17. Chapter 17
“They seemed nice, threats of bodily harm notwithstanding,” Dolores remarked as Mirabel led her away from the cobbler’s shop.
(“They are nice.”) Mirabel responded, (“Tita Ayla and her sisters have always treated me like family, even before they became my tias.”)
“More like family than us Madrigals have, I’ll bet.” Dolores replied somewhat bitterly, “But I guess that’s one of the things we’re trying to fix. Right?”
(“Well, me being forgotten certainly can’t be helping the magic now, can it?”) Mirabel rejoined somewhat sarcastically. (“But seriously, fixing the others’ problems will hopefully give us more time to deal with the big, snarling jaguar in the room.”)
Dolores gave a quiet snort at the image before giving her Prima a look, “You aren’t just putting it off because it would feel selfish? Or because you don’t think you’re worth remembering, right? Because it wouldn’t be, and you are. Respectively.”
Mirabel sighed and replied verbally, if a bit awkwardly, “I guess it would feel a bit selfish to put my own problems first. And I know that I’m worth remembering, I think. But no, I want to deal with the others’ problems first because mine will be more time-consuming to deal with and because I get the feeling that a lot of the behavior aimed at me is caused by their issues. Call it a hunch, but I feel like me being painted as the family’s black sheep after Tio left made me the target for their negativity.”
Dolores just nodded and tilted her head a bit, “I think Luisa is headed over by the river. It sounds like the donkeys are finished with their daily food run a bit earlier than usual. And… Scared? For some reason?”
The two gave each other a confused look and shrugged before they got on their way in companionable silence.
By the time they got to the riverbank, Luisa had already begun whatever job she had been saddled with. Unfortunately for her, that job seemed to entail copious amounts of digging into the riverbank.
As they approached, Dolores motioned to Mirabel to let her do the talking.
“Luisa, what are you up to?” Dolores asked neutrally.
“Rerouting the river,” Luisa responded through a grunt of mild exertion as she tossed a massive boulder away from where she was digging into the river itself.
“Again? Didn’t they ask you to do that yesterday as well?” Dolores asked, honestly surprised that they would need the river’s flow changed again.
“Yep, but that was upstream. The farmers needed to move their fields again. Cause of the donkeys.” Cue a strangely out-of-place shudder. As far as the two knew, Luisa liked the donkeys, even if they were a constant task of hers. “So the irrigation systems needed moved, and the river needed to be rerouted through that. Took the whole day before the ceremony. It’s why Tia Pepa needed to rain over there yesterday. I couldn’t get the systems up fast enough for them to water the plants.”
Mirabel quietly walked up next to Dolores and asked, “Luisa, how often have the farmers needed to move their fields?”
Luisa was startled at the unexpected voice and misaimed the next boulder she had been tossing. To her chagrin, it landed a bit too close to her cousin and sister for her comfort. “Mirabel! Don’t startle me like that. I could have hurt you two.”
“It was a valid question, though, Luisa. One that you tried to avoid. So how often have they needed to move their fields?” Dolores asked with a light chastizing tone in her voice.
Luisa sighed as she picked up her shovel again, “At least once a month, twice this one.”
“And they haven't tried complaining to the Donkey herders?”
“I guess they don’t want to get into an argument when I can just move everything in a day. I’m working here because yesterday’s rerouting caused flooding near the schoolhouse. Need to get it running back towards where the bridge … should … be.” Luisa sighed, “AND I need to move that back.” Her eye started twitching harshly.
“Um… Is your eye ok?” Mirabel asked quietly, waiting for Luisa to have emptied her shovel.
“yep, Luisa’s fine, no problems here. Just a looot to do.” And the shoulders were tightening, and the twitching had quickened.
“Luisa, you’re as bad at lying as Mirabel is. Something’s the matter, and if we don’t try to fix it now, it will only get worse.” Dolores said, walking closer to the river and motioning Luisa over to her, “Come over and take a quick break to talk with us. The river will be here when you get back.”
Luisa looked at her progress and decided she was ahead of schedule since the donkeys had been dealt with faster than usual today. She sighed, “I guess a break wouldn’t hurt; I’m ahead today anyways.”
