The Onion Girl

by Charles de Lint

  I head straight for the quicklands when I cross over, covering ground at a steady lope. I’m not much for skinchanging, and maybe I could travel a little faster in an animal skin, but this human body of mine has put in a lot of miles. I can keep up a pace like this for days if I have to. But I’m wearing a dog’s head, for the sharper senses. Sight, smell, sound.

  Doesn’t matter how many times I travel through the quicklands, I never get used to them. Seasons can change from one step to the next. One minute you’re crunching across a thin cover of snow, your breath frosting in the air, the next it’s like high summer, hot and humid. The landscape can shift, too. Grassfields become desert in the blink of an eye. Turn up an arroyo, and you’re in a pine forest. Half a mile later, you’re scrambling up some steep incline like a mountain goat, pebbles and rocks clattering away from underfoot. Step onto the top and you’re in an echo of the Greatwood.

  After a half day of this I find myself on a trail running through rough bushland like you’ll find up on the rez north of Newford. There’s a faint prick of familiarity whispering in the back of my head as I follow it, but it’s not until I step into a clearing that I realize why.

  This is the second card from Cassie’s reading. The crows and ravens lift up on black wings when I come out of the forest, startled by my appearance, but the wolves just sit up from the carcass and fix me with steady, considering looks. I make a closer study of their kill and see it isn’t some white horse they took down, but a unicorn.

  My first impression was that these wolves were cousins, but the dead unicorn puts the lie to that. There’s some things the People just don’t hunt, doesn’t matter how hungry we are. And we’d never make a sport of it like this. This pack isn’t feeding on the body. They’re just tearing at it for the fun. The main show was running it down and making the kill.

  That tells me what they are. Human dreamers. Crossed over in their sleep and went hunting. There’s no alpha male, but I spot the female that’s leading them.

  How it works is, a human can dream true, but might not even know it. Still, that doesn’t stop her from crossing over to our world when she sleeps. Most people drift in and out of manidò-akì at various times of the night, but they can’t sustain their presence, and they can’t control who they are or what they do. It’s no different than dreaming for them. But you get a few like this alpha female that can maintain a shape, call up a hunt. Probably she just likes to hurt things. Can’t do it in the World As It Is, so she does it here. Calls other dreamers to her and they go chasing mysteries, looking for blood.

  For them it’s nothing more than a dream, but that’s no excuse. It doesn’t make it right. Because the unicorn and whatever else they manage to kill, this is their world. They’re real here. They die here.

  But I’ll give the alpha female this: she’s got brass. She leaves the unicorn carcass and starts walking stiff-legged toward me, her muzzle dripping blood, a challenge in her eyes. The rest of her pack fan out behind her.

  I don’t know what she’s thinking and just shake my head.

  The dreamlands are going to shit. Bad enough these little pissants killed themselves a piece of some old mystery that they figured was no more than an animal, but they’ve got to be either blind, stupid, or just plain not give a damn to start in on me. Maybe I’ve got me a dog’s head, but I’m wearing clothes and not walking on all fours. Take me on and they’ve just moved up from bullying hunters to murderers.

  Except I’m not some innocent mystery, going to run till they’ve worn me down. They don’t know what they’re getting into and I’m just pissed off enough to do them some serious damage. Rough them up and then close the door in their heads that lets them cross over.

  But before they can attack, somebody else comes ambling into the clearing and I know him.

  It’s Whiskey Jack. He’s tall and lean, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, buckskin jacket. Dog-headed like me, but wearing a flat-brimmed hat the color of a crow’s wing with a leather hatband, decorated with turquoise and silver. A couple of long, black, beaded braids hang along either side of his head, bouncing against his chest as he walks.

  Whiskey Jack and I go way back. Follow the family tree far enough, and you can find where we’re related on the canid side of the family. It makes for an uneasy relationship at times with a lot of the canid, seeing how the other half of my family carries corbæ blood. But it still makes us cousins, and Jack and me, we’ve run together from time to time.

