The Onion Girl

by Charles de Lint

  “It’s not about what she or anybody else thinks,” I say. “It’s about what I have to do.”

  I look down at Raylene again and run the back of my fingers along her cheek. Her skin already feels cold.

  “Why are we here?” I ask. “Why did you bring us to this place?”

  I look back at the woman sitting on the other side of my sister’s corpse as I speak. That glowing shine in her eyes …

  “You’re the light I saw at the top of the Greatwood tree,” I say before she can answer my other questions.

  “I am of that light,” she says. “Only the Grace herself can claim to be it.”

  “You let me collect the twigs. But why? Why me? Why couldn’t Toby reach them without my help?”

  “You are of the light, too,” she tells me. “You have my light in you.”

  This is the thing Joe’s always talking about. I wonder if he knows this moon-faced woman with the light of cathedral trees glowing so bright inside her.

  “Like Sophie,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Sophie is a daughter of another of my sisters—you know that. I’ve seen the painting you did.”

  She’s talking about Lost Mother Found, the canvas I painted after Sophie’s first adventure in the fairy-tale world. It shows a woman with the face of a full moon, her entire body suffused with a warm golden light, holding Sophie. It was my way of reminding Sophie of what she’d found in that other world, but while she’d hung the painting in her bedroom, she’d scoffed at the idea of there being any magic in her blood.

  This woman before me and the one in my painting certainly have a strong enough resemblance to be sisters, though how I managed to do that, I have no idea.

  “Sophie’s faerie spirit was born into a human skin,” the woman says. “Moonlight held by flesh. But you and I, we have a different light. You could say we are kin.”

  Everything goes still inside me at those words. Then this feeling rises up in me—old and familiar. How I used to pretend that my parents weren’t—couldn’t—be my real parents, because real parents would love their kids, wouldn’t they?

  I clear my throat. “Are you saying I was adopted …”

  I trail off as she shakes her head.

  “No, I mean I chose to gift you. You and your sister.”

  “But why?”

  I sound like a broken record. Why, why, why. But I can’t stop asking.

  “I was in that tree that you lay under so often as a child,” she says. “I would listen to the stories you told. I saw the belief you awoke in your sister’s eyes. The truth you recognized in your own. So I knew you were kin and gave you the light.”

  “Both of us?”

  She nods. “You met all my expectations, but your sister …” Her voice trails off into a sigh. “I knew there would be trouble when she burned down the tree. But a gift such as this, once given cannot be taken back.”

  I remember that road trip back to Tyson that I took with Geordie, all those years ago; how devastated I had been when I saw that only a blackened stump remained of my beloved childhood friend.

  Raylene had done that?

  “The light I gave you can be a great joy,” my companion goes on, “but it can be a burden as well, for it carries with it a responsibility to reach beyond yourself. When I gift such as you, it’s in the hope that you will do the same. That you will shine your own glow into the darkness and pass its magic on.” She favors me with a beatific smile. “You, once you found your way out of the darkness, have proved true. Many don’t. It is so easy for your people to forget that everything has a spirit, that all are equal. That magic and mystery are a part of your lives, not something to store away in a child’s bedroom, or to use as an escape from your lives.”

  “So you’re a Muse as well?”

  “There are those who have named me as such.”

  “But you don’t because you don’t like to be locked into a particular persona.”

  “Exactly. Still, I have gifted many over the years—with the light of the forever trees, however, not with talent. Your talent you are born with, or earn on your own, of course.”

  I’m happy to hear that. I know that inspiration can come from anywhere, from inside and all around us. But the idea that the artistic gifts we use to express ourselves might come from outside of us rather than within would be too depressing.

  “Like you, many have proved true,” she goes on. “Storytellers and artists and musicians.” She smiles. “I suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel, or unconnected to each other. We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.”

  I think back to what the professor told me about how people need to be storied. How if they miss out on stories when they’re younger, it creates a hunger in them that they can’t sate. They don’t know what it is, what they need. They only know they need something. They have to be re-storied before they can find any kind of peace.

  And then I remember something Christy, forever collecting quotes the way he does, told me. He knows about this stories-as-sustenance business, too. He once read me a few lines from one of Barry Lopez’s books, something about how there were times when people needed stories more than they needed nourishment, because the stories fed something deeper than the needs of the body.

  “I wasn’t telling stories,” I say. “I was just painting.”

  “And each one was a story. Each one a reminder that there is more to the world than what one expects to see.”

  I give a slow nod. I suppose she’s right. That’s what Daniel said, too, and it’s probably the reason I kept fleeing into the dreamworlds after the accident … not knowing if I’d ever paint again, at least I could be in a story, even if I couldn’t make them anymore.

  And I realize that’s the choice she’s talking about, this mysterious woman who claims to have known me since I was a child when I was hiding from my hurts under the boughs of my own forever tree. I can call it that because if all forests reflect the first forest, then all trees must reflect the first tree, and that tree of mine connected me all the way back to the beginning of things, to what Joe and the People call the long ago.

  But knowing that doesn’t help me now.

