“I suppose that growing up on a farm, I developed a special relationship with animals, and I can’t imagine eating them.”
“We have a dog,” Felix said. “A big shaggy thing named James Ferocious.”
The boy laughed. “Is he? Ferocious?”
“The opposite!” Felix said.
Felix watched as the boy began to eat, holding his utensil with his left hand. Felix’s father was left-handed, too, and he almost commented on this similarity. But he didn’t want the boy to start asking questions again, so he ate instead, in silence, savoring the delicious vegetable soup.
“I noticed that you’re interested in the fact that I’m left-handed,” the boy said.
Felix blushed. “Sorry I was staring.”
“It’s not a good trait here. Some people think it’s the sign of the devil.”
“Not me!” Felix protested. “My father’s left-handed!”
“You know, many Florentines believe that studying the past helps with the present. But I believe we learn from observation. Like the way you were observing me,” the boy continued between bites. “What theories did you come up with watching me?”
“Well,” Felix said thoughtfully, “I saw that you are left-handed like my father, and since he’s an artist, too, I wondered if maybe being left-handed is something many artists have in common.”
The boy nodded. “Interesting,” he said.
“Like you observing birds to understand their flight patterns.”
“I don’t just observe the flight pattern of birds. I observe all of nature. The movement of water, the arrangement of leaves on a stem. For example,” he said, tapping the table, “I spend much of my time alone, in the mountains, to observe nature. There, I found fossils, shells and fish and coral, all in the mountains, far from the sea. I asked myself, How did these get here?”
He looked at Felix, seeming to wait for an answer.
“I don’t know,” Felix said. “Maybe someone brought them there?”
“Aha! Someone? Or something?”
Before Felix could respond, the boy said in disbelief, “Do you know that the popular theory is that these fossils floated up the mountain during the Great Flood? Which is scientifically impossible.”
He shook his head. “These things are too heavy to float up,” the boy said. “They’re too heavy to float at all!”
“So, then, how did they get there?” Felix asked.
Without thinking, he helped himself to more soup. The boy didn’t even seem to notice.
“The rock that formed that mountain,” the boy said, his eyes ablaze with excitement at his theory, “must have once been at the bottom of the ocean. The ocean receded, leaving the fossils behind.”
“Makes sense,” Felix said, wishing science was always explained so clearly.
“Not long ago,” the boy said, forgetting his dinner, “I was boiling water and watching the lid on the pot jump up and down. I asked myself, Why does a pot lid jump like that when water boils?”
He looked at Felix expectantly.
“I think . . . ,” Felix said hesitantly, trying to remember this very thing from science class. Something happened to water when it boiled. But what was it?
“I thought water must expand when it turned to steam,” the boy said.
That sounded possible. “That’s right, I think,” Felix said.
“That’s right, I know,” the boy said, satisfied without being smug. “I made a glass cylinder, put water and a piston inside it, then brought the water to a boil and measured how far the piston rose.” He leaned back slightly. “The water did indeed expand.”
“Wow,” Felix said, impressed.
“That is why my angel is not yet painted,” the boy said, pointing at the big half-finished canvas.
“I should probably go and let you get back to work,” Felix said, resisting the urge to lick his bowl.
“Where are you going?”
“Well, I have to go meet my sister,” Felix said.
“And then? Where are you staying? I so enjoyed talking with you that I’d like to see you again.”
Felix considered what to say. Finally, he opted to tell the truth.
“We haven’t found a place to stay,” he told the boy.
“But it’s almost Carnival! Every room in Florence is taken!”
“We’ll figure something out,” Felix said.
The boy’s face wrinkled with worry, but almost as quickly he brightened.
“You’ll stay here!” he said.
“Here?”
“Yes, yes. Go and get your sister and bring her back here.”
“Well . . .”
“And tomorrow I’ll take you to the mountains,” the boy said. “I have been thinking a lot about what happens when I throw a pebble into the pond there, and I have some theories I’d like to share with you.”
“All right, then,” Felix said, happy now. “I’ll go and get Maisie and bring her back . . . Where am I exactly?”
The boy laughed. “This is the artist Verrocchio’s studio. He has many apprentices, so there are always beds for more.”
“Verrocchio’s studio,” Felix repeated.
“Ask anyone,” the boy said. “He is one of the most famous artists in Florence.”
He pointed again to the unfinished painting.