1. A Golden Spool Of Thread

It all started with a spool of thread.

Well, that was definitely an oversimplification. It wasn’t just any spool of thread, no, this was Mirabel’s prized embroidery thread, a stunning, shimmery gold with reflective strands that hypnotized those lucky enough to gaze upon it. It had been incredibly expensive and had taken months to save up for, and because of this, she kept it safe and tucked away in a shielded corner of her sewing kit, only rarely pulling it out to admire or use on her most special projects.

And today was one of those days.

Antonio’s birthday was coming up, and in her precious spare time when he wasn’t in the room, she had been toiling away at his present. She had sewn him a yellow, cuffed jacket and was currently working on embroidering a jaguar on the front lapel pocket. This was what she needed the gold thread for, to add the perfect accents that would complete a project she had been slowly hacking away at for the past few weeks.

She had been making excellent progress, too. Painstakingly adding a gold outline around the black rosettes of the jaguar’s spots, Mirabel found herself about halfway done when she looked up to see a small rat sitting on her workbench.

“Awwwwww,” had been her first reaction as she watched the rat lick the back of its paw and rub it over the felty tips of its ear. “Do you want to watch me work? I might not be as naturally talented as my sisters and cousins, or even that good at sewing for that matter, but hey, it’s the effort that counts, right?”

The rat’s nose quivered and its whiskers twitched, and Mirabel resisted the urge to groan. What on earth was she doing, talking to a rat? Especially about her woes of being the only Madrigal child with no miracle gift? Even so, she paused in her work to smile at the little creature. Despite the fact that it was a rat, in her room, for that matter, it was hard to be grossed out by something that looked so adorable.

Well, that is, until the rat grabbed her favorite spool of gold thread and, before Mirabel could even blink, scurried down the workbench and out the door to her room.

Stunned for a second, her mouth hanging slightly ajar in shock of the audacity for a rodent to steal her prized spool of thread?!— Mirabel was on her feet in an instant with an indignant “Hey! What are you—give that back!”               

The rat didn’t listen, which in all fairness, was probably to be expected. Springing to her feet, Mirabel burst out into the hallway, frantically looking around to see the direction that the little thief had gone in. Seeing its tail flicker around the corner to her left, she sprinted after it, pushing her glasses up her face as they threatened to slide down her nose at the jostling from her physical exertion.

As she ran around the corner, she realized she had lost sight of the rat, and Mirabel was gripped with a petrifying sense of fear at the thought that oh no, where did it go, I just lost the thread and I’m not even done with Antonio’s gift, how am I going to finish it now?!, but then, just in her peripheral vision, she caught sight of a slight movement.

It was a picture hanging askew on its frame, gently waving back and forth as if something (or, to be a bit more specific for this certain scenario, a rat), had just adjusted it in a hurry.

Or perhaps, as Mirabel approached the suspicious picture, hooking her fingers under the frame to pull it away from the wall and revealing a secret passageway, something had passed through it in a hurry.

“Casita?” she asked, stepping away from the decidedly unsettling corridor that was very dark, very musty, and very creepy. “What is this?”

Turning around to look at the floor of the house, Mirabel was unimpressed to find that Casita was lifting up some of its broad ceramic tiles in a clear imitation of a shrug. Nice. So that was useless.

“Great,” she muttered under her breath, and then, clenching her hands into tight fists to try to steel her nerves, entered the hidden passageway.

In any other circumstance, she would’ve turned right back around and forgotten that there was a secret passageway behind a seemingly innocuous painting of flowers in a pot. A very boring painting, she might add, which made it additionally surprising that there was something so unexpected hiding on the other side of its bland canvas.

But! This was no ordinary circumstance! This was her favorite embroidery thread that she was talking about here, not to mention the fact that the fate of Antonio’s gift was on the line!

So, she forged ahead.

Taking tentative steps, Mirabel did her best to walk forward as quickly as she could despite her general fear of the situation. There was an eerie, low mist that clung to the dark corridor, whose presence made no sense seeing that she was technically still in the warm, inviting Casita, and as she sidled along its twists and turns, she grew increasingly uneasy. The floors were creaky, there were freaky noises echoing all around her, and there was a damp, mildewy smell that hung stale in the air and put her on edge.

