There was so much she wanted to know, but her sisters could not answer everything, so she asked...

her old grandmother and she was familiar with the higher world, which is what she rightly called the lands above the sea.”
“ ‘When humans do not drown,’ the little mermaid asked, ‘can they stay alive for ever, don’t they die like we do down here in the sea?’

‘Oh yes,’ the old woman said, ‘they too have to die, and their lives are even shorter than ours are. We can live until we are three hundred years old, but when we cease to exist, we become foam on the water, do not even have a grave down here among our dear ones. We do not have an immortal soul, we will never live again, we are like the green rushes, once they have been severed they can never grow green again!’ Humans on the other hand have a soul that lives for ever, lives even after the body has become earth; it rises up through the clear sky up to all the shining stars! Just as we rise up to the surface of the sea and see the lands of the humans, they rise up to unknown lovely places, those we will never get to see.’