Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn't Die

I don’t have to wave, but I do. Decency is decency, no matter how tall you are. That’s what Nora said, back before everything fell apart. I pick through the wreck until I find the red-and-blue signal flag the Three Rivers merchants told me to look for, and I lower three hundred and six tonnes of coal onto a cracked and faded parking lot that’ll never see another car.

“Can’t tell you how thankful we are,” says the person with the money. The sack of coins they set out for me has buying power from here to the edge of the Lakes. “We’re getting close to the bottom of the hoppers, but this’ll keep us going until the next ship puts in.”

“Great.” The entire place already reeks of smoke and coal dust, as if someone’s trying to summon a new apocalypse. “You ever heard of a woman named Nora? About as tall my fingernail, red hair, loves swords?”

“I don’t get out much. You could try the Friendly Get-Together, but—” They gesture to a little wooden building about as tall as my ankle. “It’d be a hard time for you to squeeze in.”

I take a breath and imagine how much compression I’d need to duck through a door frame, and my heart races. It’s been so long since I last squeezed myself ordinary. I’d be vulnerable and too small to run away.

“Yeah.” Back when I took the Dreadnought Oath and touched the monolith, I’d thought about the people I could help and protect. I’d thought about how I could still show Nora the love she deserved when I towered over her.

I didn’t think about all the places I’d be far too big to go. I definitely didn’t think about everything I might lose.

There was only so much Melody could do to make the scrapwagon quiet. Even the finest axles and smoothest bearings had to fight against the boneyard’s rough, broken roads, and it was a long time since Melody had seen anything close to fine or smooth. All those loose shards of aluminum and steel and everything else jangling together weren’t exactly symphonic, either.

So it was more of a disappointment than a surprise when a squad of Imperial Protectors stepped out of the night, directly in Melody’s path. Their midnight armour, harsh and severe, reminded her of demons.

“Funny meeting you in this neck of the wreck,” said the one in the center, carrying a mean-looking rifle with a bayonet made eager to cut. Melody groaned. Blaine. “I thought we went over this last time, girl. You’re not trying to dodge your contributions, are you?”

“Give me a break, Blaine,” Melody said. “It’s scrap. Garbage. Nothing that’d make the Empress’s eyes glitter.”

“It’s material for reconstruction,” Blaine said. “And seeing as how you perverts haven’t been putting in your share, well, there’s a lot of need.”

“What, is rusted steel the hot new thing this week?” Melody said. “Better tell ‘em it’s bad for piercings. They’ll get infected.”

“I’m not going to ask you again.” Blaine stepped forward. His bayonet flashed in her night vision. The men flanking him shifted into combat stances, guns at the ready. “Your contribution.”

Her fingers twitched. It would be so easy to grasp her pistol. So quick. She’d practiced. She might even get it out of its holster before Blaine’s men made her cry blood. That way, the Empress would never be able to make her beg.

Melody watched with smouldering rage as two of Blaine’s men heaved the scrapwagon out of her reach. When its wheels squeaked and its cargo groaned, all she could hear were cries for help. Cries she couldn’t answer.

“Thanks for your donation,” Blaine said, once the scrapwagon was well out of reach. “Remind your deviant friends.”

It would have been so easy to shoot him in the back as he left. One practiced motion, one squeeze, one problem solved forever. It might even be worth dying for. It wasn’t as if she was worth much, after all.

One thing they never told me about becoming a giant is that your nightmares get that much bigger. The stars say it’s about four in the morning. I’ve got a sense for that now. Not like when I was small, when I still had luxuries like beds and doors and roofs and love.

“Fuck,” I grumble. I stretch and shift, looking for some modicum of comfort on the little rubble-strewn meadow, and that’s when I hear the murmuring voices. In the moonlight I find a pair of bedbugs who weren’t smart enough to run back home the instant I started moving.

“Shortage at the blood bank?” The bedbugs drop their little improvised syringe—more of a scraper, really—when they realize I’m talking to them. So many people forget I’m not a curvier-than-usual mountain. “Lucky for you I’m O negative.”

The bedbugs fall over each other as they scurry off. Men like that, and they’re always men, are full of piss and vinegar when they think there won’t be a lick of danger, but when danger licks its lips they’re the first to run.

I toss and turn, but I don’t find any more sleep before sunrise makes it impossible. I’ve heard talk of a few settlements sheltering beneath the old city’s bones, and Nora could have visited any of them. If it turns out she hasn’t, at least my list gets that much shorter.

