Chapter Text
There was one last distraction to get out of the way before Mirabel finished, but admittedly, it was a very big one.
“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait- is that the sun??” Mirabel gestured up at the pinkish sky. “Is the sun rising??”
“Cue the sun,” Bruno said to confirm.
“We stayed up all night!!!” Antonio had never been louder in his little life. “I never did that before!”
Antonio was quickly swept up with the village kids as they made a celebratory lap around the story circle. Mirabel and Bruno shared a triumphant dance, and Mirabel sang “The freaks stay up all night~ the freaks stay up all night~ Anyway, I should probably start wrapping up.”
Alma’s forehead smack was heard across the Encanto.
“So! It all begins with tostones.”
There came a cold wind as Pepa collapsed in her chair. “Ay, now I remember…”
Mirabel kept on. “Everybody loves tostones! Crispy hot tostones! Nobody likes MAKING tostones, because they’re squishy and oily and make everything in a five mile radius smell like lard for three days. So, guess who never makes tostones?”
Mental calculations began. The villagers met each other’s eyes, crossing people off the suspect list until their gazes fell on the one person in the Encanto who they’d never see dealing with disposing of old frying fat.
Julieta outed herself. “It’s not that I don’t like them! They’re just so messy. I have a dozen other recipes I can make that don’t soak into my clothes.”
Point made, Mirabel continued. “So we never have tostones in the house! We only have them when someone else makes them, which is exactly what happened the day Antonio was born. Me and everybody- all the grandkids specifically- we were all coming back from school with, like, handfuls of tostones. We had our share at school, so these ones were for our dads, and we get home, set the food in the kitchen, and we just get distracted and we’re talking about whatever, right?”
Alma cocked a suspicious eyebrow. “I never got any tostones.”
“I’m getting there, Abuela. It can’t be even TWO minutes, LESS than two minutes, and we turn around, and Pepa had eaten enough tostones for two people.”
(Alma huffed. “Three people.”)
(Luisa winced. “No… two.”)
Pepa thundered. “You try dealing with pregnancy cravings at forty-five!”
“No, I don’t think I will,” said Mirabel, “Because Pepa’s water broke on the spot.”
The Madrigal grandchildren (minus Antonio) all gagged in shared, almost-repressed trauma. Antonio, catching everyone collectively throwing up, stopped his wild running and tapped on Mirabel. “Wait, who broke her water?”
“You did, Antonio. You were being born.”
Not sure what being born had to do with it, Antonio nevertheless bowed his head. “Sorry for breaking your water, Mami.”
Pepa was nearly the same shade of red as the sky. “Mirabel!!”
“But, like, that’s the moment I realize, like it finally kicks in.” Mirabel clapped her hands together for emphasis. “I don’t even have a room anymore. The baby’s on the way, and it’s about to move into the nursery with me, and I am getting replaced.”
Julieta’s distraught noise was lost in the understanding nods of the rest of town.
“I make for the clubhouse faster than I ever have in my life. Lanterns lit, running like hell, Cuatro and Dulce figure something’s up and so they’re coming out, and I think everybody else noticed too, but like, things are already getting bad outside. Clouds are rolling in. The wind’s whipping up. It’s getting dark. And I don’t notice it at the time, but-”
&&&&
Dulce tripped over something and picked it up slowly, confused. “There’s… a rope in the yard-?”
Cuatro threw open the mosquito netting with the force of an angry slamming door. “FOCUS, DULCE!”
“RIGHT- sorry! Mirabel it’s okay-!”
Mirabel wasn’t having a wonderful time at the moment. Pressed up against the stone wall from under her hammock, she could only whimper into Señor Raton and try to catch her breath against the oppressive cold. “It’s not okay! They’re gonna love the new baby more than me!”
“That’s okay! That’s normal!” Cuatro’s eyes darted around the clubhouse until he spotted more toys. He grabbed them all by the armful and piled them around Mirabel, hoping she would take one. “Parents always like the new baby more- they grow out of it once it starts to talk!”
Dulce, the only child, balked. “Cuatro that’s awful!”
