Chapter Text
“Time to get up, hermanito. Your ride is here.”
Bruno blinks his sore eyes open. His head is muzzy with lingering fatigue, and everything feels far away, muffled somehow, on the other side of a barrier he can’t cross.
That isn’t really Julieta’s voice. She isn’t here with him, nudging him gently awake. She’s in the other part of the house, with the family, and he’s staying hidden, protecting Mirabel. Right? That’s all he can do for his family any more. So he isn’t really lying on rain-moistened grass, wrapped in blankets that aren’t his, with his head in his sister’s lap and a clean, chilly breeze on his face, under a sky spangled with stars.
Mirabel doesn’t hold onto the blankets so they don’t fall off him when he sits up. Agustín doesn’t help him stand, and certainly doesn’t lift him, blankets and all, and carry him to a waiting cart. None of them speak to him, quiet phrases like you’re not gonna fall and sorry, let’s try it this way and is this okay, hermanito?
It’s not okay. They’re not supposed to see him. The bed of the cart shifts when they set him down, and shifts more when Julieta sits down next to him. It’s precarious and too high up. He hasn’t ridden in a cart since he was a child.
“Why?” he wonders.
Julieta is fussing with the blankets, tucking the lower one around his freezing feet. “Why what?”
Oh. This is real, and she heard. That’s bad, isn’t it? He isn’t sure, but now he has to keep talking. “The, the cart. Why are we in a cart?”
“Well, you don’t want me carrying you all the way to the Casa Ospina,” says Agustín reasonably, “and we can’t expect you to walk.”
A guffaw makes Bruno jump. A man says, “Not after you had a staircase fall on you.”
“What?”
Julieta taps him on the shin, pay attention. “You’re extremely lucky your injuries are no worse.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Might as well go with that. The truth — that he wrecked his health by hiding in the walls too long, and now can barely hobble across a room — is too complicated and personal to spread around.
“Rosita and I don’t mind, eh, muchacha?” The man gives the donkey a friendly slap. “Better than finding your body under the rubble tomorrow.”
“Osvaldo!” Agustín and Julieta protest.
“Well, it’s true! Just don’t tell me she’s gonna get mange or anything.”
It’s Julieta who says, “He won’t,” because Bruno can’t find any words. It feels like … no, not like coming home, at least not in a good way. Ridiculous thought. If there’s a lump in his throat, it must be for some other reason.
But the donkey. Did he see anything? Maybe he did, and if he doesn’t tell Osvaldo, Osvaldo will think Bruno misled him. “I don’t know. I saw a donkey step in a hole one time.”
“She’s gonna step in a hole?”
“No, that one came true years ago,” says Julieta, “and it was someone else’s donkey. Please forgive my brother, he’s overthinking it. Bruno, if you aren’t completely sure that you saw something about this donkey, just don’t say anything.”
Agustín jumps in brightly, “The sooner we get him there the sooner you can go home to your family, eh? So let’s get moving.”
The cart creaks into motion. Julieta pulls Bruno’s blanket hood down over his face like a veil. “Let’s not give them anything to see,” she says, giving him a sick twinge in his stomach because he forgot all about them, their neighbours. Then they’re off the grass and onto the street, bumping slowly downhill.
It hurts. Even at the donkey’s easy walking pace, every jolt over every stone travels unimpeded through the rigid wheels, to the axles, to the bare planks of the cart bed, and into Bruno’s ill-padded backside. He grits his teeth and keeps as quiet as he can.
Julieta notices anyway. “I wish I had some cushions for you.” She squeezes him close against her, which stops him bouncing around so much but wakes up the bruising on his arms and back. “Just hold on. It won’t be long.”
When the cart stops, he puffs out whoo in relief. There’s a smell of rotting plants. Osvaldo, walking beside the donkey, yelps out, “Ay, Rosita!” The cart inches backwards.
“I think she pushed him against something spiky,” says Julieta. “There are big cacti and agaves all over the road. Isabela went rather wild with her gift earlier, and now she can’t clear it up. We’ll have to pick our way through.”
Isabela, wild? It must be some crazy dream. His head is still muzzy, so that fits.
