The Onion Girl (47 page)

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Authors: Charles de Lint

BOOK: The Onion Girl
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I try not to think of what we'll do when the branches become so frail they won't hold our weight anymore, but the tree goes on.
“It's not necessarily a possible task,” he says, and I realize he's worried about the same thing.
“But we're not giving up.”
I'm not sure if I mean it as a statement or a question, but he replies all the same.
“I can't,” he says. “I've never made it this far before.”
That strikes me as odd. Sure, this has been a strenuous exercise, and who knows if we'll even be able to climb to the very top, but it doesn't strike me as having been an impossible journey up to this point.
“Why not?” I ask.
He looks down at me from his perch. “Whenever I've tried before, the way became impassable. Sometimes the vines would give out. There'd be no handholds and the trunk would be too wide to shimmy up. Or I'd come upon such a nest of vines that it was impossible to get around. A couple of times the birds would come at me like diving swallows, except they'd cut at me with their talons and beaks.”
“I wonder why it's different this time.”
He laughs. “It's you—why else? The tree and its guardians recognize that light you carry and are allowing us through. At least so far.”
Again with the light. I've never understood what Joe meant by it, though when he says that Sophie has it too, I can see something in her. There's always this nimbus of a glow about her, radiating an otherworldly glimmer the way really healthy people radiate their physical well-being. I put it down to her faerie blood. But me? I look in the mirror and all I see is me. No light, no glow, no shine.
“Well, at least it's good for something,” I say.
Toby gives me an odd look. For a moment I think he's going to make a comment, but then he stretches his shoulder muscles and asks if I'm ready to continue.
“Lead on,” I tell him, and up we go again.
I'm not sure how long we're climbing this time. I'm not judging our progress anymore either because I'm too busy concentrating on hand- and footholds, wearily pulling myself up, inch by inch it seems. So when Toby stops, I bump my head against his rear.
“What's the matter?” I ask.
“Look,” he says, pointing up.
I change my grip and twist around so that I can see past him. I can't believe we've come this close and I wasn't aware of it. The top of the tree isn't more than ten feet above us. Past it is a sky so blue it makes my eyes tear to look at it. But the most amazing thing are the topmost branches—no more than twigs, of course. They're hard to look at, too, because they're glowing with an intense amber light that's shot with filigrees of bright golds, turquoise, a deep red, and flashes of emerald.
When my gaze settles on them, my head fills with the sound of singing and all my fatigue is washed away. The voices aren't human. The sounds don't come from the throats of anything I can recognize at all. But it's singing all the same. A swell of celestial sound that would be cheesy if this was a movie, but here, in this place, it fills me with this incredible sense of humility and awe.
I have to look away. The voices do a slow fade, echoing and resonating deep inside my ribs. When I lift my gaze again, it's to grin at Toby.
“We made it,” I say.
He's grinning, too, but then he directs my attention to the branches above us. We're on the last part of the trunk and it's not much more than a half foot across at this height. Right above Toby there's a clump of growth, a tangle of vines and sprouting branches. Those are the ones that continue on and not one of them has a diameter of more than a few inches. There's no way they'll hold our weight. At the very top of a half dozen of them are those bright, singing twigs.
“This far,” Toby agrees. “But to get any farther …”
“We can't give up now,” I tell him. “Let's change places.”
We have an awkward moment as he descends and I scramble up to where he was. I test the largest of the branches but it bends alarmingly with only the slightest weight put on it.
I look up again at those glittering twigs. My head fills with their chorus. This time I can almost understand the words. It's as though they're related to a language I knew once, but have long since forgotten. The
voices pulse against my spirit like hands on a drum, my spirit the drum-skin, taut and resonating. An echoing tattoo wakes in me and what I feel I can't begin to describe. There aren't words for this. I just know it's magic. A deep and old magic that I'm being allowed to experience and remember forever. A miracle, even, that will never fall into the little black holes that rise up to swallow other parts of my life.
The sound of the voices continues to swell and grow until I have to turn my head away again. But I'm determined to reach those twigs now. How, I don't know. I'm still holding on to the branch. It's still slender and unable to bear my weight.
It'll have to be more magic, I guess. Which I don't have. That leaves only luck.
I remember something Joe once told me when I asked him how the People could eat meat when they're so closely related to animals—not just the way you or I might say, we're all mammals, but to know that many of them are actual family.
“We all need sustenance,” he told me. “The wolf, the puma, the eagle as much as the rabbit, the deer, the salmon. Even the trees and grass require nourishment that's dependent on the lives of others. Nature was never benevolent or fair. But by the same token, we have to live together in this world and cruelty is neither gracious nor defensible. So when you take from the bounty that others provide for you, bless their gift, treat it with respect, give it dignity. And always ask before you take, give thanks for what you receive.”
I wrap my arms around the trunk and close my eyes, press my cheek against the rough bark.
“Oh, tree,” I say softly. “I don't know that I deserve it, but surely Toby does. I'm just going to take two of the smallest twigs and no more. I hope that's okay. We're not going to do anything bad with them. We're just going to use them to fix what's broken inside us.”
I look up again and the chorus fills me once more, but I don't hear anything different in it. I don't hear yes, I don't hear no. The only message I seem to get from the voices is that there is wonder and beauty everywhere.
