Disclaimer: I do not own Encanto. This story is not for profit.


Chapter 12

October 25th

Afternoon and Evening

Everyone worked through the afternoon with only snacks to eat because of the big celebration breakfast and everyone's desire to make up for a work day at the construction site being rained out. Bruno kept Mirabel at his side building the outer stone wall. He showed her how to fit the stonework together properly and how to wipe off the excess mortar between the stones.

Mirabel found comfort in working with him. "When I was little…"

"Yes?" Bruno asked.

"I can't remember anything before my 5th birthday party except a totally random memory of discovering a yellow butterfly in our courtyard," Mirabel admitted.

"I think that's normal," Bruno said. "I don't remember much from before my 5th birthday party. Just the one year my Madre was so sad that our Padre wasn't here that we all slept in the same bedroom one night. What do you want to know?"

"Isabela said that you came and went all the time without us knowing if we were going to see you for a while. That you spent a lot of time in your room by yourself."

"That's true." For a long moment, Bruno focused on wiping off excess mortar with the smoothing tool.

"Then…were we close, at all?" Mirabel braced herself for his answer.

But Bruno gave her a little smile. "Well, besides sitting on my lap all the time while I sewed and asking me a million questions, all of them adorable, you used to play in my room all the time."

"I did?"

"I-It wasn't always the way it was when you were in there," Bruno said. "Once I stopped using my Gift, it – uh, it changed a lot. Way more sand. Even more stairs, if you can believe that. And the sand that was there used to be well-behaved." He suddenly chuckled. "You used to get Pepa to help you make sand sculptures. She'd bring the rain and get the sand all wet for you, and you made all kinds of things – including mounds you said were all of us."

Mirabel tried to picture this as she carefully laid more stones. In the end they would need a ladder, but so far the wall was only four feet tall. "Where did you sleep?"

"The sand covered my bed once I left," Bruno said. "It was like Casita knew I wouldn't be coming back, so there was no need for a bed anymore. The bed used to be before the stairs, and there were these curtains that closed off the sleeping area from the rest of the room. All that was gone the last time I went back to my room. I used to go just to check it out. I have no idea how you climbed all the stairs that appeared."

"It wasn't easy," Mirabel grumbled. "I had to sing like four songs to myself. And at one point I almost gave up – but I thought I was saving the miracle, so I pushed on."

Bruno placed a hand on her shoulder. "You may not have saved the miracle, but you saved me, kid."

xxx

When work stopped for the day, everyone helped cover the construction site.

"Not knowing what the weather will do is an adjustment, but I think we're getting the hang of this," Mirabel said, working together with Luisa and their father.

"That's right. We're going to be just fine," Agustín said.

At dinnertime everything was set up in the market plaza because the ground at the construction site was too muddy to be desirable. All the women of the village, including the Madrigals, cooked and helped plate everything, while the men set up the tables and chairs and then played music to keep the women company.

The Madrigals pushed two tables together so that they could sit in a semblance of their familiar arrangement, Abuela sitting at the head of the table. "Good evening, everyone. I have announcement to make. It has been decided that everyone who wishes to leave the Encanto may do so, and be welcomed back with open arms if they change their minds. As well, any outsiders who wish to live in the Encanto may apply for citizenship, in the unlikely event that anyone discovers our mountain pass. From this moment forward, we shall also have guards armed with binoculars and horns to sound the alert in the event of an unexpected visitation."

Mirabel glanced around the table. Mostly, her family seemed stunned.

"Then cooler heads prevailed," Bruno muttered.

Mirabel bit her lips to keep from snorting. He'd used her pet phrase back at her.

"It took a lengthy deliberation," Abuela said, seeming to not understand any potential insult toward herself.

"What about my daughter's reputation?" Félix asked. "Do I have to break some heads?"

"Not at this time," Abuela said.

"Good." Félix relaxed back in his folding chair and grinned.

Abuela continued. "The house is coming along wonderfully. I am so proud of all of you for persevering through this difficult time. As soon as the house is completed, we will throw the biggest party in the Encanto's history as a thank you to our village. I truly feel we are of one heart."

Mirabel glanced away. Except the people who are going to leave.

"That is the least we can do to repay the village's kindness and support," Julieta agreed.

