The kids exchanged a look as Arturo waited anxiously for his answer. He was fiddling with the scales on the back of his hand, his blue eyes wide with worry. Luca moved to gently take his wrist before he could hurt himself.
"We thought they were looking for you," Alberto said.
"So did I," Arturo fretted. "But I've looked all over and I can't find them anywhere."
Luca went back to the Trota house and knocked on the wall, but as before he got no response. When he looked inside he saw that the interior was dark – the jellyfish hadn't been bothered in a while. He poked one, and it slowly lit up pink.
By that light, he saw... nothing much. Not only was there nobody home, it looked as if no-one had been there for days. Sand and grit had settled out of the water all over the stones that formed the furniture and shelves, and a basket of clams had fallen from its hanger and spilled its contents all over the floor. How could that be? They'd seen Signora Trota only a couple of hours ago, and Giordana just before that. They must have at least slept here last night, and Arturo would have, also.
"Maybe your Mom went to see the Branzinos," Giulia suggested, as she, Arturo, and Alberto waited in the doorway. "Luca said they're friends."
"I already asked, and Signora Branzino said she hasn't seen her today," Arturo replied. "I should have gone straight home."
"Where did you go instead?" Alberto wanted to know.
"I knew I was gonna be in trouble," Arturo said. "Mom told me she doesn't like me up there but if I must go I at least need to finish my chores first. But I got impatient and I went anyway because I thought if I came after breakfast was over maybe your mom would have gone out. After you told me Giordana came looking for me I came right back and I went out to check the eel traps, because those are down in the ravine and I could pretend I'd been doing that the whole time. But I finished, and when I brought the eels back nobody was home and the house looked like this. So I thought maybe they were still looking for me, or maybe they'd gone to see a friend or to talk to the dolphins, so I checked around, but I didn't find them!" All of this came out in a big rush, and then Arturo had to stop because he'd run out of breath to talk with.
"It's okay! It's okay," Giulia told him. "We saw your mom not long ago."
Arturo's shoulders sagged in relief. "Where is she?"
"We don't know," Luca said, "but she was looking for you, so she's gotta be around here somewhere. You probably just missed each other."
"Giordana might still be in town," said Alberto. "She commandeered Guido and Ciccio to show her around, and Ciccio asked if she had a boyfriend. Maybe she's still with them."
"And we kinda lied to her about where you and Mamma went," Giulia added. "So she could have just gotten lost."
"We can look with you, if you want," Luca offered.
"Could you please?" Arturo asked.
It wasn't how they'd planned to spend the rest of their morning, but Luca, Alberto, and Giulia helped Arturo comb the area his family was responsible for. There was nobody in the gutweed meadow where the sea cows grazed in the summer. The next field belonged to Signor and Signora Branzino. The kids arrived to find their grown-up son Niccolò hanging in front of their house.
"Hello, Singor Branzino!" Luca called out. Even if Arturo had already done so, it was probably a good idea to ask. "Have you seen Signora Trota or Giordana today?"
"Not today," Niccolò replied, "but when Mom and Dad get back I'll ask them."
"Thank you!" Luca said.
They continued on their way int the ravine where people set their eel traps. There they found two more neighbours – Vittoria Aragosta and her older daughter Isabella, who were examining damage to one of the traps.
"Did you find your Mom, Arturo?" Signora Aragosta called out.
"Not yet," Arturo said. "Luca and his friends are helping me look!"
"If I see her I'll let her know," Vittoria promised.
At the end of the ravine the seafloor sloped down to Signor Donzella's forge. The blacksmith was not at first in evidence, which was worrying, but after a minute they found him poking around with a stick in the stones below one of the entrances to his cavern, trying to evict a belligerent mantis shrimp that had made a home for itself there.
"Oh, hello again, bambini," he said. "Could you give me a hand with this?" He inserted the stick into the crack and tried to pry the crustacean out, but it had hunkered down and wedged itself in tight. "The last time I tried to get rid of one of these I ended up with a broken finger."
"Not right now, Signor Donzella... we're looking for Arturo's mom," Luca explained. "Have you seen her this morning?"