Cuatro, the fourth of about to be six children, shot back, “Well it’s true! What am I supposed to do, lie to make her feel better?!”
“YES!” Dulce shouted. “Mirabel don’t listen to him- your parents love you and your family isn’t going to replace you!”
Knowing she was lying, Mirabel started to sob.
“Lie better!” said Cuatro.
“But that one wasn’t- I mean-”
The wind kicked up with a force that whipped around the sides of the wall. It blew the mosquito netting inward, fluttered all their papers, knocked over toys, and sent some unlucky (if unimportant) notes and scribbles into the fire.
“I’m not going back anymore!” Mirabel whimpered. “I’m gonna sleep here and bathe in the river and not go to school anymore, and nobody will miss me!”
“I’d miss you!” said Dulce.
“But you’ll be here, right?” said Mirabel. “You’ll come sleep over just like always!”
“… well yeah but-”
The wind whipped. The fire guttered out in a push of smoke and ash. Mirabel winced at the spray of orange embers into her face. The rope outside kicked up off the ground in the wind… and kept bouncing even after it settled back into a hard gust.
Mirabel was too suspicious to cry. “… why’s that rope there?”
“That’s what I was saying!” said Dulce. “Cuatro told me to ignore it!”
“No I didn’t! I was saying Mirabel was more important than some stupid-”
The gusts were coming close and closer together. Mirabel could feel them through the stones of the wall, each blast of air pushing the rocks just that little further into her shoulder-
It was like every hair on her body stood up all at once and bristled her with electricity. Without thinking, she dropped everything in her arms and ran for the yard, only grabbing Dulce and Cuatro because they were right in front of her. With a hard crack and a whuff of air like a withheld breath, the unmortared stone wall tipped forward and collapsed at her heels, burying the clubhouse.
There wasn’t even time to mourn, because the next instant, Bruno was yelling “GRAB THE DAMN ROPE!”
&&&&
“Wait, Bruno?!” Dolores shouted.
“What does Bruno have to do with anything?!” said Julieta.
A few of the villagers and most of the children were busy crying at the “death” of the clubhouse and Señor Raton, so Mirabel took the opportunity to catch her breath and shrug. “I mean, I didn’t know it was Bruno at the time! In fact I just kinda figured out it was Bruno while I was telling it.”
“Wait, really?!” Dulce looked over at Bruno. “… oh yeah, I guess he has the nose…”
Cuatro pointed at Bruno and accused Felipe, Martina, and Yeimi. “And YOU thought we made him up!”
Julieta wasn’t letting it get lost in digressions. “What? Does Bruno?? Have to do with this???”
He had been fairly silent the entire storytelling session. Seeing the whole story unfold from Mirabel’s perspective was refreshing. It was nice to not have to make his own entertainment for once. But the answer, so obvious from where he stood, fell out of his mouth in a frustrated huff that had gotten him in trouble as a kid and wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. Julieta had known him his entire life and she still had to ask?! It was a stark reminder of why he left in the first place.
Bruno wailed. “I can see the future!”
Thankfully, Dolores could pick up on pieces and put them together in a hurry. “Bruno knew what was happening the entire time.”
“Of course I did!” Bruno explained. “My little baby niece feels unappreciated by her f-family and half moves out, staying with her friends and stealing fo-food for them? She was m-me, basically! I kept track of her in my vi-visions to make sure she didn’t get hurt!”
“And you didn’t tell us?!” said Julieta.
Bruno let that silence hang for a few seconds until Julieta remembered that Bruno was living secretly in the walls for that part of the decade.
“Sorry. I’m just-” Julieta sucked in a breath. “It’s very upsetting to hear all of this six years after the fact.”
“You’re okay,” said Bruno. “But- but yeah, the visions told me about Antonio’s birthday and the blizzard and the wall falling. And I had to keep the kids safe, so, I thought of the rope.”
&&&&
Bruno couldn’t flinch. He had to keep his eyes on the kids, even though he saw them almost get crushed under a few hundred pounds of sharp rocks and gravel in the middle of a blizzard along with the tea towel rat he worked hard to make for Mirabel and he was cold and it was dark and they weren’t grabbing the rope like they were in the vision damn it what was he supposed to do they were gonna get stranded out there and get frostbite if they didn’t-
“GRAB THE DAMN ROPE!”
