19. A Prophecy Etched In Glass

Despite the optimism of Bruno’s vision, what happened next had been so far from ideal, it was almost laughable.

Well, Mirabel would have laughed, if she wasn’t currently cold and shivering, tears streaming down her face as she stared listlessly at a random river she had discovered buried deep in the mountains surrounding the Encanto. It was kind of hard to find humor in a situation as humorless as hers, when she found herself wallowing in the direct consequences of her actions.

She had wanted to go further. Run farther. Escape and hide so that no one would ever find her again, do what Bruno had been too cowardly to do and disappear into the mountains for good. However, the stream had been deep, wide, and icy, so she resigned herself to moping along its shores, figuring that no one had bothered to leave the Encanto in years, so how would anybody find her here anyways?

She sniffled, plucking the glasses off of her face. Her tears had dripped onto the lenses and the salty liquid had accumulated at the bottom of her rims, making it difficult to see. Wiping it on her shirt, she blotted up the tears before returning them to their perch on her nose.

It had all been going so well, too. That was perhaps the worst part; she had done everything right, despite the impossible task that Bruno’s image had assigned to her.

Hugging Isabela, as it turns out, was a lot more challenging than the translucent image on the glass had made it appear to be.

“Are you sure I have to do this?” Mirabel had asked Bruno in desperation. They were currently squatting behind some potted plants that lined the hallway banister and scoping out Isabela’s room from afar; well, Bruno was hiding, Mirabel wasn’t really bothered with doing so because she wasn’t the one that had been sneaking around in the walls for ten years. Her presence in the house was to be expected, whereas Bruno, on the other hand, well, not so much.

“Absolutely positive.”

Mirabel frowned as she studied out Isabela’s door from their safe distance. That had not been the answer she had wanted to hear. “There has to be another way. One that is significantly less humiliating and painful.”

“Look, Mirabel, you saw the same vision that I did. I would offer to go do it again, but did you see the mess it made?! They’re such a disaster to clean up! The sand gets all over the place, and next thing you know, you find it in your hair and your clothes, and don’t even get me started on when you find it in—”

“Tío. I need you to focus.” 

Bruno, his rant cut off, paused, quirking an eyebrow in question. “Focus on…?”

Mirabel huffed. “Helping me get out of this nightmare scenario!”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” There was a beat as Mirabel stared at him expectantly. And then, after a few prolonged seconds of silence: “I don’t have any ideas.” 

Mirabel groaned, burying her face in her palms in anguish.

Bruno noticed her pain (which wasn’t that impressive of a deduction given how dramatic Mirabel was being about the whole ordeal), wringing his hands together as he attempted to mollify her concerns. “Listen, it’s really not that hard! All you have to do is walk in there, and hug her! When you think about it, it’s really quite simple!” Which, maybe it was. But Mirabel refused to see it that way.

Instead, she let out a derisive grunt. “You say that like it’s easy!”

“Isn’t it? I mean you hugged me the other day without any issues… unless that was painful for you to do?”

“That was different. This is Isabela we’re talking about! She hates me, and I’m not exactly fond of her either! Not to mention, I didn’t even finish her flower deliveries the other day and I left one of her bouquets in the dirt, so she’s probably super angry with me about that, and ugh I don’t know, I just don’t want to do it!” Mirabel refrained from reminding Bruno that the reason that her flower delivery task got cut off so abruptly was because she had come to the realization that her friend Ratón was actually Bruno, which technically made this whole mess his fault, but the last thing she wanted to do was make him feel guilty. Especially when he was currently looking rather pathetic crouched behind a potted plant, flinching with wide eyes anytime anything that could be perceived as footsteps or, heaven forbid, a person, sounded throughout the house. If Mirabel wasn’t so distraught over being forced to hug Isabela, she might have felt a little bad for him, for being placed so far outside of his comfort zone.  

Mirabel pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, trying to stave of an aching headache she could feel pressing at her temples from everything that was happening. Everything that was going to happen. “I don’t even know how to approach this. How do I even convince her to hug me? Hypothetically, of course, if I choose to follow through with this.”

Bruno shrugged. “Just go in there, sing a little song, and then boom!” He splayed his arms out, palms open and fingers spread to articulate the metaphorical explosion. “Sisterly hug!”

Mirabel didn’t have the heart to tell him that was rich, coming from the man who had actively avoided his own two sisters by living in the walls for ten years, just out of reach because he was scared of confrontation. She felt that would be just downright rude.

So, she elected for a backup quip instead. “Tío, this isn’t like one of your telenovelas. You can’t just go and sing a song, and then expect everything to go perfectly and for everyone to live happily ever after!”

