Archive of Our Own

Dear children,

The story of La Familia Madrigal and our village is nothing more than stories and one horrific, frightening truth. The stories have been passed down for decades through whispers in forest shadows, chatter by fishermen on the banks of the Rio Milagro, exaggerated retellings in the firelight meant to impress or intimidate, and warnings to children by candlelit bedsides. They have been washed down the river and blown by the winter wind and sown in the earth and scorched by our hearths until they hold no remnants of truth that we can be certain of, if they ever did. But they have survived, and perhaps for that reason it is important to tell them, even if they are nothing more than the start of a fairy tale.

The story always begins the same: in a very big village far from here. The people there were like us, and indeed we probably come from them, but one day something drove them away-a plague, a storm, most commonly violent lords whose soldiers spilled their blood with glee. They fled, and it was a long journey here, across plains and oceans and mountains so tall they pierced the clouds, but they arrived. Here, in our Encanto.

Of course, it was not an Encanto then. Just a lush, beautiful valley that must have seemed like Heaven on earth to our weary ancestors.

But they had barely rested their tired feet when the evil caught up to them. Our ancestors were terrified and could run no further. They stayed there, frozen, while their nightmares drew closer and closer.

But then one man emerged from the rest. Some say he was blessed by Díos. Others say he had gone crazy from the unceasing journey. Whatever the matter with him was, all the stories agree that he stood in front of all of them, the elderly, the children, all of them. He looked towards the approaching soldiers. He then turned back towards his beautiful young wife, very young indeed, and took her face in his hands and kissed her so tenderly that one could only infer he was giving all of himself to her. His love, his past, his present. His future, because he would not be able to share it with her the normal way. Then he kissed the three newborn babes she clung to, once on each head, begging his children to remember him, their papá.

And then he turned with nothing but the life remaining within him to go and see what he could do.

Alone.

Some stories call him brave. Some stories call him stupid. Perhaps he was both. Perhaps he knew that standing their ground or running away would only end in bloodshed, so he went to try to talk with them.

In the end, it does not matter. Because he was selfless. He gave up everything-his future with his wife and children-so that they, and every other person who had traveled so far, could have their future.

And Díos seemed to think that that was worthy of recognition.

No soul actually witnessed what Pedro Madrigal did before the soldiers. Many assert that he stood in the Río Milagro and held out his hands, begging them to stop and listen to him for a moment. They think this because our river ran red for days afterward, and on the anniversary of that moment you can still see a crimson reflection in the currents. They think this because golden lilies bloom from a single spot in the riverbed, the spot where Pedro Madrigal’s life went up to Díos, and sail down the frothing waves.

But whatever he did, all the stories agree that Díos delivered through him a miracle.

The earth rumbled like a thousand furious beasts, and our mountains rose out of nothing, driving the soldiers backward, crushing them ruthlessly. They rose until they pierced the sky, blocking any evil from ever entering our lands and harming us again. We were given a paradise, a valley filled with fertile soil and trees and animals and flowers, with a very short winter and a very long summer. Our ancestors shook in fear and collapsed on the ground and thanked Díos until their voices were hoarse, long after the rumbling and the screams of the soldiers faded.

But one woman did not move.

One woman stood there, tears not daring to fall from her cheeks, children wailing and screeching in her arms. She just stared at the last place her beloved had stood, cold and still as ice. Until she collapsed, like a falling rock, like a bird dropping dead and plummeting out of the sky. It hit her all at once, the truth and grief, and she knelt on the dirt, sobbing her heart out.

As she did, the candle next to her flared. It was their wedding candle, and she’d brought it all this way, it being one of her only belongings. She’d probably thought that she could put it up in the window of their new home and look at it with her husband as a reminder of what they’d gone through together. But now, the candle couldn’t do that. And so Díos gave it a new purpose. It became the symbol of our miracle, through which the magic that protected us flowed.

Children, it is said to have been just like you imagine magic to be. Golden and sparkling and warm, all around you. It started from the candle, which burned so brightly the people had to look away, then burst throughout the entire valley, blessing it abundantly. Oh, what a sight it had to have been! Our Encanto was formed.

But here is where our story truly starts. For when our ancestors could look back at the candle and the grieving young widow, they noticed that she was shimmering a little, like the magic had gone inside of her. And as they watched in both awe and horror, she tilted her head back, let out a furious howl that tangled with her infants’...

And then they and the candle vanished in a shower of sparks.

Pedro Madrigal, Alma Madrigal and their triplets have never been seen in the Encanto since that day.

There aren’t even any stories about what happened to them in the years since. We do not know how the magic took Alma Madrigal, her children, or our candle. We do not know how those infants grew up, with only their mother and lonely wind for company. We do not know how they were bestowed with magical abilities. We do not know how they have come to be where they reside now, or what they occupy themselves with. We most certainly do not know why any of these events took place. All we know is our story-we rejoiced, thanked Díos and prayed for the soul of Pedro Madrigal and the health of Alma Madrigal and her children, wherever they were. We formed a community and worked together to build a town, a beautiful town where you could always see the sky no matter where you were and some part of the valley always smelled like flowers. There was never any blood spilled on the streets from cruel overlords, no criminals that we let run wild. And so we prospered, and lived joyfully, for decades.

But here is where that horrific, frightening truth comes in. All the rest is stories, but this is understood and believed as the terrible fact. It is the reason that the stories have continued to be told to begin with.

Every so often, the magic decimates us. Every so often, the magic rips away one of our own.

We do not know how. We never know who, or when, or where. We can only guess why.

But it starts with those three baby triplets.

The stories say that even as children they were remarkable, though this is most certainly fabrication. They say that the eldest seemed to emanate warmth and that even as a baby her gentle brown eyes put your heart at rest. They say that the middle child obeyed a wind within her that switched direction in a snap, her sharp laughs twisting into fitful cries that darkened into harsh screeches in a matter of minutes, staring at the grass with wide matching eyes while her siblings babbled to their mamá and papá. You could tell right away that there was something purely different about her, not least of all her golden-red hair and rare emerald eyes. They say that the youngest had eyes that gave you the impression that he knew far more about you than you did. Pedro and Alma Madrigal swaddled them in different colors. Blue for the eldest, the blue of wide open oceans and lively rivers and gentle rain and beautiful skies. Yellow for the middle child, the yellow of wild fire and shifting sunlight and tangled wheat fields. Green for the youngest, green of ancient forests and listening leaves and all-knowing trees. To their children, Pedro and Alma Madrigal gave the entire world. And those children held the entire world close to their chests and never let it go.

Julieta Madrigal, the gentle eldest, in blue.

Pepa Madrigal, the unpredictable middle child, in yellow.

Bruno Madrigal, the otherworldly youngest, in green.

We never would have known their names if it wasn’t for the mural. It was the first time since the beginning of the Encanto that the story of La Familia Madrigal intersected with ours.

Fifteen years after we gained our miracle, a beautiful painting appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the plaza. The paint was bright and fresh, but has never dulled over the decades since it appeared. Whoever had done it was very skilled. Each curl of hair was rendered in glorious detail. Each stitch on the clothing was exact. And it depicted Alma Madrigal and her now teenage triplets.

The entire town was excited and quite happy to learn that the widow of their savior and her children had found peace and happiness. They crowded around the mural, exclaiming over what beautiful young ladies Julieta and Pepa Madrigal had grown into and what a strong young lad Bruno Madrigal looked like. The older women who had known Alma Madrigal sighed in fond remembrance and gazed wistfully at the streaks of gray in her chestnut hair.

Of course, children, you have no doubt seen the mural, but I shall describe it nonetheless, as briefly as I can. Above her children, cradling the miracle candle in her hands, was Alma Madrigal. A black mourning shawl draped her shoulders, and the rest of her was cloaked in a deep magenta dress embroidered with candle flames. A few wrinkles marred her face, and her two long braids were woven with silver. Her brown eyes pierced the crowd with a hint of fierceness, but her lips formed a faint smile.

Depicted beneath her were her three children, blue on the left, yellow in the middle, green on the right. Julieta Madrigal smiled warmly, eyes sparkling even in the paint. Her head was tilted invitingly, her rich deep brown hair was pulled into a wavy bun, and in her hands were a mortar and pestle which she appeared to be expertly grinding herbs in. She wore a warm teal dress that complimented her rich brown skin.

