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Mona Megistus, Mona Megistus– his heart, which is to say the empty space inside of him that ought to hold a heart, is filled up with Mona Megistus. A thousand words dance at the tip of his tongue, a hundred sonnets, an uncountable number of songs, but not one of them manages to capture the essence of her loveliness. Even now, her hair unbrushed and clothes all wrinkled, he thinks she is the most magnificent creature he has ever beheld.
He opens his mouth. No sound comes out.
"Wanderer?" She calls, concerned. She runs her fingers against his throat, then sighs.
"... Voice still hasn't come back, huh? Seems like all that seawater did more damage than I thought."
It is not the seawater. He has lived and breathed seawater all his life. He knows it as well as he knows himself. It could never hurt him.
No, his current ailment is of his own doing. Even if he had a way to communicate that to Mona, though, he would not want to trouble her with the truth.
~
Mona rises with the afternoon sun. She has no reason to be up earlier, so she does not get up earlier. The townsfolk in her old village used to call her a witch, based solely on the way she wasted so much daylight. They were right, of course, but she still rankles at the thought of their accusations.
She'd moved here mostly to avoid all that sort of trouble– her seaside cottage is secluded, but has a large enough garden to let her be self-sufficient, and the closest town is only half a day away if she ever needs something she cannot make herself. It's the perfect place for her research.
There's all sorts of magic in the world, be it potions, spirits, ghosts or faeries, but Mona's done nothing but dabble in all of those. Her specialty, rather, is the study of fate.
She's often heard people call fate funny or fickle, but she's done more than enough research to understand that that is not the case. What fate is, though, is predictable. You have to know where to look and what to look for, in addition to knowing how to interpret the signs you do find, but a skilled enough partitioner can read the future as clearly as a newspaper. She's not quite there yet, but can say with confidence that she's far beyond the level of most street-market fortune tellers with their crystal balls and inflated prices.
At any rate, she's good enough to not be surprised when she goes outside to check on her garden and sees a man washed up on the beach. She's been seeing signs of a new person entering her life for weeks now.
"You alright?" She says, checking to make sure he hasn't swallowed any seawater. He has, unfortunately, and she turns him on his side. The stranger seems to cough up half the ocean, then slowly, though shaking, turns to look up at her.
"My name is Mona Megistus. Do you know–"
He shakes his head, then opens his mouth. He says nothing. He tries again, but no sound at all comes out.
"Must have been the saltwater," Mona mumbles under her breath. Seawater's got all kind of things mixed up in it, and she's sure that getting so much down your throat can't be good for you.
"Here, come with me. I can get you something to eat."
The stranger takes her hand. His touch is clammy and quite cold, but there's a certain fire in the way he latches on to her.
~
His mother's kingdom is magnificent. The palaces are so tall as to nearly scrape the surface, the nobility dress themselves in finery unimaginable to those on the surface, the halls are inlaid with pearls, and there is absolutely no place for her oldest son. Where his little sister graces ballrooms as the crown princess, he skirts about in the shadows, not quite hated but not quite loved.
He is not ostracized. He is not thought of at all.
~
"Do you have a name?" She calls from the kitchen.
The stranger looks down, then shakes his head. He's sitting at her kitchen table, running his hands quite intently over everything in his reach. He's probably one of the more unusual people she's met, which is really quite impressive.
The thought occurs to her that he's lost his memories, but she dismisses it just as quickly. He can't speak, and had hardly been able to walk, but both of those can be blamed on the damage he'd gotten before he'd washed up here. His seeming ignorance of the things in her cottage is probably just because he's a foreigner, or unfamiliar with witchcraft, and his reticence to communicate his name is likely for a similar sort of reason.
"Do you mind if I call you wanderer, then?"
He nods. His eyes are very bright, as if her lackluster attempt at a name is the most beautiful thing he's heard in all his life.
She decides the soup she'd been making ready, and pours a small bowl out for him. She's not the best cook, far from it, actually, but she figures that it's good enough to help him get his strength back.
"Here. Hopefully this'll help you get your voice back," she says, putting the bowl in front of him before turning back to grab a spoon.
