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Chapter Text

Like most typical adult residents of 1960s Portorosso, you’ve grown up hearing about the legends of the horrible seamonsters that infest the Ligurian Sea, especially around Isola del Mare. They’re maneaters, or at least man-killers who snatch people from boats or when swimming and pull them underwater to drown. You’re not sure that you really believe in such things, yet most every day you walk past and see the numerous fresco engravings and the statue in the Piazza Calvino fontanella of Giorgio Giorgioni, famed pasta chef and slayer of seamonsters who founded and was the mascot of the Giorgio Giorgioni Pasta company.

It’s late Agosto, 1968. School starts soon, and as is tradition, your town holds a fun little triathlon for schoolkids up to age sixteen in the last week before the school year starts: the Portorosso Cup. Since the Giorgio Giorgioni Pasta company sponsors the event, eating a bowl of their pasta is the middle part of the triathlon. Participants are encouraged to form teams of three so that as many children as feasible can participate in one of the events. The pasta-eating event is especially suitable for crippled children so they’d have something to do to participate that didn’t require athletics since the other two events were swimming and riding a bicycle up the long and winding Via Piaggio to the ancient Saracen watchtower atop “Mt. Portorosso” and back down the straighter and thus even steeper road back to Piazza Calvino. A small soldi prize of ₤10,000 as well as the Cup itself await the winners.

You know that Signor Marcovaldo, the enormous one-armed fisherman and proprietor of Pescheria Marcovaldo at №10 in the southwestern corner of Piazza Calvino off Via Vernazza, has a young figlia, but since she’s only in town during the summer due to her genitori living apart and her attending a school for the gifted in Liguria’s capital city of Genova, you and most of the town don’t really know that much about her other than that she’s courageous and more than a bit tomboyish. The townskids think that she doesn’t really belong so they’d never teamed up with her, causing her to have to race alone. Since that meant riding that grueling course on a bicycle right after eating a large (for a child) bowl of pasta and that right after a lengthy (for children) swimming race, she’d generally wound up with gastric distress and have to drop out of the race before the downhill leg. But this year looks to be different. She’s befriended a couple of out-of-towner boys who’re willing to team up with her, and they’ve been training hard for about a week with the younger boy riding her bicycle. Their clothing (especially the older youth’s — a rope for a belt?) looks too poor for them to be the sons of rich tourists or friends from her Genova school, yet they’re definitely not from around here because Portorosso’s a very small town and you know everyone in it by face if not by name, but not these boys. Perhaps they’re from some agrarian villagio from further inland or even some other province, just here for the triathlon?

Maybe this time that blowhard bullo, the Visconti youth Ercole, would lose! Most likely not, but one could hope. You and most of the town dislike him because of how stuck on himself he is (the Viscontis were minor nobility back in the day) and how he pathetically bullies and competes against younger children, and really, isn’t he too old now? But he’d won ½ a decade in a row, with past winnings pooled to purchase himself a nice cherry-red Piaggio® Vespa®.

Many in the town choose to watch from along the bicycle path since they live around there, but most including you and those who have or are friends of famiglie with bambini in the race have gathered in Piazza Calvino near the harbour for the first two events of swimming then pasta, knowing that they can simply walk across the piazza or just turn around where they’re standing to watch the bicyclists cross the tragurardo. Some, including Signor Marcovaldo, are holding hand-written signs cheering on their young friends or family members (ah, yes, from Massimo’s sign you now remember his figlia’s name: Giulia [others in the race named on signs that you can see from where you’re standing include Serena, Beatrice, and Marco]).

You see the table (really three of their usual square tables, two of which are normally outside, placed adjacent to each other) for the eating pasta event set up in front of №26 Trattoria da Marina covered with three overlapping red checkerboard tablecloths. Five chairs and six bowls of pasta had been set there, with a gap between chairs one space from the right end (from your POV) where you realize that the townsgirl in pink in a wooden wheelchair will eat once her swimming teammate tags her, so no need for a chair there. Wait, another chair is being pulled up and the five current chairs moved a bit to make room as a seventh pasta bowl and forchetta are set there. Did another team somehow form and enter at the last minute? Wasn’t the entry deadline and orientation a week ago?