Pepa Madrigal beamed out at the crowd, vivid green eyes appearing to glow. Her infamous poppy hair now twisted into a braid that sailed down her back, but a few wayward strands curled around her chin. Her hair seemed to sail in an invisible breeze. Her skin was a pretty peach that appeared radiant, as if from some inner fire, and she wore a brilliant yellow dress that flowed wherever she moved.

Bruno Madrigal was the only one not smiling. His mouth betrayed nothing but pure neutrality. But his eyes were still as mysterious and piercing as we remembered, and many avoided looking at his face. His hair was dusty brown waves, cut at his chin. His skin tone was somewhere between his hermanas’. And he wore an enigmatic green ruana that covered most of his body like there were some horrible secrets there. Between his hands, he clutched an hourglass with sparkling green sand. Oddly enough, the amounts in the top and bottom and even the direction the sand was trickling seemed to change depending on the time of day or which direction you looked from.

But what truly caught our attention were the other things in that painting. The things that gave rise to the legend you have undoubtedly heard-that our miracle gifted the Madrigals something more than safety.

Swirling around the mortar and pestle Julieta Madrigal cradled in her hands was that same magic from the formation of the Encanto, gold and bright. The same magic burst from Pepa Madrigal’s heart and arced above her head through painted stormclouds, snowflakes and vivid rainbows. It fell from Bruno Madrigal’s eyes, glowing faintly green, and trickled down like tears to embrace the hourglass in his hands. And all this magic gushed from the candle that their mother clasped firmly, daring anyone else to try and take it from her.

We were unsure what it meant at the time, but did not give it much thought. We left little gifts of food and flowers beneath the mural and thanked Díos that our saviors were safe. And we watched through the next few years as that magic mural grew. Julieta Madrigal’s image grew taller, wisdom that comes with age appearing in her eyes. Pepa Madrigal grew taller as well and her braid touched her waist. Bruno Madrigal’s hair grew longer, casting shadows on his face, and his ruana cloaked more and more of him. We took only fleeting notice of the fact that sometimes the wind from the mountain would smell like the most delicious food, or that there were thunderstorms in summer with no warning that lasted only minutes, or that the sandy riverbank seemed to shift with no wind and glowed an eerie green on some nights. We were glad that we got to watch them grow up into their own beautiful people.

And then the first villager went missing.

It was so long ago that we have nearly forgotten his name. He was Félix Castillo, son of the carpenter and a pianist, with skin, hair and eyes the color of our rich earth. He was known for his energy and protectiveness, a music lover like his parents, whose laugh could brighten any room and whose cheer lifted even the saddest heart. He would dance in the streets with no warning whatsoever, playing whatever random instrument he could get his hands on and singing in his grand voice, and all the villagers would clap and dance along with him.

One day, he went out for dinner with a few of his friends and set off back home, humming to himself. He was never seen again.

His mother was inconsolable. Search parties were sent out every day. No one went missing in the Encanto. It was so small that anyone would be found eventually.

But he never was.

He had always loved the color yellow. In hindsight, perhaps that was a clue. For, almost a year later, with Félix’s mother wasting away and his father’s instruments gathering dust, a new person appeared on the mural. Señora Castillo saw it first and collapsed to the ground, heart unable to handle the shock. Her life would be given to Díos a few days later.

There stood Félix Castillo in exquisite detail, right next to Pepa Madrigal. The middle triplet had her arms wrapped around his waist and squeezing, her head leaning on his shoulder, and an even bigger smile than before. She looked like she was dancing with him.

She looked like she was in love with him.

And perhaps we could have accepted that–perhaps we could have believed that Félix had secretly fallen in love with her too and had just not told anyone, and was now living with his novia in preparation to marry. But smiling, lively Félix Castillo was no longer smiling. He stood at Pepa Madrigal’s side, still and lifeless as the paint he was rendered in, mouth in a firm line, eyes blank. The middle child danced lovingly with a doll.

And the villagers were worried.

Along with Félix’s disappearance, many noticed an odd sight in the sky. It appeared to be a new star, gleaming right on the ridge of the tallest mountain. But when he disappeared, so did the star.

We did not think much of it. Not until the next man was taken.

His name was Agustín Rojas. He was a tall man, the son of the seamstress and one of the jewelers, and he was very lovely indeed. He had warm chestnut hair, a kind smile, and understanding eyes that glinted behind his specially-made glasses. He loved sewing, like his mother, and was known across the Encanto for his attention to detail. He also loved to read and write anything he could get his hands on, hence the need for the glasses. He would have been described as regal if it weren’t for how extremely clumsy he was. He was always eager to help with any project the villagers needed, but he would often end up with a nail embedded in his fingers, burn marks on his legs, and, on an impressive amount of occasions, bee sings. There is even a story that claims he once tripped over absolutely nothing and fell into a cantaloupe cart. Both cart and man toppled into the river and wound up waterlogged and stranded on the island in the middle of the lake, eight miles downstream. Poor Agustín.

A little more than a year after Félix’s disappearance, that star appeared on the mountain again. We watched it warily, unsure what it meant. Then we realized that Agustín Rojas was nowhere to be found.

Those were the darkest days in the Encanto, children. No one knew what to think or do. Parents hugged their children close. Young men went about the village in groups. Members of families started staying up at night to guard those sleeping. Stories and rumors and pure lies were howled on the wind. Desperate hope fueled search parties. Perhaps his clumsiness had led to him knocking himself out on a tree in the forest or falling into the river and near-drowning. But the months passed, and that star went out, and there was no sign of Agustín.

We watched the mural with bated breath. Agustín’s parents practically slept in the plaza, Félix’s father beside them. And sure enough, one day the entire Encanto woke to Señora Rojas’ screams.

There stood Agustín, tailored suit, glasses and all, next to Julieta Madrigal. The eldest triplet had one arm around his back and the other laid gently over his heart, and instead of looking out over the village she gazed up at him. No one could deny that the look in her sparkling brown eyes was beyond loving, beyond adoring even. She looked at him like he was the only thing in her life that mattered.

She smiled up at him radiantly. But Agustín’s constant compassionate smile had turned into a blank expression. His mamá ran to his image and touched his face, begging for her baby to come home to her, but her son just stared at nothing.

He had always loved putting together outfits in blue. Perhaps we should have known.

And now the whispers truly flew. The Madrigals were abusing the candle’s power. The candle corrupted them. This was not a safe haven but a prison, and their overlords were going to pick them off one by one. Pedro Madrigal was not a selfless savior but a cunning demon who’d trapped them here, at the mercy of his offspring. Alma Madrigal was not a devastated mother but a calculating shrew who would take everything from the innocent villagers and give it to her children. Julieta, Pepa and Bruno Madrigal were not innocent children but greedy soul suckers who had stolen Agustín and Félix as their playthings. It was not Díos who had led them here, but el Diablo himself.

The nail in the coffin was the death of a beautiful young girl. Despite having no picture on the mural, she is remembered the most.

María Pérez.

She had curly black hair that shone like the night sky.

She understood things about the world that others did not. She knew how to heal stubborn sicknesses and grow herbs in poor soil and season caldo just right.

She lived in a cottage with her father, beneath the willow trees in the forest. She never wore shoes and wound intricate, feathered necklaces around her neck. Anyone who saw her there could only describe her as at peace. María was in harmony with the world and the world with her.

She would go to a large, tall crag that jutted out of the mountains every month. From there, she would gaze up at the ethereal stars and sway to a tune that they sang to only her.

Perhaps it was this love of the heavens that led her to see the star on the mountain shining again before anyone else. Perhaps the sixth sense she had had let her understand something about what was coming for her. Perhaps the world which loved her so had warned her somehow. Whatever the case, she knew before any of us that Bruno Madrigal wanted her for himself.

But she did not want him.

Her padre was in the village on business. It was a young shepherd that found her body at the foot of the crag. It was so disfigured that she could barely be identified, but her eyes remained clear. They still stared up at the sky as if they could see where her soul now resided.

We did not know her well. But she was one of us. Her instincts had not steered her wrong: the star winked out the day after her body was discovered and no one else went missing. And that night, every grain of sand on the riverbank, in the garden beds, in the grooves of the streets, lifted into the air and swarmed our Encanto.

