“He was a great man, your grandfather Witka,” she told him. Just then, as she said it, they felt something there. Someone walked with them, inside. They both heard and felt it. Perhaps it was the old man, Marco’s ancestor. The back of her neck grew cold, the hair starting to rise in the old animal way. Dragonflies came in the window she had opened to the sea and floated in the air around them, blue and shining. A soft knock on the door. She went to the door. “No one is there,” Marco said. “It must be the wind,” but they both knew better because it was a calm day. She knew there were many spirits and felt the air move, spirits one after the other related to the child, come to see him, to infuse him with the world that was his, that he belonged to. Belonging. It has so much significance. So few have it. In his grandfather’s place of many spirits, she brushed Marco’s hair. Both of them knew the spirits had been there, waiting, some human, some the same as in a tide pool, a small octopus with its powerful eye, a starfish.

“Don’t be afraid, Mom. I feel them, too.”

That day when Ruth and Marco returned, Aurora looked up from her knitting of constant afghans that sat on the back or were folded neatly on nearly everyone’s sofa. She guessed where they had been. “You were born prematurely,” she said to Ruth. “Maybe that’s why you need more vitamins.” She handed her the bottle again. “You look pale. Did I ever tell you about the gill slits? When you were born I never even went into labor. You wanted to come into the world and the moment you could walk, you went to the ocean. You walked into it. We yelled and chased you. We were mortally scared. Here, take some more of these vitamins.”

“Gill slits? What gill slits?” Sometimes Ruth wondered if her mother was slipping.

“You were born with them. I was sure you knew that. Didn’t I tell you? At first you had trouble with the air. The midwife put you in water, she told me later, and you lived through it. But then we had to take you to a large hospital in the city where the nurses were very worried, even afraid, I’d say. They never did see such a thing. You choked when the doctor stitched them up. You were a fish even then, my child. They had to open them up again. Then they experimented and put you in water and you didn’t drown. They wanted to call in other doctors to look at you. I wouldn’t hear of it. They even wanted to write about it. I could hear them talking.”

Ruth knew about her mother’s good hearing. She had it, too. It seemed Thomas did, as well. But hers was like sonar. She didn’t believe her mother. “What happened then?”

“You can ask the midwife. I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”