Chapter Text
Bruno thought the first morning after he disappeared would be the hardest, but it wasn't.
It was hard, don't get him wrong. He curled up in the chair that Casita had so thoughtfully provided, hands worrying the edge of his ruana. He tried not to hear his mother asking Julieta if she'd seen him, tried not to hear the anger in her voice. Later, as everyone filed in for breakfast, he tried not to hear the children asking for their tio. He couldn't bring himself to look through the crack, not that morning. He knew that if he did, if he saw their dejected little faces searching for him, that he would come right back out of hiding, just to make them smile.
He couldn't come out. Not ever. Because he was doing this for Mirabel. His sweet mariposa, who he could also hear crying out for her tio, with a voice roughened by her tears the previous night. He dragged the hood of his ruana over his head, taking comfort in the darkness.
It was also hard when he listened in at dinner. The family meals were never this subdued, and any conversation that may be happening was too low for him to make out. Though, eventually, he did hear his mother snap, "Agustin, Felix, go check his room after dinner. I want to talk to him now, not when he finally decides to show his face."
Oh, right. He did have that habit of holing up in his room for weeks at a time. So they didn't know he was really gone, yet. Bruno lightly knocked on the wooden arm of the chair, and then his head.
When the family finally left the table, he let himself look around the bare space he was occupying. He was going to need a table for himself, at least, or a box to eat off of.
It was then that he realized he was hungry.
How was he going to get food?
--
Late at night, when everyone was asleep, he crept out of the hole behind the portrait.
Bruno assumed this was going to become his new schedule; sleep throughout the day, when everyone was out and about. Come out at night and do... whatever he was going to do with his time. He resolved to always be awake for family meals, though. He may be removed from them, but he wanted to know how they were doing. He was doing this because he loved his family, after all.
He found himself in the kitchen pantry, a place that was usually reserved for his oldest sister, and debated on what he should take. The concept of stealing from his family made Bruno's stomach clench into such knots, that he had to waste precious seconds doubled over in the floor, clenching his hands in his hair.
Okay. Okay, he would only take what he absolutely needed to survive. Absolutely no excess. To remove the temptation, he gave himself a strict rule of when he was allowed to come... borrow, from the pantry, Once a week, on Sunday mornings, when the whole familia left for church. If he ran out before then, tough.
Now... what did he need? Salt, of course, can't forget the salt. Sugar, too...
Bruno was drawn from his musings when he noticed a plate sitting on the kitchen counter. A plate full of polvorosas. Julieta had left them for him, just like she always did when he hid away in his room. Because she knew he would be hungry.
Bruno looked at the plate of cookies, which his sister had made for him, because she thought he would be coming back. If she woke up tomorrow morning to see them uneaten, she would know it wasn't true. If he took just a single cookie, just one, he wouldn't break his big sister's heart.
A little while later, Bruno left the pantry. The plate of polvorosas sat untouched.
--
So no, the first morning after his disappearance wasn't the hardest. The second morning was.
It started off badly, when Julieta walked into the kitchen. With his ear pressed against the wall nearest the pantry, he could hear when she discovered that no one had been down to eat her offering. Heard her gasp in shock. Heard her begin to cry.
'Sorry Juli, so sorry.' Bruno thought, biting his lower lip so hard that he tasted blood.
It continued badly, too, when the family sat down for breakfast and he still wasn't there. He heard Isabela, his little spitfire, demand that someone tell her where he was. Heard Camilo complain that he wanted to play hide and seek with his tio today. Heard Mirabel asking if he wasn't here because she didn't get a gift, if he didn't like her anymore because of it.
'No! Mi mariposa, no, please, I love you, I'm sorry!'
"No, Miraboo!" Agustin said loudly. "That's not it at all, you know your tio loves you. Eat your breakfast, eh?"
Breakfast continued in silence. Bruno did not delve into his meager stash. He wasn't hungry. After the meal, he heard whispering, and was finally able to make himself peer through the crack.
He could see his mother's profile, and could see Felix whispering in her ear. She nodded once, sharply, and soon after dismissed all of the children. The older three to do their chores, the younger two to go to their rooms and work on their studies. They all obeyed wordlessly.
"We... we have to tell you something, Alma." Agustin said, reaching for Julieta's hand.
"Bruno's door is dark," Felix wasn't looking at anybody in particular. "And we couldn't find him in there. Anywhere. We stayed in there all night, looking for him."
His sisters began to sob, a large cloud forming over Pepa's head. Bruno felt pretty disgusting, not only for hurting them, but for watching them suffer. Watching, when he could have put a stop to it with just a single word.
