In the kitchen, Helena got Arturo wrapped in a blanket and put a pot of chocolate on the stove, while the other three changed their clothes. Giulia hung the things they'd worn overnight up in the bathroom to dry, then joined her father at the table to describe their plans for the day.
"The biggest sponges grow around here," said Luca, pointing to a spot on the map of the bay. "It's nice and shallow, and the current brings in lots of food for them."
Massimo put a finger on a place not far away. "I'll be fishing around here," he said, indicating one of the spots Alberto had shown him, "So come up and say hello. And if I've got anything in my nets that I don't want there, I may need to borrow Alberto for a moment," he added, giving the boy a smile. Alberto smiled back.
"Then we'll be looking for snail shells," Luca added. "There are lots of those below the tidal beaches on the Island." Nice shells were hard to find on the mainland, where there were humans to pick them up or step on them.
"We could use urchins, too. Some of them are really colourful under the spines," said Alberto. "We can find those around the Island, too. There's lots of them in the rocks."
"If we can borrow some fishing line, we can use that to hang them," Giulia added. "Do you have any we can use?"
"I must have somewhere," said Massimo. "I'll see what I can find."
He went to look, while Helena distributed cups of cioccolata and helpings of biscotti. Arturo said a polite thank you and stuffed the first pastry in his mouth. Giulia dipped hers in her chocolate, and started telling her mother about her night with the Paguro family.
"Luca's mom and grandma promised to teach me sea monster cooking," she said. "They cook all kinds of things... we had squid eggs for breakfast, and I was worried they'd be gross, but they weren't. Because they can't have a fire, they've got culverts that bring hot water from somewhere, and they cook stuff in baskets that let the water flow through. Oh, and do you know how they light their houses? They've got these little jellyfish that glow when you poke them! All they have to do is remember to feed them and they live for years, and Signora Paguro told me in the summer they also catch little krill and things when they get into the house."
"I'm glad you had a good time," Helena said with a smile. She seemed more relaxed now, apparently reassured by the fact that Giulia had fun and came home okay. "Although I'd prefer if you were home for lunch today."
"Sure," said Giulia.
"And don't forget, tonight is bath night," she added, before pausing to reconsider that. "How is that going to work?" she asked, looking at Luca for the answer.
Giulia had the same idea. "Same way it does for Luca, I guess." Luca did take baths, but Giulia had never been privy to the details. There was definitely at least one thing she'd always wondered, though, and now it seemed very important to ask. "How do you wash your hair?"
Luca reached up to tug on one of his curls, going a bit cross-eyed as he watched it spring back into place. "I dunno. As long as I keep stuff out of my fins and comb it, it seems okay."
"I got some of mine tangled up in a broken fan once," said Alberto, reaching up to rub at the left side of his head, above his ear. "Dad had to cut it to get it out, and I was missing a few fins there for a while." He frowned at the memory. "I stayed mostly on land for a couple of weeks while it grew back, because it hurt when I went in the water."
"Good to know they grow back," Helena observed.
Luca watched Arturo break another biscotto in half. "You're supposed to dip them in the chocolate," he said.
"Mf?" asked Arturo, mouth full.
"Like this." Luca demonstrated.
Arturo considered that. "Won't it get crumbs in it?"
"Yeah, but that's fine."
After a moment's more thought, Arturo shrugged and continued crunching on the biscotti dry.
"I suppose we're going to have to get you a couple more swimsuits," said Helena, as Massimo returned to the room with a reel of fishing line for the kids to use.
"It would probably be a good idea," he agreed. "Giulia, can you think of anything else you're going to need now?"
"Not right now," she replied, mouth full, "but if I do, I'll let you know. You seem... less upset today," she added hopefully.
"We had a talk about it," said Helena, "and we decided that if Luca's parents can handle him going off to school with you, then we can handle this." She bent down to give Giulia a kiss on the cheek. "Just stay safe, okay, Passerota?"
"I will," Giulia said. "I promise."
Twenty minutes later, with their plans for the day set, Luca, Alberto, and Giulia dashed back into the surf. Arturo, still munching pastries, waved to them from the front door.
