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Luisa sat by the side of the water, took a deep breath, and then let it go.
There was the scent of freshly-wet grass on the air. Raindrops slid down the back of her neck, dripping from her hair. Her clothes were soaked through.
She caught herself smiling, even as she shivered. She’d been halfway to the river before it had started to rain, and she’d considered turning back – but there had been something about the sudden downpour that had made her laugh and she’d set off running instead, through the trees and the break in the mountain and all the way down to the water’s edge. Just as she’d arrived, the rain had eased off, and she’d sat down without minding the dampness of the rocks.
And now here she was. In the quiet, with the smooth water moving by. A shy sun peered through the clouds, checking to see if the coast was clear before reaching with golden fingers to dry Luisa’s wet clothes and hair. Luisa stretched, and sat back, watching the soft light play on the surface of the river.
The water was so clear. And she knew, now, why this was a painful place – Abuela had told her everything – but this morning, it just felt peaceful.
Her own history was so deeply written in this place. All the strength in her – a part of it had died here with her Abuelo Pedro, and a part of it had been born here with the miracle. She didn’t quite know what that meant, or what she felt about it. It was sad, but she didn’t feel sad. She felt at rest.
A bird swooped low over the water, tipped its shining wings, and then darted away. Seeing it, Luisa felt something unfurl inside her – a kind of serene happiness. She took another long, deep breath. Even a week ago, sitting here would have felt completely impossible. And now here she was, just sitting down. Doing nothing. For whole minutes at a time! It was a miracle of a completely different kind. Go back a few days, and she’d have been spending just about her entire day looking after the –
“Donkeys!” said a voice from the treeline behind her, and Luisa whipped around. She recognised the man from the town that came hurrying towards her, gasping for breath.
“What’s wrong?” she said, getting to her feet. And as nice as it had been to sit down, she felt her muscles tense in a familiar, almost comforting way at the interruption.
“My donkeys have got out… please, I’m so sorry, but I just can’t seem to get them back in, and if they get into the window boxes again then everyone will be so angry… I know I’m not meant to be asking you right now, but… can you help?”
Luisa didn’t even hesitate. She was already starting to stride back towards home before she answered,
“Always ask me. It’s fine. I’m on my way.”
–
The night sky was huge and silent, and Luisa stood completely still underneath them, staring upward. She was just outside Casita, and she could hear the reassuring clink clink of the floor tiles behind her.
Above, stars had been lovingly pressed to glitter against the swathe of purple and blue and velvet black. The moon was a perfect crescent, casting a faint silver light over the leaves on the trees and the rooves of the houses.
It was beautiful enough that, on her way back to her room after an afternoon spent renovating the fence around the donkey field, Luisa had stopped to look. Her muscles were aching pleasantly. And now all she had to do was head inside and go to sleep. When she woke up, maybe she’d go and check on the fence just to be sure it was sturdy.
Or… maybe she’d take a bath, she thought, or sit and watch the sun rise from a hammock. She was meant to be taking more time for herself, after all. But even as she thought about it, she heard the echoes of the man’s words in her head as he’d asked for help with the donkeys: I know I’m not meant to be asking you right now, but…
If everyone knew they weren’t meant to be asking, did that mean there were lots of people out there right now who needed help but weren’t asking for it? Luisa felt a clench of worry tighten in her stomach.
What if her family needed help but weren’t asking? What if Mirabel, especially, who had to be so overwhelmed with all the changes lately and who had also been the one to say Luisa should take more rest – what if Mirabel needed help, but wasn’t asking for it? What if she was somewhere right now, upset, wishing her older sister could come and reach out to her but not asking just because she thought Luisa needed to – to sit around with a coconut, or whatever?
Luisa’s eye twitched. Just a little. But still, she felt it.
Just because she’d decided to relax more didn’t mean that everyone didn’t still have the exact same problems, or maybe even new ones. It just meant they wouldn’t have the same help with them anymore. And that – that wasn’t okay. That put a horrible coldness in Luisa’s chest. And what if…
An even deeper coldness set in. What if, instead of just trying to get by without help, they asked for help… from someone else?
What if someone else became their go-to person? Luisa stared up at the stars, feeling painfully small. They might all just stop coming to her, everyone in the village and everyone in her family. The thought alone was so painful that Luisa could feel tears coming to her eyes.
