Chapter Six



Nell woke up with a start, her head pounding and her heart racing. The details of her dream swam away from her. She just remembered sirens, and screaming, and a feeling of panic. Like there was something she had to do, but had no idea how.

The room was still dark, and Nell knew she could not have slept more than a few hours. She tried to take a few deep breaths and calm down, but just felt dizzy. Rubbing at her eyes, she threw off the covers and stumbled toward the light switch. She crossed the room more quickly than she was expecting to, almost slamming into the wall. Of course, she thought, now that she had grown she'd be taking bigger steps. She had to feel along the wall for the light switch, and was surprised to find it at her waist. The switch itself was much smaller than her finger.

She blinked in the light, and looked around. Had she grown again? Nell couldn't really judge based on her surroundings. The entire room seemed much smaller than it had when she was short, but that had also been the case the night before. On a whim, she reached up toward the ceiling, but found that her fingers were still definitely short of the plaster. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she tried to get just a little bit closer, and completely lost her balance.

Nell tripped forward, her bare feet skidding across the polished wood floor. As she lunged forward to stop herself, her foot crashed directly into the miniature of the mansion, smashing through the roof and through to the ground floor below.

Nell winced with pain, and slowly extricated herself from the model. She sat down heavily, and surveyed the damage. The roof had caved in, like it had been hit with some huge meteorite. Or as if one of its occupants had burst through the ceiling. Nell felt a little like crying. How could she have been so clumsy? She'd treasured the dollhouse since her father had given it to her, and despite all the years she'd spent playing with it, she'd wrecked it in an instant. She tried to extricate the model of Lenette from underneath the shattered remains of a window, but her fingers were too large to properly grasp it.

Nell leaned back and took a deep breath. The room suddenly felt a few sizes too small for her. She hadn't stepped outside since returning from the mall, and she'd grown at least once since then, maybe even twice. She needed some fresh air.

As she approached the door to her bedroom she immediately knew she'd grown - significantly - during the night. The top of the door frame was level with her shoulderblades. But how tall was the door? Nell had never remembered it as any bigger or smaller than the average. But her father could walk through this one without any danger of scraping his head. So it was at least seven feet tall...

Nell suddenly felt incredibly dizzy. Not only was the room too small for her, it was closing in. She couldn't breathe. She tried to hunch over to fit through the exit, but when she balled herself up, she was too wide for the narrow frame. Biting her lip, she laid down and turned on her side, praying she was still skinny enough to fit through that way.

Her head went through easily enough, and her slender shoulders cleared the gap with no difficulty. She had to squish her arms through the door and over her head to get her chest to clear the passage, but managed, somewhat painfully to fit them through as well.

Then the dizziness accelerated into full-on head rush, and Nell had to close her eyes. The now-familiar tingly feeling rushed over her, along with sudden, constricting pain around her hips. When the feeling passed and Nell opened her eyes, the hallway was suddenly far too small for her.

***

The sound of splintering wood reverberated loudly, audible even through the thick walls and byzantine corridors of the mansion. Daniel, who had been groggily shaking himself awake, abruptly snapped to full attention. He seized his glasses from the nightstand and bolted down the hallway to Nell's room.

He nearly crashed into Winston right before turning the final corner. The butler firmly held him back.

He heard Winthrop from down the hall, yelling, "Okay, the door's fallen off. Back to the first position!"

"Good, this hurts anyway!" Nell snapped back.

"Miss Nell is, ah, indisposed at the moment." Winston said stiffly.

"Let him through!" Winthrop called from around the corner. "Another brain might be able to help us out of this mess."

Daniel didn't know quite what to expect as he rounded the corner. While Nell entirely filling the doorway to her room should have been on his list, it had somehow never crossed his mind. It was as if her rosy flesh was the stopper on a flask. She seemed to be taking up every available inch of the hallway, turned awkwardly on her side, her arm just managing to cover up the nipples on her tremendous breasts.

