I wasn't gonna post this right away but writing Chapter Six of my other fic made me sad, so I use fluff to cope.

The boys had been running on their way to the Farmacia. On their way back they walked, shoulders slumped. One disappointment would have been enough, but the double blow of the camera's cost and the distance it had to come from was a lot to take in all at once.

"Maybe we can figure out some other way to show her what's down there," said Luca. "Maybe we can find another dive suit. Somebody must have one." He'd seen a couple in the town, but they were much too big, designed for grownups.

"No, all we need is another sixty-five thousand lire," Alberto told him firmly.

"Where are we gonna get it? That's... that's more than six Portorosso Cup races," Luca pointed out. He thought back to something Alberto had written in his letters. "You said Massimo gives you pocket money every week..."

"Yeah, but I spent most of that," Alberto said.

"What did you spend it on?"

"Mostly candy. And comic books. And sometimes I put money in the jukebox at the Pizzeria. And I've been saving a bit of it to buy a bicycle," he added. "Since Giulia said I'm not allowed to ride hers. I think I've got another thousand for that. I was gonna use the forty thousand to get a really fancy one, but Massimo told me to wait until after Ephiphany because Befana might bring me one... although I'm pretty sure Befana isn't real. Marco says it's just the adults sneaking stuff out of the closets while you're asleep. Anyway," he brought himself back to the point. "So that's a start already. For the rest we'll have to sell something."

"Like what?" Luca asked, and then realized he could guess. "Something from your shipwreck?"

Alberto nodded. "Exactly! If that coin by itself was worth forty thousand lire, there's gotta be something else in there we can sell for the rest."

Luca wasn't so sure. "Is that a good idea?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"You said the man from Savona told you not to touch anything," Luca reminded him.

Alberto waved that away. "There was heaps of stuff down there. He won't notice if one or two things are missing. Anyway, I'm the one who found the shipwreck. I can do whatever I want with it."

That did make sense, although just because something made sense didn't always mean it was true. A few painful pinches from his father's show crabs had taught Luca that grownups usually had a reason for telling kids not to touch something, but at the same time it was hard to imagine anybody getting hurt because Luca and Alberto sold a couple of things from the shipwreck. And the thought of having the underwater camera was a very enticing one.

So Luca didn't make any more protests as they returned to the Pescheria and climbed the stairs to the kitchen. Giulia was still there, sitting with her mother as the two of them made a list of what they were planning to cook for Christmas dinner. Both looked up when the boys came through.

"What did you get?" Giulia asked eagerly.

"Nothing," said Luca, as he and Alberto started up the stairs to the third floor.

"Nothing?" asked Giulia.

"Nothing yet," Alberto said. "We're working on it."

In Alberto's room, they looked over what he'd taken from the shipwreck, trying to choose the most valuable and at the same time least noticeable item.

"It can't be Nettuno," said Luca, "because there's only one of him. Same with the beetle ring." Those were just too distinctive.

"Right... and the rest of the coins aren't shiny. I think it'll have to be one of the perfume bottles." Alberto climbed up on the bed to look at the shelf, where he'd arranged them in a row from shortest to tallest. "There were a bunch more of those... even if he counted them, I can just replace it with another one and he'll never know. Now, which one?"

There were half a dozen of the bottles, all shaped like little vases and most of them in various shades of blue, though there was one slightly lopsided one that was plain cloudy glass with a bit of a greenish tinge. The rest were fancier, with stripes or zigzags of yellow, white, or turquoise through the dark blue background. Alberto examined several of these, then selected one with a short neck and one of its two handles broken off. "This one!" he said. "He said he wanted to see the ones with stoppers because they might still have stuff in them, but this one's already open." He turned around to hand the bottle down to Luca, then stopped dead, his smile fading.

Luca turned to see Giulia watching them from the doorway. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Nothing!" said Alberto, quickly hiding the bottle behind his back.

"We can't tell you yet," Luca said. "It's a surprise!"

"Oh," said Giulia. She started to step back, then changed her mind, worried. "What kind of a surprise? Didn't the man from Savona tell you not to touch those too much?" She pointed to Alberto, whose hands were still behind his back, even though Giulia had obviously seen him take the bottle off the shelf.

