Godmother

Chapter Nine

..

Three weeks almost to the day that Mirabel stumbled home, Julieta finally managed to find something to feed her that she could actually keep down. It was palm sugar dissolved in milk and whisked until frothy, hardly substantial but better than nothing. It failed to heal her gunshot wounds but it filled out her cheeks so she didn't look so sickly.

The doctor from the next village over was brought in to examine her, and although he was satisfied that her wounds were healing well, he was confused by her general state.

"If what you tell me is correct," he explained in hushed tones to Mirabel's parents and Alma, "she should be more malnourished, dehydrated even. She's a little thin but nothing to be worried about."

The mood in the Casíta flipped on a daily basis. They had been wallowing in grief followed by intense joy, but with things so uncertain there was a general air of confusion and anxiety. Isabela refused to act like anything was wrong at all, just glad to have her sister back, and Luisa buried her worry under her work as she'd always done. Dolores was quiet, often deep in thought and easily distracted. Camilo was his usual lackadaisical self but he spent more and more time out of the Casíta, doing who knew what with who.

As for Mirabel herself...

More and more, it seemed like she was drifting away from them all. Whether it was due to what had happened to her at the hands of El Verraco or something else she wasn't talking about, they couldn't know. Part of why the family spent so much time at her bedside was tinged with panic that she'd be gone again as soon as they turned their back for too long. For those that knew about Bruno's prophecy, there was an extra layer of worry.

She couldn't walk without help, but she often struggled her way over to the window to stare out into the distance. Sometimes whoever stopped by late at night found her propped up against the windowsill, fast asleep.

"You're going to give yourself a chill," Isabela moaned, dragging her back to bed on one of these nights. "You want to get even more sick when Mama can't heal you?"

Mirabel didn't answer her but let herself be tucked in without complaint. Before, she might have pushed Isabela away or made some wisecracks or even made fun of Isa for being worried about her. It just wasn't like her to be so quiet.

Internally, Mirabel was struggling with her own thoughts. She felt uncomfortable in Casíta in a way she never had before. There was a restlessness thrumming under her skin, a pull towards the edge of the Encanto. She could not tell her family that she heard singing in the wind, whispers and whirring in a thousand voices. Over the trees, she could see fragments of gold rising and falling. A handful of butterflies flitted around the gardens, unwilling to get too close to the house. At night, they were replaced with pale moths. They were watching her, she knew that.

Beloved child...

Her leg hurt, the rest of her muscles hurt, there was a burning pain in her stomach and throat from all the failed attempts at eating, and her glasses irritated her face and gave her a headache. She had felt rejected by Casíta before, when she was much younger. How much of what she was feeling now was that same rejection? If the butterfly queen's magic ran so contrary to Casíta's...

The songs came from voices that swirled and vibrated in uncanny ways, baffling to a human ear. Still, she understood what they meant.

Come back to us.

…..

"What are you doing?"

It was just approaching sunrise, and Dolores had caught Camilo with one leg in the window, the other propped up against the drainpipe, guilt written all over his face.

"I thought you were asleep..." he said, sheepishly.

"I'm sure you did," she deadpanned. "You've been getting away with this for a while, haven't you?"

"You're not going to snitch, are you?"

"No," she sighed. "I get it, I really do. We could all use a break..."

"Don't say it like that," he grumbled. "You'll make me feel bad. It's hardly Mira's fault things are so awkward now."

"Did I sound like I was blaming her?"

Dolores followed Camilo to his room. There were cushions stuffed under his blankets, just in case someone decided to check on him in the night.

"It's nobody's fault," he said, yanking back the covers and flopping across the mattress. "I mean, the grown-ups are being weird but they're just worried so..."

"They're more than worried," Dolores said, folding herself into a nearby rocking chair. "You wouldn't believe what I heard them talking about..."

Camilo paused, clearly weighing something up in his head. He frowned deeply, screwed up his mouth. Dolores waited, curious.

"I heard a few things," he said at last. "But I think I should show you."