  The wolves have stopped their approach on me. The alpha female loses some of her cockiness with two of us to contend with.

  “Aw, Christ,” Jack says, taking in the dead unicorn. “What’d you have to go do that for?”

  I get the sense that the alpha female has never run into any of the People before, least not when they’re doing a mix-and-match with their skin-changing like we are.

  “You better make tracks,” Jack tells her when she starts to growl, “or I’m going to tear that pelt off your body and use it to wipe my ass.”

  He finishes with a snarl and the pack bolts. We stand there for a long moment, listening, tasting the wind. But they’re not circling back.

  I think about that alpha female. There was something about her that nudges at my memory but I can’t grab hold of it. Then it’s gone and Jack’s talking to me.

  “Hey, Crazy Dog,” he says. “Or are you calling yourself Bones these days?”

  He walks over to the carcass as he talks. Bending down, he closes the animal’s eyes, runs a hand along the bloodied flank. The look in his eyes tells me that those wolves better think twice the next time they get the urge to come hunting in the dreamlands.

  “You know how it is,” I tell him. “People call us what they want, but we don’t need names to know who we are.”

  I take out my tobacco pouch and roll a couple of smokes, offer him one. He stands up from the body and takes a fancy Zippo lighter out of his pocket.

  “Won it in a card game with Cody,” he says when he sees me looking at the lighter. He grins. “You know Cody. A poker face he hasn’t got.”

  He lights my cigarette, then his own.

  “Been a long time,” he adds, blowing out a stream of blue-gray smoke. “I haven’t seen you this deep into manidò-akì since we went chasing water ghosts with the corn girl sisters.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “You still opening doors for people?”

  “Opening them for some, closing them for others. Whatever’s needed.”

  Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know what it is, but I can’t get my head around this idea of having a calling. Must be the corbæ blood in you.”

  I smile. “Must be. Where are you headed?”

  “Steamboat Harley’s place. I’ve got my eye on a puma girl he’s got working the bar.”

  “Watch she doesn’t hang you up by your toes.”

  “Naw. Ray says she’s sweet on me. What about you?”

  “I’d rather just be friends,” I tell him. He laughs, then I add, “I’m looking for Nokomis. Have you seen her? I think she’s doing the buffalo walk but I don’t know where.”

  I tell him about the image from the third card, the reflection of the moon in the pool of dark water, up on that mountaintop. Last time Nokomis was in the high country, she walked one of the lost trails, following in the footsteps of the buffalo spirits that the Europeans slaughtered. It was possible she was doing it again. Sadness and old hurts can always call her, bring her with healing in her hands and a blessing in her eyes.

  “She’s not White Buffalo Woman these days,” Jack says. “Last time I saw her she was back to Grandma Toad, but that was pretty much a year or so ago.”

  Some spirits are impossible to keep track of, they change skins so often.

  “And you’ve heard nothing since then?” I ask.

  Jack shakes his head. “You should ask Jolene.”

  “I already did.”

  “Then you got me. What do you want with her anyway?”
>
  “I’ve got a friend needs a blessing.”

  “Best blessings come from inside,” Jack says. “Nokomis’ll just tell you the same thing.”

  “I know. It’s complicated. See, the inside’s broken, too—an old hurt—and we can’t get to fixing the outside till we deal with that.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Family trouble. Deep bad medicine, the kind that scars the marrow.”

  Sympathy enters Jack’s usual mocking gaze.

  “That’s something that might never get fixed,” he says.

  I sigh. “Don’t I know it.”

  “And trying can just call up more trouble.”

  “This one’s worth the trouble.”

  “Your woman?” Jack asks.

  I shake my head. “My sister. At least she is now.”

  “I’ll put the word out,” Jack tells me. “Let the Old Woman know you’re looking for her.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “In the meantime,” he adds, “you could take a swing by Cody’s manidò-tewin. That mountain of his has a moon pool on the mesa top and the two of them used to be tight.”

  I think of that third card of Cassie’s and nod.

  “How’s Cody feel about corbæ these days?” I ask.

