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Chapter Text

“Bruno!”

The sound of Pepa shrilling his name in utter terror brought Bruno running. He automatically ran in the direction of the nursery before he remembered, ‘Oh, right, the new rooms.’ He located the door with Pepa’s figure and burst in to find her cowering against the wall of her bright, sunlit room.

In the middle of the floor was the object of her terror: a large, hairy spider.

“Oh, mier-” Bruno stopped himself from saying a forbidden word he definitely wasn’t supposed to know just in time. He really wasn’t much more of a fan of spiders than Pepa: he didn’t scream and run away or start shaking if one was nearby, but they were still scary-looking and he preferred to give them a wide berth. Which made it odd that Pepa had called for help from him, of all people. “Where’s Mamá? Or Julieta?”

Mamá was of course the best at dealing with spiders, but failing that, Julieta was the only one of the three siblings who didn’t seem bothered by them, deftly trapping them under a glass or bowl and carrying them away.

“They’re down in the kitchen, but they’re too far away and I needed help now!” Pepa cried. Responding to her distress, frost edged out from her feet towards the spider, which reacted by scuttling around even more – but not, unfortunately, away from Pepa, who wailed in distress. “Bruno get rid of it!”

“Casita!” Bruno called, hoping that the house would be able to move some floor tiles around or something to carry the spider away.

“I’ve tried that! Casita can’t go in our rooms!” Pepa said. Clouds were gathering over her head and Bruno really didn’t want to find out what type of weather would result from her increasing upset.

“Okay, Pepa, hold on, I’m going to get someone who can help,” Bruno said. He dashed towards his room, ignoring Pepa’s cry of “Who?” and, casting about, snatched up the empty glass that he’d brought up from breakfast and the drawing pad he’d been using to scribble things on. Then he rushed back to Pepa’s room. Pausing in the doorway, he summoned up all his courage and then pulled the hood of his ruana up over his head.

“Don’t worry, Pepa, I’m here!” Bruno said, trying to make his voice sound deeper. It didn’t really work, but it sounded funny and succeeded in startling a giggle out of Pepa. “I’m Hernando, and I’m scared of nothing!”

He ran towards where the spider sat in the middle of the room, then carefully knelt down and put the glass over it. Now came the tricky part. Breathing heavily, Bruno tried to slide the drawing pad underneath the glass so that he could move the spider. He lifted the glass slightly, and immediately shoved it back down with a squeak as the spider tried to crawl for the opening. He looked up at Pepa, expecting a jeer from his sister, but she was watching intently, white-faced.

Bruno took a deep breath and tried to become Hernando, the boy who was scared of nothing (whom he’d just invented). Hernando wasn’t scared of spiders, with their scuttling and their legs and their… okay, maybe it was better not to think that hard about what he was doing. But rats scuttled too, and he liked rats. Spiders were probably just misunderstood, as well.

Very quickly, Bruno shoved the drawing pad under the glass and kept the glass sealed as tightly over the top of it as he could. The spider was waving its legs a bit, but otherwise it seemed not to have noticed what had happened. Bruno stood up, shaky from the adrenaline, and quickly took the spider out of the room and down the main staircase to the hallway. He heard Pepa following him, probably wanting to make sure that the spider was really taken care of.

“You’re not so bad after all, are you?” Bruno asked the spider when he was halfway down the stairs, reverting back to his normal voice. “You look scary, but that’s mostly just because you’re different. We only have two legs, so we think having eight legs looks strange. But I bet you think we look really weird, having just two.”

“You know that thing can’t hear you, right?” Pepa pointed out, behind him. “Also, spiders are scary and that’s that.”

“W-well, maybe they don’t try to be,” Bruno countered. All the same, he was still a bit relieved when they got outside and he was able to release the spider onto the ground and watch it crawl away.

“Yay!” Pepa threw her arms in the air and then hugged her brother. A warm sunbeam shone down on them both. “Thank you, thank you! I’m going to ask Hernando to deal with ALL the spiders from now on!”

“Uh…”

Chapter Text

“Bruno! Bruno Madrigal! Come down here now – I’m not going to ask you a third time!”