And so he screamed at a group of scared children while hiding in a clump of grass.
&&&&
Mirabel took back over. “So we grabbed the rope.”
Bruno was shivering with repressed trauma. “D-do-doing this in p-public is h-hard…”
“You did good! But I got it from here.”
&&&&
So, terrified, they grabbed the rope.
It pulled them along at the speed of sound (or at least faster than their little kid legs were used to going), whipping them blindly through the maize and into the depths of the field. The crunch under their feet shifted from the familiar crinkle of leaves to the slippery biting cold of snow. Mirabel, mashed between Dulce and Cuatro, couldn’t see further than her own hands, but she could tell they were going in a straight line towards the forest by the darkening of the sky overhead. It felt too fast and too long by the time the pull finally ceased, and when she could gather her senses again…
They were in a rough shelter made of wood planks and tarps hanging from ropes tied between the trees, and in the middle of it was a blazing bonfire. The only company other than Dulce and Cuatro was a man in a dark green cloak with a big nose and eyes hidden behind dark bangs.
“U-uhm….” said the main. “B-behold! You are in the presence of The Wizard!” He held his hands aloft and bellowed, “Of the TREEEES! And I have SAVED YOU from certain doom!”
Dulce turned tail and tried to run.
“Do not run from the Wizard!” said the Wizard. “For it is… really, really cold out there! Like you wouldn’t believe!”
“DAAAAD?!” shouted Cuatro, not taking his eyes off the Wizard.
“That would normally work and that is a good thing to do, but he can’t hear you right now!” said the Wizard. “Uh- because no one can hear you from within the realm!” He held his hands aloft and bellowed. “Of the TREEEES!”
Mirabel wasn’t sure why Dulce and Cuatro were reacting like anything was wrong, because she was fairly certain she’d never seen a more harmless man in her life. She almost giggled.
“You dare laugh! At the Wizard??” He held his arms-
&&&&
Mirabel lifted her hands aloft and bellowed. “Of the TREEES!”
The village children and Antonio did giggle, and even laugh out loud. The act was so very silly when nothing was wrong and everyone was cozy in front of the embers of a dying fire. The sky was even starting to turn blue.
Nonetheless, Alma was horrified. “And that’s all it took for you to trust a stranger??”
Mirabel pointed out yet again, “I mean, it was Bruno!”
“Yes but you didn’t know that at the time!”
“I mean, true, but also like???” Mirabel gestured at the hunched over twig man with the funky beard and the round nose. “It was Bruno.”
&&&&
“- of the TREEEES!”
The wind blew, knocking about the hanging walls and curtains in a cacophany of banging wood and creaking ropes. The Wizard dove over the wall tilting inward the most and leaned back against it. “Kids quick keep the walls straight don’t let the fire go out quick quick quick-!!!”
Instinctively, the three of them jumped to the other walls and reigned in the wiggling wood. The fire kept burning, even though the smoke would make for their faces if the wind blew funny. The Wizard waited until the wind died back down before he spoke.
“… very good children! You have done a service to the Wizard of the TREEES!” and there went the hands again. “For your good- um- service! You may shelter with me until the storm is over!”
“Weirdo,” said Cuatro.
Mirabel, feeling bad for the Wizard, just asked, “How did you know we were in trouble?”
“Oh, the Wizard knows all that happens within-” Hands. “THE TREEES!”
“… but we weren’t in the trees?” said Mirabel.
“It also covers anything that happens within about a hundred feet of THE TREEEES!” said the Wizard. “A-and also things MADE! Of the TREEEES! Look just-” He adjusted his hood so it covered more of his face. “I-I just know the Encanto really good, right? And I feel bad for what you kids are going through and thought- well, the trees-”
Mirabel shot her hands up. “The treees?”
The Wizard shot his hands up. “I mean THE TREEEES told me to keep you kids safe- oh god the wind again kids the walls-!!!”