"When you calculated that inverse logarithm, did you look to see when this would happen?" Winthrop demanded.

"Er... I suppose I should have been more accurate about the timeframe." Daniel laughed nervously.

"Don't blame him, Daddy," Nell said in a slightly constricted voice. Daniel noticed she was taking extremely rapid, shallow breaths, and her tone of voice betrayed barely-suppressed panic. "It's not his fault. Just... How can you get me out of here?"

"First things first," Daniel said. "I want you to take a deep breath and hold it."

There was audible creaking from the door frame as Nell complied.

"Ok, now slowly let it out over the next few seconds, like this." Daniel took a lungful of air and loudly exhaled it in a long blow. As Nell did the same, he thought he saw the entire doorway shift back into place. "Okay, same thing two more times."

"She's still stuck. What did that accomplish?" Winthrop snapped as Nell finished the last breath.

"It stopped Nell from having a panic attack," Daniel said. He didn't know why, but somehow Nell's crisis had him feeling more confident and in control than he ever had in his life. He stood on tiptoes to whisper to Winthrop, "Don't tell her this, but your daughter might be claustrophobic."

Winthrop nodded, and turned to Nell. "It's okay, sweetie. Just stay calm and we will get you out of the house."

"Right. Hmmm..." Daniel surveyed the scene. There seemed to be literally no gap between Nell's ample hips and the doorframe, which was currently pressing into her. Daniel felt a twinge of pity; that couldn't be comfortable. A lubricant probably wouldn't do the trick - Nell's butt got thicker before thinner, and even if she could withdraw back into the room, her breasts wouldn't flatten enough to fit back through. For once, the hourglass shape was actually incredibly inconvenient.

She couldn't go out, but also couldn't fit back through. Unless.. "Nell, do you know when you last grew?"

Nell sighed softly. "I didn't check the clock. I was too busy trying to get out. But I've been stuck here for a while."

"At least an hour," Bill muttered. "That's when I got here."

"Is this corridor reinforced? As in, structurally sound?" Daniel asked.

Winthrop's eyes widened. "Oh no. You can't be serious."

Daniel nodded. "There's no other way I can think of." He turned to Nell, whose hands were tightly clenched. "Okay, you're probably going to grow again soon. When you do, I want you to slowly turn so your stomach is facing the ground. If you feel like anything's stabbing into you, stop. Otherwise, keep turning."

Nell gritted her teeth, and nodded. There was a long, nervous pause.

Then her eyes fluttered. "Oh my god. It's happening."

"Stand back!" Daniel cried, ineffectually tugging Winthrop from the door.

Daniel had never seen anything like it. He'd thought Nell's expansion would be something like a balloon inflating, but instead it was much the opposite: it seemed like the entire hallway was shrinking around her, like she was outgrowing all of them.

Nell's massive hips swung ninety degrees to crash into the doorframe, and with a deafening crack the wood frame caved in two. As Nell continued to turn, her body slammed clear through the wall. Spurts of crumbling plaster filled the air.

"Turn back on your side!" Daniel managed to yell, while he still had a voice. Afterward, the sheer spectacle of Nell's growth rendered him completely incapable of speech.

When Nell finally turned back to lying on her side, there was a good foot of door and wall missing on either side of her.

***

Nell tucked her head to her chest and looked down at the length of her body. Just looking at herself, she didn't feel any different than before. But when she saw the crumbling walls around her, combined with the pathetic remains of the dollhouse dwarfed by her tremendous feet, she started to feel dizzy again.

She quickly turned back to Daniel and her father. They both seemed absurdly small to her. Daniel especially seemed less like a person and more like an extremely convincing scale model. Not quite a doll yet - but not quite real either.

"Okay, now move back into the room," He said, putting his hands up and miming moving back as if pressing against a wall. Like he was directing a truck.

Nell suppressed a chuckle, then carefully slithered back into the room, struggling to keep one arm over her boobs. It hadn't even occurred to her to be embarrassed up until this point, but she suddenly realized that Daniel had now seen her almost entirely naked. She felt her cheeks flush, and knew that her sudden embarrassment was only going to make things look worse.