  I have to choose between continuing the stories that first came to me from that sheltering tree, healing the Broken Girl so that she—so that I—can paint again. Or saving my sister’s life.

  But I’ve already made that choice.

  The moon-faced woman with her clouds of hair and the forever tree light in her eyes can talk to me forever, but I won’t change my mind.

  “Will it work?” I ask her. “This wreath that Toby made for me?”

  She nods.

  “For Raylene as well as me?”

  “Only for one of you.”

  “I know that. I just wanted to know if it would work for either one of us.”

  “It will,” she says. “You have only to choose.”

  I meet her gaze. “I already have. Before you ever brought me here.”

  “I know. I think, perhaps, that is why I brought you here. To have the chance to speak with you before you leave.”

  I can see where this is going. I think I’ve known this all along.

  “I won’t be able to visit the dreamlands anymore, will I?”

  She hesitates, then gives a slow shake of her head. “Probably not. Or at least not for a long time. Miracles always have a price, though not one measured in coin. I …” She hesitates a moment. “The light of the forest is only in me, I can’t command it. If it were up to me I would give you as many twigs as you needed, but the light is more sparing with its gifts.”

  I give her a small smile. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be miracles anymore.”

  She nods. “The hardships we endure are what temper us, what make us who we are.”

  I’m wondering if she mea
ns I should be grateful to my brother and all the others that hurt me when I was growing up, since the horrors they inflicted on me are what eventually made me who I am. But she’s already shaking her head. Maybe she can read my mind, maybe she only sees it in my eyes. I don’t suppose it really matters.

  “Oh, no,” she says. “There is no plan, no future laid out for any of us beyond what we make for ourselves. If you embrace the darkness, it only lessens you as well.”

  “It was the accident that let me cross over into the dreamlands, wasn’t it? Not the light. Something got shifted around inside my head when the car hit me.”

  “The light connects you to this place,” she says, “but you needed to find the doors yourself. In that my gift was the bane of your desire to step into the dreamlands. It shines so bright that when you cross over in your waking body, it makes you a target to those who might take advantage of your inexperience.” She sighs. “Your sister is not the only predator to hunt in the dreamlands.”

  “That’s what Joe’s always telling me.”

  “But the light helped your dreaming self cross over,” she says. “And in that form you are not so vulnerable to the dangers that might find you here.”

  “And when I heal Raylene … ?”

  “The process will take of your light as well. There’s no telling how long it will be before it shines as bright as it needs to be once more.”

  I nod.

  “Thanks,” I tell her. “For taking the time to talk to me before I have to go back into the Broken Girl—I do have to go back into her, don’t I?”

  “If you leave her unattended much longer, especially in this place, you won’t have a future.”

  Maybe that would be best, I think. Because a future as a cripple … unable to paint, unable to even visit the dreamlands … what kind of a future is that? But I’m already pushing that thought away as soon as it comes whispering up out of the shadows in my head.

  “You could still recover,” the woman tells me. “Let us assume the best, not the worst.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “Don’t worry. I don’t give up. I haven’t before, and I’m not going to start now. It’s …” I give her a bright smile that I don’t feel. “It’s just this gift I have.”

  “One of many, child.”

  Whatever.

  “So, anyway … thanks,” I tell her.

  I take the wreath and lay it on my sister. I think for a moment nothing is going to happen, but then, just as it did with Toby, the light comes flaring out of the leaves and blue flowers, out of the cathedral tree twig that I broke off from the highest branch of the Greatwood’s tallest tree. That flash of amber with spiraling and twisting filigrees of red and green, turquoise and gold. I hear the chorus again, can almost see the untranslatable words. The warm otherworldly light bathes my face, for one moment, another, until finally it dies down, goes out.

  And when it goes, I feel something leave in me as well. Some of my light, I guess.

  My hands are empty. Like the twig did with Toby, the wreath has been consumed by the light and dissolved into my sister.

  Raylene still lies motionless, but I can see a pulse in her throat, the rise and fall of her chest. I touch her face and the skin is warm. Alive.

  Her clothes are still bloodied, but when I lift the raggedy T-shirt, blown apart by the shotgun blast, her skin is smooth and untouched underneath except for one splash of color—a mark just below her breasts like the one on Toby’s palm. An amber stamp like a birthmark or a tattoo in the shape of the twig, only hers is surrounded by a miniature wreath.

  I look up to the woman, but she’s gone.

  I’m back in the gulch with everybody staring at me.

  “What the hell have you done?” Whiskey Jack says.

  He takes a step toward me, but Joe blocks him with an arm, then points behind me, up the slope. Jack goes still.

  “It’s her,” Nanabozho says. “The woman from Cody’s mountain.”

  I turn to see the moon-faced woman standing among the saplings on the slope, halfway between the ridge and where we are. Her expression is sterner now, but Jack’s not intimidated by her.

  “So that’s it?” he says. “She comes back to life and the killings go on?”

  The woman doesn’t say anything for a long moment. When she does speak, her voice, like her gaze, is so much sterner than it was when we were talking in that place she took me to.