"Not today, I'm afraid," the blacksmith replied, sorting through nearby detritus to see if there were anything else he could use as a tool. "Giacomo Mitilo came to see me about sharpening his scythe, and Ginevra Tartaruga asked about some bottles... or was that yesterday? No, yesterday was when you came by." He yelped and let go of his stick as it was rattled by an impact that split it in two along the grain. "Whoa! Feisty little, uh..." Signor Donzella glanced at the four children and amended whatever he'd been about to say to, "critter."
"Let us know if you see her," said Luca, disappointed.
As they made their way back up the ravine towards the settlement, Arturo was close to despair. The older kids did their best to reassure him.
"She can't have vanished forever like my Dad did," said Alberto. "She didn't take her stuff."
"Maybe she went into town to look for you and Giordana," Giulia suggested. "If Guido and Ciccio had to leave, maybe Giordana couldn't find her way back." That didn't seem likely, though... sea monsters had that uncanny sense of direction, which Giulia had experienced herself on their way out to see the whale. Shouldn't that have made it easy? "Do you want to go check?"
Arturo shook his head hard. "If I go back and she's there, she'll think I've been up there all morning and then I'll really be in trouble."
"Then we'll do it," said Luca. They could tell Signora Trota how worried Arturo had been, and maybe they'd both be happy enough to see each other that she'd forget to punish him for not finishing his chores. "Come on, you can wait at my place so you won't be all alone. Uncle Ugo looks weird but he's not that bad really."
"Thank you," Arturo said quietly.
They checked the Branzinos' house one more time, just in case. The occupants were still out, and Niccolò had either gone with them or given up waiting and left. Luca wondered whether Bianca Branzino and Attinia Trota had gone somewhere together, perhaps invited by the dolphins they hung out with, but for the moment there was no way to find out.
Over one final rise, the Paguro house came into view. The trellis was fixed, and Grandma and Uncle Ugo must have gone back inside. Luca swam ahead of his friends and darted inside, calling out, "hey, Mom!"
Then he stopped short.
The house was empty. Not just empty, but like the Trota place, in a mess: their Christmas tree sponge had fallen over on top of Lorenzo's bags of crab feed, and the shell ornaments had scattered across the floor. Luca's letters from school were strewn about, dishes were lying where they'd fallen, and the moulted exoskeleton from Pinchypessa that had been saved for display with her ribbon was broken into pieces. A layer of sandy grit had settled over everything, as if there'd been nobody there for some time.
The water suddenly felt colder, and Luca's throat tightened in fear. What was going on? He'd been here not long ago and Mom and Dad and Grandma and Uncle Ugo had all been fine! What could possibly have happened?
He started to back out of the room, but then a light flickered under the fallen sponge tree, and somebody started to sit up. Luca's first reaction was utter terror, which froze him in place as if the sea around him had turned to ice. That lasted only a split second, though, as he realized that of all the horrible things it could have been, it was only Ugo.
"Uncle Ugo! Are you okay?" Luca hurried to help him out from under the bags of crab feed. One of these had split open, and the crabs were gathering to snatch up as much of it as they could. "Do you need me to punch your heart?"
"I don't know," said Uncle Ugo, his eyes bulging even more than usual. "Is it still beating?"
Luca looked over his shoulder. His friends were hanging back in the doorway, as frightened as he by what they saw inside. When they realized Luca was trying to help his uncle, they came cautiously closer.
"What happened?" Luca asked.
"I don't know," said Uncle Ugo. "Your grandmother and I were looking at your drawings. I saw you were drawing the writing from the gold face. You did a very good job..."
"That wasn't me. That was Alberto," said Luca.
"Sorry, sorry. My nerves," Uncle Ugo. "Where are my worms? I need a worm. It will calm me."
Giulia spotted the bag he'd brought with him, tossed into another corner. She picked it up, and one of Lorenzo's crabs scuttled out of it, a worm in each pincer. "Here you are, Signor Paguro."
"Thank you. Thank you. I like your friend, Luca," Ugo said distractedly. He pulled a worm out of the bag with a shaking left hand – his right was closed in a white-knuckled fist – and slurped it down. He followed with a second one, and it did seem to be helping with his shakes... though given the choice, Giulia would definitely have rather had another of Signora Zigrino's sour leaves.
"That's better. Much better," Uncle Ugo went on. "I turned the gold face over to compare, and then suddenly the house was full of sand. Got it all in my gills." He tugged on one, then shook his head. A few grains came out, and settled gently in the water. "Everything was thrown around, but then it went away and everyone was gone. There was just me and a funny little man all made out of..."
