Everything was quiet in the church except for the rustling of blankets and soft snores of the Madrigal family as the moon hung high in the night sky. It was a peaceful scene that was abruptly shattered by the sound of a frightened scream.
Julieta sat up with a gasp, kicking off her blankets as she scrambled off the mattress on the floor, Agustin sitting up and searching for his glasses beside her.
Around the church, people were throwing off blankets and scrambling off mattresses and pews to find the source of the scream.
In the far left-hand corner of the chapel, tangled up in a wad of blankets, Julieta's youngest was thrashing around and screaming.
"What's going on Mama," Luisa asked, blinking tired eyes as she glanced over everyone's head and peered at her hermanita that was tossing and turning all over the floor after obviously falling off the pew where she had been asleep. Surprisingly it seemed that Mirabel's scream had woke the whole family but Mirabel herself.
"She's having a nightmare," Julieta confessed, "Considering what happened yesterday, it's not surprising, expected even."
"Well, we better wake her up," Isabela insisted, pushing hair out of her face, "Or else none of us are going to get any sleep." She reached out and was about to grab Mirabel's shoulder to shake her awake when a young voice called out.
"I wouldn't if I was you."
Everyone turned to Antonio, who was clad in his orange footie pajamas and was clutching his stuffed jaguar with one hand as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the other.
"What do you mean?"
"Mira doesn't like being woke up."
"Well," Isabela huffed, "She's going to have to deal with it because I can't handle the screaming." She grabbed Mirabel's shoulder and violently shook her, "Mira, Mirabel! Wake Up!"
Mirabel suddenly shot up into a sitting position at the same time as her hand, curled into a fist, and flew upward, catching Isabela on the cheek, having had just enough warning to move to prevent her nose from being hit.
Mirabel blinked in confusion as she came awake to find Isabela clutching her cheek, the rest of the family crowding around her, and Antonio saying as smug as a five-year-old could, "I told you not to wake her up."