Chapter Text
It had been years since the family awoke to the shrieks of small children, and far longer since the door to Alma’s room was pounded on by half a dozen of tiny fists.
“Mamá, wake up!”
“MAMÁ!”
“Mamá, there are thtrangerth in Cathita!”
Alma’s eyes flew open at the sound of her son’s lisp, having not heard it in nearly four decades. Her grandson, Camilo, likely didn’t know of it to replicate Bruno’s voice from childhood, leaving her baffled beyond reason. She stumbled on her way to the door, where the kids continued crying out from the other side, before a blood curdling scream drew her to open it and find her three children tugging at her nightgown. They were fifty-one years old the day before, and in a single night, had reverted to small versions of themselves. She recognized the clothes on their bodies as her own hand sewn creations, with amateur stitchwork zigzagging across the hem of simple designs.
“What? What happened to them?” she asked.
Félix threw up his hands, “I don’t know! Everything was normal when Pepí and I went to bed last night, and then, poof! I woke up to find her tiny like this!”
“The same thing happened to Julieta,” Agustín added. He bent down in an attempt to comfort his frightened wife, only for Pepa and Bruno to pull her further behind their mother’s legs. The grandchildren were beginning to emerge from their bedrooms, with Luisa frantically seeking out a source of danger that elicited Pepa’s scream.
“We’re under attack! Man your battle stations!” she yelled, swinging her foot onto the railing of the second-floor balcony to leap off the ledge, but her sisters held her back.
“Or, we go with plan B and see what the problem is before your stress levels rise for no reason,” Mirabel said, while Isabela led them to the rest of the family.
Julieta peeked out from the door frame, and beamed, “Mamá!”
Her siblings following suit, she squeezed past Alma and raced over to the young woman, who froze mid step as they threw themselves at her. She looked around the hall, desperate to find her mother, aunt and uncle blended in with her other relatives that stared back at her, and swallowing a lump in her throat that crept up her body when her search came up short. She backed away from them when Bruno ducked his head under her dress.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, I’m not your mother, okay? I’m not.”
Julieta’s elated smile melted off her face, replaced by a teary-eyed scowl that reminded Isabela of Mirabel as a toddler. Pepa looked at Alma, then back at Isabela, and broke down into a bout of uncontrollable sobs that made her face turn red. Dolores covered her ears with a wince of pain, her mother’s voice much too loud for her to bear. Bruno sank to the floor, overwhelmed, and curled into a tight ball between his sisters.
Camilo approached her, “Did you have to be so harsh about it? They’re little kids.”
“I panicked, okay?! How would you have handled them calling you Papá?”
With a devious smile, his body transformed into a perfect replica of Alma from old photographs. His light curls darkened into two long, black braids that sat atop his shoulders, and round, hazel eyes were pulled taut into an almond shape with brown irises.
“Mamá’s here, my babies!” he cheered, raising his arms and throwing his head back dramatically as he waited for the triplets to seek comfort in his presence. Instead, the three children scrambled down the hallway, screaming in abject terror.
“Nice going, ‘Abuela’,” she said mockingly, before joining the pursuit with him. Félix and Agustín stood motionless as Pepa and Julieta ran past, too nervous about scaring them further to even try stopping them. Bruno crashed into Dolores’ legs by accident, but the collision barely slowed him down.
“Mamá, wait!” Luisa yelled, running alongside them down the stairs, “Tía, Tío, hang on a second, please!”
Julieta was the first to reach the portrait of their father, Pedro, and grabbed a corner of the heavy frame in an attempt to remove it from the wall. Pepa took hold of the opposite corner and helped her rip it from the nail it was hanging from, while Bruno ducked under the frame.
“Papá, save us!” they shouted, hiding their faces behind Pedro’s warm smile. Luisa stopped, stunned, and could do nothing but watch the scene unfold in front of her as Antonio approached them.
“Hi,” he said, peeking around the painting, “I’m Antonio.”
Julieta shuffled her feet to inch away from him, “Go away! You’re strangers, and Mamá told us that Papá’s gonna get rid of you.”
“Juli?” Bruno whispered to her, “Nothing’th happened yet. They’re all thtill here.”
Next to him, Pepa peeked her eye out in time to see Camilo shift back into himself. He offered a sheepish smile and a wave, but his face fell when she hid again.
“We’re not strangers, we’re your family. Abuelo loves us just like he loves you guys. That’s what Abuela told me, and she got way better at telling the truth, so I believe her.”
Julieta looked the boy up and down, and squinted at him, “You’re not family.”
“Yeah, I am,” he argued, pointing at Félix, “Papí married Mamí, and had Dolores, Camilo and me. That makes me part of your family. You just don’t remember ‘cause you’re too young.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Uh-huh, and since I’m a big kid, you need to listen to me.”
Bruno gasped, “A big kid?”
Antonio nodded, puffing out his chest and standing on his toes to appear taller, “Yup! My cousin Mirabel called me one when I turned six. That means I’m more responsible.”
The triplets exchanged glances, and after a moment of silence between them, lowered the painting to reveal their faces to the rest of the family. Luisa held out her hands to take the frame and hang it back on the wall, carefully straightening it on the nail and studying the brush strokes that formed her grandfather’s appearance. She remembered her mother telling her how safe she and her siblings felt when they stared up at Pedro’s face, but she never imagined they believed he was capable of warding off threats. Thinking about it more, she supposed it was reasonable for small children to come to such a conclusion if they were told a man sacrificed himself to protect his family.
Her heart sank when she looked down at them again, and saw Julieta shielding Pepa and Bruno with her body, the other two clinging onto her arms as though they expected her to rip them apart from each other. Or, she thought, maybe they were scared she would literally rip them apart.
“This is my other cousin, Luisa,” Antonio explained, “She likes to help people, and she’s really good at it because she’s super strong. But she doesn’t like being climbed on without permission.”
“Uh, yeah, please don’t do that,” she chuckled nervously, the awkwardness of the situation finally setting in. She stepped aside to allow them a better view of everyone else on the stairs, and made brief eye contact with Isabela, who mouthed something incoherent to her.
“That’s Isabela. She looks a lot like Abuela when she was younger, but she just wants to be called Isabela. You can call her Isa, too,” the boy took Pepa’s hand and guided the three of them closer, “This is my big sister, Dolores. You can’t be loud near her, or else you’ll hurt her ears. But, if you ever get in trouble, she’ll be able to rescue you. And Camilo’s my big brother.”
Pepa wriggled her hand free from Antonio’s grasp and hunched into Julieta, her words muffled against the other girl’s shoulder.
“She doesn’t like him,” Julieta translated, “She says he’s scary.”
“He’s not scary, he was trying to make you feel better. He likes making other people happy, and he’d never, ever scare anyone on purpose.”
Mirabel coughed into her hand.
“Except for Mira,” he corrected himself. Pepa frantically shook her head, flipping her long braid over her shoulder to run her fingers through. Camilo’s hopeful expression dwindled when she refused to cast so much as a glance in his direction, but mustered a weak wave to Bruno when the little boy chanced a crooked smile at him.
“And that’s Tío Agustín and Abuela way up there. Tío gets hurt more than anyone else in the whole village, so Tía tends to give him a lot of food everyday-”
Isabela interrupted him, “Wait just a minute. Sorry, but I need to ask–does Mamá have her gift like this?”
“Tía hasn’t made any clouds so far…” Mirabel added, staring at the empty space above Pepa’s head, before she bent down to meet Julieta’s eyeline, “Hey, how old are you guys, by the way?”
Alma nearly fainted when they each held up four fingers.