The Onion Girl

by Charles de Lint

  She nods, but not like in agreement.

  “We’re just too different.”

  “Different never stopped me before,” she says.

  “Well, I guess time will tell. You going back?”

  “I have to,” she says. “If I don’t, I’ll die back in the World As It Is and then I’ll have to move on anyway. I might as well see this through.”

  “I ain’t going back. That spirit, she told me once I’m gone outta here, that’s it, I can’t come back.”

  “She told me pretty much the same thing.”

  “’Cept I know there’s other ways to cross over,” I say, thinking ’bout what Miss Lucinda told me and Pinky.

  I tell my sister about that, run through the whole damn list of materials you need and how you get ’em and all.

  “Sounds complicated,” she says.

  “I reckon it’s supposed to. Course there’s another way. Miss Lucinda also told me you can just have yourself a sip of the blood of one a them animal people and it’ll do pretty much the same thing.”

  She gets this horrified look on her face.

  “Is … is that how you learned how to cross over?” she asks.

  Funny, I never thought about how the blood of them unicorns could do the trick. But then I realize it can’t be. I might’ve been able to take that feeling of well-being back with me, and I guess it did something to make me and Pinky lose our sags and wrinkles, but the thing about dreaming is, you can’t take nothing back ’cept what’s in your head.

  Course that don’t explain how come me and Pinky had us the glow of youth like we did. Like I still got, I guess.

  “I remember that time when I saw you as a wolf,” Jillian May says. “You were chasing this fox with the face of a little man …”

  “We never caught him,” I tell her. “We never took down one of them hybrids. It was just deer and little critters like hares and mice and such. And them unicorns, of course.”

  I stand up. I can see we’re about to start going in a circle with our talking and I don’t have me the stamina for that kinda thing. Not right now, not today. Maybe not never. Pinky’s too soon dead and I ain’t never been one for opening up anyways.

  “You take care,” I tell her as she gets to her feet.

  I know that urge’s coming over her again to do the hug thing, but I can’t. I stick out my hand instead and we shake.

  “Where will you go?” she asks.

  “I can’t rightly tell. Wherever my feet take me, I suppose.”

  “There are other places besides these forests,” she says.

  I guess she’s worried I spend too much time in the wilds, I’m gonna go feral again.

  “There’s a city called Mabon,” she goes on. “It’s big and all kinds of people live there—people native to the dreamlands as well as dreamers.”

  “Maybe I’ll pay it a visit.”

  She points west. “And over there, in the foothills of the mountains, there’s this inn. The innkeeper’s really nice.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll be looking for any kind of company,” I tell her, “but I’ll keep it in mind, too.”

  She don’t want me to go, but we both know I can’t stay. I’m feeling anxious, some kind of pressure building up inside my chest, though I can’t tell why.

  “What about you?” I find myself asking. I’m about to say what can you do, but I catch myself. “What are you going to do?”

  “Try to get better,” she says. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

  A little smile touches her lips, goes right up into her eyes, and it changes her face. I can see why people are attracted to her. There’s something about her just makes you want to know her, to be her friend.

  “And I’ve actually got this guy interested in me,” she goes on. “One of my nurses from the hospital, though I don’t know what he sees in me. I just hope he doesn’t turn out to be some kind of serial killer.”

  “You like him?”

  She nods. “Except he’s too good to be true.”

  I think about Hector and feel that old ache start up inside a me.

  “Well, give him a chance,” I say. “What’ve you got to lose?”

  She laughs, but there’s not as much humor in it as there was in that little smile of hers a moment ago.

  “I guess you’re right,” she says. “When you’re where I am, there’s not a whole lot further you can go down.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “You think there’s any chance you’re going to … you know, walk again?” I ask.

  “I don’t give up,” she says. “Not on anything.”

  I know she’s not just talking about her crippled body. She’s talking ’bout us as well.

  “Yeah, well, I hope it works out.”

  “I’ll think of you,” she says.

  Lying in bed, not much else she’s going to be able to do but think. But I don’t tell her that.

  “Me, too,” I say.

  I start to go, but she calls after me.

  “Raylene.”

  I turn to look at her. There’s something in her eyes I can’t read. But discomfort’s a part of it.

  “You weren’t driving that car that night … were you?” she asks.

  “I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

  She nods. “I … I just had to ask.”

  “And ain’t that a sorry thing between sisters,” I say.

  “Raylene, I …”

  But I turn away again and head off, quicklike, afore she finds some more words to cast out and reel me back to where she’s standing. I got no more words. I got nothing but this ache inside me, getting bigger by the minute. So I just scramble on up the slope of that little holler and do the best I can to lose myself in the forest.

  And I don’t never look back.

  Jilly

  I wish I hadn’t asked, Raylene, about the car. Long after she’s gone up the slope and been swallowed by the forest, I keep wanting to follow her into those woods, find her and try to explain. But each time I stop myself. What would I say? The fact that I had to ask the question says it all.

  I didn’t trust her.

  And that’s not the only thing that’s leaving me so confused.