The whole atmosphere was so hostile that Mirabel had been about to turn around, writing the whole incident off as a peculiar, unfortunate loss, when she saw a glint of gold catch the low light. With a gasp, she strained her eyes, just barely able to make out the rat sitting on its haunches and unraveling the thread from the spool.

“Hey you!” Mirabel called out, and the rat froze, its ears perking up at the shrill pierce of her voice. “That belongs to me!”

Grabbing the spool in its mouth, the rat turned tail and sprinted down the narrow, cramped hallway, the long trail of thread that it had undone streaming behind it.

Previous reservations abandoned, Mirabel found herself sprinting down the corridor, doing her best to move as quickly as she could without injuring herself on any low-hanging beams or loose floorboards. Chest heaving, she felt like she was slowly gaining on the rat; she would have it caught in no time.

Rounding a sharp corner, Mirabel saw the tip of the thread disappear behind a slightly opened door, golden light leaking out from behind the frame. Unable to register her surprise at seeing something as odd as a door back here, as she was too focused on catching the fleeing rat, she kicked the door down (literally—she wasn’t playing around!) and barged into the room the rat had retreated to.

“Give that back, you thief!” she snapped, a fierce snarl on her face.

A fierce snarl, that is, that quickly morphed into shock as she processed the scene that she had ran headfirst into.

It was a room. A warm room, illuminated in a soft glow, decorated with shabby adornments, and inhabited with an alarming number of rats that made it feel worlds away from her Casita. There was a worn-down table with equally worn-down chairs, a few decrepit shelves, a shoddy hammock, and right in the center of the room, a decaying armchair that had certainly seen better days, with what appeared to be…

...a man sitting in it, who let out a sharp yelp at her brusque interruption and dropped the mug he had been holding, where it promptly shattered into pieces on the wooden floor. “Would it kill you to knock?” he demanded, though he sounded less angered and more distraught as he looked at the fragmented ceramic pieces in thorough dismay.

Mirabel felt her mind reeling. “What the—knock?!” Those were the only coherent words she could form in retaliation to her shocking discovery, and even calling them coherent was a stretch.

“Do you know how hard that was to steal without anybody noticing?! That was my favorite mug! That was my only mug!” Pushing himself off of his chair, the man turned to face Mirabel, where he rapidly paled as he got a full, unobstructed view of who his intruder was.

“What are you doing here?!” he exclaimed in a weak, timid voice, his earlier irritation at the demolition of his favorite (only) mug being replaced by something that appeared to be fear.  

“What am I…? Huh? Forget that, who are you?” Mirabel looked around, still in shock. “And what are you doing in our house?!”

The man followed her wandering gaze, and after a heavy moment, abruptly seemed to realize how incriminating the scene looked. “Now, wait a second, I know this looks bad….”

Mirabel’s eyes narrowed dangerously as she angled her body defensively away, taking a slow step back. “Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“But I can explain!” he said in a hurry, waving his hands in a placating way that did very little to placate Mirabel. He paused, and Mirabel arched an eyebrow in a way that invited him to continue, to at least attempt to explain himself, but he remained silent. “Okay, well, maybe I actually don’t have an explanation….”

“Unbelievable,” Mirabel said, not even knowing how to properly react. “How did you even get in here? How were you able to get past Casita?”

The man brightened at this, seeming to latch on to her question. “Do you think your Casita would let me stay here if it didn’t approve?”

Mirabel lifted an aggressive finger, a sharp retort sitting and ready to pounce on her tongue, but she cut herself off before she spoke, the question causing her to waver.

Why would Casita let this stranger live here? It made no sense.

Mirabel shifted her stance, giving him a cautious, skeptical eye. “So then, mysterious man that lives in our walls, what’s your name?”

He had crouched on the floor, gingerly picking up the jagged pieces of his deceased mug, but paused at her question, turning sharply toward her with a quizzical look. “Wait a second, you don’t… know who I am?”

Mirabel hesitated, doing a once-over of his disheveled figure. Worn out chanclas with unbelievably gnarled toes poking through, frayed brown shorts in which it was difficult to tell if the color was from filth or if it was supposed to be like that, a ratty green ruana that looked like it was in desperate need of a wash…. Nope. Nothing.

Was this supposed to be ringing any bells? Because it wasn’t ringing any bells. “Should I know who you are?”