Bruno huddled at the very top of the stairs inside his tower, the ones that led towards the room he had started to use for his visions (that Pepa had nicknamed his “vision cave”). He knew he should go downstairs before his mother’s anger really started to build, but he just couldn’t bring himself to.

As the three of them had started to get better at using their Gifts, Mamá had started asking them to help out around the town, saying that it was important for them to give back to the community in exchange for being blessed by the Miracle. Bruno hadn’t minded it at first. In the beginning he couldn’t see too far into the future, but he would work together with Pepa to help the farmers, predicting the weather patterns over the coming few weeks, which Pepa could then add to or counteract with her own personal weather (most of the time. She was still working on calming down enough to create clear skies on demand, and one time she had accidentally drenched a field instead of producing sunbeams, but the crops had managed okay in spite of it). One time he even had a vision, unbidden, of one of the cows that the farmers had thought was barren producing a calf, and some months later, she did – which made Mamá very proud, and they got an extra load of papaya from Farmer Alvarez as a thank you, which Julieta and Mamá had used to make dulce de papaya verde.

Bruno felt a little odd about taking credit for something good that had happened when he didn’t do anything to bring it about, just saw what was going to happen. But it seemed ungrateful to say so.

It wasn’t really a surprise, though, when he started to see things that weren’t so good, and people reacted like he’d caused those too. Going into town to help out had started to feel like a personal punishment, because he had to talk to the people who were angry about his bad visions. The other kids would whisper things behind his back about him being “weird” and “creepy”, or put a hood over their heads and imitate his glowing eyes. (Pepa had caught them doing this once, and brought down a hailstorm on their heads, which was quite satisfying).

When he brought it up to Mamá, she was sympathetic but insisted that the whispering and imitation would stop (it didn’t) and that it was still important for them all to be using their Gifts to help people. Bruno tried to suggest that maybe it would be more helpful not to tell people what their future was, since they couldn’t do anything to change it, and they would only become angry if it was bad. But she wouldn’t listen.

“It’s important for every one of us to do our part,” she told him. “Julieta can’t always cure every ailment that she tries to, and Pepa doesn’t always succeed in producing the… most helpful weather.” (Pepa had grimaced at this across the table). “But they keep trying, and honing their Gifts, and so must you.”

But one day, Bruno had thought miserably, Julieta will be able to cure anyone, and Pepa will be able to produce any kind of weather on command. But I’ll still be unable to control the future.

But he knew it was pointless to keep arguing.

Which led to him being here, hiding at the top of his tower while Mamá angrily shouted his name from below. He could retreat further into his vision cave, bar the door and shut out all sound. But if he was going to be in trouble, he at least wanted to know how much.

“Bruno?”

The door at the bottom of his tower opened, and he heard his sister’s voice calling. Bruno sighed. Of course Mamá would have sent Julieta to come get him.

He scooted backwards on the platform, casting a longing glance towards the corridor that led to his vision cave. But he’d only be boxing himself in, and anyway, he didn’t enjoy going in there as much these days.

“Bruuuuno,” Julieta singsonged. “I know you’re in here somewhere.”

Bruno moved a little way into the corridor so that he was hidden by the shadows, hoping that Julieta would look up to the platform and leave when she couldn’t see him, rather than brave the stairs. His foot nudged a bucket that he’d been using to collect up the sand for his visions, and he picked it up, then put it over his head. He couldn’t say why, but it felt safer with the bucket over his head, like it was a helmet that would protect him from the coming crash.

“Bruno!” He heard footsteps begin to climb the stairs, and cursed his sister’s patient persistence. “Mamá is worrying about you.” Inside the safety of the bucket, Bruno raised an eyebrow. He doubted Mamá was worried, unless it was about the gossip that would inevitably circulate if the family were seen in town without him.

A few moments later, he heard Julieta beginning to puff slightly. “Did you get more stairs since I was last in here?” she asked, good-humoured.

Bruno listened to her footsteps getting closer, followed by an exhale as she finally reached the top. “Bruno! There you- are.” He heard a laugh in her voice as she took in what he was wearing over his head.

“I’m not Bruno,” Bruno said in a funny voice he used sometimes to make the rats talk to Pepa. “I’m Jorge. I don’t know a Bruno.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Señor Jorge,” Julieta mock apologised, still with a laugh in her voice. “I was looking for my brother. You’re in his tower, you see. Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Bruno repeated as “Jorge”. “Maybe you should stop looking for this Bruno and let him come back if he wants to.”

