Chapter 17 - The Choice

The next morning, Linn didn't recognize her.

She saw it happen. Watched the girl's eyes open, watched the confusion settle in, watched the moment when Linn looked at her and saw a stranger.

"Who are you?"

Three words. The worst three words she'd ever heard.

"My name doesn't matter," she said carefully. "But you've been traveling with me. We're looking for something together."

Linn sat up slowly, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. Her eyes were wrong. Not empty exactly, but disconnected. Like she was seeing the world through dirty glass.

"I don't remember that." Linn looked around at the ruins, at the blackened walls and the ash and the dead fire. "I don't remember any of this. Where are we?"

"A lighthouse. It burned down. We came here looking for information."

"Did we find it?"

"Yes."

Linn nodded, but the motion was automatic. She wasn't really processing the words, just going through the motions of conversation while her mind tried to catch up with a reality that had shifted overnight.

"I have a notebook," Linn said. She pulled it from her pack, held it up like a talisman. "I've been writing things down. That's what it says on the first page. Write everything down because you're going to forget."

"That's good. Read through it. It'll help you remember."

Linn opened the notebook and started reading. Her lips moved silently, forming words she'd written and couldn't recall writing. Every few seconds she'd look up at the protagonist, comparing what she was reading to the stranger sitting across from her.

"This says I followed you because my grandmother told me to. That you're looking for someone who was erased."

"That's right."

"It says I wanted to help. That I believed what you were doing mattered." Linn's voice was flat, reciting facts without feeling. "But I don't remember any of it. I don't remember my grandmother telling me anything. I don't even remember having a grandmother."

The Disease had taken more than just the recent memories. It was eating backward now, consuming Linn's past along with her present. Soon there would be nothing left but the notebook and the words of a person she used to be.

"You should read the whole thing," she said. "From the beginning. It'll help."

"Will it bring the memories back?"

"No. But it'll tell you who you were. That's something."

Linn went back to reading. She watched the girl's face for any sign of recognition, any flicker of the person she'd traveled with for weeks. Nothing. Just the blank concentration of someone studying a stranger's diary.

She should feel something. Grief, probably. Loss. But she'd been losing pieces of herself for so long that watching someone else disappear just felt like more of the same. Another casualty. Another wound that wouldn't heal.

She pulled out the journal and opened it.

Ten pages left. Two more had gone blank overnight.

At this rate, she had maybe two weeks. Maybe less.

"I think you should go."

Linn looked up from the notebook. She'd been reading for an hour, working through pages of her own handwriting, trying to rebuild a life from fragments.

"Go where?"

"South. Back toward the port city. There are people there who might be able to help you. Doctors, maybe. Or at least a place to stay."

"The notebook says the port city is dangerous. It says people there know about you and are afraid."

"They're afraid of me. Not of you." She gestured at the notebook in Linn's hands. "You don't remember anything about the search. You don't know what I'm looking for or why. As far as anyone can tell, you're just a traveler who got lost."

"But I'm supposed to be helping you. That's what it says. That's why I came."

"You can't help me anymore." The words came out harsher than she intended. "I'm sorry. But the forgetting is too far along. If you stay with me, you'll keep losing pieces until there's nothing left. At least if you go south, you might stabilize. Might be able to build something new."

Linn was quiet for a long moment. Her eyes drifted to the notebook, to the pages filled with a life she couldn't remember living.

"This person." She tapped the page. "The one who wrote this. She really believed in what you're doing. She thought it was worth dying for."

"She was young. And stubborn."

"She sounds brave."

"She was." She looked at Linn's face and tried to find any trace of the girl she'd known. Nothing. Just a stranger wearing familiar clothes. "She was the bravest person I'd met in a long time."

"I wish I could remember being her."

So did she.

They walked together as far as the crossroads.

South led back toward the coast, toward the port city and whatever remained of civilization. North led into the foothills, toward the mountains, toward the Backwards River and everything that waited beyond.

Linn stopped at the junction and looked both ways. Her pack was lighter now. She'd given back the supplies she wouldn't need, kept only the notebook and enough food to reach the city.

"The notebook says to tell you something," Linn said. "If this moment comes. If I forget and you have to send me away."

"What?"

Linn opened the notebook to a page near the back. Read the words aloud in a voice that didn't understand what they meant.

"It says: Don't go alone. It says you promised. It says the sibling warned you, and the Cartographer's Daughter warned you, and everyone who knows anything about this has told you the same thing." She looked up. "Do you know what that means?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to listen?"

She looked north. The mountains were visible now, gray shapes against a grayer sky. Somewhere beyond them, a river flowed the wrong direction. And somewhere beyond that, answers waited. Or oblivion. She wouldn't know which until she got there.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I know what I should do. I know what everyone's told me to do. But I'm running out of time, and the slow path might be too slow."

Linn nodded. The motion was strange, mechanical. A stranger's gesture.

"The person who wrote this notebook would tell you to wait. To find the others first. To do it right." She closed the notebook and tucked it into her pack. "But I'm not that person anymore. So I'll just say: good luck. Whatever you decide."

