Chapter 10 - The Impossible Choice

The fog came out of nowhere.

One moment they were walking through scrubland, following the coordinates toward the Sutured Lands. The next moment there was a wall of white in front of them, dense and sudden, rising from the ground like something alive.

She stopped so fast that Linn walked into her back.

"What the hell is that?"

"I don't know." But that wasn't true. Something in her gut knew. Something remembered even if her mind couldn't quite reach it.

She pulled out the journal, flipped to the pages that still had writing. Somewhere in there, she'd written something about fog. A warning she couldn't remember making.

There. Near the middle, in handwriting that was shakier than usual. Three words underlined so hard the pen had nearly torn through the paper.

Don't trust the fog.

"We need to go around," she said.

"It's just fog." Linn stepped forward, peering into the white. "We can walk through it. Might be faster than—"

"No." She grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her back. "We go around. Trust me."

Linn looked at her, then at the fog, then back at her. "You know what this is."

"I wrote myself a warning. I don't remember why, but I wrote it, which means there's a reason." She started walking, angling to the left, keeping the fog wall at a distance. "Come on."

They skirted the edge for maybe an hour. The fog didn't move, didn't shift with the wind, just sat there like a stain on the landscape. Wrong. Everything about it was wrong. The air near it felt heavy and tasted like copper, and the compass in her pocket had gone completely still. Not pointing at her fear anymore. Not pointing at anything. Just dead.

"Look." Linn pointed ahead.

Someone was coming out of the fog.

A man, stumbling, moving like he wasn't sure his legs worked properly. He was maybe forty, dressed in traveling clothes that had seen better days. His face was wet. Crying. He was crying so hard he could barely walk.

They reached him just as he collapsed to his knees.

"Hey." She crouched in front of him. "Are you hurt?"

He looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. His expression was strange. Joy and grief tangled together, fighting for control of his features.

"She came back," he said. His voice was raw, broken. "I wished for it and she came back."

"Who came back?"

"My wife. She died three years ago. Fever took her in the night. I've been carrying her memory ever since, visiting her grave every week, talking to her like she could still hear me." He laughed, but the sound was terrible. "And now she's back. She's waiting for me at home. Alive. Real. Like she never left."

She felt the cold spreading through her chest. "The fog did this?"

"The fog grants wishes. Everyone knows that." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "You walk in, you say what you want, and it gives it to you. I wished for her to come back and she did."

"Then why are you crying?"

The man's face crumpled. "Because I can't remember her."

She stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"I know she's my wife. I know I loved her. I know we were married for fifteen years and she made me happier than I've ever been." He pressed his hands against his temples like he was trying to hold something inside his skull. "But I can't remember any of it. Our wedding day. The first time we met. The sound of her laugh. All of it's gone. Just... empty."

Linn made a small sound behind her. Horror and sympathy mixed together.

"The fog took the memories," she said quietly. "That's the price."

"I didn't know." The man was rocking back and forth now. "Nobody told me there was a price. I just wanted her back. I just wanted to stop hurting."

"What are you going to do?"

"Go home. See her. Maybe if I see her face, it'll come back. Maybe if she talks to me, I'll remember why I love her." He looked up at the sky, at the clouds drifting overhead like nothing was wrong. "She's alive. That's what matters. She's alive and everything else I can learn again."

He stood up. Swayed. Started walking, heading away from the fog, away from them. Moving toward a life that was both everything he'd wanted and nothing like he'd imagined.

She watched him go and felt something crack inside her.

"That's what the fog does." Linn's voice was barely above a whisper. "One wish, one memory. Equal exchange."

"That's not equal." She was still staring at the white wall in the distance. "He got his wife back but he can't remember loving her. That's not a trade. That's a theft."

"He chose it."

"He didn't know what he was choosing."

They stood there at the edge of the scrubland, the fog a constant presence at the corner of her vision. She could feel it now. The pull. Like gravity, like a current, like something was calling her name in a voice too quiet to hear.

"We should keep moving," Linn said. "Get away from here before—"

"Before what?"

The girl didn't answer. She didn't have to.

She pulled out the journal and opened it to a random page. Blank. Turned to another. Blank. Another. Three words in fading ink.

Don't trust the fog.

