Chapter 13
Apologies for the late arrival of this chapter, recent world events have had me too stressed out for personal reasons to write, thankfully I had good news I was waiting on so my motivation is temporarily back. Hopefully it will stick around for a while.
…..
The kitchen was cold when Isabela shuffled in, the sink piled with dishes, the storage baskets empty. Shivering in the morning chill, she lit the stove and put a fresh pot of water on the boil. The canister of coffee was down to a quarter of its usual stock, even though they were carefully rationing it now. She checked the cornmeal jar too; almost completely gone.
We have some eggs still, don't we? In the tróje...
Luisa walked in as she was thinking, slumped over with exhaustion, carrying a basket of ripped up sheets, dark and sodden with blood.
"Is there still coffee? I need coffee," she groaned.
"There's enough for a small cup," Isabela told her. "I think you need sleep more than coffee though."
"Don't we all," Luisa grumbled quietly.
"How was she last night?"
"Bad. I thought she was going to bleed out. And when she could talk, she kept saying Mama was trying to poison her."
Isabela made two small cups of coffee and passed one to Luisa. She hadn't heard Mirabel speak at all since the fits began, but whenever she was on duty in the nursery she did see Mirabel shrink away from Julieta as though she thought she was trying to hurt her.
"She's sick," Isabela said. "It's not her fault...I mean, it's hard when the treatment hurts the person you're trying to help..."
"What treatment? Has Mama ever told you what exactly she's trying to do?" Luisa fired back, gripping her hair in frustration. "She needs a hospital, what are we even doing keeping her locked up here like some crazed animal?"
"She's not locked up," Isabela argued. "She's tied down for her own safety. She'll hurt herself if she isn't. They'd do exactly the same thing in a hospital."
They sat together for a while in grim, contemplative silence. Dolores had fled the house after just one day, unable to take the constant screaming, rattling and the strange noises coming from the nursery. Pepa joined her the next day with Antonio; although she wanted to stay and help her sister with her terribly ill niece, her fear and panic was making the whole Casita unsafe with constant flooding and high winds.
The men had fled too, in their own way. Alma had taken a significant chunk of the Madrigal family wealth and was using it to supply the village with imported crops, sending Agustin, Felix and even Camilo off to collect what they needed. Although they all said they wished to stay behind and help, their haste in leaving to the other towns said differently.
Alma was also distributing the Madrigal's food stores to the village. Their own few crops had been untouched by whatever had stripped the Encanto of its food, but it was really only supposed to be enough for their household. Isabela did what she could with growing edible plants to fill things out, but edible plants were much more complicated than flowers. Her entire room had been taken over by fruit trees, but she couldn't produce a single stalk of corn.
That left Luisa, Julieta and Bruno managing Mirabel's condition, all day and night. Julieta almost never left her side, trying over and over to get her to eat something and wrapping her in makeshift bandages near every hour. Luisa held her down during her fits when the restraints snapped. Bruno tried to do both while they stole an hour of sleep here and there, but he wasn't strong enough to hold her, and didn't have the heart to try and force her to eat. At his most useful, he washed the bandages over and over so they always had a fresh supply.
Desperately needed, because Mirabel was bleeding through her skin now. It was like she was covered in tiny cuts that wouldn't close, even though Julieta couldn't find an actual wound. How the blood loss hadn't killed her already was a mystery, the small amount of food Julieta had managed to get into her couldn't account for it. She seemed to bleed even more when she swallowed something.
And the fits...
They were so violent she had broken through two beds before they gave up and put the mattress on the floor directly. She screamed herself hoarse when she was awake, or made bizarre animalistic noises that shook the walls. Her limbs cracked under the restraints until she tore through them. If she got loose for a single moment she threw herself at the door or the window, trying desperately to get out, until she was dragged back to the bed and restrained again, over and over and over.
The house was quiet for now, which meant she had slipped into unconsciousness. So it was just about safe for Luisa to come downstairs, drop off some bandages to be washed and drink some coffee, maybe even lie down for an hour. If it wasn't for the regenerative properties of Julieta's food, they could never have kept this up.
"I need to tell Mama we're out of cornmeal," Isabela said, breaking the silence.
"You haven't had any luck growing some, then?"
"No. I got the seed but I can't get it to grow. All I have right now is bananas."
"I'm so sick of bananas," Luisa sighed.
"I'll try some figs, then."
"Thanks, appreciate it."
Finishing her coffee, Luisa trudged back upstairs to the nursery. Julieta was slumped over on a pile of clean bandages, gently snoring. Luisa checked the restraints, thick rope leashed to wooden posts that had been hastily nailed into the floor, and when she looked up she was surprised to see her sister was awake.
Eyes fever-bright, Mirabel stared at Luisa. Luisa wanted to say something nice, something comforting, but she couldn't think of anything.
"Luisa..."
Mirabel's voice was raspy, too quiet.