The man gave her an incredulous look for a split second before letting out a sharp laugh; a grating, barking sound that was a little too high-pitched, a little too nervous, and a little too unhinged. Dropping the pieces he had collected back on to the floor, he stood up straight, acting suspiciously hard to be casual. “What? No, of course not! After all, why would you?”

“Yeah…” Mirabel agreed uncertainly. “Why would I?”

Although, now that she thought a little harder about it, he did seem to be rather familiar. But why? Where had she seen him before?

“Hey,” she followed up, and the man’s head snapped back toward her, the fear reflecting deep in his large, expressive eyes. “What did you say your name was, again?”

For some reason, the question made him visibly relax. “Oh, that’s an easy one,” he said with a careless, flippant bounce of his shoulders. “I’m Br—”

Before Mirabel even had the chance to react, the man’s (Br’s?) eyes widened, as if he were realizing a mistake, and he cut himself off with a violent fit of coughing into his fist. Apparently, her question wasn’t as easy as he had thought it was. Which was odd, because all she had asked for was his name.

Mirabel blinked, witnessing the scene with a perplexed look. “Bless you?”

Clearing his throat, the man smoothed out the folds of his ruana, though fat lot that did, seeing that it still looked as musty and rumpled as it did before the abrasive coughing spat. “My name is…” he trailed off, looking around the room with a degree of panic so subtle Mirabel almost missed it. And then, his gaze settling on the rats scurrying around on his furniture, he looked back at Mirabel with a pensive grimace. “…Ratón?”

Mirabel shot him a flat, unimpressed look. “Your name is rat?” The squeaking from behind him caught her attention, the sheer number of rats scampering around enough to send a shiver of discomfort down her spine. “Like those guys over there?”

“These are not rats!” he protested. “They’re mice. There's a big difference!”

Mirabel peeked over his shoulder to get a better look at the rodents sitting on his table. They were currently playing with and getting tangled up in her stolen spool of thread; very rat-like behavior in her opinion. “I don’t know,” she said, redirecting her gaze to the man in front of her. “They look an awful lot like rats to me.”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhh!” he exclaimed, cutting her off by pressing a bony finger to her lips, the wild action bumping her glasses so that they sat skewed upon her nose. “They’ll hear you! They’re very sensitive about that, you know!”

He withdrew his finger from her mouth, and Mirabel did her best to subtly wipe the back of her hand against her lips as she readjusted the frames of her glasses. “Well, Ratón, my name is—”

“Mirabel, yes yes, I already know,” he interrupted, turning around to do something that eluded Mirabel’s understanding or care (and throwing a fistful of salt over his shoulder as he did so... which only added to her confusion) because what in the world? Huh? How did he already know her name?!

“Wait wait wait,” she said, waving her arms around as she tried to recapture his attention. Which was an unsuccessful venture, seeing that his back was still turned to her and he could not see a single thing she was doing, but hey, it had been worth the shot, right? “How did you already know that my name was Mirabel?”

There was a beat as Ratón’s lanky, hunched form stiffened. He slowly pivoted around, an incredibly guilty expression pasted across his features, as though he had somehow slipped up. “I, uh…." He grimaced as he twisted his hands around, biding his time for the right words to come to him. “…heard your family call you Mirabel? Through the walls?”

The way his tone lifted up at the end of each statement and made it sound like a question was more than enough to raise Mirabel’s suspicion. But, looking at the weak, awkward smile he extended her, she decided that hey, that wasn't completely implausible, right? Her family was pretty boisterous (or, if you were to ask Dolores, just straight up, obnoxiously loud), and what else were you supposed to do while sitting in the walls with only rats to keep you company?

So, she simply shrugged. “That makes sense,” she conceded, and it was impossible to miss the way that Ratón’s shoulders sagged in what seemed like relief, but then again, it could have simply been exhaustion, if the deep, sallow bags under his eyes were any indication.

All of a sudden, Mirabel went rigid, the bizarre sight of a man living in the walls of their beloved Casita coming off as all kinds of wrong.

What was she doing? She needed to get a grip.

“I have to go tell Abuela,” she announced, and with that, turned on her heel to promptly exit the literal hole in the wall.

