The small girl played the harpsichord badly, but it was the only thing between her and the noises being made behind her back. Sadly, her legs were too short to reach the pedals. It was all up to her clumsy, tiny fingers to drown out the shouts and screams.

  It wasn't all rage. Sometimes the two women behind her would coo or flirt with each other instead. Invariably, though, they would return to the painful roaring and fighting the girl was trying so desperately to ignore. She played wrong notes constantly, and her rhythm was nonexistent. She wished she practiced more. She wished she hadn't insisted on skipping the easy, boring songs.

  For some reason, the harpsichord was outside, in the open. How it managed to do this without being destroyed by the elements in this green, rainy land, the girl didn't remember. Maybe they carried it out just for her, and then took it back in after she was done. Maybe this harpsichord was special, somehow. She knew the moons in the sky could do all sorts of strange and wondrous things.

  After some time, one of the voices took on a new quality. A manic quality, as if the owner was suddenly looking at life through a pair of interesting glasses they couldn't remember putting on. It was the voice of her maamel, or non-birth mother. She had never spoken like that before.

  The girl played louder. Not better, but louder.

  Then, her maamel's voice returned to normal. She stopped saying frightening things. She was still yelling, and she was still angry at the other woman, but it was still an improvement. A period of peace and warmth followed between the two.

  When the girl's playing was starting to improve, the other voice gained that easily perceptible manic quality. Her maamvi, or birth mother, was doing it now. She waited for it to pass by restarting the song all over again. Finally, it did, and they were back to screaming at each other in their normal voices.

  Then, there was the sound of glass shattering, and everything went quiet. The girl didn't notice until she reached a rest, but when she did, the keys stopped playing. They went down when she pressed, but no sound came out.

  The girl didn't dare turn around. She heard footsteps. Tiny ones. She realized that her legs had extended and could now reach the pedals. Her fingers were larger, and her body had matured. She was still very young, but no longer a little child.

  Any doubt of who was walking behind her disappeared when they spoke in her voice. Or rather, wept:

  "Maamel, please make me forget!" There was a thumping of small hands on a bigger person's clothes. "I wish this didn't happen. Please, make me forget! I know your moon can do that! Please, maamel! Please!"

  The girl looked down at her hands. Silver magic was starting to curl off of them. For a moment, she didn't know why. Her cheek burned, and she remembered.

  She blinked. The harpsichord was gone. She wasn't out in the open anymore. The voices behind her stopped. She turned. She was alone in an attic. There were no windows, but she could tell it was still night. The air was warm. She remembered where she was. She was sitting on her tiny mattress in the attic of the farmhouse. And she was a slave.

  There was a rune on her cheek. She knew what it was supposed to do. Given that she'd just woken up, could remember what her dream was, and her magic hadn't gone away, the rune wasn't working. She didn't know why, and it might start working again at any moment. She could remember everything. Her name, the town they'd bought her from, all the reasons they branded a memory capture rune on slaves in these parts. She didn't have time to dwell on all of it. She just needed to move.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She couldn't run; her master had a horse, and knew how to ride it. She would have to deal with him first.

  Gladly, she thought, turning toward her door. The lock on the door was the only thing protecting her master during the night. She had to move quickly. She gathered up a silver charge of magic, stuck a finger in the lock, and thrust.

  ***

  "Where," bellowed the girl, "are my mothers, Derek?"

  Normally, Derek would have enjoyed to have Phoebe on his lap, but not on the wood floor of the hallway, and certainly not with a crack in the azure slave rune on her cheek. In the hand that wasn't pressed into his throat, she held a festering orb of magic. Like her eyes, it shone a vibrant, threatening silver. It was blinding in the darkness of the farmhouse at night. Derek didn't want to know what it would do if she slammed it into his face like a rock. Based on the remains of the door to the attic, he already had a pretty good idea.

  "Mothers?" Derek wheezed. He couldn't get her hand off his throat; her grip was steel. Even though he was ten years older than her. What had happened to her in the night? And where was that music coming from? It sounded like someone incompetently playing the harpsichord, through several walls.

  "Yes," Phoebe snarled. "Mothers. I'm Adalaantian. I should've known from my yellow-brown skin that you stare at so much. You kidnapped me and took me to Barrid. What did you do to my mothers?"

  Derek's mind worked quickly. He just needed to touch the rune on her cheek. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew enough to keep her distracted.

  "I told you," he gasped, "I bought you in Aleb! I don't know anything about your mothers. Phoebe, please – Ack!"

  Phoebe leaned closer, teeth bared. "You lie. My rune cracked, and now, I can remember their faces. I came from Claazent, in Adalaant." She squeezed tighter, silver light curling around Derek's neck. "And my name is not Phoebe."

  Derek made no words. He tried to signal to her that if he wanted her to talk, she needed to loosen up. The rune on her cheek was within reach. He needed to be fast, and more importantly, she needed to be slow.

  "What – " he said as a smidge of air was allowed into his body, "what is your name?"

  Phoebe opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her expression turned searching, and when that happened, Derek jabbed a hand up and into her runed cheek. The tattoo flared a painful violet color. Phoebe recoiled with a scream, the magic evaporating from her eyes and hands. Derek pushed himself up as she toppled backward. She clutched at her face as the rune re-assembled and asserted itself. Derek pinned her down beneath him, holding her hands away from her writhing face.

  The slave rune was a basket hanging from a chain, surrounded by a firm circle. The problem, Derek observed, was a hole in the circle. As he watched, it closed itself up, but he'd seen enough slave runes to know this one was long overdue for maintenance. He frowned.

  I had it touched up half a year ago. How is it fading already?

  He looked up at the remains of the door to the attic down the hall.

  And what kind of magic was that?

  Beneath him, Phoebe stopped moving. Her eyes were closed, her mouth hung open, and her chest rose and fell. Derek gazed at her for a minute, then dragged her back to her room, the attic. He grabbed a heavy set of chains and manacles on the way. He didn't know if that would stop whatever just happened from repeating, but it was better than nothing while he waited for morning. Not that the runewright had any excuse to sleep in as late as he did; damn layabout hadn't done a day's work in his life.

  As Derek bound his slave to her bed, he couldn't help but glance out the window he installed for her. The westward view was dominated by the Fade. The wall of gas towered over his farm like a giant tree. A colossus that provided fruit, but promised to fall ponderously on everything Derek knew. The source of his livelihood, and its eventual destroyer. That was what it meant to be a fogcrawler, to slowly crawl away from the Fade, the source of your livelihood and your eventual destruction. It was no different from any other farmer, who worked the soil to which they would one day return.

  His property secured, Derek rubbed his eyes and made his way back toward his room. He nearly tripped on what was left of the door. When he laid down again in his bed, his eyes were drawn out of his own east-facing window. He squinted at a bright silver moon that set in the east every night and every afternoon. It was a very fast moon compared to its few remaining siblings in the sky. He tried to remember what its name was before falling asleep. He failed; his mind was too busy wondering if he'd seen it dim.