"What does that mean, Mamí?" Pepa cried, tugging at her braid. "What does it mean that Bruno's door is dark?"
His mother was sitting very stiffly, and her response was stiff, too. "It means that your brother has turned his back on this family. Right when we needed him most. Excuse me."
Alma stood, and Bruno had a perfect view of her expression as she walked away. It was rage.
"There's something else, mi vida," Felix said softly to Pepa.
"We don't know... if you knew, but," Agustin stammered. "Bruno was going through some stuff. We don't know what, exactly. He wouldn't tell us. But we knew he'd been... hurting himself."
"Bruno was... was still doing that?" Julieta's voice was high and wavering.
"No! He promised us, he promised me that he had stopped years ago, after that night that I found him...that I found him..." Pepa broke off into sobs of such force that rain poured from the ceiling.
Agustin and Felix traded anxious looks, before it seemed that Agustin was elected to finish.
"He promised us that he would come to us after, and he never did. But the night of your birthday a few years ago? When you all got really drunk? He told us... well, we thought it was a lie, and we still do, that he saw a vision of himself... dying."
Felix cut in quickly, "I'm sure he was lying! He was very drunk, and he was very sad. I don't think this was a real vision at all! But with his door being dark... I just. I wouldn't be surprised if we couldn't find him because there was nothing... nothing to find."
"My brother did not kill himself," Julieta said. There was a hard edge to her voice.
"Of course he didn't!" Pepa shouted. "I'm going to go find him right now, to prove it." She stormed out, literally, with Julieta right behind her. Their husbands followed at a more sedate pace, because they had guessed what Bruno knew for a fact.
They were never going to find him.
--
He didn't remember much of that second day, later. He spent most of it deep under the waves. They weren't real waves, of course. Ever since he was very young, when things became too difficult for him, it had seemed to Bruno that his mind was full of rising water. He would sink down deeply beneath the waves, which rose and fell and pulled him under. Things were much easier when he was down, because whatever was happening to him, whatever his body was doing, seemed not to really apply to him at all. Because Bruno wasn't really there; he was safely tucked into the sand bed.
When Bruno came back, his body was tucked tightly into itself, curled on the floor underneath the crack. His hand was sore, and so was his temple. He could only hope that he hadn't been knocking loudly enough for anyone to hear him.
Okay, no more of this wallowing. He needed to get busy, to make this place livable in the long run. Bruno knew he should really eat, but as he looked at the small pile of food he had swiped (mostly things that Julieta had canned) his stomach hurt too badly for any of it to be appealing. That's fine. He'd have something for breakfast. He would eat with his familia.
"Alright," Bruno whispered. "Casita, can you hear me in here?"
The floorboards wiggled at him in response. Was there a little less enthusiasm than there had been two nights ago? He wasn't sure.
"How am I going to get water?"
The door to his little room (had there been a door, before? He wasn't sure, but he didn't think so) waved open and closed, beckoning him out.
The house guided him down secret passageways between the walls, barely giving him time to get his bearings, before opening up into the Madrigal's cellar, via a conveniently-placed crawlspace that he was sure hadn't existed before. There was an exit to the outside in the cellar, he knew, which led directly to the pit where the family threw out unwanted things. These things were loaded into Ortiz's cart (usually by Luisa) and then taken off to be disposed of.
There wasn't too much present in the trash pit, at the moment. A torn hammock, which used to hang outside before Pepa's latest storm damaged it. About a dozen long pieces of bamboo, which was so pervasive that cutting it down was a regular chore. And a shattered porcelain plate.
Bruno picked it up with trembling hands. He knew without using his gift who it belonged to. And he was right; one of the bigger pieces read "Bruno", with half of a beautifully-wrought hourglass beside it. Who had thrown his plate out? He sort of hoped that it had been his mother, because he already knew she hated him. It would break his heart if Julieta or Pepa had cast him out so. Not that he didn't deserve it. Deserved worse, actually.
Bruno went back to his room. He took everything he found with him. Including the broken plate.
--
Bruno used the bamboo sticks to make rudimentary pipes, which he somehow managed to hook up to Casita's water system. Then he took the hammock and set it up on some conveniently spaced nails. He curled up in his chair, staring through the crack in the wall, willing himself to go to sleep and escape this awful day.
His head began to ache. A green glow lit up the dark room.
No! He couldn't have visions, not if he could help it. Bruno didn't know if his door would light back up if he used his gift, but he wasn't willing to risk it. He didn't even know what time it was, or if anyone was awake! He knocked frantically on the wooden armrest, and then his head.
This was going to be a long night.
