The Onion Girl

by Charles de Lint

  I nod. He walked the Lower Crowsea beat for years. “A young, redheaded guy …”

  “Not so young anymore,” Lou says. “And he hasn’t got that much hair left, either, but yeah, that’s him.”

  “What’s he doing in L.A.? I thought he got transferred uptown.”

  “He did. But then he moved out west. He was going to work in the movies.” Lou shakes his head. “Instead, he’s a cop again and the closest he gets to a film set is working for the studios on his off hours, providing security for film openings and stuff like that.”

  “I wonder if he and Geordie have run into each other?”

  Lou looks at me for a moment, then files my comment as irrelevant and goes on.

  “Anyway,” he says, “I asked Oz to dig a little deeper for me. He came back with the same charge I got off the computer, but also a lot of associated material. Turns out she surfaced in a case he had dealing with a porn actress named Pinky Miller who went berserk on a set and knifed a few people in ’95.”

  “Porn?” I repeat, my heart sinking.

  Lou nods. “Your sister wasn’t in the movies herself, but this Miller’s her best friend and she was definitely a part of that scene. Miller did time—six years in the pen with the usual time off for good behavior—but your sister kept her nose clean. Or at least she didn’t get caught. She turns up again a little earlier as a witness in a shooting at a copy shop—this is ’94. She was still working there at the time Miller did the knifing, but she also had a side business by then, writing computer programs and selling them on the Internet. Nothing major, strictly small-time shareware stuff.”

  Lou’s been reading from a spiral-bound notepad. Now he looks up and fixes me with that cop look of his.

  “Here’s her arrest photo from ’81,” he says, pulling it from the back of the notepad and handing it over. “Looks a lot like you at that age.”

  I nod. She could be my twin.

  “Funny,” Lou says. “The two of you having different surnames.”

  “I changed mine,” I tell him. “Legally,” I add when I see his eyes narrow.

  “This back in the days when you were under Angel’s care?”

  “Can’t we just leave it as old history?” I say. “Please? I mean, whatever happened back then, hasn’t the statute of whatever run out by now?”

  I can see he has to work at it, but he gives me a reluctant nod. I know what’s going on inside his head: all that old history between the two of them, Angel playing loose with the same law he was determined to uphold. It’s what broke them up and I don’t think he’s ever forgiven her for that. Or himself for letting her go. Considering the two are mutually incompatible, you can see how it’d leave him messed up, even after all these years.

  “Does she have a car?” I ask.

  Lou nods and looks down at his notepad. “A ’68 Cadillac convertible with California license plates.”

  “Does it say what color it is?”

  He gives me an odd look. “Pink.”

  It’s the car Sophie saw near my place, I think. The one Wendy said showed up on Cassie’s cards. So it really is my sister behind all of this. Lou catches whatever’s going on in my eyes, though he mistakes where it’s coming from.

  “You remember something about the accident?” he asks. “According to the report we got back from forensics, the car that hit you was a dark blue Toyota Camry.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t remember anything more than I told you.”

  He continues to study me, finger tapping against the open page of the notepad.

  “There’s something going on that you’re holding back,” he says.

  “Woo-woo stuff,” I tell him. “Dreams and premonitions.”

  All true enough, and he buys it. And because that kind of thing makes him uncomfortable, he doesn’t push it.

  “You know I’m only trying to help you, Jilly.”

  “Of course I know that,” I tell him.

  “If there’s anything else you can tell me about this sister of yours …”

  “Lou. I haven’t seen her in over thirty years.”

  “But Sophie says she could have a mad on for you.”

  “I really don’t know,” I say. “I abandoned her in that hellhole I grew up in, so maybe. It could even be likely. But I think it’s pulling at straws. I mean, if it is her, why would she wait so long to get back at me?”

  “Time does funny things to people,” Lou tells me. “For some, it lets them forget. For others, it just makes the old hurts bigger and more painful.”

  I don’t have to ask how he knows. You just have to see him and Angel in the same room to understand.

  “We’re still trying to get an address on your sister,” he says after a moment, “but we’re running into a wall. She moved out of her L.A. apartment in February of this year—when Miller got out of prison—and so far as Oz can tell, neither of them have been heard from since.” He pauses, then asks, “You think they came back here?”

  “Here or Tyson,” I say. Then, reluctantly, I share a last bit of information with him. “Sophie says she saw a pink Caddy convertible on my street not too long ago.”

  Lou doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then finally he nods.

  “I’ll put an APB out on the car,” he says as he gets up.

  “Lou?”

  He pauses in the doorway and gives me a questioning look.

  Don’t be hard on her, I want to say. From the little he’s told me, her life after she left that hell that was our home just went from bad to worse. I don’t want to add to her pain.

  But if it is her, if she is responsible … I can’t take the chance of anybody else getting hurt.

  I don’t know how to tell him any of that.

  “Thanks,” is all I say.

  He nods, and then he’s gone.

  After he leaves, I’m back to staring at the ceiling again. I’m like a Yo-yo Girl, today. Up one minute, down the next. Daniel coming by, all sweet and full of possibility, then Lou’s bad news …

  I think of what Joe told me, what feels like years ago now, how I have to deal with the old hurts before he can get someone to help me mend the new ones. So by setting the police on my little sister—is that adding to the burden, or lightening it?