“Mirabel, you see, you’re missing the point of all of this. The fate of the family… it’s up to you.” He swallowed, his eyes searching Mirabel’s, gauging her understanding before he continued speaking. “You’re exactly what this family needs, you just have to see it. Remember what I said about that ‘Mirabel Magic?’”

Mirabel’s lips pursed in a thin line, wanting to argue but finding herself unable to. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t as immune to the charms of having her uncle convince her that she had her own brand of completely fabricated magic as she had originally thought. Go figure. “Ugh, fine,” she conceded, sounding none too happy about it. “But you owe me some new episodes of ‘Love Across the Stars!’”

“I owe you a new season for this, Mirabel.”

Mirabel scoffed, not feeling particularly impressed by the offer. “You were already planning on showing me a new season, Tío.”

“Of course! After you go hug your sister.”

Mirabel bit her tongue, gulping down the words that would point out that she had actually already been promised new episodes, and had been supposed to watch them with him a few evenings ago, but the whole “Ratón” is actually “Bruno” fiasco had put a severe dent in those plans, deciding that now was neither the time nor place to point such a technicality out.

So instead, she nodded in reluctant relent. “They better be good episodes.”

“Is there such a thing as a bad episode?”

Mirabel had to admit, he made a fair point.

A bout of silence fell over them, which Bruno took as his cue to leave, apparently deeming that Mirabel had everything under control. Which she didn’t, not in the slightest, but she at least appreciated the faith he had in her. “Good luck, Mirabel,” he said, crawling backwards in a gangly flail of limbs that was not at nearly as sneaky as he probably thought it was, and then sidling against the wall before hooking his fingers under the canvas and prying it from its flush position. “I’ll see you soon.” And just like that, he knocked on the frame of the painting, singing under his breath “Knock, knock, knock on wood!” Ending the peculiar ritual by rapping a fist lightly against his temple, he fell backwards into the dank corridor, and just like that, he was gone.

Smiling to herself with a slight shake of her head, Mirabel turned back to size up Isabela’s door, building up the courage and motivation to go over there, knock on it (gross), and hug her (double gross).

Or at least, that had been her plan. Because that was currently put on hold, seeing that Mirabel caught sight of a large, hulking figure looming just down the hallway, frozen and rooted to the spot. A large figure with incredible strength that had been diminishing over the past few days as the flame of the candle flickered and dimmed. A large figure who was now taking slow steps toward her, revealing the bewilderment that twisted her features as she approached.

Oh no.

“Was that….” Luisa stared dumbfounded at the painting, her eyes flickering between Mirabel and the hole she had just seen a certain rat-loving hermit escape in to. “Tío Bruno?!”

“Um… no?” Luisa’s expression of disbelief was more than enough to make Mirabel squirm in her slippers. She should’ve known that a flimsy denial would not be enough to negate the fact that Luisa literally saw Bruno crawl into the wall. It was a shame that she didn’t quite have the same creativity and speech proficiency as her Tío to come up with some elaborate explanation, and so, feeling the pressure of Luisa’s bafflement, she revised her initial ‘no’ by saying, “Okay, maybe?"

“And he just… went into the walls?”

“I—er—yes?” What else was she supposed to say? Luisa had seen the whole thing! 

“Why would he do that? Does he live back there?!”

“No, well actually, yes… listen, it’s complicated!”

Luisa shook her head, though not necessarily in disapproval of Mirabel, but in more of a perplexed manner, at the ridiculousness of the whole situation. “I don’t even…. Who else knows? About this?”

Relieved at a question she could answer, Mirabel began counting them down with her fingers. “It’s only me, Antonio, Dolores…” as she began to rattle off the names, Mirabel became acutely aware of just how messy everything had become, and the extent that it had tumbled out of control. “… and now you.”

“And Camilo.”

“And Camilo,” Mirabel agreed, before realizing what she had just repeated. “Wait, what?”

Without a word of elaboration, Luisa tilted her head towards something behind Mirabel. Her body stiff as she pivoted, her stomach flipped as she found herself staring at Camilo. Standing there. In the middle of the hallway.

His expression indicated that he had heard and seen everything. Mirabel resisted the urge to let out a dramatic groan of frustration. Nice. This was just wonderful.

She did, however, let out a sigh of exasperation. “Okay, okay,” she began, waving her hands around to convey that they were getting off track, and that they needed to get back on top of things. “So now me, Antonio, Dolores, Luisa, and Camilo know about Tio Bruno. But that’s it. We can’t tell anyone about this, no one else can know!”

