18. Chapter 18

There was an amount of time when Dolores and Mirabel mutually believed that the other was unaware of their uncle’s current place of residence. That belief was broken for Dolores when she first overheard Mirabel talking with Bruno. But, of course, as far as Mirabel knew, Dolores wasn’t aware since they had never talked about him, and she had never given Mirabel a reason to believe she was. So obviously, Dolores was the one to broach the subject of their Tio.

“So… want to avoid going into Tio’s spooky, dangerous, forbidden tower?” Dolores asked as they walked back to the house.

(“Sure, how are you proposing we do that?”)

“Has Casita ever complained about anything banging around in her walls?” Dolores asked knowingly.

(“Ah, so you’ve heard Tio? Figures, you hear everything.”) Mirabel responded, only marginally surprised. She really should have guessed that Dolores would know.

“I’m omniaudient. Of course, I’ve heard Tio Bruno. Kind of hard to miss my slightly crazy, fun uncle puttering around in my home’s walls.”

(“So we’re just gonna go ask him directly instead of risking our lives with the stairs of eternal despair?”) Mirabel asked to confirm.

“I don’t know about you, but the breaking point for me was that his Bottomless Pit of Doom is missing its Rickety Rope Bridge of Lost Hope. I’m all for adventure, but I like living, thank you.” You could practically hear the sarcastic capitals in Dolores’ mumbled words.

(“You know, with a room like that, I don’t blame him for moving. Candle leaned way too far into the ominous seer vibes with his room.”) Mirabel replied thoughtfully.

Dolores just nodded in agreement as they continued their way back to the house.

The space between the walls was an odd place. There were pieces of bamboo creating haphazard supports throughout, making something of an obstacle course. Additionally, thanks to the cracks that Casita had been hiding for so long, there were holes covered with narrow planks and weak spots in the floor one needed to dodge and relatively deep pits. It was fun to traverse when she was younger, but now, it was closer to tedious for Mirabel. She had hopped, slid, and balanced to Bruno’s room at least once a week for years now, so it was as easy as breathing for her. Dolores, on the other hand…

“Ow!”

Mirabel sucked in a small breath of sympathy when she looked back and saw that Dolores hadn’t ducked fast enough. The older, taller girl wasn’t really built for this, nor was she happy to be doing it.

…

“Where did you go? … How did you get up there?!” Mirabel shrugged and pointed Dolores towards the lower path that would meet hers, cringing as her prima hit her head again.

…

“How did you make that jump?!”

(“I just jumped?”)

“But it’s so far!”

(“Come on, this is the last hole Tio hasn’t patched up. His room’s literally just through that narrow part up ahead. I’ll catch you if you slip or something. And it’s not a far drop if you don’t make it.”)

Dolores sighed, backed up, and tried to pull off the jump, only to miss and fall to the floor a few feet down. Mirabel sighed in teasing exasperation and stuck her hand down to help Dolores clamber up to her side.

“Why does Tio leave everything like this? It’s insane!” Dolores grumbled.

(“Excersize is my best guess. Or Tio Bruno just likes laughing at the idea of people like you trying to reach him.”) Mirabel replied once she’d squeezed through the tight part of the wall between the outer stone and bamboo support.

“Well, he’s getting an earful either way. This is horrible. I don’t like quoting Alma, but what is wrong with that man?”

Mirabel rose her eyebrow and responded over her shoulder as she crossed a primative plank bridge, “He’s been living in the walls with minimum human contact for ten years. If he didn’t have something wrong with him I’d be more concerned. At least it’s showing up in generally benine if strange, sources of amusement.”

“Fair enough,” Dolores grumbled as the two got to Bruno’s door and knocked.

The door cracked open, and Bruno poked his head through, a few rats escaping through the opening. “Oh. Hello.” He turned his attention towards Dolores, “You ok? You look winded.”

(“Hello Tio. Can we come in? We need to talk about something.”) Mirabel asked before Dolores could entirely pull up her annoyance, a smile on her face.

(“Sure. Steps watch you.”) Bruno responded. Mirabel blinked for a second, then corrected, (“Watch your steps.”)

“Oh, right. Thanks, Mira.”

(“No problem.”)