"You need to untie me."
Luisa shook her head, looking away.
"You know I can't do that," she whispered. "You're sick, we're trying to help you...we just don't want you to hurt yourself..."
"She's hurting me," Mirabel told her. "She's going to kill me if she keeps going. She's trying to help but she doesn't know what she's doing."
Mirabel sometimes had these little moments of lucidity, but they were fleeting. Always, she asked to be let go. Always, they refused.
But today, something was different.
"At least get rid of the doll," Mirabel asked, cocking her head in the direction of the corn husk doll on the windowsill. It was still there, even when all the other furniture had been broken or removed.
"The doll? Why?" Luisa asked.
"Because it's ugly and I don't want to look at it."
Luisa burst into laughter, tinged with a touch of anguish. That was such a Mirabel answer it was almost enough to give her hope of getting back to normal. Mirabel giggled hoarsely, though it seemed to cause her pain.
"Who puts a face on a corn husk doll?" she asked.
"I know!" Luisa agreed.
As she picked up the doll and slipped it into her pocket, the heavy atmosphere in the nursery seemed to clear, just a little. Julieta stirred uneasily in her sleep. At Mirabel's hairline, a few little beads of blood started forming again, but nowhere near as fast as they had been before.
…..
In the village, the people were doing the unthinkable. They were doubting the Madrigal family.
The loss of their crops had scared them, but these things happened. The good book was full of stories of sudden famine. The Madrigals didn't have an obligation to share their unravaged food stores, not really, but they did anyway. Proof that they were the blessed chosen people.
And then the rumours started flitting around. Mirabel Madrigal had gone mad, they said, and her family had locked her away for it. After what the poor girl had been through a little madness was to be expected, why would her family lock her up? Other rumours said that the girl had been possessed by some sort of demon, and the Madrigals were trying to drive it out. The noise and the shaking that came from the Casíta seemed in keeping with this rumour.
And then, there was a creeping unease that told another story, that the Madrigals, so blessed, were meddling in matters they didn't understand and the village was being punished for their arrogance. First the crops were ravaged, and then the chicken's eggs were broken or taken away. The goats only gave a few drops of blood-tainted milk. Even the wild fruit trees and bushes were yielding up fruit that was rotten beyond saving. There were no fish to be found in the river, and any traps laid in the forest turned up empty and broken.
Just when they thought it couldn't get worse, a new madness descended on them. The donkeys and horses were whipped into a frenzy and broke through their fences, two of them were lost to the forest. One of the billy goats attacked his owner, nearly killing him by goring him with his horns. The village dogs couldn't rest, they were constantly barking at thin air, all day and night.
There were whispers from the forest, unintelligible, chanting in some ancient runic language that chilled to the bone anyone who heard it. It terrified the children in particular, it seemed almost aimed at them. They could not sleep, and for the first time in the Encanto's history families sent their children away to other villages for safety. A number of families considered moving away for good.
Alma Madrigal assured them all that they would be taken care of while these strange occurrences were investigated. As much as they wanted to believe her, they had to wonder if the Madrigal gifts were finally failing them.
…..
Once the corn husk doll was gone, Mirabel felt the magic that had been squirming under her skin settle down, slow to a trickle. It wouldn't last, she knew, the next onslaught was just around the corner if her mother managed to force her to eat. For now, she could regroup, consider what she knew.
The other poison artefact was still in the room, somewhere. Under her mattress, most likely, there was nowhere else for it to be. Mirabel could almost taste it, sour and cold and heavy on her tongue. As long as it wasn't touching her directly, it wasn't enough to make the magic react. She would have to convince someone else to get rid of it, Luisa wasn't likely to fall for the same ploy twice, and Julieta would notice the doll's absence.
Julieta most likely thought she was just trying to break the bond between Mirabel and the butterfly queen...
(how did she find out?)
...and indeed Mirabel felt the bond stretched thin by mortal food and the poison artefacts, but what she was really doing was trying to push the magic out of Mirabel entirely. The magic reacted by trying to break out of Mirabel's body however it could. It was bonded through her blood, and through the blood it pushed outwards.
She was exhausted with pain. Every muscle ached, strained past capacity when the magic thrashed and rolled to find a way out. Just a minute soaking in the water of the butterfly queen's realm would clear up this pain, strengthen the bond, settle the magic. If she could convince someone to untie her, just long enough to make it to the edge of the Encanto, the butterfly court would do the rest. She knew that. It was spoken in the words of the chanting she heard from the forest.
She could feel the butterfly queen's anger from where she was. The queen was powerful enough to go toe to toe with the Casíta's magic, but doing so would risk blowing a village-sized crater where the Encanto used to be, killing every creature nearby. Terrorizing the village with famine and mischief was a gentle approach, by immortal standards. Still, her patience was wearing thin. If she felt moved enough to step into the mortal realm to get her child back, it would be disastrous.
