Chapter 2: Trouble in Town

Alberto wakes to a dull cerulean glow. It hangs over the wooden decorations in his bedroom on the second floor as he rubs his eyes and sits up, feeling the cloud cover in the air before he sees it. The image of himself in the mirror brings him fully to his senses – the swell of pride in his full arms and chest, the twinkle in his hairy face. Luca's letter a few days before certainly had something to do with it. He nods at himself in approval before setting off for the day.

Because of the gloomy weather, it's too overcast for beach fun, meaning it'll be a day of selling fish from the cart for Alberto, so he mounts the rickety old bike. Pedaling through the town square, he can already feel the eyes on him, but it's nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Not even the strange skittish atmosphere of the townspeople who dart out of his way, whispers following him up the slope, is enough cause for alarm.

No. It isn't until he gets averted eyes at nearly every door, polite and avoidant refusals from the well-meaning ladies who usually smile at him as he offers his merchandise, that he realizes something is wrong. Door after door he hears the same excuses, feels the same trepidation even as the corners of their lips curl upward in a smile, trying and failing to hide their surreptitious scanning of his demeanor. It's not enough of a reaction for Alberto to be able to call it out and ask what's wrong, but enough to make him feel uneasy and unwelcome, unable to understand what could have changed over the last few days. When a little girl, one of the children he lifeguards, squeezes around her mother at the door to approach Alberto in familiar gladness, only for her mother to seize her off the ground, chastising her in a feverish tone, any lingering sense of Alberto's light mood is extinguished from his body. The woman snaps the door shut in his face, not even offering a farewell.

Biking home, he lowers his garish green eyes. Unable to face those who cannot face him, the cart is still half full of fish when he arrives.

Signor Marcovaldo sits at the kitchen table with a coffee and newspaper in his hand as Alberto enters. Given the weather, it's Massimo's day off, and Alberto says nothing as he pulls a pot and a box of pasta from the cupboard, fills the pot with water, lights the stove. Massimo understands immediately that something is off. Alberto's jerky movements are uncharacteristic enough, but it's also from the way Alberto tensely holds his shoulders, as if fending off an invisible attack. However, Massimo has no idea how ominous the situation really is, since teenagers can be moody on the brightest of days.

"Trouble selling fish today?" he asks, cavalier.

"Yes, actually," Alberto growls, too preoccupied to know how ill-tempered he sounds. "The cart's still half-full."

Signor Marcovaldo raises an eyebrow at him, catching his dark tone. "Half-full? What do you mean?"

"I mean it's half-full," Alberto says again, annoyed by the question. His eyes flash with an anger Massimo can't understand, one he hasn't seen in his adoptive son in years. It stuns the older man into silence, suddenly understanding whatever happened while Alberto was in town was more than the typical teenage heartthrob.

Massimo asks gently, "Alberto, did someone give you trouble today?"

"No, it's just –!"

What can he say? No one was rude to his face. Unlike before. He'd gotten used to the men who sneered at him in pity when they saw his scales, the way a master does as his dog jumps, desperately trying to catch the treat held aloft in his hand. Alberto had grown accustomed to the women who thought they were being discreet when they laughed and whispered behind his back, to the elderly who shook their heads when they saw him playing in the water with the children – but this, the pregnant silence he felt as he passed the streets that morning, as if everyone waited with baited breath for all hell to break loose as Alberto revealed the true power of his ugly form – that was something he hadn't endured for more than a few moments before he, Luca, Luca's family, and le signore Aragosta revealed themselves after the race. This silence was far more disconcerting than the confused terror of Portorosso he felt as he stood alongside Luca and Giulia in the pouring rain. Compared to then, Alberto has no idea what this is about.

"Who was it?" Massimo presses, his voice a loving threat. "I'll go talk to them."

Even as Signor Marcovaldo's protective tone grounds him, Alberto remains silent. What changed so quickly? he wonders. Of course, his mind has fallen on it: the encounter he had with the man who accused him of being a siren as he sang in a seaside cave, a mandolin at his side. The man who ran fearing for his life.

