Tío Enrique pulled a thin, twisted brown cheroot from his shirt pocket and lit it. Will looked hungrily at the glowing tip, the smoke.

“Quiere un cigarro?”

“Very much,” said Will, trying, without success, not to sound too desperate.

The cheroot was the tobacco equivalent of moonshine whiskey, and Will gagged when he drew the smoke into his lungs.

“Ohe! You do not inhale these like they are cigarettes,” Tío Enrique said, laughing.

“Can I get cigarettes around here? American cigarettes? Duke’s?”

“I will see. But that will cost you something. Here, take these to last you. My favor to our yanqui guests.”

He gave Will half a dozen cheroots, then planted his hands on his knees and stood up.

“All right. Who are the two injured ones? Rosaria has something for you. You will be good as new in no time. She knows her stuff.”

Will asked for a moment to explain what was happening to his friends. When he was done, he and Eliot followed Tío Enrique outside into the gathering twilight, the sky a velvety purple in the west, candle- or lamplight slivering through the cracks in the shutters of the bohíos, palm fronds rattling in the breeze.

“I ain’t drinking any hag’s potion,” Eliot grumbled as they entered a hut.

The middle of its earthen floor was taken up by a wooden bathtub. A large iron pot simmered on a hearth in one corner, its steam filling the cramped room with a dense, pleasant odor. Bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters added their fragrance, and candles guttered on an altar, which was dominated by a three-foot plaster statue of Jesus wearing a scarlet cape, his exposed heart dripping blood from the thorns twined around it. Beside the statue was a bohío the size of a dollhouse, complete with a straw roof decorated with seashells, a tiny window, and a door against which a pair of miniature crutches leaned. None of this, exotic as it was, drew Will’s attention as much as Elvira. In a fresh white gown that reached to her bare ankles, her wrists adorned with bracelets of black and pale blue beads, her throat with the gold pendant, she sifted dried herbs into the pot, hearth coals and candlelight burnishing her skin so that she looked like a living icon cast in bronze and gold. She turned around when the two boys entered, and her eyes lingered on Will before they shifted to Enrique, the sight of whom appeared to frighten her. She quickly averted her gaze and went back to her sifting and stirring. After he left, Rosaria, sitting on a footstool in front of the altar, beckoned her patients to come forward.