“Don’t forget about Isabela,” Camilo chimed in, the characteristic cheekiness absent as he lifted his two index fingers and pointed them to the side, shifting Mirabel’s focus as if he had grabbed her by the jaw and forced her neck to turn that way.

And there, standing in front of her door with her perfect features contorted into a scandalized expression, was Isabela. She stared in horror, and upon making eye contact with Mirabel, her eyes narrowed, resolve hardening as she turned on her heel to walk down the hallway and down the stairs.

The entire silent interaction was enough to put Mirabel on edge. “Um….” She let out a nervous laugh. “Where is she going?”

Camilo rubbed the back of his neck, a response to the tangible tension in the air. “It’s, uh, dinner time. I was told to come get you, and I was just going to call for you from downstairs, but mom yelled at me last time I did that so that’s why I came up here, but I wasn’t expecting to see Tío Bruno and—”

As he rambled on, his babbling a likely by-product of the lingering shock of seeing Tío Bruno for the first time in ten years (and also perhaps from the realization that his interpretation of their Tío was so wildly off the mark, it wasn’t even funny), Mirabel tuned him out as she watched Isabela descend down the stairs, nose in the air and her visage hardened in determination.  

Dinner. Family. Abuela.

Isabela was going to tell Abuela.

Her heart sank. Just like that, Mirabel’s hopes of embracing her sister were dashed, vanishing quicker than when Bruno had retreated into the walls mere moments earlier. Which, to reiterate, had been pretty quick.

Pushing past Camilo, who was still talking, Mirabel ran down the length of the hallway, bracing her hand against the banister to help stabilize herself as she swung around the corner in her pursuit of Isabela.

“Wait! Isa, wait!”

Her sister, as was probably to be expected, didn’t listen, instead continuing to stomp down the steps with a level of aggression she seldom exhibited. Deliberate steps that carried her away from Mirabel and towards Abuela. Grasping the rapidly deteriorating secret in her hands, prepared to expose it for the whole family to see (which at this point, was only the Madrigal adults who didn't know, meaning that the majority of the family knew about Bruno's presence, so it wasn't exactly that much of a secret anymore. But that was beside the point!) As she watched her sister slip away from her, in a moment of desperation, Mirabel shot a panicked hand out, wrapping her fingers around Isabela’s wrist and halting her determined march.

“Ugh, Mirabel, let go of me!”

The whole scene induced a vivid flashback upon Mirabel, a recreation of the first day she had found Bruno. He had prevented her from leaving by gripping her by the wrist, begging and pleading for her not to tell anyone. The parallels, if the stakes weren’t so dire, might have been humorous to Mirabel, that her massive little secret had finally come full circle.

When she failed to let go of Isabela, or even produce a simple response, her sister continued to speak. “How could you keep something like this hidden? Conceal it from the rest of the family?”

This direct line of questioning was enough to snap Mirabel back into the present. “I didn’t mean to keep it hidden from everyone, it just sort of happened!” she pleaded, hoping that the desperation lacing her voice didn’t make her appear as pathetic as she currently felt.

“What do you mean, ‘it just sort of happened?’ It seems like it was pretty deliberate to me!”

“Agh, it’s hard to explain! You wouldn’t understand!” She wouldn’t understand what it was like to be giftless like Mirabel, to feel completely isolated and alone when surrounded by the exceptional.  After all, how could she? Isabela was the perfect golden child of the family, something that she seemed more than willing to repeatedly shove in Mirabel’s face. With her dumb gift of flowers adorning every action, every motion of her hands, she had been born for flawlessness. Mirabel, on the other hand, had been born to be ordinary, and while Bruno himself had ended up possessing a gift, he had related to her ostracization, because he himself had experienced it.

No, Isabela wouldn’t understand this. Not at all. So, Mirabel doubled down in her pleas. “Isa, you can’t tell Abuela,” she beseeched. “Please, you have to listen to me!” As she tightened her grip on Isabela’s arm, she felt a wave of regret surge over her. She should have never brought Bruno out of the walls, why, she should have never kept his presence a secret in the first place. Because now, it would be seen as a betrayal by the rest of the family. That she was not to be trusted. 

“And why should I do this for you?” Her voice slithered over Mirabel’s ears, venomous and ready to embed her fangs into her flesh.  “After what you did to me?”

“After I did… what?” Mirabel knew exactly what she had done. Playing dumb just seemed like the best course of action at the moment; she just didn’t really want to acknowledge it at the moment, especially not right here, right now, not while she was busy scrambling to fix her careless mistakes.