"No, it's nothing," Alberto lies despite knowing Signor Marcovaldo doesn't believe him. He already sees how this rumor – whatever the truth is that lays behind it, is different from the rest. Even if it isn't true, how could he prove it? If people are willing to believe evidence from one witness, they could make up all sorts of excuses about why his voice doesn't affect people all the time – suggesting Alberto could be waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Alberto thinks, trying to remember if he'd seen the man who heard him singing before. Is he one of the town bigots who tries to scoff at him, whatever he's doing, whenever he's within earshot? Or one of those who expressed kindness whenever possible, meaning he'd been honestly entranced by his alluring singing voice? More likely he was just someone in the background who looked on, saw all the changes happening in the city, detached and confused, neither actively helpful nor harmful. Alberto can't find the man in his mental record, so it's the only explanation that makes sense. It's impossible to know his true intentions.

"Alberto," Massimo tries again, picking up on Alberto's distress as these thoughts whoosh through his mind. The teen has already turned away from the stove and rushed out the front door. He slams it shut behind him in an unfathomed, terrified rage.

. . .

Alberto stalks out of the Marcovaldo residence and straight toward the dock when a pair of voices calls behind him. He would have ignored them if not for the genuine concern he heard.

Ciccio and Guido approach Alberto on the dock, their heads bowed.

"Hey, we heard what people have been saying about you," says Ciccio. "That really sucks, fratello."

Guido nods.

"What have they been saying?" Alberto demands. He wants to hear it for himself. He wants someone to say it to his face.

The two exchange a breathy glance before Guido speaks, lifting his chin. "They've been saying you can lure people into the ocean and drown them. Like a siren or something."

"We don't know who started it," Ciccio pipes up, "but we know it's not true. It's just someone trying to stir up trouble."

Guido unclasps his nervous fingers, a chortle escaping his lips as he looks at Ciccio and Alberto. "Yeah, sirens are usually women anyway. I don't know what that guy is thinking." He smiles humorously and Ciccio sniggers with him, but Alberto's clammed up silence, devoid of humor, halts their merry mood.

The three had spoken on more than a few occasions about the town and their place in it, even became friends over the past three years – but there was a certain distance they would never cross, compared to Luca and Giulia, for how they grew up. That and, well, was something Alberto couldn't quite put his finger on, something that had to do with famiglia.

Makes sense Ercole's former goons would be the only people brave enough to tell me what people have been saying behind my back. Alberto blisters with confusion and contempt.

"You… you know it's not true, right?" Guido probes with caution. The waves behind Alberto make the question echo in his ears.

"I don't know."

The humans look at Alberto with visible shock, and pity, a reaction that's better than what Alberto expected, but unhelpful in staying the anxiety blooming in his heart. Ciccio and Guido understand from his turned body where Alberto had been planning to go next.

"Good luck, fratello," says Ciccio, and Guido nods at him with a determined expression. Alberto nods back, and then they watch Alberto leap into the ocean, transforming into the creature they'd been taught to fear.

Immediately, the salty ocean surrounding him calms his nerves. He can breathe again, focus on small happenings in the sea: the fish gliding alongside him, the crabs clipping at bubbles rising from corals and sea flora on the sandy floor. He feels his movements streamline as he swims past the Portorosso bay. About twenty minutes out, past Isola del Mare, Luca's farming village slowly comes into view: Its tall, rolling kelp fields sliced and stacked, sea folk of yellow, green, and pink picking egg sacs and fresh luminaria from within. As Alberto comes to the edge of the settlement, the round-peddled heads of the reef dwellers swivel away from their work, toward him, momentarily startled by the appearance of his jutting features and gangly body. They turn away again, busying themselves with their work. They still don't fully accept him – replacing hundreds of years of traditioned prejudice within a few short years wasn't easy. While they may be perturbed by his presence, they were at least courteous to him now, even if it's through avoidance rather than direct questioning. After the accusatory evasion he faced in Portorosso, the dull but flustered curiosity of the reef dwellers is a blessing.

The Paguro residence lays on the farthest end of the kelp fields, before a large mass of boulders that kept the area free of human ships. Luca's parents put Alberto on-edge sometimes – but not nearly as much as they did Luca – so it was rare that Alberto visited them even when Luca was around. They were the only other sea people he knew who might be able to tell him more about his origin.

Alberto hovers awkwardly at the entrance of the house, noting the hanging pots and faintly glowing jellyfish near the interior concave ceiling. "Hello? Qualcuno a casa?" He doesn't wait long but reconsiders his presence as Signora Paguro's voice slides through the door cavities.

