Godmother
Chapter Twelve
Apologies for the lateness of this chapter! It has been a very hectic time of the year for me and I'm finally able to sit down for long enough to get this done.
A wee note on the use of mythical creatures here: One thing I've always found fascinating about world culture is the common thread that runs through folklore and how certain stories are repeated by cultures that have little to nothing else in common. Many cultures have their own version of the Cinderella tale with different elements (Aschenputtel for slavic, Yeh Shen for Chinese, Rhodopis for Egypt) and I've found a lot of places have a creature that tempts humans into the water to drown them (usually a beautiful woman, occasionally a very nice horse)! The creatures I reference in this fic are not completely accurate, I've taken a lot of liberties with them, but they do broadly resemble different icons in world folklore.
Specific note on this chapter: Can you guess what my favourite film is?
…..
Mirabel's dreams were strange, muddy and sour. It felt like she was trying to walk through a marsh but all her limbs were weighed down by something slimy that dragged on the ground. There was a raw taste in her mouth, rusted metal and old blood. She couldn't see anything through a thick brown fog.
When she did wake up, her head was pounding. Her muscles ached like she had been running all night. She lay in bed, unmoving, hoping for the headache to melt away, until Luisa knocked and then barged through the door.
"Hey Mira, we're waiting to start breakfast, did you need some...are you okay?"
Luisa loomed over the bed, searching Mirabel's face worriedly.
"Just a headache," Mirabel groaned, pushing herself up to a seated position. The room spun a little.
"It's all that palm sugar," Luisa said, shaking her head. "I don't know how you can stand it, more than a spoonful gives me the shakes. I can bring your breakfast up to you if you're not feeling well enough...?"
"No, no," Mirabel waved her off. "Start without me, I'll be down in five minutes."
"Okay. You want some help getting dressed?"
"No, I'll be fine. I just need to get up and get moving, right?"
Luisa was a firm believer in the power of proper circulation to fix any problem, ironic for a daughter of a supernatural healer. She hadn't had an injury or illness healed by her mother since she was a child, and put it down to the stretches and jogs she did every morning without fail. Humouring her was the fastest way to get her to leave you alone.
Luisa thundered away and down the stairs, and Mirabel struggled out of bed. Her headache eased a little, but a heavy feeling settled in her hands and feet, like she was holding weights with them. Her stomach was churning, and her skin tingled. It felt itchy, like tiny pinpricks poking through. She shivered, with each pinprick a wave of coldness rushed through her blood.
Something wasn't right. She pulled on her clothes and washed up for breakfast achingly slow, all the time looking for something that was off. Outside the window, the crop of butterflies that were usually there to greet her were missing. She strained to hear the distant whispering from outside the Encanto, but there was dull silence.
It's just a virus or something. They'll stay away if they know I'm sick.
The corn husk doll in the window smiled with its blood-red mouth. Why had Senóra García given the doll a face? It looked out of place on a traditional doll, gaudy. Mirabel reached out to see if she could wipe away the paint, which still looked somewhat wet...
...a sharp pain ran through her finger and echoed throughout her body, knocking her to the ground. She examined her shaking hand, expecting to see blood, but the skin was unharmed.
"Mirabel? You okay up there?"
"I'm fine!" she called back, trying to keep the trembling out of her voice.
It's a fever or a virus, nothing more.
Unsettled, she made her way downstairs to where everyone else was halfway through breakfast. She tried to act as normal as possible, though a few concerned glances from her family showed that she wasn't doing a very good job.
Julieta, the very person who should have picked up on it first, seemed unbothered.
"Luisa said you have a headache," she said, placing the usual milk-and-palm-sugar mix in front of Mirabel.
"It's nothing big, I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Mirabel mumbled.
"We should start trying solid food again soon, all this sugar is probably messing with your system."
Mirabel took a look inside the cup before she drank. Was the milk always this dark? It had a brown tinge to it, like pale caramel. She sniffed it; it didn't smell any different, but the consistency was thicker than usual.
"Is there something else in this?" she asked Julieta, who was taking her seat at the table again.
"No," Julieta shrugged. "We ran out of the usual palm sugar, I had to borrow some from Senóra Gúzman. I think their's is more raw than ours."