For an entire week the sandstorm raged, tearing away paint and stone and flesh. Green images flashed in the grains as they flew past the windows, gruesome pictures of gore and death.

When the sand finally rained down to the ground and stayed there, we ventured out of our homes to see what damage had been done. It looked like a thousand little beasts had raked their claws over our precious village. But the most obvious change was the mural in the town square.

Agustín and Félix looked as lifeless as ever. The Madrigal sisters now stared at the ground, silver paint tracing tears on their cheeks. They would regain their smiles in time. Their brother would not.

Bruno Madrigal’s face made the children shriek in horror and even the adults quail backward. He was roaring at the village, insane devastation searing from his gaze. His fingers on the hourglass were white and cracks webbed the glass. His ruana was tattered and bloody scratches covered his face. He looked indeed like a man who had lost his beloved, but no one could feel any sympathy. Not when they went to the morgue to try to give the young girl a proper burial and found her eye sockets gouged and bloody. The eyes María had used to take in the forest and to gaze longingly at the stars had been cruelly wrenched from her body.

Over Bruno Madrigal’s heart, the intangible painter had added a pair of wide, dark eyes.

Now some tried to leave, despite the fears of the world beyond. But they would never make it. The mountains were far too steep, and many of us fell to our deaths. Of course, we blamed the Madrigals.

We did not know what to do. We could not just stand here, waiting to be slaughtered. The fathers of all three young victims armed themselves and headed for the mountain, raring for bloody vengeance. They never returned. We tried to build a boat and sail down the Río Milagro, but it ended in the lake and flowed deep under the mountains. Some young men and women even inked their skin with butterflies and scaled María’s crag, offering themselves as tributes in exchange for leaving their village alone. For a few years, a cruel, deranged mayor even sent particularly troublesome children up there in chains. Our village became so paranoid that we were turning on each other, throwing anyone to the wolves if we thought that could save us. The evil that we had fled from all those years ago, we were now fostering in ourselves.

Then one year, that mayor dragged a girl up there in chains whom the doctor had insisted had a demon inside her. She sobbed and begged and fought, and the mayor became so enraged that he flung her right off the cliff. She screamed all the way down. The Río Milagro ran red again. The fuschia riverbed bleached black, and all the lilies died. After that, there were no more sacrifices of any kind. Our lives were too precious to throw away unnecessarily.

So we grew, and lived and laughed and loved. We went to school and married and had children. We planted gardens and built the library and threw parties long into the summer nights. But we never forgot the shadow of the mountain. Those eyes over Bruno Madrigal’s heart, bright and full of life, staring gleefully over the village at her triumph over fate.

Perhaps we thought that the worst of it was over. The triplets had clearly chosen Félix, Agustín and María to be their partners of some sort, and now, presuming that they only wanted one, there were no more Madrigal children left.

What we failed to take into account was that they were partners. And with partners come more children.

It was Agustín’s mother, some faint cobwebs of life still within her, that saw it first. She had taken to living in the plaza, kneeling beneath her son’s portrait and beseeching Díos to return him to her. Over the years, her mind had gone, and she now looked the part-her snow-white hair snarled over her grimy, wrinkled skin and she begged for her son in what was barely a croak. As this night gave way to dawn, however, the entire Encanto heard her howling loudly. So loudly, in fact, that she would never speak again.

And what, children, did she behold that made her scream so?

Another figure, beautifully painted on the mural. Another Madrigal. A grandchild this time.

When the villagers rushed to the plaza, they could only stare in shock and dread at the lovely young girl painted beneath a beaming Julieta Madrigal and a numb Agustín. Their daughter, no doubt.

The entire mural had been adjusted upwards to make room for her. She half smiled, half smirked, almond eyes bright with a thirst for life and adventure that only a teenager can hold. She looked like a princess, by far the most beautiful girl in the Encanto: Thick, silky, jet-black hair bloomed to her waist, her rich brown skin glowed, her lips were pink and shaped like a heart, and a pretty blush stained her cheeks. But the image was ruined by that smile she wore. She was up to something, most definitely, and the mischievousness in her eyes only cemented that fact. It was decided that she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A witch in the disguise of the princess. A rose with petals that cloaked her wicked thorns.

And what was her magical power, you may ask? Around her feet and in her hands bloomed flora of all sorts-snapdragons and flor de mayo and sundew and palma de cera. The lacy lilac dress she wore was splattered with pollen in every color of the rainbow. In the place of honor, resting on her palm, was a spiky cactus that she cradled like it was a beloved pet.

Beneath her feet, the name of our newest tormentor in elegant cursive: Isabela Madrigal.

And now we had a new fear: that the lovingly tended plants in our gardens would grow malevolent roots and strangle us as we slept. Sure enough, many farmers had reported odd plant growth since the time that we estimated her to have been born-their crops would grow rapidly for no reason at all or decay completely in perfectly good weather.

Though we continued trying to make our lives as happy as possible-after all, what else could we do?-it was torture, children. Now we feared everything around us. The weather above, the sand below, the food we cooked, the plants we grew. Mothers with sons around the age of the Madrigal grandchild wept into their hands with fear. We renewed our efforts to break through the mountain only to be buried alive. We were rats in a maze to La Familia Madrigal, and we detested it. None more so than poor Señora Rojas.

She was the only parent of a kidnapped child left alive long enough to realize what was being done to them. They were being forced to make more oppressors, all for the pleasure of Alma Madrigal and her sadistic triplets. Worst of all, that young girl… she was her nieta. Her little Agustín’s hija. And she was likely being turned into a monster just like her witch of a madre, but once upon a time she had been an innocent baby girl. She was an abuela and she hadn’t been there to save either her or her hijo. So it was no surprise that she was found, months later, collapsed on the piano bench where her son had loved to play, far too much wine and sleeping powder scattered around her. A scrawled letter clutched in her bloodless fingers read only, I am sorry, Emmanuel, my brave husband. I am sorry, Agustín, my darling son. I am sorry, Isabela, my tainted granddaughter.

Are you afraid yet, children?

If not, you will be.

The day that Señora Rojas died, yet another new painting appeared on the mural. This new terror half-smiled serenely from underneath a still-ecstatic Pepa Madrigal and a still-wooden Félix. Yet another Madrigal nieta, her name spelled out beneath her.

Dolores Madrigal. You have most certainly heard of her. She is the one we fear the most.

She looked so much like her poor, abused padre. Rich cocoa-brown skin and hair and eyes. She was tall and thin and her features were finely shaped, like someone had carefully sculpted her nose, face, neck, arms, and legs until no flaws remained. Something about her posture evinced her gracefulness and poise.

But that was where the nice qualities ended. Dolores Madrigal’s cruel nature was revealed by her choice of clothing. A scarlet red skirt, bright as blood in sunlight, gushed from her waist to her ankles. A big blood-red bow cinched her hair into a tight bun. The golden magic wrapped around her ears, one of which she held her hand to. That along with the stark golden soundwaves embroidered on her blouse left no doubt as to what she could do.

She could hear everything. She could hear your whispers, your cries, what you mumbled at night in your sleep. She could hear your footsteps, where you went, who you spoke with, everything you did. She could hear every one of your secrets. Including any plans to escape.

We were doomed.

There was no question about it now. Our Encanto was not a miracle but a curse. And we were all going to be fed to a bloody monster until we died or became part of it.

All we could do was wait.

Waiting for the outside to kill us killed us inside, children. Imagine a storm raging around a rock. Every moment spent fearing for your lives and your loved ones’ lives, every moment spent trying to enjoy your life while ignoring the axe hanging over your head, every moment spent praying and begging and hoping eventually wore us down to nothing but a little pebble.

And yet, we tried.

We got married and raised children and threw parties and wrote books and songs and planted gardens with high fences. Fear pushed our community closer together until everyone knew the name of the hermit’s unborn baby. We were happy, sometimes. Perhaps things were good enough.

But the threat kept growing.

Three years later, the baker burst out sobbing when he entered the plaza and caught sight of the mural.

Yet another nieta, for both the Madrigals and poor Señora Rojas. The girl posed proudly beneath the blue-clad couple, beside her pollen-covered hermana.