"Alberto! Good to see you. Come on in, we're just about to have lunch." She's surprised to see him and the look on her face doesn't disguise this fact – expecting him to decline her offer as usual. When Alberto mumbles a "sure, that would be great," her surprise turns to bemusement.

Joining Lorenzo and Nonna Paguro at the table, Alberto senses his inelegance the moment he passes through the doorway. He's hyperaware of the power of his spiny tail, the wide gestures of his limbs. He's hardly stayed at the Paguro household for more than hour while Luca wasn't there with him – certainly never for an entire meal alone. Sensing Alberto's awkwardness, the Paguros fall into comfortable chatter amongst themselves. They discuss their harvest, the food, and their neighbors. The son of the Branzinos is finally getting married to the daughter of the Sogliolas after years of going back and forth on the dowry. The mundanity of their conversation relaxes Alberto a bit, reminding him that life exists outside of Portorosso, even when rumors about him spread. He can still feel his sharper edges, though; the way his natural coloring blends into the oceanwater around them. He's little more than a phantom in Luca's childhood home, his body and past of abandonment making him unfit for the modest work of the refined reef dweller family before him.

The Paguros ask Alberto the usual: How is Signor Marcovaldo? Had he heard from Luca and Giulia? Anything happening in Portorosso? Alberto's avoidant answer of the final topic clue Daniela and Nonna Paguro into the fact that there's something greater weighing on his mind. They visited Portorosso often enough, having become acquainted with some of the townsfolk thanks to Luca's misbehaving, but their home was down here, away from the bustle of human life. They didn't know the rumors that had been circulating in the town for the past few days; they weren't like Alberto, who was more suited to a life of shifting between, befriending humans and sea people alike – well, perhaps less sea people than he thinks, a realization that dawned on him in the last few hours.

Once everyone has finished eating, Signor Paguro clears the table at Daniela's request. She addresses Alberto directly. "Well, we're glad to have you here. It's been a while since you came to visit."

Alberto nods and shrugs, aware of his rudeness at being so distant during the meal and for not coming over before. Only now, when he's in crisis. He starts stuttering. "Y-yeah, w-well, I do apologize for that, but I figured it might be nice to spend time in the ocean for a while, since things on the surface have been kinda tense, y'know?"

His rushed apology only perplexes Daniela more. It's not like Alberto had been purposefully disrespectful to her in the past, but he's no Luca – he wasn't afraid of speaking his mind or rolling his eyes at her when she tried to treat him like a child. But Signora Paguro's piercing stare could make anyone crack, and Alberto's avoidance rather than defiance of her reveals more than he knows. Daniela and Nonna Paguro raise their eyebrows at each other.

"Is there something on your mind?" Nonna Paguro asks in that commanding yet empathetic, gruff voice she has. Alberto doesn't know she had done the same to Luca not three years before. His nervous eyes flicker up to her pink stare as he plucks up the courage to ask.

"I-I was wondering if you knew anything about open ocean people… Like, if we can produce songs that affect humans…?" His gut drops saying it aloud.

"Songs that affect humans?" Daniela repeats. "You mean like hypnotizing them in some way?"

By now Signor Paguro has returned with a peculiar look on his face, having heard Alberto's question. They had hardly ever broached the topic of their difference – Alberto's ethnic distinction was something they took for granted, unspoken, as that was too improper, but his lack of a familial connection to any open ocean person in their vicinity made their acceptance easier. Talking about it now felt like breaking a taboo that had the power to undo time itself.

"Yeah, like –" Alberto starts to say, but stops, his throat closing from the fear of sounding stupid in front of these reef dwelling adults who may have never heard such a thing in all their lives. "Like a siren…?" he peeps.

The silence that follows Alberto's question lets him know they're taking him seriously. It causes the unease inside him to unfurl on the pool in his heart, from a bud into a radiant flower. He looks up from the hole he's burned into the table's surface.

As expected, it's Nonna Paguro that speaks first. "Hmm, I gotta be honest, ragazzo, I've seldom heard the term. But if I had to guess, there's probably some truth to those human tales."

"Are you sure?" Daniela cuts in, clearly worried about Alberto's mental state with this new information – a gesture he appreciates, but her worry only unnerves him more. "We don't know anything for certain. There haven't been open ocean people living in these parts for centuries, so –"

"That's exactly why we can't say it's completely baseless," Nonna Paguro interrupts. She gives Alberto a pointed look, but he doesn't meet her gaze. His heart has started beating loud and steady in his chest, too loud to focus. The world shifts around him in a hazy blur though it remains perfectly still, perhaps stiller than ever before. If the rumor was actually true, then…

"What should I do…?" he hears himself say, finally meeting Nonna Paguro's pink eyes.