"Sand! The genie," Luca whimpered. He'd had a horrible feeling that was the culprit.
"Oh, no!" Giulia covered her mouth. If the genie had hurt Luca's family, was that her fault for letting it out of the bottle?
"He looked at me like he couldn't understand why I was still there," said Uncle Ugo, and opened his hand to reveal the little face pendant. "Then he saw this, and he told me I'd best watch out, and he vanished. After that your sponge fell down on me and I thought I'd better not move. Like a shark, you know, they sense the motion in the water. Keep still and they won't know you're there."
Luca sank slowly to sit down on the floor and cover his face with his hands.
"I don't get it," Alberto said. "The genie thought sea monsters are great. He talked about how cool he thought we were, with the kingdoms and libraries."
"I thought it was humans he didn't like," Giulia agreed. "Or... maybe it was just me."
Luca sat very still and quiet for a minute. He wasn't worried about whose fault this was. He was just trying to figure out how to keep any more of it from happening, because it seemed perfectly clear to him that the same thing had already befallen the Trota family and probably the Branzinos, too. For the moment, there was only one, probably temporary, solution he could come up with. The genie had recognized him and Alberto as 'children of Oannes' even when they'd looked human, but in general, anyone looking for sea monsters would probably be looking in the sea.
"I think we all need to get out of the water," he said.
"Never! I can't do that," Uncle Ugo replied. "I swore, never again!"
"You have to!" Luca insisted. "Aturo was up on land and he missed whatever happened. If the only reason the genie didn't get you was because you had this," he pointed to the face, "then he'll just be waiting for you to put it down again."
"I'll swallow it!" Ugo declared.
"We might need it!" Luca countered. "It's safer on land."
"But the sun!" groaned Uncle Ugo. "Even here in the shallows, it burns..."
Luca took his uncle's hand to drag him off the floor. "Come on, Uncle Ugo."
The others moved in to help. Giulia took Ugo's other hand and Alberto pushed him from behind, while Arturo swam along beside them, giving Ugo worried glances but not saying much. He found this odd stranger far too intimidating. Uncle Ugo didn't struggle, but neither did he help, and it was very difficult for the kids to move his large body.
Luca was thinking hard. "We'll get Arturo and Uncle Ugo up to the town," he said, "and then we'll go find anybody else who's still here and get them out, too."
"Then what?" asked Alberto. That wouldn't help anybody the genie had already disappeared. Had it just made them vanish, or had it taken them somewhere, or turned them into something? If the genie could change Giulia into a sea monster, it could turn the sea monsters into crabs or jellyfish or anything it wanted. It could even turn them into humans and leave them down here to drown... but he wasn't going to say that out loud in front of Luca.
"I don't know! Let's just do this first," said Luca. He didn't want to think too far ahead.
Uncle Ugo continued to complain about things like sun and wind and some promise he'd made, but he didn't fight as the kids led him towards the mainland. Every time they heard a sound, whether of fish moving in the water or birds overhead, or even gravel shifting when someone's foot or tail touched the seabed, Ugo would tense and twitch, and the glowing bobble on his forehead would flicker. At last they reached the shallows, where they dragged him up onto the beach and let him transform while they grabbed their bike and clothes.
Luca was both curious and dreading to see what Uncle Ugo's human form would look like. He turned out to be stout and big-nosed like Lorenzo, but ghastly pale, with blue veins visible under his skin. He was bald on top, with a fringe of greying dark hair around his ears and a single remaining curl above his forehead. His brown eyes darted back and forth wildly, still refusing to move in sync.
"The sun, it burns!" he protested. "I can feel it already! Like being boiled alive!"
"Uncle Ugo, it's only about twelve degrees out," said Luca.
Arturo's teeth were chattering. Alberto helped the younger boy put on his yellow sweater.
"That is a hot day in the Deep!" Uncle Ugo groaned. "I should never have let you bring me up here. Where are my worms?"
"I brought your worms." Giulia pulled her shirt on and offered him the sack.
Uncle Ugo snatched a worm out of the bag and slurped it down, which was somehow even worse to watch when he looked human. Then he looked for another and made a distressing discovery. "Was that the last one?"