Luca ducked under and excitedly waved for his friends to follow him as he headed out for the sponge beds. These grew wild on an undersea slope, facing south to catch the phytoplankton that swarmed in the sunlit waters. There were all kinds of them, from tall, bright yellow chimneys; to flat, creeping green ones; to yellow-brown ones that looked like loaves of bread. In searching through the clumps and clusters, however, the three kids were looking for something very specific.
"What about this one?" asked Giulia, pushing aside the strands of seaweed to reveal a purple specimen about sixty centimetres tall, with branches that started out horizontal and then curved up for a Christmas-tree-like effect.
"It's the right shape," said Luca.
"Not tall enough," Alberto decided. "We can fit one twice that size in Luca's house." He darted over the rise to inspect the other side.
Giulia continued searching. The only sponges she'd ever seen outside of photographs were the type people harvested to use for scrubbing things. The sheer variety of them was fascinated... who knew there were so many kinds? She found a pair of them shaped like giant vases, with spiralling grooves up the sides, and when she peeked inside she was delighted to find a pair of little spotted fish hiding inside it.
"Guys, look at this!" she said.
Alberto came to investigate. "Oh, yeah. They'll lay their eggs there in the spring," he said.
"We'll have to remember to come back and see," said Giulia.
"Hey! Over here!" Luca called.
They followed his voice, and found he'd located a pile of boulders near the bottom of the slope. In the shelter behind these, a bigger version of the purple branching sponge was growing. It was not quite twice the size of the one Giulia had found, but it wasn't far shy.
"This one," Luca said. "The side that faces the rocks is flat, but we can turn that towards the wall and it'll be perfect. Alberto, have you got your knife?"
"Right here." Alberto unfolded the pocket knife Massimo had given him, and used that to scrape the sponge's base off the stones. "When we're done with it, we can bring it back here and it'll stick again," he told Giulia. "So we can use it again next year."
The sponge weight almost nothing – most of it was empty space, little holes in which it could trap the plankton in the water – but its large surface area meant it produced considerable drag, and it was far more of a challenge to carry than its weight alone would suggest. Another way that moving in water was very different from moving on land, Giulia noted. Rather than make the whole trip back to Luca's house and have to go out again, they decided to take their prize as far as the Island with them and there weigh it down so it wouldn't wash away while they collected their urchin and snail shells.
"Wait," Giulia said. "Papà wanted us to stop and say hello to him." She looked up at the surface, where she could see at least three different boats, silhouetted against the bright sky above.
"That ones's your dad," said Alberto, pointing to one that was just visible away to the west.
Giulia frowned. "How can you tell from down here?" All the boats just looked like dim shapes to her.
"You think I can't tell boats apart?" asked Alberto. "Watch!" He swam for the surface, picking up speed as he approached the boat until he leaped out of the water in an arc right over the vessel, where Massimo was sitting rolling up a net.
"Hi, Massimo!" said Alberto.
"Hello, Alberto," Massimo replied.
Alberto splashed back into the sea. "That's him all right!"
Luca went next, leaping out of the water and over to boat in the other direction. "Buongiorno, Signor Marcovaldo!" he said.
"Hello, Luca," said Massimo.
Then it was Giulia's turn. Like the waves on the beach yesterday, or the worm that morning, she wasn't going to back down from something other sea monsters could do, and Luca and Alberto had made it look easy enough. She swam up as hard as she could, but as Luca's grandmother had told her that morning, she could see her reflection in the surface, and that made it look an awful lot like a wall she was about to run into. She had to do the last few metres with her eyes closed. With a messy splash, she left the water, and looked down to see the boat just below her.
"Hi, Papà!" she said, and only then realized she'd misjudged the distance. Rather than going right over the boat like the boys had done, she landed with a thump in the bottom of it, setting it to rocking violently.
"Giulietta!" Massimo reached to help her up. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine! I'm fine!" she said, smiling sheepishly as her father helped her to stand. "Still getting the hang of this. We found a sponge to be Luca's Christmas tree."
"That's good, but you have to be more careful," said Massimo.
"I will," she promised, straightening her hat. "I just need practice. We're going out to the Island now to collect shells."
"Well, remember what Alberto said about not touching the ones that sting."
"I will!" Giulia gave her father a damp hug and an exasperated smile. He was always a worrier – she was used to that. It was her mother worrying that was kind of weird. "Is Mamma okay. She seemed better."