Bruno heard a rustling as Julieta sat down nearby. “Well, you see, I wish I could do that,” she said apologetically. “But our Mamá really wants Bruno to come with us into town. And Bruno’s two sisters really want that as well.”

Bruno slid down against the wall a little. “There are angry people in town,” he mumbled. “And mean kids who make fun of… Bruno. So I heard.”

“I don’t think people are angry at y- at Bruno,” Julieta said. “Maybe some of them are upset at what he saw. But they’ll move past it.”

“Señora Martinez seemed pretty angry,” Bruno pointed out.

“Well, maybe-”

“And Elena García was definitely mad that Bruno saw her breaking up with Felipe Muñoz.”

Julieta huffed in frustration. “That was unfair, I know for a fact she didn’t really like him anyway.” After a moment, she said in a more encouraging tone, “You know who is a fan of Bruno? The Giraldo twins. They think his Gift is super cool. I bet they’d die of excitement if I told them they could meet him.”

Bruno lifted up the edge of the bucket so that he could peer out at Julieta’s face, trying to judge whether she was joking or being sincere. Even though making up something like that wasn’t really her style. “Really?”

“Yeah, they think he’s amazing! I think quite a few of the younger kids think he’s cool, actually, even if they’re too shy to come up and say it. It’s a shame he isn’t here so that I can tell him about it,” Julieta added, with a pretend wistful look on her face.

“Okay, okay.” Bruno took the bucket off his head and set it to one side. “No more Jorge, it’s just Bruno now.”

“Bruno!” Julieta exclaimed as if seeing him for the first time. “There you are! I was looking all over for you.”

Bruno laughed a little in spite of himself. “Fine, here I am.”

“Look, I know you’re worried about coming into town, but we’ll stick with you today,” Julieta said. “I’ll persuade Mamá to let you help me with my healing – Señora Marin can’t really do it anymore, her back hurts too much – and then afterwards you and Pepa can go help the farmers. I know you like doing that.”

Bruno made a face, unconvinced. “Mamá won’t like it. She’ll say I should stand on my own two feet.” She’d said that before.

Julieta’s mouth twisted in thought. “Well, she also likes to see us working together. I think we can win her round.” She stood up and offered Bruno a hand up.

Bruno didn’t take it, still hesitant. “Maybe today, but what about tomorrow? Or the day after that?”

“One day at a time, Brunito,” Julieta told him. “Ooooor we can tell Mami that her only son has gone missing and she has no choice but to adopt Jorge, who has no Gift but can wear a bucket really well.”

Bruno laughed and accepted her hand up. He thought about saying that maybe a bucket-headed son would be less of a disappointment to Mamá, but that probably wasn’t true.

He still cast a longing glance back at the bucket as they walked down the stairs together. It would be nice if he could play at being someone else, even just for a little bit.

Chapter Text

“Pepa! Pepa come on, don’t be like that,” Nicolás called after Pepa as she strode away from the cantina.

“Like what, Nico?” Pepa called back, her voice like the crack of a whip. Dark storm clouds were already gathering overhead.

“It was just a bit of fun. I thought you liked me,” Nico said plaintively, a whine in his voice that made Pepa grit her teeth. Trust him to play the victim after all that.

“I asked you to stop, Nico, and you didn’t,” Pepa ground out. “This date is over. I’m going home.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nico shouted, and there it was, the temper that she’d sensed in him, that she’d known to be wary of, but like an idiot had gone on a last date with him anyway. “You’re too good for me, is that it? You Madrigals, you think you’re so special and better than everyone else, you and your weirdo powers. You’re freaks, all of you.” He spat the last words, and it was as if he’d spat at her, that sudden and insulting. “You and your old crone of a mother-”

“Don’t you EVER,” Pepa whirled around and rounded on him, lightning already crackling in the clouds above them, “say those things about my family and my mother again!” Thunder rumbled ominously, close, and for once Pepa relished the sound and the fury humming through her. She could do it; she could unleash the storm. No-one was around to stop her or tell her to calm down.