Mirabel had tried to tell her mother, through agonizing fits where the magic nearly broke her back and spit blood onto the sheets of the bed she was tethered to. Julieta just set her jaw and refused to listen.
"I'm doing what needs to be done," was all she would say. "You will thank me when it's over."
With the removal of the corn husk doll, two little white butterflies had dared to flit close to the window, to check in on her. If they could get close enough to drop a pata de vaca on the windowsill, it would reverse some of the damage done. But Casíta angrily flapped its shutters, threatening to crush them if they got too close.
Powerful as they were, contamination was an immortal's weakness. If the magic was driven out and she survived the process, she would still be too poisoned by mortal food and mortal air to go back to her immortal mother. She understood that now, if she didn't before. The magic in her blood had kept her tied to the butterfly queen, without it their bond would be broken forever.
She was so deep in thought she didn't hear Bruno come in until he was sitting right beside her, gently shaking her.
"Sorry, sorry," he chuckled awkwardly. "Wasn't sure if you were awake...did I wake you? I shouldn't have woken you, I'm sorry..."
"I wasn't asleep," she mumbled.
"Oh, good...I mean, not good, you should probably try and get some sleep when you can, right?"
"I can't sleep while I'm tied up like this."
"Yeah, good point...anyway, I'm supposed to feed you this..."
It was a bowl of plain rice and some lightly fried vegetables, a slight change from the soups and pureés Julieta had been forcing down her throat since the fits started. Still, Mirabel's stomach churned just looking at it.
"I can't," Mirabel told him.
Bruno sighed, put the bowl down and scratched his head nervously.
"My sister's not going to be happy with me if I don't get you to eat..."
"Tío Bruno, you know what she's trying to do isn't going to work. What does it matter?"
"What? I...I don't know that..."
"Yes, you do. You saw a prophecy where I walked away from the Encanto. She's doing this to keep me here. It's not going to work."
"Prophecies aren't exactly stable," Bruno said with a nervous shrug. "They can change based on how someone reacts to them, you know."
"So what are you seeing now?"
He didn't want to answer the question, she could see that. He fidgeted, his eyes darted around the room, flickering over her restraints and the untouched food.
"I can't see anything in your future," he admitted at last. "It's clouded over. There's something interfering with it."
"That something is either going to get what it wants, or I'm going to die while you fail to keep it away. You need to let me go."
For a moment, it looked like Bruno was really, truly considering it. He was used to nobody listening to him, surely he of all people knew how she felt? His hands clenched and unclenched, he worried his lower lip with his teeth.
"I can't," he sighed. "I just...it would break Julieta's heart, I can't do that to her. I'm sorry."
It was too much to ask for him to free her, but maybe...
"Could you at least take this thing out from under the bed? It's digging into me, I can't sleep," she asked innocently.
Relieved to have something he could do for her, Bruno didn't even question it. He reached around under the mattress until he found it...
(cold iron, an old mortal trick)
"How did a horseshoe get under there?" he asked, turning it over in his hands.
"Old art project," she lied with a shrug. "I thought I could make it into a loom or something..."
…..
Slowly, the fits slowed and Mirabel began to recover. Julieta, exhausted by the extremity of the first few days, didn't seem to notice that the doll and the horseshoe were gone. She kept up the force-feeding, however, resorting to a funnel and a pipe when she had to and feeling terrible about it for hours after. Mirabel always had fits after being force-fed.
The magic was settling around her bones for safety, waiting for the opportunity to break out. All she needed was for one family member to take pity on her and loosen the straps, and then she could slip out. The butterfly court was growing impatient, day by day.
Camilo was the most likely candidate. Back from his journey he was set to watch her while her usual minders were catching up on their sleep. He'd always been sympathetic, as well as rebellious.
"Nope."
When she asked, he gave nothing but that one word answer. No matter how good her argument was.
"Nope."
He wouldn't even look at her as he refused her.
"I'd untie you if it was you stuck here," she growled.
He answered with a flippant shrug. There was a relieved amusement in his manner, he was glad that she wasn't so sick any more but he also couldn't pass up the opportunity to have some fun at her expense.
She was just trying to come up with a new argument when there was a commotion from outside, a woman shrieked and some men shouted angrily in the distance. Then there was the unmistakable sound of Antonio sobbing. He'd only been back at the Casíta for a single day. Dark clouds gathered overhead and Felix could be heard talking quietly, placatingly, to someone. Camilo bolted to the window and Mirabel watched the colour drain from his face.
"Just give me the girl," a sickeningly familiar voice called, slurred with alcohol and desperation. "Bring the girl to me now and nobody gets hurt."
She didn't need to see anything to know that Vargas was holding Antonio hostage. With nobody to work for, Vargas was free to do whatever he wanted. Apparently what he wanted was her.
"You need to untie me now," she told Camilo. "Fast."
