Chapter 2: The Second Word
The sun was a liar. It spilled its cheerful, butter-yellow light over the porch, over the vibrant green of the lawn, over the familiar, comforting shape of the oak tree. It promised a normal day. But nothing was normal. The light fell on skin that was hers, yet wasn’t. It warmed limbs that felt borrowed, their length a constant, low-level surprise. Lilly sat perfectly still on the swing, afraid that if she moved too quickly this new body might unravel, might snap like overstretched elastic.
Her mother’s voice, a frantic, muffled stream from inside the house, was the only real thing.
“…yes, last night… a stranger… tall, in a coat… green eyes like nothing you’ve ever… No, you don’t understand. My daughter… she said the words he gave her. She’s changed.”
A pause. The hum of the refrigerator clicking on underneath the words.
“No, not like that. Not a phase. Physically. She’s… taller. By inches. In a second. I heard her bones… What? No, I’m not hysterical! Pastor Miller, please… just come. Just come and see.”
The receiver clattered into its cradle. Silence, then a single, shattered sob that seemed to pierce through the clapboard wall.
Lilly looked down at her hands. They were her hands. The same faint scar on the left knuckle from where she’d caught it in a bike chain at twelve. The same short, unpolished nails. But they seemed farther away. The geometry of her own lap was foreign; her thighs were longer planes, her knees sharper peaks beneath the denim. The frayed holes in her now-capri jeans showed patches of skin that had never seen the sun.
Five-foot-four.
The number echoed, a concrete fact in the swirling chaos. It was a good number. A reasonable number. A number that belonged to women in magazines, to confident girls in hallways who didn’t have to look up. A victorious thrill, cold and sharp, cut through the disorientation. She had done it. She had taken the strange key and turned it, and the lock had yielded.
But the thrill was instantly followed by a hollow, widening ache. The look on her mother’s face. Not wonder. Not concern. Pure, undiluted terror. The kind of look you give a house fire, a snarling animal, a natural disaster rolling toward your home. Don’t come near me.
Lilly pressed the heels of her new, longer hands into her eye sockets. Sparks danced in the darkness. The phrase was still there, imprinted on the inside of her skull. Ayla Eyliar. It didn’t feel like words anymore. It felt like a taste—metallic, like a penny held under the tongue. It felt like a vibration, a frequency her body was now tuned to receive.
And it was calling.
The desire wasn’t a thought. It was a physiological pull, a deep, muscular yearning. It was the ghost sensation of the cracking, the stretching, the brutal, painful ascension—but remembered now not as agony, but as a metamorphosis. A becoming. The ache in her bones wasn’t just pain; it was potential, unspent. It was a door she’d opened, and now a wind blew through it, whispering of the other side.
Five-foot-eight.
The thought was a complete image. She would be statuesque. She would be undeniable. Doors would open. Eyes would widen, not with pity or amusement, but with respect, with desire. Dylan Cobb would have to look her in the eye. Her mother… her mother would have to look up. The fear in Maria’s eyes would be justified then. Power would be a tangible thing, worn in her stature, in the reach of her arms, in the length of her stride.
Her mouth was dry. Her tongue felt thick. She leaned forward on the swing, the chains groaning in a new, lower register under her increased weight. She stared at the warped floorboards between her feet—feet that seemed a league away. Just two words. Just a whisper. The first had given her a taste. The second would give her a meal.
She parted her lips. A slow exhalation, a preparation of breath. The taste of ozone and soil flooded her mouth again.
“Finding the adjustment period a bit unsettling, are we?”
The voice came from the side of the porch, from the shadowed space between the hydrangea bush and the latticework. It was smooth, conversational, as if he’d been standing there all morning waiting for a polite pause.
Lilly jerked upright, the swing lurching wildly. Her heart jackhammered against her ribs, a frantic drum in her new, expanded cage.
Silas stood there, leaning against the peeling white column as though it were his personal property. The dark trench coat was gone. He wore a simple black shirt and trousers, which made his silver-streaked hair and those lucid green eyes seem even more vivid, more unnatural. He was looking at her with an expression of mild, academic interest.
“You,” she breathed. The word came out strained.