She imagined walking through the streets, and no one talking to her. No one even knowing what to say. What would there be to say, after all? All she’d ever really talked about to any of them was the jobs they needed done. It wasn’t as though she’d ever had the time to think of other things to talk about.
What did people usually talk about?
Luisa stared up at the stars, and realised she had no idea. And if she couldn’t talk to people, what then? She’d just be alone.
She needed to keep helping. She needed to be the person that people went to. If not… it would just be like this, forever. Silent, standing just outside in the dark, by herself.
Maybe it was already too late. Maybe everyone had already replaced her –
“Hey, Luisa?” said a voice from the doorway, and Luisa turned to see Camilo standing there, looking hesitant.
“What’s up?” Luisa asked, hoping the darkness was covering the fact that her eyes had been filling with tears, and hoping her voice sound deep and strong enough like usual.
“Uh, so, I know you’re taking a break right now, but…”
“You need something done?” Luisa said, wiping the tears out of her eyes with two swipes of her fist.
“Um… well, it’s just that I wanted to move my bed to a different place in my room…”
Luisa strode towards Camilo, picked him up, and hugged him.
“Ow! Luisa, seriously!” She felt him shrink in her arms, turning into someone smaller to avoid the crush of her embrace, and she tightened her grip with a smile. “Luisa, let go, I’m going purple here!”
Luisa set him down, and patted him on the head.
“Let’s go,” she said. And when she slept that night, she eased the knot of fear in her stomach with the thought that she obviously wasn’t completely replaced, not yet. She just needed to keep doing things for people until she was sure they wouldn’t be in trouble without her, or replace her. Then she could take a proper break.
–
Luisa strained with her arms, muscles taut with the effort. She felt a strand of hair come loose from her bun, sticking to the sweat that was rolling down her face. She took a second to breathe, and then with a low, angry noise she heaved again.
The mountain she was trying to lift groaned, and moved an inch. She definitely saw its jagged peak shift just ever so slightly against the backdrop of the clear blue sky.
“Move,” Luisa told it furiously. “Move!”
Impassive, the mountain made no reply.
“I’m going to – put – you back – together,” Luisa ground out through clenched teeth as she dug her feet into the ground, pushing with all her might. “And everything will be… fine… hrrrrrr…” She gave it everything she had and the mountain shifted another few inches. She could do this. She could seal the mountain back up, she knew she could. She just needed to…
Luisa stopped, the back of her neck tingling. She looked left and right, and then checked behind her.
“Ah!” She stopped pushing at the mountain and readied herself at the sight of a dark figure standing in the shadows.
“Ahhh!” said the figure, in a higher-pitched voice. Luisa frowned, clenching her fists tighter – and then relaxing them when she saw that the figure had shaggy, shoulder-length hair and wide eyes that were becoming more and more familiar these days.
“Tío… Bruno?” she said.
“Luisa, hey,” Bruno said with a nervous, raspy little half-laugh, eyeing Luisa’s readied stance. She swallowed and then eased it, folding her hands in front of her, and Bruno stepped out of the shadow of a tree and into the light.
“Is everything okay at home?” Luisa said.
“At home?” Bruno seemed surprised. “Yes, of course.”
“Do you need help with something?” Luisa asked.
“Me?” Bruno didn’t appear to know what to do with the question. He nervously brushed down the front of his clothes, and shrugged. “No, I don’t think I need any help.”
“Okay,” Luisa said. She paused, watching her uncle, waiting for him to say something else – but all he did was stare at her. She looked away and then back again. Bruno didn’t budge. She tried to smile at him but could feel that it was definitely coming out as more of an awkward grimace. “So… did you… I mean…” Luisa cleared her throat. “I was just… the mountain…”
“I saw,” Bruno said. “It looked really hard.” Maybe it was just because he’d been gone for so long, but Luisa always found his tone so difficult to read. She could never tell if he was being judgemental or if he was just observing.
“I just wanted to try to put it back,” Luisa said.
“Ah, yes, yes, yes,” Bruno said. He paused, and then said, “Why?”
“Oh. Well, I thought…” Luisa clenched her hands back into fists. “I thought I’d just do something really big for everyone, and then I could take a break after.”
And suddenly Bruno was looking at her with far more understanding than she’d expected. She didn’t know if she liked the expression on his face, his eyes gentle and kind and a bit sad; no one ever felt sorry for her, and she liked it that way.