Luca sighed, realizing they had to tell her. "We're going to sell one," he said, "so we can buy a camera."

"You said it was supposed to be a surprise!" Alberto protested.

"Yeah, but what if she doesn't want us to sell one to get it?" Luca asked him. "That would ruin the whole thing!" He turned to Giulia again. "We want to get a camera that works underwater, so we can take pictures of my house and the shipwreck for you, but it costs a lot of money."

"The man from Savona gave me forty thousand lire for the coin," Alberto agreed, "so we can get the rest by selling one of the bottles. Unless you don't want us to." He glanced at Luca.

Giulia, who had looked skeptical a moment ago, lit up. "Santa mozzarella! That's a great idea!" she said. "And if Alberto has a camera here while Luca and I take my camera to Genova, we can send each other photos with our letters!"

Luca grinned with relief. "So it's okay, then?"

"Yes! Actually, I bet I know who would buy it from you. Signora Pastorino's husband works at the Università," she said, referring to one of their teachers.

"He's the one who wrote the archaeology book she gave me," Luca told Alberto.

"We'll just write him a letter," Giulia agreed. "Oh... but you probably won't get your money until after we go back to school to deliver the bottle to him."

"That's okay," said Luca. "The camera has to come from Roma anyway, so we won't be able to use it until the summer."

"No, I'll use it when it arrives, and send you guys the pictures," said Alberto.

"Perfetto!" Giulia nodded. "First, we'll need a picture of the bottle to send to Professor Pastor..." she broke off in mid-sentence and pointed at Alberto's feet. "Wet shoes on the bed! Were you raised in a barn?"

Alberto had indeed forgotten to take his shoes off when he'd come in, and the water from the puddles outside was soaking into the blankets. Giulia's exclamation made him jump in surprise, and his shoulder hit the shelf. The ancient glass bottles clinked against each other, then one by one they toppled off and fell.

"Get them!" said Alberto.

Luca caught one. Alberto dropped the one-handled one they'd decided to sell, letting it land safely on the pillow, and grabbed another. Two more bounced on the bed and rolled to where the mattress was depressed by Alberto's feet, where they stayed. The fifth and final bottle, the plain glass one, also hit the bed, but bounced off.

Luca and Giulia both dived for it. Luca knew he wasn't going to make it, but Giulia almost caught the bottle, only for it to slip out of her hands before she could close them. It hit the floor, and despite everybody's expectations it did not break. It just rolled to a stop against a stack of records.

All three breathed out. Giulia scooped it up, and then realized something. "The stopper's come loose," she said, and turned the bottle upside-down. The lump of old beeswax that had been used to seal it fell out onto the floor.

Immediately the air filled with a dusty smell, like sand on a hot day, and a cloud of pale golden fog billowed out of the bottle in Giulia's hands. She cried out in surprise, stumbled backwards, and landed on her backside on the floor. Luca and Alberto grabbed each other in terror. The fog filled the entire room, hot and harsh like desert air, and then abruptly collapsed down into a floating humanoid figure with a bushy beard and a bucket-shaped hat on its head, wearing a long robe. Rather than flesh and fabric, however, all of this appeared to be made out of yellow sand. The being turned around in midair, taking in the sight of the three frightened children, and then it focused on Giulia.

"Mistress!" it said, taking a bow. "What is your wish?"

Giulia swallowed. "My... wish?" She looked at the bottle in her hands. "Are you a genie?"

"Isn't that why you opened the bottle?" the genie asked. "Are you not a sorceress? You are at least one who knows great secrets, since you consort with sons of Oannes." It gestured to Luca and Alberto.

The boys exchanged a dubious glance, each checking to see if the other had any idea what that meant. Neither did.

The genie looked Giulia over. "You are... awfully small for a sorceress," it admitted, "but magician or no, if you opened the bottle, It is my duty to grant you a wish."

Alberto let go of Luca. "Wish for the money for the camera!" he said. "Or... no! Skip the money and just wish for the camera! Then we won't have to wait!"

"Hold it." Giulia held up a finger. "What's the catch?" she asked the genie.

"The catch?" it echoed.

