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The hips. Oh, my Autumn, the hips—as wide as a barn.

The thrum of my pulse. I felt it inside my chest, and even breathing felt different, and moving felt different. I sketched the landscape of my face and the fringes of my eyelashes.

I pinched myself. I smacked and licked my lips.

I outlined the shape of my nose. A little long as usual, but not a branch. Aloud, I muttered a lie. A trembling lie.

“I’m a timber girl,” I said.

But nothing happened, no tickling or growth spurt.

From bolts to bones. From grains to tendons. From corners to contours.

From an acorn to an organ. From wood to flesh.

I sat there forever, at the end and the beginning of me. Was this a prologue or an epilogue, or somewhere in the middle? I shook my head, waiting for it to go away, hoping and dreading it.

It was a dream. It was a nightmare.

A wish. A curse.

Still, as the hour passed, I remained the same. Real.

I laughed. I laughed so hard, because if I didn’t laugh, I would cry. I’d weep and wouldn’t stop. I’d sob until I choked.

This body wasn’t mine, yet it was. And yet I grieved. And yet I marveled.

I’d wanted this. Now that I had it, did it feel right? Was I still me?

What have you done?I wanted to ask the forest.

I’ve done nothing. You did, it might have answered.

I laced my boots, marveling at the bob and buckle of my fingers as they worked the bindings. I moved like liquid, like air.

Had I known what flexibility meant until today?

As I wobbled to my feet, I thought of infants learning to walk. A chink of fear gripped me. I wondered if I would fall, like a marionette with clipped strings.

I didn’t. I skipped in place, my balance intact.

My clothes whisked around me, fitting the same, but the fabric scraped in a new way, a strange way, coarser than I remembered.

My mouth teetered between smiling and sagging. Excitement or sorrow? Rigor or nausea? Nothing made sense, and everything made sense. I thirsted for none of it and all of it.

I could mourn. Or I could celebrate.

I ran. It was effortless, the soles of my feet hitting the path, kicking back the undergrowth. Pushing my arms and legs, exercising the tool of my body, I carried myself back through the woods. I laughed some more.

Sothathad been the key to using the final acorn, to getting a restored life: giving the prize back to the place it came from. That was the key for me, at least. Maybe for someone else, it would have been otherwise. Everyone’s tale was unique.

The bungalow roofs pitched into the canopy. At the first sight of the creek, I collapsed on all fours and glanced into the water, dizzy with relief as my face rippled back at me. I looked the same, only cozier.

I dunked my hand into the water and pulled it out, fixated as the droplets dried quickly.

Vaulting up, I raced through the colony, climbing steps and dashing through a covered bridge, then up another winding stairway. I had a real body, of flesh and muscle, of a heart that pounded.

And the first thing I wanted to do was show it to him.