Declaring her intentions was a huge mistake, though, because she only got a few steps before a knobby grip with a shocking amount of strength clamped down hard on her wrist, yanking her back before she had the chance to leave. “What the—? Hey!” she protested, trying to pry her arm free from Ratón’s grasp, but to no avail.

“You can’t tell her I’m here,” he begged, his eyes wide and fearful, ignoring the way Mirabel struggled to free herself.

“Agh, let me go!”

“Mirabel, you have to listen—”

“I don’t have to listen to anything you have to say!”

“Please.”

Mirabel froze, the pure desperation, the plea in his voice making her cease her writhing, if just for a moment.

Seizing her hesitation, Ratón plowed forward. “Mirabel, please, I’m begging you. She can’t know that I’m here.”

Mirabel’s fingers curled, itching to be free of his warm, callused hold. “And why not? Other than the fact that you are some freeloading creep living in our walls?”

Ratón looked away, his lips pulling into a grimace. “It’s… complicated.”

“What’s complicated about it? Looks pretty clear-cut to me.”

“I—you wouldn’t understand.”

Mirabel, for the second time that evening, looked the strange man up and down. The fact of the matter was… he looked pretty harmless. In fact, in a weird, twisted sort of way, she felt kind of bad for him. What kind of depressing, pitiful person lived in the walls of a magical house?

Not to mention, what kind of wacko had the name Ratón?

Against her better judgement, she decided to entertain his antics. “Why should I do this for you? Why should I choose you over my own family?”

“You wouldn’t be choosing me over your family,” he was quick to clarify. “And I promise I have no ill intentions toward any of the Madrigals. Please, Mirabel, you cannot tell any of them.”

Mirabel paused, mulling the situation over. “And what’s in it for me?”

“You’re lonely.”

“Excuse me?”

Ratón pinned her with a flat look. “I literally heard you talking to the mice. People who aren’t lonely don’t do that.” He paused, looking around his small nook, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Take it from me.”

Mirabel’s cheeks warmed in embarrassment; well, that was a little humiliating! “Wait, you heard that?”

“I live in the walls. I kind of hear most things.”

“Well… I don’t understand what my loneliness has to do with any of this! Not saying that I’m lonely… but if I was! Which I’m not!”

Ratón simply sighed. “If you ever need anyone to talk to, you know where to find me. Feel free to visit. Any time.”

Mirabel had literally zero intention of coming back to visit. She was quite content to forget this fever-dream of an interaction, and was secretly planning on informing Abuela the first chance she got. Even so, she nodded, a tight smile plastered on her face. “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

“So you won’t tell any of your family that I’m here?”

“Um… sure?” Yeah, so that was a lie, but what else was she supposed to say?

Seeming to be satisfied with her answer, Ratón released her from his grip, drawing back. There was an awkward moment where they stared at each other, neither knowing what exactly to say.

Ratón was the first one to break the uncomfortable spell, his eyes darting between the worn wooden door and Mirabel. “Okay, bye.”

Well, that was blunt. Giving him an unamused look that was normally reserved for when the always-perfect Isabela did something exceptionally nauseating, Mirabel snorted. “Bye, nice talking to you,” she responded sarcastically, because honestly? It hadn’t been nice talking to him at all. It had just been weird.

Walking out the door, she snuck one last glance over her shoulder, taking in the view of the crusty dwelling. Ratón had already gone to sit in his deteriorating chair, his back toward her, and from this angle, she could see him playing with the rats that crawled over his hands, weaving between his fingers with their slick little rat bodies.

Ugh. Weird.

Shaking her head, Mirabel shut the door softly behind her. As she made her way back toward the main area of the house, her mind turned somersaults around itself, trying to make sense of the freakish scenario she had just found herself in. What kind of a crummy deal was that? She doesn’t tell her Abuela about the man living in their walls, and gets, what? His company? Some sort of secret friendship? Ha! What kind of a pathetic loser did he think she was? She didn’t need that. She didn’t need him.

She needed to find Abuela. Now.

Finally out of the corridors wedged behind the walls of the house, Mirabel found herself back in the central area. Looking around the open courtyard of the Casita, she spotted Isabela and Luisa walking side by side.

They would probably know where Abuela was. Jogging down the hall, Mirabel slid down the stairs with just a little help from Casita, quickening her pace to reach her sisters.