  Like I said, there’s an old rivalry between canid and corbæ, goes way back to the first days. Some canid like Whiskey Jack here just ignore my crow blood, but Cody’s old school. He and Raven have been feuding since time began. I’ve had a run-in or two with him in the past myself, so now I just stay out of his way.

  Jack laughs. “Didn’t you hear? Cody’s got himself a magpie girlfriend these days.”

  “Hard to imagine.”

  “I swear it’s the truth.”

  We have another smoke before we take full canid shapes and start to dig a hole in the dirt beside the dead unicorn. We work at it until the grave’s deep enough to hold it, then shift back to human form and roll the body in.

  “Damn shame,” Jack says.

  I nod. Creatures like this can’t leave the dreamlands. There’s so much medicine caught up in that horn of theirs that even if they can make the shift to human form, the horn stays there on their brow. Makes it kind of hard to stay unnoticed in the World As It Is.

  But they’re rare in the dreamlands, too. I only ever saw one before this. It was back when I was a kid, before I’d ever crossed over into the World As It Is. I was out scouting with one of my uncles one night, the two of us sailing high on crow wings, when he suddenly banked and went into a long, descending curve that took us to the top boughs of an old pine tree. I don’t know where exactly we were. Deep in the wild, for sure.

  “Look,” he said.

  And then I saw it. High on a crag of granite, horn shining silver in the moonlight. It lifted its head and sang to the moon. The sound of its voice was sweet as honey, but it made the marrow in my bones tremble and resonate like I was feeling distant thunder. Animiki. The Grandfather Thunders.

  “You want to say a few words?” Jack asks.

  I look down at the body, trace the curve of the horn with my gaze.

  “Safe journey,” I say.

  Jack bows his head and adds an “Amen,” then we fill the hole back up again. It makes a small, rounded hillock when we’re done. Jack draws a pattern in the fresh dirt, a warding to keep predators away.

  “You know any unicorns?” Jack asks when we’re done.

  I shake my head.

  “Me neither. I guess I’ll pass the word around when I get to Harley’s and hopefully somebody’ll let his kin know how it went down. And if anyone asks, I’ll be sure to share the scent of that alpha female with them. See how she likes to be hunted, the next time she crosses over.”

  I nod. It’s the right thing to do, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. It’s like spreading the shadows, instead of shining a light into them.

  Talking about shadows makes me think of something.

  “Hey, Jack,” I say. “You know much about shadow twins?”

  He shrugs. “No more than the usual stories. Why? You had a run-in-with one?”

  “Not so’s I know. I’m just trying to remember something. The one that casts the shadow—does she know about her twin?”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “But I’m no expert.”

  “Know anybody that is?”

  He has to think a moment. “Jack Daw,” he says finally. “Except he’s—”

  “Dead. Yeah, I know.”

  “You find the Old Woman, you might ask her,” he says. “There’s not much she doesn’t know.”

  “But sometimes there’s not much she likes to share, either. I remember her telling me once, ‘Don’t look to other people’s stories; live your own’”

  “There’s that. But I don’t know that I agree.” Jack looks off into the woods. “I know this much about shadow twins. When they go bad, it’s because the one that casts the shadow hates something about himself.”

  I nod. When someone hates you, it takes a big heart to not return that hate. I know Jilly’s got things in her life she hates. And for sure she’s got a big heart. But if she’s got herself a shadow twin, how big is its heart going to be?

  “You think that she-wolf we chased off could have been one?” Jack asks.

  I hadn’t even thought of that.

  “I doubt it,” I tell him, but more for something to say. Right now I’ve got more important things on my mind than human dreamers like her.

  Jack nods and tips a finger against the brim of his hat. “Well, you take care.”

  “Good luck with your puma girl,” I say.

  He laughs. “Hell, Joe. You don’t need luck when you’ve got my good looks and charm.”

  “Not to mention modesty.”

  “That, too.”