One inescapable truth of life is that people tend to get helpful once you do things for them, and one inescapable truth of being a giant is that there’s a lot of things I can do for people. Between hauling, clearing, and heavy lifting, I can make a settlement’s day pretty quick. After I spend a few hours decluttering the roads in Streetstown, with a name like that, you’d think they’d have managed without me—one of the braver locals points me toward a community down by the lakeshore, in an old railyard not far from the Four Sisters.

“They get a lot of people coming and going,” the local says. “It’s that kind of place. Even if they are a bunch of disgusting deviants.”

“Excuse me?” One thing they did tell me about becoming a giant is that you don’t have to take any bullshit. “Sorry, I was too busy being a big giant lesbian to hear you. Care to repeat that?”

I smile, really wide. I let the little guy see my teeth. It’s the sort of message that’s hard to misread.

“They...they get a lot of people coming and going,” the local says. “Lots of variety.”

“Is that so?” After this I’m sure I won’t be welcome in Streetstown again, but there are plenty of wrecked cities. “Thanks for the hint, and don’t forget, be kind to each other. The world’s not going to do it for us.”

The city’s one of the old suburbs, built for space and speed and assumption that everyone in the world wanted their own little cardboard castle, and so there are plenty of roads big enough to fit my feet and then some. I can’t imagine what the builders were thinking. For an ordinary-sized person they’d be asphalt rivers. Every once in a while I set off mines with little frumps meant to blast legs off. They don’t even break my skin. Public service.

The railyard’s the biggest clear space I’ve seen in ages. No trees, no greenery, just expanses of track gone to wreck on gravel beds. Here and there, old train cars quietly rust where they sat the day the world went askew. I see a riot of cloth ceilings strung up around a long, low building. That must be where everyone’s hanging out. I’ve seen villages built inside everything from shopping malls to shipping containers.

At first there isn’t much to grab my attention, and then I see it. A mural covering the side of a shipping container with smooth, bold lines, bright colours, and soaring birds. It’s hope for the future done in brushstrokes. Nora’s work, certain and sure.

The world deserves brightness, I hear Nora say, or at least a dream of her. Reality is dark enough. It’s my responsibility to add some light.

I step over a long, low perimeter wall and hear alarms go off as if it’s someone else’s problem. Murals can take a while to paint, and this one doesn’t look too weathered. Maybe she only left recently. Maybe there are people who know where she went. I don’t let myself hope that she’s still here.

Shouts rise to accompany the alarms, but I’m careful where I put my feet and kneel in front of the mural. My eyesight’s keen, but I’m too big to pick out the signature. I bite my lip and take a breath. I could always keep doing what I’ve been doing, after all. Wandering from ruin to ruin, sleeping in rubble fields, following dim hopes until it gets too dark to see.

I close my eyes and take another breath. I don’t have to compress myself much. I can make myself just small enough to get a good look at the mural while still standing tall. It’ll be good to flex those muscles again. Never know when I’ll need to squeeze into tight quarters, after all.

I summon my energy, focus my abilities the way the dreadnought captains taught me, and force myself small. Slow, steady, careful. Until I feel a surge of energy that envelops me, seizes me, squeezes me down.

My feet never leave the ground, but I fall just the same.

Melody was halfway through organizing the parts for a new scrapwagon chassis when the alarm shattered the world. Not the bone-chilling rise-and-fall of an attack warning, but she’d learned there were no good alarms. That was one of the things Samantha had made sure Melody learned when she was inducted into the community. It had been a rise-and-fall alarm that had broken their nighttime embrace, and it had been by the dying tones of that alarm that Melody had found the only woman that had ever loved her slumped dead against a wall, clutching her rifle close, as if an instrument of death could save her life.

Back in the home she’d abandoned, people would destroy such an obviously cursed object. Here in the boneyard, things were different. Besides, when she cradled it, she could feel Samantha’s warmth. She kissed the rifle’s wooden stock, swept it from its rack, and charged out to answer the call.

“So, she finally makes an appearance!” Sylvia-Three might as well have been waiting at Melody’s door to see if she’d ignore the bell. “And not melting in the sunlight after all. Looks like I’m gonna be five chits richer.”

“Someone’s gotta bring in the scrap,” Melody said. “Or the walls’ll get hard as hell to patch.”

“I don’t know how you handle it, spending all that time in the dark.” Sylvia-Three didn’t bother to hide her shudder. “All the worst people come out when it’s dark.”

“Night vision goggles.” Melody tapped her temple. “They can’t hide from me.”