“Don’t look now, people are staring. I think the ground is cracked too, from when the miracle broke.”
“I saw.” It was long ago, and green, and once he’d seen it he never had a chance of preventing it.
“Shhh, not where people can hear.”
He shuts up. He doesn’t have anything else to say, anyway.
Mirabel, down in the street, says to someone, “Yup, Tío Bruno is back! Isn’t it great? Oh. Well, you do you, but I think it’s amazing. We all missed him so much! We just couldn’t talk about it, cause, you know.”
Bruno loves Mirabel for her positivity, and he knows he hurt his sisters by disappearing, but that word amazing is ludicrous. If she really thinks that, she’s going to be terribly disappointed once she gets to know him better.
Meanwhile, Agustín is saying, “You know, he’s a very private person. He didn’t want the whole town to know he was back, so he just stayed quietly in Casita and we agreed as a family that we just wouldn’t talk about him. Can you blame him, the things that some people say? Heh.”
“No no no, don’t worry about that!” Mirabel again. “He won’t be having any more visions.” Which alarms Bruno, because if they want him to stop — well, he’s tried that before and his gift just doesn’t work that way. He wants to tell Mirabel, but when he tries to lean out of the cart, Julieta pulls him back.
“I know you want to make things right,” she murmurs. “But not now, please. Wait for things to settle down.”
They start moving forward again. They stop and turn a few more times, but once they get out of Isabela’s range there’s no more need to stop. Bruno’s world shrinks to the lanolin smell of wool, the soft press of Julieta’s body against his side, the firm line of her arm around his back, and the hard, jolting planks of the cart. He remembers why he’s avoided riding in carts all these years. They make him queasy. His stomach roils hot and cold and he tries not to dwell on what’s in it, even though that isn’t much. Daniela is balanced on his shoulder, which at least means she’ll be out of the way if anything comes up. The thought doesn’t make him any less miserable.
Stay hidden. Protect Mirabel, he chants in his head, filtering his breath around the edges of his tongue. But that’s wrong now, isn’t it? Stay under the blanket, anyway. Protect the family reputation, which he’s ruining by being out in public needing rides in carts. At least he knows the drill.
At last they stop again. “Here we are,” says Julieta. “Casa Ospina.”
He raises his head fast enough to make him dizzy. The name brings back cloudy memories of fear. He told the widow Ospina something terrible and her son took it badly, worse than most. Does Julieta not remember cooking papas rellenas for him, after? Or maybe Agustín somehow didn’t tell the family Ospina who he was bringing here. But as soon as they see … and Bruno can’t run away this time …
Suddenly someone pulls the blanket away from his face. “Boo!” says a girl’s voice, followed by a laugh that turns into a shriek of terror.
“Get off him!” Julieta throws the blanket back over Bruno, but Bruno struggles free of it. If there’s something to be afraid of, he can’t afford to be blind. His heart thumps, his eyes sting, and he’s still dizzy, but he sees Mirabel tackling the girl, pulling her away from him, shouting, “Carla Fuentes Santos, you leave him alone!”
“That’s a devil!” wails the girl. “You’ve got a devil in that cart!”
“Don’t you dare talk about Tío Bruno like that!”
Too many people are talking at once. A woman says, “Ay, it doesn’t matter what you call him! You shouldn’t have stirred him up, Carla. Now he’ll curse you, mark my words. Just look what he did to the miracle.”
“That wasn’t him! He doesn’t curse people!”
“Silly girl! Didn’t I tell you about poor Ricardo’s acne just this afternoon?”
“That was before I met him,” Mirabel starts to explain, but Agustín interrupts loudly, “Right! I’m taking you indoors.”
He gets one arm under Bruno’s legs, the other around his back, and heaves him out of the cart. The wooden edge scrapes across Bruno’s hip. He cries out, and Agustín half drops him.
His feet land on cold, uneven cobbles. The shock makes his knees give way. Agustín’s grip on the back of his shirt hikes it up under his armpits. Then Agustín lets go.
“Devil! Demon! Ghoul!” screams the girl.
Dizzy and nauseous, Bruno gropes for something steady, and finds an arm that immediately pulls away. He collapses onto the fallen blankets under the cart. The donkey brays and shifts. A cart wheel compresses the edge of the blanket and bears down on Bruno.