The two girls entered their tio’s little room, one for the first time. Dolores cringed a bit at its state, clothes hanging from a line over the beaten-up red armchair that Bruno collapsed into. A lime green lap blanket was quickly pulled back into place, his hands rubbing over the familiarly embroidered surface. The shoddy table with a few chairs to one side. Haphazard shelves. It was a mess, and every surface had at least one rat upon it; even her tio had one that suddenly popped out of his hair.

Mirabel seemed relatively at home in the little room, pulling over a pair of chairs in reasonably good repair and setting them up facing Bruno’s armchair. (“How have you been doing, Tio?”)

Bruno perked up a bit and tried knocking again (“Pretty well, You two?”)

Mirabel kept smiling (“Well, other than what we have to talk about, I’ve been ok.”)

Dolores sighed and stopped looking around, “I would be doing better if you cleaned up the way over here. I hit my head three times. Don’t know how Mirabel does it.”

The girl shrugged (“Practice.”)

Bruno chuckled awkwardly, “Sorry, I’ve… well, not I, but, well. Anyway, the cracks were more important.”

Dolores gave Bruno a look, “Who else is back here with you.”

Bruno gave a lopsided smile and pulled up his hood, “I’m Hernando; I fix the cracks.”

Mirabel’s smile got a touch more forced as she suppressed her laughter at Bruno’s eccentricity. Dolores just allowed her second eyebrow to meet the first higher on her forehead.

Bruno pulled back the hood again, “It’s just me. I like acting; I always said that it’s my ‘real’ gift. But, you know that Dolores, you like my telenovelas.”

“That I do, Tio. But, we have something more important to talk about than Lucillia and Rosalinda both cheating on Maximillio with each other.”

Mirabel made an irritated noise as she knocked, (“Hey! I missed that episode! Tio promised to catch me up before all this happened!”)

“Not now, Mirabel, Source of cracks now, telenovelas later.” Dolores chided lightly, giving Mirabel an elbow to the side.

Bruno startled at that, “wwwaait, you know where the cracks are coming from?”

Mirabel sighed (“Candle finally clued Mama Cassie into it last month, and she told me after she almost died during the party yesterday. Apparently, the magic is breaking because the family is. And now, we have two weeks, minimum, to fix the family’s problems before the magic dies and Mama does with it. Oh, and if there are any major disagreements in that time, we’re done, even if it hasn’t been two weeks.”)

Bruno slumped a bit and rubbed at his blanket, “But what do you want to talk to me about? I can’t really help, bein’ in the walls and all.”

“Luisa told us that you had a vision before moving back here. We wanted to know if it had anything to do with this.”

Bruno cringed hard and rubbed the blanket faster before gripping at it, “I, I really don’t want to talk about that vision. I… I don’t know, it may. I- It’s hard to explain.” He sighed and got up, tossing the blanket over his shoulders as he shuffled over to a trunk shoved and forgotten in a corner. He sat on its lid instead of unlocking the substantial lock on it.

“I hide a bunch of private visions in this trunk. Visions, I had. But. Well, I thought that their recipients wouldn’t appreciate seeing them. And well, they're private, cause, I don’t think the recipient would want anyone else seeing them either. So this trunk was made for visions like that one. I don’t know if I really want anyone to see that vision.”

“Tio, why don’t you want us to see it? If it could help us fix the magic, save a life and our home, then why shouldn’t we see it?” Dolores asked from her seat.

Bruno sighed even more heavily, “I guess I just worry. It wasn’t like any of my other visions; well, it started like every other vision. Mama asked for a vision to see what was up with the magic. I eventually caved, so since I was already in my vision cave, I did a few, and this one was going normally until I got the actual tablet. It changed. They NEVER change. It was like the magic couldn’t figure out how it would end up, so it gave me both and said, you choose. Even If I never choose, it’s always my fault anyway, right? So, I chose to never show it to anyone. Because they would decide that the bad outcome was what would happen, and then they’d cause it to happen that way, and it would be Bad Luck Bruno’s fault like it always is.” He sighed again, a profound wracking thing that went from his core all the way to his jaw and back. “So I came back here. And I took my trunk of bad futures with me.”

Mirabel seemed pensive as she sat on her chair listening to her Tio’s story (“If it didn’t have a defined outcome, maybe we can figure out how to influence it towards the good one. I know that you don’t create the future, Tio. You just warn people about the consequences of their choices.”)