It was like the wind had a personal vendetta against that one bonfire. Even after the gust subsided, it still blew steadily enough to where the Wizard had to lean hard on his wall to keep it steady. Under his breath, the Wizard cursed, “God damn it, Pepa…”
Mirabel gasped. “You know Tía Pepa.”
“I told you, I know the Encanto pretty good!” The Wizard slumped and rested up on his heels to let his toes warm near the fire. “And I know it’s rough out there, and that’s why I don’t live there anymore.”
“But you used to?” asked Dulce.
“Oh yeah, it was the worst!” said The Wizard. “All those gossipy people telling you to grow up to fast, or ignoring you if they liked your siblings more than you, and those stupid Madrigals with their special little powers getting all the attention and their dumb magic rooms but only because everybody always WANTS something from you-!!!”
&&&&
“You know, in retrospect, it was really obvious,” said Mirabel. “But anyway-”
&&&&
Mirabel IMMEDIATELY trusted him, because somebody finally understood. “So you ran away too!”
“I did!!! And you know what?!” The Wizard slapped the nearest tree. “It didn’t help!”
“WHAT?!”
“Yeah, like, some problems aren’t there anymore! But new ones just moved in to replace them! Wind-” He waited until the gusts were over. “There we go. Like- I did run away! I ran from all my problems and moved out here to be away from it, and I’m not gonna lie, there are some parts I really like! But what’s made the biggest difference for me- the thing that really made me feel better- wasn’t going away from the problems. It was realizing that sometimes… life is just bad. But it’s not your fault that caused it and it’s not your job to fix it. Things will just happen. The best you can do… is- is…”
His gaze fell on the bonfire. “… i-is I guess to tend your own fire.”
“Tend your own fire?”
“L-like look at today!” The Wizard gestured to the tiny shelter and the fire keeping them warm. “Look at what’s outside here! We can’t make this blizzard go away! We can’t change the blizzard-”
“Tía Pepa can change blizzards.”
“Are we Tía Pepa?? Then no, we can’t change blizzards! But we CAN make sure that when the blizzard happens, we have the walls to keep it out and the fire that keeps us warm until the blizzard goes away!” The Wizard made his point. “See?? And because I did the work to help myself, I was able to help you!”
“… so we can be safe by being selfish?” asked Cuatro.
“… yes! Kinda!” said The Wizard. “A little bit of selfishness is good for you! THAT is your fire- the part of you that knows that YOU are great, no matter what anybody else says! And that could be someone telling you you’re not great until you’re a grownup!”
Dulce’s eyes fell to her feet.
“Or not that special because you’re just one of a big group!”
Cuatro folded his arms.
“Or even just…” The Wizard couldn’t quite look at Mirabel. “Or just not feeling special in any way, I guess.”
He really did get it… Mirabel’s throat clenched on reflex, trying not to cry.
“But that’s what keeps you going. Knowing that you’re amazing, and if you’re amazing, then people can say whatever they want and it will never affect you. The cold will never get in, because you’ve tended your own fire.”
Mirabel lifted her hands. “In the treees?”
The Wizard smiled warmly and held his hands aloft. “In the treeees.”
“Our fire didn’t last all that well…” said Dulce.
“Yeah, well, nobody taught you kids how to mortar bricks. I don’t blame you,” said the Wizard. “But you did great! Really good job for doing things without any grown-ups there to teach you. The Wizard is proud of you.”
“Thanks, Wizard.”
“Now…” The Wizard braced himself against the wall. “This is gonna take a while… Who knows some good riddles?”
Antonio was born on May 21st, the result of a massive blizzard and binge eating tostones and nearly ten months of over-reliance on healing arepas. Pepa finally fell back into her birthing bed exhausted and wracked with pain and too scared of Julieta’s food to go near it. The little Antonio was swaddled and tucked into Pepa’s arms and cooed over by Félix and Alma in the wee hours of the morning.
Out in the dark, The Wizard lead Mirabel and the kids back to the fields with his rope and a torch he’d made from the bonfire’s embers. Mirabel, Dulce, and Cuatro stood a quiet vigil at the pile of stones that was the clubhouse before catching the flicker of a candle in the far distance. Throughout the whole blizzard, a little miracle on their own, the stone lanterns had stayed lit. Leaving them to their walk, the Wizard departed, and Mirabel lead her little family back through the snow and into their homes before making the long, lonely trek back to the Casita herself.
