Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag! - P. L. Travers

Every time she ate the head off one soldier, another grew up in its place, with a green military coat and a yellow busby.

The Dolphins were after it in a second, two dark striving shapes rippling through the water. Jane and Michael could hardly breathe. Which would win the prize? Or would the prize escape?

Perhaps we are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and all their ancestral kin continually run in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we first bear them is not of surprise but of recognition.