"What is it you're afraid of?" she asks.

"I just – I just want to be sure, because if I have this power, then I…"

A small voice completes the sentence in his head: …then I could understand why the townspeople would be scared of me, and keep their children from ever getting near me again.

"So you're afraid of your own power, eh?" Nonna Paguro says, measuring his mind in a second. It embarrasses him to be read so easily, and he feels self-conscious wondering what Signor and Signora Paguro are thinking.

"If… if I have this ability, then…" Alberto can't say it aloud. "Did my dad have this power? Did you ever see him use it?"

Signor Paguro finally speaks, his shoulders drooping in his powerlessness. "No, I can't say that we did. We only heard rumors about the lone open ocean male living near Isola del Mare about five or six years ago. Had we known he left a son…" He trails off. Alberto can see he wants to believe they wouldn't have left Alberto alone on the island or driven him away to fend for himself in the open ocean, the most dangerous part of the sea. But none of them could be sure what would have happened back then. Things were quite different.

"Come over here for a moment," Nonna Paguro says, exiting the dining room. Luca's parents stay behind as Alberto follows her through the living room. Nonna Paguro leads Alberto to a stack of treasures in a corner at the back of the house. There's no human stuff. It was forbidden to own anything made by humans for many years before and during Luca's childhood, but some of the treasures look quite ancient, from an era long past. Huge, elaborately decorated conch shells, jagged shark teeth the size of his head, and shiny pearl blue necklaces long enough to string around his neck, arms, and shoulders at once lay among the heap of treasures. Nonna Paguro bends over the heap with an effort-filled grunt. Alberto is about to offer help until she pulls something buried underneath all the others.

"Here."

The old woman doesn't explain as she hands Alberto an oyster shell. Larger than both of his balled fists, its oval-shape is dotted with holes that arc down one side. Hundreds of years of calcification have hardened the uneven, greyish layered outer shell to protect against the violent ocean. Alberto opens it. Dazzled by the interior, mother of pearl shines so brightly it nearly blinds his green eyes. There are markings inside. One side of the oyster is scrawled with a beautiful artistic portrait, the other a message in a language he can't read. The portrait is of a sea person, and quickly, Alberto catches onto the ruggedness of the man's streamlined scales, the jaggedness of the fins on his face. The man's coy smile seems to be winking at him from the shimmery finish of the ancient pearl.

"I met him a long time ago in the open sea," Nonna Paguro says, her mind transported to a time she herself nearly forgot existed. "His name was Cari Mirzaei. We traveled together as lovers for a time but separated due to conflicting interests in what we wanted in life."

"What does it say?" Alberto asks, pointing to at the message scrawled on the lower half of the oyster.

The old woman's lips turn in an ironic smile. "He told me once, but I can't remember. I don't know this language, and I never learned to read it. It's a language invented by open water folk. I was hoping you might be able to read it. Anyway, I think you should keep it. It's no use to me now."

Alberto, normally the connoisseur of free – and stolen – goods should have shimmied in the water in glee at owning such a beautiful treasure. But the thing in his hands now has more history than he wants to be responsible for. "Keep this? Oh, nonononono, I couldn't –"

"Keep it," Nonna Paguro insists, pushing it farther into Alberto's hands. "You hold more connection to it now than I do. Besides, I have something better – in the beautiful memory of Cari gifting it to me."

She gives Alberto a wry, knowing smile, one that he doesn't understand. So Alberto turns his attention back to the large oyster again. He opens it, stares at the large portrait of Cari Mirzaei on the upper half. Other than his dad, he can't remember seeing the face of anyone who looked like him in all his seventeen years. Ghostly shapes haunted his memories from a time when he was a young child, but none were as clear to him as the man who abandoned him on an island. Alberto only had memories of the endless expanse of open ocean, blurry images of human and reef dweller towns in the distance, and his father pushing him roughly along as they passed, far from any place he might call "home."

"Grazie, nonna," he says, not missing the warmth in her smile as he turns to go. He didn't get the answer he wanted, but he found something far more precious.

A kinship that had long been lost.

. . .