Ercole’s taking no chances and is dousing the portly younger henchman of his who’s doing the swimming in olio d'oliva to reduce water resistance. Is that legal? Suddenly you hear a strange clunking sound coming from the top of the stairs. Che sorpressa! The younger out-of-towner boy’s walking down the steps to the quay to participate in the swimming contest rather than waiting his turn to ride Giulia’s bicycle! Instead of a swimsuit, swimming cap and visor like the other swimmers, he’s wearing a deep-sea diving suit, holding its helmet! It looks like he’s no longer teaming up with Giulia since both’re in the swimming portion, she wearing a modest turquoise-colored one-piece swimming suit. Why would they split up their team? They’d trained so hard! You realize that this explains the extra chair and bowl at the pasta table — he’ll be doing that part, too. She shouts something to him that you can barely make out from your distance, but it seems to be about this being a very bad idea. The older boy who’d been seen training with them is nowhere to be found. The poor girl’s going to have to do it all again this year, which means more gastric distress for her, and the same’ll almost certainly apply to the tourist boy. Darn it, Ercole’s going to win again! He’s mocking both Giulia (about even her terrible friends not wanting to be friends) and the visitor in the diving suit (something about not being able to afford a proper swimsuit), but both ignore his taunts.

As race officiant and spokeswoman for the sponsoring pasta company, Signora Marsigliese reassures the participants and their families that despite recent seamonster sightings in the harbour, nine townspeople were standing watch on five fishing boats, nets and harpoons in hand, near the buoy that the swimmers were to swim around (usually there’d only be a few acting as judges to verify that the contestants really did go around the buoy before heading back, and as lifeguards in case any of the young swimmers had difficulties). She rings a handbell to start the swimming race and the triathlon as a whole. Most of the participating children dive right in, but Giulia hesitates for several seconds, looking worriedly at her erstwhile teammate in his diving suit who seems to be having a panic attack (no wonder, given what Signora Marsigliese’d just said about seamonster sightings in the harbour — you’d hesitate to swim there now! Maybe he’d already heard about that and that’s why he was wearing what was basically waterproof armor?), then lowers her swim visor and runs in herself. Even with this delay, if it weren’t for Ercole’s minion she’d’ve quickly been in the lead, but despite his build he’s surprisingly good at swimming. The visitor boy hesitates a few seconds more, puts on his helmet, and wades in, apparently planning to walk around the buoy on the floor of the bay (what was he thinking!? You know he can’t really swim in that thing, but could it stand up to a seamonster attack? Do they have claws or fangs or spines that could rip right through it? Wouldn’t it just make it even harder for him to escape? And even without that, it puts him at a terrible competitive disadvantage in addition to the several seconds’ delay of so much as getting into the water thanks to his panic attack). Maybe you’re overthinking it. Maybe he doesn’t know how to swim, and this was the only way he could think of to do this part after their team broke up? You’d seen him before training on Giulia’s bicycle, not swimming.

Suddenly Ercole’s henchman cries out in pain. It seems that olio makes good fish bait, and sardine are biting. You almost feel sorry for him, but this’ll give the younger kids a chance. Giulia swiftly rounds the buoy, swims back to the quay, then walks out of the water and tosses her visor aside, winning this portion of the race, but has to put her street clothes on over her swimsuit (which the other teams’s swimmers don’t have to do — they simply tag their pasta-eaters when done, then can change clothes at their leisure) while dashing as fast as she can towards the pasta table. Even with this delay she’s easily the first to the table and sits in the rightmost seat (from her POV — leftmost from yours). She’s obviously quite pleased with the choice of pasta this year, and heartily digs in, while at about the same time the short boy in red swim trunks (he’s older than his stature implies and has dwarfism) dashes up the stairs to tag his partner in her wheelchair (older girl in pink) who then takes the chairless spot set up for her while, on the quay, two more swimmers (both older girls) emerge and tag theirs. The stout girl in the daisy yellow one-piece swimsuit tags a boy known in town for loving gelato who then runs up to take the spot at the opposite end of the table from Giulia, while the slender girl in the chartreuse one-piece tags her partner, a shorter girl with curly hair, who takes the spot on the other side of the wheelchair girl, thus near but not at the middle of the table. The boy in the diving suit, pretty much last of all except for Ercole’s minion (who’s still thrashing wildly in agony) and the boy with the crutch who’s still waiting on his own partner (the youngest, a small boy in lime green swim trunks), walks out, only to stumble and fall as he walked past Ercole (did that bullo trip him?), causing his helmet to fly off. You see this out of the corner of your eye due to the distraction of the screaming minion’s thrashing, as a brief flash of green where the tourist boy’s head should be grabs your attention, but by the time you shift your gaze to focus on it, you only see the helmetless suit as if the boy’d pulled his head into it like a turtle into its shell.

