He walked, not toward the gate, but toward her. He pressed his warm, bristly snout against her chest, right over her heart. Valentina flew from her perch and landed on Xuxa’s shoulder, nuzzling her ear. The tamarins scampered down her legs. Chico the sloth began his impossibly slow, deliberate crawl across the mud, headed directly for her lap.
The voice of the animals.
The tapir in question, a gentle giant named Saturnino, was currently sleeping against the back wall of the clinic, his spotted hide twitching as he dreamed. He had been found as a calf, wandering in circles near a burned clearing, his mother a patch of scorched fur and bone. Every time Xuxa tried to lead him to the forest gate, he would simply lie down and refuse to move, his long nose trembling.
Her gift had arrived late. As a young model in São Paulo, she had heard the roar of a lion from a circus truck stopped at a traffic light. It wasn't a roar of power. It was a sob. A sound of pure, chemical despair. That sound had shattered her world of glitter and flashbulbs. She sold her wardrobe, bought a battered Land Rover, and drove north. Her family said she had lost her mind. Perhaps she had. But she had found her soul.