  All those things Raylene did were awful and wrong—I understand that, even if the canids think I don’t. And while I’m not sure that everybody deserves a second chance, did Raylene ever have a first one? From the day I left her in the hell that was our childhood, there was no one to stand by her, to show her a way out. All she had was that psycho Pinky Miller, and we saw where her friendship took them.

  But now that she’s got the second chance, there’s still no one to stand by her. When she left, I could see that so much anger and hurt remain in her and I know she’s capable of great violence. So did I do the right thing in bringing her back to life?

  I don’t know.

  I know I had to do it. I know it wasn’t just because she’s family, because she’s my little sister and I owe her big time for deserting her the way I did. I did it for the same reason I’ll help anybody—but especially other Children of the Secret.

  But I wanted to be there for her, to give her the moral support she’s going to need in the days to come, just as I got that kind of love and support from Lou and Angel, and later from my other friends. Instead, I basically kicked her out of my life and now she’s got no one again.

  How’s she going to get through this on her own?

  It makes me so frustrated I could cry, but I can’t cry. Because if I cry about this, then I’ll cry about everything, and there’s far too much to cry about. I might never stop.

  I don’t know how long I stand there staring up into the trees before I finally sit down once more. I really should return to the rehab. They’re all going to be worried about me. But surely Joe and Sophie, at least, will understand. They know what it’s like to be here. They can guess how much I dread being back insid
e the Broken Girl again. Inside her and trapped, and this time with no more interludes in the dreamlands like I had before.

  The sound of a twig breaking underfoot snaps my gaze back up the slope, but it isn’t Raylene picking her way down to where I’m sitting. It’s Toby. He slides down the last couple of feet and sits on the rock where Raylene had been sitting.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “She made you unhappy, didn’t she … with all those things she was saying.”

  “You were listening?” I ask.

  Though I don’t know why I should be surprised. Faerie have a whole different idea about propriety. At least he’s got the good manners to look embarrassed about his eavesdropping.

  “Don’t be mad,” he says. “I just wanted to see what people who are real talk about with each other.”

  I sigh. “And now you know. We mess up each other’s lives. Being real isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “It’s better than fading.”

  “I suppose. But we make each other so unhappy.”

  “You don’t have to be real to be unhappy,” Toby says.

  “This is true.”

  We sit in silence for a while, listening to a light wind whispering through the trees around us.

  “Do you really have to go back?” Toby asks after a while.

  I nod.

  “And you won’t be able to return?”

  “Apparently not. It’s something to do with giving up too much of my light to bring Raylene back to life.”

  “Why did you do it?” he asks. “She was so ungrateful.”

  I start to tell him what I’ve been thinking, about how I always try to be the kind of person who’ll be there for anybody in need, but I realize that’s not entirely true in this case.

  “I didn’t really do it for her,” I say, not sure if I can explain. “I did it for me. It didn’t matter whether she’d be grateful or not; it was something I had to do for my own peace of mind. And not because of what Joe said about how if I can heal the old hurts in me, there are people he knows who will be able to heal the new ones.”

  “Did it work?”

  I shake my head. “Not really. I’ve made a kind of peace inside myself—you know, with my guilt over how I treated her. But it doesn’t change the fact that I did abandon her—not once, but twice now. And it doesn’t change what our brother did to both of us. I don’t have it in me to forgive or forget that.”

  “I don’t know why you feel you need to.”

  “Because all it really is is this useless baggage I carry around that affects not only my physical health, but my emotional well-being. I just can’t connect with a man the way I should be able to. For the first fifteen years or so of my life, every man I ever met just used me. I should be able to put that aside. It’s the past, done and finished with. And to some degree, I can. But not once I get close to a man. As soon as we start to get intimate, I just shut down inside.”

  I don’t know why I’m telling him all of this. I don’t know what an Eadar might or might not feel. Toby’s acting as though everything about being real is this wonderful novelty, so maybe being an Eadar really is different. My own brief experience was so locked into the geas pulling me back to the Broken Girl that I can’t tell much from it.

  “Maddy once told me that trust and faith are the hardest to hold true,” Toby says. “Love itself is easy.”

  “Who?”

  “Maddy Reynolds—she was a character in one of Margery Bainbridge’s books.”

  “Those were the books in which you were born?”

  He nods. “When I became real, I started to remember them all again.”

  “I don’t know if love is so easy,” I say. “Maybe infatuation is—but even that gets complicated when it gets too strong.”

  “It seems everything is complicated when you’re real.”

  “I guess so. Unless you remember and hold on to the connections.”

  “What connections?”

  “The fact that we’re all connected. Everything has a spirit and it’s all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you’re less likely to cause any hurt. It’s like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you dump trash, you’re dumping it on your and my ancestors. Or to bring it down to its simplest level: treat everything and everybody the way you want to be treated, because when you hurt someone, you’re only hurting yourself.”

  “Because we’re all connected.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why don’t the people doing the hurting feel it?” Toby asks. “How come they keep doing what they do?”

