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That first night, and for the next several after the mountains rose and the candle flared, Roberto Matinez and his family had the privilege of sleeping under the arcade that encircled the courtyard of the miraculous Casa Madrigal. They had young children and his little mother among them, that was justification, but he suspected the reason was that they were among the majority who did not question that the house belonged to the young widow.
Her name was already on it, after all, and as he watched the golden door - only sometimes obscured by Señora Herrera’s form as she paced the gallery, rocking a tiny bundle in her arms - he could just about hear her sobs, and forced himself to swallow his own.
Roberto did not share her grief but felt its echo in the lingering terror which made him once again count heads. There his older brother Albert, his wife Josephine, their sons Tomas and Ricardo and little Félix gathered close, the gentle rise and fall of his mother’s shoulders under his arm, the lack of a snore which told him she was awake too. He pressed a kiss into the tight curls of her hair, and she responded with a hum as her fingers clutched his, vice-like.
They were safe, and he would do everything in his power to keep them safe for as long as he lived.
*
He was not the last man - nor the first, that distinction fell to Diego Salazar not two months after the noche del milagro - to take Alma’s hand and assure her that he did not wish to supplant her late husband, nor her place in the Encanto, he just wanted to help carry the burden, help her raise her children. He was, however, the first to accept her refusal with grace and step aside with nothing but fondness in his heart.
Maybe that’s why his sobrino had such luck courting one of the Madrigal daughters all those years later. No matter, it wasn’t long before he asked his Beatriz the much simpler question of if she’d like to dance, and she’d answered with a smile made of starlight, taken his hands, and never let go.
Their daughter was born in the spring before the Madrigal triplets’ fifth birthday, and much care was taken with her name. Many of the children born in the valley had names with meanings of hope, strength, mercy, names of protective saints, names of family lost to distance or death.
(It was two generations before a boy was given the primary name of Pedro, everyone waiting respectfully for a Madrigal to claim it. It showed up in second names, third ones, after Confirmation, and when it only appeared as the second name of Alma’s first grandson it seemed the time would never come. After the miracle crumbled and rose again, young Lourdes Castaño came to tentatively ask if she could have it, if her baby was a boy, saying it would be an honor, and Alma took her in her arms and wept and wept and said yes, over and over.)
Roberto and Beatriz’s daughter was named Vittoria, their son born a year later Esteban, and while his own happiness grew his brother Albert grew bitter and angry. There was a soul-deep pain in him which he tried to numb in a bottle, then many bottles, then Josephine came early one morning and asked if he could look after Félix and little Osma for a day, a week, a month. The older boys could manage, but her little ones needed their tio.
Years passed and time came when people of the town meant him when they said “Señor Martinez,” not his older brother. He was the one who led the children to the river to hunt cangrejo de río for his mother’s recipes (she lamented the lack of camarón and langosta and other treasures of the sea but made due), told them stories of his boyhood on the edge of the ocean, taught them music. There were jokes that he was the pied piper of the Encanto, young ones trailing in his wake and rolling across the floor of his home, laughing.
Albert was spoken of in hushed whispers and worried glances, and so eight years after the miracle Roberto found himself seeking out the counsel of another in town spoken of in such a manner. He was already heartsick as he stepped through the stern-faced door Alma led him to, tried not to listen as she gently coaxed the boy on the other side to not fidget, and had to force himself up each step of the two flights to the inner sanctum where the future waited, ever-patient.
Bruno poured a precise circle of sand around them, took a couple of tries to light a match to ignite a pile of dried leaves, his small face screwed tight in concentration, and took a deep breath.
“Señor Martinez, what do you wish to know?” he asked, voice hushed by the cavernous space.
Suddenly Roberto wanted to ask countless things, none of which he had come here for. Will Beatriz like the gift he’d gotten for their anniversary, would Félix ever master the tambora, will his mother ever finish writing her memoir, which hymn will the congregation sing at the next Fiesta de la Inmaculada Concepción, anything but what he actually found himself saying.
“What will become of my brother, Albert?”
The little prophet nodded, took another deep breath, and held out his hands as his eyes began to glow an unearthly green. Roberto took those small hands in his and suddenly found himself in the middle of a cyclone as scenes played out in that same green around them. Josephine collapsed on the floor, Tomas and Ricardo standing between her and their father, himself confronting Albert, shouting, broad gestures, and finally Albert alone, staring sightless into the distance before falling to the ground, a bottle rolling away from his limp hand.
That lifeless moment was what got crystalized and plucked from the air by small, shaking hands, its eerie glow reflected in tears on a too-young face.