She collects the spoon, and turns to give it to him. She finds him looking quite intently at the bowl, from several angles, as if not sure what to make of it. He picks it up, looks at it from the bottom, and tilts it such that it spills a little. He quickly adjusts, saving the rest from pouring all over the floor, but nonetheless stares at the spilled drop curiously.
"... I forgot to give you a spoon," she says. She holds it out to him, and he accepts it with a small nod.
The spoon, too, he carefully inspects, albeit with less confusion than the soup. Before she can even think to show him how to use it, he's figured it out himself, and very carefully brings a spoonful of soup to his mouth.
He looks towards her, immensely pleased.
~
He hates spending time in the palace. Every room is filled with song and laughter, and none of it is for him. If only his mother wasn't so reckless, if only his aunt hadn't tried to fight that monster alone, if only he wasn't broken–
It does not matter. The point of it is, he spends time away from others when he can.
Most often, he goes up towards the surface. It can be risky for merfolk, that close to humans, but for all his faults he does not lack power. He can handle more than a few superstitious fishermen.
It's usually quiet up there, the bigger sea creatures sticking to the deep, and when a human ship does pass by it's more of a novelty rather than a distraction.
Today, he's decided to forfeit the open ocean entirely in favor of visiting the shore. It's the time of the year where the salmon go inland, and he thinks he might catch a couple. He can't follow them, of course, as merfolk can only survive in the salt of the ocean, but he can still wait at the river mouths.
As he approaches the shore, he hears the sound of muffled singing get slowly louder. Scowling, he turns to see who's interrupted his solitude, but can't see anyone anywhere. A thought occurs to him, and he risks sticking his head above the water.
There's a human on the beach, singing to herself as she reads a book in her lap. He watches, enraptured, as she flips through the pages, occasionally cutting herself off with a sigh or a grumble.
There are no books beneath the sea. The water tears them all into nothing. Merfolk have no need of writing, either, not when their voices transmit so quickly and so clearly through the sea.
And yet, this girl, beholden to a fragile work of text, has a voice far lovelier than any he has ever heard before. He finds himself drawn towards her, as if she is the siren between them, but forces himself to stay out of her sight. Even if she can't hurt him, he– doesn't want to scare her. That's all.
He stays there, hidden in the shadows, until long after she leaves. For the first time, he feels a twinge in the empty space inside his chest.
~
Mona looks down at her scryglass with a frown. She sighs, closes her eyes, and goes through the motions again.
It's foolish, of course, but there's always the chance that she'd missed something the first time. Logically, she knows she couldn't have, but she still cannot help but give in to the hope that this time will be different.
It's not. Her fortune is the same. Her constellation stares back at her, taunting, still carrying the message you will end with the sea.
~
"You like her, don't you?"
He spins around, finding the sea witch behind him. Instinctively, he shifts into a combat stance. He doesn't know what Dottore wants, or how he found him here, but he will not allow him to lay a single finger on Mona.
"Pretty girl, for a human. They're so terribly delicate, you know-"
"Don't you dare."
Dottore laughs, long and low and insincere.
"I have no interest in her. You, however– well, clearly you're fond of her."
He says nothing. If Dottore knows the truth, there's no point in denying it.
And of course he's fond of Mona, as the clownfish is the anemone. He comes to her like the tide, would do anything to help her if he could, but he cannot let himself even entertain the idea.
The sea and the land are two different worlds. He cannot join her, and she cannot join him. That is simply the way things are.
"What would you give to be with her?" Dottore asks.
His eyes narrow.
"Why do you care?"
Dottore smiles, showing off all of his too-sharp teeth.
"Because, for a price, I might just be able to help you."
~
Her wanderer is sound asleep when she slips out of bed, stopping only to kiss away his furrowed brow. He will not have to suffer anymore, not after tonight. She wishes she could give him a better goodbye, but he wouldn't let her go if he was awake to stop her.
Mona shuts the door behind her as softly as she can manage, and walks over to the shore. She steps in the water, lets the sea wash over her feet, and waits.
She was always going to end up here. She is going to end with the sea.
Dottore, for his part, does not delay their inevitable end, although she doubts that he's predicted what's going to happen to the two of them. A black shadow soon appears beneath the waves, a writhing mass of tentacles, and even his human face seems monstrous in the moonlight.