She turned and started walking south.

She watched her go. Waited until the girl was a small figure in the distance, until she disappeared over a hill and was gone.

Another loss. Another piece of herself walking away.

But also a relief. Because now there was no one left to disappoint. No one left to protect. No one left to watch her make the wrong choice.

She was alone.

The way she'd been when this started.

She sat at the crossroads for a long time.

The journal was in her lap, open to the hidden messages she'd found. The sibling's words, appearing as her own memories faded.

Don't follow the Backwards River alone.

Find the others. Build something they can't erase.

Trust the slow work. Trust the connections.

Good advice. Smart advice. The kind of advice that came from someone who'd learned the hard way what happened when you rushed.

But the sibling had rushed anyway. Had known it was a mistake and done it anyway. Because sometimes the slow path wasn't an option. Sometimes you had to choose between doing it wrong and not doing it at all.

She pulled out the Cartographer's Daughter's papers. The coordinates for the Rememberers. Dozens of locations scattered across the world, each one a potential ally, a piece of the network she was supposed to build.

Weeks of travel. Months, probably. And at each stop, the risk of spreading the Disease further, infecting more people, leaving more casualties behind.

By the time she finished, the journal would be empty. Her memories would be gone. She'd be a stranger searching for something she couldn't remember, following a trail she couldn't understand.

Unless.

She looked at the other paper. The map to the Backwards River.

Three days' travel. Maybe four. And at the end, the source. The place where the sibling had gone. The place where the Editors lived.

If she went now, she'd still have pages left. Still have memories to fight with. Still have enough of herself to remember why she was fighting.

But she'd be alone. And everyone who'd gone alone had been erased.

She sat there as the sun moved across the sky, weighing impossible choices.

The compass was heavy in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at it.

Still pointing north. Still aimed at the fear that lived at the end of the journey.

But as she stared at the needle, something shifted. A memory, surfacing from wherever memories hid when they weren't being used.

The last time she'd seen them. The sibling. The day before they disappeared.

They'd been fighting.

She remembered it now, in fragments. Sharp words and slamming doors and the particular kind of anger that only came from people who loved each other too much to let anything go.

"You're not listening," the sibling had said. "You never listen. I tell you what I've found and you just dismiss it, like I'm making things up, like I'm a child who doesn't know any better."

"Because you're chasing fairy tales. Inconsistencies in maps? Holidays nobody else remembers? You sound crazy."

"Maybe I am crazy. But at least I'm paying attention. At least I'm not sleepwalking through a world that's falling apart."

"The world isn't falling apart."

"It is. It's been falling apart for longer than either of us have been alive. And you'd rather close your eyes than look at what's happening."

She'd said something cruel then. She couldn't remember exactly what, the words were gone, erased along with so much else. But she remembered the sibling's face. The hurt that flashed across it, quickly hidden. The way they'd stepped back, like she'd physically struck them.

"Fine," the sibling had said. Voice flat. Closed off. "I won't bother you with it anymore."

"Good."

"I'm going to follow this trail. I'm going to find out what's happening. And when I do, you'll see that I was right."

"Sure. Good luck with that."

She'd walked away. Hadn't looked back. Hadn't said goodbye or good luck or I love you or any of the things you were supposed to say when someone you loved was about to walk into danger.

Just turned her back and left.

And the next morning, they were gone.

The memory hit her like a physical blow.

She sat at the crossroads with tears streaming down her face, remembering what she'd spent months trying to forget. The fight. The cruel words. The last conversation she'd ever had with them, and she'd made it about dismissing everything they believed in.

No wonder they'd gone alone. No wonder they hadn't asked for help. She'd made it clear she wouldn't give any.

The compass was still in her hand. She looked at it through blurred eyes.

It wasn't pointing at the River anymore.

It was pointing at her chest. At her heart. The same place it had pointed when she'd first gotten it, back when she thought her deepest fear was giving up.

But that wasn't right. The fear of giving up had faded. She'd made peace with it.

This was something else. Something she hadn't let herself face until now.

Guilt.

That was what the compass had been pointing at all along. Not the fear of surrender, but the guilt that lived underneath it. The knowledge that she'd failed the sibling long before they were erased. That her dismissal, her cruelty, her refusal to believe had driven them to take risks they shouldn't have taken.

The compass pointed to what you feared most.

And she feared, more than anything else, that this was all her fault.

She sat there until the sun started to set.

The tears had dried. The memory had settled into the place where all her other losses lived, painful but no longer paralyzing. She could carry this. Had been carrying it for months without knowing what it was.

At least now she understood.

She looked at the journal. Ten pages. Maybe two weeks.

She looked at the coordinates. Weeks of travel. Months of network-building. Time she didn't have.

She looked at the map to the River. Three days. Maybe four.

The sibling had gone alone because she'd driven them away. Had made them feel like they couldn't ask for help. And they'd been erased.

Now she was about to do the same thing. Go alone, ignore the warnings, rush toward a confrontation she wasn't ready for.

