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A week after her disastrous 5th birthday, Mirabel breaks her leg. With a mamá like Julieta, this should be no big deal. Though the little girl cries and cries and cries until she’s red-faced and her throat hurts, Mamá is gentle as she comforts her, and even gentler as she feeds her bits of sweet pan trenza, fresh from the oven and sprinkled with sugar. Her leg stitches itself back together before she can properly swallow the treat, and, all together, the entire incident happens and is resolved within the span of an hour. Mirabel spends the rest of the day gratefully clinging to her Mamá’s skirts as the woman cooks, indulgently being fed bits of whatever Julieta is trying to create for the day. When Papá sees this, he will ask Mamá, “Did she get hurt today?” And Mamá will nod. Later that night, when tucked into her bed in the nursery, moonlight slanting in through Casita’s closed shutters, Mirabel will realize why this incident is one she will never forget. Mirabel didn’t fall out of the tree, like she had told Mamá when asked.
Mirabel jumped.
Following the tree incident, Mirabel finds herself seeking elevation - literally. To the little girl, everyday becomes a matter of fighting against gravity. She awakens minutes before her alarm clock in the nursery rings, just so that she can coax Casita into bouncing her bed up-and-down. She pleads with Luisa for piggyback rides whenever the older girl isn’t busy, and even gathers up the courage to ask Isabella for a vine-swing - though that suggestion is quickly shut down at her older sister’s annoyance. She wriggles half of her body outside of her nursery window before Casita’s floorboards push her back inside again, and she gets into the habit of skipping stairs on the big staircase before Tía Pepa catches her in a particularly ambitious leap and the resulting drizzle soaks them both to their shoes. Despite this incident, Mirabel doesn’t stop this habit - she just practices it more sparingly.
One day, as Mirabel dangles her slipper-clad feet from between the bars of the upper-balcony, she watches a butterfly land on the railing across from her. It’s beautiful golden wings shimmer in the early morning light, and Mirabel swears she can hear the delicate flutter of their wings in the quiet of the Casita. Standing, still in her nightgown, she pries her eyes away from the creature. It’s wings stretch - once, twice, thrice. Self-consciously, she flexes her arms - once, twice, thrice. The butterfly takes off from the balcony railing and swirls away into the sky above, rising alongside the sun. Mirabel, baby-soft and only six, hurries to do the same, still too small to lift herself over the railing and jump and rise just like she’d seen the butterfly do.
When Papá is awoken by the gentle knocking of the Casita, he journeys out into the hallway to find Mirabel sitting on the tile floor, in tears. She refuses to tell him what’s wrong, and the incident is quickly forgotten, shrouded in the haze of morning light.
When Mirabel is 10, she can finally understand her feelings of jealousy, anger, hatred, envy towards the birds outside of her window, even though they do nothing but chirp happily at baby Antonio and build their humble nests on the sides of the house. She feels guilty, even as she scowls at the birds, the cheerful girl uncharacteristically bitter-looking when she glances at the colorful feathered animals.
She doesn’t dare vocalize her thoughts, for the fear of Dolores telling anyone, but many of Mirabel’s days are spent staring at the flying creatures outside of her window and thinking:
Why not me?
Mirabel’s quinceañera takes place on a nippy February day, her 15th birthday crowned by a morning rain (not courtesy of Tía Pepa) and her Papa’s teary eyes as Mirabel emerges from the dressmaker’s backroom, clad in her quince dress. That night, after a day of dancing and partying and Mirabel being the center of attention (a change from the usual - not unwelcome, but strange) Mirabel stumbles from her bed, careful not to wake Antonio, eager to go downstairs and watch the clock until it strikes 11:47 - the minute she was born, 15 years ago.
As she sits at the kitchen table, only in her nightgown, droopy eyes directed at the clock behind her glasses, she smiles. 11:47, the clock reads, and Mirabel drums out a happy beat on the kitchen table, nibbling away at a slice of the delicious cake her Ma made her for this celebration. Casita dims the kitchen’s candles behind her as she slides into the main center of the Casita, stepping around the shadows of butterflies cast from the wall separating the kitchen and the rest of the house. As she turns to the staircase - she freezes. Her heart drops to her stomach. Like some sort of bad dream, right there, at the top of the staircase, is a glowing golden door. And the Candle itself, sat quaintly upon its pedestal, magical flame alighting the path upstairs. A dream - she muses, even as her body forces its way up the staircase, toes gently touching candlelight as she climbs. She must’ve fallen asleep after her quince - and here she is, dreaming about that day again, as she often does, 5 and climbing up a staircase in full white clothing, unaware of her impending disappointment.
Of her impending heaviness, that ties her forever to the ground.
