The Onion Girl (59 page)

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Authors: Charles de Lint

BOOK: The Onion Girl
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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.
Jack's making out like he's in cheerful mode, but it doesn't wash for me. Hell, he hasn't even made a single pass at Cassie, and lord knows she's looking good this morning.
“Didn't work out the way we were expecting, did it?” I say after a while.
Bo shrugs. “I didn't know what to expect.”
Jack takes a final drag from his cigarette and flicks the butt into the fire.
“It's kind of funny,” he says. “The one time I try to do good and …” He shrugs. “Well, we didn't manage to do much of anything except tick off some old spirit.”
“Just making a stand makes a difference,” I say.
“You think?”
“I know.”
He nods. “I suppose you would. But I guess now I know how Cody felt all those times he tried to make things right.”
That makes Bo laugh. “You kidding us? Maybe we didn't change anything, but we didn't screw up the world either.”
Everybody's got a story about Cody's attempts to make the world a better place, from how he's the reason the humans are here, to his inadvertently welcoming sickness and death into the world. Most of the time his motivation is good; he just goes about it in about as wrong a way as you can. He's the main reason canids don't get themselves involved in issues much.
Jack's pack of ready-made smokes are gone by now, so he bums my tobacco pouch and rolls himself one, passes the pouch to Bo.
“So did we learn something from this?” he asks as he lights up.
Nobody says anything for a moment.
“Maybe that nobody's necessarily what we expect them to be,” Cassie says. “Everybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's the choices we make that define who we really are.”
That gets her a blank look from Jack.
“I mean the way Raylene hated Jilly,” she explains, “but she still took the shotgun blast for her.”
Jack gives a slow nod. “I was thinking more along the lines of how it's better to mind your own business, but I suppose that'll work, too.”
“You think the one good thing this Raylene did balances out everything else she destroyed?” Bo asks.
“No,” Cassie tells him. “But it's a good start.”
I finish off my coffee. “Time we were going,” I tell Cassie. I look at the boys. “You keep out of trouble now,” I tell them.
“We don't even know the meaning of the word,” Jack says, grinning.
Bo laughs. He gets to his feet.
“Yeah, time I was going, too,” he says. “I've been borrowing this place of Cody's for long enough. Maybe I'll have me a look into getting rid of this curse of mine. It's been too long since I've been able to walk on two legs outside of
manidò-akì.
”
“You want some company?” Jack asks.
“I would have thought you'd have some girl waiting for you somewhere,” Cassie teases him.
“Naw,” he says, shaking his head. “I'm into causes these days.”
“Lord, help us,” Cassie says.
Instead of heading directly for home, Cassie and I take a longer route, walking for a while in those red rock canyons, appreciating the sun in our
faces, the warmth that sinks right down into our bones. Sometimes I think that everybody photosynthesizes light, not just plants.
“You're awfully quiet,” Cassie says after a time.
I put my arm around her shoulders.
“I'm just thinking about Jilly,” I say. “I was hoping it'd turn out better for her.”
“It's hard on her,” she agrees.
“And I guess I'm feeling a little like Jack,” I add. “Let down, I mean. I pride myself on being able to take on a problem and fix it, and that hasn't been the case from the get-go here.”
Cassie slips her arm around my waist.
“Welcome to the real world,” she says.
NEWFORD
I fall asleep in the middle
of talking to Cassie and Joe. When I wake up later, I'm sure I'm dreaming. I haven't crossed back over into the dreamlands, because I'm still in my room in the rehab, and anyway, I can't cross over anymore. But nevertheless, this doesn't seem real.
I hear a tap-tap on the window and see two faces pressed against the glass, looking at me.
Crow girls.
The windows are plate glass and they don't open, but they do now. They swing wide and the two small dark-haired girls hoist themselves up from the lawn outside to climb into my room. They stand at the end of the bed, holding hands, their hair all spikes, their raggedy black sweaters hanging loose, almost to their knees.
