Chapter Text
When Bruno saw a horde of townsfolk carrying tools—handy improvised weapons, the most paranoid part of his brain supplied—sweeping up the hill toward Casita’s ruins like a wave crashing over a beach, he maybe panicked a little bit. And with the vigor of a man who knew almost every person he had ever met was capable of picking him up and wringing him out like a dishcloth, using about the same amount of effort, his fight or flight instincts hurtled him over three separate walls, into the jungle, and up a mango tree in the time it took Antonio to wave at Osvaldo.
He almost regretted it, when people began talking and he was too far away to even guess what they might be saying. Or, well, he could guess, he would just be wrong. Probably. Maybe he would be right!
Doña Guzmán spoke to Mamá. She had seen his vision of Casita cracking at last night’s disastrous dinner. Maybe she was commiserating. Or offering to help. Bruno had predicted her husband’s death—a stroke that Julieta could not prevent, though he was only middle-aged—and when it happened Mamá had helped her with funeral preparations and taking care of the three Guzmán children. Offering to help with Casita explained all the tools.
After a minute of conversation, the townsfolk began digging through the rubble with his family, pulling picture frames and his papá’s portrait free from the debris. Mamá used her skirt to brush some of the dust off the painting, then looked around. Brow furrowed, she called something. A few people turned to look at her. There was another brief back-and-forth, then they started looking for something while most of the family looked increasingly worried.
Everyone seemed to be calling the same short word or two, but it took a few minutes before anyone wandered close enough to the treeline for him to hear it clearly. Bruno. Which was a strange thing for everyone to be yelling, but who was he to judge strange?
It took another few minutes for a quiet part of his brain to whisper that he was Bruno, and maybe they wanted something from him. Except that didn’t make sense, because nobody except the kids and his hermanas ever asked him for anything except visions, and the magic was gone.
People started walking away from Casita. A few meters to his left, Mirabel stepped into the jungle, calling his name, and her expression was so distraught that Bruno dropped out of the mango tree to ask what was wrong.
“What’s wrong?” Mirabel repeated, with the same disbelieving tone that preceded Julieta’s rare but terrifying fits of temper. Bruno shuffled a step backward, but was immediately grabbed by the collar of his ruana and yanked forward. “You disappeared! Everyone is looking for you! Didn’t you hear us calling?” Quieter, she added, “I thought that you left again.”
And oh no, those were tears. Bruno fluttered his hands in the air around her wrist, trying to remember what he was supposed to do if someone grabbed him. “Lo siento! Please don’t cry-”
“I’m not crying,” she denied, brushing her eyes with the hand whose knuckles weren’t pressed against his sternum.
“Okay, you’re not crying. Lo siento. I’m not leaving. But there’s-” he darted a glance over Mirabel’s shoulder and his body jerked backward without his permission, though Mirabel’s grip kept him from getting anywhere. “Um. There are. A lot of people.” Most of them hated him, too. Bruno’s legs ached with the need to run away, even after telling Mirabel he wouldn’t.
She gave him a long look, and he had to flick his gaze toward the bright pink butterfly embroidered on her blouse to avoid the intense eye contact. Frowning, she said, “Are you worried the neighbors will see you? They already know you’re here. Abuela told everyone that you found me and made sure she and I both got home safe.”
He risked looking her in the eye for a moment before staring out toward the dispersing crowd. “That’s- but that isn’t what happened. I was- too late.”
Mirabel released his collar and slipped her hand into his instead, the way Mamá had after hugging him on the riverbank. “Well, the reality that you came charging out of the jungle and yelled at Abuela to be nice to me is much cooler, but the whole story is a bit complicated, and Abuela doesn’t even know most of it. But I think she got the spirit right.”
What? What? “You think I’m cool?” What?
“Very cool,” Mirabel confirmed, pulling him forward.
“I have never been cool a day in my life,” he said. “That’s- did you hit your head? Oh, dios mío, a building fell on you, of course you got hurt, I just thought that- well, you were talking and walking around, I thought you were fine, I didn’t even check-”
“Tío Bruno,” Mirabel interrupted, her smile twitching at the corners like she was trying not to laugh. “I’m fine.”
Bruno squinted at her, which was convenient because a moment later they stepped into bright sunshine, and even while squinting that stung. “You’re sure?” he asked. He had read Julieta’s medical texts. Sort of. Listened to her talk about them for hours on end, at least, which was probably even better than reading them himself, because Julieta asked questions to make sure he and Pepa were paying attention whenever one of them made a poor life choice and had to slink up to her to ask for a snack. He knew about first aid. Was it rude to ask how many fingers he was holding up?