She reaches the door. The Candle beckons to her. Gently, afraid to rupture the vividness of her dream, she barely ghosts a finger over the side of the candle, smiling as it glows against her touch. Then, breathing out a sigh - she hates this part of this recurring dream - she locks her hand around the doorknob. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Mirabel doesn’t want to see the door disappear - she sees it too often, in these dreams, in her memories. Something pulses beneath her fingertips - a shock of energy. Maybe she’s waken up, and maybe her hand is being dipped into a pot of warm water by mischievous Camilo. It’s happened before. Light is shining into her eyes. The sun - she’s waking up.
She opens her eyes, glad to see the sunlight streaming across her ceiling. Except she doesn’t see sunlight. Her eyes are staring at a glowing golden door, her face tilted upwards - as if hoping to catch the light. This gives her a perfect view of Mirabel in her own loopy writing at the top of this sparkling golden door. Her breath leaves her.
So the dream continues - and what a dream it is - she feels - feels - weightless. She brings her nose closer to the loopy cursive and - oh. Oh. She looks down, and is delighted to see her slippered foot floating above the ground, her whole body hovering in the air. Flight! She laughs again, breathless, and curls her knees into her chest, feeling her whole body move with the action - she rocks in air, buffeted as if by Magic, floating on invisible pillows. Mirabel can fly. Mirabel can fly.
In this dream, Mirabel curls herself into a ball and spins in air - laughing as she tumbles head over heels in mid-air. When she manages to steady herself, knees wobbling, like a baby deer finally learning to walk - a girl finally learning to fly - she turns her eyes to the sky. Up, she thinks, and her body rises, slow at first, and then fast, so she breaks past the barriers of Casita and floats, slipperless, suspended, in the night sky above Casita - above the village, so high she is among the stars and can curl her fingers around the wisps of clouds in the sky - her hands come away damp. Her hands are wet.
She stares at them in disbelief. She touches her wet hands to her face. Her damp fingers touch her glasses, perched upon her nose - a detail too real for dreams. Mirabel - she begins to float downwards, until she is hovering a few inches above the ground, the idea of touching land as foreign now as it had been familiar a few minutes ago. The door in front of her is as golden as the rest, and the girl in the illustration is obviously Mirabel - from the glasses to the embroidery on her favorite skirt - she’s floating, smiling sheepishly, framed by clouds. Her very own door.
Her eyes turn to the sky again. She grins. And up, she flies, into the night, away from Casita, and into the Encanto.
Mirabel - well, she dances on air, once she can keep her balance. She runs, fleet-footed, across the rooftops of the town, tiles clinking beneath her feet, when she allows herself to touch them, which is whenever the absurdity of her position makes her falter for a moment. She makes impossible leaps between houses, making cartwheels and star-fish spinning herself over long distances, careful to catch her glasses whenever they threaten to slip off her face - which is often. She floats - inspects signs and peers inside windows and giggles mischievously, a flighty shadow in the night, the companion of baffled night-birds and her forever love of stars and dancing atop high places validated by the grace of flight, where she dances above the village, - and when she gathers her courage - floats up beyond the mountains around the Encanto, pulling clouds around her like wet blankets as she peers into the distance beyond the valley. From above - everything looks so tiny. So inconsequential.
She stays like this, wrapped in cloud blankets, belly laying on an invisible pillow of air, as comfortable as the tomcats that sun-bathed in the square of the town, until the beginnings of daylight hit her eyes from her place above the mountains. Her eyes are droopy, and she laughs when she catches herself diving for her glasses to prevent them from falling to the earth below, once, twice, thrice, until she finally gives up and perches the glasses atop her head, content to view the scenery with blurry vision. Like a cat who's had the pleasure of catching a canary, she grins at the speckles of gold that dance across her vision - thinking back to a golden butterfly that had taunted her nearly a decade ago. Glancing at the world below, she thinks:
Why not me?
By the time Mirabel deems herself ready to descend, the sun has climbed into the middle of the sky, marking the time as firmly in the afternoon. She floats downwards, as unbothered as can be, savoring the natural lightness she feels. Even as she reaches the Casita’s courtyard, she doesn’t touch down - why would she? Forcing her feet on the ground seems uncomfortable, and her sleepy mind reasons that floating two or three inches above the ground won't be too offensive to her family.
“Mirabel! Mirabel!” She hears the panicked shouts of Mamá, and she lazily turns to face her familia, who are gathered by the entrance of their house. “Hola Mamá.” She intones, even as Tía Pepa starts sputtering angrily and - is that Tío Bruno? Huh - Tío Bruno stares in disbelief. Isabela and Abuela look ready to explode in anger, Camilo’s eyes are rapidly changing color, and the rest of the family just look worried.
“Where were you? What were you -” Mamá cuts herself off. Mirabel hovers a little higher above the ground, and the family collectively intakes a breath. The teenage girl lifts the skirt of her nightgown, showing her dissonance from gravity. Then, she grins, the only way someone can grin when they’ve really, truly, won.
“I can fly." She says, and the family explodes with noise.