We found you, and you alone, in a universe that had forgotten to die.

As far back as I could remember, Oma warned me about the bats. She said they would eat me if they found me exposed at night. But I knew the green light of the moon would protect me, even when I was still smaller than Oma.

“I’ll prescribe time travel,” the doctor says.

I wondered how many before us had learned what the ocean knew and were prevented from sharing that knowledge with anyone still able to use it.

These nights, when Gramma fell asleep in her rocker, Luba knelt on all fours to press her ear to the rug; she heard the Undersea rising, the roar of the sea-lions, a faint song of sirens luring ships to invisible rocks. And just last night she heard beneath the rug the faint deep sound of a cello.

Down here among the dead, our fairy tales begin at the end.

Uncle Rod came back from Vietnam, broken like they all were, and danced.

Everything had changed. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The whole reason we had moved to the Isle of Lewis was because everything everywhere was changing. Here seemed like the best place to face that.

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Lying in bed last night I felt fingers reach in, grabbing. I opened in spite of myself as you clawed me with your fingernails, flattened, panicked. Split throat, iron tongue, white masks ranged overhead, the rings on their fingers scraping me as they reached in to take you.