Chapter Text
The Encanto could be found, if you knew where to look, and a very small number of families related to the original founders had settled there over the years. Alma Madrigal was delighted when she learned that Ignacio Rojas’s brother, along with his wife and 14-year-old son—one year younger than her triplets!—were making a new home in the village.
Oh well. Alma had had a lot of disappointments in her life. Young Agustin Rojas was hardly the most memorable.
She had nothing against the boy himself—what she saw of him, from a distance. But after a flurry of frenzied sociability, the new family quickly retreated to themselves. Señor Rojas was nearly 70 and on the frail side, while his much-younger second wife, Agustin’s mother, heard the rumors about Bruno and quickly came to shun all the Madrigals, even refusing Julieta’s food for her son’s frequent injuries. Agustin was at the age when students left the primary school and went on to apprenticeships or individual study. Tutors in math, music, and various other subjects were regularly seen going in and out of the Rojas house … while Agustin, at first a popular novelty among the Encanto youth, increasingly remained in.
Some five years after the Rojas family had come to town, Julieta was gathering herbs after lunch when Casita gently shepherded young Agustin to the edge of the garden. She hadn’t seen the young man—who was really well dressed, had he always dressed so well?—in over a year, but she thought of him occasionally with pity, this boy who hurt himself so often but whose parents feared the Madrigals too much to let one help him. She scooped the herbs into her apron pockets and dusted off her hands, thinking how glad she was he had finally come. Except, looking him over—
“You don’t appear to have any injuries,” she said.
“I don’t!” Agustin replied. “The odd bruise here and there, but it’s been a good month, overall. I didn’t come for that, I just wanted to meet you. All of you, because I feel bad at how standoffish my family has been. Mostly you, though, because you’re beautiful.”
“You’re … not … here for food? And thank you?”
“You’re welcome, and no! I’m here to ask if you want to take a walk with me. With Pepa or Bruno of course. I’m sorry about the short—er, utter lack of notice. I had an unexpected opportunity to get away.”
“Well, I … all right.” Julieta wasn’t hesitant as much as astonished. Agustin was nothing like the sniveling wreck she’d imagined, and he was quite attractive up close. And boys never approached Julieta. (She wondered sometimes if her mother would ever figure out that boys don’t want a “perfect” girl.) “I was going to hang up these herbs to dry and then wrap up the leftover food from morning rounds, so come to the kitchen with me.”
“Splendid!” He helped her gather the herbs, and then stopped. “Leftovers you cooked, Julieta? And can you easily spare them?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Curiosity compels me,” Agustin mused, and then marched straight at Alma’s beehives pumping his arms and singing the Colombian national anthem, to the predictable response of the bees.
“Whoop, there we go, that didn’t take long,” the now lumpy young man said happily. “Let’s try it!”
“You just—”
“Yes, it’s not why I came, but I’ve been so curious to see what magical healing feels like as opposed to the traditional kind, and the bees were right here and the food was right there, and the opportunity was too good to resist.”
“But you just—”
“My mother’s afraid of a lot of things, I’m not. But could we get those leftovers now?”
Alma had seen but not heard the interaction, and strode into the kitchen indignantly. “Young man, did you just provoke my bees into stinging you for an excuse to talk to my daughter?” she snapped.
Agustin swallowed a mouthful of arepa, choked a bit, and took a sip of water from the glass handed to him by a furiously blushing Julieta. “No, Doña Alma,” he said. “I’ve asked Julieta to go for a walk with me in order to talk to her. I got stung to satisfy my scientific curiosity. I apologize for bothering your bees, señora. I don’t think I scared them.”
“The bees could stand to hear the national anthem, don’t you think, mama? This is their country too,” Julieta said with a twinkle in her eye. “You have a very nice voice,” she added to Agustin, who was now the one to blush.
“Thank you!” he said. “Señora, may I take Julieta for a walk? I certainly don’t have my parents’ blessing, so it would be good to have yours.”
If there was one skill a person learned as the single mother of triplets and leader of an entire village, it was triage. Alma didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all, but she had easily half a dozen more pressing tasks that afternoon, and Julieta was sensible. She’d let it go and talk to her daughter about it that evening. “Fine,” she said. “Julieta, Bruno is in his room, take him with you. Pepa is coming with me to meet with the farmers and settle the spring planting schedule.”