But Nico was grinning victoriously, having baited her exactly the way he wanted to. “Yes, go on, use your “Gift” on me,” he taunted, pronouncing ‘Gift’ with a vicious sarcasm. “I’m sure that will help the Madrigal reputation no end. I’ll tell everyone what you did - how you attacked me when I had no way to defend myself, abusing your powers – and that will be the end of your good standing in the community. No man will come near you ever again.”

“You think they’ll believe you?” Pepa tossed out disdainfully, but she felt suddenly uncertain. Nicolás had a reputation for being a bit of a playboy, but he was otherwise well-liked and thought-of. Would they take her word, the word of the odd, unpredictable storm girl, whose moods could bring misery upon farmers’ fields if they weren’t careful, over his?

And Mamá would be so angry if she heard that Pepa had hurt someone with her powers; it wouldn’t matter what the circumstances had been.

Nico saw her hesitation and pressed his advantage. “Who wouldn’t believe my tale over someone as unnatural and dangerous as you? Over Pepa la Tormenta? You know that’s what they call you. Difficult Pepa, Unpredictable Pepa- AUGH!”

Nico yelled in shock, staring at something over Pepa’s shoulder, and Pepa spun around to see a hooded figure emerging from the darkness – Bruno. Her first instinct was relief, then annoyance. What was he doing here? Was he checking up on her?

“Nicolás Muñoz,” her brother intoned in a deepened voice she recognised as his Hernando voice. His eyes were glowing faintly green, a visual trick he’d developed when they were kids, which involved summoning the first vestiges of a vision without giving over to it completely. But it was dangerous, sometimes resulting in him losing control of the visions or being hit by an extra powerful one as a backlash, and it gave him a killer migraine. Pepa and Julieta used to clamour for Bruno to “do the eyes”, and he’d oblige, eager to show off his burgeoning Gift. Their mother had swiftly banned it when she’d realised what it did to him. Pepa wanted to smack his arm for using it now.

“Y-you! Stay away from me!” Nico shrilled, taking a couple of steps back to put more distance between himself and the advancing Bruno. “Everyone says you’re bad luck – a curse!”

“YOU-” Pepa began in anger, ever ready to defend her baby brother, but she caught her brother giving a tiny shake of his head beneath his ruana hood. Presumably he was going somewhere with all these theatrics, and he didn’t want her to interfere. She subsided with a huff, internally vowing to make it two thumps on the arm for not letting her come to his defense.

“Then perhaps you’d better not cross me,” Bruno, or maybe she should say Hernando, said. “I see misfortune in your future, Nico Muñoz, if you so much as breathe a bad word about my sister.”

Pepa almost snorted in amusement. That wasn’t how Bruno’s prophecies worked at all, but the sad thing was that most people didn’t know that, and were willing to believe whatever stupid rumour the latest ignoramus spread about how Bruno could cause your future to turn bad just by looking into it. As if life wasn’t perfectly capable of doling out cruelty to people without any help from an outside force.

“Stay away!” Nico repeated, almost tripping over as he rushed to back away from Bruno. It was comical, watching the more-than-180cm-tall and well-built Nico scrambling away from her diminutive, slender brother, who barely cleared 160cm. But there was admittedly something eerie about the way the pale green of her brother’s ruana reflected the moonlight, causing his outline to seem blurred and strange. “You’re sinners, all of you! Unnatural! See if I come near that house of yours ever again!”

With that last threat, which he clearly believed was the ultimate parting riposte, Nico turned and fled into the night.

Bruno snorted in amusement as his eyes faded back to their regular colour, then he suddenly paled and staggered, clutching at his head.

“Bruno!” Pepa exclaimed and ran to grab his arm. “Sit down, for God’s sake-” She guided him over to where a pile of stones sat outside the Florez’ shop, which was having a wall repaired.

“I’m okay,” her brother said shakily, though he sat down on the heap of stones like his legs had just given way. He pulled out a handful of salt from inside his shirt and tossed it over one shoulder, then took out a piece of wood that was hewn into a shape roughly resembling a rat, and tapped on it with one fist, muttering, “Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock on wood.” He finished this up with a knock to his head, and his shoulders relaxed.

“I’m tempted to thump you in the arm for using that trick,” Pepa said severely. “You know I can look after myself.”