"She's fine," Massimo assured her. "She's just concerned about you."
"She doesn't worry about Luca," Giulia pointed out. In Genova, Helena had always trusted Luca to know what was safe for him and how do to the things that would be made more difficult by transforming in the water.
"It's different when it's you," said Massimo. "Luca has... experience with this. You're doing things that are new to you."
"I won't learn how to do them if I don't try," Giulia pointed out.
Luca's head popped out of the water beside the boat. "Giulia, are you coming?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm coming! See you at lunch, Papà!" She hopped back over the side with a splash.
Massimo sighed. He's always known that there would someday be situations in which he would not be able to protect his daughter... but as Helena had observed last night, this was not what they'd had in mind.
The three kids dragged their sponge out to the area where the rocks began to rise up to become the Island, and found a convenient crevice to stuff it in while they began combing the nooks and crannies for pretty shells.
"Which were the stinging ones?" Giulia asked.
"These." Alberto pointed to a small conch-like shell with a bold pattern of brown, black, and white. "I'll show you." He found a piece of wood, and prodded at it. Something moved in a flash, too quick to properly follow, and the animal rolled over. "See, that one was still at home. I got stung once, and my whole hand swelled up. I thought it was gonna fall off." He shook his left hand, as if the memory alone still hurt.
"I'll be careful," Giulia promised. Alberto handed her the stick.
Luca, meanwhile, was inspecting some more shells. He used the tip of the tail to flip one over without touching the open end. "This one's fine," he said, and scooped it up. "We're gonna need something to carry them in." Nobody had thought to bring a bag or basket.
"Use your shirt," Alberto suggested.
Luca wiggled out of it and tied off the sleeves and neck to make a sack. "That works."
"Great, here's another empty one." Alberto handed over an elegant spiral shell.
"You know that paint some of the older human girls put on their fingernails?" Luca said. "If we could find some of that, we could paint the boring shells."
"Oh, that's a great idea," Alberto said.
Giulia was intrigued by the fact that Luca had used his tail. She looked over her shoulder at her own, which had a leaf-shaped fin at the end, unlike either of the boys... but both Luca's mother and grandmother had fanlike fins at the end of their tails, so maybe that was something only girls had. She tried to see if she could get the end of it under a flat stone to turn it over like Luca had with the shell. The result was something like trying to write with her left hand: the tip of her tail would do approximately what she told it to, but she did not have the fine control the boys evidently did. Maybe it would come with practice.
"Hello!" somebody called out to them. "You three!"
Luca, Alberto, and Giulia all looked up from their shell collecting. The sea monster swimming to join them was a girl with green scales and long, spiralling yellow fins, about fourteen or fifteen years old – Arturo's older sister, Giordana Trota.
"You were at our house with Arturo last night," she said. "Have any of you seen him this morning?" She glared at Luca and Alberto in particular, as if she thought they were personally responsible somehow.
"He went up into the human town," said Luca. "Giulia's mom gave him some chocolate."
"Again? Cod's sake..." Giordana groaned. "I hope I don't have to go up there and find him. You shouldn't hang around with these two," she told Giulia, whom she recognized only as somebody she didn't know. "They're bad influences."
Luca snickered behind a hand, and Alberto outright cackled.
"That's good advice, you know," he said, elbowing Giulia in the arm. "Spend too much time with us and just imagine what we might influence you to do!"
"That's not funny," said Giordana.
But Giulia was giggling, too. "It's too late," she said. "I think they've already been as bad an influence as they can possibly be!"
"The absolute worst," Luca agreed with a smile.
Giordana looked at them suspiciously, then decided this was not a joke she wanted in on. "Whatever," she decided. "If you see Arturo, tell him Mom's looking for him." She swam away, leaving Luca, Giulia, and Alberto giggling helplessly.
They made their way around the Island, pulling discarded shells out of cracks and shaking the mud off them, and evicting a couple of bad-tempered hermit crabs, which scuttled off naked to look for new homes. Their collection grew until it almost filled Luca's knotted shirt, at which point they decided they probably had enough for their tree.
"Hey, Giulia," said Luca. "While we're here, you wanna see something cool?"
Giulia inspected a broken snail shell, and then decided that even thought it had a very pretty pattern, they didn't need it. "Sure," she said, tossing it aside. One of the hermit crabs hurried in to claim it. "What is it?"
