Unusual Stories for Unusual People

The Shepherdess and the Mermaid

The Shepherdess was only fifteen years old, but she felt as though she had lived for centuries. Her hair was a wreck, her hands were gnarled from years of work and stress. Her feet were always dirty, rough and patchy, and she could only dress in rags.

She lived all alone in a barn owned by a wealthy family, and she only had the sheep for company. The family she worked for paid her very little, yet she never complained since they gave her a warm place to sleep and food to eat, which was really all she wanted.

However, the Shepherdess had another desire: she wanted to be a mermaid. She could not read but kept countless drawings of mermaids beneath her bed of hay, which she would stare at each night before she went to sleep. The days of herding sheep and constantly working wore down on her, and while she was grateful for the home she had she secretly wished she could swim far, far away from her village, somewhere she could perhaps find love.

The Shepherdess knew that this was an impossible dream, so she kept it to herself and told nobody. She went about her days nonetheless, never complaining and always keeping to what she knew.

One day, a lamb wandered to the path which led to the seashore, and the Shepherdess went to retrieve it once she realized it was missing. Yet as she picked up the lamb, she noticed an abandoned fish net near the waters, and there she saw a mermaid tangled in the net. Alarmed, she went and cut the mermaid free, and then turned her loose into the waters.

"Thank you!" the mermaid said to her once she'd been freed. "How could I ever repay you?"

"You don't need to," the Shepherdess assured her, but the mermaid insisted.

"No, no! There must be something I could do for you,"

The Shepherdess thought about it and finally decided, "Well, all right. Would it hurt you to give me one of your scales?"

Mermaids always grow back their scales, just like their hair, so the Mermaid gave the Shepherdess one of her sparkling scales. The Shepherdess thanked her and returned home, where she kept the scale with her other pictures as a keepsake.

A few days later, the Shepherdess started to feel ill. She tried to keep working, but it wore down on her and she had very little energy to keep herself moving. She finally decided to ask her employer if she might have a day off of work, to get her strength back.

Her Employer said, "No, I can't risk losing a day of farmwork because of your laziness! Get past it and keep working,"

The Shepherdess tried her hardest, but she wound up collapsing during the middle of her sheep watch, and many of the sheep wandered away due to this. When the Employer found her lying in the grass, he became furious and shook her awake, only to beat her until she fainted once more.

He dragged her to the seashore and tied her up, leaving her there for the tide to take her away. As the Shepherdess stared up at the night sky, she thought, "What a way to end! I've never found love, and here I die, alone under the sky,"

But when the tide came in, the Mermaid appeared, and she cut the Shepherdess's bonds free. She then removed another scale of hers and pressed it to the girl's legs, whispering, "You will be free, my friend,"

Instantly, the Shepherdess's legs became fins, and she was a mermaid just like her rescuer. The mermaids swam away into the sea, and no one on land heard from the Shepherdess again.