Bruno gave a weak chuckle. “Pepa, of course you can. You and Juli have been taking care of bullies on my behalf since before we got our Gifts.”

Pepa snorted at that. It was true; Bruno had always been a sensitive child, with deep imaginary inner worlds. He’d always preferred to spend time building little homes for his rats rather than run around boisterously in the street with the other boys. The other kids their age and older didn’t understand him, and they could be cruel.

“What were you doing out here, anyway?” Pepa asked him, suspicious. “Did Mami send you to check up on me?”

Bruno hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Julieta sent me. She was worried about you.” It didn’t quite sound convincing, and the way that he fidgeted as he said it, like he was itching to knock on wood again and cancel out the lie, confirmed her suspicions.

“Bruno…” Pepa said warningly, and the reappearance of dark clouds above her head served to reinforce her point nicely. “The truth.”

Her brother, predictably, gave way like a tree branch in a strong wind. “I had a- a vision of the two of you having an argument, and you storming off – I just wanted to be on hand to help, if you needed it-”

“Bruno Madrigal, what have I told you about looking into my future when I go on dates?!” Pepa exclaimed and, deciding her brother had recovered enough to withstand it, delivered a solid thump on one arm. “I don’t! Want! To know!” Overhead, the little cloud rumbled with thunder – still a personal storm and not something that would affect the weather more widely, but ominous nonetheless.

Bruno shrank down on his stone stool, fidgeting with his sleeves and crossing his fingers inside them. “I know, Pepa, but after what happened with-” His mouth snapped shut, not wanting to say the name. Juan Carlos. Pepa had caught him kissing another girl – Gabriela Alvarez, of all people – and the ensuing rainstorms had flooded the land around their house for days afterwards. “I just wanted to be there in case…”

“In case what? I brought down another hurricane? Struck him with lightning? Washed him away?” Pepa demanded. She held out a hand and pulled Bruno none-too-gently to his feet, then set off in the direction of their home without waiting for him.

“Pepa, no,” said Bruno anxiously, hurrying to catch up with her strides as best he could without stepping on any of the cracks in the paving stones underfoot. “In case he hurt you. I wasn’t afraid for him.”

Pepa scoffed, although her shoulders unknotted a little, the clouds lightening and becoming less dense. “Then why did you stop me from causing a storm?”

“Because he’s not worth it,” Bruno told her, earnest. “And I knew you could handle it, but what’s the use of being a bad omen if you can’t scare away some terrible suitors every once in a while?”

He said it lightly, but there was a brittleness lurking behind his words that made her heart clench. She gave him a little push, not too hard in case she unintentionally sent him stumbling onto a crack in his path.

“Don’t say things like that,” she told him. “They’re just spiteful words, from people who are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

The words Pepa la Tormenta in Nico’s goading voice echoed in her mind. “You know that’s what they call you. Difficult Pepa, Unpredictable Pepa…”

Pepa pressed her lips together, knowing without needing to look that the clouds over her head were darkening again. Don’t think about it, she mentally instructed herself. Don’t dwell on it, or you know that it’s going to take over your brain, and then there’ll be another flood… Think about clear skies, clear skies…

“Pepa,” her brother said quietly, from next to her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to… hold it in. There’s no-one around.” Pepa drew breath to insist that she was fine, she had it under control, but then Bruno added, “You can be sad if you want to,” and the next thing that came out of her mouth was a sob.

The two of them came to a standstill in the middle of the street, Pepa doubling over and wrapping her arms around herself, feeling the downpour soak her hair and her clothes, and not even caring. A few bemused passers-by gave them a wide berth, but even they didn’t seem too bothered by what was happening. Just another bizarre Madrigal thing, Pepa thought wryly, and laughed a little through her sobs.

After a while she felt like she could draw in a breath, and then another, and she straightened up, wiping at her eyes even though rain was still drizzling down her face. Her brother was watching her with anxious eyes, close enough to be a warm, supportive presence without invading her space.

“I really did like him,” she told Bruno in a wobbly voice, closing her eyes as she said it. “We weren’t that serious, we were just having a bit of fun together, but then he took it too far and I-” She broke off and pressed her lips together, reopening her eyes to see Bruno looking devastated. “I told him we were through. I left before he could – do anything, but then he chased after me and got angry, and said those horrible things…” Pepa sniffled, and wiped her face again with her arm. “I know he was just trying to hurt me however he could. But I hate that I can’t just be – normal, that men go round acting like I’m going to strike them down with lightning or bring down a hailstorm on their house. I hate that people can say things like that about our family.”

