I heard wood slamming against wood as a door swept closed with a loud clack. A swarm of aromas swept over me: garlic, cloves, freshly baked bread, wet dirt, urine, smoke, and above it all the close odor of many bodies. A fire nearby crackled and popped. It wasn't cold, and the heat didn't add much to the room. It must have been for cooking. The walls were wooden and roughly formed together with some kind of mud or plaster smeared between the cracks. A staircase led to a second floor, and rectangular openings along the roofline just below the ceiling allowed a stream of dim sunlight to penetrate the room.

    Dust particles swirled in the light from the door as a man with long wild hair and tattoos covering half his face walked through. It looked like a tavern of some kind. Judging by the long cotton gowns gathered in ripples about the women's torsos and the knee-length tunics the men wore, I guessed I was somewhere during the Roman Empire. Most of the tables were filled with men drinking and playing some sort of dice game. A man was on the floor near the stairs with a woman. She was splayed out on her back, his hand fondling her legs, while another man sat by the fire with two children.

    I finally spotted Ezra sitting alone at the table closest to the fire. A woman stepped through a narrow doorway and headed straight for Ezra. She was short and plump with strawberry red hair piled on top of her head, round rosy cheeks, and thin lips. I followed her and watched her place a steaming wooden bowl and a round loaf of bread in front of him. As she reached across him to set down the food, Ezra turned and locked eyes with her. She looked to be in her fifties or sixties. She gazed back at him for a moment and then walked away.

    Ezra watched her. She settled herself into a chair a few feet away and sifted flour through some sort of mesh. He picked up a spoon and began digging through a thick stew. One of the men playing dice scowled and cursed at another man loudly, and the rest laughed.

    A high-pitched whimper near the fire raised the hairs on the back of my neck. One of the children was crying softly. The boy was older, about twelve or thirteen years old. The girl didn't look much more than ten.

      The man grabbed the boy by the face and bent to pull something from the fire. A finely honed knife blazed white at the tip and faded to a deep scarlet further along the blade. The man seared the blade to the boy's cheek. He screamed, high pitched, and agonizing. The smell of the boy's roasting meat mingled with the garlic and bread odors. The girl trembled and hiccupped helplessly.

    I stared around the room in shock. The men ignored the boy, indifferent to his piercing screams. The man on the floor had positioned himself between the woman's legs and was groping himself while trying to pull up his tunic. Another man spilled a dark liquid across the table, and the other men laughed at him. No one was looking at the children. No one, except Ezra.

    The man shoved the boy away with his free hand and bent to put the knife back into the fire. He turned as he noticed Ezra staring at him.

    "You want something, Friend?"

     "I'm not anyone's friend."

    "Then you better eye that bowl instead of me and my property."

    "It's a pathetic man who harms his children." He reached over and pulled off a hunk of bread from the loaf and popped it into his mouth. "You have to brand them to make them obey. I bet you have to brand your women too just, so you have something to slide your dick into." He grinned and chewed slowly, deliberately. 

    I hardly noticed the man move. Suddenly, a short spear sliced through Ezra's stomach. The spear skewered Ezra, pinning him into a post. Every eye in the room was now riveted on the two men. The man gloated in triumph. Slowly as seconds passed, the muscles in his face contorted, sliding from confusion to fear. Ezra casually glanced down at the spear protruding from his stomach with a look of mild interest. Blood was beginning to spread, soaking through his tunic. Ezra slowly, purposefully looked at the man. Then he calmly grabbed the shaft of the spear and pulled. It popped out of the post and slid through his body with a wet sucking sound. The man's eyes widened.

    "Potestas."

    The man backed up into the boy behind him. Before I had time to realize what had happened, Ezra thrust the spear upward under the man's jaw and out through the top of his head. He let the man go and watched him tottered from side to side for a couple seconds before collapsing. His left shoulder and arm fell against the fire sending a spray of embers and coals flying into the air. The boy and girl shrieked and ran from the raining fire. The man's tunic quickly smoldered and burned.

    Ezra sat back down at the table where he had left his food growing cold. The room was silent. No one shifted or murmured or even twitched. Ezra picked up the loaf of bread, pulled off a large piece, and dunked it into the stew. He ripped a large mouthful with his teeth. Then he reached into a leather pouch, pulled out a small coin and tossed it onto the table. He grabbed the loaf and tugged another mouthful free as he walked toward the door. Ezra looked at the plump woman as he walked by.

    I turned toward the woman once more before I followed Ezra out the door. I looked left and then right searching for him among the massive throng of people crowding the street. He had disappeared into the mass.

    Ezra blew a quick puff of air in my face, and I blinked. "You've been staring at that cup for more than five minutes," he said. "What were you watching?" He took his hand off my back, then reached across to grab a piece of toast off my plate and took a large bite.

    "Dinner theater. Or rather breakfast theater," I said, eyeing my half-eaten toast with jam. "Is there a plump red-headed Avati who looks around sixty years old?"