“Buying yourself some time?” he said.
“Something like that,” Luisa said, trying to keep her tone respectful but hearing the curt defensiveness in it.
“Why would you think everyone wants the mountain closed off again?” Bruno asked. Luisa pulled a face.
“Obviously it’s better when it’s closed. We’re safer that way. Nothing can hurt us.” She shrugged. “It only broke because Abuela and Mirabel fought, like the house broke. And we fixed the house. So I’m going to fix the mountain. Keep everything out.”
“It is pretty scary out there,” Bruno said, nodding. He knocked a couple of times on the wood of the tree nearest him, and then once on his own head.
“Yeah…” Luisa said, eyeing him uncertainly. “I mean, the river is nice. But everyone’s seen it now. If we spend too much time there, it could really ruin everything.” In her mind’s eye, Luisa saw that morning by the river again, with the rain and then the sudden warmth of the sun. The feeling of breathing easy, the little unfurling of joy and calm inside her.
And then the man’s words. I know I’m not meant to be asking you right now, but…
If she kept going back to the river, if she kept looking for that feeling she’d had that morning, Luisa knew she would stop being herself. She’d stop being who she needed to be. She’d leave everyone she cared about feeling helpless. It wasn’t worth it, just to spare her a little bit of work.
She’d tried carrying less, and it hadn’t worked. It hadn’t felt good. It had just left her feeling more alone than ever.
Bruno took a step closer.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Luisa realised with horror that she was starting to tear up again. She tried to suck the tears back in with an effort of will.
“I’m fine,” she said. Bruno seemed to contemplate her for a second, and then said,
“I actually came out here to birdwatch. Do you want to come?”
Luisa struggled to keep her face blank, and not show her confusion.
“Birdwatch?” she said dubiously.
Bruno nodded, his face starting to light up.
“Did you know that there are so many different species in the forests around here? I couldn’t really see any of them… the birds… while I was – well, stuck inside the walls with no windows to look out of. And honestly I don’t really know any of the names of the birds except the obvious ones like toucans and parrots and parakeets. I’ve been meaning to find a book with all the names in but I haven’t had time yet and I want to see them in real life more than I want to know their names, you know? So I’ve just been making up my own names. Like greeny-red friends, and small strange yellow-eyes, and stripey pants. Those are my favourites. But there are lots and lots of really beautiful ones.”
Luisa stared at him. He looked so excited, smiling so brightly that it was contagious, and she found herself almost smiling right along with him. Inside her, she felt the worry untwist, just a little bit.
“You want me to… come with you?” Luisa said, and Bruno shrugged, looking suddenly shy.
“You can come if you want, that’s all. You don’t have to. The offer’s there.”
Looking back for a half-second towards the mountain, Luisa thought it might be okay to put off putting it back together. Just for a day. She could see what this birdwatching thing was all about, and then come back to it. She had to admit that the stripey pants had her intrigued. She looked back to Bruno, who seemed ready for her to say that the whole thing sounded stupid and she wasn’t going to do it.
“How do we… start?” she said, and watched Bruno brighten again.
“We stand still,” Bruno said. “And look around. You just have to be really quiet to see them.”
“And not pick up any mountains?” Luisa guessed, and felt a little burst of happiness when she saw Bruno smile again.
“Probably not,” he said. “Though honestly I haven’t given it a try, so who knows.”
–
Three days later, as she was crossing Casita’s courtyard on her way out, Luisa heard her name being called from above.
“Luisa!”
She looked up and saw Mirabel leaning over the fence, waving down at her. Like it always did when she saw her little sister, Luisa felt her heart grow in her chest. Mirabel looked so happy these days. She had Antonio beside her, pulling on her skirt.
“Hey!” Luisa called back. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah!” Mirabel said. “I was just wondering, could you give me a hand with something? It’s just a whole problem we’re having with a giant rock. You know, giant rock problems.”
Luisa opened her mouth to immediately agree to help, and then – maybe for the first time ever – she paused.
She’d been on her way out to go birdwatching with Bruno again. It had been… eventful the first time, with her making too much noise and even trying at one point to shake the trees hard enough that the birds would fly out so Bruno could see them, but it had been fun. At the very end, just as they’d been about to head back, they’d seen a stripey pants. It had been tiny and magical, just perched on a branch preening its feathers as Bruno and Luisa watched.