She blinked some more tears away from her eyes, and looked sideways at Bruno, who was nodding. Of course Bruno, of all people, would understand what it was like to have people say horrible things about you wherever you went. Would know what it was like to be afraid of living up to everyone’s worst expectations.

“I know, Pepi,” he said softly. “Me too.” After a moment, he added, “Though, if anyone did deserve to be struck down with lightning…”

Pepa snorted. “No, you’re right, he wasn’t worth it,” she said tiredly. “He’d only have used it against me anyway.”

By unspoken agreement, they started walking towards the house again. It was a clear night, and after the drenching that Pepa had received from her own raincloud, she was starting to feel the chill. As she rubbed her bare arms to warm herself up, she found Bruno holding out his ruana. “Here, put this on.”

“So I can be Hernando too?” Pepa joked, but she took the ruana, settling it over her shoulders and pulling the hood up over her hair. She could see why Bruno liked wearing one so much. You could hide away from the world inside it. “I’m Hernando, and I come out of the night to scare horrible men away,” she said in a gruff voice, raising her arms in front of her as if to strike someone down with a spell.

Bruno laughed, and Pepa was laughing too – right up until she felt something move at her shoulder, and then she went very, very still.

“Bruno…” she said in her most controlled voice. “Can you tell me why there’s something moving around inside your ruana?”

“Oh god,” Bruno said, paling and lunging for the neck of the ruana. “Don’t move, that’s just – Señor Ratito–”

“A rat? You’re letting a rat live in your ruana?!”

After a fair bit of shouting while Bruno tried to extract the unfortunate rodent in the middle of being hailed on, they made it home to Casita. Pepa was holding forth on the general safety and hygiene issues with having rats living in your clothing, while Bruno was defending the honour of his pet rat. Attracted by the noise of their voices, Julieta came into the hallway from the kitchen.

“Oh, hello Hernando,” she said, seeing a figure in a hooded ruana, before realising it was her sister inside the hood, Bruno following behind her in his regular clothing, throwing a handful of salt over his shoulder as they entered the house. “Uh… do I want to know…?”

“Not really,” Bruno told her.

Julieta looked from Bruno’s sheepish face to Pepa’s irritated one, and evidently decided to do what she usually did in the face of her siblings’ chaotic behaviour: ignore it and move on. “I made buñuelos; they’re in the kitchen if you want some.”

Bruno and Pepa’s faces lit up, and both of them moved towards the kitchen, but before they could get very far, their mother’s voice called from the stairs.

“Pepa? How was your evening with Nicolás?”

Pepa froze, and shot a desperate look towards Bruno, whose eyes widened. Their mother’s tone was warm, but it carried with it the heavy weight of maternal expectation: of good news, a romantic date, and the promise of more to come. How could Pepa tell her what had really happened?

For a second, all she wanted to do was shrink into the ruana like Bruno and disappear. Julieta was watching her worriedly, instantly picking up on the tension, and clearly wondering if she should say something to help deflect their mother away from an uncomfortable path.

But Bruno’s brows drew together a little and he gave her a tiny nod. Pepa straightened up and tried to summon Hernando, who had no fear. She turned and looked up at her mother, who was now looking concerned, realising that things might not be as positive as she’d hoped.

“Actually, mami…” said Pepa, hesitantly. “It was… not so good.”

Disappointment crossed her mother’s face, but she opened an arm to her daughter, and Pepa went to her quickly, letting herself be folded into a one-armed embrace. “I’m sorry, corazón. Come and tell me about it.”

Relieved, Pepa followed her mother up the stairs. She glanced back to see her siblings still watching; Julieta looked worried, but smiled at her, while Bruno gave her a nod of encouragement and a tiny smile.

Later, the three of them would congregate in the kitchen, where she and Bruno would both eat enough buñuelos to almost make themselves sick (thanks to Julieta’s Gift, they couldn’t really be ill from her cooking, but it was an uncomfortable sensation) and Julieta would remonstrate with them both and vow to never cook treats for them again, and Pepa would finally let the memory of the awful night slip from her mind.