“Hey,” she said, only slightly out of breath as she finally caught up to them. “Have you guys seen Abuela around?”

“What’s it to you?” Isabela said, at the same time that Luisa responded with, “Yes, not too long ago.”

“Well, where was she?” Mirabel asked, shooting Isabela a quick glare before directing the question toward Luisa. And then, seeing her sisters walking next to each other, Isabela's dainty steps falling in time with Luisa's broad strides as they headed out of the house, a second question occurred to her. “Wait, where are you guys going?”

“Abuela asked Isa and I to go into town to start preparing the town square for the Castillo’s wedding,” Luisa responded gruffly, not sparing Mirabel a second glance as she stormed past. It was typical Luisa behavior; always on a mission, always too busy to stop and acknowledge Mirabel, or the rest of that family for that matter. Isabela trailed beside her, her hair flowing in perfect waves as she stuck her nose up in the air.

Mirabel perked up. Weddings were fun! And the Castillo’s wedding had been in the works for months now. She had totally forgotten that it was this weekend. “Oh, maybe I can help!” she exclaimed, pushing her glasses up on her face in hopeful excitement.

“By what, getting in the way?” Isabela sneered. Luisa gave her a mild disapproving glare, but didn’t do much else to defend Mirabel. In fact, she pointedly ignored the whole interaction by continuing her march forward, step not faltering.

That was okay, Mirabel was perfectly capable of handling this, help from her older sister or not. “You know, the townspeople live their everyday lives without having gifts of their own…. They are probably fully able to do the wedding preparations by themselves, they don’t always need to be helped by your special talents.”

“If the townspeople are so capable of setting the wedding up on their own, then why did they call for our assistance?” Isabela gave her a smarmy smile, one dripping with so much self-importance and ego that it made Mirabel’s blood boil.

“I’m just saying,” she ground out tightly, “Any help is probably appreciated, gift or no gift.”

“But what makes you think that they would need the assistance of someone like you?”

“I’m just trying to offer—”

Mirabel was cut off as she ran into something solid. Well, maybe solid wasn’t the best way to describe what she had collided with, because as she gathered her bearings, refocusing her attention from her little quarrel with Isabela to the physical obstruction in her path, she realized just who she had ran into.

Oh, great.

Abuela looked at her disapprovingly down the length of her nose, the folds of her face wrinkled in displeasure. Her hands clasped tightly in front of her, shoulders squared back, Mirabel could already tell based on body language alone that she was about to get a stern earful. As usual.

“Mirabel. Stop distracting your sisters. They have important work to do.”

The Madrigal in question looked over Abuela’s shoulder, only to see Luisa and Isabela’s backs; they didn’t even spare her a second glance as they walked out the front entrance of the Casita. At this, Mirabel frowned before redirecting her attention to her grandmother. “I can help though! I want to help.”

“You’ll only get in the way. It would be more helpful for everyone if you were to stay here.”

And there it was! The sharp words spoken in a firm tone that wasn’t overly biting, but still stung as if she had been slapped across the face. Honestly, it was something that Mirabel was disconcertingly used to at this point, but it still hurt nonetheless. Looking up at Abuela, Mirabel searched the fine lines and creases of her face for any signs of yielding, any signs of weakness, but there were none to be found.

In the stretched moment of silence, Mirabel had the sudden recollection of the alarming news about Ratón, the weird man living in the nooks of the house, and that holy Casita what the heck am I doing? I need to tell her.

I have to tell her.

And yet… for some odd, unfathomable reason, Mirabel couldn’t bring herself to. The words were on the tip of her tongue, poised and begging to be spoken, but her jaw clamped shut and refused to let them free.

“Mirabel?”

Snapping out of her musings, Mirabel extended a guilty smile toward her grandmother. “You know what? I think you’re right, I’ll just… stay here.”

Abuela gave her a prolonged, ambiguous look, before shortly nodding and walking away. Smiling tightly at her retreating figure until she disappeared around the corner, Mirabel made her way up to her room in a daze. Flopping on her bed, she stared at the ceiling, her room feeling about as dark, dingy, and lonely as Ratón’s secret dwelling in his forbidden corner of the house.

It was probably a good thing she didn’t go into town to help with the wedding. After all, she had quite a bit of thinking to do.