Same mistake. Same ending.

Unless.

Unless the mistake wasn't going alone. Unless the mistake was going without understanding.

The sibling had known the Editors existed. Had known memory could fight back. But they hadn't known about the Rememberers. Hadn't known there was a network. Hadn't had the coordinates, the symbols, the map of where allies could be found.

She had all of that.

And she had something else. The hidden messages. The warnings left in invisible ink. The sibling's own voice, telling her what they'd learned, preparing her for what was ahead.

They'd been erased, but they'd left pieces of themselves behind. Anchors. Proof that couldn't be completely destroyed.

She was carrying those pieces now. And every person she found, every Rememberer she connected with, would carry pieces too.

The network didn't need to exist before she went to the River.

She just needed to plant seeds on the way.

She stood up.

The decision had made itself while she wasn't looking. While she was sitting in her grief, her guilt, her impossible choice.

She would go north. To the River. To whatever waited at the source.

But she wouldn't go empty-handed.

She had the coordinates. The symbols. The knowledge of how to find the Rememberers. And she had two weeks of journal pages left.

Two weeks to travel north, following the route on the map. Two weeks to stop at every seam she passed, look for the symbols, make contact with anyone she could find.

She wouldn't build a network. There wasn't time for that.

But she could scatter pieces of herself along the way. Leave copies of what she knew. Plant anchors in the minds of people who might remember, might preserve, might pass the knowledge on.

The sibling had done the same thing. Left hidden messages in the journal, knowing they might not survive.

She could do that too. Leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Make sure that even if she failed, even if she was erased, something would remain.

The slow work and the fast path at the same time.

It probably wouldn't be enough. Probably she'd get to the River and be cut away like everyone else who'd tried.

But at least she'd go fighting. At least she'd go doing something other than running toward destruction.

She gathered her things. The journal. The compass. The coordinates and the map and all the pieces of knowledge she'd accumulated over months of searching.

Then she started walking north.

She made camp that night in the foothills.

The mountains were closer now, rising against the stars like teeth in a jaw. Somewhere beyond them, the Backwards River waited. Somewhere beyond that, the Editors.

She built a small fire and sat beside it with the journal in her lap.

Ten pages. Maybe less, by now. She hadn't checked.

She opened to one of the blank pages near the end. Picked up her pen.

If you're reading this, I'm probably gone.

I don't know who you are. Maybe someone who finds this journal abandoned by the roadside. Maybe a Rememberer who recognizes what it is. Maybe just a stranger who picks it up and wonders why the pages are blank.

But if you can read this, if the words haven't faded yet, then here's what I know:

The world is full of holes. Places that were cut away, people who were erased, memories that were stolen. Someone is doing this on purpose. They've been doing it for a long time.

They're called the Editors. They cut away anything that doesn't fit their vision. Anything too complex, too contradictory, too real.

But they can be fought.

Memory is the weapon. Proof is the weapon. As long as someone remembers, the cuts don't hold. As long as there's evidence, the erasure isn't complete.

I'm going to the source. The Backwards River. Where the Editors live. I know I probably won't make it. Everyone who's gone there alone has been erased.

But I'm not going empty-handed. I have knowledge. I have proof. And I have love, stupid stubborn love that won't let go even when everything tells me to.

If I fail, find the Rememberers. The coordinates are in these pages. The symbols are here. Build what I couldn't build. Connect what I couldn't connect.

And if by some miracle I succeed, if I make it back from the source with the person I'm looking for, we'll find you. We'll help you. We'll make sure no one else has to do this alone.

Don't give up.

Please.

Whatever happens, don't give up.

She read it back. It sounded like the sibling's messages. The same desperate hope, the same impossible optimism.

Maybe that was appropriate. Maybe that's what love sounded like when it was running out of time.

She closed the journal and held it against her chest.

Tomorrow she'd keep walking. The day after that, and the day after that. Following the map north, looking for symbols along the way, trying to plant as many seeds as she could before her time ran out.

And at the end, the River.

The sibling had told her to wait. To build something first. To not make the same mistake.

But the sibling had also said: I love you. I've always loved you.

And love didn't wait. Love didn't calculate odds or weigh costs. Love walked into darkness because someone you cared about was lost in it.

She was going to find them.

Or she was going to be erased trying.

Either way, at least she'd know.

The fire burned down to embers.

She lay on the cold ground, looking up at stars that might not have been in the right positions, constellations that might have been rearranged by cuts she couldn't see.

The compass was in her pocket, pointing at her heart. At the guilt she'd finally named.

She'd failed the sibling. Had dismissed them, driven them away, let them walk into danger alone. That failure would live in her for however long she had left.

But guilt could be fuel too. Could drive you forward when nothing else would.

She'd failed them before.

She wouldn't fail them again.

The mountains waited in the darkness. The River flowed toward its impossible source. And somewhere beyond all of it, a person she loved was waiting to be remembered back into existence.

She closed her eyes and let sleep take her.

Tomorrow, she'd start climbing.

Tomorrow, everything would begin.

END OF BOOK ONE