“Me,” he agreed, pushing off the column. He took a few steps onto the porch, his movements silent. His eyes traveled up and down her form, not with a leer, but with the appraisal of a sculptor checking his work. “Ah. Four inches. Clean. Precise. The mechanism works perfectly. How do you feel?”
“Get away from me,” she said, but it lacked conviction. She was fascinated. He was the source. He was the architect of this new, terrifying reality.
He chuckled, a soft, dry sound. “After you just summoned me with such potent desire? That’s rude.” He nodded toward her mouth. “I felt the words forming. The pull. It’s quite strong, isn’t it? Like a thirst.”
“What did you do to me?”
“I? I did nothing. I presented an opportunity. You activated it.” He tilted his head. “The first taste is always the sweetest. The most… revelatory. The world shifts. Your place in it shifts. The boundaries of your own flesh are suddenly revealed to be mere suggestions.” He took another step closer. The air around him seemed cooler. “But the first is just an appetizer. The real power, the true transformation, comes with the second. The third. The hundredth.”
Lily’s skin crawled. A hundredth? The math was absurd, monstrous. She’d be over forty feet tall. The image was so ludicrous it looped back to horror. “Stop it.”
“Why?” He was genuinely curious. “You wanted to be seen. Now you are. But you’re already realizing it’s not enough, aren’t you? Four inches just moved you from the background to the middle distance. You want the foreground. You want the whole stage.” He smiled, and it was that same transactional curve of the lips. “It’s human nature. To see a new horizon and immediately want to stand upon it.”
Inside, the sound of footsteps. Maria was moving toward the front window.
Silas’s gaze flickered toward the house, then back to Lilly. His voice dropped, becoming conspiratorial, intimate. “You have a choice now, Lilly. A real one. You can stop. Right here. You can learn to live in this new skin. It will be awkward. Your mother will look at you like a monster for a while. Your clothes won’t fit. Your friends will whisper. But eventually, the shock will fade. It will become your normal. Five-foot-four. A nice height.”
He leaned in slightly. The scent of him was wrong—like turned earth after a rain, and something else, something sharp like static. “Or,” he whispered, “you can continue. You can speak the words again. And again. You can grow. Not just in inches, but in presence. In potential. You can become something the world has to reckon with. Something it has never seen before. You can outgrow every limitation, every box they’ve ever tried to put you in.”
“What’s the cost?” Lilly asked, parroting her mother’s question, but her voice was a bare thread of sound. She was mesmerized by the green of his eyes. They were like deep, still pools in a forest, hiding everything.
“The cost is the choice,” he said, straightening up. “To stop is to accept a new, uncomfortable normal. To continue is to embrace a perpetual becoming. There is no going back to what you were. That girl is gone. She was devoured the moment the first crack sounded in your kitchen. You are only what you are now, and what you choose to be next.” His smirk returned, knowing and endless. “Some find the uncertainty taxing. Others find it… liberating.”
The front door flew open.
Maria stood framed in the doorway, her face a paper-white mask of fury and terror. In her hands, she held her late father’s old baseball bat, the wood stained dark with age and sweat. She hefted it, her knuckles white.
“You get away from my daughter! You get off my property right now or I swear to God I will split your head open!”
Silas didn’t even turn. He kept his eyes on Lilly, his smile lingering. “Protective,” he murmured. “Admirable. And so very… small.” Finally, he shifted his gaze to Maria. The warmth drained from his expression, leaving something polite and utterly cold. “Mrs. Rivera. There’s no need for violence. I was just checking on my investment.”
“She is not your investment!” Maria screamed, the sound raw and ragged. She took a step forward, the bat raised. “What did you do? Undo it! Take it back!”
“I cannot,” Silas said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness that was plainly false. “The power is hers. The words are in her. They are part of her cellular language now. I am merely… a catalyst. I’ve left the building.” He looked back at Lilly, a final, piercing glance. “The choice, as I said, is yours. To be content with the taste… or to feast.”
He gave a slight, mocking bow to Maria, then turned and walked down the porch steps. He didn’t vanish into shadows this time. He strolled casually down the flagstone path, turned onto the sidewalk, and became just a man in black walking down a suburban street in the morning sun.