Casita welcomed her in through the window and immediately wrapped her in a blanket. She slept for an hour until Julieta peeked in to check on her.
“Mira, honey? Do you want to see your new little cousin?”
Tired, she remembered saying “No, gracias”.
“That’s okay,” Julieta told her sincerely. “He’s going to have to stay with Pepa for a while anyway, so sleep in a little today. We’ve all had a hard night.”
The Madrigal house stayed quiet for a few hours longer.
&&&&
The skies were clear and blue.
“Oh, Mirabel…” Julieta cried.
“Hey.” Mirabel shrugged. “That’s just life sometimes. It wasn’t just me- all of Dulce’s childhood toys she was scared of losing were in there, too. And Martina’s art supplies, and Cuatro and Felipe’s comics. We all lost a little something that night, but, like, that’s childhoood, right? Sometimes the things you appreciate are gone before you have time to cope.”
“But we’re your family!!” she pleaded. “We’re supposed to help you cope!”
“We had a baby to take care of at home! And a Pepa to recuperate! Everything worked out.” Mirabel pointed to Dulce. “I even got to go to her quince before she moved to the capital!”
Isabela balked. “But I didn’t get an invitation!”
Dulce, embarrassed, tucked in her shoulders and smiled. “I uh… only invited my closest friends.”
Yeimi posed. “We ROCKED that dance though.”
Felipe nodded. “I got to wear a skirt for it!”
“And that’s also when I decided I was gonna keep up the little kid brigade until my quince, since like, it was kind of the best time in my life, right?” Mirabel gestured at her little group of tag-alongs. “Good thing I never had one, right?”
The children of the Encanto screamed, “HELL YEAH!”
Ozvaldo agreed wholeheartedly. “You wouldn’t BELIEVE how much it helps to have Mirabel raise the kids for us!”
“I mean…” Mirabel patted Antonio on the head. “It worked for Antonio, right?”
Antonio looked upon his family with a newfound disappointment, suddenly aware of a lot of things no one had ever told him before, and he held tight to Mirabel’s arm.
“Well, a million years later, I think I’m finally done!” said Mirabel. “Any questions?”
Luisa, shyly, raised her hand.
“Luisa, go ahead!”
“… you don’t think your stuff is still there, do you?”
There was a strange movement, like a prickle of electricity that traveled through the little clubhouse gang all at once. Dulce was the one to go “Huh?”
Luisa admitted, “Well, we saw it collapsed, but I never went and moved the rocks, and nobody ever asked me to, so…”
Antonio jumped to his feet. “Señor Raton!!!”
It was like triggering a stampede. The little children all stood first, followed by the clubhouse gang and Bruno, then everyone else. They ran for the fields, right along the weathered and disused lanterns, moving at double speed compared to Mirabel’s short ten year old legs. Out into the maize and over to the latrine, right up to the pile of stones overgrown by light field grass and a few piles of ants. Luisa reached in at full strength and scooped up armfuls of rocks, throwing them casually to the side.
There, mostly flat and somewhat sooty but preserved under a pile of stone, was the clubhouse. The bookshelves had fallen forward and protected their contents from the elements. The oilcloth kept them dry. All of Martina’s drawings and Yeimi’s woodcarving and the boys’ comics and Dulce’s toys, only a few of them squished or muddy or burned, were there. In the middle was Señor Raton, right where Mirabel dropped him. He was even more pathetic than Mirabel remembered, incredibly small and uneven and, dare she say, ratty, but he was there. Mirabel picked him right up and mashed him into her nose. He smelled like mildew.
Juancho shrieked, “RATON LIIIIIVES!”
The Encanto cheered. A few of the field workers bounced ideas for rebuilding the place as a proper stone hut with a roof and mortar and window shutters. Dulce distributed her more forgotten toys among the village kids while reclaiming the ones she held dear. Martina bemoaned how her skills had barely improved. Felipe and Cuatro wondered how they ever read those terrible old comics now that they knew the good ones.
