Dos Animais — Xuxa A Voz

Dr. Lemos sighed. “The law does not recognize animal trauma, Senhora. Only viability. You have ten days to transfer your large mammals to a state-approved facility in Manaus, or we will be forced to seize them.”

She was not the famous Queen of the Eighties. She was a woman of fifty-three, with a crow’s feet map around her kind eyes and hands that were more callus than soft. To the poachers, the loggers, and the gold miners who cursed her name on the edges of the Amazon, she was a ghost. To the animals, she was simply A Voz —the Voice. XUXA A VOZ DOS ANIMAIS

The monkey’s black eyes, wide with terror, locked onto hers. For a moment, there was no species, no cage of bone and flesh. Just a shared, silent understanding. Xuxa did not just heal bodies; she listened to the silence between the screams. That was her gift. Only viability

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. To the poachers, the loggers, and the gold

“Saturnino is not depressed,” Xuxa said quietly. “He is traumatized. There is a difference.”

“Calma, pequeno,” she whispered, pressing a poultice of crushed neem and barbatimão bark against the jagged gash on a howler monkey’s flank. The monkey, no bigger than a football, whimpered. Its family had been scattered by a trap set for a jaguar. The mother had died trying to free him. “Calma. A dor vai passar.”

Dr. Lemos opened his mouth to cite a regulation, to call for force. But the security guards lowered their weapons. The vet from Manaus turned and walked back to his truck. And the IBAMA officer simply took off his cap, held it to his chest, and bowed his head.