  I watch him go, then turn back to the grave we dug. I bend down and lay my hand against the dirt. Closing my eyes, I can hear that song I heard with my uncle so long ago. It comes whispering up out of my memory, and then I see the horn again. The image lies across the back of my eyelids, the gleaming white flanks, the white mane and tail, the horn rising like a spiral of white fire in the moonlight.

  Sitting back on my haunches, I roll a cigarette and light it. I take a drag and offer the smoke up to the Grandfather Thunders before I place the burning butt on the dirt beside Jack’s warding.

  I sit there for a while, watching the smoke trail up into the sky until the cigarette goes out. Then I stand up and head off myself, deeper into the quicklands.

  Raylene

  TYSON, AUTUMN 1971

  Everything changed after that business with Del and the knife. It was like when Mama decided they weren’t going to bail my sister outta juvie no more, starting her in on her round a foster homes. Mama flat disowned her and we was none of us supposed to talk about her, or even mention her name. I was still pretty small, but come the first couple of lickins, I learned to keep my mouth shut. After a while it weren’t so hard, ’cause that’s ’bout the time Del started coming into my room of a night and I learned to hate my sister just like everybody else did.

  For me, it was the way she just up and run off on me, and I guess for Del it was pretty much the same reason, ’cept I’m guessing he was more pissed that he’d gone and lost him his little homegrown girl-toy. I never really knowed why the rest of ’em felt the way they did. Jimmy and Robbie never much talked to me, and ’specially not after Del started paying his midnight visits. I doubt the old man even noticed she was gone for the first few months; he never did pay much mind to any of us kids. I guess he just give up on the lot of us, what with the two oldest becoming delinquents straight off, that being Del and my sister, and then Jimmy and Robbie not showing much inclination to walk the straight and narrow neither.

  And Mama? Hell, she was a mean drunk anyway and she just hated us girls—on general principles, I reckon, since I sure never done her no wrong.

  I remember it was different before they took my sister
away. Hell, I adored her then. She was like the mama none of us had—the kind you see on a TV show, you know. Not the soaps, but the sitcoms and such like, where the mama cares for everybody more’n she cares for her own self. My sister was like that—for me, anyways. We’d hide out, the two of us, in the fields behind the house, and she’d tell me stories she made up, or she’d read me outta her books. I didn’t have me a clue, what was happening between her and Del then.

  I gotta laugh now. I remember being jealous of how close they seemed and all, and then feeling confused ’cause I could also tell that she just plain didn’t care for him neither. She made out like it weren’t so, but I could tell different.

  “How come you don’t like Del?” I’d ask.

  “Oh, I like him well enough,” she’d say, but there’d be a mean burn in her eyes, just at the mention of his name.

  “I seen the looks you gived him.”

  “‘I’ve seen the looks you give him,’” she’d correct me.

  I figure that’s partly why I talk the way I do, her always correcting me like she done. Once she took off and left me behind, anything she cared about, I’d do the opposite. Like once I knew she wasn’t coming back to me, I took them books of hers out to the old tree where she’d read to me and I burned them and that damn tree down, started a fire that spread into the field and just kept on a-coming. It pretty near took out the house, and woulda done it, too, if the wind hadn’t up and changed at the last minute. The fire department sure never bothered coming out.

  I can read and write fine, but I don’t bother much. When I was still taking my schooling, I’d sit there in art class with my arms folded against my chest. Because those were the things she cared about—books and drawing.

  And about that time’s when I started to make a point of sounding like the white trash we was. But it wasn’t just ’cause of her that I keep it up. Thing is, while I know better, I like sounding ignorant. Talk like this and people figure you’re about as dumb as a fencepost, which suits me fine. Makes it all that much easier to take advantage of ’em.

  I suppose if I’m going to be fair, I got to say that maybe my sister didn’t have much choice, things working out the way they did. And I guess she tried to warn me about Del. She’d say, “You be careful around him,” and I’d go ask Mama why she was saying that, and we’d both end up with a whippin’. When it come to Del, Mama had her a blind spot a mile wide. After the first few times, I finally smartened up and it never come up no more.