With such a lot going on in the last half year: a shift in US political structure marked by Trump’s inauguration to a second term, culture wars and global wars, an uncertain economy, plane crashes, escalating climate change, LA burning, and well . . just the holidays, I haven’t felt much like putting myself out into the virtual world. But today is Groundhog Day, Imbolc, one of the four ancient cross-quarter festivals — a celebration of Mother Earth awakening from dormancy, new beginnings, slow intentional emergence, gathering energy, tending the deeply buried seeds, strengthening the potency of the divine feminine, honoring fire and water and the mythological archetype of Brigid with her fiery arrows. Today felt like a day of import sufficient enough — if not so much for making a comment on the doings of the world — then at least for tossing a personal statement out into the turbulent cyber winds. I wonder if anyone will hear.
Whipped by the fabled Santa Ana Winds, devastating and tragic fires recently spiraled out of control in Southern California, ravaging beautiful and iconic Los Angeles County communities from the Pacific Coast to Pasadena, destroying the coastal towns of Santa Monica and Malibu, and historic homes and landmarks in Topanga and Laurel Canyons (“Ladies of the Canyon”), the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Hollywood. Thankfully, as of today, Groundhog Day —Sunday, February 2, 2025 — the fires are all 100 percent contained, for now. The world famous Hollywood sign and the priceless Getty Art Museum were saved, but the cost of lives, homes, and human history lost to the fire is incalculable.
The Santa Ana winds rattle the walls of my childhood memories. The Old People who populated my childhood called them Santanas, and personified them, in stories and legends, as the Devil Winds. Like earthquakes, the Santanas come suddenly, out of the blue, without warning, hot, fierce, eerie, terrifying. I vividly recall the first time I consciously experienced a Santana. I was about eight years old when my historic and immoveable Spanish-style stucco home suddenly shuddered as if kicked by a giant, then started quaking, the winds howling like Banshees hammering at the doors. Unlike earthquakes, which only last for seconds, this frightening, supernatural-seeming wind went on for hours.
While writing my newest novel, Incident at Cougar Creek (to be published in 2025 — the same year the Santanas whipped up the LA fires that ravaged and desiccated the landscape of my childhood), early memories of the Santa Ana winds crept out of my unconscious and onto my story’s opening pages.
Below, my new story begins. I’d love to hear your comments. Let me know if you’re interested in being an advance copy reader/reviewer.
Incident at Cougar Creek
by Mary Flodin
Imagine that on California’s central coast in 2025, C.J. Box and Taylor Sheridan meet up with Colleen Hoover and the ghosts Tony Hillerman and Ann Rice to collaborate on a novel inspired by the controversial opening of a new national monument. The outcome of their meeting is Incident at Cougar Creek — a romantic cli-fi thriller shimmering with magical realism.
Prologue.
Since childhood, twenty-year-old Delfina Cuera had known the secret trails from their home at the Ma Tar Awa Viejas Trailer Park, on the outskirts of San Diego, up to the ancient Kumeyaay ceremonial site on Viejas Mountain.
This April evening, mother and daughter performed their sunset prayers and rituals in peace and solitude, as they had so many times before.
Twilight faded the bright blue Southern California sky to pale indigo. Far below to the west, the lights of San Diego twinkled awake.
Just as the last glint of sunlight vanished over the horizon, hot, dry, Santana winds rushed fiercely across the mountain. Like sinister, angry giants bringing mayhem from another realm, the Santanas boomed across the land, causing the very air to tremble and crack. Venomous wind demons kicked and hurled everything in their path, forcing the spirits of earth to shake and flee in terror before them.
The Satanás!
Enraged wind whipped Delfina’s hair across her face. She protected her eyes with a raised hand, squinting to see better.
In the dim moonlight, Delfina perceived something strange happening to her mother. Ramona’s body was weirdly changing.
Frozen in horror, Delfina watched Ramona shape shift — subtly at first, then all at once. The transformation was so radical, so grotesque that Delfina could not doubt what she saw, although her mind would not make sense of it.
Delfina felt a rising irritation from deep inside her own body — an itching in her very bone marrow. Inflammation boiled through her blood and flesh. She needed to burst out of her skin, as if it no longer fit. A terrible pain gripped her. All of her bones felt like they were breaking. Fur sprouted from her skin. She fell to the ground. Her hands and feet turned into large paws with sharp claws.
What’s happening to me?
She screamed.
But the sound that rose from her throat was not human. It was the howl of a wild animal.
She heard her mother’s voice in her head, shouting, “Delfina, run! Hunters have found us. Follow me. Run!”
The young puma leapt twenty feet straight up the cliff face and clawed her way across crumbling rock. She struggled to keep up with her mother as the two of them ran for their lives through the night.
Hot dry Santana wind threw gritty rock dust in her eyes. She blinked frantically. Her mother wordlessly instructed her to memorize the landmarks, to remember her way in the dark through this ever-dwindling corridor of mountain wilderness.
I must keep my vision clear.
They fled toward the reservoir along a mountain ridge path that Delfina had never traveled before.
The further into the wilderness the cougars ran, the harder the devil wind blew, sending waves of pressure rippling over their fur, as if an enormous invisible monster were trying to push them back, prevent them from reaching their destiny.
A loud crack sizzled through the air overhead. Like cupped hands slapping both sides of her head, pressure smashed into Delfina’s eardrums with a violent pop. The world went silent, but the young puma kept running.
The Santana winds blew harder, faster, hotter. She squinted against swirling sand, dogging sharp thorns of barrel cactus, cartwheeling tumbleweeds, and crashing limbs of scrub oak trees.
A loud whistling squeal rang in her ears. Then the fierce crack of another rifle shot racked the night, followed by men’s laughter.
The zing of a bullet buzzed Delfina’s head like an angry yellow jacket, ricocheting off a rock just inches from where she stood at the edge of a cliff. A spark flew off the granite, igniting drought-dry chaparral. Within seconds, the devil winds had whipped fire all around her.
The sound of her mother’s voice screamed inside her head.
“Delfina! Jump!”
Delfina leapt off the cliff into a canyon river gorge a hundred feet below.
The scene in the prologue with the winds and fire is vividly described and holds intense emotion. The characters shifting shape is interesting. Delfina has no previous awareness that her body would or could shape shift, and this makes me curious.