Section 1
In the middle of the big ocean, there’s a place where the water is a beautiful blue color, just like a pretty cornflower. You can see right through the water because it’s so clear, like glass. This place is really, really deep - even a very long cable couldn’t reach the bottom! It’s so deep that if you stacked up lots of church towers, one on top of the other, they still wouldn’t be as tall as the distance from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the water. The Sea King and all the creatures who live with him, call that deep part of the ocean their home. We shouldn’t think that the bottom of the sea is just plain, yellow sand with nothing else there. Actually, there are many unique and special flowers and plants that grow at the bottom of the sea. Their leaves and stems are so flexible that even the tiniest movement of the water makes them move around as if they were alive. Just like birds fly through the trees on the land, in the deep sea, big and small fish swim gracefully among the branches of these underwater plants. At the very bottom of the ocean, there is a special place where the Sea King lives in a castle. The castle’s walls are made of coral, and it has very tall and narrow windows made of the clearest amber. The roof of the Sea King’s castle is made of shells that open and close when water moves over them. The shells are very pretty because each one has a shiny pearl inside that looks like something a queen would wear on her crown.
The Sea King’s wife had passed away a long time ago, and his mother, who was very old, took care of his home. The Sea King’s mother was a very smart lady, and she was also very proud of her family history. That’s why she had twelve oysters attached to her tail, which was more than other important sea creatures, who only had six. The Sea King’s mother did a really good job taking care of her granddaughters, who were little princesses of the sea. She was a very kind and loving grandmother. The Sea King’s six grandchildren were very lovely, but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. She had skin that was as smooth and gentle as a rose petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deepest part of the sea. However, just like her sisters, she didn’t have feet - instead, her body turned into a fish's tail. Every day, the little sea princesses would play in the big halls of the castle, or outside among the special flowers that grew on the walls. The Sea King’s castle had big amber windows that were always open, and just like how swallows come into our houses when we open our windows, fish would swim in through the castle’s windows. But instead of flying around, the fish would come up to the little princesses, eat from their hands, and let the girls pet them.