Reaching under his bed, he pulled out a small wooden box. Flipping it open, he took out two battered-looking photographs. He passed one to Dolores; it wasn't anything too exciting, just Tío Agustin and her Papa with their children, posing in front of a cornfield. Dolores and Isabela looked to be about eight years old, gangly and gap-toothed. Luisa was a head shorter but already a sturdy-looking child. Camilo and Mirabel were babies in their fathers' arms, just about old enough to support their own heads.

"Look at Mirabel in that picture," Camilo told her. "Look closely."

Dolores peered at the picture carefully. There was nothing unusual about it that she could see. Mirabel looked like a typical baby, doughy-cheeked, beady little eyes, barely any hair.

"What am I supposed to be looking for?" she asked.

"Compare it to this one," he told her, passing her a second photo.

It was just Mirabel in this picture, probably taken a year apart from the first one. She was standing against a doorframe, squinting at the camera, still chubby in that unformed way of small children. Someone had tried to tame her crop of wild curls with a hairpin and failed, leaving little corkscrews splayed out all over her head.

"She's older?" Dolores shrugged.

"Okay, so you might not see the difference, but I do," Camilo told her. "People's faces change a lot over the years, but their bones and bone structure don't change all that much unless they get in an accident or something."

It made sense that Camilo would know that; he tended to study people in minute detail before he shifted into them. He could detect small changes in a face much quicker than the average person.

"I heard Abuela talking to Mom about Tía Julieta. About how she used to think Mirabel wasn't hers?" he continued. "I got curious, so I went digging."

Dolores trembled, suddenly full of dread.

"The kid in that second picture isn't the same kid from the first one. One of them is Mirabel. I don't know who the other one is."

…..

Eventually, Julieta reached her limit.

It happened when Mirabel was trying, once again, to eat. She was frozen with the spoon halfway to her mouth, resisting the urge to gag.

"Please, amore," Julieta begged. "I know it hurts you but you must try..."

"I am trying," Mirabel told her, swallowing hard.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. Julieta took the bowl away, her face tight and fists clenched.

"I don't understand," she muttered. "Nothing but milk and palm sugar and you don't even feel hunger...and you're not getting food from somewhere else?"

"Where would I get it from?" Mirabel countered.

"Whoever fed you while you were in the jungle, I suppose," Julieta snapped.

They hadn't discussed it before, but it had hung in the air between them ever since the doctor visit. Mirabel tensed under the blankets.

"There's something you're not telling me, Mira," Julieta began, taking up her seat at her bedside. "If you told me, maybe I could help you..."

"There's nothing to tell," Mirabel mumbled.

Even if she wanted to, it felt like a betrayal to talk about the butterfly queen openly. It felt like something terrible would happen if she spoke it out loud. A curious dread filled her when she thought about it.

"You're lying to me," said Julieta, her voice full of hurt. "You made it through the wilderness without shoes, without your glasses, completely on your own? You can't expect me to believe that!"

Mirabel's throat burned from the expelling of what little she had choked down to please her mother. With a sharp spike of anger she remembered how much it had burned when the witch pulled magic out of her.

"You're keeping secrets from me," she accused Julieta. "How can you expect me to be honest if you won't be honest with me?"

She almost regretted saying it, because of how crestfallen her mother looked. Julieta closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began.

"Please don't say anything until I'm finished," she said. "I thought I would never have to tell you about this."

…..

With five small children, the Madrigal household was a noisy, boisterous one. There was always a child running, a child shouting, a child making a mess, a child being dragged to take a bath or go to bed or sit at the table or get their hair tidied.

Isabela was dramatic and liked to complain, loudly and often. Dolores was a telltale, even before she received her gift she reported on everything she ever heard at length, all the time, whether anyone was listening or not. Luisa was a walking disaster, knocking over things and into things and creating chaos wherever she went. Camilo, small as he was, already had a streak of mischief running through him, especially when someone was trying to catch him.

Mirabel, on the other hand, was a placid child. She rarely cried, picked herself up if she fell over, and found things to amuse herself with for hours. She was happy to be in the same room as her mother or father without needing their attention, she could sit in a corner of the kitchen playing with the pots and pans while Julieta cooked all day. She was so quiet that the adults sometimes forgot she was in the room with them.

