Getulio, whom everyone calls Call and Answer, wants to buy a bike. And he goes to Torello Palmer, whom everyone calls Brugola, who has a bike shop and also works as a mechanic. "I want that one," says Call and Answer, pointing to a red bicycle with a black seat and handlebars that look like devil's horns. "It's not right for you," Brugola warns him. But Call and Answer insists, pays, mounts the bicycle and takes off.

This is how one of the stories in "The Village of Stories" (Società Editrice Fiorentina, 176 pages, 15 euros) begins, a book written by Mauro Parrini, who has a special passion for bicycles and cycling ("Pietro Chesi - the cyclist in a black shirt", Mursia, 2014; "Spoken Dictionary of Cycling Language", Absolutely Free, 2018; "Pedals in Legend", Mursia, 2020...). And at least a couple of these stories, born in a village that slowly began to lose its inhabitants until a passing story decided to stay there, are round and flying.

Call and Answer, absolutely confident, "leaning on the handlebars, with his big nose splitting the wind", tackles climbs and descents. But while taking a curve, he is thrown from the saddle. And he realizes that this red bicycle is acting up. So much so that "before he can put his feet back on the road, he already sees the red bicycle, balanced on two wheels, moving straight ahead". Brugola was right: this red bicycle is not like the others. It belonged to a nobleman from the village and was a witness to his death, him with a broken neck, it with wheels in the air, before ending up in Brugola's shop.

"We must find it, before it causes more trouble", Brugola tells Call and Answer. In the hunt for the red bicycle, Toni Capodaglio, a greengrocer, and Fifty Percent, a merchant, join in, and then also Tooth or Jaw, who has spotted and tried to capture it along the way. The red bicycle escapes and takes refuge in a dilapidated castle. Sought, chased, almost trapped, the red bicycle prefers to plunge into a ravine rather than be imprisoned. The five companions look into the void, but there's no trace of the red bicycle. However, the echo of a chilling laugh resounds.

Alive or dead? Real or ghost? What a mystery, that of the red bicycle. Because "even today, on moonlit nights, those passing on the road from the village to the dilapidated castle can see a shadow pedaling madly..."

Parrini flies into fantasy. His village has stories for readers of all ages. And these stories help us breathe, remember, dream, live and, in times so hasty, so forgetful, so arid, so ungrateful, they also help us survive and smile.