"The Haunted Fish Graveyard!" Luca gave her a toothy grin. "It's not far from here. I was scared to death of it when I was little, but it's really not so bad. It's less scary than some of the movies we saw." The movies Giulia liked, full of monsters and mad scientists, were frequently terrifying and yet somehow Luca always had fun at the cinema.
"Then definitely," Giulia said.
They tucked their shirt full of shells into he crack next to the sponge, and the boys led the way down into deeper water. There was a place where some unknown force had pushed a slab of bedrock up through the muddy ocean bottom, forming an underwater cliff that cast a deep shadow in which the seaweed couldn't grow. Within the shadowed area were jagged shapes that looked distressingly like rows of snaggly teeth, although Giulia hoped they were only more rocks.
As they got closer, she realized that both interpretations were wrong. Instead, what was lying on the bottom and partially buried in the silt was the skeleton of a whale. The animal had died on its belly, and with the flesh long-gone, its ribs were now sticking out of the mud, leaning at odd angles like a row of poorly-set croquet hoops. At the front was the long skull, dish-shaped in the middle to hold the spermiceti organ, lying partly on top of the narrow, toothy lower jaw. The pones of the tail were jumbled and scattered, but the hand-like bones of the flippers were remarkably intact. Crabs and starfish were living among the ribs.
"See any delicious-looking worms?" Alberto teased.
"Hey, at least I tried it," said Giulia. "You were too chicken!"
"She's got a point there," Luca put in. "What happened to silenzio Bruno?"
Alberto didn't have an answer for that, so he changed the subject. "Anyway, I'll go you one better. You wanna see a live whale? I know where they hang out sometimes."
"You do?" Giulia had never seen a whale up close, only their spoutings way off in the distance.
"Yeah, Dad and me used to go out there all the time," Alberto bragged. "This way."
They made sure their stuff was still safe in its crevice, and then followed Alberto out, past the farms in the shallows and out towards the deeper, darker water further from shore. They bottom dropped away below them, and with it went any topography that might have provided landmarks, but Alberto seemed to know where he was going, and when Giulia thought about it, she realized she knew they were heading south, towards Corsica, without being quite sure what was telling her that. Maybe sea monsters were like pigeons, and just always knew where they were. Shafts of sunlight flickered down from the surface, twenty metres above, and then vanished again like ghosts.
Giulia turned and looked back over her shoulder, then looked down. In both directions she could see only blue fading away to black. The rays of light coming down from above seemed to converge again below her, giving the impression of a bottomless pit, and she felt a sudden rush of vertigo. She had to look up again and find the surface in order to reassure herself that she wasn't falling.
"Guys?" she asked. "We're an awfully long way from land..."
That was when there was a sudden, violent splash. A white shape knifed into the water from above, right past Giulia and several metres down into the dark water. She yelped in surprise and grabbed Alberto's arm.
"Oh, cool!" exclaimed Luca.
The shape reappeared, swimming back up with both wings and legs, and turned out to be a cream-coloured bird with black wingtips and a fish in its beak – a gannet. Either unaware of or unimpressed by the sea monster kids, it swam back to the surface and bobbed there a moment with its dark feet dangling down before running a short distance on the water and flapping its wings to take off again.
Moments later, another one splashed down, and the next thing they knew, the kids were surrounded by birds, slicing into the sea like arrows from a bow, leaving trails of tiny white bubbles behind them.
"What do you think?" Alberto asked. "You sorry about that wish yet?"
"Never!" said Giulia, laughing. Even if someday, for whatever dumb reason, she was sorry, she thought, all she'd have to do is remember this and she wouldn't be anymore.
"Come on, this means we're going in the right..." Alberto began, only to be abruptly cut off as a descending bird smacked him in the face.
"Alberto!" Luca swam over to check on him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," said Alberto, rubbing at his eye. "I'm fine. Ow."
The bird was not far away, flapping upside-down in the water, disoriented. Giulia came closer to check on it. It had a gray beak, and a marking like a black mask around intensely blue eyes. This was the closest she'd ever been to such a bird, although like the whales she'd seen them from a distance. It was twice the size she'd expected it to be, nearly a metre long from the tip of its beak to the end of its tail. Carefully, she got a hold of it, pinning its wings to its sides so it couldn't flap. The animal immediately started to struggle, flailing its feet and thrashing its head back and forth – Giulia quickly swam to the surface and tossed it into the air. For a moment it looked as if it might fall back on top of her, but then it got its bearings and flew away to rejoin the flock wheeling overhead.