Isabela confirmed this by repeating it verbatim, finally tearing her arm free from Mirabel’s shackles. “You know exactly what you did!” she cried out in indignation, the rage that had been carefully concealed under her insipid frown leaping to the surface in a fearsome mask of fury.

Mirabel rubbed her fingers together, making an awkward popping sound with her lips. “Oh, are you, um, talking about the flowers?”

Isabela seethed. Mirabel interpreted that as confirmation, a smile-grimace hybrid stretching her mouth in a guilty response.

“Do you know how much extra work I had to put in to make up for your slack?!” Isabela demanded. “That was supposed to be my day off! And don’t even get me started on the earful Abuela gave me, about your mistake! Ugh, Mirabel, what could have possibly been so important that you had to abandon the deliveries halfway through?!”

Bruno, Mirabel wanted to say, I would wager that he is pretty important, but she refrained, sensing that now was not the time for snarky side quips. So she chose to ignore Isabela’s question, brushing it off. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said, praying that her skeleton explanation would be sufficient enough for Isabela. “Be mad at me all you want. But please, just don’t tell Abuela about Tío Bruno.”

There was a pause. A long, excruciating silence in which Mirabel could do nothing but hold her breath. And then: “I won’t tell Abuela.” Mirabel’s face lit up, and she was just about to thank Isabela when she lifted a delicate hand to cut her off. “If! You apologize for ruining the flower deliveries.”

Mirabel glared at Isabela, her enthusiasm dissipating. This reaction only made Isabela shoot her a smug smirk in return, leaning forward with a devious glint in her dark eyes.

“Go on.” Her words were a potent mixture of being slow, deliberate, and agonizing. “Apologize.”

Mirabel’s mouth pressed into a thin line as her nose wrinkled. Oh man. She did not want to do this, not in the slightest! But if it meant that Bruno’s secret would be maintained, she supposed she could swallow her pride, for just one tiny, simple sentence…. “I’m so—” The rest of her face scrunched up, puckering in pain at the excruciating words. “—sorry.

Isabela’s smirk deepened, and she left out a content puff of air through her nostrils.  

However, unfortunately for them both, Mirabel wasn’t done. So much for her earlier resolution to set aside her ego for the sake of her Tío’s secrecy; that would have made this all far too easy. “That your stupid flowers are so important to you!”

Isabela smirk slipped, being replaced by a dark scowl. “Bye.”

In a moment of clarity, Mirabel remembered why she was there. Why she was putting herself through the torture of conversing with her sister in the first place. She had to prevent her from telling Abuela about Bruno! (But not only that; she needed to hug her to save the miracle!) And what she was doing right now? Was not really helping her achieve these goals!

“Ack, Isa, wait!” she cried, but it was too late; a vine had wrapped itself around her ankles and was currently pulling her away and across the courtyard. Raking her fingers across the tile, trying to find purchase to root herself, Mirabel’s fruitless venture failed.

“Don’t you—think you’re—being a little overdramatic?” Her words were punctuated by her labored breathing as she struggled against the grip of the vines, vying to rip herself free. She couldn’t help but feel a bit lame in her futile exertions, but in her defense, she had not been expecting these plants to be so strong!

Isabela let out a tart gasp, spinning around. “Overdramatic?! You’ve tarnished my reputation!”

Mirabel snorted. “Me screwing up your dumb flower deliveries doesn’t impact your reputation! You’re still perfect, you’re not the one that made a mess of things!”

“And that’s exactly it! I’ve been stuck being perfect, my whole entire life. And you somehow manage to undo years of work, all in one afternoon!"

“Listen, this really isn’t that big of a deal! You can just make more flowers, you do it all the time!”

Isabel rolled her eyes with a violent scoff. “I don’t even care about the flowers! In fact, I’m sick and tired of all these stupid! Flowers!”

And then, the cherry on top to accentuate this stunning reveal, a small cactus, sharp, pointy, and thorny, popped up in between them.

They were each stunned, although for different reasons. Mirabel, because what in the world? Isabela was sick and tired of her flowers?! Her entire personality trait was perfection and flowers! Whereas Isabela, on the other hand, was stupefied because never before, in her entire, flawless life, had she created something so… well, flawed.

She wasn’t able to react much further than this, though (and reveal if she was horrified or elated at creating something so prickly and spiny), because right at that moment, the second that the cactus popped out of the ground, Abuela burst into the room. The sounds of their argument, as it suddenly became apparent to Mirabel, hadn’t really been all that quiet.

Gasping as she saw the cactus that Isabela had created— because it was not a perfect, beautiful flower!—Abuela whirled on Mirabel, her shock transforming into fury.