No one else seemed particularly excited. Bruno looked nervous, and to Mirabel's surprise, Antonio stopped eating and pushed his food around with his fork.

"Finally, after dinner, I would like to speak with you, Mirabel," Abuela said.

All eyes turned to Mirabel.

Mirabel frowned for an instant, then put on a smile. "Sure." That wasn't really a request, as usual. Well, she might be sorry she asked me, in the mood I'm in. She couldn't stop thinking about her 5th birthday party. Whenever that happened, she was prone to one of her rare explosions. With sudden self-reflection, Mirabel realized that she was Julieta New and Improved, 2nd Edition. Trying to stay positive no matter what? Check. Holds it in until she bursts? Check. Urges to do bodily harm to people in the family, like Abuela? Check. Great. Thanks, Abuela, for messing up my Mamá so she could turn around and mess me up. Oh, and Luisa, and Isabela, too.

After dinner, true to her word, Abuela rose and gestured for Mirabel to join her. "Let's take a walk. It's a lovely evening."

The corner of Mirabel's mouth twitched. It won't be for long. "Sure." She walked by her grandmother's side.

The sun had set, revealing stars, and while the evening breeze was cool and damp, it wasn't chilly. Smells of the delicious foods everyone had cooked wafted from the plaza, reminding Mirabel of the festivities they were leaving. Being alone with Abuela felt uncomfortable, and Mirabel realized she expected her Abuela to get revenge for Mirabel and Bruno standing up to her and having to concede that people were allowed to leave the Encanto now.

"I became very self-involved," Abuela said without any preamble.

Mirabel watched her grandmother out of the corner of her vision and pretended to be staring straight ahead.

"I was obsessed with creating a perfect world. A paradise." Abuela bowed her head. "But it seems that was not to be. Now our house is gone, the miracle too, and people are leaving the Encanto. I imagined a world that was safe. Safe from everything: safe from soldiers, from death, from abandonment and disappointment, safe from natural disaster and hunger, safe from disease." Her voice was wistful. "A place with no danger or distress, where war is unthinkable and children never have to be orphaned."

Mirabel found her voice. "You left something off the list. You didn't make your world free from emotional pain."

Abuela stopped and stared at her.

Mirabel took a deep breath and gathered up her courage. "The Encanto is a really nice place to live. We have food, water, shelter, no war, we have no crimes and no dangerous weapons. We are very physically comfortable." She placed her hand on her heart. "But on the inside, on the inside, where we truly live, we are in agony. Our spirits, our hearts, our minds, are in agony. Abuela, I would choose to be hungry every day if this internal agony would just stop."

She gestured with both hands. "And I know I'm not the only one to feel this way. And I know you feel this way, because you shared that with me down at the river. You told me that this is why you try to control everything and everyone. So you know. You know it's true that the Encanto can't protect you from what you most want it to protect you from. And it doesn't protect anyone else from it, either."

"I'm sorry," Abuela said.

"You know when I really needed to hear that? Ten years ago. Ten years ago, an apology would have ended this pain. But now? An apology isn't enough. An apology isn't enough to stop hurting. Leaving behind the way you talk to me, and talk to other people in the family, and leaving it behind forever, is the thing that's going to be big enough to put us out of all this pain."

"I don't know what you are talking about," Abuela said. "What is wrong with the way I talk to you and our family?"

"If you don't know, you better figure it out," Mirabel said, consciously echoing Félix when he gave the same advice about Bruno's visions.

"Help me to figure it out," Abuela said.

"I am," Mirabel said. "I actually told you everything you need to know. Good night, Abuela." She walked back to the plaza and helped clean up. She was not going to give her grandmother the power to refuse to dismiss her.

As she worked together with her family to collapse the tables and chairs and gather them together, her mother asked, "What was that about? Are you OK?"

"No," Mirabel said, snippier than she would have liked. She breathed deeply. "I'm not OK. Because none of us are OK. You're not OK either, Mamá. That is what I just got finished explaining to Abuela. Because I care about this family, no matter what she thinks."

"I think she's starting to get the message," Bruno said.

"Maybe." Mirabel wasn't holding out hope.

"Did she read you the riot act about walking away from her this morning?" Bruno asked.