The three girls all sat on the water's edge, feet dangling in the river. Mirabel distracted herself by skipping stones, letting Dolores do the talking for now. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the amount of talking she had done already today, and she needed to ease some of the tension that had caused.
“So, what’s the matter? I know that something’s up. You’re stressed, and you clearly aren’t dealing with it well. So, do you want to talk about it? I’m a pretty good listener.” Dolores joked, leaning a bit against Luisa.
The larger girl sighed, “It's just... " Luisa stumbled over her words a bit, "It's like… I'm the strong one, right. I'm tough as diamond; crush platinum with my bare hands. I'm not supposed to be nervous. But I always feel this Pressure. Like there's ... I'm in this boat. And I have this little bucket that I keep filling and emptying so that the boat won't sink, but I can't empty the hull fast enough, so I just have to wait until it sinks. And I don't want it to sink because I know that if I do, then all that time I spent trying for so long to bail out the water would go to waste, and I'll drown. And even when I try to speed up how fast I toss away the water, the hole in the aft just keeps being opened more.
"So I have to keep tossing the water away faster and faster, but that just makes it harder and harder to keep the boat empty. And I just wonder what it would be like if someone could just take over the bailing for once so that I can breathe.
"But that never happens because obviously, I’m the best one for the job. No one wants to take over when I’m doing so well. So I just keep bailing water, and the hole keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I just. I just wonder what would happen if I just stopped. If I just refused to keep bailing and let the ship sink. And then I feel bad because everyone else in the boat relies on me, and I would be letting them drown."
Dolores opened her mouth to say something, but Luisa just kept going,
“And I then because I feel bad, I start worrying. What happens if I get hurt or fall out of the hole or something. Would anyone else actually be able to take over for me? Would the boat sink? And I… then I start wondering why no one’s trying to fix the hole. Like, I would, but clearly, I’m in the middle of keeping the boat floating, so why isn’t anyone trying to come up with a permanent solution!? It’s like they don’t care that I’m working myself to the bone to keep them safe and happy, and- and….” Luisa trailed off as she teared up and finally started crying. Dolores hugged Luisa, rubbing her back and whispering calming nonsense into her larger cousin’s ear.
Mirabel sighed and ceased her rock skipping as she concluded, (“The boat’s the Encanto, isn’t it?”) She knocked, just loud and slow enough for Dolores to hear. (“The boat’s the Encanto, and the water’s all the grunt work everyone always piles on her. Three guesses who created the hole and keeps making it bigger. The first two don’t count.”)
Dolores’s mouth straightened as she caught up with Mirabel. “Everything keeps coming back to Alma. And no one’s trying to fix anything because they’re fine with the status quo. They don’t see that the person carrying the valley on her back is tiring, so they don’t feel the need to fix anything because she’ll still be here.” She thought.
Mirabel shifted where she was sitting and latched onto her … sister? She supposes. Honestly, it’s been years since she thought of Luisa as anything other than just Luisa. She guesses she still feels a bit of that connection, but it’s so frayed and strained that she barely feels like the title means anything right now. It feels more like Dolores has that title than Luisa does. Of course, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care or want to fix it. But it was something of a wake-up to how wrong everything was that she felt like this about one of her relatives she likes. Either way, Luisa liked hugs, and Mirabel wanted her to feel better, so she wrapped around the girl’s bicep and midsection and squeezed as much as possible.
“Luisa, You’re carrying way too much.” Dolores sighed as she tightened her own side hug.
“I can’t help it. If I stop, who’s going to take over?” Luisa asked brokenly. “I’d love to have time to myself. For my load to be lightened. But who’s going to want to take over for me. I know my job sucks. I’ve known it for years, but who would want to take over for me? The entire valley relies on me. If I just stop… the boat sinks, everybody I care about drowns.”
Dolores didn’t have an answer to that, and neither did Mirabel. Because honestly, who would take over? If the townspeople weren’t willing to find permanent solutions to whatever they had Luisa perpetually temporarily patching, then there was no way that they would take over that patching while Luisa took a break.