“Mirabel!” she snapped in a tone harsher than anything Mirabel had ever before heard directed toward her, “what have you caused your poor sister to do? What did you say to her?!”

In Isabela’s shock, the vines imprisoning her against the floor had slipped, allowing for Mirabel to push herself back onto her feet. “Me?” she asked, pointing a finger at her chest in surprise. “I didn’t do anything!

“That is not what it looks like to me!” Abuela said with strict vehemence. “I don’t know why you didn’t get a gift. But it is no excuse for you to corrupt this family! To interfere with the duties and standards we must uphold to protect our community!”

“But I’m not trying to interfere, I just want to help! Listen, I know how to save the miracle, how to save our gifts! I just have to hug—”

However, Mirabel was not given the chance to reveal Bruno’s prophecy, for Abuela cut her off with a sharp slice of her words. “Save? Look around you! Look at Isabela! A cactus?! Our beautiful Isabela, creating something so horrid as that! Not to mention, Luisa has been losing her strength, Camilo can barely control his shapeshifting… I don’t know what you’re doing to this family, Mirabel, but you have to stop!”

Her words echoed throughout Casita. Mirabel recoiled, and as she did so, there was a deep shudder that ran throughout the house, punctuated by a low groan.

As the spiderwebs of a crack began to spread, extending its tendrils to scar the tiles beneath her feet, Mirabel had a moment of clarity, like the peal of a bell “Nothing we do will ever be good enough for you, will it?” she began, her words slow and careful, gaining traction as the realization sank into her skin. “Luisa will never be strong enough. Isabela will never be perfect enough. Bruno left, because you only saw the worst in him!”

“Bruno didn’t care about this family! Otherwise he would not have left us behind!” Her words were punctuated with a wild gesture, one that Mirabel had never seen her utilize before. Anger that Mirabel had not known her Abuela was capable of displaying.

Once again, Bruno’s absence proved to cut deeper into this family than anyone had ever acknowledged. We don’t talk about Bruno, because to do so would force us to acknowledge how we mistreated him. We don’t talk about Bruno, because we miss him more than we would ever care to admit.

The thought of it sent a surge of defensiveness swelling up in her chest, adamant to prove her wrong. “Bruno loves this family. He never left, he’s been living in the walls for ten years, all because of you! You drove him away! And now, you’re going to drive the miracle away, just like you did to him!”

Behind her, there was the sound of a gasp, almost loud enough to mask the shattering sound of a massive crack splitting through the floor. Her eyes darting past Abuela’s form, Mirabel noticed Pepa, Félix, Augustín, and Julieta standing in the entryway to the dining room. And then, with a glance over her shoulder, saw that Luisa and Camilo were standing at the top of the staircase, watching the entire interaction with fearful eyes.

Oh no. When had they all gotten here?! She hadn’t realized she had an audience!

Pepa pressed a delicate hand to her chest, jaw dropping, and Julieta covered her own open mouth with the palm of her hand.  The entire family went silent, still and unmoving at Mirabel’s bombshell reveal that Bruno had still been living with them in Casita. The entire scene was so dramatic, so absurd, that Mirabel couldn’t help but feel like she gave Bruno’s telenovelas a run for their money.

But could she blame them? Had that not been her own reaction when she had found out herself? Granted it was a little different, but the fact of the matter remained all the same. Bruno’s absence was painful, and to learn that he had just been on the other side of one of Casita’s walls was, well, upsetting, to put it lightly.

It was reflected on Abuela’s face, her shock, sadness, and indignation creating a powerful combination of reactions. But above this murkiness of warring emotions, she looked hurt. Devastated.

“Bruno is… here?”

Those were the last words Mirabel heard, any of the family heard, before a deep, resounding crack echoed through Casita, tearing through the floor right beneath Mirabel’s feet.

What happened next could only be described as chaos. The worst-case scenario.

The house had collapsed. The candle had died in her hands. And if Bruno’s vision had been any indication, it was all her fault.

So, as was the only logical conclusion, she had fled.

Above her, the beginning of dawn was beginning to break through the inky black night. A dusty rose glow haloed the mountain peaks around her, signifying the start of a new day. Closing her eyes and tilting her head back, Mirabel took a deep breath.

Behind her, she could hear the silent padding of muted footsteps in the dirt. The shadow of their form was cast over her in the dim, morning light, but they stopped, not speaking and simply standing there, waiting.

After a few minutes of not acknowledging the presence of the person behind her (because to be honest, she had been hoping that if she ignored them for long enough, they would walk away and leave her alone) Mirabel let out a sigh, finally turning around to see who had found her.