Chapter Text

The cracks were getting bigger.

It had been three years since the night of Mirabel’s fateful Gift ceremony and the vision Bruno knew his family could never see. Three years since he’d left his room in Casita for a final time, watching the light darken and go out, and had slipped into the bones of the house itself, folding himself up and tucking himself away into the seams. Hidden, but not gone.

He knew it wasn’t the same, not if his family thought he was really gone – but it was much better this way. Bruno could become a spectre, someone who absorbed all of the darkness belonging to the family – everything he symbolised, the awful futures (and the awful knowledge of them) that he represented, gone overnight.

And the family was – doing okay without him. Mamá had become sterner and more closed off in the years since he’d left, but that could easily have been due to Mirabel’s lack of a Gift. She was under more pressure to show that the Miracle was okay, that the magic was strong. The whole family was – from his sisters, Julieta who was spending more time than ever in the kitchen making healing meals, and Pepa whose weather outbursts had become more severe and unpredictable; to kids like Luisa and Isabella who were under more pressure to help with everything, to use and perfect their gifts. (He sometimes saw how Mirabel trailed after them, desperate to help, only to be told – gently or not so gently – that she was in the way). Camilo, who was barely older than Mirabel, was already using his Gift a lot more than he should for the age he was.

And Dolores – sweet, quiet Dolores, who heard everything and everyone. He could only imagine the kinds of things that girl knew. It had only taken her a few nights to catch onto his presence inside the walls of the house. One morning after breakfast, she’d hung back with an arepa in hand, and slipped it through the gap in the wall, whispering, “I won’t tell.”

It was better this way – the family could move on without him holding them back. Without the knowledge of what he’d seen holding them back.

But the cracks… the cracks were still there. As he moved within the walls of the house – at first tentatively, only venturing out of his nook when he was positive that the whole household was fast asleep (also, he felt bad for inevitably disturbing Dolores by introducing an unexpected sound), and then with more confidence as he learned to predict the windows of opportunity where the house would be empty, or mostly empty, with the family all in one place or outdoors – he realised the structure wasn’t as sound as they’d all assumed all these years. The wood was spongy in places, looking like it would flake off if he touched it (he didn’t dare touch it) and creaked ominously if he leaned with too much of his weight. He’d become adept at moving lightly, both to avoid placing stress on the house and to avoid making too much noise.

The cracks in the stonework, though – he had no idea what to do about those. At first, they were just fine hairline cracks, but he’d seen in his vision what they could become. He had nightmares about them deepening in the night into massive fissures, shaking the house apart from its foundations, and crept out of his nook to reassure himself that the house wasn’t crumbling where it stood. Then he had to knock (lightly) on everything wood in sight and throw salt over his shoulder so that it wouldn’t happen.

But even though he did it every day and knocked on every piece of wood whenever he accidentally touched a crack and started throwing sugar as well as salt, the cracks had begun to deepen and spread. Bruno tried to avoid looking at them. He held his breath and crossed his fingers when he walked past. He started muttering “Sana, sana, colita de rana”, the rhyme their mother used to sing to them when they were tiny and got sick, like it would somehow be able to alleviate the house’s hurts in the same way it had done for them as children.

One night, he’d been dozing, half-asleep really, when he’d heard a kind of grinding noise, just on the edge of his consciousness, and then a CRACK that had him sitting bolt upright in his chair and running towards the source of the noise.

One of the cracks that had previously been only a tendril in the corner now speared right down across the wall, dark and ominous. Bruno stared at the crack, something tightening around his chest like an iron band. He wasn’t enough. He hadn’t been able to prevent this. He’d done everything to try and keep this from happening and he hadn’t done it right and now the house was breaking and it was all his fault. He struggled to draw in air, closing his eyes tight but seeing only visions of the cracks spreading behind his eyes, the house shaking apart at its seams.

He didn’t know how long it went on for. Dimly, he could hear the rats squeaking in distress, running over his feet in an attempt to – ground him, maybe, but he couldn’t acknowledge them. He tried hard to picture his sister’s faces, to imagine Julieta stroking a hand through his hair like she used to do when they were teenagers, humming under her breath. He pictured Pepa holding his hand, her face sad, rain falling onto their shoulders. He even pictured his mother, but he could only imagine her looking disappointed.