Maria stood frozen, the bat trembling in her grip. She watched him until he turned a corner and disappeared. Then her strength seemed to leave her all at once. The bat’s tip thudded onto the porch floor. She sagged against the doorframe, her eyes finding Lilly.
The look was still there. The fear. But now, layered over it, was a desperate, hopeless love. It was worse.
“Lilly,” she whispered. “Baby. Please. Come inside. We’ll… we’ll figure this out. Pastor Miller is coming. Maybe he can… maybe there’s a prayer.”
Lilly didn’t move. The confrontation had crystallized something in her. Silas’s words echoed. To be content with the taste… or to feast. Her mother stood there with a baseball bat, ready to fight a shadow. Ready to call a pastor to exorcise a height. It was pathetic. It was the act of someone who lived in a small, frightened world where problems were solved with blunt instruments and ancient prayers.
Lilly stood up.
“A pastor, Mom?” Lilly said. Her new voice, still finding its register, sounded almost bored. “What’s he going to do? Pray me back to five feet?”
“We need help, Lilly! This is beyond us!”
“You need help,” Lilly corrected, and the coldness in her own tone shocked her a little. It was easy, though. The altitude made it easy. “You need help understanding that this is my life. My body. My choice.”
“It was a trick! A trap! Can’t you see that? He’s laughing at you! He’s turned you into a… a carnival attraction!”
The words stung, because they brushed against a fear Lilly hadn’t yet let herself articulate. Was this power, or was it a freak show? But the anger was a more immediate fuel. “Better a carnival attraction than a scared little mouse living in a cage of your making,” she shot back.
Maria recoiled as if slapped. The pain in her eyes was so profound Lilly almost faltered. Almost.
“I have to go,” Lilly said suddenly. She couldn’t be here, in this suffocating space of her mother’s fear and these too-small rooms.
“Go? Go where? You can’t go out like… like that!”
“Like what, Mom?” Lilly spread her long arms. “Like me? This is me now. I need clothes that fit. I need to… breathe.”
She stepped past her mother, having to angle her shoulders to get through the front door. The familiarity of the act—leaving the house—was rendered strange by the new dimensions of her body negotiating the old architecture. Maria grabbed her wrist. Her grip was weak.
“Don’t. Please. Don’t say the words again. Whatever you do, don’t say them.”
Lilly looked down at the hand on her wrist, then into her mother’s pleading face. The love was there, a frantic, drowning thing. But it felt like an anchor. A chain meant to keep her in the harbor while the storm, the glorious, terrifying storm, raged out at sea.
She pulled her wrist free, easily. Too easily. The new strength in the motion made Maria stagger back a step.
“I’ll be back,” Lilly said, and it was an empty promise, and they both knew it.
She walked down the steps, each stride consuming twice the distance of her old steps. Her gait was unsteady, a fawn on new legs, but with every step, a new confidence seeped into the movement. The world was different. The pavement was closer. The roof of her car, a beat-up old Civic, was lower. She had to fold herself awkwardly into the driver’s seat, her knees pressing hard against the dashboard. She had to slide the seat all the way back, a setting no one had ever used.
In the rearview mirror, she saw her mother on the porch, the bat discarded at her feet, her hands covering her face, her shoulders shaking.
Lilly turned the key. The engine coughed to life. She didn’t look back again.
Driving was a surreal experience. Her perspective was altered. The steering wheel felt smaller in her hands. The landmarks of her town—the gas station, the library, the diner—looked subtly diminished, as if she were seeing them from a slightly elevated platform. She caught a glimpse of herself in a store window as she drove by: a tall, oddly-proportioned girl crammed into a small car, her hair a wild auburn mane. A stranger.
She pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the Cherry Creek Mall. It was a week-day morning, a time for retirees and mothers with strollers. She sat for a moment, staring at the vast, impersonal facade. She needed jeans. A shirt. Shoes, probably. Her old sneakers pinched.
Getting out of the car was another awkward contortion. She stood in the lot, feeling exposed under the vast sky. Every step toward the sliding glass doors was a performance. She felt eyes on her. An old man on a bench squinted at her. A young mother pushing a stroller glanced, did a double-take, then quickly looked away.