After standing up and holding his gloved hands over the head opening of his diving suit as he blindly makes his way up the stairs, he kneels down and crawls as quickly as the big bulky suit allows towards the pasta table. Only three empty chairs remain by the time he crawls under the left (from the participants’ POV) end of it and makes his way to the chair two down from Giulia, having doffed the diving suit while under the table. He seems not to know how to use a forchetta! Even though he’s now her opponent in this race, Giulia rolls her eyes and quickly shows him how to do it, though she doesn’t seem happy about it. He’s followed by the townsboy with a crutch who sat between them. Ercole’s swimming henchman finally makes it to shore, still wailing with sardines attached to him. Ercole yanks one off and tosses it into his face, berates him, and makes him tag his other henchman, a youth slightly taller and much slenderer than their swimmer. Ercole frog-marches that minion to the last remaining empty chair in the middle of the table to the tourist boy’s left. By that time Giulia had only a few bites left in her bowl. She finishes them off, shouts “Finito!” and, sure enough, shows obvious signs of gastric distress as she gets on her bicycle and heads north up Via Piaggio on the east side of the north of the piazza past Via Stellina to the east and Alimentari Repetto between those two streets.

Seeing this, Ercole forcibly rams pasta into his smaller henchman’s mouth in violation of the rules (as the young competitor to his left points out) but no officiant intervenes. As he does this, the gelato-loving boy finishes his pasta and tags his bicycling partner. a girl in a light-green outfit, who heads towards her own bike and follows after Giulia up Via Piaggio. Ercole force-tags the henchman and heads to his own racing bike (itself an unfair advantage in addition to his age). The next three of the Portorosso competitors finish after that, then the visitor boy finishes last of all (despite Giulia having shown him how to use a forchetta, he was still slower at it than children who’d been doing it since they were toddlers), shouts “Done!” and tags himself as he heads to his own very rusty, decrepit bike. Instead of a proper hard-rubber biking helmet for safety which all other bicycling competitors were wearing, he dons, of all things, a colino, with not so much as a strap to hold it onto his head! That’d be useless if he falls off the bike! He, too, seems to be in gastric distress but then lets out a belch that all can hear, and that seems to resolve it for him (maybe Giulia should’ve thought of that), and he pedals on up Via Piaggio behind all six of the other kids on bikes including Ercole himself, but he seems to be making good time, already catching up to other cyclists before he’s no longer in view.

Once he’s out of your sight, that’s all for this part of the competition. You and most of the other observers reposition yourselves to be able to see where the young bicyclists would soon enter the piazza down Via Corniglia at the corner with Via Revello on their way to the traguardo. A few minutes after you get in place it starts to rain, and you and most others there open up umbrellas, while a youth unknown to you runs with a blue café umbrella through the piazza towards Via Corniglia and keeps running up it and out of sight. You figure he must want to watch more of the downhill part of the bike race itself instead of the finish.

Chapter Text

A few minutes later you suddenly hear noises from Via Corniglia not far from where it meets Piazza Calvino, at the corner of Via Revello. A single bolt of lightning lights up the sky briefly, with thunder quick enough that you know it must be nearby. You hear what sounds like shouts and a crash. A family standing where they have a better look up Via Corniglia than you do suddenly cover their child’s eyes. A bicycle wheel flying through the air is the first thing to truly enter the piazza, followed by Giulia. She’s not on her bike. She’d fallen and is rolling on the cobblestones into the piazza, and seems to be hurt! She can’t stand up!

Before she even stops rolling, she’s immediately followed by two — oddio! What are those things!? — on a bike! They’re dressed like vagrant boys, yet aren’t human! Are they — seamonsters? The horrible, murderous seamonsters of legend? Did they knock her down? Why would they be riding a bike? What’d they done to her?

They look back at the fallen girl as they pass her. The driver of the bike, the smaller of the two, with aquamarine-green — skin? Scales? And indigo fins on his tail, limbs, back, and the back of his head, too. He shouts “No!” in a boyish voice that sounds, if you didn’t known better, like — concern? The larger of the two with silver-lilac scales and lavender fins calls her name in a voice that sounds like an Italiano youth whose voice had recently changed, that also seems to express concern. They can talk? In Italiano!? Suddenly the smaller green-scaled thing stops the bike and both things dismount and charge at the fallen, helpless Giulia! They obviously realize that she’s still alive and are about to finish what they’d done!

