As each mermaid princess reached her fifteenth birthday, she was allowed to swim to the Upper World.
Before her journey each sister promised to tell the others what she saw the next day.
When the eldest princess turned 15, she spent her time close to shore.
"I lay on a sandbar in the moonlight and gazed at a distant town," she told her sisters.
"The houses' lights twinkled like stars.
Bells rang from a large house with a tall tower."
The next year the second sister came up to the surface at sunset.
"The sky and the water glowed gold and red," she said.
"I saw fluffy, purple clouds high overhead.
A flock of white swans flew just above the water toward the setting sun."
The following year the third sister went deeper into the Upper World.
"I swam up a river and saw rolling hills and woods filled with tall, green trees.
I heard birds sing happy songs to their chicks.
In a small cove, humans were swimming—even without tails!"
Frightened of the humans, the third sister fled back to the open sea.
Hearing this, the fourth sister was less bold.
She kept far away from land and stayed among the rough waves.
"I saw playful dolphins jumping over each other above the water," she said to the others.
"Huge whales spouted water through holes in their backs.
In the distance I saw ships.
They were so far away that they looked like seagulls."
Now the fifth sister had her turn.
Her birthday was in winter, when the sea often turned a deep green and storms raged.
Enormous icebergs stuck out of the water.
"I sat in the snow on a mountain of ice, and I watched a ship sail by," she told her sisters.
"Soon the sea became choppy and the green waves turned black.
Thunder roared in my ears, and I saw lightning flash across the sky!"
Some evenings the five older sisters swam to the surface together.
They sat on rocks and sang to the ships.
They had beautiful voices that rang through the air.
But when the sailors heard the sisters' songs, they became frightened.
The sailors quickly turned their ships around to head for shore.
As the years went by, humans told stories of the singing sisters.
They said mermaids were wicked because they tricked humans.
Foolish sailors loved to hear the mermaids' songs and would sail too close.
Then their ships would crash into the rocks.
None of these stories were true.
The sisters did not want to hurt anyone.
They just loved to sing!
But the five mermaids eventually lost interest in the Upper World.
And they spent less and less time singing to the ships.
For the sea folk, there was no place as nice as their home at the bottom of the sea.
The Sea Kingdom was the best place to live and always would be.
For five years the Little Mermaid listened to her sisters' tales.
She longed for her own adventure in the Upper World.
"Oh, how I wish I were 15," she cried.
"I know I will love the world up there and all the humans in it!"