“Lo…lo siento, señor,” Bruno said quietly and offered the tablet, his expression absolutely miserable. “I don’t- it’s not…I didn’t mean-”
Roberto took the tablet, set it aside, and swept up by instinct pulled Bruno into his arms, shushing him. “No, chiquito, no, I am sorry, you shouldn’t have seen that.”
And he should not have asked, as all this did was confirm what he suspected would happen. Still he found himself taking ice-cold comfort in knowing that there was no hope, that he could begin grieving the man he already barely recognized, that he should begin to make preparations for keeping his family safe.
He pulled away, giving Bruno’s fragile shoulders a gentle shake. “Hey, listen, tomorrow you bring your hermanas and meet me and my kids by the river, yeah? We’ll catch things for my mama and Julieta to cook, we can make tomorrow a good day.”
The boy looked uncertain, but nodded in agreement, and the following day was a good one. His children and sobrinos and the triplets splashing and shouting in delight as they overturned stones and caught the creatures that scuttled out from underneath, Félix leading them in a song, the sound of Bruno’s rare, reedy laughter.
Alma had not been pleased at him for taking her children away from their “chores”, but Roberto pulled an ace from his sleeve and informed her that his mother, the tiny but formidable Abuela Martinez, was going to teach her eldest her recipes. Rondón and cocadas blancas and cazuela de mariscos a la Encanto and arepa de huervo, Julieta Madrigal would know them all.
“My gift to you, señora,” Abuela Martinez had said as she stood in Casita’s kitchen. A few floor tiles clattered at her feet, respect and thanks.
Within two years, Albert Martinez was dead.
*
Casa Martinez was not impossibly grand like Casa Madrigal, or effortlessly stately like Casa Guzman, or tidy and respectable like the more recently built Casa Cordoba. It was busy, it was comfortable, it was loud.
Between Roberto’s instrument lessons for the children and rehearsals for the adults there was no end to the music. The never-ending stream of children - Tomas and Ricardo and Félix and Osma and Vittoria and Esteban and Jasone and all of their friends - added to a happy cacophony which the neighbors sometimes shouted at them to keep down as evening drew in.
Some nights when he was restless, when fear would nip at his ankles before he could dance away, he’d look to the house on the hill and find the flicker of light in the window and be calmed.
*
A grand fiesta was held on the twentieth anniversary of the miracle, the triplets’ twentieth birthday, fifteen years since they’d been granted their gifts. The music and the laughter spilled from Casa Martinez and down the street into the square before the church and it seemed the whole community gathered to celebrate with feasting and dancing.
Roberto watched and clapped and couldn’t help but have his attention drawn to Pepa Madrigal, who had grown tall and proud as a sunflower, still bathed in light while she danced under slowly-emerging stars.
At his side his nephew was likewise transfixed and took a sip from his drink, then nodded like he’d reached a profound conclusion. “I am going to be that woman’s husband,” Félix said.
“Are you?” Roberto asked, nudging the young man playfully. “Are you sure? Have you asked her brother?”
Félix turned and gave him a smile just as radiant as the impossible sunlight Pepa danced in. “Nah, I don’t need to see it with my eyes, I know it here.” And he’d thumped his fist against his broad chest, the sound clear as a strike to a tambora.
Three years later the rains fell and the winds howled and Roberto barely held on to his umbrella but he got to see Félix and Pepa dance in a single beam of golden sunlight.
For a day or two he thought maybe there would be another Maritinez-Madrigal wedding, when he heard Vittoria’s soft chuckle followed by Bruno’s reedy laugh, and his eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw them walking arm-in-arm down the alley by the church. The next day he caught sight of them sitting by the river, facing one another with hands clasped, speaking in quiet, serious murmurs.
The day after that Vittoria sat him and Beatriz down and informed them, tearfully, that she never wanted to marry, and begged for them to understand, and to leave her be, and they’d all embraced and promised her peace, so long as she was happy. And she was, leading the choir at church, teaching the children of the Encanto their letters and numbers, and gently, politely, refusing any suitors.
Bruno also never married but never seemed happy, and Roberto wished he’d reached out more, pulled the boy into his home before he became so untethered from the one he was born to. He doubts Alma would have allowed it, as jealously protective of her children as she was, but years later he couldn’t help wondering what-if. What if the man knew he had another home to come to, another family to love him, another place he might feel safe and welcome.
(And when Señora Helena Cordoba came to him in righteous fury over being denied giving her nieta Mirabel the same sort of haven he felt the bottom drop from his belly. It was happening again.)
So one afternoon when he came across little Camilo standing on the edge of the square, frozen between one thought and the next, one form and the next, he dropped a warm hand on the boy’s shoulder and leaned down close.
“Hey, listen, tomorrow you bring your hermana and meet me and the kids by the river, yeah? We’ll catch things for your Tía Julieta to cook, we can make tomorrow a good day.”
And it was.