With Julieta and Mirabel both settled at the table, Alma took up her usual agenda for the day; assigning tasks to everyone. The family half-listened between bites of food and sips of coffee. Things were finally starting to feel normal again. Mirabel sipped her milk, gagging a little on how thick it was. Had the milk turned? Was this a milkshake in disguise to slip a few extra calories into her?
Even the aftertaste was odd. It was bitter, and it stung slightly like alcohol. The little pinpricks running all over Mirabel's skin surged. A pressure built in her blood, pushing through her veins and arteries to the surface.
…..
The court felt the pressure from their own realm. A few of them had tried to take up the usual position watching over the butterfly queen's child near the living house, but the atmosphere around it had turned aggressive towards them. It stank of old iron and bitter herb, they could not cross the boundary without risking their lives. They were a cautious people, they trickled back to their home ground to wait for orders from the queen.
When the queen returned from her gathering, she knew that once again the mortals were trying to sever the bond between herself and her child. Her fury was boiling hot, melting rocks and simmering water. They had done this to her before, when the child was still too young to bind to her forever. It would not happen again.
She gave her orders, and thousands of butterflies and moths fluttered out into the outskirts of the Encanto, hissing and whispering to each other as they went.
…..
Luisa kept one eye on Mirabel over breakfast. Just when she thought things were finally getting back to normal, it looked like she was ill again. Her face was drained of colour, and she was staring into her glass like she thought the milk was sour.
With duties assigned, the rest of the table made the usual small talk. Isabela was trying to get a rise out of Luisa, teasing her about one of the corn farmer's sons who seemed very taken with her, but Luisa was only half-listening.
"I mean, he's pretty strong in his own right," Isa chattered. "He'd have to be, you know? All that harvesting work is basically like lifting weights..."
"Sounds like he's better for you than me," Luisa jabbed back, squinting a little in Mirabel's direction. There was still nearly half a glass of milk left, if she was giving up drinking the milk-and-palm-sugar then she was going to starve to death.
"Yeah, no," Isabela said. "He's not my type. And he's not interested in me anyway, he's interested in you!"
Luisa could have bit back by saying no man at all was Isabela's type, Isabela's type was plump with a wide bosom and a jolly smile and worked at the tavern and wore red petticoats and was named Luz, but now wasn't the time for that conversation. In fact, that conversation was unlikely to ever happen, at least while Abuela was still alive.
"Think of the babies," Isabela continued. "You could have the world's strongest babies. And you could go on tour with them as the world's strongest family."
"Again, this sounds more like a you thing than a me thing," Luisa deadpanned.
"Well, we need someone to have a romantic life to gossip about," Isa shrugged. "Dolores isn't even married yet and she's already boring."
"What's stopping you?" Dolores shot back from across the table. "You're the oldest, technically you should be the one trying to get married before me."
"Traditionally! Tradition is for normal people. Anyway, if we were really going by tradition we'd be trying to get rid of Camilo first."
Camilo choked on his aguapanela, briefly shifting into his father and back again.
"Get rid of me? What?" he gasped.
Dolores snorted, and elbowed Camilo in the ribs.
"That's not an option," she said sweetly. "He only has eyes for that tavern girl...Luz, isn't it?"
Luisa didn't miss how Isabela's muscles tensed up at the mention of the tavern girl's name.
"I don't have eyes for her," Camilo huffed. "Benito does, I just go along with him when he wants to look at her through the window."
"Right, right."
"For solidarity, you know."
"And her tiny little blouses don't have anything to do with it?"
Isabela looked on the verge of manifesting a vine to strangle Camilo with, so Luisa cast her gaze around the table, looking for something to change the subject with. Her eyes landed on Mirabel, who was sitting so still it was easy to forget she was there...
Oh...
"Mira, you okay?" she asked, casting around the table for a clean napkin. "Why didn't you say anything?"
Dark venous blood, almost black in colour, was trickling from Mirabel's nose. She didn't seem to have noticed, she remained in her chair clutching her glass and staring at nothing. Rounding the table to dab at her nose with a napkin, Luisa noticed that she was faintly trembling.
"Luisa? What's going on?" Alma called from the head of the table.
"Mirabel has a nose bleed," Luisa called back.