How many pages were left now? A quarter of the book? Less? Every day more went blank, more memories dissolved, more proof disappeared. She was losing the race and she knew it. The erasure was winning and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Except there was.

The thought crept in slowly, inevitable. The fog grants wishes. One wish, one memory. She could walk in right now and wish for the sibling to come back. Wish for the erasure to be undone, for everything to be restored, for the nightmare to be over.

All it would cost was a memory.

"You're thinking about it." Linn's voice was sharp. "Don't."

"I'm not."

"You are. I can see it on your face." The girl stepped between her and the fog, blocking her view. "Whatever you're thinking, stop. That man lost fifteen years of love. Fifteen years of his life with the person he wanted most in the world. And now he has to go home and look at her face and feel nothing."

"He has her back."

"Does he? Does he really have her back if he can't remember why she matters?"

She closed her eyes. The pull was still there, humming in her blood, whispering possibilities. One wish. One memory. Such a simple trade.

But which memory would it take?

The yellow scarf. The only clear image she had left. If the fog took that, she'd have nothing. Just a hole where a person used to be, with no proof they'd ever existed at all.

Or the guilt. The weight she'd been carrying for months, the certainty that she'd failed, that she was responsible. What if the fog took that? Would she still care enough to keep searching? Would any of this matter if she couldn't remember why it hurt?

Or the dreams. The fragments that came back to her in sleep, the glimpses of a face she couldn't see when awake. The fog might take those too, and then she'd have no way to remember anything new.

"I could ask for them back and it wouldn't matter," she said. "Because I wouldn't remember them anyway. I wouldn't know what I'd lost."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it? The man knew he loved his wife even though he couldn't remember any of the reasons. The feeling was still there. The knowledge was still there. Just not the memories that made it real."

"And you think that would be enough? Knowing you loved someone without knowing why?"

She opened her eyes and looked at Linn. Young and scared and trying so hard to be brave.

"I already don't remember why. The memories are already gone. All I have left is the feeling and a yellow scarf that's fading more every day." She gestured at the journal. "This is all I have. Blank pages and fragments and the certainty that I failed someone I can't even picture anymore."

"Then why keep going? If it's already so bad, why not give up?"

"Because giving up means they win. Whoever did this, the Editors, whoever cut them out of the world. If I stop searching, the erasure is complete. They're gone forever and it's my fault."

"So go into the fog." Linn's voice was hard now. Challenging. "Wish them back. See what happens."

She turned toward the white wall. It was right there, maybe a hundred yards away. She could reach it in two minutes. Walk in, speak the wish, walk out with everything she wanted.

Everything except whatever the fog decided to take.

She started walking.

"Wait." Linn grabbed her arm. "I didn't mean— I was trying to— Damn it, stop!"

She didn't stop. Her legs kept moving, one foot in front of the other, closing the distance between her and the fog. The pull was stronger now, almost irresistible. Like the fog wanted her. Like it had been waiting for her to make this choice.

"You don't know what it'll take!" Linn was struggling to hold her back, digging her heels into the dirt. "It could take everything. It could take the thing that makes you you."

"Maybe that's what needs to happen."

"No. No, that's the fog talking. That's not you." Linn yanked on her arm hard enough to spin her around. "Look at me. Look at my face."

She looked. Linn was crying. Tears streaming down her cheeks, snot running from her nose, the ugly crying of someone who was genuinely terrified.

"My grandmother went into a fog like this," Linn said. "When she was young. Before I was born. She wished for something, I never knew what. And she got it. But she lost something too."

"What did she lose?"

"Her daughter. My mother." Linn's voice broke. "She couldn't remember having a child. Couldn't remember nine months of pregnancy, couldn't remember labor, couldn't remember holding her baby for the first time. She knew my mother existed because there was a person living in her house who called her mom. But she couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel any of it."

"Linn—"

"She spent twenty years trying to love someone she couldn't remember loving. Trying to be a mother to a child she had no memory of wanting. And it destroyed her. It destroyed both of them." The girl was shaking now. "That's what the fog does. It gives you what you ask for and takes the thing that made you ask."

The pull was fading. The fog was still there, still waiting, but the grip it had on her was loosening. She could feel her own will coming back, her own choices mattering again.

"I'm sorry." The words felt inadequate. "About your grandmother. About your mother."