"Yeah," said Giulia. "What kind of wish do I get? And are you going to do something where it comes true in a way that makes me regret it?"

"Anything your heart desires," the genie assured her. "I can reshape the entire world if you ask me to. I can make you an empress, or wealthy or beautiful beyond your wildest dreams. And since you are neither the wizard who trapped me in the bottle nor any relation of his, I have no quarrel with you. On the contrary, since you have freed me, I owe you eternal gratitude. I swear to you by my father Nergal, neither you nor the two sons of Oannes will come to any harm."

"Wish for the camera!" Alberto insisted. "There's no way you could regret that."

"I dunno," said Giulia. "If we can have anything, a camera seems a little small."

"I should say so," the genie agreed. "You have only one. Don't waste it."

"Well, what else would you wish for?" Alberto wanted to know.

Downstairs, Helena Marcovaldo rapped on the wall. "Luca! Alberto!" she called. "Your fish eggs are hatching!"

"We're coming!" Luca called, and looked at Giulia, silently urging her to make up her mind. If her mother came upstairs while the genie was still here... well, they would have to explain what was happening, and that would be difficult when they weren't entirely sure, themselves.

Giulia's eyes went wide. "I know!" she said, and pointed at the boys. "I wish I was a sea monster, like them!"

Luca grabbed Alberto's arm, his heart nearly stopping. Could the genie really do that?

"To go among the children of Oannes and see their kingdoms for yourself!" the genie exclaimed, delighted. "The very Queen of Babylon would not have been so ambitious! Granted!" It took a bow, then dissolved into golden fog again. This dispersed almost immediately, leaving a scattering of sand over everything in the room.

That left Luca, Giulia, and Alberto – the last still wearing his wet shoes – holding six ancient bottles and blinking at each other in shock. Had that really just happened? It had been so fast and so strange it was tempting to think they'd imagined it, but the floor, the bed, and every other horizontal surface was still dusted with yellow sand.

"I don't feel any different," said Giulia, examining her hands. They didn't look any different.

Luca's heart was hammering. "You have to get wet," he said, his face slowly breaking into a smile. If that had worked, then they didn't need the camera anymore. "Come on!"

"Ragazzi?" Helena called from the kitchen.

"We're coming!" Luca repeated.

Giulia scrambled to her feet. "Let me get my swimsuit!" she said.

Alberto took his sweater off again, and the boys ran down the stairs, while Giulia frantically rummaged through her drawers to find her bathing suit. In the kitchen, they found Helena offering another cup of cioccalata to a boy of eight or nine with blue eyes and dark hair, a patch of which on the right stood straight up in what the humans called a cowlick. He was sitting on the bench shivering in a blanket, under which he was wearing only trousers made of woven seagrass.

"Are you Luca?" he asked, as the older boys came in.

"Yeah," said Luca. "And he's Alberto."

The boy slid off his chair. "I'm Arturo Trota from the other side of the gutweed meadow," he said. "Your Mom sent me to tell you..."

"The roe is hatching," Luca nodded eagerly. "We'll be right there."

"I found it!" Giulia shouted. She came charging down the stairs in her bare feet, wearing her blue swimsuit and with a towel draped around her shoulders.

"Giulia!" exclaimed Helena. "It's far too cold for swimming, and you're certainly not going that far out!"

"It's okay," Giulia told her. "One of the Alberto's shipwreck bottles had a genie in it, so I wished to be a sea monster!"

"What?"

"Let's go!" Luca tugged on her arm. "We're gonna miss it!"

"Gotta run!" Giulia called to her mother, as Luca pushed her out the door. "If it doesn't work, I'll come right back!" Alberto kicked his shoes off and ran after them.

Helena leaned out the door to watch them. "You'd better!" she shouted.

The tide was in, so Alberto just leaped right over the little stone quay below the house and dived directly into the ocean. He came up treading water, with droplets running off his purple scales and head of unruly fins. Luca whooped as he jumped in after his friend, and popped up a moment later, also transformed. Giulia went down the steps and then hesitated, shivering in the cold air.

"Just get in!" Alberto urged her.

"The Change happens all by itself!" Luca added. "It doesn't hurt!"

"Silenzio, Bruno!" said Alberto.

