The Onion Girl (6 page)

Authors: Charles de Lint

BOOK: The Onion Girl

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I can't seem to explain why I need to get away as badly as I do. This broken body that everybody comes to visit in the hospital might seem reason enough, but I've never been one to wallow in my misery. I'm just not built that way. If there's a problem, I fix it. If I don't know how to fix it, I find out how.

And I'll do the same with the hand I've been dealt now.

But all my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom. I devoured those books by C. S. Lewis and William Dunthorn, Ellen Wentworth, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. When I could get them from the library, I read them out of order as I found them, and then in order, and then reread them all again, many times over. Because even when I was a child I knew it wasn't simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland. Instinctively I knew crossing over would mean more than fleeing the constant terror and shame that was mine at that time in my life. There was a knowledge that ran deeperâan understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can accessâtelling me that by crossing over, I'd be coming home.

That's the reason I've yearned so desperately to experience the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of that world beyond the World As It Is. It's because I know that somewhere across the border there's a place for me. A place of safety and strength and learning, where I can become who I'm supposed to be. I've tried forever to be that person here, but whatever I manage to accomplish in the World As It Is only seems to be an echo of what I could be in that other place that lies hidden somewhere beyond the borders.

So now that I can cross over, if only in my dreams, it's all I can do to come back to the World As It Is and be the Broken Girl again. Even if I was perfectly healthy, I'd have trouble returning. This is my chance, maybe the only one I'll ever get. If it took a hit and run and a crippled body to get me there, I can deal with it. Because I'm not escaping from, I'm escaping to.

I know everybody's worried. I love my friends, and I hate making them feel so bad, but I can't seem to find the right words to explain what this opportunity means to me. I don't think any of them, except for maybe Geordie and Joe, know how much I need the otherworld.

Though, if I'm going to be honest, the aftereffects of being hit by that car, the paralysis and broken bones, don't make time spent in the World As It Is all that appealing right now. I'm so used to being active, to dealing with my problems on my own, that the helplessness of being the Broken Girl is killing me. I can't even exercise on my own. I've only got movement in one legâa lot you can do with that, right?âand my left arm, though it's weighed down with a cast.

This morning the physical therapist came by to see me, along with
Daniel, that handsome nurse Sophie claims is sweet on me. He's just got a good bedside manner.

Because of budget cuts, the therapist's workload is too big and he can't always be here to do it himself, so he's showing Daniel how to exercise my paralyzed arm and leg, a combination of movement and deep muscle massage. It's supposed to be done at least twice a day. More often, if possible. So this afternoon, Daniel comes by for the second session of the day and it's driving me crazy, his moving my leg, my arm, my heck like I can't, chatting all the while. Time was, I'd be happily chatting back. As Geordie says, I can be terminally friendly. I may have had to learn how to like people, back when I rejoined the human race, but it's not hard anymore because I genuinely do like them now.

But at this moment, I just want to be alone. I don't want Daniel manipulating my limbs like I'm some kind of puppet. I don't want to visit with my friends who are all suddenly acting awkward and stiff around me. It's like, be careful around the Humpty Dumpty Broken Girl. Humpty Dumpty walked down the street. Humpty Dumpty got knocked off her feet. We've just put the pieces all back together, but the glue's not holding so well and the slightest draft of air could easily make her fall all to pieces again.

When Daniel finally leaves, I shut my eyes. I remember being surprised at how easily Sophie's able to fall asleep, but I think I understand now. When you know that falling asleep lets you cross over, how can you not train yourself to drop off at a moment's notice?

One moment I'm the Broken Girl, lying in her hospital bed, and the next I'm myself again, whole and mobile, standing in the forest of forever. The cathedral woods. It's only a dream, you say. And that's true. But I don't care because when I walk off under those giant trees, every breath I take is like food, sustenance for my soul.

What I want to do is travel deep and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home. But I promised Joe I'd take it slow, that these little sojourns here are to catch my breath before I concentrate on the real work at hand: healing the Broken Girl. Then I can look for home. And I know he's right. If my body dies in the World As It Is, I'll be taken away from the dreamlands, too, heading off on that final journey that we all have to take one day. I don't know what's waiting for us when we dieâsomething better, something worse. I only know I'm not ready to find out yet.

So I take it easy. Today I've decided to go sketching.

Before the accident, this is something I always made time for. Even when I might be too busy to paint, I'd work in my sketchbook, going out and drawing for no reason except for the pleasure of feeling the pencil rub across the paper, searching for the lights and darks with the graphite until the magic happens and recognizable shapes appear on the paper. I guess drawing's something I've always taken for granted. Even when I was a kid, it was just something I did, like breathing. But I'm really paying attention to it now. I know a lot of the pleasure I'm feeling at this moment is from the simple fact of being able to do it. The Broken Girl can't even pick up a pencil.

I got my sketchbook and a nice Wolfe's carbon crayon in Mabon. I still don't know why I sometimes find myself there, sometimes here, in the woods. I wandered around the city for a long time, looking for Sophie or her boyfriend Jeck, but while I met a lot of interesting people, I couldn't find them. I wonder about the people I meet. Do they originate in the dreamlands, or are they here like me, taking a vacation from their body? I haven't asked because it doesn't seem polite.

