RECOMMENDED READING
Speculative Los Angeles. BY DENISE HAMILTON
Akashic Books | February 2021 Excerpted from “Past the Mission” by Denise Hamilton, originally published in Speculative Los Angeles, edited by Denise Hamilton, copyright 2021 Denise Hamilton, used with permission of the author and Akashic Books (akashicbooks.com).
Talina pulls in at the trailhead and turns her wheels dutifully against the hillside. Night has fallen and cars already line both sides of the road. She applies the emergency brake, kills the engine, and flips down the mirror. Taking a small earthen pot from her purse, she daubs on lip gloss, careful not to touch the inside of her mouth. She rarely wears makeup, and it feels wrong, greasy and thick as pork fat. Plus there’s that residual bitterness from the herbs she’s pounded in. From the mirror, a painted, nervous stranger stares back. Talina frowns and hardens her eyes. Then she scrubs her red-stained finger with a wipe until no trace of color remains. Can she really do this? Should she? What will it 52
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accomplish? The skeleton of the past has been picked clean, bones cracked, marrow sucked, leaving only shards buried in time. And yet. A word in a dead language, the smell of raw spirits, the toll of a bell—any of these things can send a dagger through her heart. And just like that, memory swamps her. Her lower belly contracts. Rough wool chafes her skin. A weight pins her to the ground like a splayed insect. Talina grips the steering wheel, hands slick with moisture. She starts to dry them on her skirt, thinks better of it. She can’t do this. It was stupid to come. She will start the car and drive home. Outside, a shadow streaks across the windshield, a tree branch snapped by the warm winds that Santa Ana has sent blustering down her canyons tonight. Then Talina sees the outstretched
wings, the dense tips of bristling feathers. Intent on prey, it hurtles past with a blood-curdling cry before silence descends once more. The owl is a portent, infusing her with strength. Enough to see this through. It’s time. It is her time. She has felt the quickening all around her, the rustling of nameless voiceless multitudes urging her on, buoying her, leading her here, tonight, to this. Talina presses a hand to her cleavage, feels the reassuring bump of the