She held the cloth tightly pressed to Mirabel's nose as the rest of the family began to fret and huddle closer to get a better look. There were a few dark droplets on the tablecloth in front of her; how had she not noticed? Julieta gently pushed Luisa's hands away and took the cloth herself, she tried to push Mirabel's head back but Mirabel wouldn't budge.
"Does it hurt? Do you feel sick?" she asked, but Mirabel wouldn't answer.
"She said she had a headache when I went to get her for breakfast," Luisa murmured. "She said it wasn't a big deal..."
"Maybe she fell on it?" Pepa fretted. A small wind was picking up around her, tossing her curls around her face. "We heard banging up there, maybe she fell? And didn't tell us?"
The family hovered, riddled with anxiety. A dozen hands offered clean napkins, someone offered to go boil some water, all the while Julieta tried to staunch the blood and searched her daughter's face for what was wrong.
Julieta was the only one that didn't immediately shrink back in horror when Mirabel's eyes started streaming that same dark blood. Struck dumb, they could do nothing but watch as Julieta cursed under her breath and tried to stem the flow. The blood tinted Mirabel's eyes scarlet as she tried to blink.
"I need another set of hands," Julieta said through gritted teeth.
Somehow, Luisa fought through her terror and grabbed another napkin. She held it under her sister's left eye and nose. The napkin was saturated in less than a minute, her own hands turned crimson and sticky.
"We need to send for the doctor," Alma said, going for the door. Luisa had never heard her sound so afraid.
She never got as far as the door. Suddenly, Mirabel's chair lurched backwards to the wall, where it shattered with a sickening crack. Mirabel was only on the floor for a moment before some unseen force lifted her up and threw her down, splashing a gout of blood across the tiles. She thrashed, back arched at an unnatural angle, her mouth wide open but no sound coming out.
Luisa couldn't be sure of what she was seeing, but she thought she saw Mirabel's skin ripple!
The tiles cracked under Mirabel as she was lifted and hurled against the ground, over and over. The walls shuddered, the window shutters flapped open and shut, the table and everything on it flew against the opposite wall. Antonio clung to his mother, wailing loud and high. Dolores dropped to the ground in a dead faint. Agustin retched into his hand. Everyone else was paralyzed by their terror.
"Luisa," Julieta said, her stern voice breaking through the chaos. "Come with me."
Julieta struggled to get her hands around her convulsing daughter, but under her instructions Luisa managed to grab a hold of her, held tight in a bear hug. She pinned Mirabel's arms to her side with one arm and held her legs as firmly as she dared; with any more pressure, she could easily break her bones. Even so, it took all of her legendary strength to hold onto her.
"Hold her still," Julieta commanded, as calm as could be. "It will pass, I promise you."
How can you know that?
"Easy now, easy," Julieta whispered to Mirabel, trying again to wipe the blood away from her face. "It'll all be over soon."
Mirabel's glasses had been smashed in the chaos, her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. There was a searing heat coming off of her skin, almost too hot for Luisa to touch. Under her palms, she felt something just under the skin moving around, pushing upwards.
Mirabel's mouth opened, but instead of a scream or a cry or anything else that they might have been expecting, a loud piercing screech like nothing they had ever heard came out. It was multilayered, like hundreds of voices screaming in unison, echoed closely by the roar of a thousand beasts. The sound burst through the Casíta, shattering windows, mirrors and everything else made of glass with it.
As soon as the last piece of glass hit the floor, the attack (or whatever it was) was over. Mirabel slumped in Luisa's arms, breathing hard, eyes closed. The heat coming from her skin waned, the house stopped shaking. The family stood in place, looking around at their ruined dining room, too shocked to speak.
"We have to move her upstairs," Julieta said, breaking the silence. "Before it happens again."
"Again?" Isabela spluttered. "You think this is going to happen again? What was that, what the hell was that...?"
"I don't know," Julieta told her, strangely calm. "But it would be safer if we brought her upstairs."
Numb, Luisa nodded and gathered up her sister in her arms. Her hands felt scalded, her muscles strained. The only other time she had come so close to having her strength fail her was when the candle was nearly snuffed out.
