Chapter 3 - The Informant Who Forgot

She found him in a tavern called The Drowned Anchor, which was either a very honest name or a very dark joke. The kind of place where the floor was sticky and the light was dim and nobody looked at anybody else for too long.

He was sitting in the back corner, nursing a drink that had gone flat hours ago. Thin man, maybe fifty, with the hollow look of someone who hadn't been sleeping well. She knew that look. Saw it in the mirror every morning.

"You're Morrow," she said, sliding into the seat across from him.

He didn't startle. Didn't look surprised. Just lifted his eyes from his drink and studied her face like he was trying to memorize it.

"You're the one who's been asking questions."

"I'm the one who's been asking questions."

"Dangerous thing to do in this city." He took a sip of his flat drink, grimaced, set it down again. "People who ask questions tend to forget why they started asking."

"I know."

"Do you?" He leaned forward, and for a moment something sharp flickered in his eyes. "Because I've watched it happen. Watched people go from curious to confused to completely blank. Like someone reached into their heads and scooped out everything that mattered."

Her heart was beating too fast. This was the closest she'd gotten in weeks. An actual person who knew something, who'd seen what she'd seen, who understood that the forgetting wasn't natural.

"Tell me what you know."

Morrow laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's the problem, isn't it? What I know keeps changing. I write things down, same as you probably do. And then I read what I wrote and half of it doesn't make sense anymore. Names I don't recognize. Places I've never heard of. Like I'm reading someone else's notes."

She pulled out the journal. Set it on the table between them. "Like this?"

He stared at it for a long moment. Then he reached out, slowly, and touched the leather cover with his fingertips.

"Where did you get this?"

"It's mine. I've had it for years."

"No." He shook his head. "I mean... I've seen one like this before. Same binding. Same wear pattern on the spine." His brow furrowed. "Someone showed it to me. They said it was important. They said it was the only proof that..."

He trailed off. His hand was still on the journal, but his eyes had gone distant.

"Proof of what?" she pressed. "Who showed it to you?"

"I don't... there was someone. Young. They came to me because they'd heard I collected inconsistencies. Stories that didn't add up, records that contradicted themselves. I've been gathering them for years, trying to find the pattern."

Her pulse was pounding now. "What did they look like? The person who came to you?"

Morrow closed his eyes. She could see him straining, reaching for something that kept slipping away.

"They were... God, why can't I remember? It was only a few months ago. They sat right where you're sitting. They had a scarf, I think. Yellow. No, that's not right. Was it yellow?"

The yellow scarf. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake the memory loose. That was them. That was her sibling. He'd met them, talked to them, maybe even learned what they'd discovered.

"What did they tell you?" Her voice came out rougher than she intended. "What proof did they have?"

"They had documents. Old ones. Records from places that aren't supposed to exist." Morrow opened his eyes, and for a moment they were clear and focused. "They showed me a map. Not like the maps we have now. This one had... there were whole countries on it. Countries I'd never heard of, with names I couldn't pronounce. And they said..." He pressed his palm against his forehead. "They said they knew how it was happening. They knew who was doing it."

"Who? Who's doing it?"

"The..." His face twisted with effort. "The Edit... the Ed..."

He stopped. The clarity in his eyes was fading. She could see it happening, the same way she'd seen it happen with the old sailor, with the flower woman in the market. The light going out, the confusion rushing in.

"Morrow. Stay with me. Who's doing it?"

"Doing what?"

Her stomach dropped.

"The erasures," she said carefully. "The people who are cutting things out of the world. You were just telling me about them."

He stared at her. The look on his face wasn't confusion anymore. It was blank incomprehension, the polite blankness of someone who has no idea what you're talking about but doesn't want to be rude.

"I'm sorry, I think there's been a misunderstanding. I don't know anything about... what did you call them? Erasures?"

"You collect inconsistencies. Stories that don't add up. You've been doing it for years."

"Have I?" He looked down at the table, at the flat drink, at the journal sitting between them. His hand was still resting on the leather cover. "I don't... that doesn't sound like something I'd do."

She wanted to scream. She wanted to flip the table and drag him out of this dingy tavern and make him remember. But she knew it wouldn't work. She'd tried before, with others. You couldn't force a memory back once it started dissolving.

"The young person who came to see you," she said, one last desperate attempt. "With the scarf. They sat right here. You talked about maps."

Morrow's face went through something terrible. A flicker of recognition, there and gone, like a candle guttering in a draft. Then nothing.

"I think you have me confused with someone else." He pulled his hand back from the journal. "I should go. I don't know why I'm here, actually. This isn't the kind of place I usually..."

He stood up. Swayed slightly. Looked around the tavern like he was seeing it for the first time.

"Did I order this drink? I don't even like ale."

"Morrow—"

"That's not my name." He said it with absolute certainty. "I'm... my name is..."

He stopped. The color drained from his face.

"Why can't I remember my name?"

She couldn't watch this. Couldn't sit here and witness another person unravel. But she couldn't look away either, because this was it. This was what was happening to her, slowly, piece by piece. This was her future if she didn't find answers.

"You should sit down," she said quietly.