--
Bruno was still awake when the family sat down to breakfast. He couldn't make himself go listen at the wall for the conversation. He was too tired. He considered it sticking to his promise as long as he was awake.
His eyes drifted shut. His head pounded, and they flew open. Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock knock on wood. They closed against his will. He went through his knocks. His eyes cracked open. There was pressure on his head. He went through his knocks.
Something squeaked.
Bruno froze. He reached a shaking hand to feel around in his hair. He felt something that was not of himself, and gently grasped it, pulling the creature into view.
It was one of his rats.
One of his beautiful, wonderful rats had joined him in exile.
He was excited enough to crawl out of his chair and hold the rat up to the meager light drifting through the crack. She was small, with light gray fur, and very kind eyes. He was pretty sure he was the rat that he had named Sofia.
"Is that you, Sofia? Is it really you?" he breathed. The rat squeaked in response, snuffling her nose into his palm, and he knew it was so. He found himself crying, had to bite his hand hard to stifle the sound of it.
"Thank you, mi bebé, for coming with me."
The rat squirmed out of his hands and into his ruana, curling up inside one of the inner pockets. Bruno sighed happily.
--
By dinner time the second night, Bruno was well and truly hungry. But was he hungry enough? Hungry enough to finally crack into his ill-gotten goods? The smell from the family's table made his mouth water. It smelled like sancocho, which was one of his favorites.
He looked at the cans of food. There were only three, which was all that he could convince himself to take. To steal. Three cans. One of tomatoes, one of red beans, and one that was a mysterious beige color. What day was it? How many days until Sunday morning? And how much food did he really need to eat?
All of these things were such mysteries to him, that he decided to put off consuming food for one more night. Besides, his stomach wasn't feeling too strong at the moment, anyway.
Bruno crawled back into his chair, petting Sofia, relishing in the comfort of her company. He waited for everyone to fall asleep, so that he could explore. Staying cooped up in this spot all the time was definitely not good for him. And besides, he wanted some candles rather badly.
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock knock.
That wasn't Bruno. He even checked his hands to make sure
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock knock.
It was coming from the crack in the wall, which peered out over the dining table.
"Tio Bruno?" a small voice called.
Dolores.
--
"Tio Bruno? I know you're there. Everyone else has gone out, so you can talk to me if you want to."
Bruno slid deeper into his chair, holding his breath. 'Dolores, mi sombra, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'
"I can hear your stomach growling, tio. Do you need me to bring you something to eat?"
Bruno crossed his fingers, and prayed for her to leave.
"It's okay if you don't want to talk. I don't know why you're hiding in the walls, but I won't tell anyone. I would have, yesterday, when everyone was looking for you, except I kinda thought you were a ghost. I still did, until I heard your stomach. Are you stuck in the walls?"
'Yes.'
There was a long silence, so long that he thought she may have left. He didn't dare check, though, because if she caught sight of him, he was done for.
Eventually, she said, "Do you not want to talk to me, tio? Or are you... are you even really there?"
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, perdoname mija! Lo siento-'
--
Time passed.
He was never sure how much, really. Eventually Bruno figured out a pattern, of how to tell what time of day or night it was, and whether or not anyone was home.
He got his candles, eventually. A box to eat off of, on which he recreated his plate as best he could with the few broken crayons he found discarded. A few more canned items from the back of the pantry. He occasionally pocketed a leftover arepa or similar, portable foods; partially for the luxury of fresh food, and partially because it was much easier to share with his rats.
Quite a few of the ones he'd had before moving into the walls had rejoined him. Some had brought wild friends of their own. Not many moved in with him permanently, like Sofia did, but only visited. Bruno didn't mind; it was the more, the merrier, for him. He loved his rats more now than ever. They not only comforted him, but provided him someone to talk to, to entertain him.
He was grateful for them, too, as he sat to dinner about a month after he had disappeared. He was happily listening to the familia talk, nibbling on the small quarter of fresh arepa he had allowed himself, when he heard his own name.
"Mamí? Where is tio Bruno?" Camilo asked.
'Ah, mi camaleón, I miss you too.'
"Camilo!" Pepa's voice was unusually harsh. "You know that we don't talk about Bruno."
They... didn't?
Bruno dropped his meager meal, uncaring as it crashed to the dirty floor. Let his rats have it. They deserved it more.
His family had... what, banned discussion of him entirely? Written Bruno Madrigal out of the narrative? Had he meant nothing to his familia?
The waves beckoned, and Bruno dove underneath. He hoped he never surfaced again.
--
Six months after he had moved into the walls, and five months after his... unfortunate response to his family's new "pretend Bruno never existed" policy, Bruno pretty much had his new life down pat.