It was a particularly hot day, and Agustin promised to take the children to the clearwater pond to paddle and look for frogs. There was no discussion about whether Mirabel was going along, Agustin thought she was too young (Camilo being a few months older was just old enough) and Julieta thought she would be fine trailing after her sisters and cousins. That was the crux of the matter; Agustin thought she was with Julieta. Julieta thought she was with Agustin.

Nobody saw her leave the house.

The sun was starting to set when the children came back, tired and giddy and ready for dinner. Julieta didn't see Mirabel with the others, and asked where she was. That was when they realized their mistake. They realized she had been missing for hours.

They searched the house, even the children, but they knew that if Mirabel was still in the house that Casíta would have lead them to where she was hiding. The alarm was raised in the village, every able-bodied person set out to search every nook and cranny of the Encanto before it got too dark. They found little traces; a few broken cornstalks, a tiny footprint in a muddy puddle, a scrap of blue cloth on a thorn. Traces but no child.

Terrible thoughts ran through the minds of the Madrigal parents. There were jaguars in the jungle that sometimes trespassed close enough to grab a farmer's goat. There were snakes hidden in tree roots, caimans in shallow bodies of water. There were cesspools on farming land and herds of livestock fit to trample anyone into the dirt. There were poisonous spiders and scorpions in the undergrowth.

There were people. People that they knew, had known for years, but how well could you really know someone?

And on the edges of the Encanto, if a small child could make it that far, there were bands of roving militia who were always on the lookout for something they could profit from.

The sun went down on these thoughts, with no sign of the Madrigal baby. Julieta spent all night praying to her god and every saint she could remember. The cobbler's assistant rode overnight to the next village to borrow a dog that could track by scent. The village would start the search again at sunrise.

A full day and night after she had last been seen, the borrowed dog picked up a scent. It lead them on a path through the backwoods of the village; easy to see how such a small child could go unnoticed, through corn that was tall as a grown man, crawling through tunnels of shrubs and thickets, along rabbit trails too narrow for anyone bigger than a child to bother with. The dog lost the scent at the river.

Julieta spent a second night praying to the old gods of her ancestors, the ones whose names she could not pronounce, the ones that exchanged wisdom for blood sacrifice. She prayed especially hard to Bachúe, the goddess of motherhood. If any god could understand her pain, it would be Bachúe.

The river was trawled, but it was a difficult task. There were tunnels carved through the rock over thousands of years, hidden under the rushing water. The currents were deceptively strong, there were only a few places that could be crossed safely. They did find the most important clue there; a tiny white shoe. Agustin identified it as belonging to his daughter, Julieta could not bring herself to look at it.

Nine months in her belly, just over a year of life and all Julieta had to show for it was one white shoe.

She prayed that night to no-one in particular. She prayed to anyone that might have been listening.

Then, nearly a month after she last saw her baby, a man came rushing into the Encanto saying he had found a child wandering around by the river. She matched the description of the missing child perfectly, down to wearing one white shoe and a blue dress. Hope surged in the Casíta; they had been blessed with a second miracle.

Julieta tore out of the house to meet the man as he strode up the path with the girl in his arms, trailed closely by the rest of her family. But she stopped dead in her tracks when she took a good look at the child.

It was all wrong. That was Mirabel's blue dress, torn but recognizable, and that was her white shoe. She was reaching for Julieta as Mirabel had always done, babbled her baby talk in the same way...

...but it wasn't her. Julieta didn't know this child.

The rest of her family wept and thanked the man and fussed over the baby, but Julieta hung back until Alma asked her what was wrong, thinking perhaps she was overcome with her joy.

"That's not my baby," Julieta said, quiet but forceful.

Everyone went silent, except for the baby that kept babbling and reaching for Julieta.

"What do you mean, Juli?" Pepa asked, taking the baby gently from the man's arms. "Of course it's Mirabel, look at her!"

"That's not her," said Julieta, shaking her head and backing away. "Those aren't her eyes...it's not her. Dios mío, that's not my baby!"

The shrill rise of her voice distressed the baby, who began to wail. Pepa tried to shush her as the others milled around, looking uncomfortably at each other.

"She looks a bit different, she's been gone for a while," Agustin said, trying to keep Julieta from backing away any more. "It's natural she wouldn't look the same to us, right? But that's Mirabel, I know it is."

No, you don't!

