Turn 196 of 226

Move deeper into the wilderness to put more distance between us and the wreckage. We also grow while moving. Our height doubles to 38'6". Our weights triple to 15,000 pounds. Our bone and muscle density is 96x average. Our senses improve even further

The forest ends and begins again. The pine thins to birch, the birch thins to spruce, the spruce thickens to old growth that has never been cut because the slope is too steep and the soil too thin for logging. Lena moves through it the way water moves through gravel — not around, through. The trunks that do not move break against her shoulders and she does not feel them. The ones that do move she pushes aside with one hand and keeps walking. Diane is behind her, then beside her, then ahead, and the switching is not communication but the animal's way of taking turns in the front.

The growing starts somewhere in the spine. Lena feels it the way she used to feel hunger — a low pull, a deep need, something the body wants and takes without asking. The vertebrae multiply. The long bones stretch. The ribs widen and the pelvis shifts and the skull thickens, and the 19'3