It wasn’t the kind of look she’d imagined. It wasn’t admiration or respect. It was confusion. A calculation. Is she… tall? Or is it just those pants? She was an anomaly, a visual puzzle.
The department store was a cavern of soft music and fluorescent light. She went straight to the women’s section, her heart pounding. She grabbed a pile of jeans in what she guessed was her new size—a rough, terrifying estimate—and several long-sleeved shirts. In the fitting room, under the harsh, unflattering light, she confronted herself.
The mirror didn’t lie. The body that looked back was hers, but stretched. Her ribs were more prominent. Her hips seemed narrower. The muscles in her legs were longer, taut wires. She pulled on a pair of jeans. They fit in the waist, but the length… she had to get the “tall” size. The “tall” size fit. She was a “tall” now. She bought two pairs, and the shirts, and a new pair of cheap canvas shoes in a larger size.
The girl at the register, about Lilly’s age, smiled brightly. “Find everything okay?”
“Yes,” Lilly said, her voice sounding too loud.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a sterile insect hum that made the back of her teeth ache. The girl at the register, whose nametag read “Maya,” began scanning the tags with practiced, bored efficiency. She had a kind, round face, a smattering of freckles across her nose, and hair dyed a faded, purplish black. She was small. Petite. The kind of girl Lilly had always envied for looking delicate, but now just looked… limited.
“You’re tall,” Maya said, not looking up, as she folded a shirt. It was an observation, neutral, the kind of thing cashiers say to fill the silence.
Lilly’s pulse, which had been a steady thrum of alien anxiety, suddenly spiked into a wild, galloping rhythm. The words Ayla Eyliar twisted in her gut, not a threat but a promise. The air in the store felt charged, thin. She looked at Maya, really looked at her. She saw her own former life in the girl’s comfortable slouch, in the chipped black polish on her short nails, in the slight awkwardness as she reached for a hanger. A conduit. An audience.
“How tall are you?” Lilly asked. Her voice was calm, which surprised her.
Maya glanced up, a polite customer-service smile pinned to her lips. “Oh, um. Five feet even. Why?”
Five feet even. The number was a museum piece. A relic of a self that had existed barely two hours ago. A laugh bubbled up in Lilly’s throat, light and giddy and entirely disconnected from any real amusement. It was the sound of nerves unraveling.
“I used to be five feet,” Lilly said, and the giggle escaped, tinkling and strange in the quiet aisle. “Just like you. This morning, actually.”
Maya’s folding slowed. Her smile stiffened, faltered. She didn’t understand, but she was picking up on the wrongness in Lilly’s tone, in the too-bright focus of her eyes. “Okay…” she said, drawing the word out.
Lilly leaned forward, bracing her new, longer arms on the counter. She felt powerful. The countertop was lower than it should be. She was looking down into Maya’s confused face. “But I’m five-four now.”
She said it with a conspiratorial whisper, as if sharing a spectacular secret. Maya took a small, instinctive step back, her hand pausing over the cash register’s keys. She was trying to classify this interaction: odd customer, possible prank, maybe something she should call a manager about. Her eyes darted to Lilly’s shopping bag, to her ordinary new clothes.
“Cool,” Maya said, her voice flat, a protective shield of disinterest slamming down.
“Do you want to see?” Lilly whispered, the words slithering out. The desire was a physical heat now, a pressure in her joints. It wasn’t just about growing anymore. It was about showing. About proving the impossible was real. About watching understanding and then terror dawn on a normal person’s face. It was about making someone else feel small. “Do you want to see me grow to five-eight?”
Maya’s face went blank with utter incomprehension. Her mouth opened, then closed. “What?”
Lilly didn’t wait for a better answer. The phrase was there, ripe and full on her tongue. The first time had been a scream of rebellion. This? This was a performance.
“Ayla Eyliar.”
She said it clearly, deliberately, her eyes locked dead on Maya’s.
The world did not fracture. The pain did not come.