After a while he realised he could hear rain outside, and focusing on the sound helped him to finally even out his breathing. He unfolded himself from his hunched-over position on the floor, his ribs aching, and petted Miguel, one of the closest rats, with one shaky finger.

He wondered whether it could be caused by Pepa, lying awake in her bed or having a sad dream, or whether it was just rain.

He thought of his sisters, asleep so close by; Julieta snoring softly (even though she always denied that she snored) next to Agustín, Pepa next to Félix. He wanted to go to them so badly that he ached with it; wanted to see their faces light up as they saw him.

But would they? Juli and Pepa would have every right to be angry at him for being away for so long; and would he even be able to say why? He looked back at the crack in the wall, remembering his vision: an older Mirabel in front of the house, dark cracks spreading everywhere. He couldn’t be around them and keep it from them. And if he came back, soon it would all begin again. The demands. The insistence that he look into the future. The anger, the disappointment.

He loved his family, but he couldn’t go back. But maybe he could do something to help them right here.

The next night, armed with several items stolen from the town’s communal store of building supplies (and a couple from the kitchen), Bruno faced off against the cracks. The urge to turn and run back to his nook was almost overwhelming.

Looking down at the bucket he held, Bruno smiled slightly as he remembered putting a bucket on top of his head when he was a kid to distance himself from the things that were causing him stress. He looked back at the wall with its yawning crack and put the bucket over his head. “I’m Jorge,” he said in Jorge’s “voice”. “I will make the spackle.”

Then he had to take the bucket off his head again in order to use it for the spackle, but the knot in his chest had eased just a tiny bit. Bruno remembered how he used to joke that acting was his ‘real’ gift, how he would take on different personas and do funny voices to make his sisters smile. They both claimed he was terrible at it, but they still laughed.

“Cornstarch, flour, water and salt,” Bruno narrated in Jorge’s voice as he mixed the ingredients. He pictured Julieta in the kitchen, hands in a bowl, kneading together the dough for arepas, shaking her head at Pepa and Bruno’s antics or gently mediating their bickering. Bruno was grateful that he could still have his sister’s cooking every day (even if it was scrounged from kitchen leftovers or secretly passed through the wall by Dolores – or left in a convenient spot for him to find – instead of laid out on the table). Julieta’s cooking had always represented love and care, and it would be even harder to do this without it.

Eventually, Bruno’s wrist ached from stirring the spackle. He’d stirred it three times for every crack he could count in the wall, but then realised he’d miscounted and had to start again from the beginning, and then do the exact same number of stirs in the other direction. Then an extra stir to make it an even number. But finally, he had to accept that he was finished.

Bruno looked up at the crack gaping in the wall (had it got bigger since the previous night?), trowel in one hand, trying to will himself to walk over and start filling it. But what if he did it wrong, and the cracks got worse? He started to see them again, the cracks spreading and breaking everything apart, and he had to knock on all the wood and throw salt and then put his head to the handle of the trowel and just – breathe. He couldn’t let himself fall over the edge again.

He realised he could hear noises, soft sounds as the household stirred and started to get ready for their day. The Madrigals were early risers – Mamá had got into the habit of rising with the sun in the days when the town was still new, not wanting to waste a single hour of daylight when she could be up and helping with the community, and she’d instilled that mindset into her children. Even as teenagers they could never bring themselves to lie in bed for long.

The noises helped: a reminder of why he’d set out to do this. A reminder that, even if they didn’t know it, his family weren’t far away.

Bruno pulled the hood of his ruana up over his head and whispered, “I am Hernando, and I’m scared of nothing.” And then, with a deep breath, he began to fill in the crack.

By the time Bruno finished, the sun had risen high enough that daylight was painting streaks across the wooden floor. The light illuminated the cracks in more detail, but for once, Bruno didn’t feel as afraid at the sight, because he could see his handiwork spidering across the wall too, patching things over.

Even if it couldn’t hold the walls together forever, Bruno had managed to do something he’d never done before, and that felt… good.

Hopeful.

The sounds of his family were louder as Bruno crept back to his nook; he drifted off to sleep surrounded by them.