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The first three gifts given were about survival: that raw, animalistic need to live.
The Miracle burned with Alma’s fear and wild hunger. Despite the towering mountains she had created, the paranoia never left her. What if the soldiers returned? What if someone was injured, or hurt? What if their crops failed? Cut off as they were, there was no way they could travel outside the Encanto for supplies or a doctor. They were on their own.
Alma unknowingly fed the Miracle with her turbulent emotions. It was she who created the mountains in her desperate need to protect her children, it was she who created Casita in her aching desire for a home. And it was she who gave the Miracle the power to bestow gifts upon her children. When Alma awoke that morning on the triplets’ fifth birthday she knew something had changed. When she stepped out of her bedroom and saw the ghostly outlines of three doors, she understood – somehow, without any words – what the Miracle was trying to do. She fetched the candle from her bedside table and roused her little babies, who blinked curiously up at her from their beds in the nursery.
Despite her being the source of the Miracle’s magic, Alma did not choose the gifts. That was the Miracle itself. It took that fear and paranoia and hunger and like a general it surveyed the three little children as if they were tiny soldiers. The triplets were rarely far from each other, speaking in their made-up secret language, communicating plans with the glance of an eye, the twist of a mouth. They were already a unit. The Miracle gave them gifts that were designed to be worked together, in tandem.
For the youngest, the smallest, with his delicate health, the Miracle gave Bruno the gift of prophecy. It was not a gift that required physical activity, not like Julieta’s gift; he could remain protected within Casita’s walls, safe and cared for. He could soothe Alma’s fears by looking into the future. Whatever may come, the family would know about it in advance and prepare.
For the eldest, the strongest, the pillar, the Miracle gave Julieta the gift of healing. She could work the long, hard hours in a hot kitchen, cooking the food infused with her magic. She could look at wounds and blood, and even if she wanted to run and scream and hide in safety, she would not allow herself to flinch. She had to soldier on, to keep the burdens from falling onto Pepa’s or Bruno’s shoulders. If Bruno saw visions of catastrophe, Julieta would be there to heal whatever broke, come what may.
And for the middle child, Pepa, loud and flamboyant and wanting so desperately to be seen and appreciated, like most middle children, the Miracle tapped into her powerful emotions that were capable of uplifting and spurring her siblings onward. With her gift of weather manipulation, Pepa could provide Julieta with the raw ingredients needed for healing. She could feed the whole town. She could go out into the sun, bask in that singular oneness that she so rarely experienced when home, while Bruno and Julieta remained behind in the Casita.
By the time Isabela was born, Alma had lost some of those hard edges. She no longer feared quite like she used to. The emotions the Miracle fed upon these days was a strange mixture, a tangled knot of regret and hope. Because Isabela looked so much like Alma had when she was baby, and, oh, what a life she could have had with Pedro! But here, in the Encanto, she was given a second chance. Isabela shall have everything that Alma always dreamed of.
The Miracle had made no plans of continuing to bestow magic gifts on Alma’s descendants; but it was an extension of Alma’s will, and Alma assumed that the Miracle would bless Isabela the same as it had Julieta and Pepa and Bruno and the Miracle must provide. Alma wanted Isabela to live a charmed life, and so the Miracle gave her the gift of flowers. Ornamental, pleasing, and utterly frivolous.
After Isabela, things changed. The triplets’ gifts were no longer flukes; they had become, in the eyes of the villagers, the Magical Madrigals. Chosen by God, to lead and protect them, with Alma at the head of this new imperial dynasty. Alma stepped gracefully into her new role as not just the town leader, but as someone divinely appointed to protect and care for the Eden she had been given. With these new feelings of duty, obligation, and arrogance – the gifts now thought of as simply perfunctory instead of what they were, gifts – the Miracle duly provided the gift of hearing and the gift of strength to Dolores and Luisa. Their feelings were not taken into consideration, nor their thoughts, nor their personalities. It was what the Encanto needed, and so they must provide, as Madrigals, so Alma commanded.
With Camilo, things changed once more. Looking into his eyes – Pedro's eyes, he has Pedro’s eyes, Alma thought over and over – a deep yearning opened up within her soul. The pain of an old woman looking back on her life and— if I could just see him one more time, just one more time before I go. The Miracle provided. It gave Camilo the gift of shapeshifting.
Camilo’s gift required every last bit of power the Miracle had, because no matter how strong or wise or kind Alma Madrigal was, the fact remained that she was old. Her death was drawing ever nearer, and as she grew weaker so too did the Miracle. When little Mirabel touched the golden knob, it had wanted to give her the gift that Alma desperately envisioned for her, but it couldn’t. There was nothing left to give and the door just... disappeared.