Fortunately Signor Marcovaldo was having none of it. “Mostri marini” he shouts, then “Give me that!!” as he snatches a harpoon out of the hand of a townsman standing next to him. He runs toward the things, but was he too late? The inhuman things dash right past you and others of the townspeople standing near you, their long thick finned tails streaming behind them, rapidly approaching his figlia while he’s too far away to safely throw the harpoon! She’s still unable to stand up, and is defenseless against these things! Mamma mia, why’s nobody stopping them!? You can’t bear to watch but you can’t look away! Now they’re practically upon her, and she looks up at them with — that can’t be right? You knew she was pretty much fearless, but she looks at these inhuman things coming for her without a hint of fear or even apprehension. She’s — smiling!?

The smaller green-scaled thing says her name in his treble voice right before reaching her, then — non ci posso credere! He slides to his hands and knees beside her, to her right (your left), and — asks her if she’s alright! The larger silvery-lilac-scaled deeper-voiced thing kneels to her left. Giulia, in a halting voice like the wind’d been knocked out of her but nothing more serious, says, actually chuckling a bit, “Y—yeah, I—I—I’m okay.” as she reaches her arms up to the two — things’ shoulders, and they in turn reach their arms around her back and under her armpits and — oh, Santa Cielo! — they’re actually helping her to her feet! With real concern on their strange yet surprisingly human-like faces, and in the younger thing’s voice! As she slowly stands up yet still leans on the two things for support with the younger thing even reaching his free right hand up to make sure that hers is securely around his shoulders, Giulia grunts a couple times from the effort as she looks back and forth at them with nothing on her face but complete trust in these things, then thanks them!

Signor Marcovaldo hurriedly approaches with harpoon still in hand, but he stops short at the sight of his precious figlia with these two — things — one at each side of her, arms still intertwined about her to support her until she can stand on her own. Giulia gasps at her padre’s approach, but he looks down at the trio in sheer astonishment so profound that you can actually see his eyes beneath his very bushy eyebrows for once! “Ah, Giulietta!?” “Papà, I—” she replies, then stops, at a loss for words. The things beside her have expressions on their faces like — like any boys might who feared that they’d just gotten in trouble. The taller one looks down and away, with an expression that looks less like fear and more like — not wanting to be a disappointment to someone he looks up to? Several approach with nets and harpoons, still focusing more on their inhuman appearance than their so very kind actions. You hear someone near you say almost under his breath, “Look at that!” and the fisherman Giacomo also standing near you says “You’re not going anywhere!” then someone else nearby says “Come on!” as they all close in while Giulia and the two things back up a step.

Ercole suddenly makes his presence known, rudely shoving a townsman aside as he rushes in, shouting, “IIiii saw them first! The reward is mine!” Giulia and the two strange things turn to face him, and so away from you. No longer can you see their faces, but you hear the courage in the younger thing’s treble voice as he shouts, “We’re not afraid of you!” With this second full sentence you hear from him, you notice that he speaks Italiano fluently but with a distinctly tourist-like accent that you can’t place. Ercole replies,“Nooo, but we’re afraid of …” as he gestures around with his harpoon at the townspeople behind him, then back to the trio as he finishes, “… you! Everyone is horrified and disgusted by you, because youu are monsters!!” You at least had certainly felt that way towards them, right up until they’d helped young Giulia. Now you don’t know what to think.

Too bad you’re on the wrong side of the piazza; so you miss getting to see Giulia’s face in that moment. Even from behind the sheer defiance is plain to see in the way she balls her fists and crouches down a bit as she says,“Stop They’re…” then stands up taller, right in Ercole’s face, “…not monsters!” Her obvious fondness for these two strange things, along with the way their own first thought moments earlier had been to help her in spite of their own danger, has already started to soften your heart towards them, but you still have doubts. Ercole smugly asks, “Oh? Who are they, then?’” as you and others murmur while the older, taller thing steps over by the smaller one.

