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Soon, the old gardener, with a hint of a dry smile, informs her, “He needs nothing, Madame. He has a job as an apprentice mechanic, and in two or three months he will go to Mahajanga to work on trucks.”

Shay envisions a Princess Harena changing money at the Fleur des Îles, and a Prince Didier, with his aristocrat’s hands, dismembering truck engines in Mahajanga.

As for Harena’s half brother, Didier, the phone number he gave Shay is out of service, and no one can discover his whereabouts in Mahajanga or Morondava, though there can’t be many mechanics like him.

Or consider this paragraph: “You see a giant red plume of eroded red soil bleeding into the Betsiboka River, bleeding into Mahajanga Bay, bleeding into the Indian Ocean. The mess is so big that astronauts take pictures of it from space.”

The tortoises started in the northwestern corner of the country before being transported hundreds of kilometers to an international airport, probably in the city of Mahajanga, where poachers can use Internet cafes to connect to buyers in Asia.