"Come on, Uncle Ugo." Luca dragged him to his feet again. Alberto and Giulia joined in, while Arturo, after some brief instruction, took charge of wheeling Giulia's bike back up the hill to the town.
It was now past noon and people were out and about running errands, making deliveries, sweeping front steps and gathering in laundry. The group did get some stares as they passed, but by now everyone in Portorosso knew who Luca and Alberto were, and Uncle Ugo's seagrass trousers made it obvious that he was a sea monster, as well. A couple of people called out greetings, but most chose to say nothing, figuring that if there were any good gossip here they'd hear about it in the pubs and restaurants later.
The townspeople were not going to be the problem – it was the people from out of town.
"What are we gonna tell Professor Hamid?" Alberto asked.
"She ought to be finished by now, don't you think?" Luca said. It couldn't take her that long to draw a bunch of bottles, especially when she wasn't trying to teach anybody else how to do it.
"My eyes," whimpered Uncle Ugo. "So bright..."
"What if she's not?" Giulia asked. "We're gonna have to tell her something."
"She didn't ask about Giordana," Luca pointed out. "Maybe if we just say he's my weird uncle she won't ask about him either."
"If she thinks we're too strange she's not gonna wanna come back in the summer," Alberto protested.
"That might be a good thing," Luca said. Or maybe, he thought with a knot in his stomach, it wouldn't matter who came here in the summer. Maybe there weren't going to be any sea monsters besides the few that lived in hiding among the humans. Maybe the genie would vanish them all.
They dragged Uncle Ugo into the yard and up the steps. Giulia ran ahead to see if Professor Hamid were still there, crossing her fingers and hoping that she would not be.
She was. The Professor was eating a sandwich while Helena showed her a painting that normally hung in the upstairs hallway. This was a piece Helena had painted herself, of Hannibal's Bridge in Rapallo. Both women looked up in surprise when Giulia appeared in the doorway.
"Giulia?" asked Helena. "Is something wrong?"
"Is she still here?" Alberto called from halfway up the steps.
"Yeah," said Giulia, but it was too late now. They were just going to have to make whatever excuses they could. "Mamma, can you come out here, please?"
"Of course. I'll be right back, Hafsah," Helena promised her new friend. She moved to step into the hallway, then had to back off again as the boys dragged Uncle Ugo into the room.
"See? It's nice and shady in here," said Luca.
"I'll get the shutters!" Alberto went to pull them closed, then heard a jingling sound on the stairs. "Arturo, you can't bring the bike up here!"
"Where do I put it, then?" Arturo asked.
"Down in the yard!" Alberto ordered.
Luca got Uncle Ugo over to the padded bench at the side of the room and sat him down there. The low light didn't seem to have made him any happier, as he now had a hand on his chest, patting the place where his heart was. Was Luca imagining it, or could he still see something reddish twitching in there?
"Palpitations," he said. "Too much oxygen."
Giulia remembered something she'd seen on TV for calming down someone who was panicking. She pulled a paper bag out of a drawer and handed it to Ugo. "Breathe into this."
He began huffing on it, while Arturo finished putting the bicycle away. He came running back up the stairs and snatched up his new clothes, which Helena had left on the bench next to where Ugo was now sitting. Without even bothering to step back into the hallway, he started getting dressed.
Professor Hamid sat watching all of this in silent bewilderment. She looked at Arturo, then at the older kids, then pointed at Ugo and said, "what is that?"
"That's my uncle," said Luca. He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and pushed his fingers into his hair as he tried to think. They'd gotten Uncle Ugo and Arturo to what was hopefully safety... what next? Where were his parents and grandmother? How was he going to find out? What if they were gone forever? It made him feel sick to think about it. He had to do something, but right now he couldn't think even of how to begin.
"No, no," said Professor Hamid, and got up from her seat to look at the shiny object Ugo was holding, now visible between his fingers as he held the paper bag in both hands. "What's that? Is that Bes?"
Luca's train of thought stopped in its tracks. It had seemed as if the golden face was what had protected Uncle Ugo from the genie. He'd already hoped Professor Hamid would know something about the item. Now it might be a matter of life and death if she did.
"May I see?" she asked.
Ugo didn't want to hand it over, so Luca got up to help pry it out of his fingers. "We're safe up here, Uncle Ugo," he said. "For now anyway. She might know what it does."