  “There will be a balance,” she says finally. “There always is.”

  “And what good does that do those that are already dead?”

  “Have you learned nothing from Cody’s misadventures?” she asks. “To stand up against injustice is what the brave do. But revenge never aided anyone.”

  “Except it feels good,” Jack tells her.

  She shakes her head. “Ask Cody how good revenge feels.”

  Before anyone can reply, she turns and continues up the slope. Silence falls over the gulch until she’s out of sight. Then Nanabozho sighs.

  “Well, we’ve been wrong before,” he says.

  “Not this time.”

  As Jack speaks, I get up to stand between him and my sister.

  “Maybe retribution’s not the answer,” he goes on, “but the killings have to stop and there’s only one way we can do that.”

  “Nobody’s going to hurt her,” I tell him.

  That dog of Joe’s comes sidling up to stand by me. Joe steps closer, too. Toby’s on my other side.

  “You don’t understand,” Jack says. “She’s been killing for too long now. We don’t have a choice anymore. She’s got the taste and she won’t stop until she’s put down.”

  “This is my kid sister you’re talking about—not some animal.”

  “I’ve got more respect for most animals than I do her kind.”

  “She died trying to save me.”

  Jack looks down at Raylene.

  “She doesn’t look too dead to me,” he says.

  “Give her another chance,” Joe says.

  “You want more killings on your head?” Jack asks. “I don’t. We’ve got a simple situation here. The woman did wrong. Not once, but over and over again. But we can stop this here. And if by doing it she pays for the past killings, too, then that’s justice being served so far as I’m concerned.”

  “I’m the reason she went bad,” I tell him. “Any punishment meant for her should be mine.”

  “Okay,” Joe says. “Let’s all just calm down here. We don’t need to hear any more talk about punishments or retribution or anything else along those lines.”

  Jack looks at him. “Who died and put you in charge?”

  “Weren’t you listening to what that spirit said?”

  “I was listening. Just like I was listening to what Bo told us she said back at Cody’s place. I didn’t like what I was hearing then, and I don’t like what I’m hearing now. Hell, you were right in there with us, asking why we should follow some kind of edict laid down by one of the old spirits.”

  “I’m not asking you to listen because of who she is,” Joe says, “but for what she was saying. We all know how well it’s worked out for Cody anytime he went looking for retribution.”

  Jack shakes his head. “You’ve gone soft, Joe.”

  “And you’ve gone too hard.”

  “Joe’s right,” Nanabozho says. “Back off on this one, Jack. Next thing you know we’re going to be fighting between ourselves and who wants that?”

  “So what do we do?” Jack asks. “Leave her to kill some more?”

  “We don’t know that’s going to happen,” Nanabozho says. “My advice is we let it go for now. We keep an eye on her. She looks like she’s going back to her old ways, we find a way to stop it. But I’m guessing she won’t. While you two’ve been arguing, I’ve had a good look at that girl. You see the light in her?”

  Jack and Joe both turn their attention to Raylene.

  “It’s different,” Jack admits. “It’s not dark like it was before.”


  I’m looking, too, but I can’t see whatever it is that they see.

  Nanabozho nods. “She got the dark cleaned up in her by whatever they did to bring her back. I’m guessing she’s going to be doing some serious hard time when she wakes up—just dealing with all she’s done.”

  “And the unicorns?” Jack asks. “The kin that’ve survived?”

  “She’s going to have to make peace with all of them, the living and the dead.”

  Jack looks like he’s going to say more, but then he lets his shoulders lift and fall, all nonchalant. He looks from me to Joe and Nanabozho, then turns off the anger like it never was.

  “Okay,” he says. “I can wait. I got me a date with a puma girl anyway.”

  He takes out a pack of smokes and offers them around. Everybody takes one, even me. I cough when he lights me up with this fancy lighter of his and I suck in a lungful of the noxious stuff, but I’ve got a reason to be doing this. I think it’s like a way to seal some bargain between us—a tobacco offering, or a Kickaha peace pipe. When I catch Joe’s eye, he nods his approval, so I know I’m right.

  “We’re gone,” Jack says.

  He tips his finger against the brim of his hat. He and Nanabozho take a few steps away and then it’s like they’ve turned a corner that isn’t there and they simply vanish from our sight.

  Once they’ve left, I bend down to put my cigarette out against a rock and offer the long butt to Joe. He sticks it in his pocket. Toby touches my arm.

  “Why did you do it?” he asks. “The miracle was supposed to be for you—to heal the Broken Girl.”

  “I know. But I couldn’t let my sister die. I owed her some kind of salvation.”

  “But now you …”

  I give him a hug.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, talking into his hair. “I’ll be fine. Thank you, Toby. You’ve proved to be the truest friend.”

  I let him go when I feel him start to get hard against my leg. Even now, after all of this. He’s incorrigible. He gives me a smile as I step back and sticks his hands in his pockets to tent his pants, but I know what’s happening in there and Joe just smiles. The pit bull isn’t paying any attention. It’s looking back down the gulch to where Pinky’s body lies, a very contemplative, undoglike look in its features.