For the most part, it went like this:
He slept infrequently, usually from the time just after the family had breakfast until right as they sat down for dinner. The prospect of sleep actually made him very nervous; Bruno had been plagued by sleep visions since he was fifteen or so, and he didn't want them to give him away. Fortunately, they didn't give off the same unearthly wind that his forced visions did. But his eyes did glow, and brightly enough to be seen if someone happened to be moving about in the kitchen after bedtime. Camilo, for example, was a serial late-night snacker, but Bruno didn't blame his camaleón one bit for it. He assumed that shapeshifting, constantly stretching and shrinking one's entire body, burned a lot of calories. Seeing the future certainly did.
Also, he was concerned about his door. Would it glow, if he had a vision? Bruno wasn't sure, and wasn't willing to take that chance until he knew it wouldn't out him. Why did the doors glow in the first place? And why had his stopped?
He didn't know. It had never occurred to him to ask, before, and now he couldn't.
But it was fine. Bruno was fine. He would stay awake until he physically could not keep his eyes open, knocking on wood all the while. On Sunday mornings, before his once-weekly food run, he would allow himself to relax in his old, yet comfortable, chair. He would let his eyes drift closed, and he would finally allow the most insistent visions to come through. Afterwards, Bruno always felt incredibly weak, and drained.
That was fine, too. Sunday afternoons were for rest, anyway. All he had to do first was make his way into the kitchen to restock his provisions. And if he was too tired to do that? Well, that was fine, too. Obviously he didn't need it badly enough to force himself out of his room.
And besides, the visions came less frequently if he didn't eat.
But back to his schedule.
Sleep Rest from breakfast until dinner. Sundays were devoted to food, prophecy, rest, and prayer. Join his family for the meals that they all took together, so as not to be completely cut off from them. But what would he fill the rest of his time with?
On the surface, Bruno supposed the answer was "not much". He spent a lot of time in silent reflection, for instance, trying to understand how his life could end up this way, what had gone wrong with his family. Where he had gone wrong, and whether or not it could have been prevented. Or whether or not it could ever be fixed. These thoughts troubled him, though. He didn't actually know what was worse; to think that his lifetime of suffering was entirely of his own making, or that somehow his entire miserable existence had been preordained.
These bouts of self-introspection often ended with him curled up tightly, face hidden in his increasingly bony knees and hands fisted in his hair, struggling to breathe. He just coudn't stop doing it.
Quite a lot of time, too, he spent with his rats. They had grown into something more than pets to him; they were his only friends, his confidants. Bruno knew each of them by the merest glance: clingy Sofia, bold Elonzo, who battled with the other male rats from dusk til dawn; sweet Ines, who liked to be cradled in his arms like he had once cradled human babies; and precious (and precocious!) little Chico, who couldn't be more than three weeks old, yet learned new tricks with a speed that outpaced even Sofia.
These rats were the ones he was most attached to; they slept with him at night, curled up in his lap, in his hair. They were almost always with him, either napping in his ruana or riding on his shoulders. Bruno spoke to them (quietly, he did everything so quietly), fed them from his own scarce rations, and occasionally sobbed into their fur. They didn't mind. Or, if they did, they never let him know.
Bruno also explored Casita's hidden passageways, by the way! There were a lot, although he suspected that a number of them simply bypassed the laws of physics entirely. Sometimes he would swear he was following the same path he had taken the last time, and yet he ended up somewhere entirely new and unexpected. This was, also, how he got his exercise; with all of those stairs in his room, the seer had always been pretty physically active. His nervous energy had always fueled him, and it didn't disappear just because he was isolated from the entire world. It had honestly just gotten worse.
So late, late at night, he would run the narrow halls that Casita provided for him. It was a tight squeeze sometimes, even for him, but that was okay. There were also exposed beams from which to swing, and footholds in the bare boarding to climb. He and the rats had a lot of fun racing together.
This was how he found out about the cracks.
--
Bruno sprinted down the increasingly narrow passage, sliding on the soles of his sandals to turn a hard corner. From the corner of his eye, he could see Elonzo gaining on him. That big gray brute didn't even have the common courtesy to seem tired!
Bruno wasn't tired, either. He was exhausted.
It had been one of his bad days. One of those days when the unending silence bore down on him like an avalanche. When even a fresh pandebono tasted stale and dry, and he couldn't swallow so much as a single bite. When the ever-present ache in his head pulsed, blurring his vision. One of those days when he thought about the word "brujo". And the roof.