The letters under her declared this one Luisa Madrigal.

She was by far the strongest person in the family, beating even the men. We know this because her portrait emphasized her big, brawny arms as she effortlessly balanced a boulder above her head, golden magic glimmering along her muscles. Her wavy hair was the color of her poor padre’s. She grinned confidently out at us, golden brown eyes wide and happy, dark blue skirt flaring out beneath a white shirt stitched with blood red. She looked proud and eager and (despite the red thread) not at all sadistic.

Perhaps it was that that led us to find even more balance in those rickety times. Most likely, it was that we just couldn’t take any more fear and loss. Our abuelos and abuelas had lost people in the journey to the Encanto, we still lost many due to normal causes such as old age and accidents, there were those that suffocated in the sandstorm or dropped dead from sudden lightning strikes, and of course there was poor, poor María Pérez. Who, it is worthy to add, was becoming someone revered. She was a martyr, the only one courageous enough to deny the Madrigals by making the ultimate sacrifice. But the point is that we had been living in fear for so long that this new addition did not change much. There was not much we could do against someone potentially hurling boulders at us from the mountainside, and the Madrigals never came here in person. And so we accepted the existence of Luisa Madrigal with weary nods and continued on as we always had, with the exception of constructing underground rooms where we could hide in case she ever caused an avalanche.

We continued living, growing older and wiser. My own family hosted my quinceañera and welcomed my baby nephew into the world. We built an observatory from which we studied the stars. No one dared to declare it outright, but everyone knew it was in memory of María. The dark eyes emblazoned on all the telescopes were proof of that.

The Madrigal nietas grew too, taller and more beautiful. Bloody lipstick appeared on Dolores Madrigal’s lips. More cacti sprouted around Isabela Madrigal’s feet. Luisa Madrigal learned from her cousin and added a blood-red ribbon to her wavy locks. Meanwhile, gray hairs sprouted from the heads of the matriarch, the triplets, Félix and Agustín. This gave us hope that they were at least not immortal.

One year ticked past, then two, then three and then four, and parents looked worriedly at their handsome young sons. What if the bloodthirsty girls decided that they wanted a villager too? Well. At least they did not have to worry about their daughters.

Can you guess what happened next, children?

By sheer bad fortune, that same baker entered the square and saw it first. Feared Dolores Madrigal had received a sibling. Pepa Madrigal and Félix had had a new child.

And this one was a boy.

Camilo Madrigal.

Coily, pale brown hair bursting out of his head and dangling over his face. Deep hazel eyes shimmering eagerly, narrowed with anticipation of some mischief. A big, wide smirk on his freckled face, a smirk that spelled nothing but bloodshed and ruin. His entire body tensed, arms outstretched, posed like he was preparing to burst out of the mural and attack us. Magic swirling around his pale yellow ruana, a clothing choice we had only seen from the most insane Madrigal of them all-this boy’s tío. The one with the eyes of our martyr plucked out and displayed on his heart like some badge of honor.

The village was in uproar. Mothers sobbed in agony and prayed to Díos to protect their little girls. This boy looked like the craziest one of them all and would undoubtedly torture their hijas horribly. Fathers grabbed every weapon they had, from a woodcutting axe to a broken guitar neck, and swore to Díos, Jesucristo, and the espíritu Santo that no one would touch their daughters as long as they drew breath.

One man, who had mellizas Camilo Madrigal’s age and another hija that was older, flew at the mural in a fit of insanity and slashed his face with a carving knife. The others pulled him away, terrified of retribution, but the next day the gash was gone as if it had never been. This galvanized others who had previously been too scared to rebuke the Madrigals in the only way they could. Pepa Madrigal wound up with hundreds of slash marks gouged inside her, across her neck and through her hips and in her forehead and all the way down her arms and legs. The section of wall where her heart was painted was ripped out and animal blood splashed within the cavity, dripping down her sunny dress. There was never any proof, but we all knew it had been Félix’s hermanas. They had taken vengeance on the demon who stole their brother in the only way possible as well as indirectly promised what awaited her if they got their hands on her. But the next day, the paint was spotless once again, the cavity in the wall filled in perfectly. The middle triplet smiled as effusively as ever.

That wasn’t the only attempt. Julieta Madrigal was split down the middle by a fishhook. Bruno Madrigal’s eyes were carved out and an axe was left buried in his chest, handle painted with stars. Someone coated the Madrigal nietas in scarlet paint and blood, scrawling on the wall, ‘Not so pretty when it’s the real thing, is it, little wenches?’ Alma Madrigal endured by far the worst. Every month, there were either slash marks from carving knives, nasty scrapes from farming equipment, painted demons ravaging her apart, or homemade spears buried in her eyes. One particularly creative vandal torched the walls so that it looked like her own miracle candle was burning her alive. There were talks of destroying the mural completely and burning the remains. And somehow, there was still no retribution. The mural just serenely replaced itself until there wasn’t a brushstroke out of place.

But as you can surely guess by now, children, we were only on dry land for a little while. Misery came rolling in like the tide, in the form of a cry from María’s observatory.

A young girl had been looking through the telescopes when a bright flash blinded her. She swung the scope towards it and immediately ran to alert the village.

The star was back. And the telescope revealed that it was not a star after all but the miracle candle itself, burning in all its glory in a windowsill carved into the side of the mountain.

This discovery shook us to our cores. Mothers clutched their sons close while the astronomy students rushed to investigate the mountain further. They pointed all their telescopes at the candle and dug out every available notebook they could find, intent on charting everything they could see.

And oh, children, what they saw. It gave us hope and fear in equal measure.

We could finally see our enemy.

There it was. The secret house, the lair, the snarling cave ready to devour us. Somewhat obscured from the candle’s glow, but still. We could see it. It was a grand casa carved into the mountain. A palace, to be sure.

We could not believe our luck. The students did not go home that night. They stayed, desperate to document as much as they could before Dolores Madrigal inevitably heard.

There were grand towers and sweeping vistas and carved archways, plants of every color bursting from crags in the rocks and snuggling around the house. A library was visible through one arched window, a lavish bedroom through another. There were silver windchimes and glass tables and wooden chairs.

What there was not was any torture instruments. We saw no blood or weapons. No ragged prisoners. Just a beautiful, lonely mountain home. We were confused by this, but all contemplations scattered to the wind when we caught a glimpse of her.

Pepa Madrigal, in the flesh.

We only caught sight of her for a moment-a flash of her fiery braid and sunny dress and exuberant smile-but it was enough to confirm that we now had an ability to monitor our tormentors.

Well, those poor telescopes were wrangled night and day, constantly adjusting focus, seeking a new angle. There wasn’t an instant that went by that someone wasn’t watching La Casa Madrigal, either a protective father or desperate mother or anxious young adult, desperate for another glimpse into the feared family that had been out of reach for so long.

The next glimpse we got was Isabela Madrigal. We didn’t recognize her at first because she was wearing a tunic and pants rather than her lilac dress. She was simply ambling down a walkway toward one of the patios. We eagerly clustered around the telescope, hoping she would show us how she committed evil deeds. She walked to the edge of the patio, on a cliff that jutted out of the mountain, silky black hair flying in all directions with the whipping wind. She stood there a moment, a small smile on her lips, something sparkling in her eyes that sent a chill down our spines. She knelt on the stone and placed her palms flat against the rocky soil that edged it. Plants were already growing there, but they were old and decaying.

Isabela Madrigal closed her eyes. There were no sparkles, no stream of gold, but new plants burst from the soil all the same. The old ones were tossed backwards onto the cliff, dried out leaves splintering from the impact. The new growth sprouted up before our eyes, a vivid green that seared our eyes, reaching maturity in seconds. And then they blossomed. Huge sunflowers leaped towards the fading sun. Cacti impaled the air with their spikes. Poisonous sundew unfurled its sticky petals and wriggled hungrily. Life dragged from infancy to maturity in the span of seconds. And this girl looked like she was simply making empanadas.

She stood up. Dusted her hands. Collected the dead plants and walked away.