Yeimi said “CHRIST I’m tired. How are you all still awake??”
Mirabel came right out with it. “I DON’T KNOW. I am ABSOLUTELY up for going to bed.”
“You don’t STILL sleep in the nursery, do you??” asked Mariano.
“I don’t think I do?? I haven’t been in Casita since it woke back up!”
“Oh god-” Bruno got behind her and started pushing. “Bed. Bed bed bed bed bed bed bed!”
“I’mma go to bed bed bed bed bed lemme just get Raton here-”
Thus ended the Casita rebuilding party and the longest session of storytelling Mirabel had ever done, ever. It was just a quiet retreat of everyone in town back to their own houses to wash their faces and get back in their own beds. Antonio’s coatimundis could take care of the cleanup. Antonio himself passed out more or less the instant Mirabel picked him up, and once back at the Casita, she put him on his favorite jaguar to carry back to his room. Bruno patted her on the head and ducked into his renovated tower to find his bed. Mirab-
“Mirabel, honey?”
Honestly, Mirabel was very tired, but she still summoned up the gumption to smile. “Yeah, Mom?”
It wasn’t just her mother, but the entire family looking at her with expectant apologetic eyes.
Mirabel noped out harder than she ever had in her life. “You know what? It can wait until after we sleep.”
“Mirabel- no, honey, it can’t! Mirabel, you have to understand, we love you!” said Julieta. “We’re your family! I know we haven’t been perfect, but you should rely on us more!”
“Uh-huh.”
“And we want you to share with us-”
“Uh-huh.”
“-whenever you’re upset!”
“Mom, I’m not even upset.” Casita offered up a little chair, which slid into place against a side wall. Mirabel fell into it and relaxed. “All of that was so long ago- it’s all fine!”
“Mirabel, it isn’t fine!!” Julieta’s happy little smile fell, and along with it, the entire family behind her started to wince and cringe and grimace in sympathy pain. “Mirabel you just spent the last nine hours telling everyone in town about how you moved out of the house for half a year and we never noticed! We skipped your birthday- a lot of your birthdays! We have so much to make up for-”
“You really don’t.”
“Honey it’s almost like…” Julieta’s dawning horror broke over her face. “… you don’t expect anything from us…”
Mirabel shrugged. “Mom?”
“… yes, dear?”
She let her head fall back. “Go to bed.”
Mirabel wondered when Casita got a new tower.
The chair shot right up the side of the wall, up and up and then backward into the new room at the top of the new tower. Facing away from it, Mirabel didn’t get to see the pattern on her door, but she could tell by instinct that this was in fact her new room. To her delight, she realized that with this entrance-only-by-chair-evator system that none of the other family could get into it unless she, or Casita, approved. Even now she could hear the other family members clamoring from the ground floor asking where she’d gone. It gave her a vicious little self-satisfied thrill, and when her breath stuck in her chest, she turned around to see her new room.
Inside was an open field surrounded by maize-patterned walls and windows open to the wide blue sky, bigger than life and shining bright like the sun. She had bookshelves and a table and a hammock to sleep on, and her little toys and concertina and paper and sewing supplies from the nursery, along with a door to a private bathroom and a central hearth.
Mirabel cocked her hip out and grinned. “So, when were you gonna tell me you were jealous of the clubhouse?”
Casita’s little clinks and shuffles were pretty indicative that this was her way of saying she had spent six years being jealous of the clubhouse. As if the high-end, polished, adult-size and private retreat at the top floor wasn’t evidence enough.
Mirabel fell into the hammock and hugged Casita tight. “I love you too.”
While most of the Madrigals shouted for Mirabel’s attention, Antonio fell into deep soundproofed sleep and Bruno wandered the comfortable halls of his new tower. The village settled in to rest, the reframed thoughts of the Madrigal family bouncing around in sleep-deprived chaos. Mirabel took one last little look out the massive windows, seeing the breadth of the valley spread out in a panaroma before her, and then hurried into the bathroom for a soak in the tub followed by about seventeen hours of sleep.
This made up for a lot of missed birthdays.
It was gonna make for a great story later.