Sucking in a deep breath, she wiggled back, and seized hold of the masses of sheets on the floor. Each of them was now about the size of a towel, but she sat up and piled them on top of herself all the same, and felt a little better - until the floor groaned, loudly, beneath her weight.

"Oh dear lord," Winthrop muttered to himself. Winston looked on grimly.

Daniel, however, marched straight over to her. Laying a tiny hand on her shoulder - he had to reach up even to get there - he pressed backwards, telling her to lie down. "We need to even out the pressure on the floor," He explained. "Sitting puts it all in one place, but if you're lying down the weight's more evenly distributed."

His seriousness, combined with how tiny he was, just made him absolutely adorable. Nell had to fight the urge to simply pull him close to her. She could do it easily enough with one hand. Her father and Winston were looking on though, and even covered in sheets she was pretty close to naked. The rational part of her brain knew this wasn't the time for that, and she was capable of listening to it.

"What am I going to do about this?" Her dad asked, visibly concerned.

Nell wished this was the doll house, and she could simply lift away the entire front and head straight outside. Instead she was stuck in here, with no easy way out. Staring at the ceiling, she felt like she could reach out and touch it, and suddenly felt cramped again.

So instead she turned to Daniel, who was looking around the room. When he settled on a wall, She turned to look toward it as well, and saw that he was looking out the picture window.

"If we can break that glass, she might be able to fit." Daniel said.

Nell turned to look at her daddy, who was frowning. Eventually, he nodded. "We have to make it safe, so she doesn't cut herself."

"Yes, but we don't have much time." Daniel said. "She'll grow again in another few hours."

"Winston, get us a..." Winthrop turned to look for the butler, only to find that he wasn't in the room.

Moments later, he appeared with a few hammers and some blankets. "With the curtains drawn, we shan't get any broken glass on ourselves. Then the blankets will ensure that Miss Nell can escape unharmed."

***

"You're sure you can do this?" Winthrop asked Nell once more.

"I'm okay, Daddy. It's not that big a drop."

To her it isn't, Daniel thought to himself, staring down through the remains of the picture window. Nell's room was on the second story, and that left a fair amount of distance to the ground. A giantess was trouble enough without broken heels. He didn't think any of them had the medical training to deal with a serious injury, and there was no way they could take Nell to the hospital. They just had to hope Nell stuck the landing.

He turned back to look at the girl. She had to be just over ten feet tall now. Truly enormous, and soon to grow even bigger before the day was done. Was eleven feet next? Twelve? He wished he had his graphing calculator on hand, just to know the next step. As if the numbers would help Nell.

She was actually calming her father down, instead of vice versa, all while lying spread out on the ground. Daniel had to admire how well she was keeping it together. Maybe the stress of it all was bringing out the adult in her.

A slight cough sounded to Daniel's left, and he turned to see Winston, who had entered quietly behind them. "Sir, it gives me no pleasure to inform you, but we are under a deadline if we wish to extricate Miss Nell from the house."

Winthrop turned, looking almost ready to snap at Winston, but instead slumped slightly. "Be careful, sweetie," he told Nell.

"Don't worry, Daddy." Nell said sincerely.

They filed out of the room, back through the foyer of the mansion and out the double doors, into the pale morning light. Nell's room was on the eastern side of the house, so the sun was rising just behind the shattered remains of her bedroom window.

"Are you ready, Miss Nell?" Winston called.

"Ready," Nell called back. Even from outside the house, her voice was clearly audible. Of course it is, Daniel thought, her lungs are twice as large. "Here I come!"

There was a tremendous rumbling sound, and Daniel saw through the window that Nell was sort of crab-walking her way toward the window, to avoid putting too much pressure on the floor of her room. Even so, the creaking timbers of the house were audible as Nell made her way to the window.

