Character from Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Sol's daughter who aged backward — an archaeologist who touched the wrong tomb and spent years forgetting everything she'd learned, one day at a time, until her father handed her as an infant to a god.
Rachel Weintraub was an archaeologist studying the Time Tombs when a temporal anomaly struck her — the Merlin Sickness, which causes reverse aging. She loses one day of memory each night. She forgot her education, then her adulthood, then her childhood. Her parents watched their daughter grow younger while forgetting them. Sol carried her to the Time Tombs as an infant. He gave her to the Shrike. The Shrike sent her backward through time. She became Moneta — the woman in the silver suit who fights beside Kassad across history. Rachel is the person and Moneta is the paradox. They are the same consciousness traveling in opposite temporal directions, meeting in the middle at the Time Tombs. The Scholar's Tale is told as tragedy. The resolution is temporal mechanics. Whether that makes it better or worse depends on how you feel about physics solving grief.
At the start of her condition: a brilliant young archaeologist. As the Merlin Sickness progresses: she regresses through adolescence, childhood, infancy. By the time of the pilgrimage, she is a newborn being carried by her elderly father. The visual of Sol holding his infant daughter who was once an adult is the Cantos' most devastating image.
Also known as: Rachel, Rachel Weintraub