Signor Marcovaldo speaks up, silencing everyone: “I know who they are.” He approaches them as they turn around to face Giulia’s padre, backs to Ercole. What defiance they’d had towards that bullo was gone when facing the imposing Massimo. Even Giulia seems apprehensive as her padre approaches, harpoon in hand. The looks on the things’ faces are just like that on Giulia’s, like any human child’s who’s unsure what’s about to happen. Signor Marcovaldo steps towards and looks hard at them, first looking at the younger green thing who’s now in the middle and says, “They are Luca, and…” then shifts his glance a bit to his left to face the taller, lilac-scaled thing and continues without missing a beat, “… Alberto.” He lets the harpoon fall clattering to the cobblestones as he steps to the older thi— no, the older boy’s — they had names, and not just any names but good old Italiano names! You’ll never again think of them as “things” — to Alberto’s side, and reaches down with his huge hamhock of a hand grasping the boy’s so much smaller wrist, “And they are…”

Signor Marcovaldo lifts his arm, easily hoisting the surprised young Alberto up a decimetre or so off the cobblestones, and continues, “… the winners!” Silence in the piazza for a second or two. Then you hear from behind you a couple voices you don’t recognize: a woman shouting Luca’s name, then a man shouting “Let us throoough!” but your attention and just about everyone else’s is focused on Signor Marcovaldo and his figlia, and the two strange-looking young boys who’re obviously her friends and somehow known to both of the Marcovaldos. Luca says, “W—what?” and Alberto, still held aloft in Marcovaldo’s grip, says, “Really?” Ercole tried to dispute this as Massimo lowers Alberto back down and releases his grip. “They can’t be the winners! They are not even people!!”

“Signora Marsigliese?” says Signor Marcovaldo as he glances towards the officiant. You look her way as she crouches towards the fallen bicycle that the seamonster boys had abandoned in their rush to help their fallen friend. Slowly she says, “Technically — legally — …” then more quickly as she looks back towards Marcovaldo, “Yes. They won.” Sure enough, both wheels of the bike are definitely past the traguardo, though the boys hadn’t deliberately tried to cross it first before stopping to help Giulia.

Gasps throughout the piazza, you included. Alberto questioningly says, “We won?” Ercole angrily retorts, “Who cares if they won? They’re seamonsters!” Some of the townspeople still grumble about capturing them, but a throat-clear and a “You’ll have to go through me to get to them” look from the towering Signor Marcovaldo puts a stop to that. They back off and most turn away. Only one remains holding a net, grumbling, but he no longer seems so eager to try to use it. Ercole’s exasperated at this. “What!? Come on!” as he looks at the withdrawing townsfolk. Noting his distraction, Giulia immediately seizes her moment and Ercole’s harpoon. Luca and Alberto grab it as well, and the three of them, though children, are able to break its handle in pieces and hurl it down to the cobblestones, all three working together as a perfect team.

That doesn’t stop Ercole from trying again. He turns to his two younger henchmen and demands another harpoon, then insults them when they don’t even try to obey. That appears to’ve been the last straw. Thy look at each other and say each other’s names, then scuffle with their erstwhile leader, tossing him and his prized woolen sweater into the fountain. Ciccio sarcastically says “Oops” and walks off as Guido got in one last thumbing of his nose and issuing a raspberry to his ex-leader who was mourning the ruining of his “piccolino.” They’ve finally had enough of him, recognizing as you’re starting to that there’s only one monster in the piazza and it’s not either of Giulia’s friends.

Giulia rejoices at this. “It’s over. The reign of terror …” then turns to her friends and jumps up and down in joy. “… It’s finally over!!” Still, though, even though you’ve begun to accept her friends as real boys, as human in their own way as any other, you wonder what adult seamonsters are like. Maybe they’re fine as children, yet become the vicious monsters of legend when they grow up?

Oh, no! You realize that one of the human racers is missing! At least it’s not any of our townskids, but Giulia’s former teammate, the out-of-towner boy? You remember seeing him heading up Via Piaggio, yet even though all the other racing kids have arrived in the piazza (but none even tried to reach the finish line due to the sight of the two seamonster boys), there’s no sign of him! Where could he be? The way he was catching up to others despite his late start and rusty bike, he should’ve been among the first!