With the object in her hand, Professor Hamid turned it over to look at it. "Did this also come from your shipwreck?"
"Yes!" said Giulia, before anybody could say anything else that might make things even more confusing for their guest. "Yes, it did! What is it?"
"This is the face of the ancient Egyptian god Bes," she replied. "He was responsible for driving away evil spirits. This inscription on the back... I would need a dictionary to be sure, but it's probably a magical formula that's supposed to keep the wearer safe from harm."
Luca's heart beat faster. "Evil spirits? Like a genie?"
Professor Hamid shook her head. "A genie or djinn is a much more recent concept. The ancients had a more genera idea of supernatural entities. Their world was full of magical beings that lived in the sky, or the water, or the desert, which could do you harm if you made them angry."
Giulia swallowed. If anyone had made the genie angry, it was probably her, but then why would it take that anger out on the sea monsters?
Luca found a spool of twine and the kitchen scissors, and cut a length so he could thread the amulet on it and wear it around his neck. "I need to go look for more people," he said. Signora Aragosta might still be in the ravine with her daughter, or Signor Donzella at his forge, and there were other families who lived further away...
"All alone?" asked Giulia.
"No way! I'm coming with you," Alberto said firmly.
"Me, too," Giulia agreed.
"You can't," Luca told them. "There's only the one amulet, and it only protects whoever is holding it. Uncle Ugo told us Grandma was right there, but she's gone."
The others didn't like that one bit, but they couldn't argue with it. Luca made sure the knot in his twine was tight and that the piece was short enough not to slip over his head by accident, and ran out of the Pescheria to return to the ocean.
In the silence he left, Professor Hamid cleared her throat. "I'm sorry," she said, "but... what's going on?"
She was looking at Helena, possibly hoping for a straighter answer from her than she would get from the children. Helena, however, could only shrug.
"I would very much like to know that, myself," she said.
"Upstairs," said Giulia. Professor Hamid would just have to be satisfied that it was none of her business.
In her bedroom, Giulia took a deep breath and then explained to her mother what seemed to have happened, first at Arturo's house and then at Luca's. It was a difficult story to tell, even if it were short. Seeing the Paguro house all in a mess like that, when just the previous day they'd been talking and laughing in there as they decorated their underwater Christmas tree, had been like a punch to the gut. She couldn't imagine how much worse it must have been for Luca, who lived there, to come back and find his family just... gone.
"Gone? Gone where?" asked Helena.
"We don't know!" Giulia said. "I never should have opened that dumb bottle!"
She'd been trying not to cry. At almost thirteen Giulia was too old for that, but now as she spoke tears suddenly rose in her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks. They didn't know much about this situation yet, but everything she'd seen seemed to indicate that this was all Giulia's fault. She should have just told the genie to get back into the bottle. Shouldn't she? Was that something people could do? It hadn't occurred to Giuia not to make a wish when she was offered one. She'd just wanted to make it a good one, and the genie itself had encouraged her to aim higher than just wishing for the camera. She should have known that something awful would happen, that it was all too good to be true.
"Oh, Sweetheart." Helena pulled her daughter close for a hug. "It's not your fault. You didn't know."
"In stories something always goes wrong with wishes," Giulia whimpered as she hugged her mother back. She could feel a tingle in her cheeks as hot tears ran down them. Giulia had seen Luca cry once in Genova, when he'd been terribly homesick one day, and it had made the scales pop out on his cheeks. Now the same thing was happening to her. It was a good thing she was too old for crying, because she was never going to be able to do it again unless in front of somebody she trusted.
"Stories also say that sea monsters are vicious and like to eat people," Helena pointed out, rubbing Giulia's back. "How would you have known they weren't just as wrong about genies? And you're doing the best thing you can now, which is trying to help." She relaxed her grip and held Giulia at arm's length a moment, then gently wiped the tears off her cheeks to change the scales back to skin. "If they can't get back in the ocean, what are we going to do with Arturo and Ugo? They can't stay with us. We don't have room."
Giulia knew very well that her mother had only asked her that to give her something else to think about, but it worked. Their little house had seemed crowded even when Luca and Alberto had been sleeping in the treehouse that summer. There was no way they could accommodate anyone else.