She didn’t bother to mention Blaine and the Imperial Protectors. She knew the only reason they hadn’t stolen her goggles as well as her scrap was that only desperate farmers killed the cow.

“So, any idea what the problem—” Melody’s question died in her throat as she got out from under the roof and saw the giant woman. When she leaned back for a better look, her legs kept going and sent her falling back into the dirt, eyes open and mouth agape. She’d seen pictures and heard stories of the skyscrapers they’d built in the old days, and this woman looked like she could knock a skyscraper over with the flick of a finger. Concentrated magic poured off her titanic body, electrifying every strand of hair Melody had.

“Holy wow,” Melody said. “Wow.”

She picked herself up and holstered Samantha’s rifle—no way would it be anything more than a pinprick to a lady like that—before charging toward the giant woman. No one, she noticed, was following her. Maybe they were waiting to see if she’d get squashed like a bug.

“Hey!” Melody shouted. “Hello! Down here!”

The giant woman didn’t look at her. Her gaze was locked on the Calmness Wall, until she kneeled in front of it with eyes closed as if she’d come to worship. Then, without even so much as a sound, the giant woman shrank and kept shrinking as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. When Melody found her curled up on the ground, the once-giant woman was smaller than she was.

“Damn,” Melody said, half to herself. “Hey there. Are you okay?”

The no-longer-giant woman groaned and stirred, sluggishly until she caught sight of Melody. Then her eyes went wide and she scrambled backward.

“Oh no,” she said. “This can’t be happening. It can’t.”

“I’m afraid it is, whatever it is.” Melody crouched down and gave what she hoped was a friendly gesture. She couldn’t place the woman’s accent, but it didn’t sound too far from familiar. “My name’s Melody. What’s yours?”

“Grace.” Her voice was flat, with no emotion behind it. She looked at her hands, the ground, and the sky. “Oh, goddess, I’m tiny.”

“That’s a matter of perspective.” Melody offered her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Grace. What brings you to the Railyard?”

“That painting over there.” Grace gestured at the Calmness Wall. Her whole face was alight with hope and she spoke quietly, as if a shout would shatter the world. “Do you know where the painter is?”

“No idea,” Melody said, and Grace’s gaze fell. “That doesn’t mean no one does, though! We get lots of wanderers here. Someone must know.”

Grace looked at Melody’s hand, then at the crowd running toward them both, now that there was no threat of anyone getting crushed underfoot.

“I’ve already screwed things up,” Grace said. Fear boiled inside her, enough that Melody could feel its heat. “What’s going to happen now?”

“I don’t know,” Melody said. “But I know a good way to find out.”

Grace bit her lip and took Melody’s hand. Her skin was smoother than Melody had expected. There couldn’t have been many giants wandering through the wreck of the world—how long had it been since she’d touched anyone like this?

“Welcome to the Railyard,” Melody said in the seconds before the crowd swept over them. “It’ll all be fine.”

There’s no way it can be fine. How could it possibly be fine? I’ve forgotten so much about the terror of being tiny. What if I’ve lost control? What if I’ve locked myself small? A few minutes ago the railyard was clean and organized and understandable, and now it’s full of dust and dirt and it’s all around me and there are so many walls and bushes and tumbledown wrecks and they’re so close, I’m so exposed, I can’t see—

Don’t be like this. Nora’s voice, echoing inside my skull. The fragment of her I’ve managed to hold on to through everything. You’re better than this. Be strong. Be the woman I loved.

“Everything all right?” Melody asks. I can’t get over the patina of dust on her face and the grease stains on her overalls. Before, people were too small for me to linger on details like that. “Need a minute?”

“I’m fine.” I can almost believe it myself. I force myself to be calm, so I don’t have to think about what’ll happen if my worries are real and all the rest of my minutes are this tiny, this compressed. “Where are we going?”

“To meet Elder Jennifer,” Melody says. “She’ll know what to do.”

Melody leads me to an old train car shaped like a squashed octagon, with a few die-hard flakes of green paint hanging on. Cloth awnings hang over the doors, and most of the windows are shaded. I put one foot on the wooden steps inside, and I freeze. Before, when I slept in old hangars or barns or warehouses, the walls were never stronger than me. Now I’m tiny enough for walls to trap me.

“Are you okay?” It’s Melody. From a thousand miles away, underwater. I gasp for breath but there’s not enough air. I want to scream but my lungs are empty. I fall for real this time, dash my palms against the ground. Hard gravel. There are scratches, but no blood yet. I make a noise, a long, low note that encapsulates all my fear.

