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"Camilo! Come out of there!"
"No!" The young boy wriggled himself tighter into the crevass beteen his bed and the wall until he was a quivering yellow mound in the shadows. Alma sighed and grimaced as her knees creaked - old age was not a kindness - and rested her hand on the bedspread. It was dark blue today. Camilo's room was one she rarely ventured into, in the year it had been an accessible part of the casita. Just like his physical form was constantly changing, the contents and quantity of his room did the same. Sometimes it was as expansive as a church, other times it could be as small as a cupboard. The place could be unsettling, especially when when the chair you had sat in decided to turn itself into a bookshelf.
But there were only so many choices one had when her young grandson ran tearfully away and barricaded himself under his bed, and it was her fault.
Camilo was young, unrefined, a little reckless (traits from his mother's side) and most certainly cheeky. But he was an observant child. Alma supposed he had come across the many evenings when she would stop and find herself distracted by Pedro's meek smile in the portrait they hung above the stairs. A man in town had painted it for her as a thank you for the Encanto that had granted the entire community safety. It was his daughter who had painted the mural on the buildings that led into town.
The picture was in good likeness and Alma couldn't help but became enamoured with his gaze sometimes. A brief fog would surround her and trap her in her grief.
Mirabel had asked for a story about abuelo Pedro last week, as the family sat around the fire in the kitchen after dinner. Alma had been happy to provide once she saw the shine in Julietta's eyes and the way she snuggled against Augustine's shoulder. Her children always loved tales of their papi, ever since they had first learned what the meaning of a story was. She hadn't expected Camilo to spy her sadness.
She certainly hadn't expected to walk into her room a week later, and see her husband breathing and bathed in the evening light.
Camilo had seen the moth of sadness she carried in her chest, and only wanted to help, but she had been blanked by terror and rage and grief. Seeing his face split apart as quickly as his disguise had sent a crack through her already broken heart.
"Camilo!" Alma winced and tried to soften her tone. Her grandson was still huddled underneath his bed, and from the sound of it, he was crying. Alma had raised three children on her own, and had been raised quite strictly herself, she knew the meaning of discipline. But seeing Camilo break under the force of her scolding broke her a little too.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper." The words were foreign, but she pushed forwards anyway. Camilo's tiny muffled whimpers didn't let up.
"I just... grief is hard. Of course I miss your abuelo and long for a day when I can see him again, but I...not like that. What you did was sweet but-"
"Mami said you wanted abuelo Pedro to come back." Camilo whimpered.
"What?"
"I asked her after you told us that story last week." Camilo sniffled, his face pressed so tightly into his sleeves that she could barely percive his words. "She said you used to talk about how you would give anything to have him back, just for a minute. I just thought..." He trailed off. Alma sighed and clutched her own hand, giving herself strength.
"Camilo." She sighed. "I, it's true, I do miss your abuelo. I miss his guidance and-" She shook herself before she descend into a spiral of every inch of a man's soul, and how empty her own soul felt without it. "But that is not your job to fix it. There, there is nothing we can do. I accepted that a very long time ago."
"I'm sorry." Camilo murmured.
Alma's attention was already caught by snapshots of her past, and the forty years she had spent without her husband, but suddenly she was seized completely by another time like this, another child crying under his bed.
"I'm sorry mami! I can't help it!"
Her boy's voice shook with the force of his regret, but her own temperament was so shaken already that she couldn't feel it.
"You can't keep doing this, Bruno." Her voice rang out like a gong. "Your gift has great potential to help people! You have to take responsibility for yourself!"
No response. She could barely glimpse her son's outline, knees to his chest, arms over his head, as she stood up. "You can join us downstairs when you've calmed down."
She had left the room that evening, expecting her boy to join his sisters by the fire within ten minutes. He did not reappear until the next morning, and then she had been too caught up in preparing for a whole day of the Madrigals helping the town, to notice him flinching as she touched his face.
Alma curled her hand around Camilo's bedsheet (which was now red) to tug herself back to the present. She realised that her grandson's sobs had paused, waiting fearfully for her reaction.
"I know you are." She spoke cautiously. "And I'm sorry I was so angry with you. It was a very sweet thing to try."
There was a shifting agaisnt the floorboards, and Camilo slowly rolled himself out, his damp face aprehensive.
"You're not angry anymore?" He enquired.
Alma's face crinkled into a smile, and she brushed his cheek, wiping the tears away.
