“Elora, no!” I lunged for her as she reached up, materializing another sundrop. I grabbed for it, blistering my fingertips and quickly pulling back.

“Lello!” She held it out to me.

“Elora, drop it!”

She threw the sundrop into the grass, which caught fire. Again, she reached up. I scooped her from the grass, pinning her hands at her sides. She began to howl, and purple-black clouds roiled above, dumping rain. The scorched grass sizzled.

I locked her in the nursery for the rest of day.

Whole weeks went by without incident, and then she’d conjure an army of lady bugs marching across the kitchen linoleum or make it snow in the living room. Every night, I watched her sleep, her cheeks squished into the pillow, and I wondered what she was dreaming up. Maybe tomorrow she’d conjure a double rainbow. But maybe she’d make scissors dance across my feet. I hid the scissors and the kitchen knives.

Over the phone, my mother—who in retirement frequently stumbled into the bowels of the internet—said to bathe Elora in goat’s blood on the full moon.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” she said, and sent crystals and sage in the mail.

A week later, Kirsten called from Elora’s daycare, saying I needed to pick up Elora immediately. When I arrived, parents clutching screaming babies were rushing from the building. Kirsten frowned, as she dabbed at a cut on her forehead and pointed to the playroom. Elora sat giggling on the floor where stuffed animals and neon hued toys spun in a tornado. Colored pencils zinged through the air and stabbed into the walls like throwing knives.

On the full moon, I bathed Elora in goat’s blood.

The next day she made the tomatoes in the garden grow as large as pumpkins, then exploded them. Slicked with red ooze, she shrieked with glee.

Late into the night, I scoured internet forums for parents with strange children. There were children who had invisible friends, saw ghosts, or prophesized the death of an uncle, but none like Elora.

I quit my job, stretched my meager savings with coupons, and had groceries delivered so I could stay home and watch her every second of the day.

“You need to tell her she can’t do these things,” my mother said.

“But she can!”

“She’s too confident. Make her believe she can’t.”

Destroying your daughter’s confidence sounded like borderline abuse. But I was up for anything at this point.

The next day, Elora scribbled on the walls with crayons. The red and purple scribbles detached and rolled down the hallway like tumbleweeds.

“Drawings can’t come alive,” I told her. I piled the scribbles in the bathtub and hid her crayons.

Another day I found her floating on the living room ceiling, reaching for the chain of the fan. I jumped onto the sofa and grabbed her ankle, tackling her to the floor. “Elora, humans can’t fly!”

When she conjured glitter and dumped handfuls on the cat, I said, “Elora, you can’t just make glitter. We buy it at the store!” The cat left a glitter trail across the house, sneezing glitter bombs until I thought he might asphyxiate.

Every day, with the most powerful weapon a parent has—words—I told my daughter all the things she couldn’t do. Can’t call birds into your bedroom, can’t grow apples in winter, can’t resurrect dead spiders and make them dance across the windowsills. And she believed me, because I’m her mother. Over time, I only had to utter those dreaded words “you can’t” once a month, then every few months.

On her third birthday, the air sizzled with sticky humidity as we sat in the backyard having a tea party with lemonade in petite pink cups.

“It’s so hot,” I said tentatively. “Let’s make it rain.”

Elora looked up at the sky then down at her hands clutching a tiny cup.

“We can’t, Mamma.”

Lemonade soured in my constricted throat, and my chest ached at the victory.