I hear new voices. Muddled, distant. Then Melody. “—like a panic—” I’m being crushed, I’m being squeezed, I’ll keep shrinking until they’re all giants, then the pebbles, then—someone’s squeezing my hand. Warmth, presence, connection. It’s been years. I’d forgotten what it felt like. I force my eyes open and there’s Melody, my hand in hers, her gaze meeting mine.

“Coming back to us?” Her voice is a flute to Nora’s saxophone, but either way it’s musical. “Sorry. I should’ve figured.”

“Not your fault.” I inhale, hold, and exhale, again and again. After a minute I can feel the calmness licking against me. “It’s been a while. I’m good.”

I take another breath and hold it while Melody leads me inside. There are floors here that have never seen rain. Ceilings you can’t watch the stars through. Stairs. How long has it been since I’ve had to climb anything? I’m lost in the recaptured novelty, of all these pieces of my old life bursting like dying stars.

There’s a grandmotherly-type with dark skin, snowy hair, and steely eyes waiting for me on the upper level. She must be Elder Jennifer. Like the wooden chair she’s sitting on, she shows her age. Maybe enough to have known the world before it went askew.

“I thought you were a story,” Elder Jennifer says. “Giant women. And now here you are.”

“Here I am,” I say, never a story and no longer a giant. “I’m sorry for overstepping. I’ve been looking for someone, and when I saw her art...I had to make sure.”

“Oh, you mean young Nora,” Elder Jennifer says. There’s a weight to the way she looks at me. “So talented. Such a shame.”

“Shame?” My legs give out and send me crashing to the floor again. “What happened?”

“The Imperial Protectors.” Her words sizzled in the air. “She had to run. We gave her all the help we could, but it’s a harsh world. You understand. You knew her, then?”

“We loved each other.” I let myself breathe. Of all the things that could have been true—she’s dead, she’s turned to glass, she’s trapped in a painting—running for her life wasn’t the worst. She’d done it before. “The world got between us. It’s been so long. I’ve been trying to catch up with her.”

“I know how you feel,” Elder Jennifer says. “I lost my wife in the troubles. But you didn’t come to hear an old woman go on about loss. Why don’t you stay for a while? The world does a number on people like us. You could use a rest.”

I want to argue, but words like “tired” and “exhausted” don’t even come close to describing my life. Since Monolith City fell, I’ve only stopped to sleep. I’ve always been moving, always been searching. At least now I know Nora made it this far. Instead I nod. I don’t have the strength left for anything else.

Melody takes me outside to a little wooden stall suffused with wonderful smells, where a person in a patched green cap stirs a simmering pot. She nods at him, ladles out two cups’ worth of whatever’s simmering, and hands one to me.

“What is it?”

“Not quite tea,” she says. “But it’ll take the edge off.”

We sit and talk for a while, about everything and nothing. She doesn’t mention Nora, or me being a giant. It’s the first time I’ve been on equal terms with someone in years, and as time drifts past I can feel myself loosening. All I need is to rest a little, and then I can grow back to normal. I’m sure of it.

That’s when the artificial screaming starts. No matter how far I walk, no matter where I go, the worst-case-scenario alarm is constant. It’s always that harsh, throaty howl, rising and falling and rising, built to signal the end of the world.

Two alarms in one day. Melody was sure that had to be some kind of record. At least she didn’t have to run back home for Samantha’s rifle. She was more than ready to drill some fresh holes in whatever raider swarm or Protector platoon was at the walls. Grace, though...Melody knew what it looked like when fear was in charge.

“That’s the attack warning,” Melody said. “Best for you to find a corner and keep your head down until we deal with it.”

“All right.” Grace said, meekly nodding. What else could she do? A giant woman could intimidate an army, but an ordinary-size woman had to fall back on whatever weapon she could wield. “I’ll try not to cause any trouble.”

“I don’t think you could make a dent, considering,” Melody said. “Stay safe.”

The enemy was already in sight when Melody made it to her position atop the wall. A force of Imperial Protectors: no surprises there. She recognized Blaine at the front of their formation and her old scrapwagon at the rear, loaded down with boxes. Because of course he’d rub his theft in her face.

“Not another foot, Blaine, or you’re gonna get it!” She couldn’t hold her tongue, not with that kind of provocation. “Try me, see if I don’t!”

“Oh, it’s our little deviant scavenger!” Blaine threw his voice through an old, hoarded megaphone. Every one of the men behind him had rifles ready. “Gotta say, you’ve got a hell of a knack for engineering. Too bad you’re fucked up every other way.”

