Every tale Andersen wrote. Newly translated from the Danish, complete.

Far out at sea the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower and as clear as the purest glass, but it is very deep, deeper than any anchor rope reaches; many church towers would have to be set one on top of another to reach from the bottom up above the water. Down there live the sea people.

Now you must by no means think that there is only the bare white sandy bottom; no, down there grow the most wonderful trees and plants, so supple in stalk and leaf that at the least movement of the water they stir as though they were alive. All the fish, small and large, slip between the branches, just as the birds do up here in the air. In the very deepest place lies the Sea King’s palace; the walls are of coral and the long pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is of mussel shells that open and close as the water moves; it looks lovely, for in each of them lies a gleaming pearl, and a single one would be a great ornament in a queen’s crown.

The Sea King down there had been a widower for many years, but his old mother kept house for him; she was a wise woman, but proud of her nobility, and so she wore twelve oysters on her tail, while the other persons of rank were allowed to wear only six. — Otherwise she deserved much praise, especially because she was so fond of the little sea princesses, her son’s daughters. They were six lovely children, but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all; her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose petal, her eyes as blue as the deepest sea, but like all the others she had no feet; her body ended in a fish’s tail.

All the long day they could play down in the palace, in the great halls where living flowers grew out of the walls. The great amber windows were opened, and then the fish swam in to them, just as with us the swallows fly in when we open up; but the fish swam right up to the little princesses, ate from their hands and let themselves be patted.

Outside the palace was a large garden with fiery red and dark blue trees; the fruits shone like gold and the flowers like a burning fire, as they constantly moved their stalks and leaves. The ground itself was the finest sand, but blue, like a sulfur flame. Over everything down there lay a wonderful blue sheen; you would sooner think you were standing high up in the air and saw only sky above and below you than that you were on the bottom of the sea. In a dead calm you could glimpse the sun; it seemed a purple flower from whose cup all the light streamed out.

Each of the little princesses had her own little plot in the garden, where she could dig and plant as she herself pleased; one gave her flower plot the shape of a whale, another thought it nicer for hers to look like a little mermaid, but the youngest made hers quite round like the sun and had only flowers that shone red as it did. She was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful, and when the other sisters decked theirs out with the most wonderful things they had got from wrecked ships, all she wanted, besides the rose-red flowers that resembled the sun high above, was a beautiful marble statue, a lovely boy it was, carved out of the white, clear stone and come down to the sea bottom in a shipwreck. By the statue she planted a rose-red weeping willow; it grew splendidly and hung its fresh branches out over the statue, down toward the blue sandy bottom, where the shadow showed violet and moved like the branches; it looked as though the top and the roots were playing at kissing each other.