Julieta was on the verge of screaming. Her baby's hair had been pin straight, like Isabela's. This baby had a head of riotous curls that seemed to move on their own, like worms. Julieta's baby had almond-shaped eyes, this baby's eyes were rounder, more turned in. Her fingers were longer and skinnier, her skin was darker, even her exposed foot was the wrong shape. It was the wrong baby.

"Poor Julieta, she's had such a hard time, she's not thinking clearly," Alma swept in, assuring the man who had delivered the baby to them. "It's so hard on a mother when these things happen, you understand?"

The man nodded, but didn't look wholly convinced. He accepted his reward gratefully and left the baby in the care of the Madrigals, but no doubt would be quick to spread the word that Julieta didn't recognize her own child to the entire village. Alma would have to react quickly to make sure the gossip didn't turn malicious.

The days that followed were a living hell. Accepting that her baby had died would have been easier than being pushed to accept an imposter child in her place, with everyone around her insisting it was her baby. She could barely look at this child, felt sick whenever she heard it referred to with the name of her dead child.

You must never call a baby beautiful, or the espiritú will take it away and leave a monster in its place.

That's what this child was, a monster. No matter how sweet it was and how it reached for her all the time, it was a monster sent to replace the child that was stolen from her. She ignored it, chased it out of the kitchen when it tried to settle there, pushed it away when it tried to touch her.

It greatly distressed her daughters, and she was sorry for that. Luisa would try to defend the little beast and Isabela was whinier than ever, complaining all the time that Julieta was being too mean. Even Agustin, who had always been so resolutely on her side, turned from her. He was so quick to pick the child up and wipe its tears and call it by his dead daughter's name. He didn't seem to see the difference, and a part of Julieta resented him for it.

One night she overheard Dolores asking Pepa if Pepa would stop loving her the way her Tía stopped loving her baby, and despite herself she felt bad. Not enough to have anything to do with the imposter baby, but her resolve wavered slightly.

Alma pushed the two of them together, insisted on leaving Julieta alone with the child to snap her out of this 'delusion' as she called it. Julieta found herself eyeing up the big tub in the corner, the sharp cleaver hanging over the stove. One hard push under the water, one quick cut in the right place and her problem would be gone. Or she could leave the door open and let the child wander off like Mirabel had, let it go back to where it came from. But these thoughts were fleeting, and she knew that she couldn't bring herself to hurt the imposter, angry as she was.

What broke her resolve entirely was unexpected. The child was clumsy, not in the way Mirabel had been as a baby just learning to walk, but more accident-prone as if it couldn't see what was in front of it. It tripped over things and walked with its arms stretched out in front of it, groping around for something to hold on to. Normally it fell into something and whimpered a little bit, then carried on its way.

She had been cooking a basket of arepas for the next morning's healing hours and ignoring the child when it put both its hands on the stove. The scream that came rocketing out of that little body shook loose Julieta's maternal instinct and she found herself scooping the child up away from the stove, rocking it as it wailed.

It all fell into place. She gave the child a leftover empanada from breakfast to heal the burn and held it...

...held her...

...close to her breast, rocking her and rubbing soothing circles on her back. For the first time, she was unsure of herself. It felt like the child was supposed to be there, in her arms. It felt like holding Mirabel.

Was I wrong?

To her, the child still didn't look like the child she lost. But perhaps her husband had been right, perhaps being lost had changed how she looked. Babies changed all the time. Her vision was impaired, perhaps because of a brain injury or some other trauma that happened when she was missing. Maybe she had been due to have curly hair and the curls had only grown in while she was missing. Perhaps her skin was darker just from being out in the sun.

She shelved her grief. She had a child that needed her, whether it came from her body or not.

For a while, things were good. Then the child they were calling Mirabel underwent a sudden, distressing change.

It started when she was three years old and sitting outside while Julieta hung out the laundry. She suddenly took off down the hill, running towards the river. Julieta ran after her and dragged her home, with the child throwing a forceful tantrum the whole way. She tried to run again the next day, and the day after that. On the fourth day, she managed to get to the outskirts of the village before she was caught.