Her crosshairs were on him. It would be so easy. One pull was all it would take to wipe him from the world. It would only cost a storm of bullets, and the wall could only stop so many. She kept her aim on his head, dreamed of watching it explode like an overripe melon, even after Elder Jennifer arrived with a megaphone of her own.

“We’ve paid your tributes,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you’re welcome at our door.”

“You’ve been doing more than that, haven’t you?” Blaine shouted back. Melody’s finger tensed on the trigger. “You shrank that giant woman. The Empress wants to know how.”

“Sheer queer ingenuity,” Elder Jennifer said. “Now, unless you want a few too many holes in you, better get your butts back to the boilers.”

“Don’t pretend that this’ll go away,” Blaine said. “We’re watching you, deviants.”

Melody followed Blaine through her crosshairs, carefully and surely, until he and his men disappeared back into the ruins. Then she took a breath, set the rifle down, and punched the Railyard’s rough walls until her knuckles split and her fingers slick with blood.

It’s all my fault. Everything down to Melody’s busted-up hands. After she found me in a corner and told me what happened, that’s the only answer that makes any sense. I’ve been trying to grow, even just a foot or so, but it was all for nothing. I go to Nora’s mural, looking for strength in her brushstrokes, but there’s nothing of her energy left there now. I press my hand against the paint, and paint is all I feel.

None of this would have happened if I hadn’t come here. I’d been so focused on looking for Nora that I never stopped to consider why she’d never looked for me. It’s hard to miss a skyscraping woman.

I step into the train car again, pushing my fears away. Elder Jennifer is on the bottom level this time, knitting on a couch as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I say. “I’ll turn myself over to them. Get them out of your way.”

“Are you kidding?” Elder Jennifer shakes her head at me, like she’s seen this a thousand times before. “They’re like viruses. All they care about is a way in. If you weren’t here, they’d have found another excuse. Nobody concentrates force like that because they’re bored.”

“If I wasn’t around, they’d have one less.”

“Just because it’s a harsh world out there doesn’t mean we have to be harsh to ourselves,” Elder Jennifer says. “Or each other.”

“If I could grow back to normal, I’d be worth something.” I keep my gaze locked on the floor. “Now I’m nothing. I’m worried I’ll be nothing forever.”

“Nobody’s nothing,” Elder Jennifer says. “Together, we’re a great something. That includes you, don’t forget.”

“I stepped over your walls,” I say. “I got those Protectors wound up.”

“And yet, here you are.” Elder Jennifer smiles at me. “People like us need to stick together. Especially in times like this. Who you were isn’t important. What matters is who you are. If there’s nothing more to you than being a giant, then...who are you, really?”

“I don’t know.” For so long my life was neatly divided: the small years, being a dreadnought, and looking for Nora. Now that there are no more dreadnoughts, and now that I know she wasn’t looking for me, I feel hollow. “It never seemed important.”

“Your name is Grace, and you matter,” Elder Jennifer says. “That sounds like a starting point to me.”

I nod and go outside, out into the open. Focusing should be easy. It’s like they taught me in Monolith City. I follow the exercises, guide my thoughts, and picture myself as a dreadnought again. Energy crackles up and down my arms, harsh and uncontrolled and burning, but I don’t allow myself so much as a scream until I collapse on the ground, not an inch bigger.

That night, I watch the sunset. The next morning I watch the sunrise. I can’t remember the last time I’ve stayed in one place for so long.

Melody couldn’t remember how she’d endured with the cabin being so quiet. After weeks of sharing her space with Grace, there was an energy there that hadn’t been present even when Samantha had shared her life. Still, Melody couldn’t help but see tragedy in it. Every once in a while she saw a flicker of the confidence Grace must have had as a giant woman, but it was ground down and stamped flat by the realities of living in a minuscule skin.

“What’s it like?” Melody asked while they worked on the new scrapwagon. “Having that perspective, I mean.”

“Hard to put into words.” Grace shook her head and focused on the wagon. Her attempts over the weeks to return to her old height had only left her taller-than-average. “I could handle bullies. I could see far. I felt safe.”

“That’s in short supply these days,” Melody said. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for a wall around the Railyard. “You’ll get there again, Grace. I believe in you.”

“Thanks,” Grace said, dull and monotone. “Dammit, this wheel is on my list. What a piece of scrap.”