That, Giulia decided, as the new coolest thing she'd ever done.
Back under the water, Alberto was probably going to have a bruise but, like the bird, he'd only been momentarily dazed by the collision. "As I was saying," he said, "We're going the right way. The fish get stirred up by the whales, and the birds follow the shoals." He rubbed at his eye, and then brightened and pointed at something. "There!"
As he spoke, another gannet dove, its bubble trail completely obscuring whatever Alberto had spotted.
"Come on," he said to Giulia. "You wanna do stuff sea monsters do, right?"
They went a little deeper to avoid the birds, and before long Alberto was finally able to show his friends what he'd been pointing at. "I told you," he said proudly, gesturing ahead. Through the gloom, it was just possible to make out a shadowy shape, undulating up and down. "Let's get closer. I know what she wants." He swam towards the form.
Giulia paused and looked at Luca to see if he knew what Alberto meant.
"I've heard about it," he said. "I've never done it. Mom wouldn't let me come out this far." He followed Alberto.
It seemed at first that the whale couldn't be very far away, as the ghostly shape swimming slow circles in the water ahead already looked big. The nearer they came, though, the bigger it got, and yet it still looked as if they had a long way to go. It was a rorqual, long and lithe and dark grey on top with a white belly. Soon they could sense the water vibrating with its calls, which were just a little too low-pitched to hear but could absolutely be felt.
A moment came when Luca thought they had to be right on top of it, but they still weren't. The whale seemed to fill their entire field of vision, but then it got bigger, and bigger still. Finally, when they were only a few metres away, they could feel the warmth of its immense body, and not just see but sense the huge presence of this animal, floating like a giant parade balloon and yet with an unmistakable mass and inertia as the water moved aside to make room for it.
Luca and Giulia hung back, wary of getting too close to an animal bigger than a locomotive, but Alberto swam right up and looked the whale in its left eye. It blinked, then playfully rolled over, creating a flow that dragged Alberto along with it.
"Silenzio, Bruno," murmured Luca, and went to join him. Giulia was still hesitant, but decided she was more worried about being left behind than she was about the whale, and followed.
Luca swam over the whale's head to look at its other eye, which was as big as the palm of his hand and inky black in colour. It blinked and looked back at him, and he could see his distorted reflection in the cornea. A moment later, Giulia's appeared, too, as she looked over his shoulder.
"Wow," he whispered. Luca had stayed in the shallows his entire life. Whales only came in so far if they were very sick or badly injured, and wanted to rest on the bottom and not have far to go to the surface to breathe. He'd never seen one swimming, and certainly never so close.
"This is so amazing," Giulia agreed in a hushed voice. She cautiously reached out to touch the whale, and ran her hand over the smooth, cool skin of its brow. She'd always known, of course, that whales were big, but knowing that was very different from experiencing it like this. Even the bones in the Haunted Fish Graveyard had not prepared her. There was no comparison between that empty, half-collapsed scaffolding and this living mountain. It made her think of the dinosaur bones in the Museo di Storia Naturale... this must be what it would have been like to stand next to a live dinosaur.
Alberto ducked under the whale's body. The other two followed him down, and found him feeling his way along the folds of skin under its chin. After a moment he seemed to find what he was looking for. He braced his feet against the whale and yanked something out. "Here we go!" he declared, and held up a yellow-white crustacean nearly an inch long, with six hooked legs.
"Ew!" exclaimed Giulia, as the thing wiggled in Alberto's grip. "What is that?"
"It's a whale louse!" said Alberto. He twisted the little beast's head off and dropped it and the body to swirl down out of sight in the depths. "Come on, there's more."
"It's like cleaner fish," Luca explained to Giulia. "Or... remember those birds we saw on television, that eat the bugs off the backs of rhinos and elephants in Africa?" He'd never actually done this before, but he knew how it worked.
"Exactly!" said Alberto, grabbing another louse. "Except the fish and birds aren't big enough to pick these off, so it's up to us!" He tossed it over his shoulder.