"I should go home." But he didn't move. Just stood there, one hand gripping the back of the chair, staring at nothing. "I have a home. Don't I? There's a place I live. A street. A door with a... with a..."

He walked away. Not fast, not panicked. Just the slow, shuffling gait of someone who'd lost something important and couldn't remember what it was. She watched him push through the tavern door and disappear into the street.

Gone.

Whatever he'd known, whatever the sibling had told him, whatever proof he'd seen with his own eyes. All of it gone.

She sat alone in the back corner of The Drowned Anchor, the journal open on the table in front of her. Around her, the tavern carried on. Glasses clinking, voices murmuring, the ordinary sounds of ordinary people who didn't know the world was full of holes.

She should write it down. Everything Morrow had said before he'd forgotten. The map with the unknown countries. The documents from places that weren't supposed to exist. The name he'd almost remembered, the one that started with Ed.

The Editors. That's what the guardian on the island would call them later. But she didn't know that yet.

She picked up the pen. Opened to a fresh page. Started writing.

Met an informant. Morrow (not his real name? he couldn't remember). He'd seen them. Talked to them. They showed him proof.

A map with countries that don't exist anymore.

Documents from erased places.

He said they knew who was doing it. Started to say a name. Something starting with Ed. Couldn't finish.

Then he forgot everything. His name. Where he lived. Why he was in the tavern. Gone in less than five minutes.

This is what's happening to me. Slower, but the same thing. Pieces disappearing. Edges dissolving. Eventually there won't be enough left to keep looking.

She stopped writing. Her hand was shaking again.

She tried to picture the sibling. Not a specific memory, just their face. The shape of their features, the expression they usually wore, the way they looked when they were excited about something.

Nothing came.

She pushed harder. There had to be something. She'd known that face her whole life. Had woken up to it, argued with it, loved it for as long as she could remember.

A blur. That's all she got. The general sense of a person, young, shorter than her, but no details. No specifics. Like trying to remember a dream that had faded hours ago.

Her chest went tight. That thing that happened when you couldn't breathe right but your body kept trying anyway.

The yellow scarf. She could remember the yellow scarf. Could picture it clearly, the frayed edge, the slightly faded color. But the face above it was empty. A person-shaped hole where a person used to be.

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."

She flipped back through the journal. Looking for descriptions, for details, for anything that would help her rebuild what she was losing.

Curious. Kind. Saw the best in people.

That was all she'd written. Personality traits. Not what they looked like. Not the color of their eyes or the sound of their laugh or the way they wrinkled their nose when they were thinking hard about something.

Did they wrinkle their nose? She thought so. She was almost sure.

But she couldn't see it anymore.

The tavern noise felt very far away. She sat there with the journal in her lap and tried, over and over, to remember a face she'd known her entire life.

It wouldn't come.

This was what Morrow had felt. That terrible blankness. That reaching for something that should be there and finding nothing but empty space.

She'd thought she had time. Six months, the last informant had told her. Maybe more. But the face was already gone, and if the face was gone then what else was slipping away without her noticing?

She grabbed the pen again. Started writing frantically, trying to capture anything she could still hold onto.

They were shorter than me. Younger by—how many years? I can't remember. They had a scarf. Yellow, with a frayed edge. They wore it everywhere. They collected smooth rocks and got excited about weird bugs and always wanted to help strangers even when I told them we didn't have time.

They weren't built for any of this. They were just a kid. Just a regular kid who loved the world and wanted to understand it and trusted me to keep them safe.

I can't remember their face.

I can't remember their face and I don't know how long I've been unable to remember because I only just tried and maybe it's been gone for days or weeks and I didn't even notice.

What else am I losing?

What else is already gone?

She closed the journal. Pressed it against her chest. The leather was warm from her body heat, familiar and solid. The only thing she had left.

Around her, The Drowned Anchor kept drowning. Glasses clinking. Voices murmuring. The world going on like nothing was wrong.

She had to move. Had to get out of here before she fell apart completely. Had to find the Cartographer's Daughter and get answers before there was nothing left to save.

She stood up. Her legs felt distant, like they belonged to someone else. The pen was still in her hand and she didn't remember picking it up.

What else was she forgetting?

She made her way to the door. One foot in front of the other. Basic locomotion. Something her body could do without her mind having to participate.

Outside, the city was getting dark. Evening coming on, the shadows lengthening, the streets emptying out as people headed home to places they could remember.

She didn't have a home anymore. Just the boarding house room and the journal and a destination she had to reach before everything dissolved.

The Cartographer's Daughter. The seams. The road that played tricks.

Tomorrow. She'd leave tomorrow. Tonight she'd try to sleep, try to dream, try to hold onto whatever fragments remained.

And in the morning, if she still remembered why she was doing this, she'd go.

She started walking. The city rose around her, wrong angles and mismatched shadows and seventeen statues for twelve founders. All the seams she'd learned to see. All the places where the world had been cut and stitched back together.

Somewhere in those seams was the answer. Somewhere was the proof of what had been taken. And somewhere, maybe, was a way to bring it back.

She just had to find it before she forgot what she was looking for.

The journal was heavy in her bag. The pen was still in her hand. And the face she should have been able to picture was gone, leaving only an ache where the memory used to be.

She kept walking anyway.

What else could she do?