Giulia took a deep breath and jumped.

As Luca had said, it didn't hurt, but it was a very strange sensation. It felt almost as if her skin were turning inside out, starting with her fingers and toes and working its way up. When she returned to the surface of the water and opened her eyes to check, this time she did look different. Her hands were covered with brick-red scales, with a dark yellow fin, edged in pink, running down the back of each forearm.

"Santa Ricotta!" she gasped. "It worked!" She looked at Luca and Alberto with a grin on her face. "How do I look?"

"You look great!" Luca told her, and gave her a hug.

"Classic sea monster," Alberto nodded approvingly. "Fins, fangs, tail..." He took one of the longer pink and yellow fins on the back of her head and gave it a gentle tug, as if to test it. "Looks like the whole package!"

Giulia gave Luca a squeeze back, then turned to her astonished mother, standing at the top of the steps. "We're gonna go see the roe!" she said again.

"Be home for supper!" was all Helena could manage by way of a reply. She looked down at Arturo, who had come outside to stand next to her and watch. He was still holding his cup of chocolate.

"Signora Marcovaldo, may I finish this before I go?" he asked.

"Of course you can," said Helena, still slightly in shock. "Come back inside while you do it... you may as well be warm."

"Thank you."

Luca and Alberto ducked back under the water to head out to sea. Giulia took another breath before trying to follow them, swimming with her arms and legs as if in a breaststroke. They quickly got far ahead of her, and she had to shout: "guys! Wait up!"

The boys turned around and came back. Alberto folded his arms across his chest and shook his head as he examined Giulia's technique. "You're not going to get anywhere like that," he said. "First... breathe out."

She did so in a rush of bubbles.

"Now in," Alberto instructed. "Don't stick your face out of the water, you're not a dolphin. Big breath. In the nose, out the gills." He used his hands to demonstrate how the water would move.

Giulia was not sure how to do that but decided she would trust her body to figure it out. She inhaled. Even having witnessed her own transformation a few moments ago, she was still a little surprised when she didn't start to sputter. Breathing water didn't seem to be a problem.

"Great!" said Alberto. "Now, you don't need to do any of that thrashing. Instead, imagine that you've got three legs, and you only need to kick the third one."

She looked at him skeptically.

"You gotta start from your shoulders and get your whole body into it," Luca explained. "Like this." He swam a loop-the-loop around her to demonstrate.

"Or if that works better for you, you can do that," Alberto agreed, following Luca's example. "Try not to think about it too hard, just do it."

"Right," said Giulia. She balled her fists and gave it a try. Her initial attempt wasn't much more coordinated than Luca's first steps had been, but then she found the right rhythm, and started to move forward.

"You're getting it," Luca assured her. He took her left hand, and Alberto took her right, so they could help her keep up while she got the hang of it. Together, the three of them headed for deeper water.

The weather had been breezy and cold in Portorosso. As they left the sheltered bay, the wind grew stronger, tossing the surface into waves that passed overhead with a noise like faraway thunder. Each one threw down lines of light and shadow that rolled across the sand and stones of the bottom. Giulia paused to look up and watch. She'd see big waves crashing in on the beach during storms, but it had never occurred to her to imagine what they looked like from under the water.

"There's a place on the Island that's perfect for riding them in," Alberto said. "Where the little beach is. On stormy days the current funnels you in between the rocks and rolls you up on the shore. Luca's tried it!"

Luca nodded. "It's a little scary the first time," he warned.

"Thinking you're gonna die is half of what makes it fun," Alberto promised.

Not only did the surface change as they got further out, the landscape below did, too. The random rocks and patches of seaweed closer to the shore began to look more organized, until the three were passing over obviously cultivated seafloor. The harvest had come in months ago, so the fields of seagrass were now just empty furrows full of next year's seeds waiting to germinate. Some of them had roughly people-shaped piles of rocks set up in the middle, or a set of clothes hung on a stick, to scare away wild fish who might eat the seeds. In other places, livestock were grazing on the stubble, and in between the fields were rocks or sponge forests to break the current.

On one boulder pile, a plump female sea monster, yellow and green, was out collecting urchins. "Hi, kids!" she called out to them.

