Lyra Titanica's Arc

Chapter 3 of 2

By morning the villagers ringed the black altar again. They had stacked fresh baskets on the polished stone. But their faces had changed. They no longer only worshiped. They watched Lyra the way farmers watch a sky before a storm. One old man near the front pressed his palms together and whispered to his neighbor. "A god gives signs," he said. "Where is her sign?" Lyra heard him. She sat cross-legged in the valley, her knees higher than the huts. The chant had thinned overnight. Fewer voices, more silence. She understood the danger. A god who did nothing was only a monster who had not eaten yet. If she gave them no wonder, their bowed heads would rise, and fear would harden into spears. Ayla climbed the altar steps to reach her. The girl still wore her striped swimsuit, small and bright against the black stone. She alone did not flinch when Lyra's shadow crossed her. "They doubt you, my queen," Ayla said, plain as a servant reporting weather. "Give them proof, or by nightfall they arm themselves." Lyra needed a wonder she could make with her own power. She looked at Ayla, so small on her open palm. An idea took shape. The golden apple had grown Lyra past the clouds. That growth still burned in her, a fire she could share. She lifted Ayla level with her face. "Hold still," Lyra said. "I will show them what I can do." Ayla did not pull back. She lifted her chin. Lyra breathed out slowly and pushed her own strength down her arm into the girl. Warmth flowed from her fingers. Ayla gasped. Then she began to grow. The crowd cried out. Ayla's legs stretched. Her shoulders widened. Her feet slid off Lyra's palm as she rose, taller than the huts, taller than the trees at the field's edge. She laughed, breathless, and lifted her own hands to stare at them. The villagers fell to their knees. This time no one whispered. The old man pressed his forehead to the dirt. "She lifts mortals to giants!" a woman shouted. "She is a true god!" The fear broke. Worship rushed back, louder than before. Lyra had her sign. But Ayla kept growing. She reached Lyra's shoulder, then her ear. Her devoted smile turned uncertain. "My queen," she said, and her voice now boomed across the whole valley. "I feel it still spreading. I cannot stop it." Lyra rose to her full height and looked her servant in the eye, almost equal now. She had spent her power to buy the crowd's faith. She had not meant to give so much of it away. Ayla stood beside her, huge and hungry-eyed, no longer a girl on a palm. Lyra had a second giantess in her valley, and only one throne in the grove above.