"Here she comes," Winthrop said, seeming like he could barely look.

Nell's feet appeared in the window, filling a good half of the frame with their pale, slightly wrinkled soles. And moments later, the girl was plummeting toward the earth. Daniel had never seen something so large move so fast.

The turf around her landing site literally exploded outward, leaving a crater-like indentation of mud all around her. A few spare shards of glass fell from the last bits of the window that had been covered by the blankets. Nell herself simply looked thrilled.

"Don't worry, I'm fine," Nell began, but was immediately drowned out by the wailing honk of a car horn.

All four of them turned to see a yellow Chevy that had pulled up in the driveway. With all the commotion of Nell's exit from the house, none of them had noticed. A woman was draped over the steering wheel, her brown hair falling over the dash.

"I beg your pardon, sir," Winston said. "But I altogether forgot to mention that Lenette was scheduled to tutor Nell today."

***

"I planned ze lesson," Lenette said firmly. "Now I shall be teaching you. Tell me, why did ze President begin ze Trail of Tearz?"

Nell knew that the very sight of the Frenchwoman at the table before her was ridiculous. She was easily twice Lenette's size, and clad in a number of sheets that had been tied haphazardly together. Yet there they were, Lenette insisting that now was as good a time as any to study history. According to Daniel, she had decided to go on with the lesson just fifteen minutes after waking up from her faint. Nell had no idea why she was being so stubborn about this.

"Well, what iz ze answer, Nell?"

Nell stared down at the textbook. She'd always thought of "Waltham's History of the United States" as huge and heavy, but now it could easily fit in her pocket. The words were so tiny... She leaned closer to the table and squinted to try and make them out.

Lenette rapped her hand swiftly across the table. "If someone asks you a question about Anjrew Chjacksonne, will you look in a book, or will you tell zem somezing?"

Nell found herself feeling pretty annoyed at her tutor. Couldn't Lenette understand that she hadn't had any time to study? It wasn't fair to expect her to be able to learn at a time like this.

"No pouting. You will tell me ze answer now."

Nell stared down at the little woman. She was really too big for all of this. And she knew just how to show that. Reaching out, she flipped the textbook closed - using only one finger. "I don't think I can learn any more today," Nell sighed with exaggerated boredom. She didn't want to offend Lenette, but she did want to get her message across. She wasn't going to be bossed around any more.

Lenette didn't even respond with words. She clenched her tiny fists and stood up roughly from the table, knocking over her chair in the process.

***

"J'rejeter!" Lenette screamed, standing on tiptoes to better yell in Winthrop's face. "I will not be mocked by zis -- zis giant girl!"

"It's been a trying time for all of us," Winthrop said gently.

"She will not learn, zen I will not teach!" Lenette shouted. She roughly seized her leather schoolteacher's bag and stormed through the mansion's exit.

Daniel chose this moment to fully round the corner into the foyer, smoothing his hair back. "Uh, I guess that went... um," he said, searching for the right word.

"Disastrously?" Winthrop said, almost chuckling. "Yeah, that sounds like it."

"Do you think she'll tell anyone?" Daniel felt his chest tighten at the thought.

"No, no," Winthrop waved the notion away. "Lenette's always been loyal to us. If nothing else, she'll let us pay her to stay quiet." His tone darkened slightly. "It's not good that Nell disobeyed her though. Not right now."

"Well, she is a teenage girl," Daniel reasoned. "She's bound to get a little rebellious."

"The timing for that could be better," Winthrop said sternly. "She's not going to like what I have to tell her."

"Tell her what?" Daniel asked.

"We have to move her," Winthrop sighed. "She's outgrown the mansion. We can't just leave her outside."

"Where can you take her?" Daniel had no idea what facility could house Nell. Surely Winthrop wasn't planning to hand his own daughter over to the government?

"One of my warehouses. For now. But if this keeps up, it won't hold her for long." Winthrop gave Daniel a steely glare. "You need to find a cure, Daniel. The clock is ticking."