A few weeks later, we saw Pepa Madrigal again, and we finally got to see her weather power in action. She was walking down the ridge of the cliff, tense shoulders and clenched fists revealing her anger. Hovering inches above her head was an honest-to-Díos stormcloud, gray and flashing with lightning. We watched with shock as she literally stormed to the balcony, flung her fists in the air and yelled at something, and stomped back inside. Her cloud spat little streams of electricity that sparked against the ground.

Then it was Luisa Madrigal, but she didn’t do anything other than walk from one room down the cliffside walkway to another. We saw Isabela Madrigal again in a tower window, hands tricking the plants in the window box to perk up and bloom.

Another frequent visitor to the cliffs was Dolores Madrigal. She would wander to the balcony and lean over it, gazing down toward the village, stretching her arms out as if to touch us. Smiling, she would murmur words that we could not string together with the telescope. We did not understand what it meant. Occasionally, however, she would tilt her head so that one of her finely crafted ears was aimed at the village, and that we understood just fine. Luckily, everyone knew better than to speak of the telescopes out loud.

And then we saw Pepa Madrigal with Félix.

We let his hermanas, now gray and hobbling, look through the telescopes. We crowded as close as we could and demanded to know what was happening.

But all that took place was a scene you could witness strolling through La Plaza on a sunny afternoon. Pepa pulled Félix along the cliff to a garden bed and down to sit by her side. Our view obscured by the carnations blooming from the soil, we still caught Pepa quite clearly enjoying herself, laughing and gesturing and swishing her braid from side to side, while Félix was nearly motionless and we never saw him say a word. The gray of ashes and gravestones now streaked the lively coils of his hair, and his sisters remained clutching the telescopes to their chests, dashing the tears from their eyes before they could fully form, so they could keep the place where they had seen their hermanito for the first time in decades in sight long after Pepa had dragged him away again. The sunlight had seemed to just adore her, sparkling all through her russet hair and making her pale skin glow.

There was only one thing we could do against a family that could play Díos. We had to attack first.

But before our plans had even started to germinate, there came another appearance on the mural.

Mirabel Madrigal.

She beamed out at us, arms spread wide like she wanted to give us a hug. Her brown eyes glowed with warmth and kindness behind her sparkling green glasses. Magic radiated from her heart and inundated her, cascading along every part of her body instead of just one. She had curly black hair from her madre that bounced cheerfully around her shoulders and freckles along her warm brown cheeks. Her skirt was a refreshing, beautiful teal that had been hand embroidered with rainbow butterflies. She looked benevolent and lovely. We were not fooled.

But we had no more tears to shed. No more parts in our minds to accomodate a new worry. So we just nodded and began to account for the newest daughter of the eldest triplet in our plans, along with any more young Madrigal children that had not appeared on the mural yet.

But before our plans could grow to maturity, Díos turned against us once more. The villagers at the observatory suddenly had a much clearer view of the mountainside and, after a little investigation, quickly realized it was because the candle’s glow wasn’t blocking it anymore. It was no longer as bright as a star. And since this had almost always symbolized that someone had been taken, we scrambled to take stock of ourselves.

I could hear the Guzmáns’ screams from across the Encanto. My hermanita Lupa buried her head in my lap so that she didn’t have to hear them.

The Guzmáns were the most active of all of us in trying to keep the village safe from the Madrigals, ironically because they wanted to protect their hijo as well as his hermana. His mamá and hermanas practically lived in the observatory while his papá, hermano and primos worked to build the underground shelters. They had been working so hard that they often fell asleep at their workstations and had not had time to go home and count their members. Mariano Guzmán had focused himself on keeping everyone together. He hosted parties where children could play and the adults could get to know each other. He hosted get-togethers where the adults secretly worked on weapons while the children played extreme hide-and-seek. This may sound trite, but it helped immensely. Mariano had such a pure, kind soul. He was amazing with people and just seemed to click with anyone he ever met. He could tell if you were feeling sad and, even more impressively, could tell if company would make you feel better or if you were the type to prefer solitude. He worked from dawn to dusk doing literally anything that people needed-bringing food to his padre and others building the shelters, watching the children, standing watch while other boys trained to fight in hidden locations. For the record, he learned to fight as well, but it evidently didn’t help him any. Though he didn’t do much of it in his last years with us, always busy working, he loved to read and write, especially poetry. He had a way of putting the feelings in his heart onto paper in a way that it could be taken off the paper and into someone else’s heart. We loved him very much. Everyone in the Encanto knew his name. He was amazing.

And then he was gone.

Some of us mourned. Some of us raged. Some of us feared. We tried to restrain Mariano’s padre, but he stormed off toward the mountain, howling furiously. As you can guess, he never returned, and Señora Guzmán could barely hold herself and her family together. Unlike the mothers of Félix and Agustín, she did not monitor the mural. She sat in her cold bedroom, wrapped her hands around her tarnished cross, and prayed until her voice gave out. The family no longer went to the observatory or worked on the shelters. I suppose they imagined, in that time of grief, that they had already lost everything they could.

For some of us, it was a kind of twisted game to wonder which Madrigal nieta had snagged him. The most popular bet by far was Isabela Madrigal-she was the eldest and the most beautiful, so she would have ‘first pick’ and perhaps thought the most handsome man in the village was the only one worthy of her. So many of us were shocked when, sure enough, Mariano’s portrait appeared on the mural three months later. The shortest amount of time by far.

Next to Dolores Madrigal.

We should have guessed. She was the one who draped herself in the color of carnage. She was the one who would fight tooth and nail for what she wanted.

She certainly didn’t look like someone who had fought, though. She smiled up at Mariano, eyes soft and caring, one arm looped through his at the elbow and the other pressed gently to his shoulder. On closer inspection, she almost appeared to have tears in her eyes and her smile seemed tinged with sadness. But that was just our imagination.

Mariano, of course, was just like the rest of the stolen. Blank. Lifeless. Gone. Instead of the pale blue he’d been known to wear most often, he’d been dressed in a tacky red suit, no doubt by Dolores Madrigal herself. She’d decorated her plaything to her wicked heart’s desire so that he matched her. It fooled no one. She looked like a villain. He looked like a caricature.

Every day after Mariano appeared beside her, some part of her portrait was vandalized. Her throat was slit, her stomach gutted, her ears sliced off, her head split in two, blood-colored paint was slathered all over her. MONSTER and DEMON and WITCH were daubed over her pretty name. And still it was not enough.

They were coming for us. The other nietas would make their choices soon. There was nothing we could do.

All the sons insisted that they were not afraid. Isabela, Dolores, Luisa, or Mirabel Madrigal–it didn’t matter. They would go down fighting. My own brother swore by heaven that he would cut his own throat before he ever allowed his soul to be ripped away, but I could tell that he was terrified about keeping that promise. Many of them wondered if it would be better to make the ultimate sacrifice as María Pérez had done, and indeed, some of them did.

My best friend. Emilio Rivera. Leaped from María’s cliff and fell all the way down to the Río Milagro. This time, the water remained as crystal clear as ever. Lilies bloomed around his body, brushing their petals against his cheeks, kissing his bloodless lips.

My classmate. Enrique Alcaraz. Hung himself under a blooming tree. The note he left behind explained that he’d at least wanted to die someplace beautiful. We buried him beneath the roots and seeded his favorite flowers above his grave.

My crush. Darito Córdoba. Jumped off a moving wagon over the side of a hill. He likely suffered for endless seconds before his neck finally snapped against a tree. He was buried with his favorite horse figurine braced against his headstone.

We tried to reassure them, truly we did. But of course, we all had to wonder.

Was it better to give up your life or your soul?

I suppose we will never know. Once you have given up one, you have no use for the other. But those who might have some inkling were lost to us unless we could rescue them.

Those attack/rescue plans were accelerating. Everyone was in on it now, from the youngest babe, listening to the plan being whispered over his crib, to the ancient hermit who lived in the streets and picked up gossip like old leaves.

And still, children, they were not fast enough.

Days after Mariano was taken, the candle suddenly flared up and seared so brightly that old Señor Rivera was permanently blinded from the magnified light blasting through the telescope. Once it died down, we scrambled to find our families and shelter them from the attack we believed was imminent, but nothing happened. Nothing had changed, not from what we could see of La Casa Madrigal or in the village. Of course we did not, and still do not, know what it meant, but after an evening of tearful kisses and strangling hugs, we went back to work, hoping, perhaps, that it was an encouraging sign.