That bike! That rusty bike the seamonster boys rode into the piazza on, that still lay across the finish line — that was the out-of-towner boy’s bike! And those clothes that Luca’s wearing — you remember that that boy, after he’d shed his diving suit under the table and later got on the bike, you could see that he was wearing clothes just like what Luca’s wearing now! The only thing different is that the out-of-towner boy was wearing a colino instead of a standard bike helmet, and Luca has neither. Panicked thoughts take hold of you. Did these monsters do something to that poor kid? Maybe ambush him on the road, then steal his bike with Luca taking his clothes? Is he — okay? Are we too quick to accept these seamonster boys as good people just because they’d helped Giulia, if they’d do something like that?

Basta! Uffa, you’re not thinking clearly. That boy was on his bike racing as fast as he could on public roads, so how could they possibly ambush him without any of the other bicylists or bystanders along that road noticing? But what other explanation is there?

Wait — no, non è possibile! Are Luca and the seemingly human visitor boy somehow — the same person!? And Alberto, was he the other, older out-of-towner boy who’d gone missing before the race? You recognize the rope-as-belt and the rest of his clothes as being the same. It’d explain why Giulia was friendly with them — since she also seemed to’ve befriended the visitors, why would she then befriend seamonsters who’d robbed or hurt them or worse? Not to mention Massimo announcing that he knew them and their names — weren’t the boys staying at his place and seen on his boat? But can they really be the same people? Is that possible? How!? And why? Did they somehow disguise or shapeshift themselves as human boys at first to deceive the town, then change to their real forms some time before entering the piazza? Why would they do that? Just to participate in the race? But then why break the disguise?

All these thoughts race through your mind in the space of only a couple seconds. You can see that others around you also still have doubts and questions. But your train of thought is suddenly broken in a way that soon resolves all remaining doubts:

“Luca!” “Luca!” shout the female and male voices you’d heard behind you earlier yet’d ignored. You turn around and watch as the crowd lets through two adult out-of-towners. Both’re stout, and seem to be of early middle age. The woman’s wearing a blue short-sleeved midi-dress with a white apron, and the man’s wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and blue pants and cap. The woman has long brown hair, and the man shorter brown hair with a very thick mustaccio, even bigger and thicker than Signor Marcovaldo’s. When you first see them, they’re under a tablecloth that they’re holding for protection from the rain, but they cast that aside without a second thought and keep running towards the strange-looking boy whose name they were calling.

As the rain falls on them — non mi lo aspettavo! — in seconds both of their bodies transform before your very eyes! Skin gets covered with green scales (the woman’s more of an aquamarine shade compared to the man’s more olive-green)! Spiny fins (indigo for the woman, dark seaweed green for the man) emerge from limbs, the back, and more! Five-fingered human hands turn into four-fingered webbed claws, and a finned tail sprouts from each of their lower backs! They run past the crowd, no longer caring who sees. It’s obvious that they’re now seamonsters like the two boys! Their seamonster forms resemble their human-looking forms, though their hair has become some sort of fleshy fin-like growths similar to the “hair” the two seamonster boys had, including the man’s mustaccio, the same color as the fins elsewhere on their bodies. These must be Luca’s parents! The green of his scales is like an in-between of theirs (closer to his mother’s).

The woman gets to her son first, then grabs him by the torso and upper arms with worry and some anger on her face. “You had us worried half to death, and you must never do that again” she says, in the same unknown foreign accent Luca had. “I’m sorry!” wails Luca in the boyish voice that’s become familiar to you these past few minutes. Her expression swiftly turns to pride as she says, “And you raced your little tail off and kicked so much human butt!” At this she lets go of his upper arms and fully embraces him. “And I am so proud of you, and I am so mad at you!” She starts sobbing, at a loss for words. “I love you, Mom,” says Luca as he returns the hug, the intensely indigo “hair” fins on the back of his head looking for all the world like the petals of a big beautiful blue rose, the green of his scales complementing that visual effect as if his neck were the stem of the flower. The seamonster man confirms that he’s Luca’s padre by simply saying, “Son?” and then joining in the family hug. Luca’s Mamma looks at Giulia and Alberto, and they smile at each other, she looking kindly at her young son’s friends, human girl and seamonster boy alike.

Luca’s madre. In that minute or so since you saw her for what she was, she’s shown in no uncertain terms that she’s every bit as much a loving Italiana Mamma as any Italiana Mamma in all of Portorosso. Your own Mamma’d been much like her in your childhood, and you even recall similar tirades of mixed emotions from her. This is a famiglia that loves each other.