"No she told him, and brushed a hand through his hair.
"Your gift is special." She told her grandson, pulling him up so his small body rested on her lap. "And as a Madrigal, I know you can put so much good into this world. And I know you can do great things, my oranguito."
Camilo smiled and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, nuzzling his face into her neck. Alma held on, scarcely daring to let go.
"Alright." She said with a warm chuckle, after they had both gotten their fill on mutual acceptance. "How about you go see if your Tia Julietta needs help in the kitchen. It's a secret, but there are some utensils she can't reach."
Camilo giggled and shifted away from her, patting her cheek as he went by. Alma smiled to see him perked up, and lifted herself into a standing position again, ignoring her aching joints.
Once she had closed to door to her grandson's room, Alma felt her throat clam up with weariness, and her heart beat softly against her chest, like there was someone begging to be let in.
She made it down the corridor, and shut her own door firmly behind her, before crossing the room. Her's was much simpler than the gifted members of her family's. Regulation chest of drawers and a bed built for one. Even casita knew there would be no replacing certain people.
Atop of the nightstand there was a smaller portrait of Pedro. This one has been given to her days before her wedding, and she carried it in a locket on a chain around her neck, except on days when the weight of her loss became too heavy. Alma slipped her hands through the fine chain now, and sank down onto her bed, clutching the small glimpse of him in her hands.
"Ach, Pedro." She sighed, clutching the pocket sized portrait to her chest. "I failed him. Our beautiful boy, I-" Her breath kiltered off. "I let him down. I always knew we would never be as good a family without you, but..." She clutched her fingers around the locket and kissed it softly. "I wish you were here."
They had been forced to flee their village only three days after they had become a family of five. Two nights of absolute joy, warm blinking bundles in their arms, and two nights of locking the doors against the whispers of hostility coming from the South, determined to keep out the cold.
Some of their neighbours had fled early while they hid inside, Pedro scooping up each of his children in turn and kissing their foreheads in delight. If only they had left sooner alongside their neighbours, instead of pretending all was fine. Maybe then her candlelit memories of holding her three babies and sobbing as loss carved a chasm of agony into her heart, would be different.
Maybe Pepa wouldn't have stumbled and fallen with her first steps, if a pair of warm hands had been holding her tiny ones. Maybe Julietta wouldn't have worn herself out every night for a week before Alma's birthday, sewing her a brand new apron to replace the threadbare one, if she had had a helping hand to provide her with a thimble and keep her secret. Maybe Bruno wouldn't have banded himself in his tower so often, having visions he couldn't keep to himself or escape from, if he'd had a parent who saw his pain before it was too late, and tried to reconcile it.
Alma had known how important it was to treasure all the time you had with your loved ones the first night she spend without Pedro's snores nestled against her shoulder. It was a lesson she hadn't learned at the time, and now she was learning it twice.
Kissing the locket again, she tucked it into her blouse and clasped her hands together. She didn't pray often - now that she lived in a magical house that overflowed with its own personality, she didn't know what she believed. But now she held onto the feeling that there was someone out there watching, hanging onto her family's every movement and protecting them from the worst of the world's horrors.
She prayed that there was someone out there looking after her son.
A soft knock sounded at her door.
"Ah, just one moment." She dropped her hands, clenched so tightly the creases of her years had begun to vanish, and composed herself. Hair neat, warm smile, the head of the Madrigal family. A woman who makes no mistakes. "Come in!"
Camilo stuck his small head around the door, little hands clutching the doorknob. "Tia Julietta says dinner is ready." He said. Alma smiled graciously.
"Thank you Camilo."
"Are you alright, abuelita?"
She looked up with a start and saw his eyes wide, full of questions.
Am I alright with the fact that I pushed my son so far away that I can no longer see his beautiful face every day, when I had a chance to make things better for him? Am I alright to know that I am capable of hurting you so badly, my little one? Am I alright in knowing that I must always lead this family alone?
She smiled deeply. "Yes, I'm fine. You can go collect the others."
She watched as he left, and then stood up.
She is a Madrigal, and Madrigals are not weighed down by their grief. They push forward in explosive bursts of magic and beauty. Like the butterflies Pedro was always including in the songs he wrote. Songs he never had a chance to teach his children, and now those children would never learn from him.
But this was a lesson of the past. Bruno was a thing for the past to consume, as was her grief over the family she had lost.