“He’s here!” someone else yelled. Bruno twitched at the sudden noise, but continued watching Mirabel, waiting for her answer. Except now she was looking ahead of them and waving. Did that mean she did have a concussion? Memory loss was a symptom. It was convenient for telenovela plots but probably less so in real life.
There was more yelling—his name was loudest, but he’d gotten used to that over the last few minutes—and then something smacked into him and lifted him into the air without any warning.
Bruno flailed, dizzy and not quite sure which way was up, until the spots in his vision receded enough to recognize Pepa’s hair and the back of her dress. Oh, another hug. He stopped kicking her knees and let his arms wrap around her shoulders.
“Where did you go? Dios mío, Bruno, tell me if you’re going to wander off.”
“I think Mirabel has a concussion,” Bruno blurted.
Next to him, Mirabel smacked her palm over her face, then had to take off her glasses to clean the smudges. Except her clothes were still filthy, so she needed to dig through her mochila for fabric that was both soft enough and not covered in dust. “I don’t have a concussion, Tía Pepa. He only thinks that because I called him cool.”
Pepa laughed, though it sounded a little wet. Then Julieta appeared, just as sudden as Pepa had, and flung herself against their sides. Bruno moved one arm to include her in the hug, feeling a bit motion sick.
“Dios mío, hermanito, wear a bell,” she gasped.
“Juli, I think Mirabel has a concussion. She called me cool and she never answered when I asked if she was sure she didn’t hit her head,” he explained. “That’s- that could be memory loss, right?”
“I only didn’t answer because Tía Pepa was yelling at you,” Mirabel protested, pointing up at him.
What?
“It’s okay, hermanito, I already checked on her,” Julieta said.
Then all three of them looked in the same direction and Pepa set him down, just in time for Mamá to embrace him instead. “Brunito! Dios mío, don’t run off like that. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Ay! Mamá!” Bruno wriggled free, tossed the last of the salt in his pockets over his shoulder, and managed to bolt far enough from their group to knock on a tree trunk before Pepa grabbed onto his ruana. He shook her off and repeated the ritual for a total of three times, wincing and clenching his jaw at each knock on his own skull, but he needed to make sure he did it right. When he turned around, his entire family and several neighbors either stood nearby or were making their way across the lawn. He jumped.
Frowning, Julieta asked, “Is there something wrong with your hearing?”
Nobody answered her. Once the pause grew awkward enough, Mirabel attempted to make eye contact and said, “Tío Bruno?”
“What?” Why was everyone looking at him? And seem worried?
Antonio tugged on his ruana and gestured him closer. Bruno crouched down, leaned closer so his sobrino could cup tiny hands around his ear like he was about to whisper a secret, then nearly leapt out of his own skin when Antonio instead bellowed, “Tía Julieta wants to know if there’s something wrong with your hearing.”
Bruno stood and rubbed at his abused ear. “Well, there wasn’t,” he muttered. Louder, he told them all, “My hearing is fine. Why?”
His hermanas and cuñados exchanged apprehensive looks. Behind them, Dolores stared at him, wide-eyed and rigid.
Mirabel took a step closer, the movement catching Bruno’s attention. “You weren’t responding to your name,” she said. Instead of looking worried, grief aged her face, a shadow of the emotion that had once lined her abuela’s face so strongly, and there was something haunted in her eyes. Dolores squeaked.
Oh. That was- yeah, that was a thing people did. And he was supposed to be a person now. Was a person. Had been a person the whole time, just a secret one for the last ten years. “I- maybe I was distracted,” Bruno did not lie. “Anyway, um, lot of- there’s really a lot of people around.” Several of them were staring straight at him. Should he ask if they were angry?
But Mamá explained that they had come to help dig through the rubble and to rebuild. So his guess was right! He mentally added fifty points to his score in his full-season game against the rats. The rats were ahead, even after the mid-season reveal that Clavileño had been sabotaging them because Bruno bribed him with extra forehead scritches, but there was still time in the season, and everyone loved a finale turnaround from the plucky underdog.
It had been a long night, though, and Padre Florez had organized a community breakfast in the church, after years of Julieta feeding the town out of the Madrigal kitchen. And none of their neighbors had come over to confront him about a bad vision, so Bruno moved to help dig their most precious mementos out of the rubble and decided he would join the family in walking to the church.
He stuck close to Pepa, just in case. She punched like a cannon.