When her feet started to cry louder than her fear of Derek's hands touching her back, Phoebe came out of the silvery slipstream. She leaned with her hands on her knees, sucking the hot desert air into scorching lungs. She immediately missed the wind whipping past her. At that speed, any air would cool the skin.

  What … the fuck … was that? What is this?

  Phoebe slowly turned and looked behind her. The Fade, as always, dominated the view to the side like a giant cliff wall. But looking past it, Phoebe had to squint to see the buildings. A trail of footprints so heavy they looked like two lines in the sand led from where she now stood to the structures. Actually, they led past it.

  That's not even Derek's farmhouse and barn, she realized. Is that the Bentley Trading Post?

  But that couldn't be right … Bentley was miles north of Derek. There was at least one other fogcrawler farm and a settlement between them, wasn't there?

  That was the Bentley trading post, though, no mistake about it. She could see people moving to and fro, many of them gathering and looking her way. Phoebe had run all the way past it, miles north of it in fact.

  Phoebe looked down at herself. Her clothes looked like someone had grabbed them from behind her and yanked as hard as they could. At least they hadn't fallen off. Her shoes hadn't been so lucky. She could feel the coarse dirt beneath her feet. The engram on her face rustled against her skin, and she felt the cracks in it like tears in a piece of clothing.

  What drew her eyes the most were her hands. Silver light coiled around them. It was a blinding effect in the evening sunlight. It was just like the light that flashed when she somehow killed that snake earlier today.

  This must be how I did it, she realized. Just like how I smacked Derek and got away from him.

  A wisp of Fade smoke struck her right arm, but the silvery magic repelled it. Before she could think about that, reality set in:

  Derek is coming.

  She couldn't see him yet, but she knew the man would already be astride Clopper, galloping as hard as he could. Phoebe wouldn't be surprised if he followed her straight into the Fade.

  Phoebe still had no idea what this silver magic was that let her move that quickly. The magic dissipated, all at once like a bucket of water thrown on a red-hot surface. She didn't know how to bring it back. Or if she wanted to. Would it tear her sandals, and then her feet apart? What if she ran into something, like a house or a sharp incline? She'd navigated up and down several already, hills that had passed so quickly she didn't have time to think about them. None of them were steep, but the steepest made her legs hurt.

  She decided to run normally for now, and if the magic came back, it came back. She didn't know what caused it the last two times, but she guessed it had to do with danger. A snake nearly biting her. Derek pinning her down after treating the beetle bite.

  Shit, she thought as she jogged. Has this happened before and I just don’t remember? What happened then? Is that why Derek chained me up at night and looked at me funny the next day?

  And what was that other voice? The one that felt things at me instead of saying them? And where did all that paralyzing terror come from? I was ready to kill him. I was. What was that, getting in the way?

  What kind of magic was this? It wasn't scriptomancy. She didn't have the pencil, the moon-shard, to write spells. Another type of magic?

  Just before she could ask herself what other type of magic there was, Phoebe's engram pulsed painfully on her cheek. She stopped in place and held her hands to her face. This was different from the usual pain of thinking things the engram didn't want her to. The engram always clamped when she tried to remember something she wasn't supposed to. But that meant she'd once known the answer to this question. Phoebe, before this, knew something about the other magic.

  By force of habit, Phoebe had already moved her thoughts elsewhere. But the engram kept squealing at her. It wouldn't go away, even though she'd already changed the subject of her thoughts.

  "Gah!" she sank to her knees as the agony intensified. This was bad. This was the kind of pain that made one even more frightened that there wasn't any blood. Phoebe felt as if the barber were ripping out a tooth, but he'd missed and grabbed the inside of her cheek with the pliers.

  Just as Phoebe was about to scream, there was a soft tearing sensation, and the pain … stopped. There was a minute of quiet. Phoebe’s breathing calmed. She felt no damage in her mouth or on her face, even when she worked up the courage to touch the engram. Carefully, as if holding something fragile, she stood back up.

  Then, there was a feeling. Phoebe knew it wasn't from herself, in the same way that she knew when she was talking versus listening to someone else talk, just to a more intimate degree. She wasn't having this feeling, something else was feeling it at her.

  The feeling was a greeting. There was no "hello" in any language, or a wave of the hand. There was just a feeling, in Phoebe's chest, that was identical to the feeling she got when someone did those things.

  Then she felt like she did when someone asked if she was all right.

  "Hello?" she tried, glancing in every direction. There was no one there. Only mist-scorched, purple-splotched sand and desert brush.