  “I don’t know. Because they’re not aware, I guess. But I still believe it’ll all come back on them. That’s why I’ve never been interested in having any kind of revenge on anybody that hurt me when I was a kid. I can’t forget, and I don’t forgive, but I do believe there’s going to be a reckoning down the line …”

  My voice trails off and I suddenly realize just how tired I am. Physically from our adventure in the Greatwood tree, and then the long run to reach this gulch. Emotionally from finally being reunited with my sister, only to watch her die, have her brought back to life, and then estranged from me once more. I can barely keep my eyes open and my head feels like it’s full of dust and cobwebs. Only the pain in my heart is sharp and bright.

  I turn to Toby and take his hand.

  “I have to go now,” I tell him. “But I want you to know that you’ve been a good friend. You’re a good person. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently—especially not yourself.”

  He squeezes my fingers. “You, too.”

  I have to smile. “Yeah, I guess I could follow my advice, couldn’t I?”

  “I’ll never forget you,” Toby says. “You gave me my life.”

  “Personally, I think you were always real.”

  “You won’t come back?” he asks. “Not ever?”

  “I don’t know that I can.”

  “Then I’ll come find you.”

  “I’d like that,” I tell him.

  I take a last look around. These are only the smallest echoes of those trees in the Greatwood, but there’s still a magic in them. I take a last breath of that wonderfully thick and sustaining air. I lean forward and kiss Toby on the cheek.

  And then I let myself wake up.

  Joe

  NEWFORD

  So Jilly makes it back okay. The nurses check her over and pronounce her none the worse for her misadventure, but both Cassie and I can see how that bright medicine light she’s always carried inside her is greatly diminished. She looks the same as ever to everybody else, I’m sure, but for us it’s a little like looking through a mist. Healing her sister might have required the medicine of the Greatwood and the vervain her friend Toby gathered for her, but it also used up a lot of her own spirit light.

  She won’t be dreamwalking in manidò-akì for a long time. And from what the nurses told me on our way out, she won’t be walking in this world either, or doing much of anything, until that paralysis clears up. I ask how long it might take and the nurse won’t look me in the eye. That tells me all I need to know: maybe never.

  But nobody’s thinking about that when she first wakes up. Everybody’s just happy to have her back.

  “I’m really beat,” she says after the first flurry of excitement wears down and the nurses have left her to us. “I need to sleep—not to dream,” she adds, looking at Sophie, then me. “I just desperately need some rest.”

  Lou and Angel are the first to go. I can hear Lou complaining about “How the hell am I supposed to write any of this up?” as they head off down the hall.

  Sophie and Wendy each give Jilly a hug before they go, and then it’s just Cassie and me.

  “You know, don’t you?” Jilly says.

  Cassie nods. “You gave up a lot for her.”

  “But that old tangle of hurts and pains is still
inside me,” she tells us. “All I managed to do is add to it.” She gives us a tired smile that hasn’t got a whole lot of humor in it. “So I guess there isn’t going to be any magical healing happening anytime soon.”

  “You’re just going to have to do it on your own,” I say. “But I know you can do it.”

  “Can I?” she asks. “I mean, really?”

  “You don’t give up,” I remind her.

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s hard.”

  “We’ll be here for you. All your friends. We’re going to get through this.”

  She manages a little nod.

  “It’s going to be weird,” she says. “Sleeping, but not dreaming. I mean crossing-over kind of dreaming.”

  “We’ll work on that,” I tell her. “Soon as you’ve got all of this behind you, you and I are going over there in our own skins, walking large. Your medicine light’s going to come back, bright as it ever was, but we’ll find a way to mask it so you don’t call the wrong kind of spirits to you when we’re over there.”

  “I’d like to believe that.”

  “It’s my promise to you.”

  “Except I don’t know that I’m ever going to put all of this behind me,” she says. “I’m scared that I’m always going to be the Broken Girl.”

  “There’s more to you than that,” Cassie says. “There always was and there always will be.”

  “I guess …”

  I can tell she’s already drifting off, so we make our farewells. When I lean over to give her a kiss on the brow, she asks, “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”

  I know who she’s talking about.

  “That’s going to be up to her,” I say.

  I get a small sad nod as she drifts off. I straighten up, then Cassie and I head down the hall to talk to the nurses before we leave.

  MANIDÒ-AKÌ

  The sun’s still below the horizon in the World As It Is when Cassie and I finally get away from the rehab, but it’s already past dawn on Cody’s mountaintop mesa where we join Whiskey Jack and Bo. Jack might’ve talked about heading off to see that puma girl of his, but I knew I’d find them here. They’ve got a fire going and coffee on. Bo’s dug up a pot and enough tin mugs to go around, don’t ask me where. We sit quietly around the fire, drinking coffee strong enough to strip paint and smoking cigarettes, though Cassie’s only had the one puff for politeness sake. Tobacco means a whole different thing, here in manidò-akì. And it doesn’t affect us the way it does humans, not even with all the chemical crap and additives the tobacco companies slip in.