Instead, a wave of profound, shocking warmth flooded her core, spreading instantly to the very tips of her fingers and toes. It was a deep, golden heat, like sunshine injected directly into her veins. There was a sound, but it wasn’t the sickening crack of breaking bone. It was a series of low, resonant pops, like knuckles cracking on a colossal scale, but stripped of all violence. They were pulses of release.
Her body expanded.
It was swift, fluid, an unfurling. The new denim of her jeans tightened gloriously around her thighs, the fabric straining but not screaming. She felt her spine lengthen, vertebra sliding apart with a slick, pleasurable ease. Her shoulders rolled back, broadening. The neckline of her new shirt pulled taut across her collarbones.
She saw the ceiling tiles lower. The countertop sank further, becoming a hip-height barrier. Maya’s face, which had been level with her chest, was now tilting farther back, the confusion crystallizing into something else, something pristine and awful.
The warmth peaked in a rush of euphoric lightness, a sensation of incredible, effortless strength. It was better than anything. Better than a first kiss, better than the thrill of defiance, better than the imagined admiration of Dylan Cobb. It was a cellular celebration. It was becoming more.
And then it was done.
Lilly took a deep, shuddering breath. The air tasted sweeter. She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers. They were longer, more elegant. She was anchored to the earth, but she felt lifted from it. Five-foot-eight. Statuesque. The word finally fit.
She returned her gaze to Maya.
The girl was frozen. The color had drained from her freckled face, leaving her skin a sickly grey. Her hand was still suspended over the cash register, trembling violently. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, the pupils shrunk to pinpricks. A tiny, choked sound escaped her throat, a whimper trapped behind her teeth.
She had seen it. She had witnessed the entire, impossible, seamless transformation. The logical part of her mind had just been dismantled.
“See?” Lilly said, and her voice was different again. Richer. Deeper. A woman’s voice. It hummed with the afterglow of the change. “Five-eight.”
Maya stumbled back. Her hip hit the corner of the counter with a solid thump, but she didn’t seem to feel it. She shook her head, a frantic, denying motion. “No,” she breathed. “No, no, no.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Lilly offered, a confidential whisper. She felt generous, magnanimous in her new stature. “It feels good. It feels… right.”
“Get away from me,” Maya whispered, the words slurring with terror. She fumbled behind her, her hands scrabbling for something, anything. She found the phone, the old corded one for manager calls, and yanked the receiver to her ear. Her eyes never left Lilly.
Lilly watched her, a curious detachment settling over her. The fear was palpable, a sour smell in the air. It should have frightened her, this reaction. It should have shamed her. Instead, it felt like confirmation. This was power. Real power. Not the kind you got from a diploma or a job title, but the kind that rewrote physics and broke minds.
The bored, mundane reality of the mall was gone. In its place was something electric and raw.
She heard the dial tone squawking from the phone Maya held upside down against her ear.
“You’re not doing that right,” Lilly said, almost gently.
A door marked ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ burst open behind the counter. A middle-aged man with a harried expression and a loosened tie strode out. “Maya, what in the world—?” He followed her terrified gaze to Lilly.
His eyes traveled up. And up. He processed a teenage girl towering over his cashier, a girl whose new clothes were already straining at the seams. He saw Maya’s catatonic shock. His managerial script evaporated.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded, his voice trying for authority but landing on confusion.
“She…” Maya pointed a trembling finger at Lilly. “She… she just… grew.”
The manager’s face twisted. He looked at Lilly, then back at Maya’s clearly hysterical state. “Maya, take five. Go to the break room.” He stepped forward, putting himself between his employee and the customer. He looked up at Lilly. “Miss, is there a problem?”
Lilly smiled. It was a new smile for a new face. “No problem. I was just checking out.” She nodded at the scattered clothes, the unfinished transaction. “But I think I might need a different size now.”
The manager blinked. The surreality of the situation—the towering teenager, the terrified cashier, the bizarre statement—battled with his need for a normal, solvable problem. He decided to cling to procedure. “Right. Well. Let’s… let’s get you rung up.” He moved to the register, his movements stiff. He avoided looking directly at her, focusing on the tags. His neck was flushed red.