    He stopped for a moment and then nodded, "Rosemerta."

    I took a bite of toast and chewed thoughtfully. "She was there when a man was branding his children, I'm not sure. He stabbed you with a spear." I swallowed and sipped my coffee. "It didn't end well for him."

    "It never does."

    Ezra's phone rang. He glanced at the screen, "It's Leif." He swiped his thumb across the screen to answer it and hopped off the stool. I shoved the rest of my buttered toast into my mouth and followed him after refilling my mug.

    For the next two days, Sria examined all of Esther's research with Ezra. Leif was on his way to join us in Kaş. Sria and Ezra had reached an all-new level of intensity since he had been attacked. They jumped into unlocking the mystery of the research project with a vengeance. I worried it was an effort in futility. We were no closer to figuring out Esther's secret than before. We knew all the Avati were genetically linked within haplogroup J. Still, not everyone in haplogroup J had the genetic marker, and not everyone with the genetic marker became Avati. We also knew Esther was working for someone else. We knew they had spent decades building profiles on every living Avati they could find, and even a few dead ones. We knew the bulk of the research was on the oldest among us.

    Sria poured over the files and timelines with a harsh edginess I could only moderately sympathize with. I could imagine, though not very well, how I would feel if I suddenly found myself faced with an FBI or CIA file with every detail of my life spelled out for the world to see. The relief she felt after realizing Yisu was completely unknown to the researchers was obvious. I had to admit I relieved myself.   

    I was lost in thought as I zigzagged along the side of the hill behind the house with Yisu. She was pointing out many of the plants that were indigenous to the area and listing their useful properties. I was doing my best to remember what she was trying to teach me. You never knew when it would become useful, but her knowledge was exceptional, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to recall a tenth of what she was saying.

    She pointed out a stinging nettle plant that I had always avoided whenever possible.

    "If you cook it, it's good to eat, like spinach. It is also good for hay fever," she said, bending down to gently pluck off a leaf. I thought of Shauna, who loves spinach. She could eat it by the pound. Her ex-husband always said it was one of the reasons he had to leave. He couldn't handle another day of spinach. I wondered if Shauna would like stinging nettles.

    "If you brew it into tea, it is good for gout and bladder infections." She lifted the leaf to her nose and sniffed. "If you sting yourself with it, just mash up the leaves and stems into a paste and put it on your skin. It cures itself." She tossed the leaf aside and continued walking.

    Yisu grazed a wide bush and squatted down low to the ground. She pulled at a yellow daisy-shaped flower surrounded by vicious-looking spikes. "Golden thistle," she said and tossed the whole flower into her mouth. "These are good. You can eat them raw or cook them." I looked around and saw taller versions of the plant growing past my knees.

    I gently touched the protruding spike of one of the leaves and winced. "I don't want to eat that raw."

    She laughed and rolled her eyes. "You don't eat the spikes raw, just the young leaves. You have to cook the thorny leaves." She laughed at me again and walked on. She hopped lightly as she spotted something else and hurried over to a small tree that reached about the top of my head.

    "This is Sria's plant. It's the tree of love. People would wear it." I looked at the soft leaves and clusters of berries, just beginning to change from green to blue. It was a myrtle. My grandfather had a tree in his yard my grandmother had planted when they were first married. "You can eat the berries. They make liquor out of them too. You can also use it as an astringent."

    The sound of a high-pitched shriek followed by girlish laughter drifted over to us. Yisu turned to look, and I followed her gaze. A small group of children were running along the edge of the water, rushing into the waves and then turning to run out again. Yisu straightened up and watched them with a mixture of apprehension and longing. One little girl turned toward us. Talking with Yisu and listening to her try to teach me, it was easy to forget she was still a little girl. She knew so much; I had already begun to think of her as the ancient Avati she was. Despite everything, she was still fundamentally a child.

    I walked up to her and straightened her long braid, smoothing it down her back the way I'd seen Sria do dozens of times. "Why don't you go play with them?" She looked at me in shock then turned back to the little girl uncertain. She looked like she was trying to think of a reason not to. Or maybe she was trying to convince herself she should. The two-thousand-year-old Avati was warring with the eight-year-old girl. I couldn't tell who was winning.

    Finally, she looked at me again and took a tentative step down the hill. I smiled... Yisu was shy. It was shocking in a way because, in the past few days, shyness was not one of her many attributes. Not around us anyway.

    Yisu walked down to the bottom of the hill, and the little girl ran up to meet her. Both girls shuffled their feet nervously at first before running down to the water together. I wondered if Yisu could speak Turkish but then shrugged. In the end, I doubted it mattered. I walked back up the hill toward the house. I could watch from the patio. Although I wasn't really worried, I felt tremendous pity for any fool who tried to hurt Yisu.

Short chapter, I know. Not much happens. I'll probably upload the next on Thursday (if I remember, what with the virus and being off of work, its hard for me to recall the days).

Stay safe, yall.

TEASER:  "There is a sniper on the roof above us."