  Phoebe peered at the Fade suspiciously. There were tales of a ghost the Barridian fogcrawlers called the Fadewraith, a creature of the mists with an axe she used to hook runaway slaves, disobedient children, and anyone else who strayed too close to the Fade when the suns weren't out. Or, if they didn't have enough money on them to grant Amethra and Peri's protection, depending on the pantheon. Phoebe didn't believe those stories, but she was having trouble deciding what she did believe at the moment.

  With the engram on, Phoebe didn’t remember anything past three years ago, and even that chunk of memories had holes in it. But now, with the engram cracking, Phoebe could remember knowing more about the Fadewraith. She’d known stories of it that depicted a withdrawn spectre that could be reasoned with, if you caught it on a good day. By contrast, in her time in Halfway, however, the Fadewraith had a reputation for violence, attacking villages in search of individuals, killing anyone caught in its way.

  Phoebe got another feeling from the same source that had said “hello” a few minutes ago. It felt like someone was pointing away from the Fade, away from the ground entirely. Almost vertically above where Phoebe stood into the sky, which in the desert was bright and clear. If she concentrated, the feeling solidified almost to the point of someone’s hand gently tilting Phoebe’s head in the right direction. With a few steps away from the Fade and more than one suspicious glance over her shoulder, Phoebe turned and looked up where a finger would be pointing if the feeling had a finger to point with. There, in the blue and orange skies, was a handful of the remaining moons over Mekkendor. Phoebe could see Tade, the red one, and Hakes, the teal one. Above both of those, earlier in its west-east path overhead, was a silver moon. It seemed to glow noticeably brighter than the other two. Phoebe couldn't remember its name, even when Derek told it to her.

  Until now.

  "… Oppzis?" she tried the word out. As soon as she did, her tongue remembered that it had spoken this name before. Not often, but a few times. It had been an important name.

  Phoebe realized why her engram had been hurting like hell a minute ago, and why it had stopped. Slave engrams were actually a combination of a few smaller engrams, and one of those smaller engrams was the tether that made it hurt like hell if you strayed too far from its anchor, which in this case was a similar engram on Derek, under his shirt. Usually it hurt way too much to try to run out of its range, and you’d be stopped in place by the pain and the tightness of it, like a rope pulling against your neck. But Phoebe had run so fast, the tether snapped.

  Memories came rushing back. So many at once. It was like a heap of notes being scattered across the desk; Phoebe had them all, she could read them all, but only one at a time could she take them in. She staggered in place, holding out a hand for balance. To an observer, she was sure she looked like a heat stroke victim.

  I knew a girl, back at Aleb. Fuck, what was her name? She was narubati like me, I remember that much. She was a slave, like me, and we got along. She could do this stuff too. She showed it to me a few times, before Derek came and bought me.

  Images of that city flashed through Phoebe’s vision. It was incredibly disorienting, because the images didn’t go away when she opened or closed her eyes. They weren’t even in the right order, and her brain didn’t always tell her what the correct order was, making her guess based on things like peoples’ hair length and the time of day in the memory. To her annoyance, she never saw a memory where it was clear she had hair or not.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Sometimes, Phoebe saw Griinel’s vague silhouette chatting with her, offering her something to eat. Griinel had always been so kind to Phoebe. She claimed that even with her powers, she couldn’t escape if she wanted to, but Phoebe didn’t believe her. Phoebe was pretty sure Griinel stayed because she didn’t want to leave Phoebe behind.

  There was another woman, and when Phoebe remembered her, she felt such a tide of emotion as to dwarf Griinel. It even came close to dwarfing Derek. Marthera, taht was her name, had been the caretaker of the orphanage in Aleb, the one Phoebe grew up in before becoming a slave. How she got to Aleb and how she became a slave were still blurry. But one thing was for sure: Mother Marthera was a towering figure in Phoebe’s mind, and one that she clung to for stability and care. Mother Marthera had been gentle. She had been safe.

  And she had needed to be with me, Phoebe recollected. When her engram lost integrity, and she remembered more of her pre-slavery past, she lost the thick hide and attitude she cultivated to survive. This timid, weak, appeasing little girl emerged, who jumped at her own shadow and treated everyone else as a god whose mercy she depended on. Phoebe’s trembling soul remembered Marthera as the nicest god she ever supplicated.

