She climbed with the prince on the high mountains and although her fine feet bled, so that the...

others noticed it, she merely laughed at this and followed him until they saw the clouds sailing beneath them as if they were a flock of birds flying off to foreign lands.
“Back at the prince’s palace, when the others were asleep, she went out onto the broad marble staircase, and it cooled her burning feet to stand there in the cold sea-water, and then she thought of them down there in the depths of the ocean.
One night her sisters came arm in arm, they sang so sorrowfully as they swam across the water, and she waved to them, and they recognised her and told her how sad she had made them all. Every night after that they visited her, and one night, far out, she saw her old grandmother, who had not been up to the surface of the sea for many years, and the sea-king with his crown on his head – they stretched their arms out towards her, but did not dare come as close to the shore as her sisters did.”