"Don't be sorry. Just don't go in there." Linn wiped her face with her sleeve. "Whatever you're looking for, whatever you've lost, you won't find it in the fog. You'll just lose more."

She looked at the white wall one more time. It sat there, patient and eternal, offering everything and demanding everything in return.

One wish. One memory.

Not today.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go."

They made camp a mile from the fog, close enough that she could still see its faint glow on the horizon when night fell. She should have gone further. Should have put as much distance as possible between herself and the temptation.

But part of her needed to see it. Needed to remember what she'd almost done.

Linn was quiet, poking at the fire with a stick, lost in whatever memories the day had dredged up. She hadn't asked about the grandmother again. Hadn't pushed for more details. Some wounds weren't meant to be examined.

The journal was in her lap. She'd been going through it page by page, counting what was left.

Thirty-one pages with writing. Down from forty-two a few days ago. The erasure was accelerating. She could almost feel it now, the words dissolving, the past getting lighter and lighter.

"Four months," she said out loud. "Maybe less."

Linn looked up from the fire. "What?"

"That's how long I have. At this rate. Four months before the journal is blank and I can't remember why I'm searching."

"Then we need to move faster."

"We're already moving as fast as we can." She closed the journal and held it against her chest. "The Sutured Lands are still days away. And even when we get there, I don't know what we'll find. The sibling went there and got erased. The Cartographer's Daughter couldn't remember what they discovered. Vera forgot everything the moment I stopped asking questions."

"So what are you saying? We give up?"

"No." The word came out hard and certain. "I'm saying we're running out of time and I don't have a plan. I've been following clues and hoping they lead somewhere, but hope isn't a strategy. Hope is what you have when you've got nothing else."

Linn was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Do you know why I followed you?"

"Because you're young and stupid and don't know what you're getting into."

"Maybe." A ghost of a smile. "But also because my grandmother told me to."

"Your grandmother is dead."

"Before she died. Years before." Linn pulled her own notebook from her pack, the battered one she'd been keeping as a backup copy of the memories. "She said that someday I'd meet someone who was searching for something impossible. Someone who wouldn't give up even when everything told them to. And she said when I met that person, I should help them."

"Why?"

"Because people who don't give up are the only ones who ever change anything." Linn opened the notebook and showed her a page. Handwriting that wasn't the girl's own, cramped and shaky, the writing of an old woman near the end. "She wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. Said I'd know the searcher when I saw them."

She looked at the words on the page. Read them once, twice, three times.

Some people remember what shouldn't be remembered. Some people search for what can't be found. When you meet them, help them. They're the only hope any of us have.

"Your grandmother knew," she said softly. "About the erasures. About the people fighting against them."

"She knew a lot of things she never told me. I'm still finding pieces of it, scattered through her old books and papers. Warnings and prophecies and scraps of knowledge that don't make sense." Linn closed the notebook. "But this one made sense. This one I understood."

"I'm not anybody's hope. I'm barely holding myself together."

"That's exactly what hope looks like. Falling apart and still moving forward."

She didn't have an answer for that. Didn't have the energy to argue.

The fire crackled between them. The fog glowed on the horizon. The stars came out one by one, indifferent to everything happening below.

She wrote in the journal until her hand cramped. Documented the fog, the man who'd lost his memories, the choice she'd almost made. Wrote down Linn's story about her grandmother, the wish that had cost a mother-daughter bond, the warning left behind for a stranger.

I almost went in. Stood at the edge and felt the pull and wanted so badly to just make it stop. One wish and the search would be over. One wish and they'd be back.

But Linn was right. The fog takes the thing that made you ask. If I wished for them to return, I might lose the love that drove me to search. And then what would be the point?

Some shortcuts cost more than the long road.

We keep going. The Sutured Lands. Whatever the sibling found. Whatever got them erased.

I need to know what happened. I need to understand why.

Four months. Maybe less.

It has to be enough.

She closed the journal and lay down near the fire. The fog was still there at the edge of her vision, glowing faintly in the darkness. Waiting. Patient.

She turned her back to it and closed her eyes.

Tomorrow they'd keep walking. Tomorrow they'd get closer to the truth. And if the fog was still there when all of this was over, if she still had questions that needed answering, maybe she'd go back.

But not today.

Today she chose the hard way.

She hoped it was the right choice.