  In the haze, it was hard to tell when she blinked. While she was remembering so much at once, she nearly forgot the here and now. Calling herself “Phoebe” didn’t feel right. It never had, since that was what Derek called her, but with a slipping engram it felt even more like a label instead of a name. Had Marthera ever called her that?

  She stumbled over a sharper piece of desert grass and snapped out of it.

  She panted, hands on her knees as she tried to process some of what she just got back. She turned to look up at the moon in the sky, the silver one that felt like it was trying to put a hand on her shoulder.

  "Oppzis," she repeated. "It's … it's you. Again."

  Oppzis. The Moon of Acceleration. The little waxing silver circle in the sky became a lot more prominent. It felt warmer, closer, more like a friend. Not like a pet, but not like a trusty tool either. It occupied a strange place between the two. Oppzis could feel things, but in the same way a highly domesticated animal did. It was fiercely loyal, but it wasn't a dog or a horse. Phoebe could talk to it, but for some reason, she still felt alone in key ways.

  With the memory came a horde of others, some of them still partially scratched out by the engram, others only reluctantly legible. But as she said those words, Phoebe felt scores of them slot into place.

  Griinel. Right. Friend of mine back in Aleb. She could do this magic. Oppzis was hers. But why in the world can I do it now?

  At least now she knew what this kind of magic was. It wasn’t scriptomancy; she didn’t need a moon-shard. She had an entire moon all to herself instead, up in the sky. Lunomancy, that’s what Griinel said it was called.

  Fuck. That means I’m a witch. A witch in the middle of Barrid. Rural, fogcrawling Barrid. That’s why the Fade’s gasses didn’t scar me. Mists, what am I going to do?

  Why me?

  Phoebe had so many questions, so many gaps in her haphazardly returning memory. She craned her neck up once more, and asked:

  "Oppzis, what happened to Griinel? Why are you making me a lunomancer now?"

  Instead of answering, Phoebe felt encouraged by the moon to keep moving, both to put distance between herself and her pursuer, and to help herself think. That was how Oppzis communicated most names and places; he’d give them labels, and then Euffie’s mind would intuit the name he was trying to get at, so long as she already knew what it was called.

  The beetle’s bite on her shin had calmed down significantly, and she felt a lot better putting weight on the leg. With a deep breath and a shake of her shoulders, she took off at a jog in the same direction she was already going in: north.

  To Aleb, she realized. Aleb. Aleb! The city I – the city where I – the city Derek bought me in, she finally finished, finding something the engram wasn't blocking.

  “Oppzis,” she said, “are you the one breaking my engram?”

  Oppzis confirmed this, then added that he was sorry he couldn’t remove it all at once. He explained that it was a constant tug of war, with the engram reclaiming ground and Oppzis having to choose his battles. Her memories were like a city divided into multiple districts, and Oppzis and the slave engram were two armies engaged in street-to-street combat for territorial control.

  "Thank you for what you’re doing,” she said between breaths. “You ... you set me free. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Oppzis took the gratitude warmly, and then asked her what he wanted to prioritize revealing in her past.

  “Do you know what all is in there?” she asked, leaping over a patch of spiky grass. The vegetation was getting thinner as she drew deeper into the desert.

  Oppzis said that he didn’t know everything, and he couldn’t give her a list of options if he wanted to without unblocking everything first.

  “Just unlock everything you can in my head about Marthera and Aleb, okay?” she asked. Oppzis agreed, but warned her that if Marthera was still alive, she would probably look different from how Phoebe remembered her.

  “That’s okay.” Phoebe started up another incline, and glanced over her shoulder before continuing. “I just a need a lead. Can't you see Derek from up there? How close is he?”

  She felt a suggestion that she didn't need to talk out loud; just thinking at Oppzis was good enough.

  Can't you? she tried again, looking pointedly at the moon. Phoebe felt the moon explain that it was very hard to see anything from up where he was except for her. Phoebe felt for a moment like she was trying to spot an individual building in a map of not just its city, but the entire world. She got the picture.

  Phoebe glanced over her shoulder again as she crested a hill. She drew a sharp breath. There was a cloud of dust fast approaching from beyond the Bentley trading post, following the blindingly obvious trail Phoebe had left behind. The horse's rider was too small for her to make out, but she didn't need to. What little hair she had rose, and the dizziness in her head was replaced with a focused need to move in the opposite direction of a predator.

  Phoebe looked ahead to the north, and saw that she was almost to the dunes, in that little space on this side of the Fade where the winds were fierce enough and the sand loose enough to bury everything the Fade tried to sprout. The winds here came from the north, where the Fade didn't block them.