Those plans were made and thrown out and remade and thrown out again. A sneak attack was the only way that we would not all die on the spot. We didn’t know how to get up the mountain-the only ones we knew of that had tried, the fathers of the stolen villagers, had never returned and were believed dead. Was it worth it if we failed and the Madrigals slaughtered the rest of us in retaliation? Perhaps Félix, Agustín and Mariano could be rescued and María’s eyes reclaimed from Bruno’s keeping and buried with the rest of her. All these thoughts and more occupied our minds and days until the next domino fell.

We started to call the period of the candle flaring brightly ‘Candlestar’. By now, we all knew that it meant someone was going to be taken. And only a few days after the thankfully false alarm, Candlestar began again.

Some boys rushed to get married, since Félix, Agustín, María and Mariano had been single. Some, who found it immoral to attack young women no matter how devilish they were, prepared a poison that they would drink immediately if they were abducted. It was sold by the alchemist’s daughter, Lluvia Ruiz. She lived in a hut secluded by palm trees, near the river. The blue-black-green liquid was poured into necklaces, rings, belt buckles-anything that they would have on them constantly. And then there were more young men that simply tried to end it. Luckily, they did not succeed.

Mateo Aguilar. Tried to simply stab himself in the heart. Had only managed to make a small wound when his novia walked in on him. They were quickly engaged and married.

Ronaldo Lopez. Attempted to steal poison from Señorita Ruiz, who chased him down and brought him to jail instead of to Díos. I can only assume that he was happier than anyone else has been to see a cell.

Another one of those young men honestly tried everything. He bought three doses of poison with his hard-earned money. He attended extra fighting classes and trained with every weapon imaginable at every available moment. He was constantly asking what new information those at the observatory had discovered and was one of the key leaders of the movement to attack the mountain. He was known for being brutish and brusque at times, but he had a good heart and never hesitated to protect anyone from danger. His name was Sergio Rodriguez.

And near the third month of Candlestar, he vanished without a trace.

In the observatory, the candle grew even more blindingly bright before dimming, and we quickly realized that this probably meant that someone had been taken. After the last time, we were hoping for a miracle; it was two days before Sergio’s disappearance was confirmed. His madre and hermana were inconsolable.

Oddly enough, his father did not seem upset at all; rather, he seemed illogically pleased with this turn of events. He would say to anyone who came by to express condolences that he ‘was sure his hijo knew what to do and would not fail him’. He was often seen looking toward the mountain with a smile on his face that sent chills down our spines. He appeared to be waiting for something-he would stop by the mural every day and examine it with narrow eyes-but whatever he was looking for evidently never happened, because four months later Sergio appeared on the mural just as the others had.

I was among the few who won this bet, having bet on Luisa Madrigal.

It may be worth noting that instead of staring vacantly out at the village, Sergio stared vacantly down at her. His body was angled slightly and his arm was even wrapped around her waist, but his eyes were still blank and his face was contorted in a pained grimace.

Luisa Madrigal, though taller than anyone else in her family, was on her tiptoes to lock her gaze with his. Her large hand brushed Sergio's chin, turning his face toward her. She wore a faint smile, but her eyes were wide and serious. If they had actually been in love, she would have been trying to reassure him and convey strength and hope through her gaze. As it was, we were sure that she was only trying to project her control over him.

It may also be worth telling, for the sake of the memory of Sergio Rodriguez, how his father reacted to his appearance. That day, the rest of us grieved for him and prayed for him and brought arepas and enchiladas to his madre. But Señor Rodriguez spat on the ground and snarled toward the sky, cursing his hijo under his breath. Then he stormed off to the village tavern and remained there for the rest of the day and night until two disgusted bar patrons dragged him to his casa in the early morning. This part is just rumors by now, but some say that while he was drinking himself unconscious, he scorned his hijo’s weakness. He’d taught him better than that, he’d said. He was a strong man who should have been able to kill that puta the instant she brought him to her cursed palace. No woman was strong enough to beat him, so Sergio must have fallen for that bruja’s tricks or given in to cowardice. Either way, he was not the brave young man he’d raised and was nothing to him now. He should not count on a rescue from his father; he should have been able to rescue himself.

As you can probably suppose, children, we do not like him much after that, whether the tavern rumor is true or not.

Perhaps the most ironic truth of this whole story is that Sergio himself bet that the next man would be taken by Luisa Madrigal. He would never get to use his winnings to purchase the new fishing boat he wanted nor the doll for his hermanita. They were given to his madre to decide what to do with. His hermanita got the doll after all, and she bought a fresh white sail to drape over Sergio’s dusty bed as an ersatz burial shroud.

Now, when we watched the house through the telescopes, all we wanted was another peek at the stolen. Something to tell us if they were at least alright. But there were none. We still have not seen any of them beyond that small glimpse of Félix. They must be hidden away from our sight in the vastness of that mountain house.

After Sergio appeared as Luisa Madrigal’s partner, the miracle candle dimmed until it was no longer as bright as a star. We were prepared to breathe a sigh of relief that perhaps our boys had more time to live when it flared right back up the next day. Candlestar began again.

I am not proud to admit this, but now the boys began to employ a different tactic to keep themselves sane while they waited for the magic axe to fall. They began to muse about how if they had to be chained to a witch for the rest of their lives, Isabela Madrigal was at least a beautiful one. They wondered if, since her hair and eyes and mouth were so perfect, then surely the rest of her that they couldn’t see was perfect too. They spoke and laughed and jeered about her in lewd terms. It was not good nor right. But it made them feel better about their potential fate.

In addition, they kept arming themselves, despite how useless that had been for Sergio Rodriguez. They wrote letters for their families to open in case they vanished one day. Said families doted on and coddled them, terrified that the next day might be their last with them.

But this time, none who had such a worried family were chosen.

On the other hand, the parents of the next poor young man who vanished in a bright flash-a first, normally they just vanished into thin air-had not been worried about him at all. They claimed he was nothing special-a little more foolish, ugly and cowardly than average. They hadn’t worried about him because, according to them, he held no appeal for such a powerful, beautiful girl.

Either they didn’t know something about their hijo or she simply liked men weaker than she, because they could not have been more wrong.

There he stood, in a lavender suit ravaged with pollen and wrapped up in the arms of Isabela Madrigal.

His mouth was turned down in a slight frown, glassy eyes unable to find a target for his unhappiness. He looked rigid and uncomfortable and somewhere in his head, entirely unaware of the woman firmly attaching him to her side. As for her, she was tilting her head up at him and smiling, but there was something fierce about the edges of her smile and the way her hands clutched his body to her. Vines grew around their ankles, twining them together.

Dante Hernandez.

We never knew much about him, despite our close community. He was apprenticed to both the doctor and the alchemist and created art in his free time. His creations were often vivid but confusing, made of bright colors used to create shapes that formed no recognizable object-triangles in every possible shade of green covering an entire canvas or woodland animals forming the shape of a dancing girl. He kept to himself often and was somewhat of an outcast, sometimes seen doing odd things such as gesticulating wildly and speaking dramatically in the middle of a perfectly empty forest clearing, performing a soliloquy for no one. He was inclined toward animals and kept several pets, most famously a parrot named Reina that the niños in the village loved. Any time that he did interact with one of us, he was perfectly kind. Despite his oddities, he had been just an average young man working among us. Now he no longer did.

By the time that Candlestar ended, we could not bear to wait any longer.

Under the watchful eyes of María Pérez’s beloved stars, almost all the men (and a few women) armed themselves with every sharp object in the Encanto and flocked up the mountain. They tried to be quiet, for the sake of Dolores Madrigal, but it was futile. They sounded like thunder. They sounded like a thousand grieving beasts. They sounded like the echo of righteous vengeance. And as they swarmed over rocks and rivers and trees and canyons, an army feeding off nothing but desperation, the sounds slowly faded beside the wind.

And the rest of us sat in our rooms and prayed.

Golden candlelight glowed in every window. Soft prayers carried on the warm wind. It was a serene and mild night, just as spring leaned toward summer. There were flower buds and sleeping butterflies and other soft and pretty things. Not for us, however.

