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Look for Sarah Cross's
brand-new fairy tale-inspired novel
TEAR YOU APART
coming from Egmont USATEAR YOU APART
in June 2015!
Check out my reviews of
KILL ME SOFTLY
and
AFTER THE BALL
(Which you can read online right now for free!),
as well as two awesome guest posts during Fairy Tale Fortnight as Sarah Cross discusses both
"White as Snow, Red as Blood, Perfect for a Retelling"
and
"The Fairy Tale Princess You Don't Want to Be."
If you want to know more about her, read one of her books. Her soul is in there somewhere.
Current art inspirations & obsessions can be found at tumblr, Fairy Tale Mood, or pinterest.
Edible Mermaids: Ningyo and Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid Saga
by Sarah Cross
Most
mermaids fit into one of two categories: friendly or dangerous.
Friendly mermaids have colorful tails and shell bras, are fond of
combing their hair with forks (Ariel), and want to experience life on
land so badly that they'll trade their voices for legs. Dangerous
mermaids are siren-like creatures who lure sailors to their doom,
stir up storms, and drown anyone who falls into the water. Why
collect statues of princes when you can decorate your sea cave with
their skeletons?
The
mermaids of Japan (ningyo) are in a category of their own. They have
no more interest in the human world than a salmon does, and their
meat is much more alluring to people than their voices are. According
to Japanese folklore, eating the flesh of a mermaid will give you
eternal youth and longevity. The most famous example is the
Eight-hundred-year nun (Yao bikuni or Happyaku bikuni), who ate a
portion of mermaid meat her father brought home and went on to live
for eight hundred years.
 |
| ©Monkey-fish 'Merman' from The British Museum |
The
idea of carving up Disney's Ariel or the lovelorn mermaid from Hans
Christian Andersen's tale might strike you as completely disgusting,
closer to cannibalism than a sushi dinner. But if you look at early
depictions of ningyo, you'll see that they're very different from the
pretty creatures we associate with the word “mermaids.” Ningyo
were believed to look like large fish with human heads, sometimes
with arms and claws. Faux mermaids displayed at fairs and oddities
clubs were Frankenstein'd creations made from monkey and fish parts
(usually a monkey head and torso attached to a fish tail). These
monkey-fish were big business. The so-called “Feejee mermaid”
exhibited by P.T. Barnum was originally sold to a collector for
$6000—and this was in 1822.
Okay,
enough gross mermaids. Let me tell you about Mermaid Saga, which was
my first taste of Japanese mermaid lore.
 |
| ©Mermaid Saga covers from VIZ Media |
Rumiko
Takahashi's Mermaid Saga (published in the U.S. by VIZ Media) takes the
“gain youth and longevity from eating mermaid flesh” story and
makes it even more twisted. In Mermaid Saga, not everyone who eats
mermaid flesh gets that fabled prize. Some die, others become hideous
monsters called Lost Souls, and it's the rare individual who gains
near-immortality. (Those who have eaten mermaid flesh and survived
can only be killed by having their heads cut off, or via a special
poison. Normal wounds heal, and if they are “killed” but not
decapitated, they come back to life.) For Yuta, a 500-year-old former
fisherman, not aging stopped being fun a long time ago. He wants to
live and grow old like he was supposed to.
 |
| ©Mermaid Saga covers from VIZ Media |
Yuta
believes that if he finds a mermaid, she'll be able to make him an
ordinary man again. During his search he stumbles upon a mountain
village full of old women who are taking care of a 15-year-old girl
named Mana. Mana is treated like a princess—everything is done for
her, and her caretakers shrug off her tantrums and verbal abuse. But
Mana is also a prisoner whose legs have been shackled to ensure she
can't walk, and who's been fed mermaid flesh in preparation for
another twisted transformation . . . because it turns out that
mermaids aren't the only ones being eaten. The old women in the
village who have been caring for Mana are really mermaids, and if
they eat the meat of a girl who has eaten mermaid flesh and survived,
they'll regain their lost youth. Yuta helps Mana escape, and their
adventures begin.
 |
| ©Mermaid Saga covers from VIZ Media |
The
series follows the pair as they travel through 1980s Japan, and also
flashes back to Yuta's past to show us just how cruel an immortal
life can be. Yuta and Mana can't go anywhere without encountering
someone who's been corrupted by mermaid flesh or by the desire for
it. Like the woman who stays young as her twin grows old, thanks to a
dose of mermaid blood she took in her her teens. Or the dead girl who
was revived by a sprinkling of mermaid ashes, but now lacks a soul
and switches from calm to murderous without warning. Then there's the
little boy who's been alive for centuries, who feeds mermaid flesh to
unsuspecting women in his search for someone to replace his long-dead
mother.
It's
a wholly different, dark look at mermaids that left a lasting
impression on me; I highly recommend it. And while I don't do
mermaid-flesh immortality in my fairy tale books, if you see a line
about “mermaid sashimi,” that's the influence of Mermaid Saga
coming through. Mermaids can be nice or wicked, curious or vicious,
but I'll always think of them as edible.
~*~
O F F I C I A L I N F O:
Title: KILL ME SOFTLY
Author: Sarah Cross
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Publisher: Egmont USA
SUMMARY:
Author: Sarah Cross
Release Date: January 2015
Publisher: Egmont USA
SUMMARY:
Pitched as a modern Snow White reimagining, in which a teen with a murderous stepmother is trapped in a dangerous game of love, jealously, and hate with her best friend and lover, who is destined to decide if she lives or dies...until a mysterious prince from a strange Underworld offers her an escape.
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