Authors: Charles de Lint
The Onion Girl (10 page)
“But dark instead of bright.”
“If that makes any sense.”
“So what're you saying?” I ask, though I can already see where this is going.
Cassie hesitates before she answers. Moves her coffee mug around in a circle on the table.
“It's like Jilly trashed the paintings herself,” she finally says.
“Except she was in the hospital, right? I mean, the time frameâ”
“No, Lou says it happened when she was still in the coma.” Cassie's gaze lifts from the table and settles on me. “Could her spirit have come back out of the dreamlands and done it? I mean, without her even knowing it?”
“When it comes to
manidò-akì,
” I say, “anything's possible. They don't call it the Changing Lands for nothing. But that'd make no sense. Why would she do it?”
manidò-akì,
” I say, “anything's possible. They don't call it the Changing Lands for nothing. But that'd make no sense. Why would she do it?”
“I don't know,” Cassie says. “But the sooner you find this grandmother of yours, the better it'll be.”
I don't like the idea of leaving this behind, unsettled. Because thinking on what Cassie's told me, it sounds too much like a shadow twin, the cast-off bits of a person that, in the right set of circumstances, can take on a personality of its own. My people have too many stories about these shadow twins and the trouble that can follow them. It's like a dark wind fills them and they're liable to do anything. Mostly, they turn on the ones that cast them in the first place.
But I know Cassie's right. I can't worry on that right now. Best thing I can do is find Nokomis and see if she can help.
We finish our breakfast. I pack some of the frybread, grab a fat pouch of tobacco and a couple of packages of rolling papers from the cupboard. There's time for one long soul kiss with Cassie, and then I'm gone.
I head straight for the quicklands when I cross over, covering ground at a steady lope. I'm not much for skinchanging, and maybe I could travel a little faster in an animal skin, but this human body of mine has put in a lot
of miles. I can keep up a pace like this for days if I have to. But I'm wearing a dog's head, for the sharper senses. Sight, smell, sound.
of miles. I can keep up a pace like this for days if I have to. But I'm wearing a dog's head, for the sharper senses. Sight, smell, sound.
Doesn't matter how many times I travel through the quicklands, I never get used to them. Seasons can change from one step to the next. One minute you're crunching across a thin cover of snow, your breath frosting in the air, the next it's like high summer, hot and humid. The landscape can shift, too. Grassfields become desert in the blink of an eye. Turn up an arroyo, and you're in a pine forest. Half a mile later, you're scrambling up some steep incline like a mountain goat, pebbles and rocks clattering away from underfoot. Step onto the top and you're in an echo of the Greatwood.
After a half day of this I find myself on a trail running through rough bushland like you'll find up on the rez north of Newford. There's a faint prick of familiarity whispering in the back of my head as I follow it, but it's not until I step into a clearing that I realize why.
This is the second card from Cassie's reading. The crows and ravens lift up on black wings when I come out of the forest, startled by my appearance, but the wolves just sit up from the carcass and fix me with steady, considering looks. I make a closer study of their kill and see it isn't some white horse they took down, but a unicorn.
My first impression was that these wolves were cousins, but the dead unicorn puts the lie to that. There's some things the People just don't hunt, doesn't matter how hungry we are. And we'd never make a sport of it like this. This pack isn't feeding on the body. They're just tearing at it for the fun. The main show was running it down and making the kill.
That tells me what they are. Human dreamers. Crossed over in their sleep and went hunting. There's no alpha male, but I spot the female that's leading them.
How it works is, a human can dream true, but might not even know it. Still, that doesn't stop her from crossing over to our world when she sleeps. Most people drift in and out of
manidò-akì
at various times of the night, but they can't sustain their presence, and they can't control who they are or what they do. It's no different than dreaming for them. But you get a few like this alpha female that can maintain a shape, call up a hunt. Probably she just likes to hurt things. Can't do it in the World As It Is, so she does it here. Calls other dreamers to her and they go chasing mysteries, looking for blood.
manidò-akì
at various times of the night, but they can't sustain their presence, and they can't control who they are or what they do. It's no different than dreaming for them. But you get a few like this alpha female that can maintain a shape, call up a hunt. Probably she just likes to hurt things. Can't do it in the World As It Is, so she does it here. Calls other dreamers to her and they go chasing mysteries, looking for blood.
For them it's nothing more than a dream, but that's no excuse. It
doesn't make it right. Because the unicorn and whatever else they manage to kill, this is their world. They're real here. They die here.
doesn't make it right. Because the unicorn and whatever else they manage to kill, this is their world. They're real here. They die here.
But I'll give the alpha female this: she's got brass. She leaves the unicorn carcass and starts walking stiff-legged toward me, her muzzle dripping blood, a challenge in her eyes. The rest of her pack fan out behind her.
I don't know what she's thinking and just shake my head.
The dreamlands are going to shit. Bad enough these little pissants killed themselves a piece of some old mystery that they figured was no more than an animal, but they've got to be either blind, stupid, or just plain not give a damn to start in on me. Maybe I've got me a dog's head, but I'm wearing clothes and not walking on all fours. Take me on and they've just moved up from bullying hunters to murderers.