"Hello, Signora Zigrino!" Luca replied.

"Luca, I heard you were back! How was school with the land monsters?" she asked.

"It's great, but I can't talk right now," he said. "Our roe is hatching."

"Oh, better hurry, then!" said Signora Zigrino pleasantly.

"Ciao!" Giulia said, waving.

They swam over a rise and down a slope. By now Giulia was almost keeping up with the boys on her own, so Luca's hand was free to point as they reached their destination. "That's my house!" he said. The foundation of it was mostly natural boulders, but it had been built up with blocks of stone to form a little round house, with a two-storey tower that held the bedrooms and the silo. Warmer water from the vent in the kitchen was shimmering a little as it flowed out the chimney.

The Paguro family – Daniela, Lorenzo, and Grandma – were all gathered around the barn, catching the fry in baskets as they emerged. If the newly-hatched fish swam away they could get lost, or be eaten by any kind of predator including the adults, though for now those were secure behind a net on the other side of the house.

"Mom!" Luca called out.

"Luca! Oh, good, you made it!" Daniela thrust a basket into his hands and grabbed another one for Alberto, then noticed that the third member of their party was not who she expected it to be. "Where's Arturo? Attinia Trota will have my head if anything happened to him."

"He's fine, Signora Paguro!" said Giulia quickly. "Mamma gave him some cioccolata to warm up and he stayed to finish it."

"Okay. As long as he..." Daniela began, only to stop short a moment later when she realized whose voice she'd just heard. "Giulia?"

"It's me!" Giulia said. "One of Alberto's shipwreck bottles had a genie in it."

Daniela didn't know the word. "What's that?"

"It's a little man made of sand," Luca explained, "who grants wishes."

"That sounds dangerous," his mother said doubtfully.

Alberto scoffed. "You think everything sounds dangerous, Signora Paguro."

"Seems okay so far," Giulia agreed.

A tiny fish slipped past them, and from back at the barn Lorenzo called out, "Honey! The fry!"

"I got it!" Luca dropped his basket and caught the hatchling between his hands. It wriggled, trying to escape, but the webbing between his fingers held it in. Alberto opened the basket, and Luca shooed the little fish safely inside.

"Take this!" Daniela pushed the second basket at Giulia. "If you're here, you can help!"

In the barn, the entire mass of eggs seemed to be shaking as the fry tried to squirm their way free. The little fish were tadpole-shaped and almost transparent, made mostly of huge eyes and tiny fluttering hearts. Giulia's first couple of attempts to catch one failed, as the viscosity of the water made it hard to move quickly while holding something as large and light as the basket. On the third try she got the timing right, and held her catch up proudly.

"I got one!" she announced.

"I have three already!" Alberto replied.

"I've got five!" Luca said.

"Now, now, it's not a contest," Lorenzo told the kids.

"It can be!" Daniela declared. "Whoever catches the most gets first helping of dessert!"

"Aha!" Alberto grabbed another one. "Now food's at stake, watch me work! Four!"

Giulia giggled and positioned herself right outside the cavern entrance, to try to get as many as she could as soon as they emerged. She didn't think she could swim fast enough yet to catch them if they got further.

"There's two! And three!" she called, as she trapped them in her basket.

Catching all the fry took over an hour of frantic activity, and quite a few still got away. By the time the eggs had finished hatching, Luca had a score of fifty-five, Alberto was close behind at forty-nine, and Giulia had caught twenty-two, which she thought was pretty good for something she'd never done before. All the fry were then transferred from the baskets to a special coop with a roof made of mesh from finely woven reed fibres, so that light could enter but the little fish couldn't escape and nothing larger could get in to menace them. Alberto and Giulia floated over this, watching as the fry found the algae on the bottom and began to graze, while Luca went to let the adult fish out of their temporary pen

"Come on," he said, herding them over. "Come and look at your babies."

Giulia moved over to make room as the football-sized animals gathered around. "This is the flock you used to watch, huh?" she asked.

