December 14, 2014 - The Mermaid in the Well

There once was a boy who lived in a small isolated village, and it was his job to fetch water daily from a well in the center of the village square.  Every day he stood at the well and would fetch water from it for anyone who came.  This was a good system for the villagers because it saved them all time and energy.  They would just go to the well with a few containers, and the boy would fill them up.  Many boys had done this job throughout the years and had grown strong from hauling water, as water has many lessons to teach.

One day as the boy was pulling up some water for an old woman, he could have sworn he heard a voice down in the well.  After the old woman left, he peered down into the well but saw nothing and assumed it must have been a trick of the water echoing in the well.  However, a little while later while he was hauling some more water, he distinctly heard, “Boy! Pretty boy! Can you see me?”  He finished hauling the water and waved goodbye to the villager, and then he peered as far as he could into the well.  Still he saw nothing.

As he was about to withdraw, he heard the voice loud and clear again:  “Boy! Pretty boy! Can you see me?”

“I can’t,” he replied, “but I can hear you.”

“I’m trapped in the well and I can’t get out!”

“Well, how long have you been there?” he asked.

“Many, many days and I want to get out,” came a sad little voice.

The echoing well.

Just then, another villager came by for some water and warned the boy about being so close to the well edge.  He filled the villager’s containers and thanked her for her concern.  When he was sure she was gone, he peered back into the well.

“How can you have been stuck down there for days?” he asked.  “You would have drowned by now!”

“Oh no,” came the voice, “I require the water.  Can you haul me up?”

The boy was hesitant, wondering if he’d lost his mind.  Finally, he thought it couldn’t hurt to lower the bucket into the well, and so he did.  When he went to haul the bucket up, it was very heavy, much heavier than a regular bucket of water.  He was strong, though, from having hauled so much water, and he kept at it.  When the bucket reached the top, he could not believe his eyes!  There in front of him was a shimmering creature, a girl whose appearance flowed and moved in many ways all at once, and she had a tail and there were gills on her neck.  She was unmistakably a mermaid, but mermaids hadn’t been seen in this area in a very long time.

“I can’t stay long in the air,” she said, “and you’ll have to lower me down soon.”
“How did you get in the well?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  I was playing and going through caves and one room led to another and another, and then I forgot which direction I was going and I just ended up here.”
“Well, can’t you go back?”
“I’ve tried,” she said, “but there are many little paths and I don’t know which one to take.  I’ve tried many of them, but they all lead to nowhere.  I just can’t remember how I got here, and I need to go back to the sea!  You must lower me down now, though.”

It was a good thing he lowered the mermaid just then because another villager had come to the well for water.  He peered oddly at the boy and asked him who he had been talking to.  The boy replied that he just liked to hear his own echo when he spoke down into the well, and the villager warned him against getting too close to the edge.  He looked long and hard at the boy with a very distrustful look on his face.  At last, he left.

The boy peered back down into the well and offered to haul the mermaid back up, and she agreed.  She was really rather lovely, if you didn’t look too much at her gills, and the boy found himself very attracted to her.  They began talking a bit about her plight, but neither of them realized that the villager who had just come for water had hidden and was watching and listening to the whole ordeal.  He heard the boy tell the mermaid that he would come with a wagon that night with a big tub in it.  He would fill the tub with water and then put the mermaid in it.  Then he would take her out to sea and set her free there.

That night when all the villagers were in their houses for the evening, the boy silently crept out with a wagon and a tub in it.  It was a full moon so he could see fairly well.  He arrived at the well and called down to the mermaid, who responded eagerly, and then he began to fill the tub.  The whole time, the villager had followed him and remained hidden, watching.  When the tub was full, the boy hauled up the mermaid and placed her in the water.  They chatted together as the boy began to wheel the tub away toward the sea.  At that moment, the villager sprang out of his hiding spot and confronted the boy and the mermaid.

“Excellent work!” he said to the boy.  The mermaid looked at the boy and the man in fear and surprise.

“What do you mean?” asked the boy.

“We can sell her and make a lot of money, you know,” said the man.

“No.  I want to return her to the ocean.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said the man, “she has you trapped under her spell!  Water creatures are wicked and tricky!  She’ll probably drown you once you get her to sea!”

The mermaid protested her innocence, but in a quiet voice because she knew that if other villagers came to the well, they would side with the man and she would be sold and probably killed.  But the boy was angry.

“I’m bringing her back to the sea!” he hissed.

“If you do, I will bring the entire village here right now, and we’ll see just how far you get,” said the man.

The mermaid knew they were at a standstill.  She quickly intervened and offered to go back into the well.  She told them both that they could settle it in the morning and that if they fought about it at night and attracted others, neither one of them would get what they wanted.  The man was greedy and eagerly agreed; the boy was reluctant but agreed.  He turned the wagon around and wheeled it to the well.  Then he picked the mermaid up to place her on the edge of the well, but every time he did, she slipped out of his hands back into the tub.  He tried many times but failed.

Finally the mermaid asked the man to stand up on the well edge and the boy could hand her halfway up and then he could grab her and hoist her over.  The man agreed and got up on the edge.  The boy lifted the mermaid up, and the man reached down and pulled.  When they got her to the edge of the well, while the boy was still supporting her weight from below, the mermaid turned quickly and pushed the man into the well!  Down he went instantly with a terrible scream that was very soon muffled by the long well shaft!

The boy froze.  He panicked.  Quickly he let the mermaid slip back into the tub.  He could hear the man yelling far down below, pleading for help.  He went to grab the bucket to lower it down into the well.

“If you let him out, I’m done for,” the mermaid said.  “If you keep him in, he’s done for.  Either way, one of us dies.  It’s that simple.”

The boy knew it was true.  He stared into the mermaid’s impassive and shimmering eyes for a long time.  At last, he began to slowly wheel the wagon away toward the distant shore.  Neither of them said a word the entire journey.  When they got to the ocean, the mermaid turned to him and smiled, but he said nothing.  She slithered out of the tub, then along the sand of the shore, and then finally into the ocean, where she quickly dove under water and swam away.

The boy watched the spot where she had been for a long time.  He emptied the water from the tub and wheeled the wagon back to the well.  By the time he got there, no more sounds were coming from the well, and the boy knew what that meant.  He hung his head in sorrow over the decisions of adulthood that had come so rapidly on him that night.  He was a boy when the night had started and a man when it ended, and he knew that he would have to live with his decision for the rest of his life.

And he did live with the decision, learning that there is always a give and a take in life, learning that when one door closes another opens, and learning that sometimes you have to make a choice and stand by it.