"Does your little admirer know you've come tonight? I must admit, Mona Megistus, even I did not expect to find you here."
Under her breath, she begins to recite the spell that will end all this. She only hopes that this will all be over before her wanderer wakes up.
~
Mona helps him up, and it is only for his lack of voice that he does not scream. Each step is agony, a pain he has never been able to imagine and does not know how he can bear. Dottore had mentioned that walking would be painful for him, but hadn't mentioned that by that he meant that even the slightest amount of pressure on the ground would make him feel like his new feet are splitting open. He's surprised when he looks down and finds them whole, so intense is the feeling of his flesh splitting open, of his bones not being where they ought to be.
Mona, noticing his discomfort, wraps her arm around him to support some of his weight. She's warm, her touch grounding, and all of this was worth it. He has hardly been her equal for a minute, hardly known her touch for a moment, but even the bliss of that alone would be worth a thousand times the suffering he is feeling now.
~
She hums as she sets up her equipment, preparing to look into the shape of her fate. Reading one's exact fortune is forbidden, of course, but that doesn't mean she can't get a sense of her general trajectory. What she's doing now is closer to a horoscope than astrology, really. Or so she tells herself. Her master would likely be terribly cross with her if she knew she was doing this, no matter what excuse she gave, but her master is not here right now.
Once everything's in place, she clears her mind, and looks to the stars. Slowly, she shifts through their patterns, and finds what they have in store for her.
Her effort uncovers a single phrase, and she frowns slightly. Prophecies are rarely what they seem to be, but she can't quite imagine any happy meaning coming out of the line you will end with the sea.
~
The letters in Mona's books are strange, but not indecipherable. Certain forms repeat, and certain words are connected to certain concepts, and before too long he comes up with a rough idea of what all of them mean. It's probably the most difficult thing he's had to learn since he left the water, but though that transition stole his voice it did not dull his wits.
Still, there's only so much he can teach himself. Mona's out in the garden, today, and although he grimaces at the thought of walking he steels himself and goes to her.
"Wanderer?"
He sits besides her, and opens the book he'd brought with him. Inside the front cover, inside the front cover of every book she owns, is a certain set of leisurely looping characters.
He points to them, and then to her, hoping she picks up on his question.
"Yes, that's my name," she answers. "Actually, let me show you–"
She produces a small pen from the pockets of her dress, and scribbles something below her name.
"That's how you write wanderer," she says. "Hopefully, I'll be able to help you with your real name someday soon."
~
Mona is not fully convinced that the wanderer is not human. Sure, he'd washed up on the beach with no other signs of a shipwreck, and sure, he seems endlessly intrigued by the most mundane objects in her cottage, but there's perfectly reasonable explanations for both of those. The fact that his gait is so unsteady and his voice completely missing and that he seems to struggle with gravity, but had calmly stopped her and showed her the most efficient way to gut a fish–
She's not fully convinced that it matters, or more accurately that it's any of her business. Human or not, she'll help him out while he recovers from whatever had caused him to end up here, and then send him on his way.
He notices that she's been looking at him, and smiles, raising one hand over his chest. He looks very soft, in this light, the moonlight flattering all his features, and she finally realizes that he is and has always been unearthly beautiful.
… She may have made a fatal error.
~
He's finally got a decent grasp on writing, but now that he finally has a way to communicate clearly, he finds that he does not know what he wants to say. His past, his heartlessness, his deal with Dottore– selfishly, he does not want Mona to know about any of that. He doesn't want her to pity him, doesn't want her to understand just how unworthy he is to be in her presence. His moments with her are stolen, he knows, and he pays for it every time he walks, but he is terribly greedy.
She notices him staring at the blank paper in front of him, and frowns.
"Did you need anything?"
He reaches over to the other side of the table and grabs a pen she'd left there, finally knowing what to write. Very carefully, making sure he gets the shapes right, he pens a single word.
No.
Mona lights up, and he wishes he could capture her expression in a bottle. He'd carry it to the bottom of the sea, all the way back to his mother's kingdom, and let it drive out the darkness from every corner of every crag and heart alike. Such is her loveliness, hors concours in comparison to everything beneath the waves.