Bruno sighed, “Well, I guess you won’t let this go, will you two?” The two girls nodded. “Fine, don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.” He looked to his hair rat, which had moved to his shoulder, “I always warn people, and they never listen. But I can always hope, right?”

He pulled out the key on a string around his neck and unlocked the trunk. The emerald glow of his vision tablets came from it, lined up in neat rows with their light leaking through paper wrappings with names and short descriptions on them.

“Vargas, no. Rojas-Ayla, definitely not, don’t want to spoil that surprise. Ah, here we go.” Bruno pulled out a thicker than usual tablet. He unwrapped it and placed it on a tray a few rats had brought over to him. He then relocked the trunk, slipping the key back over his head and tucking it under his ruana.

He carefully picked up the tray and carried it over to the girls, pulling over a small collapsible table to put it on. “Here you go. I warned you, this view ain’t a good one.”

The girls leaned over the vision, watching as the scene came into focus. Upon the tablet stood a scowling Mirabel, a stub of Candle weakly alight, held protectively in hand. Behind her, Casita stood in ruins, most of the family on their knees, watching her with broken looks. Alma was off to the side, fists clenched and glaring at the girl. Dolores and Antonio were to the other side with a few indistinguishable women. The womens’ faces each seemed to be a dense foggy imperfection in the glass’s gem-like finish. Dolores and two of the women appeared to be yelling in anger at the family while the other two faceless women hugged Antonio to them.

Both Girls reared back in horror at the picture, one terrified of what it meant for her Mama if she failed, the other just hit again with the possible outcome should they fail their mission. Bruno gave them an awkward smile and waved his hands in a calming motion. “That was my reaction too. I was scared out of my mind for a bit. Then… Well, I almost dropped it and saw this.” He tilted the vision upwards towards them, then to one side. The picture changed completely.

In the new picture, Mirabel was no longer scowling. Instead, she was beaming with a large bright smile. Casita stood tall behind her, and Candle was burning brightly, intact and unmelted, cradled in her hands. The family was behind her, smiling with arms thrown over shoulders and hugging others close. Alma was still off to one side, but instead of glaring and looking like she wanted to fight, she watched on with a look of melancholy acceptance.

The really different thing, though, was the people surrounding Mirabel. On one side, seemingly jostling to be closest to her, were Isabela and Dolores, Dolores apparently barely winning. On the other side was the same quartet of faceless women, the bottom half of their faces distinguishable as smiles. In front of Mirabel, sitting with many rats, were Bruno and Antonio, talking with each other about something. And the biggest mystery as far as the girls were concerned was that behind Mirabel was a woman that no one in the room recognized. She was taller than even Luisa, with wild hair that fell all over her face in the front and seemed to be partially tamed in the back by unknown means, with butterflies perched all over it. She had a broad, almost mischievous smile mirroring Mirabel’s and a necklace with a pendant that they couldn’t make out. Her eyes and nose were foggy similar to the other non-family members in the vision. And she was hugging Mirabel.

“What’s with the people who don’t have faces?” Dolores asked as Mirabel was still transfixed with the vision, slowly, morbidly tilting it back and forth.

“Well, my voluntary visions have always been a bit spotty, something to do with rushing the future. They only show people that the person who the vision’s about currently knows. It can age them up, but the more it does, the spottier it becomes. The further in the future, the foggier and more muddled everything gets. Too many decisions and choices yet to be made lead to more choices. If they only know the person as a small child, they very likely will not be recognizable if the vision entails them as adults. It’s why I couldn’t tell you who the man of your dreams is, only that he would be betrothed to another. I could tell you about him, but not who he is. You didn’t know him yet. It’s weird like that.” Bruno shrugged, leaning back into his chair, petting a rat that had snuggled into his blanket.

“Tio…” came Mirabel’s voice, so quiet that Bruno could barely hear it… “Did you leave to protect me…”

“No, Mirabel, not just that.” Bruno started, “Honestly, it had more to do with the family.” He trailed off before standing and beginning to slowly pace.

“You know, the funny thing is. I'm not angry at any of them. I'm barely even disappointed anymore. I'm just tired. I was exhausted even before I hid back here. And while most of the reason I'm back here is to protect you, I can admit that part of it was because I couldn't bear the ambivalence anymore. That my own mother couldn't care less when I was laid up with splitting migraines from producing visions for the town. I was tired of being scolded and criticized for being late for some meal or meeting because an involuntary vision decided that I needed to see some person's granny's unavoidable death. I was tired of being told to use my gift but not actually use it cause when I used it, it didn’t work the way Mama wanted it to.