Mirabel rolled her eyes, but she relented because she didn't want to make her uncle anxious. "I think she's trying to figure out how to apologize before she knows what to apologize for. She told me the story of the Encanto's founding again, because it's on her mind that some people are going back to the rest of Colombia. She knows I'm her biggest critic right now, and she's got it in her head that if I start agreeing with her, then everything is fine again."

"I believe that," Isabela said. "I totally believe that."

"This is so hard on her," Julieta said.

"Harder than spontaneously being shut up behind a circle of impassable mountains so that you can never see your families again?" Mirabel asked. "Abuela kidnapped them."

Julieta frowned and propped a hand on her hip. "That is ridiculous. She protected them."

"If they had a choice, if they had asked her to do what she did, if they had had time to think about it, if they knew what was going to happen, then maybe I would buy that," Mirabel said. "They had no idea what was going to happen, and it happened so fast that they didn't have a choice about which side of the mountains to be on. And then it's seemed irreversible this whole time. I don't think it's ungrateful or weird to be happy that the mountain pass is open so that they can just go home."

"This is our home," Julieta said, seeming alarmed.

Agustín hugged her. "Now, mi encantadora esposa…People are going to feel the way they feel. Maybe they never adjusted. Maybe a few of the families have been telling themselves this is all temporary, and now that the war has probably blown over, they want to go back to the rest of Colombia. Maybe they want to travel. Maybe they're sick of all this and want to go to America. Or Europe. Think of that."

Julieta hid inside his embrace. "There is no better place than here. What do I care for Europe or America? We have our place here."

"Then you can stay. No one is making you leave." Agustín rubbed her back.

"What's America?" Antonio asked.

Pepa glanced at him. "I'll tell you later."

Camilo picked his little brother up and hugged him. "America is a country. The U.S.A. People used to go there to get jobs."

"There are jobs here," Antonio said, scrunching up his face. He seemed more confused instead of less.

"It's complicated," Camilo said.

Mirabel felt exhausted. Another pet phrase of this family: It's complicated. She counted them off. It's complicated, be grateful, it's fine, oh, yeah, and we have work to do. That's a gem. As if we can ever work hard enough to escape facing how we really feel.

Camilo responded to his brother's pleading look to explain. "When people got sick of every place around here, they used to go to America. They'd get whatever kind of job they could, and sometimes they'd stay, and sometimes they'd come home after a while. It depends."

"They'd go just because they were bored?" Antonio asked.

Camilo chuckled. "Sometimes."

"And sometimes they wanted to travel the world, just to see it," Isabela said. She was using a broom to help sweep the plaza clean of any debris.

Mirabel noted the longing in her sister's voice.

"And there are landmarks all over the world that people claim everyone should see at least once," Pepa said. "Like the pyramid at Giza."

"What's Giza?" Antonio asked.

"I have a postcard that someone send your Abuela's Mamá, that she gave to me when I had similar questions," Pepa said. She paused, her brow suddenly furrowing with grief. "Or I did. I'm sorry, Tonito." She breathed deeply. "For a moment, I forgot."

Félix grabbed her hand and pulled her into a little dance. "If the magic comes back, then all our stuff will be safe and sound. It'll appear again."

Pepa pulled away from him with a scowl. "Don't tell him that! You don't know that."

Antonio looked at his parents with worry and clung to Camilo.

"I-I-It's best not to be overly optimistic," Bruno said.

"Giving up hope is bad for the soul," Félix said.

Julieta pulled away from Agustín and held up her hands. "Let's not argue. It's been a long enough day already."

Mirabel groaned. "Yeah. This day feels like three days."

Once the plaza was cleaned up, everyone split up for a second round of baths. No one wanted to go to sleep dirty, and everyone had worked up a sweat, not to mention all the mud at the construction site had managed to get all over them. Mirabel was too tired to brush her hair after her bath, but she gave it a few grumpy swipes anyway.

Everyone collapsed in the nave of the church and went to sleep relatively quickly, even Luisa, who usually tossed and turned.


Notes: There is a parallel between Abuela in Encanto and Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision. They both made worlds they believed to be paradises – and trapped other people in the process – because they lost a loved one.