"So you– can I ask you a few questions?"
He could nod, but writes out yes for the sake of practice.
"What's your name?"
I like wanderer.
"... Thank you? I'll keep calling you that, then..?"
He nods this time. The subject of his other names isn't painful, per say, but he doesn't exactly feel they fit him. Now, he only cares for whatever name Mona wishes to call him, for whatever she sees in him is the only version of himself he cares to embrace.
"Where did you come from?"
He considers his answer for a long time. He does not want to lie to her, but doesn't know how to write that many words, so he can't quite be as nuanced as he'd like. Given his limitations, and own fears, after a long moment he opts for a simple answer.
The sea.
Mona looks– not quite surprised by that, but still somehow taken aback, and in her eyes he sees for a single moment not her, and not her soul, but the miles of oppressive water between her home and his.
~
The wanderer takes it upon himself to make lunch, and so Mona decides to take her newfound free time to go collect some of the prettier shells that have washed up on the beach. They sell for decent money– enough, at least, to buy the things she cannot produce herself.
She quickly fills half her basket like abalone, oysters, even bits of bright blue seaglass. All things considered, she likely won't be going to town for a while, but nevertheless the quality of her haul pleases her. When she can spare the time to leave– when the wanderer wants to come with her, she really means– she might just make enough to buy some new astrology equipment.
"Excuse me."
She straightens. It has been a very long time since she has heard a voice other than her own, and she can't quite bring herself to believe it's not trouble. Mona scans the treeline, but doesn't find anyone.
"I have a few questions for you."
The voice is not coming from the trees, she realizes. She turns around slowly, and finds that there is a woman talking to her in the water.
The woman pushes herself into the shallows, sitting up on a long, purple tail. Mona swallows.
"Be not afraid," the woman says.
Mona isn't afraid, it's just that– well, merfolk are notoriously isolationist. Most humans don't believe in them at all, and she'd tentatively counted herself among that number until a few weeks ago.
"I am looking for someone. He looks a bit like me. Have you seen anyone like that?"
It's a pretty awful description, if the mermaid really is looking for a missing person, and Mona's about to tell her as much until she realizes that she has. They're not identical, by any means, but something in the shape of the mermaid's features cannot help but remind her of the wanderer.
The wanderer, who comes from the sea, and who dislikes walking, and who knows very little about writing but a great deal about fishing.
"That depends," she starts. "Why–"
The door to her cottage opens. The wanderer looks at her, then looks at the mermaid, then turns to go back inside.
"Wait!" The mermaid calls, her voice raw and desperate.
He stops in the doorway.
"I am sorry," she says, quietly, "that I made you feel like I did not want you. I have only ever wanted for you to be happy."
A beat passes, and then she continues.
"I do not seek your forgiveness. If this is where you wish to stay, then I will not stop you. It's just– there's something you need to know. Something about Dottore."
The name isn't familiar to her, but the wanderer freezes, going completely still. After a long, slow moment, he turns and walks down to her side. The mermaid smiles, but there is something very sad about it.
He pulls out the pad of paper he's taken to carrying, and to Mona's surprise, writes a message to her.
My mother.
"Will you not speak to me?" The mermaid– the wanderer's mother– asks. Her voice is soft, and quite sad, but in a resigned sort of way.
He shakes his head.
"He can't," Mona supplies. "I think he lost his voice."
The wanderer raises his pen once more, the scratch of its tip against the paper nearly lost in the sound of the waves.
I gave it away.
"He says he gave it away."
His mother's eyes widen, in something that cannot quite be distilled down to fear alone.
"You traded it to Dottore?"
The wanderer nods slightly, as if this isn't something he wants to talk about, or I'd fully willing to admit.
His mother sighs, but to Mona's surprise, reaches out to take his hand. He, though hesitantly, lets her.
"That will make things more complicated," she says. "Dottore means to use you. He needs a human heart, but cannot get one himself. You, though–"
The wanderer looks towards his mother, confused.
"You're loveable."
He jerks away from her, glances towards Mona for a fraction of an instant, and then turns away from both of them in a vain attempt to hide his blush. His mother laughs, despite everything, as she supposes mothers ought to.
