Norah looked at her son’s tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.

Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.

That there were other worlds, invisible, unknown, beyond imagination even, was a revelation to him.

He wished he had some kind of X-ray vision for the human heart.

After all these years, I feel so free. Who knows where I might fly?

He had never even glimpsed her.

Either things grow and change or they die.