He completed the transaction in utter silence, the beep of the scanner absurdly loud. Lilly handed over crumpled bills from her wallet, her long fingers brushing his. He flinched.
“Have a… day,” he muttered, shoving the bag across the counter.
Lilly took the bag, the handles straining. She turned and walked towards the exit. Her stride was different. It was no longer the shaky gait of a newborn foal, but a confident, rolling walk. Her hips had a new swing to them. She moved through the racks of clothing like a ship cutting through calm water, everything parting before her newfound presence.
She didn’t look back. She could feel their stares boring into her back—the manager’s bewildered glare, Maya’s traumatized gaze. They were already receding, becoming set pieces in the story of her ascent.
The mall’s central atrium felt grander, the skylights farther away yet somehow more intimate. She passed a group of teenagers lounging on a bench. Their conversation died mid-sentence. One boy’s mouth hung open. A girl elbowed her friend, a sharp, covert gesture. Lilly met their stares, held them for a second, then looked away, a ghost of Silas’s knowing smirk touching her lips. She was a spectacle. She was a event.
The pleasure of the growth still thrummed under her skin, a warm, vibrating aftermath. It was addictive. She understood that now with crystal clarity. The first time had been a violent birth. This was a sensual revelation. The phrase wasn’t a curse or a contract; it was an invocation of a better self. A higher self. Literally.
Her car was a joke. She had to fold herself into it with even more difficulty, her head brushing the roof lining. The drive home was a dream. The world was a model village, meticulously detailed but small. She controlled it from her elevated perch. Her mother’s fear, the pastor’s impending visit, Silas’s cryptic warnings—they were murmurs from a distant, lower valley.
She pulled into the driveway. Pastor Miller’s sensible sedan was already there, parked behind her mother’s car. The sight of it sparked not dread, but a cold, clean contempt. Let him pray. Let him see what prayers were worth.
She unfolded herself from the Civic and stood in the driveway. The porch light was on, though it was barely afternoon. The house looked smaller, shrunken, like a childhood diorama. She could see the top of the roof easily, could count the shingles that needed replacing. She walked to the front door, her new shoes making firm, definitive sounds on the concrete.
She didn’t bother with the key. She knocked, three booming, authoritative raps that shook the flimsy door in its frame.
Silence from within. Then shuffling footsteps.
The door opened. Pastor Miller stood there, a kind-faced man in his fifties with wire-rimmed glasses and a cardigan. He looked up.And up. His benevolent, prepared expression evaporated, liquefied by sheer, unadulterated shock. His jaw went slack. The Bible in his hand seemed to grow heavier.
“Lilly?” The word was a puff of air.
“Hello, Pastor,” she said, and stepped past him, forcing him to stumble back into the living room.
Her mother was on the sofa, a knitted afghan pulled tight around her shoulders despite the warmth. She looked shrunken, aged a decade since the morning. Her eyes, red-raw from crying, lifted to meet her daughter’s.
There was no fresh scream. No new outburst. The fear had metabolized into something hollow and hopeless. Maria’s eyes traveled from Lilly’s face, down the impossible length of her, to the new jeans that were, once again, too short, ending several inches above her ankles. She had grown again. The knowledge settled into Maria like a fatal diagnosis.
“You said it,” Maria stated, her voice a dry rustle.
“I did.”
Pastor Miller found his voice, though it was high and thin. “Young lady… what… in God’s name…?”
“It wasn’t in God’s name, Pastor,” Lilly said, turning to face him fully. She loomed over him. “It was two words. Ayla Eyliar. They work. They feel good.”
“This is an abomination,” the pastor whispered, his faith manifesting as horror. He raised the Bible, not in aggression, but as a shield. “A trick of the… the adversary. A deception.”
“It’s not a deception,” Lilly said, and she felt a flash of that giggly power she’d felt with Maya. “It’s just true. Watch.” She drew a breath, seeing the panic ignite in her mother’s eyes, seeing the pastor’s Bible shake. The desire was there, a sweet, singing tension in her ligaments. Five-foot-eight was glorious. Six feet would be…
“NO!”