A few hours later, Alberto drags himself from the ocean, sopping wet and with less information and more questions than he had before. He almost doesn't realize he's back on Isola del Mare until he looks up at the tower looming at the top of the slope. In an instant, he recalls some of his darkest days.

It seems in the distant past now, the despair he felt while living here alone. But the accusation that he was a siren made him realize how volatile Portorosso really is, and always was. He presses the oyster in his hands against his chest, as Luca's grandmother had done. This again feels like a new beginning, another step in the right direction, even if he has no idea who the man in the photo is and will never meet him. It's a treasure that means more than the scraps he'd gathered as a child, trying to hide the pain of being abandoned. He wants to keep it to himself, far from the prying eyes of the humans, even those who had grown so important to him over the years, like papà… This was a treasure that belonged to him and his lost family.

When the door of the Marcovaldo household creaks open again, Signor Marcovaldo is still at the table where Alberto left him. Head in his hand, the moment he hears Alberto coming inside, he rises from his seat in concern. He stares down at Alberto in earnest, more accurately measuring the mental state of his adoptive son this time after learning the truth.

"Listen, Alberto –"

Alberto hugs him before the man can finish, halting the words in his throat. Massimo sighs in relief, their feelings of unspoken tenderness coming out in a firm hug instead, and Alberto relaxes against him too, knowing there's nothing for either of them to forgive each other for.

"I spoke to some of the townspeople today," says Signor Marcovaldo when they finally pull apart. "They weren't the ones who started the rumor, but they told me who did. Signor Bargnani was the one who saw you in the cave that night. He refused to talk to me when I approached him, but the others seem to believe him because of his forcefulness." Massimo omits the description of when he went to Signor Bargnani's house. The man had shooed him away while hiding behind his door as he shrieked that Massimo was a protector of the leviathan that would one day destroy this town. There was no need to bother Alberto with such details when it was clear he'd already had a trying day.

Alberto is too tired to offer any insight or think about what to do right now, so he just nods. "Sorry for running off like that," he says sheepishly, his voice hoarse. "Do we have any food?"

Massimo smiles underneath his greying mustache, his hand still on Alberto's shoulder, offering him an earth-bounding comfort.

. . .

It's past midnight when Alberto sits at the desk in his room with his light on, rereading Luca's letter. Despite his fatigue, he can't sleep. His mind is too weary for rest. Luca's "I miss you" still melts his heart every time he checks on it. The rest of the letter, where Luca talks about how much he misses the ocean and wonders over his own perception of it, is something Alberto can definitely relate to too – now, even more so.

"Sometimes, it makes me feel like my upbringing in the ocean really was something I just dreamed up." Why couldn't Alberto didn't remember any other sea person around him during his childhood? No one he can remember the face of, anyway. Even though it's nighttime and most people in Portorosso are asleep right now, their pestilent presence weighs on his mind, knowing whatever these rumors are is far, far from over.

Pen and paper scratch across the desk. Alberto decides to submit his wakefulness to the struggle of writing. He wants to confide in his friend, at least, about the new information he got from Nonna Paguro about Cari Mirzaei: the fact that his people had their own language and gifted beautiful treasures like the portraited oyster to those dear to them. He wants to go back and ask Nonna Paguro more.

As graphite strikes "Dear Luca" across the page, Alberto grins to himself. How formal his writing sounds in comparison to Luca's heartfelt monologues.

Perhaps Luca would be able to help him while at school in Genova. The message inside the oyster was probably just some kind of love letter – a memento for the time Luca's nonna and Cari Mirzaei shared together – but even if that's all it was, it was so much more than that. To him, at least.

Luca, I wish you were here, he thinks, but doesn't write. Too afraid of communicating his heartfelt thoughts to someone who was so far, far away. I wish we could figure this out together like we always do.

The lone scribe scribbles away, into the night.

Here it is! Wow, sooo many people said they enjoyed the premise, that makes me so happy! To everyone who so emphatically said chapter 1 and the prologue were interesting, thank you so much! I hope my writing will not disappoint the glorious concept.

So, now we get some more background about Alberto's origins and cultural background. Of course, as time goes on, tensions will only continue to rise in Portorosso and in other relationships as Alberto uncovers more about himself and the people around him. As per my writing process, I don't have a set plan for this story and am just making it up as I go. I already have some of the next chapter written too!

I hope you'll let me know what you thought of this chapter~