  I just want to get away from it all, but even the cathedral world has gotten complicated. Between that nasty Tattersnake and the threat of my sister, the Amazing Wolf Girl, not to mention Toby running off, all bummed out the way he was, the dreamlands don’t hold much promise of relief.

  Do I even deserve relief? I ask myself, free to do so now because Sophie and Wendy aren’t here to try to convince me that what’s happening with Raylene isn’t my fault.

  What I need is a miracle, I think. Or those wizard twigs that Toby was going on about …

  His voice comes back to me, talking to me about the magic those twigs embody. The more you want it or need it, the harder it is to get.

  But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Hard doesn’t mean impossible. It just means difficult. And if there’s one thing I’ve never done it’s back down when times got hard.

  So I close my eyes and I think about that cathedral tree, the place where I left off my climb, and as I drift away, I wonder if I’ll make it there this time, and if I don’t, where I’ll end up instead.

  It doesn’t feel like it’ll matter right now. Because wherever I end up in the dreamlands, I’ll be mobile and able to take care of myself.

  I can just leave the Broken Girl behind like she never was.

  If only the rest of my life was as easy to fix.

  6

  Returning from a late lunch, Wendy sat down at her desk and found a message from Angel waiting on her voice mail.

  “Hello, Wendy,” it began. “Jilly asked me to give you a call. She wants to know if there’s something bothering you and if she’s somehow the cause of it. If you could come by and talk to her after work, she’d appreciate it.” There was a pause, then Angel added, “Is
there something bothering you? You know you’ve always got a willing ear with me—and I say that in friend mode, not as a social worker.” Another pause. “But do talk to Jilly if you get a chance.”

  Like many people, Angel’s voice when leaving a phone message was different from her normal speaking voice. You could still hear the warmth, but the sentences were clipped and there was just a hint of the discomfort that some people get speaking to a machine instead of a real person. But the meaning had come across, loud and clear. Jilly knew something was up between them.

  Well, they were so close, the three of them, how couldn’t she?

  Sighing, Wendy erased the message. She thought about what Cassie had said to her last night, how she should talk to Sophie and Jilly about it, but what was the point?

  “It’s not something that can be fixed,” she said as she cradled the phone.

  Not unless she could join them on the other side of nevernever where the lost boys fly and her namesake kept house for them.

  But I wouldn’t keep house, she thought. No way. I’d be out having adventures. Let the boys clean house and do the cooking for a change. She’d hand Peter Pan the duster, drop her apron to the floor, and off she’d go.

  Off she’d go and she wouldn’t look back.

  She blinked, and looked around the office.

  Was that what Jilly felt? she wondered. Was that unfettered feeling of utter freedom that had gripped her, just now, for one daydreaming moment … was that what Jilly experienced in those faerie dreamlands?

  She picked up a stack of galleys that needed proofing. Chewing on the end of her blue pencil, she tried to concentrate on her work, but her thoughts kept returning to that feeling. Just for a moment there her heart had seemed to swell far beyond the boundaries of her body, encompassing anything and everything. It was probably what an epiphany felt like, though if she’d learned anything from it, it was only empathy for Jilly and why, given half a chance, she would be happy to just vanish into the dreamlands.

  If that’s what you feel, she thought, then maybe I understand how you could want to go over there and not think about coming back.

  She tried practicing what Cassie had told her, to look sideways at things and see if some hidden landscape might appear in the corner of her eyes, but all that happened was that she kept missing typos and had to go over the pages again.

  Joe

  MANIDÒ-AKÌ

  Morning comes to these red rock canyons, same as it does every place. Today it shows up with a big yellow sun peeping over the edge of the horizon, the first rays shining right against my eyelids and that’s it, I can’t sleep anymore. For a while I turn my head from the light and think about the feeling that’s followed me out of my dreams, trying to decide if Cassie really needs to see me, or if it’s just wishful thinking on my part. Finally I get up.

  I leave Whiskey Jack and Bo sleeping by the fire. Walking around the rocks that are sheltering our campsite, I stare at the light play across those tall red hoodoos while I take a leak. I’m just getting going when I hear somebody giggling.

  Turning my head, I see little manitou that looks like it stepped out of one of Jilly’s paintings, an urban sprite, but completely at home for all that she’s been transplanted to this place. She’s sitting casually on a nearby rock, maybe a foot high, perfectly proportioned, with a heart-shaped face and spiky pink hair. Her violet eyes match the silky shirt she’s wearing over a little black skirt. On her feet are black platform boots with impossible heels.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask as I finish my business and zip up.

  “You’re so big,” she says.

  Here’s the thing you never read about in all those fairy-tale books: we’re the horniest bunch you’d ever run across. From canids like Whiskey Jack and Reynard, always on the make, to little punk faerie like this, everything always seems to come around to the pillow dance. The urge can build up strong in the dreamlands. I figure it’s something in the air. I’m a one-woman man myself, so I don’t spread it around the way some of us do, but whenever I get back from manidò-akì, the first thing I want to do is take that big-hearted woman of mine in my arms and head for our bed.