Lupa lay on my lap until my leg ached and never fell asleep. My graceful hermana nestled on the bed with a rosary twined through her fingers and clutched her son, not even a year old, to her rapidly beating heart. My hermanito Alvaro lost his voice after one hundred and ninety six prayers and curled up beneath the windowsill with a picture of our papá in his hands. The priest, Padre Nicolas, came by to bless our house and gently fold incense sticks into my tía’s hands. She stood there, letting the smoke dance around her, holding the sticks away from her so that her tears would not quench them. Mi hermano Victor knelt beside us and cradled a candle with shaking hands. Wax splashed onto his wrists, but his gaze never wavered from our madre. And our madre… she became someone else that night. She was the flame of the candles and the smoke from the incense and the melody of her chanting all at once. She was no longer withered skin and frail bones but something that had reached out from deep within her. Her body swayed and danced and stretched while her voice hummed unceasingly. It sounded warm and rich, coarser than honey but smoother than sandpaper. Our family huddled in that golden haze and watched her, my mother, become someone else. Something else. I have never forgotten how she looked in those moments, praying to Díos to deliver my papá and tío from the hands of the Madrigals.

Perhaps he did not hear us.

The cold, cruel light of dawn washed over the mountains in a lifeless gray. I could no longer see the lanterns of our villagers darting over the ridges of the mountain. There was nothing there but fog. Those in the observatory could not explain it. They had arranged a signal with our fighters so that they could be kept in sight at all times, yet here they were. One hundred men and women, boys some of them, gone.

Our candles melted, we picked the cooled wax from our clothes and went into the streets to rid us of our incense-induced headaches. The sun marched higher and higher and still there was nothing. Not even a flicker of life on the hills. The fog parted and drained away, and there was still nothing.

But at last, a cry from the observatory. Burned-out lanterns, gleaming machetes, shining scythes, polished crossbows, lethal fishhooks and swords and axes, quivers spilling their arrows on the grass, sacks filled with unraveling bandages and spilled needles, crumpled maps, even clothing-a red jacket, a black boot, a green shoe, an odd pink hair ribbon–abandoned on the dewy slopes of the mountain as if a tornado had hurled them there. Half-buried in rock crevices and drifting in rivers and dangling from tree branches and collapsed in bushes. Everything the invading force had taken with them, down to a shining copper coin (‘for luck’, my tío had said), strewn over miles and miles of forest and grass. You know where this is going, children.

Everything save them.

One hundred and twenty four men and women, husbands and padres and hermanos and hijos and hermanas and wives and madres and hijas, had vanished into thin air. Not dead, just gone, like Dante and Sergio and Mariano and Agustín and Félix and all their padres before them. Swallowed up but not spat out, with the sun shining uncaringly on the close-lipped mouth.

But before we could even realize that it was time to grieve, the storm hit.

My family is a paradigm of its destruction.

We couldn’t tell if it was a rainstorm, a hurricane, a tornado, a lightning storm, a sandstorm, or all rolled into one. Raging winds clawed roots from the ground, sending trees crashing. Thunder and lightning blazed to earth, setting houses on fire and charring any poor soul in its way. Rain and ice stung and ripped our skin as we struggled to find shelter. Twisters churned up the peaceful marketplace, hurling carts and stalls into the sky and pelting us unconscious. The fields were flooded, fires raged along the casas, shingles and doors and windows were torn from their resting places and smashed to dust. Many could not get to their homes. Many died in the streets, charred or frozen or smashed or drowned. A cackling wind sent my hermana, sweet and strong, crashing against a brick wall that shattered her back. Her neck bent through a window, snapping it. Her body, loving even in death, absorbed the impact and crumbled around her baby, protecting him. Her husband howled as the other half of his soul was torn away, but even that was swallowed by the storm.

Then the sand began to rise, just as it had after María Pérez’s death. It rained through the village, glowing a sickly green, and tormented us with visions of dead loved ones. Many of them came true. Right in front of our eyes, my family watched Victor and Lupa be strangled and torn asunder by malevolent vines. We saw my padre, disappeared to Díos knows where, haggardly crawling along a cave wall until he lost his balance and plummeted into an abyss. We saw my tía, eyes wide and bloody, turn to stare at us desperately through the sand before a boulder crushed her. I had my hand wrapped up in Lupa’s and my arm through my tía’s, but they froze at the horrific sights and I could not pull them forward.

Then came the plants. They burst from the ground, twisting and writhing, thorns sharper than knives, dripping with poison. They hissed their hunger as they grew, taller than our houses, bigger than trees, thick and strong and so evil that many vomited at the sight of them. They tore through the cobblestones and devoured any fleeing villagers. Their petals yawned wide like teeth, their stems snapping forward like a snake, and then someone was gone forever, screaming as they dissolved into nothing. One coiled around the corner to our street, hunting for prey. We could still not reach our house. The ginormous sundew slithered closer, mouth gaping wide and drizzling liquid that steamed and hissed. The smell was enough to make some faint, but still we pushed on, and still it was not enough. The plant was there, I remember it so clearly despite the darkness. Dark green and dripping yellow and smacking its leaf top to its body like it was licking its lips. We just froze and stared at this mesmerizing terror, the perfect prey. And behind us the sand was still swirling, Victor and my hermanita’s deaths in miniature, and the plant turned toward us-me-her and reared back to strike. But my brother was always too brave, see, and he had to be the hero now. And I remember everything. He turned to look at the sand. He turned to look at the end of the street. He turned to face the plant. The plant opened its maw. Victor stumbled in front of Lupa. The plant lunged and then all I could see was sick, swirling yellow and I vomited from the stench all over my heroic brother’s back. I saw a shadow against the yellow as he drew his sword. I saw the shadow of my brother stab the shining blade deep into its belly-mouth. I saw the plant rear back. I saw it howl. And I saw it-I know they all said it was crazy but I saw it-decide that my hermano was enough prey for it. I know I saw it the same way I know he suffered. The sundew didn’t give him a quick death. It hauled him, still clutching his sword that was embedded in its mouth, into the sky and retreated through the neighboring house. The last I ever saw of him was the plant tipping itself and gulping him inside it, but I heard him scream for long after that. I can still hear him scream. They still say I’m crazy but I know that wherever he is he’s still suffering and I can’t help.

But Lupa was safe, wasn’t she? The sand behind us showered to the ground, no longer a possibility. She would survive the night. I hope that he knows it was worth it.

I heard Victor’s screams, but as I stood paralyzed, I began to hear others. Babies’ cries and mothers’ pleas and hollered orders. The yells grew agonizingly loud until they scorched my ears and I nearly released Lupa to grip my aching head, but they faded just as quickly. Then they grew back to a deafening roar, died down to a haunting whisper, became louder and softer and louder and softer and I realized vaguely that this was another form of torture.

I couldn’t hear the rest of my family over the screams as they tripped and stumbled over slimy roots. Acting as if possessed, with strength that I still do not know the origin of, I hauled my hermanita against the storm all the way to the door of our house. I managed to tear it open and hurl her inside, screeching something about staying put. Then I started down the steps to help the rest of them, but the boulders came down before I could.

Whistling down from the mountains as if someone had thrown them, huge chunks of rock began to smash our village to rubble. I thought that somehow, we’d been transported to Hell itself. My eyes had nearly frozen shut, but I still saw an entire hill of dirt, roots still swinging from the sides, flatten an entire family mere feet from mine. The houses began to crumble and rained rubble down on the street, smashing my sister’s still-warm skin. Her husband was now collapsed by her side, rattling hands coaxing my wailing sobrino from her arms. He looked up in horror at the collapsing bricks and flung himself over his baby and his wife’s body. A cloud of dust obscured them from my view.

I moved. Thoughts stopped going through my brain. Emotions stopped raging through my heart. Pain stopped zinging through my body. I became as lifeless as my hermanos, yet somehow, I still moved.

I pulled my tía up the stairs and through the door. I flung my mamá over my shoulder despite her kicking and screaming that she needed to go back for my hermanos. I threw her through the door and spat at my tía to keep them inside. I spun around and fought my way down the stairs, though the wind and rain and sand held me back. I stumbled across the cobblestones, heart beating too hard, lungs breathing too fast, my body having lost too much blood. But I kept moving toward my little hermanito, my only hermano now. He was stranded in the street, shaking like a leaf, hands squeezed over his ears, eyes clenched shut. The photo he’d had of our papá had fallen to his feet and shattered, with the paper blown away by the wind.