Mirabel, though, thought of something, “you could say no.” She muttered. Both of the other girls looked at her like she had grown a second head
“Not to the important stuff. If someone’s livelihood or life is at stake, helping is obviously important. But things like moving the church every Sunday or the bridge whenever people need it is stupid. You could ease everyone into giving you only the things that absolutely need to be done.”
Dolores picked up what Mirabel was pointing at and tweaked it when she noticed Luisa’s anxiety at that idea. “OR, you could suggest a permanent solution. For example, you could offer to help build a new bridge when someone asks you to move the current one. That would lighten your workload and make you feel like your not slacking off. If you’re worried about that. It would be more work in the short term, though, so it might not help you.”
Luisa hedged, “I guess that could work….”
Dolores huffed a bit, “Of course, it would work. Like what you’re doing now. The farmers only really move their fields between a couple of spots, right?” Luisa nodded; they rotated to try and keep the donkeys on their hooves. “So, instead of re-digging the river every time, why don’t you leave the old trenches and put dams at their mouths? Then you could just pull up the dam for the plot the farmers are moving to and move it to the one they’re leaving.”
Luisa nodded and agreed, “Yeah, that would be easier. But I don’t know if I’d have the time to do that with everything I have to do each day. I suppose it’s worth trying, though, at least the suggesting part.”
The two girls with her smiled. “That’s the spirit. And we’re both willing to listen if you have more problems. We’re here for you, Luisa, even if it didn’t seem that way in the past.” Dolores said.
Mirabel smiled a bit and added, “I know you stopped spending time with me to keep me away from Dona Alma, but I’m a big girl now. So I can keep myself safe for the most part. I’m also a pretty good listener if you ever need to vent.”
“Thanks, you two. I’ll remember that. But I do need to get back to this. Schoolhouse flooding is pretty important after all.” Luisa said, seeming less nervous at least, even if the tenseness in her muscles hadn’t faded. “Oh, by the way. Did anything happen last night? I was carrying some kids around at the party, and I almost dropped them all. I felt… weak for a bit.”
Mirabel and Dolores looked at each other and seemed to have a silent conversation before nodding. Dolores sighed, “The miracle’s power started to wain recently. Mirabel and I are trying to fix it, but we don’t really know all of the problems we need to fix. Any ideas you have that could point us in the right direction?”
Luisa tensed further for a second, and her eye twitched, but then she breathed out and muttered a quiet, “not my problem to deal with” to herself before she said, “Well, I don’t know how helpful it could be. But Tio Bruno apparently had some sort of prophecy before he left. Don’t know if it’s about this or not, but it could be helpful. Just be careful if you decide to go to his tower. If I remember, the adults said that the bridge to his vision cave was out. It’s forbidden for a reason.”
Dolores and Mirabel gave each other a secretive look before they nodded, “We’ll be careful if we go that direction.”
“Be careful regardless. If Abuela catches either of you snooping around about the miracle, she won’t be pleased. Even if you’re only trying to help it.” Luisa remarked as she went back to her work.
The two girls nodded and waved goodbye as they left the girl to her task, a bit less anxious than before.
Later that afternoon, Luisa sighed. The town’s builders were willing to help build another bridge. They just hadn’t thought of it, at least according to them. She only needed to move this bridge for today and maybe tomorrow, then she wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. It felt bracing to take some work off of her plate permanently. She breathed in and hefted up the bridge from where it was.
As she carried the bridge through the town, she began thinking. She started thinking about what other things she’d have to do and how much work the permanent solutions for those would be. Just for this current task, she’d have to tote the stone for that new bridge tomorrow on top of carrying the bridge around and anything else she was doing. And for each new worry, the bridge seemed to get heavier and heavier until she finally got it where it needed to go, and her gift felt like it completely burned out as she set down the stone structure.
Back at Casita, Candle burned slightly brighter as he cut off magic to the girl’s gift for her own good. If he had known that she was being overworked that badly he would have limited her gift earlier. The extra magic wouldn’t protect him if the worst happened, but it would give Mirabel more time. He just hoped it would be enough.