"Spinach can't take care of a kid," says Shura. "Even if it talks. That is why when you play house there is a mommy and a daddy and not a spinach."

"...Which one are you?" says Helen, peering at Kas.

"I can't be all three?"

Shura giggles. "He's a daddy, isn't he? Also maybe a spinach."

"He's a mommy too! I came out of his uterus," Helen asserts. "He has one of those sometimes. He's a daddy and a mommy and a spinach."

"I don't think that is how mommies," says Shura dubiously. "Adopting mommies don't that thing."

"Show her the thing, mommydaddyspinach!" says Helen.

Kas laughs, and switches sex.

Shura tilts her head. "Mommydaddyspinach," she concludes. "Do you have a - a daddymommyspinach? Or a spinachdaddymommy?"

"Why?"

"Dunno!"

"Did grownups who like spinach eat the other one?"

"Then why?"

"I dunno! Mommydaddyspinach, why aren't there two of you?"

"Because I made you by myself," he says, hugging her.

"Why?" Shura asks.

"Because I wanted to have a kid."

"How come she's a witch?" Shura asks.

He shrugs, and suggests, "Magic?"

"Can you just make anybody a witch? Can you make my daddy a witch?"

"I didn't make her a witch on purpose," he says, ruffling Helen's hair. "She just came out that way."

"Why not on purpose?"

"I didn't really think about it one way or the other," he says, very truthfully.