He had spent most of the evening lying flat on his back in the floor, arms spread akimbo, thinking about the roof. How wonderfully free he had felt, soaring through the blinding rain! How, for that one perfect moment, he had floated in the air like a newly-hung star. If he closed his eyes, he could just about see the exact shade of the moonlight which had illuminated the sky, just about smell the wet earth below him-
That was when Elonzo pounced directly onto Bruno's exposed stomach.
"Mierda, Lonzo!" he gasped, trying to regain his wind. Elonzo may have just been a rat, but he was a big rat. "What did you do that for?"
Elonzo stared beseechingly at Bruno, standing high on his strong back legs and sniffing the air. When this got no response, he gave a pitifully small squeak, flattening himself into a pancake. Those beady little eyes widened in a manner that he knew that the rat knew that Bruno found unbearably cute.
"You wanna play, tough guy? Okay. Let's play."
--
So yeah, he was beginning to regret those words. Maybe if he grabbed onto the next exposed beam, he could swing really hard and-
His foot caught on something, and Bruno pitched forward with a loud thump.
His first thought was, 'I hope Dolores didn't hear that.'
Then he thought, 'I think I sprained my ankle.'
And then finally, 'What was that?'
Bruno gingerly climbed to his feet, hissing with pain as he tested his weight on the injured foot. Definitely sprained, but hopefully not broken. He limped back a few feet, wondering what could have tripped him up.
There was a hole in Casita's floor.
Just a small one, about the size of his heel. Right in the middle of this hallway. That was pretty bad. What was much worse, was what he saw splintering off from the edges of the hole towards the walls on either side.
Cracks!
Had he stepped on one? Did he touch one at all? His shaking hands fumbled inside of his ruana, scrabbling for handfuls of precious salt. He threw it over his shoulder, panicked, then did it again. Bruno fell into the wall behind himself, going through his knocks six- no, seven is a better number- seven times before he felt like it as safe to breathe.
Of all things, of all the ladders and tipped buckets and black cats, of all of the spilled salt and flocks of crows, of all things bad luck, it had to be cracks.
Why? Why did this kind of thing keep happening to him? He'd never lit three of anything on the same match, had never broken a mirror or opened an umbrella indoors. So why?
He knew why, of course. Because he was Bad-luck Bruno. How silly of him to keep forgetting.
"Casita?" he whispered. "What's going on here? This... this isn't supposed to be happening yet."
The floorboards under his feet seemed to imply a shrug. Bruno sighed, squaring his shoulders. He guessed he was going to have to take care of this himself. Would patching the cracks give Mirabel more time? He could only hope it would.
First things first, he would need something to patch them with. Bruno knew how to make spackle (flour, water, cornstarch) although he couldn't remember where he'd learned it. He could get two of those from the pantry, and his rudimentary piping had produced a somewhat-livable amount of water. He would need a bucket (and to never, ever put water inside of it), but he remembered seeing one in the cellar. He would just have to go back the way he came...
The cracks. How was he supposed to get over them?
Bruno tried holding his breath while crossing his fingers, and walking backwards, but that didn't help. It was absolutely how he was going to enter doors from now on though; he couldn't afford to take anymore chances. His knocking didn't help, either. What was he to do?
"Sana, sana," he mumbled. A little of the tension in his chest eased off, and he tried it again. "Colita de rana?"
Bruno took a step towards the cracks. He felt only deep unease, not the world-ending terror that he had felt before. Okay. He could do this. This was fine.
"Si no sana hoy..."
--
Bruno had his bucket (and a handy trowel, which had been gathering dust since Isabela's gift ceremony). Inside was his spackle. He had all of the tools he needed, and literally all of the time in the world.
He couldn't bring his hands anywhere near those cracks. Not even his rhyme helped. Bruno really, genuinely tried to force himself to do it. He called himself a coward. Said if he couldn't do it for Mirabel, he may as well just come right through the wall into the next family dinner. Said it was this or the roof, come on man, Bruno you absolute fucking waste of space you have to!
He just... couldn't. He was too scared. He was too scared of everything. Bruno wished he was brave, wished he didn't fear anything at all-
'I am Hernando, and I am scared of nothing!'
Almost without knowing what he was doing, Bruno lifted the hood of his ruana over his head. Bruno was much too scared to patch the cracks. Hernando... wasn't afraid of anything, anything at all.
'Hernando. Hernando, I am Hernando. I am scared of nothing.'
He dipped the trowel into the bucket, and began carefully patching the cracks.
--
Bruno rested but did not sleep. He ate only what he had to, clung to his rats, listened to his familia forget about him. He cried, he knocked, and he patched the cracks.
That was the first year.