Julieta screams his name.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” Strong arms pull Bruno away from the wheel and set him on his feet. “I got you. I got you. You’re okay.” Osvaldo’s warm hand presses against Bruno’s side, skin to skin. “Jesus. What happened to you?”
Bruno can’t speak for shuddering and gasping. His heart thuds as if it’s trying to escape. He tugs on the hem of his shirt, but Osvaldo doesn’t move his hand. Agustín apologises feverishly to both of them. Julieta thanks Osvaldo over and over, and Mirabel joins in. Between them they wrap Bruno up again and pass him back to Agustín.
“I don’t know if I should hand him over,” says Osvaldo, while doing so. “You’re only gonna drop him again. Plus, he’s all skin and bone. Have you guys been starving him or something?”
There’s a very awkward pause.
“No …” Bruno tries to get his breath and swallow down his nausea. It doesn’t really work, but he can speak, a little. “Not their fault.”
Osvaldo laughs nervously. “Well, of course I didn’t really think it was.”
“Señor, he touched me!” The girl again. “He’s cursed me for sure! You should keep away from him or he’ll curse you too!”
“What’s this about cursing people?” A new voice. No, an old familiar voice. “Bruno doesn’t curse people. I should know, because I taught him from the day he started school to the day he left, and I know he’s better than that.” The direction of her voice changes. “Yes, Pilar Maldonado de Cochero, I taught you too and I know you think I’m wrong about this. Take your opinion home, please; it isn’t helpful. That goes for everyone who isn’t here to help. Carla, a moment, please.”
“You’re not our teacher any more,” says Carla.
“Once your teacher, always your teacher. I want you to apologise to Señor Bruno for harassing him.”
“I wasn’t harassing him.”
“Yes you were,” says Mirabel. “You pulled his blankets off and said ‘Boo!’”
“I wanted to see.”
“Well, he didn’t want you to see him,” says Julieta. “You were incredibly rude. What are you, twelve? That’s old enough to know better.”
“And you called him a devil,” Mirabel says.
“He looks like one.” But Carla sounds less sure now.
“This isn’t what a devil looks like,” says Señora Grijalva, as if she’s seen one. “This is a very sick man who needs to go indoors and rest. How long are you going to keep him waiting?”
Carla looks crestfallen. “Sorry, Señor Bruno. I didn’t know.”
Bruno just … can’t. He’s too drained, too rattled, too focused on bracing against pain. His legs feel like green twigs, and he wishes Agustín would either lift him off the ground or just drop him and let him pass out in the street. But this is a kid. He breathes carefully and manages to say, “Okay.”
“Good,” Señora Grijalva says. “Run along home now, Carla.”
The girl runs. Señora Grijalva smiles at Bruno and sketches an air hug.
“It’s wonderful to see you again. Come inside before you collapse. Pepa and Antonio are already here.”
Oh, good. Wait, no, not good. He croaks, “Ospina?”
“The old name has stuck, but no Ospinas have lived here for years. It’s my house now.”
“Sorry, we thought you knew,” Julieta says. “We wouldn’t take you to them, not that they would offer. We know better than that.”
Osvaldo sees himself off with a cheery, “If you need any more help, just ask! And you,” he wags a finger at Bruno, “make sure they give you plenty to eat.” He slaps his own belly. “I’d give you some of this if I could!”
Once, Bruno would have had a joking reply for that, or at least thought of one a minute later. Now he’s got nothing.
Agustín forgets that carrying Bruno makes him too wide to walk into the house forwards. The way Bruno’s legs are now, the shock to his ankle bone travels all the way up to his knee. He swallows the pain. He needs to keep quiet or they’ll … no, that’s wrong. He could let them hear him now. But the moment has passed. He just breathes, breathes, as if breath is a thread through the labyrinth of everything that’s wrong with him. If he can just keep following the thread, maybe he can find his way out at last.