As the years passed, Alma grew older, grew tired, grew weaker. The magic seeped from the Miracle with each passing day; it was having difficulty even keeping Casita together. It needed a new source, a fresh being full of life to feed from. There was only one person strong enough: Mirabel. She had that same hunger Alma had, that power that could create magic through the sheer force of her will. She loved her family so much. Slowly, one tendril at a time, the Miracle disentangled itself from Alma and latched onto Mirabel.
Mirabel wanted Antonio to have a gift. She wanted him to have a wonderful gift, a gift that he would enjoy. There was nothing that Antonio enjoyed more than animals. The Miracle provided. With the power given to it by Mirabel, the Miracle bestowed upon Antonio the ability to speak with animals. Maybe it would one day prove useful to the Encanto, but that wasn’t the reason why the Miracle had given that gift. It was given because Mirabel knew Antonio would like it, and what Mirabel wanted, the Miracle obeyed.
And Mirabel wanted many, many things.
Mirabel wanted Luisa to take a break. Well, that one was ultimately up to Luisa, but the Miracle did its best by placing discreet chairs and hammocks around the Encanto and Casita.
Mirabel wanted Isabela to be human, to be less than perfect, to be as dirty and ugly as the rest of them, to be her sister again. The Miracle changed her gift. No more flowers. Or, well, not just flowers. Whatever she wanted. Like Pepa, Isabela’s powers were now based on her emotions; no more hiding. Isabela would no longer be able to keep every less-than-perfect feeling locked away anymore.
Mirabel wanted Bruno to be a part of the family again. Mirabel wanted to be noticed. Mirabel wanted, wanted, wanted.
She wanted Alma to open her eyes and see the destruction she had caused.
The Miracle is not the candle. It never was. Even as the flame burned out, the Miracle remained. The magic remained. But it stayed hidden. At that moment Mirabel wanted to punish Alma, and the Miracle was just an extension of Mirabel’s will. And what better way to punish Alma than to destroy everything she had created? From the mountains, now cracked – to Casita, only rubble – to the gifts, gone.
The Miracle returned the gifts only when Mirabel was ready, when Mirabel could finally let go of her pain and embrace those things that had hurt her– a magical house that didn’t give her a room, gifts never received. That is when Casita came back, that is when the gifts came back. Because Mirabel wanted it.
And even though she had embraced her normalcy, was able to stand proud and tall within her family, she still wanted a gift of her very own.
And the Miracle provided.
For a moment, the Miracle was torn. What to give Mirabel? For so long she had admired her mother’s healing abilities, but the Miracle knew she held no affinity for cooking. But then she met Bruno, and with her fascination for his gift the Miracle knew what it would grant her. Not the future, but the past.
Mirabel sat beside her grandmother at the river’s edge and watched as she struggled to explain what had happened so many years ago. And suddenly, Mirabel could see it. Whatever words her Abuela spoke faded into the background as Mirabel was plunged into the past. She saw her Abuelo Pedro, their happy meeting, wedding, and triplets, and soldiers, and fleeing. She saw Abuelo Pedro die. She saw her Abuela collapse in grief, her anguished cry erupting from her throat as the magic burst from her in a wave. The Miracle found it almost funny that Mirabel didn’t recognize what was happening, but brushed the episode off as simply her overactive imagination. Besides, she had more important things on her mind, like her Abuela who needed her, needed her understanding and her comfort and her healing.
If only Alma had the courage to look at Mirabel as she told her story, they would have found out much sooner.
Mirabel didn’t discover her gift until almost a month after Casita was rebuilt. It was late at night, and she sat with her Tío Bruno in the kitchen, their hands wrapped around hot drinks more for comfort than for nourishment. “Tío,” Mirabel said softly. “You should talk about it. No one’s going to judge you.”
Bruno shrugged one thin shoulder. He stuttered, and stopped, and knocked rapidly on the table. “What’s there to talk about? I lived behind a wall. Not exactly an exciting life. Sorry, no amusing anecdotes,” he joked.
“Tío,” Mirabel said.
Bruno expected her to say that, huffed out with exasperation at his stubbornness, but instead it was a gasp. Shocked, and horrified, and sad. Her hand reached and grasped his arm, and Bruno finally tore his gaze away from where it had been digging holes into the table to finally look at her and saw a very familiar green glow. Mirabel was flung back into the past and she watched as Bruno rocked back and forth in the tiny room behind Casita’s walls, pressing his arms tightly around himself in a facsimile of a hug. She blinked, and the green disappeared, and there was her Tío Bruno, sitting next to her in shocked silence. Mirabel launched herself from her chair and gripped him tightly in that hug he had needed these past ten years.