One day when Isabelle was playing with the mermaids in the water, she was approached by a very angry fish. The fish started yelling, "What is a human doing here?!"

 

Samira came to her rescue right away, "Oh stop it, Noni! She's no harm to you!"

 

"Samira, what is going on?" Isabelle asked.

 

"Oh, don't mind her. She is just upset because she has had a bad experience with humans." Samira answered. "I'll tell you all about it."

 

Over the next hour, Samira told Isabelle all about Noni's bad experience with humans and it was much worse then Isabelle had imagined...

 

Noni used to have a brother named Nemo. Nemo was a very special fish. When he was a baby he got himself tangled in a fisherman's net. He thought he was going to be dinner that night, but all of a sudden, he was greeted by a huge octopus. The octopus said that she would save Nemo, but only if she could cast a spell on him. Nemo cried out, "You can do anything you want! Just please save me!" Immediately, the octopus freed Nemo from the net with her tentacles and cast a spell on him with her hypnotic glare. The spell allowed Nemo to transform into a human so he could fetch things from the human world for the octopus. She had collected human belongings for years and wanted to add to her collection. After many years, Nemo began to control this ability and was able to transform from fish to human at his own free will.

 

One day, Nemo was walking around the market collecting things for the octopus when he ran into the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Her name was Sabrina and she immediately felt the same for Nemo and wanted to marry him. He explained the spell that he was under and she was so in love with Nemo that she did not care that he was a fish. They got married and she began to bring him lunch by the river every day. All Sabrina would do was pour a little of her perfume into the water and he would know to come to the surface. This went on for years and both Nemo and his wife were happy with the arrangement. 

 

After a few days had gone by without a visit from his wife, Nemo became very concerned. He was so worried that something bad might have happened to her. Much to his relief, he was summoned to the surface by the perfume being poured into the water. He raced up to the surface and expected to see his wife waiting for him, but was surprised to see a much older man. The man was his wife's father and before Nemo knew what had happened, the man stabbed in the chest with a large spear. The water grew red with Nemo's blood and all the sea life soon knew that Nemo had been murdered by his father-in-law.

 

Noni was heartbroken when she heard of her brother's murder. She has never trusted a human being since that dreadful day.

"Wow...that is a horribly sad story. I feel so bad for Nemo." Said Isabelle. She could not believe that a human was so cruel to Nemo.

"Yeah, it's awful not having him around anymore. But that man will get what is coming to him. I'll make sure of it." Noni said with a vengance.

 

 

Author's Note: This was one of my favorite stories that I read because it is about a man who transforms between human and fish rather than centering the story around a mermaid. The original story is told as a dialogue between the fish and the beautiful girl so I changed the point of view to be from an outside perspective. It is not specified in the original story why the fish is able to transform into a human so I included the story about the octopus. Also in the original story, the girl sings by the river so her husband will come to surface and I changed it to her pouring perfume into the water. The last part that I changed was the way that the father killed the fish. Originally, the fish is called to the surface by the woman's little brother imitating the her voice, and then father kills the fish, and feeds the fish to his family for dinner. I though that was a little too gory so I did not go into detail and simply left it with the father killing the fish with a spear. I added the fish's sister, Noni, to spark the interest at the beginning of the story because she dislikes humans so much.

Fuja A. The Beautiful Girl and the FIsh. Fourteen Hundred Cowries, and Other African Tales, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, New York 1971, Oxford 1962