  “Considering your size,” I tell this little sprite, “everything about me would seem big.”

  That just makes her giggle some more.

  “So what’s your name?” I ask.

  “Nory.”

  “I take it you’re not local.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Your getup,” I say. “You look like you’re heading out for a night of clubbing.”

  She brightens right up. “Oh, I do love to dance,” she says.

  No surprise there. Dancing’s right up there, almost as popular as sex.

  “But sadly,” she adds, “I’m here on business.”

  “And that’d be … ?”

  She stands up from where she’s been lounging on the rocks, back straight, hands primly clasped in front of her. When she starts to deliver her message I realize she’s a derrynimble, a finding sprite. They can find pretty much anyone or anything. It’s a handy talent as I know, since I’ve got a touch of it myself, though not to the same degree as they do. The way it works for them’s got something to do with the middleworld, the space that lies between manidò-akì and the World As It Is, but I’ve never made a real study of it.

  I remember hearing that someone in Mabon had started up using them as messengers and couriers, but I hadn’t put any real stock on it. Derrynimbles are normally too flighty to be of any real practical use for much of anything. This is the first one I’ve seen on the job and with the way she started off giggling when we first met, I wouldn’t have changed my mind except that she delivers Sophie’s message like it’s Sophie standing there in front of me, instead of some pink-haired sprite that’s not much taller than the length of my forearm.

  She sticks to her prim little pose when she’s done, an expectant look on her face. I’m wondering if she’s expecting a tip, and if so, what a derrynimble would consider an interesting tip. Come to think of it, what currency does the courier service use to pay her?

  “Am I supposed to send an answer back?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “You just have to give me a kiss, to prove receipt of the message.”

  “A kiss.”

  “There has to be actual physical contact.”

  I lean forward and touch my index finger to her brow. She sticks out her tongue, then grins, does this sideways step, and disappears.

  I come back to camp, shaking my head. Bo’s still sleeping, sprawled out on a raggedy blanket he pulled out from behind the woodpile last night, but Jack’s awake. He’s stirring the coals of our fire into life, getting ready to boil up some water for coffee. I see he’s already helped himself to my tobacco and got himself a smoke going. He looks up and gives me a smile.

  “When did you start talking to yourself?” he asks.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” I tell him. “You hear how someone in Mabon’s started up using derrynimbles as messengers?”

  He nods. “I heard. But what’re the chances it could ever work out? I mean, derrynimbles. Like they’d remember what they were doing long enough to actually deliver a message.”

  “Well, I just got one,” I say. “Cute little thing brought it, standing there on a rock watching me have a leak.”

  “How cute?” Jack asks.

  “Seriously cute—if you like your women a foot tall.”

  Jack laughs. “She have a big sister? And I mean that literally.”

  See what I mean? One thing on the mind.

  “She didn’t talk about a sister,” I say. “But she did have a message for me from Sophie. Sophie probably doesn’t realize it, but I think she’s given us the lead we’ve been looking for.”

  Jack forgets his libido. He gives Bo a nudge with his foot and says, “Listen to this.”

  Bo’s like most canids—slips from deep sleep to alertness with the snap of a finger. He sits up and
looks from Jack to me.

  “Joe got him a message,” Jack says. “By way of a derrynimble.”

  “Bullshit,” Bo says. He reaches for where Jack left my tobacco pouch lying beside his own blanket. “They haven’t got the brains for it. The only thing they can deliver is what my mama liked to call social diseases.”

  “Well, this one brought me a message all the same,” I say.

  Bo grunts, but whether in acknowledgment or not, I can’t tell.

  “So give,” Jack says.

  I watch Bo roll himself a smoke as I repeat Sophie’s message. With the pair of them cadging off me, I’m surprised I haven’t already run out of tobacco. Bo gets his smoke going with that lighter Jack won off Cody.

  “So the pack leader’s her little sister,” he says as he lays the lighter down.

  “Could be her sister,” I say.

  Sophie—by way of Nory—was pretty emphatic on that point.

  “But it looks good.”

  I nod.

  “And they figure she’s in Newford?” Jack asks.

  “Or Tyson.”

  “You remember her scent?”

  “As a wolf, sure,” I say. “But out of the dreamlands, when she’s human, I’m not so sure I’d recognize it. Depends on how good she is at hiding it.”

  Changing shape changes your scent, too, at least it does on an individual basis. But you have to consciously think about hiding your clan affiliation. Corbæ, canid, urse … we can usually recognize each other, doesn’t matter what shape we’re wearing.

  Jack nods. “So I guess we split up and cast around for her in both places.”

  “Count me out,” Bo says. At the question in my eyes, he adds, “I lose this human look whenever I cross over. Hard to stay unnoticed walking around a city on four legs.”

  “Yeah, especially when they’re coyote legs,” Jack says. “Somebody curse you?”

  Bo blows out a stream of smoke on the back of a sigh. “Back in the 1880s. I ever find that sucker …”

  “So you’ll hold the fort on this side of the border,” I say before Bo takes us off on a tangent.