The last time I crossed over, I decided to give up looking for Sophie for the time being. Mabon's even bigger than Newford and Newford's pushing six million by now. Since I don't know my way around, finding Sophie feels kind of hopeless. I figure we'll meet here when we do. And for now, well, I like Mabon, but the forest draws me more.

The last time I found myself in the city, I tracked down an art shop where I got my sketchbook and pencil. I asked Jamieâthe clerk behind the counter, according to his name tag, if he hadn't switched it with a co-workerâif he could tell me how to get from Mabon to the cathedral woods. He liked that name for them. Even in the dreamlands, which is such a cathedral world in itself, that forest is something special again.

“This works sometimes,” he said, leading me to the back of the store.

We were in the store's shipping/receiving room, everything in a clutter the way it so often is in the parts of a store that are hidden from the view of the general public. Jamie reached for the handle of a door set in the wall on the far side of the room and opened it, but there was only an alleyway there.

He closed the door and turned to me.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I forgot to tell you that it helps if you're
expecting it to be on the other side of the door. The place you want to go, I mean.”

I started to ask how that could be, but then gave him a nod. This was a magic world. Magic happened in it.

I gave him a smile. “Of course it'll be out there,” I told him.

He opened the door again and there it was. The alleyway was gone and the cathedral wood was just a few steps away.

“You're good,” Jamie told me. “If it happens for me at all, it usually takes a few tries.”

So that's how I got my purchases into the cathedral wood. Before I crossed back over to the World As It Is and let the Broken Girl wake up, I set them down by the trunk of one of the big trees in the plastic shopping bag they'd come in. Returning today, they were still here, waiting for me.

I don't even try to capture the majesty of the giant trees. Instead I work on smaller, more manageable subjects. A cluster of mushrooms, bunched around a dead tree limb. Some moss growing on the thick bark of one of the giants. A study of nuts, leaves, and a blue jay's feather that I'll admit I rearranged for a better effect. The light's so amazing here. Rendering it in black and white, I don't even miss working with color.

I'm so involved in what I'm doing that it takes me a while before I realize there's someone standing behind me. I turn slowly and blink at the strange little fellow who's been watching me for who knows how long. I'll give him this much: he knows how to be quiet.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey, yourself.”

He's about my size, a little shorter than my own five-foot height, but not by much. Trim and muscular, where I'm just thin. His face is broadâwhich on that small frame makes it look bigâdark brown eyes wide-set and prominent, nose stubby, mouth generous, and from the laugh lines, quick to smile. His hair is as curly as mine, but dark red and short, and his skin is the color of cinnamon. He kind of fits my mental image of what Robin Goodfellow would look likeâyou know, the Puck from English folkloreâexcept he's dressed in jeans and leather, and has a tattoo of a lightning bolt in a circle on the back of one hand, an unenclosed lightning bolt on the other.

“So, do you want to draw me?” he asks.

I have to smile. It's hard not to respond to his good humor.

“Sure,” I tell him. “Why not? Do you know how to pose?”

He strikes a muscle-builder's stance. I try not to laugh.

“You're not drawing anything,” he says. His voice sounds strained from holding his breath.

“How about something a little more natural?”

He lets out a stream of air and collapses on the ground, then flops against a big tangled root, lounging there like he's been in that position for hours. He'd make a good cat.

“What's your name?” I ask as I flip to a new page in my sketchbook.

“Toby Childers, the Boyce. What's yours?”

“Jilly.”

“That seems like an awfully small name.”

I give him a shrug. “I'm a small woman,” I tell him.

Joe once told me that when I finally did cross over to the dreamlands that I should be careful about who I give my name to, and how much of it I give them. Names are power here, though I think that carries over into the World As It Is as well. Ever notice how much easier it is to deal with a problem once you can put a name to it? It doesn't make the problem go away, but at least you know what you're dealing with.

Toby smiles, like he knows what I'm thinking, but I just continue with my drawing. He's got easy features to draw, but I'm having trouble fitting the head to the body. If I render it the way it really is, it seems too exaggerated.

“You're new to the Greatwood,” he says.

“Pretty much.”

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

I look up from my sketchbook. “Not really.”

“Too bad,” he tells me. “I've got a penis, you know.”

“Most males do.”

“Mine's special.”

“Most of them think that as well.”

“But mine can do tricks.”

I sigh and decide to change the subject. He strikes me as an innocent, but you never know with faerie types. He could just be seeing how far he can push before I get mad. Why? Who knows? They're the original inscrutables.

“You called yourself âthe Boyce,'” I say.

“That's me.”

“So is it a name or a title?”

He shrugs. “More like a title, I suppose.”

“So what is a âboyce'? Is it like a duke or an earâ”

He starts to hum the old rock song “Duke of Earl.”

“âor more like a doctor or a mayor? You know, some kind of professional.”

“You're very pretty.”

I sigh. “Looks are an accident, so that's hardly an accomplishment. It's not like they're something you earn.”

“But pleasant, nevertheless. At least from my perspective.”

“Um.”

“You don't seem very taken with me.”