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 cooling wind whipping past her.

  What … the fuck … was that?

  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 farmhouse. A trail of heavy footprints that streaked into each other led from where she now stood to the home. Actually, they led past it.

  That's not even Derek's farmhouse, she realized. The silo's all wrong. His is to the east. This one's in the way, and I'm north of it. Is that farmer Pablo's house?

  But that couldn't be right … farmer Pablo lived miles north of Derek. There was at least one other fogcrawler farm between them, wasn't there?

  That was Pablo's land, though, no mistake about it. 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 most of them hadn't fallen off. Her shoes hadn't been so lucky. She could feel the course dirt beneath her feet. She hated it, but she knew how to deal with it. Masters before Derek took shoes away as a punishment.

  What drew her eyes the most were her hands. Silver light coiled around them. It was a blinding effect in the morning sunlight. It was just like the light that flashed when she killed that snake earlier today. A wisp of Fade smoke struck her right arm, but the silvery magic repelled it.

  Derek is coming, she realized. 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 she'd done to move that quickly. The silvery magic dissipated, and she didn't know how to bring it back. Or if she wanted to. Without shoes on, would it tear her feet apart? What if she ran into something, like a house or a sharp hill? 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 had been 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. What kind of magic was this? It wasn't runomancy. She didn't have the pencil, the moon-shard, to write spells. The only other kind of magic it could be was … was …

  Just before she could ask herself what other type of magic there was, Phoebe's rune 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 rune didn't want her to. The rune 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 that other magic.

  By force of habit, Phoebe had already moved her thoughts elsewhere. But the rune 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 scrabble for a mirror, 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 gathered herself, calmed her breathing, and stood up once more.

  Then, there was a feeling. Phoebe knew it wasn't from her, 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.

  "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 fog 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.

  Phoebe got another feeling from the same source. It felt like someone was pointing away from the Fade, away from the ground entirely. Into the eastern sky, which in the desert was bright and clear. 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 Yu'um skies, was a handful of the remaining moons over Mekkendor. Phoebe could see Hpea, the pink one, and Zirelex, the green one. A little below both of those, however, 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 many times before. It was like fingers wrapping around the handle of a familiar tool.

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

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Phew … " 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 Velocity. Suddenly 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 rune, others only reluctantly legible. But as she said those words, Phoebe felt scores of them slot into place. The important ones were:

  I was, I am, a lunomancer. I don't remember how I got to be one, but I did.

  Lunomancers can work magic just with their moon's light in the sky. They don't need a moon-shard, like those runewrights.

  Oppzis is my moon. My partner. I can move really fast with his power, though I'm not very good at it and I need to be extremely careful. I learned how to use a lot of my powers in secret under a previous master, somewhere.

  "Oppzis, are you a boy, or a girl, or something else?"

  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. 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 rune wasn't blocking.

  "Can't you see Derek from up there?" she asked the moon. 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.

  So you are a boy, she thought. Interesting.

  The moon explained that this didn't really matter, and it was up to her what Oppzis was. It felt to her, and she felt to it.

  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 farmer Pablo's property, following the blindingly obvious trail Phoebe had left behind. The horse's rider was too small for her to make out. She didn't need to.

  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. 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.

  And, Phoebe realized, it'll bury footsteps.

  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?

  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 at.

  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. He 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. 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 probably hurt, but if she focused and didn't stop, she'd be all the way to the other end of the desert. She could take breaks here and there, and she definitely should. It was hard to enter and exit that spell gracefully, especially when she hadn't done it in years and had never been good at it in the first place. 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 bowed her head wearily. There's still so much I don't remember.

  Oppzis assured her that she had nothing to worry about.

  You seem very confident. Too confident, in fact. Hey, I remember that about you now. Yes, she chuckled, and gave her moon a playful glare. Oppzis, you rascal. You always had the worst ideas.

  Oppzis reminded her that they'd always worked so far.

  Well, I can't argue with that, she looked forward again. If only because I can't remember them all. You better not be selecting those memories out, with whatever you're doing to help me break through the rune.

  Oppzis told her that she could trust him not to do something so irrational and rude. She chuckled again.

  Guess I'll never know until I find a runewright 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. He promised to do his best to unravel the bits of her rune that blocked that, 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 rune act up?

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

  Oh well. Better than nothing.

  Phoebe bounced once or twice, shaking 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.

  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 was so easy now, with proper instructions, that she completely understood how she'd done it by accident. A few steps forward, then a few accelerated ones, and then a crack like the world's loudest crossbow firing, and Phoebe was away.