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The young woman, also in costume—a much simpler one—didn’t even look up.

“I’ve just been at the church, saying my rosary,” the talking lady went on, as if they’d asked. “My older brother is the friar here, and another brother is the merchant trader. He has three ships anchored down at St. Marks. He takes the things we make here in the village and trades them in Havana for things from Europe, like playing cards and tools and olive oil. There’s his stand.” She gestured at a little thatched-roof stand across the path, where animal skins hung on a line.

“Is there anyone working there now?” Ava jumped in.

“My brother has just set off down the Wakulla River with some Indians in canoes, headed for St. Marks, carrying more of our products to trade. I’ve been praying for their safe return.”

Ava guessed that this meant that Travis wasn’t acting as the merchant trader today. She stood there, swatting gnats away from her eyes, wishing she could swish her ponytail like a horse’s tail.

The talking lady gazed quizzically up at the sky. “Oh dear. Looks like rain.”

Actually, it didn’t. But it was cooler today than it usually was in August, or so everyone was saying. Only in the mid-eighties, with low humidity. It could be because Hurricane Grayson had gone back out into the Gulf. And then, who knew what it would do?

“Heavens, I need to bring in my children’s beds before it rains!” said the lady. “I set them out to air this morning. My husband and I and our ten children live in that cottage.”

A black rooster and some speckled hens darted past, weaving this way and that.

The man listening asked the talking lady if the hens were hers.

She couldn’t give a straight answer, it seemed. “I lost three hens to hawks last week.” She went on and on, in her phony antiquated English, when Spanish would’ve been more accurate. Ava listened as long as she could stand it. Finally she interrupted and asked her if Travis was working there today.

“He’s a soldier, down at the fort,” she told Ava. “Would you like to see inside my cottage?” she asked her group. The nice couple followed her and Ava turned and hurried off toward the fort.

She wanted to talk to Travis about everything that had been going on at home. Things had been bad, very bad. Travis might not be glad to see her at all, since Rev. Buff was his mother’s brother, and his uncle, but this was another chance she had to take. The red dust on the paved path got between her flip-flops and her feet, and she wished she’d worn sneakers. She didn’t have much tolerance for the physical irritations that most people could just ignore, but if she banged her head hard on something it didn’t seem to hurt her as much as it would most people. Most people. She got tired of most people. Travis wasn’t like most people, either.

A log stockade enclosed the white stucco fort. Inside, Travis was talking to the group of sweaty little boys. He wore the same white collarless shirt and breeches with the braided belt and felt hat that he’d been wearing at church, the same brown knee sock thingies and leather shoe boots. “Ava!” he said, and she could tell he was really glad to see her. He held up his finger, meaning, wait a minute. So she did.

A set of military spears with wooden handles and wicked-looking blades hung on the wall behind him, and he explained the differences among them to the boys. They were different kinds of pole arms, he said. One was for fighting on horseback, another type had different-shaped blades to demonstrate rank. The boys made sounds of approval.

Then he showed them the matchlock and flintlock muskets hanging on another wall and some swords lying on a shelf right at the boys’ eye level.

The boys crowded close to the swords, itching to pick them up. They weren’t even listening to Travis, she could tell. Each one wanted to snatch up a sword and stab something.

Finally Ava couldn’t stand it anymore. “You boys need to get out of here,” she said. “Time’s up. Move along.”

There were four of them, and they all looked at her with varying degrees of surprise and annoyance