The Mermaid

On a cold, rocky shore there once lived a fisherman. He could not imagine that someday a woman would agree to move in with him to such a bleak place. One evening, he pulled in his nets and found a girl in them—with black hair, storm-sea gray eyes, and a gleaming fish tail in place of legs.

The tempest in her eyes entered the fisherman’s heart. At the sound of his voice, the girl stopped struggling and flailing, though she understood not a word. But her eyes looked straight into his soul, and the fisherman’s loneliness captured her more tightly than the net. And she stayed with him—and loved him—though with the passing years he grew old, but she did not.

Rumors about this strange and unusual woman were passed from mouth to mouth until they reached the ears of a man whose business was the sale of anything strange and unusual.

His name was P. T. Barnum, and he was looking for a mermaid.