“Oh, Jillybilly,” one of them says.
“That's like a rockabilly,” the other explains, “only not so goatish.”
“Or as musical.”
“You don't have a beard, you see.”
“It would be all too silly if you did.”
“And you don't have a guitar either.”
“Unless you have one hidden under your pillow.”
“I don't,” I tell them.
They get up onto the end of the bed and sit cross-legged beside each other, looking at me.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“To say we're sorry,” the one on the left says.
I know their names: Maida and Zia. But I can never tell them apart the way that Geordie or Joe can.
“Veryvery sorry,” the other agrees.
“What do you have to be sorry about?”
“That we can't help you.”
The one on the right nods. “We've tried and we've tried, but it's just no use.”
“We're useless girls,” the other says.
“When they were handing out usefulness, we thought they said moosefulness.”
“So we hid.”
“We didn't want to be moose.”
“Or even mice.”
“Though sometimes we like to eat mice.”
“When they're all sugary,” the one on the left explains.
“Made of candy, you see.”
“And we do like a chocolate mousse.”
“Oh, yes, chocolate's always good.” The one on the right digs in her pocket and comes up with a brown lump of something that has bits of lint and less identifiable matter stuck to it. “Would you like a piece?”
“No, thanks.”
She breaks it in two, handing half to her companion before popping the other half in her mouth.
“I don't think you're useless,” I tell them as they contentedly chew on their chocolate.
“You're too kind,” the one on the left says.
The other nods. “Veryvery kind. Everywhere we go, people say, that Jillybilly, she's too very kind.”
“They really do.”
“But we can heal things, you know.”
“All sorts of things. Big and small.”
“Wide and thin.”
“Sweet and sour.”
“But not when the hurt's like the one in you.”
“It's okay,” I say. “I know this is something that there's no magical answer for. Sometimes that's just the way it works out.”
The one on the left turns to her companion. “Kind and brave.”
The one on the right sighs. “Now we feel even worse.”
“Lying here all on your own, being ever so veryvery brave.”
“I'm not on my own,” I say. “I've got lots of friends to help me through this.”
They lean over their respective sides of the bed, and peer underneath.
“Where are you hiding them?” the one on the left asks when she's sitting up again.
“They go home at night,” I explain.
“Of course.”
“We knew that.”
“We should go home, too.”
“Thanks for visiting me,” I say.
They nod. Then they each reach into their hair and pull out a short dark lock that turns into a black crow feather in their fingers. They lay the feathers down on the bedclothes that cover my legs.
“If you ever think we can help,” the one on the right says, serious now, “hold these in your hand and call our names.”
“You know our names, don't you?”
I nod. “Maida and Zia. Only I can never tell which is which.”
That makes them giggle. They each point at the other and say, “She's Maida.”
“I'm glad you cleared that up for me,” I say.
That makes them giggle more.
“Don't forget,” the one on the left says.
“I couldn't ever forget you,” I assure them.
“And don't you pay attention to what that old tree sister said.”
The other nods. “Anybody can fly.”
“Anybody can dream.”
They're talking about the spirit I met in the forest, the one who gifted my sister and me with the light when we were children. I feel hope rise in my chest.
“You mean I'll be able to go back to the dreamlands someday?” I ask.
“Anything can happen someday,” the one on the right says.
“Call us when you're ready.”
“We're like doors.”
“You can step through us to wherever you want to go.”
They hop off the bed and approach me from either side. First one, then the other kisses my brow. With a wave and a grin, they run to the window and jump out. Somewhere between when their feet leave the windowsill and they should be landing on the ground, they turn into crows and fly away, trailing caws that sound like laughter.
I stare at the window, watching the large pane of plate glass slowly close once more. Then I fall asleep—or slip out of dream sleep into a dreamless one. I'm not sure which. But in the morning there are still two black crow feathers lying on the bedclothes.

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