“Not on purpose,” she said. “He is the ‘Father’ who protects his people, the Alpha; the kids from the village are his tribe, though they don’t even realize it. Still, we mustn’t forget that the hands that are holding that baby now are the same hands that ripped Roberto Valent’s eyes out.”

Marini handed her the printout of an aerial photograph.

“The drones have come across an old derelict mountain shelter that doesn’t appear on the map,” he said. “It’s surrounded by woodland, in the northern sector, just below the tree line and before the scree. It’s the only one in the whole area. And there are signs of recent human activity in the clearing around it.”

-62-

-62-

FOREST OF
TRAVENÌ-ABERLINZ, 1993

The sun still shone brightly enough to warm the rocks and light up the fragrant pollens of late-blooming chamomile and wormwood, but the wind that blew from the north had grown colder in the last few days, heralding the start of the season of sleep. Plants and animals had already begun to prepare, the former shedding all that was no longer necessary, and the latter thickening their coats and filling their dens up with acorns and hay.

He, too, was getting ready to face the cold. He had noticed that after it rained now, the air was much cooler, and when it blew, it made minuscule flowers blossom on his skin. He had set a few more traps, the day before, knowing that there would not be such an abundance of prey for much longer. The flesh from his catch, sliced into thin strips and laid out to dry, would help him get through darker, colder days.

He crossed the stream, leaping from boulder to boulder, and climbed deftly up the cliff on the other side, emerging into a sun-drenched clearing. It was a spot favored by predators—foxes, badgers, and especially birds of prey—because any small animal that attempted to cross it was left exposed to attack.

One of the traps he’d laid out at the edge of the woods had caught something. It was a badger, and the more it struggled to break free, the more the noose tightened around it.

Upon reaching the beast, he realized that it wasn’t as large as he’d initially thought: it was a female surrounded by her cubs, squirming and yowling helplessly at their mother’s side.

There was enough meat on the creatures to keep him fed for days, possibly even weeks; but instead of proceeding to strangle the life out of them, he found himself paralyzed as he watched. Their cries had unleashed a storm inside him, like those dark clouds that sometimes rolled in from the east and ripped young saplings from the earth.

He let the mother go and watched them all scamper back to the forest. He had never seen a cub survive without its mother. And he had a pup of his own to think about.