I was moving, which was more than anyone else still living on our street could say. But I wasn’t moving fast enough. I was only shuffling, really. Alvaro seemed miles away.

But I must have gotten close enough, because he opened his eyes for a moment and saw me through his tears. I reached down and he reached up and just as our hands connected, his legs suddenly grew to three times their normal size. His hands were torn from mine and his upper body teetered high in the sky, screaming soundlessly. I watched utterly calmly as a humongous boulder broke through the clouds and thundered down to Earth, crumpling a house like paper beneath it and splintering half of my hermanito’s mutated legs.

Still possessed, I calmly knelt down to see if there was anything of him I could salvage from the wreckage. The same twisted magic that had elongated his legs had suddenly reversed and shortened them again. He lay flat against the cobblestones, upper body sticking out from the hunk of stone, his regular legs swallowed up beneath it. I pulled, but he did not come loose. His hands clenched around my arms and he looked up at me. I saw the pain fill his eyes until something broke an invisible barrier inside of him and they rolled back in his head. He sagged in my arms and I tried to pull him free. He was stuck fast, but I reached beneath the crag, feeling bare bone and torn muscle and bloody skin, and managed to drag what little remained of his legs out and away. There was almost nothing where one entire half of my hermanito’s body had once been and I doubted that the other half would survive the night. But I scooped Alvaro’s body into my arms and staggered back to my house, wind whisking thick waterfalls of his blood into my face.

And then we were inside, and my mamá was sobbing and screaming and was so painfully my mamí, not whoever she’d become when she was praying. She tore off her own clothes to wrap around his thighs, but there was no stitching together the streamers of skin and muscle, nor gluing together the little splinters of bone.

To all of our surprises, he would survive the night on his own strength and will alone. But he would never walk again.

I suppose that is not the worst loss, though, is it. He could have lost far more.

Crouched in our house, voices and sand and rain and roots howling past, we nursed our wounds and grieved-or rather, my mamá and tía grieved while I sat cold and still. Lupa curled into a ball and refused to move, Alvaro just lay there dying, my cuñado crumpled in a corner over my sobrino who would never see his mamí again. Alvaro tells me that our mamá screamed when she discovered that all the food had spoiled, and that her tortured screams still sing in his nightmares; my tía still trembles over the bloodthirsty beasts that eviscerated the village as if the buildings had not even been there. A rabid, gluttonous thing–a coyote, she guesses the most, or maybe a hyena–burst in through one window, smashed like a thrown axe through the second floor, and out a window on the other side of our house in less than a second. I will have to take their words for it, as I have no recollection of that event at all. Just a haze that throbbed like a drumbeat.

Then the haze pulsed, like a strong wind had blown through it, and there was someone taking my hermanito away. Then I was in the cobblestone street, lit by sunlight so harsh it scorched my tired and soggy eyes. Then I knelt by Alvaro’s side as a man removed the shawls and sweaters we had roped around the stumps that were once his legs to staunch the bleeding. He put actual bandages on, yet gave me the look doctors give you when they know that you or someone you love cannot make it no matter what they try. He had lost so much blood, so much body, and so many were dead around us that we stood out and for an instant I thought we must have all died, perhaps even before last night, perhaps we were even born dead, perhaps we were already in Hell for some misdeed in our past lives and el Diablo was gleefully feasting on our pain. We lay beneath one of the only roofs still standing for nine days and I did not move a muscle of my own free will until Alvaro dragged his arm across his chest to touch my hand and smiled at me. It is a true miracle that he survived. Díos’ one gift to us, and I suppose I must ask His forgiveness for not believing that it is enough to make up for all He took away.

I will not describe the utter annihilation our village suffered. I am positive that you can imagine it from the scars still oozing.

Entire families that had lived in our Encanto since its creation had died. That is why there are all those empty houses strewn up the hills; the souls that made them homes are long gone and those that remained fled to the center of the village because everyone wanted to be closer to each other; it is better to die among people, even strangers, than to die alone. Those houses that, if you can believe it, once contained flesh and blood men and women and boys and girls that danced and hugged and kissed just like you, are the ones in your ghost stories, children. The ones that some of you like to pretend are haunted and to turn into hideouts and games of dares where you play at exorcising malevolent ghosts that you would have no chance of defeating if they truly existed, and we do not stop you because what better are we?

I cannot give you an accurate account of the years following, children, because my body may have survived but I am not sure my mind did. It took at least seven months before it realized that it was, in fact, at least a little bit alive and I stopped drifting through the village like a ghost before falling into screeching fits like one possessed. Yet I was not alone in that, and somehow having other people that screamed at the sky and raged at the river and broke down sobbing in dark pits where no one could hear them made it easier to return to reality.

And that reality was nothing.

We had nothing left, no one to hold on to and nowhere to go. We repaired and rebuilt what we could out of habit–the mural, of course, had been preserved as spotlessly as ever–but if outsiders had stumbled into this accursed valley, they would have believed it a ghost town from how lifelessly we acted. There was no reason to do anything anymore, no reason to pretend that a miracle might someday come and that we could make happy lives for ourselves under the executioner’s axe anyway as we had been doing. Indeed, there was no reason to live at all.

We walked in the valley of the shadow of death and were too crushed and beaten to fear any more evil.

And crushed and beaten we likely will remain.

The Madrigals seemed almost to sense our defeat. Perhaps in triumph, perhaps in pity, that candlestar remained dormant, the sky above their mountain fortress innocently dark. A handful of telescopes remained after our annihilation, but only a handful of ragged people used them, and they mostly just lay curled around the bases of the telescopes and sobbed silently, perhaps wishing that they could melt into the glass and be borne upon the light up to the heavens, to be with their family. Time crashed forward and onward, never stopping for a moment so that we may catch our
breaths. One morning I woke and my infant sobrino was thrashing in my arms and screeching from the absence of his mamí’s milk and the next he was teetering over to me and the oblea I clutched in my hand; one morning I was hoisting breakfast up the stairs to where my cuñado had not left his bed in weeks and the next he was nudging his hijo towards me with a tiny smile that was more heavenly, beautiful and precious in my eyes than the sun itself. One instant I stood shaking between the bookstore and the grocer’s and saw nothing but rubble and ruin for miles to the east; the next I stood stoically in the same place, clasping the handles of Alvaro’s poorly crafted wheelchair, staring at the homes carelessly thrown up from anything salvaged from that rubble. I was not alone in haunting what should have been my own life–everyone drifted through the village in trances. Any spark of joy was seized greedily; when a child laughed with delight at the flower stall, every person within earshot dropped whatever they carried, hitched up their skirts and sprinted across the splintered cobblestones for the slightest chance of the slightest glimpse of the slightest remnant of a smile on the child’s face. Demented moths to a flame, all of us.

The idea nuzzled at my mind over those deadened years to write this story, for you, children, so that you know the history that belongs to you whether you accept it or not, and for others, perhaps years or decades or even centuries into the future, who may stumble across our sad Encanto and should know at least a fraction of the souls who made it our home. But the moment I knew for certain that I had to write it was the night that star over the mountain was reborn for the sixth time, more gloriously than all the others, often flaming brighter than the moon. In that moment I became acutely aware of my body–the crick in my neck from taking in the sight, the ache in my bones, the burning of my blinded eyes–and felt alive after two years and eighteen days of living death.

We have nothing to give you but fear. We have nowhere to raise you but a monster’s lair. We have no stories to tell you but ones of loss. We have no future to offer you but pain.

Yet you still have hope. We see it in your eyes, how you smile at the flowers while we frown at the gravestones, how you gaze at the stars while we glare at them. You are so young, so lively, so full of stars yourselves. You do not understand the stones in your families’ souls, do not see grand manors now dust between your ramshackle homes. When reality crashes on top of you, when the Madrigals turn their bloodthirst on you, when you do understand your life is hopeless… you may be angry with us. You may believe we did not fight hard enough for you.

So here, as a pitiful consolation, is the story of just how hard we tried.

Sincerely,
Juana Morales