There was some low-voiced conversation as they probably tried to figure out whether this was my way of removing all the in-laws from the picture of my honeymoon. I bet Jean-Charles was starting to rue the day he had ever made me prepare snails, yessirree Bob. Claudine might even be feeling a qualm or two about that salad.

They all glanced at Sébastien, who was considered responsible for interpreting my bouts of insanity and judging whether they would prove harmful to members of saner cultures. “It will be great,” Sébastien said firmly. He was the only one who had noticed how many teeth the log below had, and he was looking excited. “Let’s go.”

Jean-Charles was the first to nod, probably assuming that no one to whom he had graciously taught the snail art could mean him any harm. Or perhaps just accepting my challenge-gifts the same way I accepted his. “Sounds like fun.”

Claudine, Bruno, Titi, Justine, and Gaëlle all agreed. The four others decided to wait at the entrance on the off chance we came out again alive.

The yellow flies and mosquitoes attacked before the six of us even got into the canoes, despite liberal applications of every brand of mosquito repellent we had. As a layer of winged things settled on my skin and sank their suckers in, I realized my last visit to the Okefenokee had been in autumn. It made a difference in terms of wildlife.

The twenty-year-old untying our canoes grinned up at us. “How do you feel about spiders?”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“Good, then look.” He pointed above my head. “You’ll see lots of those goldens in there.”

I looked up at a golden spider in a web only six inches above me, its graceful legs stretching out to cover a span bigger than a large man’s open hand.

“What is that?” Claudine asked.

“A spider,” I translated what the canoe-handler had told me rapidly. “Err—very, very rare.” So rare that a couple more hovered above Bruno. “And perfectly harmless, except to children smaller than they are.”

I hurried down to the first canoe. The others walked under the golden spider, still staring up at it. “You know, in France, we don’t have any spiders that can catch bats for breakfast,” Bruno said. “I don’t mean that as a criticism or anything. I just mention it.”

We wanted each two-person canoe to have someone in the stern capable of steering, which put Jean-Charles and Justine in a canoe, Titi and Bruno in another, and left two possible combinations. Sébastien and I could split our steering abilities between two canoes, or we could stay romantically together, somewhat like a honeymoon couple, and leave Claudine and her niece Gaëlle in one boat to figure it out.