"The birds eat the nits they pick off the rhinos," said Giulia.
"What? You ate a worm this morning and you think this thing is gross?" Alberto teased, waving a louse in her face.
"You wouldn't eat the worm and you think it isn't?" Giulia shot back.
"Are we playing Would-You-Rather again? Because I'd definitely rather eat the whale louse," Alberto decided. "They look more like something you'd cook first."
"Nuh-uh." Giulia shook her head. "If I ate the worm raw, you have to eat the louse raw!"
Alberto hesitated. "Are you saying I have to eat it, like, right here, right now?" Alberto pulled another one off and held it up.
"No, she's not!" said Luca, the peacemaker. "Nobody has to eat them. I'm definitely not eating them, and I'm not even ashamed of it." He chose a place further down the whale and started looking for more parasites.
"So if we don't eat them," Giulia said, "what do we get out of it? The birds get dinner. That's why it's a mutualistic relationship."
"We get to hang out with whales," Alberto replied.
Giulia decided that was fair. This was cool enough that she'd definitely do it again. The whale's huge eye was still looking around – it seemed to meet her gaze for a moment before a flash of white showed at the corner as it glanced back, towards its own tail. Giulia followed the motion and saw a small hole that must have been the whale's ear, since it was hard to imagine any other purpose for it. She gritted her teeth and reached in.
Her fingers found something unpleasantly leggy. Giulia jerked her hand back and wiped it on her swimsuit a couple of times.
"Okay, okay," she said. "Forza, Giulia. You ate the worm, you can do this." She took a deep breath, or whatever the underwater equivalent was, and reached in again. This time when she touched something, she grabbed it, and pulled out a different kind of crustacean, big and wiggly and pink. With a cry of disgust she tossed it away. The viscosity of the water stopped it before it got too far, but it appeared that the creature could not swim. It just drifted downwards, flailing its many legs.
Feeling quite pleased with herself, Giulia pulled two more of whatever those were out of the whale's left ear, and heard it rumble in appreciation. The sound seemed to vibrate her bones, and she could swear she saw the surface above them shiver in time. She then decided she'd better do the other ear, too, and crawled across the wide flat top of the whale's head to get there.
She was only halfway there when the whale bobbed to the surface to take a breath. Giulia held on to the edge of its blowhole as it lifted her out of the water, then yelped as the hole opened, blowing out a fountain of hot, stinking steam. The stench was almost beyond description, like an entire boatload of fish and garbage had been left in the sun for a week and even the seagulls wouldn't touch it anymore. Giulia almost gagged, then started laughing as the whale slipped under the water again, dumping her off in the process.
"You didn't warn me that whales had bad breath!" she said indignantly to the boys.
"They eat krill all day!" said Alberto. "Of course they have bad breath."
Giulia laughed again and reached to feel around in the whale's other ear. Despite a lingering note of nausea from the stink, she wasn't really upset. After all, how many people could say they knew from experience what whale breath smelled like?
She found one more ear mite, and then moved down to join the boys in plucking more lice out of the ribbed skin of the whale's throat, where it could expand to allow the animal to take in massive mouthfuls of water. Touching them really wasn't all that bad, no worse than handling a live lobster or crab, which Giulia had done before. These couldn't even pinch.
Luca had found a particularly determined louse and was trying to pry its legs off the whale one by one, only for it to grab with another claw in the time it took him to get one unhooked. Alberto gave him his pocket knife again, to physically cut the parasite off.
"Your Mom had metal knives in the kitchen," Giulia rememberd. "Did Papà give her those?"
"Yeah," said Luca. "Usually we have stone knives for cooking, but some stuff we need metal for, like scythes and some other tools."
"Where do you get it?" Giulia asked. Metal had to be scarce down here, if only because it would corrode in the salt water.
"Most of it's stuff humans throw away," said Alberto. "My Dad and I would collect it, and anything we couldn't use as it was, we'd give it to the blacksmith."
"Signor Donzella," Luca agreed. "He makes stuff out of metal and glass. He's got this vent, like the ones in the kitchens but about a million times..." he paused, his eyes widening.
"Hotter?" Alberto guessed.
Luca grinned. "You guys!" he said. "I know where the hot water comes from!"