"They could stay with Signora Aragosta and her friend," Giulia said, remembering the two elderly sea monster women who lived in Portorosso partly because they liked cats and gelato and partly because of some family divide that the town gossips could only guess about. Concetta and Pinuccia would be able to help guests get used to being on land. "Or I guess at the hostel, now that Ercole's not working there anymore."
"Then why don't we head over and ask?" Helena suggested. "Wash your face first, okay?"
Giulia nodded and hugged her mother again. "This is what you meant when you thought I'd be sorry, huh?" she asked miserably.
"Oh, no, Passerota, not at all," said Helena. She stroked Giulia's red curls. "I was worried you'd miss going to the beach at Pegli, or that it would be hard on you when you realized just how careful Luca has to be around strangers."
"Or that people like Ercole would treat me like a monster," Giulia said.
"Or that." Helena hesitated. "Did Ercole find out?" She'd never met Ercole, but knew from Giulia talking about him that he liked to antagonize children and sea monsters.
Giulia nodded. "He saw us coming uphill to the hostel and he put a bucket of water over the door. He wanted to get Luca or Alberto, but he got me instead."
"I see." Her mother sighed. "I guess we'll just have to deal with that, too."
"Are you sure you're not mad at me?" Giulia still wasn't entirely reassured.
"I'm sure. I'm worried and a little scared, but not angry," Helena promised. "So is your father. If you'd asked us, we would have said you should wish for something different, or maybe put a time limit on it and make it just for the holidays. But we're not mad, and we're going to help you as best we can. Just like you're going to help Ugo and Arturo as best you can, okay?"
"Okay." Giulia wiped her eyes again.
They returned to the kitchen to find Arturo, Alberto, and Professor Hamid all listening in half-horrified fascination as Uncle Ugo talked.
"Then there is the hagfish," he was saying. "The hagfish, it can absorb nourishment through its skin. They burrow deep into the rotting flesh of the whale carcass and soak in the nutrients for months on end. Good eating, the hagfish, but very hard to catch. When you catch them, they secrete a substance that turns the water around them to thick slime. Fills the throat and clogs the gills."
Arturo gagged a little.
"Have you ever spoken to a man named Dr. Hans Winkler?" asked Professor Hamid. "He lectured in Napoli a couple of times, but I think he's working in Pyrgos now, near the Calypso Deep. He collects things that get pulled up in deep-sea fishing nets, both archaeological and, uh, zoological. He'd probably be very interested in your work."
Uncle Ugo thought for a moment. "Tall human. Long fingers." He wiggled his own in demonstration. "Big dogs."
"You've met him?" the Professor asked.
"One time. We did not make friends."
Helena cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, Hafsah," she said, "but we've got a bit of a family emergency going on here. Can you come back another time?"
"I was planning on leaving tomorrow morning," Professor Hamid said, "but until then you can reach me at the hostel." She gathered up her things. As much as she evidently wanted to know why she was being lied to, she wasn't rude enough to ask. The rest of them waited until they'd seen her walk away up the Via Venturini, before settling down to discuss the situation properly.
"Ugo, Arturo," said Helena, "Giulia and I have been talking about where we can put you up until this situation resolves, and she thought Signorina Aragosta might have room for you..."
"Aunt Concetta?" asked Arturo, apparently distressed by the idea.
"She's your aunt?" Giulia hadn't known that.
"She's Mom's aunt," he explained. "She and her friend visit sometimes. They're weird." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Mom says she's been up here too long."
Signorina Aragosta had never struck Giulia as anything but a perfectly nice old lady. "I'm sure she's not that bad," she said. "I mean, Luca used to be afraid of his Uncle Ugo..."
"... and I am not scary at all," Ugo finished for her with a smile and a nod.
Arturo gave him a sideways look.
"She knows how to make hot chocolate," said Alberto.
"She does?" Arturo asked warily.
"Yeah, she's given me some a couple of times when I've made deliveries there on cold mornings," said Alberto. "Sometimes she puts extra stuff in it, like vanilla or orange."
Arturo looked tempted. "What are those?"
"You can't explain a flavour, Arturo," Alberto said. "You have to taste it for yourself."
That seemed to be enough to persuade him. Helena offered to find one of Massimo's sweaters for Uncle Ugo, but he insisted he was already too warm. They had no shoes for Arturo but Helena loaned him some socks, and the entire group headed up the hill to where Signorina Aragosta lived.