They had it fixed in time for more nighttime scavenging. Grace’s presence on the boneyard trips put Melody at ease, with another pair of eyes and hands and ears in case anything went wrong. Most of the old city was long since picked over, but between Melody’s night-vision goggles and her trusty laser cutter, there was plenty of scrap out there that didn’t know it yet.

“Looks like the wall’ll be happy with this load,” Grace said after midnight slipped past. Some steel, a little aluminum, plastic that didn’t know how to die. “I’d love to help reinforce.”

“We can always use more hands,” Melody said. “I’m glad you walked over the wall, you know?”

“Yeah, me too,” Grace said. “I got to meet you, for one. That was nice.”

Despite the moonless night, Melody turned her head to hide her smile. That was why she noticed the beam of light slashing through the darkness when she did, but it was already too late to do anything about it. It was helmet-mounted, with an Imperial Protector wearing the helmet.

“Damn, I’m getting deja-vu,” Blaine said. “Except this time, I’m going to take that foot, and then some.”

He stepped forward with his rifle at the ready. His crosshairs must have been on her. One pull was all it would take.

“You really need to stop being so predictable,” says the lead Imperial Protector. “At least change your route. This is just sad.”

He can’t be anyone but Blaine. Even if Melody hadn’t told me about him, I’m good at recognizing bullies. He’s the sort of man I’d be happy to step on, if only I could still step on men and make it stick.

“Fine,” Melody said. “Take it. Gives me a reason to build a better one. Third time’s the charm.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Blaine says. “The Empress isn’t happy, and when she’s in a mood, the world rearranges itself. She really doesn’t like the two of you.”

“That’s fine.” I don’t bother reaching for the gun Melody gave me. Some situations can’t be solved with bullets. “I’m really don’t like people who burn coal. So it’s mutual.”

“I like to think I’m a nice guy,” Blaine says. “So throw me your guns, and I’ll give you a minute’s worth of deviant together-time before I end you.”

He’s got men behind him. Too many to miss. I breathe in, hold it, and exhale. So this is how it all turns out. At least Nora ran fast enough to get away. We turn to each other. Blaine probably wants to see us touch, kiss, whatever. At least we can deny him that.

“You can do it, Grace,” Melody whispers. After I fell into the Railyard, I had to look up at her; now she looked up at me. She offers me her hand, and I take it. “It’s all a matter of perspective.”

I nod and close my eyes. Every second I expect Blaine to get bored of waiting a full sixty seconds, to pull his trigger, to end us both. Maybe that’s why when the energy starts burning me, I welcome it and channel it and let it crackle. I lost my home. I lost Nora. I’m about to lose Melody and the Railyard. I don’t have anything left to lose. I hold on to her hand as tight as I can.

So much energy was liberated when the world went askew. So much possibility.

“What the fuck?” I hear Blaine say, but it’s distant and soft, less steel than wool. Gun-thunder cracks across the night, and I feel pinpricks. Sharp, momentary annoyances. Maybe even a little blood. “Hell, sustained fire!”

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard rat-a-tats like that. Not since the time I stepped between two angry towns and put a stop to their little war. I open my eyes and find that I’ve risen. Blaine and his men are like cicadas now, small and annoying and harmless. I turn to Melody, hoping she’s taken the chance to break and run, until I realize that I’m still holding her hand.

Neither of us is looking up at the other.

“Oh my god,” Melody says, her voice full of wonder. “Grace...”

There’s nothing to say, so I squeeze her hand. I know how frightening it can be to have a new perspective.

“You Protectors better run back to your little Empress,” I say. “Let her know that I don’t like her very much, either.”

I ignore them as they retreat into the darkness. I’ve got more important things to worry about. Like what’s going to happen now.

“So,” Melody says. “We’re giants.”

“I didn’t think it’d work like that,” I say. “Hell, I wasn’t sure it’d work at all. I’m sure we can shrink you back down.”

“No,” Melody says. “I want to know what it feels like, and...you’re my friend. I don’t want you to be alone.”

My heart tightens, and I feel a tear slip down my cheek. It’s been a while since I stood in for rain.

“I still don’t know who I am, you know,” I say. “Other than being a giant. Maybe you can help me figure it out.”

“Sounds like a cool project, especially since salvaging just got about a thousand times easier.” Melody kneels down and picks up the scrapwagon between her thumb and forefinger. “What’s your problem with coal, anyway?”

“It’s nasty stuff when you burn it,” I say. “All that smoke. Makes it so that you can’t see very far at all.”

High above us, the stars are shining. They’re too far away for me to touch, but I know they’ll always lead me home.