Biting at my lip, I slowly stand up, balancing precariously in that nest of vines and branch beginnings at the very top of the tree. I reach up and pull at one of the branches, bringing it down to me. As it comes down, I inch my hands up, putting a deeper bow in the branch and
bringing the top closer to me. I'm doing fine until those glittering topmost twigs are almost at hand, but then I lose my grip and the branch goes snapping back.
I start to lose my balance. Without even thinking about what I'm doing, I do the right thing. I don't try to flap my arms to regain my balance. I just crouch down and bury my hands into the nest of vines, gripping them tightly.
When my pulse steadies, I stand up again, slower than before.
“Jilly, no,” Toby says.
But I ignore him and go through the process once more, gradually bringing those topmost twigs back into reach again. When they're finally close enough, I take a deep breath and grip the main branch more tightly with one hand, reach for the twigs with the other.
It's hard to see what I'm doing. This close, their light is completely blinding. The singing chorus fills my world, becoming a sound that I can smell and taste and touch as well as hear. When I put my hand around a pair of the twigs, the very touch of their smooth bark makes me shiver and my heartbeat quickens.
“I … I hope this won't hurt,” I say as I give the twigs a quick twist and break them free.
I realize I'm holding my breath, waiting for something horrible to happen. But nothing has changed. I stuff the twigs down the front of my shirt.
“Thank you, tree,” I say. “I'll never forget your generosity.”
Then I let the branch go and crouch down again.
It takes me a while to regain my equilibrium. For long moments the chorus of voices continues to ring in my head. Not until it fades to little more than an echo and then is finally gone do I look down at Toby. He's staring at me open-mouthed. I clear my throat, smile at him.
“Let's go down,” I say.
The descent isn't any quicker than the ascent was, but it feels easier. We continue until we get to a branch that's wide enough for us both to sit comfortably on. Grinning, I pull the twigs out from under my shirt, but my good humor fades when I look at what I've got in my hand. The twigs are dull and brown and silent. I have the horrible feeling that whatever enchantment imbued them once, it disappeared as soon as I broke them off from the tree.
“I killed them,” I say. “The magic's gone.”
“We have to
believe
it's still there,” Toby tells me.
I look into his earnest face and give a slow nod.
“Okay,” I say. “I can do that.”
I give him one of them and almost drop my own when his shoots out a light made up of all the colors we saw in the twigs above—a searing flash of amber, filigreed with spirals and twisting threads of turquoise and gold, red and green. The singing chorus awakes like a switch has been turned on and hits a sudden crescendo. I can almost see words form in the interplay of the colored threads. Not with letters I recognize, but made up of runes like you see in ancient stoneworks. The flare holds, bathing both our faces with its unearthly light, then dies down, winks out.
Toby's palm lies empty, but there's a mark on his palm. Not a white scar, but an amber stamp, like a birthmark. Or a tattoo, like the ones he has on the backs of his hands. He stares at me with wide eyes and looks more—I can't explain, really—more solid, I guess than he ever has before.
“Are … are you all right?” I ask.
He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out at first. He gives a slow nod, then runs the fingers of his other hand over the mark on his palm.
“I feel the same … but different,” he finally manages to say. “Like I'm … more me. Or only me. Or … I can't explain. It's like I'm not fading anymore.” He's beaming now. “You made me real,” he says.
I'm happy for him. Truly I am. But then I look at the twig I'm holding and it's still just a dead twig. Toby's gaze drops to it as well and his smile falters, fades.
“I guess it couldn't fix what's wrong with me,” I finally say.
“We could try again,” he says. “Get another one.”
But I shake my head. “No. Joe pretty much told me that only I can fix what's wrong inside me. I'm just going to have to figure out how to do it, I guess.”
He starts to respond, but then I get a sudden stomach cramp and I jerk forward, almost falling from our perch. The twig drops from my hand. Toby catches it and even in my pain I watch to see it flare and get swallowed into his skin. It does neither.
A dud, I think. A broken twig for the Broken Girl.
Another sharp cramp grabs my abdomen and I stifle a cry. I'm feeling nauseous now, vertigo wheeling through me, making my head spin.
Toby stuffs the twig in his pocket and eases forward, putting his arm around my shoulders.
“What's wrong, what's wrong?” he cries.
I can't answer as another cramp hits me, but it turns out to be the last. The vertigo and nausea start to fade as well. But I'm feeling very strange now. Dislocated. Here and not here, all at the same time. And I have this sudden urge to go somewhere. can't say where, but my head and my body and my spirit all know exactly where I'm supposed to go. I just have to get up and let them take me there. I can't
not
let them take me there.
“Jilly?” Toby asks.
“I feel sick,” I finally manage to tell him. “No, that's not right. I don't feel completely
here
anymore. I guess I shouldn't have taken those twigs …”
Though I guess that's only partially true. The one I gave Toby certainly helped him. I'm the one that was rejected by the magic. Or maybe I'm paying for what we did. Maybe all the polite asking and thank yous weren't enough. Maybe some things aren't supposed to be taken like a common harvest, no matter how hard a climb it is to reach them.
“Story of my life,” I say.
I lift my head to see a look of horror on his face.
“What is it?” I ask and try a joke. “Did I grow another nose?”
“You … you've become an Eadar …”
“What?”
“I know that look—I've lived with it all my life. You're not real anymore.” He shakes his head. “But that's not possible. People don't become Eadar. You're either made or you're born. There's not supposed to be an in between.”

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