shook her head again, incredulous but also fascinated. “They taught you how to do it?”
He nodded, but then added, “I haven’t mastered it perfectly yet. It works sometimes, but not always. All the same, we can learn from them.”
There was movement in the sleeping pride. One of the animals got up, strolled down to the water, and drank. Then it returned to the others and lay down on the ground again.
“Learn how?” she asked.
“By accepting that we’re like them. We have to give ourselves up to them. It’s a bit like meditation.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he found it embarrassing to discuss. “By becoming one with them.”
“May the Force be with you, and all that?”
“Roughly speaking.”
He ran his fingers through her hair, and then lightly stroked her arm down to the wrist. His hand reached for hers. “The Hungry Man and the others who miss the old times, all that killing and hunting…they make us forget that Arcadia isn’t only about barbarism and bloodshed. There’s also something else. Something…beautiful.”
“And I’m supposed to stand around here while you go in?”
“You can come with me if you like.”
“I had all the Panthera I needed in New York.” She felt his hand, sensed his skin on hers. “Well, more or less.”
He kissed her, then let go of her and moved along the side of the cage. “Wait here.”
She was about to follow him, but then she stopped and just watched him go. “Whatever you think.” She looked for the chill she had just been feeling and was surprised to find that it had worn off.
In the darkness, she heard hinges creak as a door opened in the side of the enclosure. She couldn’t see him now, but somewhere keys turned in locks. The entrance was locked again, and she heard his clothes rustling as he took them off.
He appeared a little later, naked, on the top circle. The eyes of the big cats on guard followed him, but they didn’t leave their stations. A leopard, sitting closest to him as he passed, purred quietly.
Stepping steadily and surely, Alessandro climbed down the rocks. Rosa bit her lower lip, but realized that she felt no fear. As he had asked her to do just now, she trusted him entirely.
The light from the courtyard turned his body to bronze. His muscles rippled beneath his skin; only on his back was it covered by the black hair of his panther coat. The fur was not spreading any farther. Alessandro had his transformation under control.
He didn’t have to climb now; the rocks were laid out like a wide spiral staircase, and he followed it patiently down. Rosa was watching every step he took, every supple movement of his muscles on his upper arms and thighs, his chest, the sharply defined musculature of his stomach. Once, just once, he looked up and smiled at her. Don’t, she thought. Concentrate.
Down by the water, several of the animals raised their heads, picking up his scent. A lion growled softly, but not aggressively, more like he wanted to calm the other members of his pride. She realized, for the first time, that down there all the species of big cats were lying close to one another, tigers next to lions, leopards beside panthers. Why was there no competition among them? No struggle to establish dominance?
She thought of the snakes in the greenhouse of the Palazzo Alcantara. She had been into it only a couple of times, and had never again experienced the place as intensely as on her first visit. But there, too, different species of snakes lived in close quarters. Boa constrictors and pythons, adders and vipers. Venomous cobras and other reptiles side by side.
Alessandro reached the bank of the little lake. The pride was lying on the other side of it. Without hesitation, he went toward them along the edge of the water.
The big cats got up. Only a few at first, then all the rest in a single shadowy ripple of movement.
He walked into the middle of the pride.
Its leader was waiting for him at the end of an avenue that the others formed for him. Alessandro and the lion stood facing each other as if they were of equal rank. As if the lion did not have the power to tear the boy facing him limb from limb within seconds.
They looked at each other for a long time, while the pride stood around them, motionless. Rosa placed her hands on the ice-cold bars of the cage