In a warm, candlelit sala, Agustín sets him down in front of an armchair, which he slumps into gratefully. Pepa is there in a whirlwind of worry. “Are you all right? Of course not, just look at you. You need to be in bed but the bed’s not ready, it needs to be downstairs and I don’t know who’s going to carry it down. What happened out there? Did somebody hurt you? What will it take to show them, por Dios!”
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Count the candle flames, four, five, six. Mirabel found his lost match case, that’s right. He should tell her to be sparing with the candles, because the rats won’t bring any more.
“Pepa. Pepa. Stop,” Julieta says. “He’s worn out. Let him rest.”
“Of course. Sorry.” Pepa hastens out of the room.
Señora Grijalva presses a warm cup into his unsteady hands. “Agustín thought you might like this when you arrived.”
He thinks he’s too shaken up to drink. But it’s ginger tea, strong, fresh, cooled enough to gulp straight down, and such a comfort that he nearly cries. By the time he next thinks about anything, he’s blinking at the empty cup. Señora Grijalva gives him an understanding smile as she takes the cup away.
Julieta helps him arrange the blankets, tucking one over his lap and legs, folding the other in half and draping it around his shoulders so his hands are free. He leans back into the wing of the chair. It feels weirdly softer than usual.
“Can I leave you here while I make you some supper?” Julieta asks.
“Please,” he whispers, closing his eyes.
When she’s gone he lets out a long sigh of relief. Today has been a lot. Too much attention, too many feelings, and far too much danger and terror and noise. His sisters … Mirabel … little Antonio … none of them were supposed to see him. He didn’t want them to see him like this. Yet somehow it was … not all right, never all right to upset them that way, but …
He can’t think about it now. He feels for the loose thread on the chair’s left arm, which he often fiddles with to soothe himself. He can’t find it.
… because it’s not his chair, that’s right. Casita … the vision he had that terrible night … it’s going to happen, because he’s Bruno and they always happen, and now today, Casita …
He can’t think about it. It’s too much.
His nausea is fading, at least. In fact he’s about as comfortable as he can get, settled in his chair with both his ruanas wrapped tight around him. His body aches almost everywhere, in all the usual ways, and then some more from being bumped and knocked around. Inside him is the usual sick emptiness that he feels nowadays instead of hunger. But weirdly, his head doesn’t hurt at all. Nor do his eyes, as long as he keeps them closed. His gift is quiet too. The visions all blur together these days, but it feels like he had one today, or yesterday, so he isn’t due another one for a while.
He feels for the loose thread on the chair’s left arm, which he often fiddles with. He can’t find it. He tries to search more thoroughly, but stops because his infected fingertip is pulsing with tight pain. He’s been thinking about lancing it, except he has nothing clean to do it with, so he’d probably just make it worse. Anyway, it’s just one little thing. Fixing it wouldn’t fix anything else, wouldn’t fix him, so, no point in trying.
People are busy somewhere in the house, but they’re doing fine without him. He can sit here and stay hidden. He’s okay. No need to call for help, see, he’s doing all right. Someone said he wasn’t, but … no, it’s gone. Doesn’t matter anyway. He’s okay. Warm and relaxed and … yeah, he’d be silly to call for help right now. He’s doing all right.
In a little while, maybe he’ll get up. Get his stick, or use the chair for support. Go to his hammock for an attempt at real sleep. It’s not that far. He can do it. In a little while.
Maybe he’ll doze in his chair first.
He thinks vaguely about splintered wood. It seems like he’s been near some, not long ago, but it’s too hard to think about. He probably needs to get Hernando to patch it, except Hernando’s been taking a break recently, what with the way things are.
He feels for the loose thread on the chair’s left arm. He can’t find it. Oh, well. He should get up soon, go to his hammock for some real sleep.
His swollen finger pulses with tight pain, curled around the chair’s left arm. He can feel his heartbeat through his finger, steady and somnolent. At least that part of him is still doing all right. Pretty neat how it keeps on ticking, even while his body wastes away and his mind unravels into loose thread.
He should get up soon. Go to his hammock.
He’s okay. He’s doing all right.
“Hey. Are you awake?”
It’s Pepa’s voice. Odd thing to ask in a dining room. Nobody answers, so he guesses the answer is no.
“Okay,” Pepa murmurs. “Sweet dreams, hermanito.”