Also, from seeing it happen you realize that this change between forms wasn’t voluntary, not something that they will to happen. When they’re in water, including rainwater, they’re seamonsters. When on land and dry, they’re in human form. It’s just the way they are, not some deliberate deceit. So, yes, Luca and the “out-of-towner boy” really are one and the same person, and it was only because of the rain in the middle of the cycling portion of the race that he changed form. Come to think of it, didn’t Giulia shout his name right before the swimming part of the race when he walked up in his diving suit (now it makes more sense why he was wearing that, and you completely misinterpreted his panic attack earlier)? Something about it being a very bad idea? You’re pretty sure that you did hear her say “Luca” then. You also remember the flash of green you’d seen out of your peripheral vision when Ercole’d tripped the “visitor boy.” Now you realize that if you hadn’t been distracted by poor Ciccio being nibbled by a swarm of sardines, you would’ve seen Luca’s natural face full-on then.

(Later you talk with some of those townspeople who’d stationed themselves further up the race path and witnessed what’d happened there when it’d started to rain and Luca’d sought shelter under the awning of the storage shed near the ancient watchtower at the top of the hill, as it turned out to avoid transforming in front of everyone. Then Alberto arrived with a bright blue café umbrella [yes, it was he that’d carried it through the piazza earlier, running towards Via Corniglia so that Luca could finish the race in his human form, only for Ercole to kick Alberto to the ground, causing him to drop the umbrella and so get wet from the rain and transform before the eyes of the townspeople for the first time that any human resident of Portorosso [except Giulia as it turned out] had seen. Alberto begged Luca to stay where he was, but after Ercole had trapped Alberto in a net, Luca became as determined to save his friend as he later showed with Giulia, and he darted out from under the awning, no longer caring that he’d also change into a seamonster in the sight of townsfolk. He was fully transformed by the time he reached Alberto and grabbed him onto the bike. Ercole and Giulia both followed [for wildly differing reasons], starting a chain of events that led to them bursting into the town piazza, with a couple of bike tires flying through the air and Giulia rolling onto the cobblestones. You then realize that that was her saving her friends from Ercole’s harpoon. But you and the others in the piazza hadn’t known any of that at the time.)

Signora Marsigliese proudly presents the Portorosso Cup to the winners, the Underdogs (so that’s what Giulia and her friends had named their team). As Luca accepts the cup in grateful awe, and Alberto and Giulia each caress it with Giulia practically vibrating like a plucked corda di chitarra in sheer excitement, some of the town’s children are first to fully join in the celebration, running towards them, cheering the winners, heedless of the strange appearance of the two boys (“E dalla bocca de’ fanciuli” indeed). All three Underdogs start prancing and jumping around in a circle a couple of times as more children rush to surround them in celebration of their victory.

Two of these children, a brown-haired long-faced boy holding a gelato cone who less than ½ hour earlier had been chowing down on a bowl of pasta as part of his own Portorosso Cup team (he sat at the far end of the table from Giulia) and a younger black-haired girl dressed in blue, run past a townsman and then the two elderly and grumpy Aragosta sisters who lived on the outskirts of town up Via Corniglia. The townsman turns and utterss a dismissive interjection with an equally dismissive gesture, then walks away in disgust, as apparently some others did while you weren’t facing in their direction since you now see at least a couple of others further off, also walking away. As for the grumpy Aragostas though, after watching those two children run past them to join in celebrating the Underdogs, the sisters simply glance at each other with looks of determination on their faces, nod at each other, and lower their own umbrellas, letting rain hit them for the first time that you can remember. You quickly learn why as both, with smiling looks of finally feeling free on their faces instead of the grim scowls they’d worn so pretty much always before, change into seamonsters before your eyes (our sacerdote Padre Eugenio passes out in shock at that). Concetta (the taller, slenderer sister) has lavender scales with violet fins, and Pinuccia (shorter, stouter) has sea-blue scales with sea-green fins. There’d been seamonsters living among you in Portorosso for years, and you never knew!

For the second time in a matter of minutes, you hear someone in the piazza say “Give me that!” But this time it’s an elderly townswoman (one of a small group of friends of the Aragostas) as she snatches the wanted/reward poster from la Maggiore’s hand, then hands it to her friend who says “Yeah!” and passes it to their other friend who grunts from the effort as she rips it in half then cheerfully says “Bravi bambini!” La Maggiore just shrugs as she, you, and most of the rest of the town begin to accept what future generation slang would call your new normal.