“I was tired of the townspeople’s rumors. They made me into their plague doctor, their Grimm. I was the thing that people feared to hear knocking on their door, even if they knocked on mine frequently enough of their own volition. The family didn't even react when the villagers brought those rumors up. It would be one thing if they helped me. Encouraged me that I was more than my gift, that I didn't choose the future people got. Encouraged me to ignore the rumors too.

“They only ignored the townsfolk; they didn't support either side. And that was worse. Because if they had supported the townsfolk's stupid misunderstandings, then at least I could be mad at them, make a clean break. But no. I was left disappointed when I went back into these walls, in their behavior towards you, Mirabel, and me. And even that’s left me by now, seeing the shells of people they are now. I'm just tired of how everyone is treated as less than human because magic now runs in our family.

“So no, it wasn't your fault that I'm back here. It was the result of many years of treatment finally being enough for me to decide that the family and town didn't want or need me. There are exactly two reasons I'm hiding in the walls instead of relaxing in some town outside the Encanto. The first is you. I knew I needed to be there for you, even once you got Cassie and met the Rojas sisters. The other is... Selfishness, I guess. I mean, my gift wasn’t helping anyone; people made that very clear. But I... despite everything, I still love my family. I'm tired and maybe still a bit disappointed in them, but I still love them.” He collapsed back into the chair, slumping down so that the chair almost swallowed him.

“So, what does the vision mean, Tio? It was for Abuela, right? So, what can we do?” Dolores asked.

Bruno sighed, “That wasn’t the vision I made for Mama. That was for Mirabel. After Isabela asked me about her powers, I decided to produce a vision for each of my niblings when you all would turn five, just to see what big things in your lives I’d need to prepare for, gift-based or otherwise. I decided to do Mirabel’s then since I was already in the cave and wanted to put off Mama’s. Of course, that’s just Mirabel’s future. Whatever choices she makes decides how and whether that tablet comes into effect. No clue how the changing works. My best guess is that they’re both equally possible because they rely on your choices combined with someone else’s. I’m not sure about whether they’re mutually exclusive or not.”

Mirabel sighed, (“So, two questions. One, what can I do about it? And two, what happened to Abuela’s vision?”)

Bruno straightened a bit, “Keep doin’ what you have been. Keep being the optimistic person I know you are, and keep trying to help. Can’t really go wrong with that. Mama’s vision isn’t whole anymore. I… Honestly, I shattered hers and didn’t think it deserved to be in the trunk. It's probably still in my vision cave somewhere, but I know it didn’t change like yours, Campañita. It… well, I don’t think I should tell you two. It wouldn’t really help you with what you’re doing anyway. I showed you Mirabel’s because you both seemed worried about what could happen. So, I gave you things to aim towards and steer away from. But Mama’s… Mama’s isn’t like that at all. I know that whatever leads to that, well. It isn’t something you two can fix right now. Maybe after the magic’s stronger and can handle things, but definitely not now. The only thing I’ll say is to leave Isabela and Julietta for when the magic is a bit better. I… I really shouldn’t say more.”

Dolores and Mirabel looked at each other and nodded, “Thank you, Tio. I’m sorry that we bothered you about this.” Dolores said.

(“Can you hold onto this? Please.”) Mirabel asked, handing back the green tablet. (“I don’t have anywhere to put it, and I don’t want anyone seeing it until we know if it’s come to pass or been avoided.”)

Bruno nodded, “Yeah, I can do that. I’ll put it back into the trunk. You two should probably be going. It’ll be dinner time soon. And I see a noticeable lack of my Sobrinito.”

Mirabel looked at the time and muttered something in English under her breath, (“Dolores. I’ll go get Antonio. Can you try to stall dinner a bit so that I have time to get him?”)

Dolores tilted her head and winced, “I don’t think I’ll need to. Tia Julietta seems way less coordinated than she usually is. Probably will take her an hour and change to get dinner on the table. I’ll set the table for you, though.”

Mirabel nodded and ran out the door, knocking twice as she left.

Then Dolores realized, “Damn, I have to go back through that death trap alone this time, don’t I?”

Bruno snickered quietly, wishing her good luck as he shoved her out the door and closed it behind her.