Julieta had to rope in her other daughters to keep Mirabel contained. Luisa could hold her tight enough to stop her from bolting, and if she did get away Isabela could grow vines to wrap around her and pull her back. Luisa, ever happy to be helpful, didn't mind but Isabela was deeply resentful. She was old enough to want to do things on her own now, and she hated being called to rope in a screaming toddler. She hated how angry her parents got when she wasn't quick enough to react to Mirabel's running.

Mirabel started refusing food. Shortly after the escape attempts began, she stopped eating whatever Julieta tried to feed her, and anything Julieta managed to get into her was vomited up a few minutes later. She didn't lose any weight even after days with no food, but that also meant she couldn't be healed when she crashed or fell into things. She was given glasses in the hopes that they would help her navigate the house better, but it made her fleeing even more dangerous.

Eventually, they found themselves having to lock Mirabel up in the house. Casíta itself was on board, slamming its doors and latching its windows unprompted. Mirabel reacted badly to confinement; she screamed for hours, banging on the doors and windows until they broke. Worse still, the words she shouted during these fits were strange, a language they didn't recognize, clicks and overtones that should have been impossible for such a young child.

The doors and windows had to be reinforced, and on particularly bad days someone had to prop up the door with their body. Usually this was Agustin's duty, so that when the fit was over he could sweep in and put an exhausted Mirabel to bed. Luisa's gift came in handy for this task but they didn't like to ask it of her, knowing how distressing she found it.

Mirabel seemingly grew out of it after a while. She began to eat again, stopped trying to run away, stopped speaking in tongues. She even started to look more like what Julieta thought her Mirabel would look like as she got older. There were times when they caught her singing a song they'd never heard in a language they didn't understand, but those times were few and far between.

Throughout it all, Alma never doubted that the child living under her roof and answering to the name Mirabel was her granddaughter. She maintained that Julieta had suffered a delusion brought on by the shock of her child going missing.

Then Mirabel's gift ceremony went so horribly wrong, and her mind was changed in an instant.

…..

Mirabel stayed true to her word. She said nothing until Julieta was finished with her story, as much as she wanted to say something. She wanted to say many things.

Chief among those things was a single sentence, repeated over and over in her mind.

You don't think I'm your daughter.

Everything made sense now. Abuela's cold treatment when the ceremony failed. Isabela's resentment over the years. Why Julieta had hardly ever stood up for her when she was pushed to the periphery of the family.

I'm not a Madrigal.

I don't know what I am.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" she asked at last, swallowing past the lump in her throat.

"I thought I'd never have to tell you," Julieta answered. "I never wanted to."

"I'm not your daughter..."

"No! That is not true!" Julieta exclaimed, taking Mirabel's hand and holding it to her heart. "I don't know what happened to my baby, whether she was lost or she came back...but I have raised you for fourteen years, you are as much my daughter as she was."

Mirabel didn't know how to respond. Her whole body felt cold. There was something almost shameful about knowing what she knew; it made her want to run away and never look back.

"I have told you the truth," Julieta said. "Now you tell me. Who helped you to find your way home?"

She couldn't lie, her mother would know. But she couldn't talk about the butterfly queen either.

"I didn't see her properly," she began her explanation. "And she never gave me her name. She was a bruja, she lived in the forest. She carried me on her back and dropped me off at the river."

None of that was a lie, not really. Julieta sighed her relief. She collected the uneaten food, kissed Mirabel's forehead and told her she loved her. She told her to get some sleep.

Gritting her teeth, Mirabel waited until she could hear her mother's footsteps trail off into the kitchen, then she pulled herself out of bed to go to the window. It was dark now, only a handful of lights still on in the nearby houses. She caught sight of a few moths fluttering near her window, not close enough to the Casíta to alight on it but hovering close. They had voices like rustling paper.

Tonight is a good night.

Come with us.

We have such sights to show you.

She would never be able to make it far, but she felt like making an attempt at least. She pushed the window open and gingerly inched her way onto the roof, sitting just close enough for the largest moth to land on her outstretched hand. In an instant, a spreading warmth suffused under her skin. Faint traces of gold glimmered in her veins.

Step forward.

She is waiting.

The air beside the roof wavered like a pool of water. Even looking at it, Mirabel felt the pain in her leg recede.

She stood up and walked off the roof.