She’d kept so still, so quiet, just watching. The bird needed no help. The bird asked nothing of her. The bird was better, happier, when she did absolutely nothing.
She’d felt that sensation again. Like warm sun on her brow, like smooth waters flowing. Like joy and calm unfurling in her chest.
And she hadn’t felt like she wanted to go back to the mountain to fix it since – that felt like a good thing. So when Bruno had told her he was going out again today and that she was welcome to join him, Luisa had jumped at the chance. But now Mirabel was asking for help, and if Luisa said yes… she’d probably miss that chance.
She could try to find Bruno now, explain the situation, and ask him to wait for her so that they could set off together after she’d helped Mirabel. But the fact of the matter was that helping people tended to play out a lot like dominoes, with one job leading to another, and she’d probably make Bruno really late leaving. She didn’t think he’d hold it against her, but…
But Luisa really wanted to go. She really wanted to go now, just like she’d planned.
Luisa looked up at Mirabel, who was still standing and watching her from the balcony with an increasingly concerned expression on her face. Luisa gritted her teeth. She tried to put out of her mind the way that Mirabel’s face was going to drop, how crestfallen her little sister was going to look. She tried to set aside the slippery cold fear that Mirabel would never ask her for anything again, after this. She swallowed hard, and opened her mouth, and said,
“I was just… um. I was just on my way out. Do you think I could help… this afternoon?” As soon as the words were out, Luisa saw Mirabel’s expression change, and a horrible feeling flooded her. “You know what, no. I can help now. It’s okay. There are so many days when I could go birdwatching, and you guys need help now. I’ll just tell Bruno that…”
“Casita!” Mirabel called, and then she was climbing over the fence; Casita caught her as she stepped off it, building her a stone slide all the way down to the courtyard where Luisa was standing. Antonio jumped on the slide right after Mirabel, laughing all the way down.
“Mirabel…” Luisa said as her little sister got to her feet, “It’s okay, I didn’t mean it, really… oof.”
She broke off as Mirabel took a couple of steps towards her, threw out her arms, and hugged Luisa right around the middle.
Mirabel said something garbled into the hug, and Luisa put her arms around her little sister.
“What?” Luisa said.
Mirabel looked up, her face still round and bright and beautiful the way Luisa could remember it being since she was tiny.
“I said,” Mirabel answered, “that sounds great. And birdwatching sounds amazing.”
Mirabel wasn’t angry. She didn’t even look disappointed. All Luisa could see in her face was happiness, and maybe even a little bit of pride.
Luisa felt herself getting choked up, and tried to shake it off. There had been way too much getting emotional lately. She said in her strongest voice,
“Don’t ask anyone else about that giant rock, though. I’ll be back soon. Okay?” The last word came out in a very different tone than she’d intended, more of a plea than anything else. Mirabel, still looking up at her older sister, squeezed her arms tightly around her middle.
“No way,” Mirabel said. “Honestly, the whole thing was pretty much just an excuse to get you to play with us, so. Not much good asking anyone else, really.”
“An excuse?” Luisa said.
“Yeah. Have you not noticed we always do that?” Mirabel’s glasses had slipped a little down her nose, but she didn’t pull away from the hug to fix them. “Asking you for help is pretty much the only way to get to spend time with you, otherwise you’re away helping someone else. So we sort of… you know… make up something we need help with sometimes. So we can hang out.” Mirabel relaxed the hug, suddenly looking worried. “Is that bad?”
“Luisa, you can play hide-and-seek with us when you get back, right?” Antonio said, reaching up to try to grab Luisa’s arm and hang off it. Luisa stared between the two of them, both looking up at her with wide eyes.
They wanted her, Luisa thought. Not help. They just wanted her.
There was no stopping the tears now. Luisa bent down to scoop up Antonio and brought him into the hug, squishing her sister and her little cousin just tight enough that she hoped they understood how she felt. And then she carefully set them down, and fixed Mirabel’s glasses.
“I’ll see you when I get home,” she said.
“Have fun!” Antonio called after her, as Mirabel waved. Striding away from them and from the house, Luisa could hear the tap tap tap of roof tiles and floor tiles waving, too.
She made for the place she’d agreed to meet Bruno, her steps steady and assured. Today wasn’t about helping. Today, she was going to just be. And for the people around her, and for the birds – and maybe even for herself as well – that was enough.