Arcadia Burns

CREATURES OF THE SAME SPECIES


“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”

“I come here often. And I know how we can get in.”

“Get into a zoo?”

He gently took her face in both hands and smiled. “Trust me.”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hell, no. At least, not if we stand around here any longer.”

At Valcorrente they had left Route 121. In daytime, they could probably have seen the gray volcanic slopes of Etna from here. Now, however, just before midnight, the grounds of the Etnaland water park were a brightly lit island surrounded by deep darkness. Alessandro had parked his Ferrari on a path in the fields, next to a high chain-link fence.

They walked along the fence on foot for about fifty yards and then reached a place where it had been cut neatly apart to waist height. Several small twists of wire held the incision together so that it couldn’t be seen at first glance. Alessandro removed them and held one corner back for Rosa to slip through.

“We’re such a couple of criminals,” she whispered.

“I recently donated a hundred thousand euros to the zoo.” Alessandro followed her in, and closed the gap in the wire netting again. “And one of my firms delivers animal feed on special terms.”

She made a face. “And let’s not forget what kind of animal feed it is.”

“That’s all in the past. Since the Carnevares got out of the disposal business, everything’s above board.”

It had taken a good deal of courage—and great difficulty—to give up one of his clan’s most profitable ventures overnight, so she merely nodded, and looked through the bushes on the inside of the fence at a path leading farther into the place.

“Aren’t there any night watchmen?”

“Yes, two,” he replied. “But they’re sitting in their lodge at the main entrance playing cards. One of them goes around every three hours. So we still have”—he looked at his watch—“two hours and twenty minutes.”

There were only a few lights on, here and there, inside the zoo. Several of the side paths lay in darkness, and the sounds of nocturnal animals came from a couple of the enclosures, but all was quiet in most of them.

They reached a place where two walkways met at a sharp angle. Like an arrow, they pointed to an enormous cage as high as a building. “Cesare financed that,” said Alessandro. “Probably the only decent thing he ever did in his life.”

The front of it had to be at least thirty yards wide. Rosa couldn’t see how far back the cage went on the inside. Two lamps illuminated the paved courtyard, but the light from them did not reach very far into the enclosure. Moving closer, she could tell that the ground sloped downward. Farther inside, there were angular rock formations, but she couldn’t see the lowest point.

Alessandro went over to the bars of the cage and breathed in deeply.

She wrinkled her nose. “You smell better.”

He had closed his eyes. In the dim light, she saw a black trail of fur rising from his leather jacket and up the back of his neck.

“This is what you call a controlled transformation?”

He opened his eyes again. “Come closer.”

She took another step, but stopped at arm’s length from the bars, remembering only too well the big cats who had hunted them on Isola Luna.

“These won’t hurt you,” he assured her.

Her heart was pumping an icy chill into her veins, but she went to stand beside him in front of the iron bars. Suddenly she didn’t mind the sharp, animal smell coming from the enclosure anymore.

“Can you see them?” he asked.

Her eyes were getting used to the darkness. Or was her snake’s vision taking over? Something down there radiated warmth. The interior of the enclosure was like a crater with graduated rocks, and niches and openings among them. Farther down, a pool of water lay as dark and still as if it were made of glass. On the left bank, the night had come together into a formless, dense heap of something.

“The pride,” said Alessandro.

“Won’t they pick up your scent?”

“Most of them are asleep. But look over there…and there.” He pointed to several places in the shadow of the rocks, and she realized that they had been under observation for some time. Big cats, as still as statues, sat on rocky outcrops. The longer Rosa looked, the more clearly she saw their eyes glowing in the light of the lamps on the courtyard.

“They’re keeping watch while the others sleep,” said Alessandro.

She moved a little closer to him, and he put his arm around her waist. She felt his muscular chest rising and falling faster, and pressing more firmly against hers. He put his hand under her long hair, stroked her neck. Could he sense the chill that was now reaching her lips? Her hands caressed his back, and she knew that panther fur was growing on his backbone under the leather jacket, spreading over his shoulder blades.

Smiling, she bent her head. “What were you thinking of doing?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“You lured me here,” she said with mock indignation, “in order to—”

“To show you how I’ve learned to control it.” The corners of his mouth turned down. “Only it won’t work as well if we do it right here.”

She returned his grin and let go of him. “So?”

“So I have to go in there.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t.”

“Nothing will happen to me. They know me.”

Doubtfully, she looked from him to the motionless animals on the rocks. They seemed wild and untamed, even in captivity.

When she looked into Alessandro’s eyes again, they were glowing emerald green in the darkness, like the eyes of the big cats.

“You do understand, don’t you?” he asked gently.

She shook her head, but perhaps too soon.

Among the older Arcadians, she knew, there was a legend that the souls of their dead slipped into newborn animals of their own species, so that no Arcadian ever really died, but led an eternal life in an animal body, generation after generation. If that was true, there was a good chance that some of the big cats in this enclosure had once been human beings, ancestors of Alessandro and the other Panthera.

She 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 and then passed her face between them. Spellbound, she looked down into the depths.

Alessandro changed shape. Not explosively, like Mattia in Central Park, but in a fluid, elegant transition from one form to the other. There was nothing unnatural or alarming about his transformation. One body turned into another, and there was a beauty about the shift of shape that brought tears to her eyes.

Alessandro sank to the ground, all panther now. He and the lion crossed the short distance still between them, lowering their heads as if to exchange whispered words.

After a while they moved apart again. Alessandro rose, stood on his hind legs, and shifted back into human form. He turned his face to Rosa, and even in the darkness she saw him smile. He calmly raised one arm, beckoning to her. She was going to shake her head and step back, and then she realized that she was on the other side of the bars already. She had slipped through in her snake form without even noticing the transformation.

The lion roared. A tiger on top of the rocks stood still to let Rosa pass.

Alessandro came to meet her, leaving the main pride of big cats and moving to the foot of the rocks. Patches of fur were passing swiftly over his body like electrical discharges, twitching over his arms, his thighs, covering his hips and moving away again.

Like a torrent of amber, Rosa flowed down the rocks. She reached him, wound her way up him, coiled around his limbs, her scaly skin caressing his muscles, his hair, his entire body. In her embrace he turned back to panther form, and the sensuality of that movement filled her with icy bliss.