It was Maria. She threw off the afghan and launched herself off the sofa, not at Lilly, but at the pastor. She grabbed his arm. “Don’t listen! Don’t look! Get out! Please, just get out!”
“Maria, we must confront this darkness! We must pray—”
“GET OUT!” Maria screamed, her voice shredding. She shoved the stunned man toward the door. “This isn’t for prayers! This is my daughter! GET OUT!”
She manhandled the pastor through the doorway and slammed the door shut, locking it. She leaned against it, her chest heaving, staring at the floor. She could not look at Lilly.
The silence was thick, hot, suffocating.
“Why did you do that, Mom?” Lilly asked, genuinely curious. “He wanted to help.”
“He wanted to save a soul,” Maria rasped, still addressing the floorboards. “But I’m not trying to save your soul, Lilly. I’m trying to save you. The you that laughs at stupid movies. The you that hums when you make pancakes. The you that used to fit under my chin when I hugged you.” A ragged breath tore from her. “Prayers can’t get her back. I know that now. I just… I want to keep what’s left from burning away completely.”
Lilly felt a prickling sensation, not of guilt, but of a vast, chilly distance opening up. Her mother was speaking a language of nostalgia for a ghost. The girl who fit under her chin was gone, devoured, just as Silas had said.
“Nothing’s burning,” Lilly said, but the words felt insubstantial. She walked to the living room window, her head nearly level with the top of the frame. She looked out at the empty driveway, the empty street. “I’m just changing. Growing. Everyone does.”
“Not like this!” Maria finally turned, her eyes blazing with a grief so intense it was like a physical force in the room. “You showed someone, didn’t you? That’s why you’re even taller. You couldn’t just keep it to yourself. You had to show off the damn thing.”
“It felt good,” Lilly insisted, the warmth of the memory returning. “It felt amazing. You have no idea.”
“I don’t want to know!” Maria spat. “I want my daughter back! I want the girl who was afraid of what she’d done, not the one who revels in it! That thing, that feeling… it’s changing more than your bones, Lilly. It’s scouring out your insides and filling you up with… with whatever he is.”
Lilly’s hand went to her abdomen, as if she could feel the new thing inside her. It didn’t feel like a scouring. It felt like a foundation. Solid. Strong.
“Maybe what was inside needed changing,” Lilly said quietly.
Maria made a sound, a low moan of defeat. She slid down the length of the door until she was sitting on the floor, a small, broken figure in the dim afternoon light. “Then it’s over,” she said, her voice flat. “You’ve chosen the feast.”
The word hung between them. Silas’s word.
“It’s not a choice between a feast and starvation, Mom,” Lilly said, trying to make her understand. “It’s a choice between staying in a small room or walking into a bigger one.”
“And when the bigger room isn’t big enough?” Maria looked up, her eyes hollow. “What then? You break through the wall? You keep going until there isn’t a room on earth that can hold you? Until you’re so tall you can’t see people’s faces anymore, just the tops of their heads? What is that, Lilly? What do you call that life?”
A strange image flickered in Lilly’s mind: herself, colossal, peering down at the ant-like scurrying of her old town, her mother a tiny speck of color on a porch. The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, it was just… a thought. A possible coordinate on a map she was only beginning to read.
“I don’t know,” Lilly answered truthfully. “But it’s mine to find out.”
She left her mother on the floor. She went to the kitchen, her head clearing the doorway with an inch to spare. She drank a glass of water, her large hands making the tumbler look like a shot glass. The familiar act was comforting. She was still here. She was still human. She just… took up more space.
She went upstairs. Her bedroom was a crisis. The bed was a toddler’s bed. Her desk was a knee-high nuisance. The poster of a band she liked was now at eye-level. She had to duck to see herself fully in the mirror on her closet door.
The woman staring back was a stranger, but a compelling one. Her auburn hair seemed richer against her paler, stretched skin. Her eyes, her mother’s warm brown eyes, held a new, unyielding light. She looked tired, but radiant with a secret energy. She looked powerful.
She sat on the floor, the only place that felt proportionally correct, and leaned against the wall. The pleasurable ache of growth was a memory in her tissues, a siren song on a low, persistent loop. Ayla Eyliar. It was her heartbeat now.