~
"What was your life like before you came here?" Mona asks softly. He knows she must have left her question vague on purpose, knows she must suspect something of the truth but doesn't want to force him in to anything.
He finds himself liking that about her. He does not know if anyone else has ever been so kind to him.
Empty, he writes. He frowns, knowing it's not enough, and adds more.
I did not care for anyone and nobody cared for me.
"... What your mother said, about a heart–"
He cuts her off with the scratch of pen against paper, desperately trying to get the words out of him before they fall into the dark recesses of his mind and he forgets them forever. He's sure his spelling suffers for it, but he finds that hardly bothers him.
Not sure there's a word for it you'll understand. A heart is not literal, but like
Not important. I don't have one. I could have one, if a human loved me.
"A human?"
Merfolk hearts are weak. They do not last. Mine broke before I was even born. Human hearts are different. I do not have a heart, but if you loved me, the shadow of your heart would pass to me.
Mona pauses, considering. Even now, he finds himself fraught with the urge to lean back to meet her where she's looking over his shoulder; to melt into her and gently rest his head in the crook of her neck. He is empty, but even if he does not have her heart, simply being around her fulfills him in other, more important, ways.
"That Dottore your mother mentioned– he's trying to use you to get a human heart, right? And you made some kind of deal with him?"
Dottore is a sea-witch. I traded him my voice for the ability to live up here.
Mona pauses again. He looks up at her, and cannot help but smile softly. She snaps out of her reverie, notices his expression, and soon some kind of elusive emotion moves across her face.
"Why would you make that deal?" She asks quietly.
There was nothing for me back home.
"And what was there for you here?"
He turns and looks at her. The answer is obvious, he thinks, but she seems somehow troubled by it.
"Wanderer," she says, "are you in love with me?"
He turns back towards the page before him, quickly running out of blank space.
Yes, he writes, and for every flowery platitude that every poet has ever sung, for every muse of comedy and tragedy and morality itself that has ever been invoked, that's really all there is to it.
~
From over his shoulder, Mona stares down at him as he writes a single word.
Yes
Her heart skips a beat. She– has known this, she thinks, but–
"I can't possibly be worth that much to you," she says softly.
He turns around completely and reaches for her arm. Slowly, giving her time to pull away, he presses a soft kiss to the palm of her hand.
He looks up at her, smiling in a reassuring sort of way. Mona, he mouths.
"You–"
He presses another kiss to the apex of her wrist, like a man wholly devoted to that in front of him and nothing else. There's a message in it, something words couldn't possibly express, something divine.
He continues to kiss his way up her arm with an unrestrained reverence, admiring every inch of her imperfectly human form. He reaches her shoulder eventually, then the curve of her neck, and then–
He waits, hovering, just above her lips. A small and extremely content sigh slips out of him, almost unwittingly, as he looks at her with unabashed adoration. Mona thinks she begins to understand him.
She closes the gap.
~
Something is very wrong. He can tell as much from the moment he wakes, and from nothing more than the fact that the bed is empty. He rushes through the cottage and out the door.
The beach is empty. Involuntarily, he lets out a scream, and to his horror it isn't soundless. He stumbles out into the sand, and it doesn't hurt. Tears are rolling down his face and they taste like the sea.
~
“You forget I am a witch,” says Mona, smiling. She has already won.
Dottore sneers down at her from his throne of tentacles, the expression nearly breaking his face in two.
“Oh, I remember, but it's not worth thinking about when you so badly pale in comparison to me. Now, hand over your heart. I've entertained you long enough.”
Mona still smiles. Her wanderer is asleep inside, and hopefully unaware of all this mess. When he wakes he will be free.
She cuts her hand on a seashell and lets her blood drip into the water. Her spell activates with a flash of blinding light.
~
“Don't cry,” she says.
He stumbles back from the water with a yelp, still unused to the return of his voice. Mona is gone, Dottore must have gotten to her, and yet–
She forms slowly, leisurely, from the seafoam, taking on a form light and airy but still her, still the woman he loves.
“You– you're–”
“My humanity was a small price to pay to hear your voice,” she says. “I do love you, after all.”