"Yeah. Mom and Dad have had Arturo and Giordana doing it while I'm gone," Luca replied, and reached out to pet one of the fish. "This is Giuseppe, he's the one who's always trying to run away. His friend Enrico disappeared about a year ago and I swear he's trying to go looking for him. And this is Matilde, you can recognize her because she's got the freckles on her belly." Another fish came to investigate Giulia, and seeing how Luca interacted with the others, she tried scratching it under the chin. "That one's Donatella," said Luca. "She's always trying to get under stuff like rocks and weeds. Once I looked for her for half a day and found her hiding under a soup pot that had fallen in the water."

"Nice to meet you, Donatella," said Giulia.

The fish bleated, and wriggled under Giulia to cuddle.

At the barn, the adults were busy collecting the remains of the eggs to use as fertilizer. "Oh!" Daniela called out. "Here's one who's stuck. Luca! We need your tiny fingers!"

Luca pushed himself off the fry pen and swam over, his friends close behind. Daniela presented him with an egg that had split, but the baby fish inside had gotten its tail wedged in the crack instead of putting its head through, and had then been buried in discarded shells by its brothers and sisters. Luca took the egg from his mother's hands and gave it to Giulia.

"Squeeze it this way," he said, putting her hands on the ends of the split, "so it opens."

"Like this?" She did so.

"That's right. Don't tear it." Luca put a finger in and very gently got the little fry unstuck and turned around. "Alberto, get ready to catch him!"

Freed, the fish darted out, and Alberto grabbed it. "Gotcha!"

"Well done, all three of you," said Daniela.

"It was a team effort," Alberto said, taking the last fry to put with the others. "Oh, and that makes mine an even fifty!"

Daniela shook her head. "Giulia," she said, having apparently decided to behave as if this were perfectly normal, "will you be staying for dinner?"

"Can she?" Luca asked, delighted by the idea. The boys had tried all kinds of human food. Now they could show Giulia what sea monster food was like!

"Sure!" Giulia said, then reconsidered. "I dunno. Mamma told me to be home for supper, so I'll have to ask."

"Let's go ask, then!" said Luca.

"Wait," Alberto rejoined them. "That gives me an idea... we have to pass the Island on the way back to town, right? You wanna see our hideout, Giulia?"

She nodded eagerly. "Yes, definitely."

"And then we can take you to the kelp forest! And the haunted fish graveyard!" Luca added, as the possibilities piled up in his mind. There were so many places that seemed totally ordinary to him, just as the latteria and the biblioteca seemed ordinary to Giulia, but which would be wonderful to somebody who'd never seen them before.

"It's not actually haunted," Alberto promised, "but fish are very superstitious."

"Mom!" Luca cupped his hands around his mouth to call back to her as they swam away. "We're gonna go show Giulia the Island!"

"Just remember to let me know about dinner in time to be sure how many I'm cooking for," Daniela told him. "And be careful of the breakers on the rocks. Be sure you approach from the beach side, not the cliff!"

"I know, Mom!" Luca took Giulia's hand again. "Come on!"

"Don't stay out in the wind!" Daniela added. "If you're cold, get back in the water!"

"Yes, Mom!"

As they headed down the route Luca had taken to the pasture so many times, he chatted about the places they were passing. "The Branzinos live there. Their kids are grown up now so they spend a lot of time on their crabs. And over the hill are the Aragostas. Signor Aragosta's Aunt Concetta lives in Portorosso with her friend. She smacked me in the face with her purse my first day there and I didn't even know it was her."

"She also gave us some gelato," said Alberto, "though it wasn't exactly on purpose. So we can't be too mad."

"That house down there is where Arturo's family lives," Luca went on, indicating a building made of a large slab that had fallen on top of a smaller stone at one end. "Signora Trotta is friends with Signora Branzino and the dolphins, so they always know everything that's going on all the way to Corsica. Never tell a dolphin anything. They all chatter to each other and by tomorrow everybody will know."

"There's Arturo now," Alberto said, pointing to a figure swimming across the pasture towards the house. As a sea monster, Arturo was dark green, with one fin on the right side of his brow that had grown in with a funny twist and stuck straight up. "Hi, Arturo!"

"Hi, guys." Arturo waved. "Did I miss it?" he asked.

"Yeah, they're all hatched," Luca replied.

"Cool, that means I don't have to help," Arturo said, and swam on.