She looked at her family from the top of the stairs as Julieta gathered sheets and blankets, clutching Mirabel close to her. Dolores was just coming round, helped by her brother. Agustin was slumped in a corner with his head in his hands. Antonio was cradled between his mother and father, sobbing so hard his body shook. Isabela and Bruno were already sweeping the broken glass and what was left of breakfast off the floor, their eyes cast low and haunted.
It was a good thing Julieta was so steady. If they were all in hysterics, where would they be?
The two of them put Mirabel back in her bed, after changing her clothes and cleaning off the blood. Then Julieta ripped up some old sheets and used them to tie Mirabel's arms and legs to the bed frame.
"Do you really think it's going to happen again?" Luisa asked when Julieta told her to wrap a wide piece of fabric over Mirabel's torso. The unease must have been showing in her face.
"I don't know, Luisa," Julieta told her. "But better to be safe than sorry, right?"
It was strange. Her mother didn't even seem scared. Luisa's own heart was beating so hard she felt ready to burst. How could she be so calm after what they had seen?
…..
Alma paced around in front of the door, debating who to send for first.
The doctor was obvious, Mirabel hadn't been eating solid food and hadn't been getting any better and was now bleeding from her nose and eyes, the most likely explanation had to be that she had picked up some sort of virus that affected her particularly badly in her weakened state. The doctor could recommend a hospital to send her to and she could finally recover properly.
But...
The Encanto's priest could offer them some help. Maybe he had never seen...
(a demon)
...a strange phenomenon like they had just witnessed, but he would have connections in the priesthood who would know what to do.
Alma had long suspected there was something off about Mirabel since her failed gift ceremony. She tried so hard to push it out of her mind, but the girl had an unnatural history. Speaking languages she'd never heard before, the violent fits, the escape attempts, the screaming, all when she was still a young child.
She never believed, as Julieta once did, that the baby that was returned to them was not the one she had given birth to. She felt she still had a blood connection to the child, but it was clear that something had gotten a hold of her while she was missing and that something was unholy. Only an expert in these matters could help them now.
Just as she'd made up her mind to go to the priest to consult him, there came a frenzied tapping on the front door. Alma opened it, to find Senór Moreno, one of the corn stock farmers, standing on the doorstep, pale as milk.
"Please excuse me, Senóra Madrigal," he croaked. "We have a situation..."
"I am aware," Alma sighed. "We have it under control now. It's nothing to worry about, a few broken windows we can afford to have fixed. I am sorry the shaking made its way to your house..."
"No, no, Senóra," the man insisted. "I saw the Casíta shaking but it didn't go any further than that. This is different. My crops...they're all gone."
A cold feeling washed over her.
"Gone? Gone where?"
"Just...gone! I don't know how to explain it, I went out this morning and every stalk has been stripped!"
Alma looked past Senór Moreno; his lands were near enough to Casíta that they could get a clear view of his cornfields when the corn was close to ripe. The acres had been shining gold and green when she woke just after dawn that morning; now, they were mud brown and desolate.
"It's not just the corn, my wife's kitchen garden was stripped too," Senór Moreno continued. "Tomatoes, avocados, peppers, nothing is left. And our chickens..."
"The chickens too?" Alma whispered, trying to wrap her head around what had happened.
A rogue storm of locusts from the border could strip an entire town of its crops, but within three hours? With no sign of them now? The sky would be buzzing with the pests if locusts were behind this...
"They left the chickens but all the eggs are broken," Senór Moreno told her, clutching his cap in his hands. "My neighbour's goats...he had pots of milk and butter and they were either knocked over or swallowed up. His kitchen garden is gone too."
Another farmer was making his way to the Casíta, holding the broken stalk of one of his plants. Alma could see two more setting out as she talked to him. The Encanto was buzzing with hushed conversation, worried faces. Every garden and tract of land she could see from the steps of the Casíta was completely barren.
If every crop in the Encanto had been depleted, it would be nothing short of a disaster. The people didn't just grow their own food, they exported it to nearby villages and traded for goods they couldn't make or grow themselves. The Encanto was known to be prosperous, even during bad harvest years they usually made enough to get by.
Over the scared murmurings of the townspeople, Alma thought she could hear laughter in the far distance. A child's laughter, clear as a bell and full of mischief.