  And they’ll bury footprints.

  The dunes stretched for hundreds of miles north, and beyond that, Aleb awaited. She remembered that now, with Oppzis's help. Yes, the world was coming back into focus. If Phoebe were to draw a map of it, there would be a lot of gaps, but at least the city where Derek bought her wouldn't be one of them.

  Oppzis urged her to run. She took a step forward, but then looked back. Her tattered clothes blew in the wind.

  What will I eat? What will I drink? I don’t have anything with me but you and my clothes.

  Oppzis told her she would be out the other side of the desert in no time. She wouldn't need to eat or drink. It would just be a few hours if she went at the speed she just ran here with.

  Phoebe looked down at her hands. They weren't glowing.

  How do I cast that spell again?

  Oppzis advised against waiting until Derek was right behind her to trigger it. Oppzis seemed anxious. She allowed herself a smile. Maybe Oppzis had more personality than she remembered.

  It was a difficult explanation, but Oppzis didn't have words in his way. He just felt it to her, and Phoebe felt the answers to follow-up questions present themselves. This went on for a minute or so. The sand, Phoebe was assured, was soft enough that she could run on it without too much issue. Part of the spell was projecting a protective barrier so she didn’t get torn apart by wind resistance or by her constant impacts on the ground. She didn’t understand it very well, so she hesitated to push its limits.

  She'd start a small sandstorm in her wake, but that would just hide her tracks even faster. She would probably trip a few times, and it would hurt, but if she focused and didn't stop, she'd be all the way to the other end of the desert. She wouldn’t have much further to walk to Aleb, a few weeks at most, and she could find places to eat and drink once she was past the desert. She could take breaks here and there, and she definitely should. It was hard to enter and exit that spell gracefully. She was lucky the ground here was so soft and the land was so open. Running into a tree or a rock would strip chunks of her clean off.

  Phoebe slowed to catch her breath, and bowed her head wearily. There's still so much I don't remember.

  Oppzis assured her that she had nothing to worry about. She’d never used this magic before except in little spurts and failed attempts to escape before, but he could guide her through learning it and get her to safety.

  Phoebe frowned. Why didn’t Derek just get rid of me, if he knew I could do this?

  Oppzis didn’t know, but that was okay, because Phoebe already did. She grimaced.

  Why are you helping me? She asked. Why did you pick me?

  Oppzis reminded her that they needed to move, and promised to explain after she’d crossed the desert. Glancing over her shoulder again, she wholeheartedly agreed. Clopper could gain quite some ground when Derek pushed him. Phoebe picked up the pace again.

  I’ll work with that then, she thought, looking forward. Ugh, I need to find a scriptomancer who can get this damn thing off. First thing's first: I gotta get back to Aleb, and find Mother Marthera. She'll know somebody.

  Oppzis added that if not, she could always just keep running west, around the northern edge of the Fade. There'd probably be an Ecliptican somewhere willing to help her.

  We'll figure it out, Phoebe agreed. By the way, Oppzis, one question: what was my name, before? Phoebe is Derek's name for me. What was my parents'?

  Oppzis explained that it was difficult for him to convey specific words, especially ones that held no concrete meaning like names. For names she already knew, he could easily evoke the feelings associated with them in Phoebe’s mind. He promised to do his best to unravel the bits of her engram that blocked the names she didn’t know, but couldn't promise anything fast. Best just find Marthera and ask her.

  Can you explain anything else about my past? Or will it just make the engram act up?

  Oppzis confirmed that this was the case, with tangible sympathy.

  Oh well. Better than nothing.

  Phoebe stopped running again, and bounced a few times to stretch and shake out her muscles. She already ached from a morning's work, and that mad dash she'd made. She looked down over the dunescape. Gusts of wind blew little clouds of sand here and there. The air shimmered with heat. She was looking at one of the hottest places on Mekkendor, she now knew. The Thirsting Wastes. If she stopped partway through and the magic ceased working, she'd burn up and thirst to death. It was like looking out over a huge chasm before jumping.

  Phoebe looked over her shoulder at the still-approaching horse.

  Or I can stay, and let Derek catch me.

  Phoebe took a step forward. Following Oppzis's instructions, she got a good cloud of silver magic swirling around her. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable now, with proper instructions and careful listening. She completely understood how she'd done it by accident, with someone using feelings instead of words to direct her. A few steps forward, then a few accelerated ones, and then a crack like the world's loudest crossbow firing, and Phoebe was away.