Colina Linda

The grandmothers of Colina Linda tell stories inherited from their grandmothers. Tales of misdeeds and heroics, of shape-shifting animals, of lovers and the witches who tear them apart. Ancient tales, from the time before the walls.

My gran is one of the best storytellers in Colina Linda. Everyone says so, and I believe it. When Gran starts spinning a tale, I can see the gleam of the prince’s sword; I can feel the bristle of fur as the wolf readies itself to attack. More than once, I’ve paused in the middle of stoking the kitchen fire or slicing the skin off a mango because Gran’s words have ensnared my brain.

I enjoy Gran’s stories when I am fully immersed in them, but I am quick to discard them when I am finished. The same way I toss aside a rib bone after sucking it clean of its marrow.

But my sister lives in the stories. She recites them to herself when she is tending the garden or repairing thatch. She asks Gran to repeat this line or that moral until she has mastered a tale. It is fitting she was born first. The family’s storykeeper. The one who will safeguard our tales for the future.

I am the second daughter. And I’m more interested in truths, or as near as I can get.

That is why Mother sends me out in the world to run errands for the family. She knows I can handle the rawness of Colina Linda. It cuts my sister like an unsheathed knife—the stench of it, the squalor. She’d rather not see women selling their bodies or freshly gutted pigs or men trading the last of their family’s food for a hit of asco.

Me? I’m fascinated by the whores and butcher shops and addicts. They are part of the truth of Colina Linda and its grimy overcoat.

Mother knows this about me. She’s seen me study the city with unveiled eyes. Which is why she sends me, and not my sister, to fetch water every morning. Early, early, while the city is still picking off its scabs from the night before.