Except I'm not some innocent mystery, going to run till they've worn me down. They don't know what they're getting into and I'm just pissed off enough to do them some serious damage. Rough them up and then close the door in their heads that lets them cross over.
But before they can attack, somebody else comes ambling into the clearing and I know him.
It's Whiskey Jack. He's tall and lean, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, buckskin jacket. Dog-headed like me, but wearing a flat-brimmed hat the color of a crow's wing with a leather hatband, decorated with turquoise and silver. A couple of long, black, beaded braids hang along either side of his head, bouncing against his chest as he walks.
Whiskey Jack and I go way back. Follow the family tree far enough, and you can find where we're related on the canid side of the family. It makes for an uneasy relationship at times with a lot of the canid, seeing how the other half of my family carries corbæ blood. But it still makes us cousins, and Jack and me, we've run together from time to time.
The wolves have stopped their approach on me. The alpha female loses some of her cockiness with two of us to contend with.
“Aw, Christ,” Jack says, taking in the dead unicorn. “What'd you have to go do that for?”
I get the sense that the alpha female has never run into any of the People before, least not when they're doing a mix-and-match with their skin-changing like we are.
“You better make tracks,” Jack tells her when she starts to growl, “or I'm going to tear that pelt off your body and use it to wipe my ass.”
He finishes with a snarl and the pack bolts. We stand there for a long moment, listening, tasting the wind. But they're not circling back.
I think about that alpha female. There was something about her that nudges at my memory but I can't grab hold of it. Then it's gone and Jack's talking to me.
“Hey, Crazy Dog,” he says. “Or are you calling yourself Bones these days?”
He walks over to the carcass as he talks. Bending down, he closes the animal's eyes, runs a hand along the bloodied flank. The look in his eyes tells me that those wolves better think twice the next time they get the urge to come hunting in the dreamlands.
“You know how it is,” I tell him. “People call us what they want, but we don't need names to know who we are.”
I take out my tobacco pouch and roll a couple of smokes, offer him one. He stands up from the body and takes a fancy Zippo lighter out of his pocket.
“Won it in a card game with Cody,” he says when he sees me looking at the lighter. He grins. “You know Cody. A poker face he hasn't got.”
He lights my cigarette, then his own.
“Been a long time,” he adds, blowing out a stream of blue-gray smoke. “I haven't seen you this deep into
manidò-akì
since we went chasing water ghosts with the corn girl sisters.”
manidò-akì
since we went chasing water ghosts with the corn girl sisters.”
“I've been busy.”
“You still opening doors for people?”
“Opening them for some, closing them for others. Whatever's needed.”
Jack shakes his head. “I don't know what it is, but I can't get my head around this idea of having a calling. Must be the corbæ blood in you.”
I smile. “Must be. Where are you headed?”
“Steamboat Harley's place. I've got my eye on a puma girl he's got working the bar.”
“Watch she doesn't hang you up by your toes.”
“Naw. Ray says she's sweet on me. What about you?”
“I'd rather just be friends,” I tell him. He laughs, then I add, “I'm looking for Nokomis. Have you seen her? I think she's doing the buffalo walk but I don't know where.”
I tell him about the image from the third card, the reflection of the moon in the pool of dark water, up on that mountaintop. Last time
Nokomis was in the high country, she walked one of the lost trails, following in the footsteps of the buffalo spirits that the Europeans slaughtered. It was possible she was doing it again. Sadness and old hurts can always call her, bring her with healing in her hands and a blessing in her eyes.
Nokomis was in the high country, she walked one of the lost trails, following in the footsteps of the buffalo spirits that the Europeans slaughtered. It was possible she was doing it again. Sadness and old hurts can always call her, bring her with healing in her hands and a blessing in her eyes.
“She's not White Buffalo Woman these days,” Jack says. “Last time I saw her she was back to Grandma Toad, but that was pretty much a year or so ago.”
Some spirits are impossible to keep track of, they change skins so often.
“And you've heard nothing since then?” I ask.
Jack shakes his head. “You should ask Jolene.”
“I already did.”
“Then you got me. What do you want with her anyway?”
“I've got a friend needs a blessing.”
“Best blessings come from inside,” Jack says. “Nokomis'll just tell you the same thing.”
“I know. It's complicated. See, the inside's broken, tooâan old hurtâand we can't get to fixing the outside till we deal with that.”
“What happened to her?”
“Family trouble. Deep bad medicine, the kind that scars the marrow.”
Sympathy enters Jack's usual mocking gaze.
“That's something that might never get fixed,” he says.
I sigh. “Don't I know it.”
“And trying can just call up more trouble.”
“This one's worth the trouble.”
“Your woman?” Jack asks.
I shake my head. “My sister. At least she is now.”
“I'll put the word out,” Jack tells me. “Let the Old Woman know you're looking for her.”
“I appreciate that.”
“In the meantime,” he adds, “you could take a swing by Cody's
manidò-tewin.
That mountain of his has a moon pool on the mesa top and the two of them used to be tight.”
manidò-tewin.
That mountain of his has a moon pool on the mesa top and the two of them used to be tight.”
I think of that third card of Cassie's and nod.
“How's Cody feel about corbæ these days?” I ask.
Like I said, there's an old rivalry between canid and corbæ, goes way back to the first days. Some canid like Whiskey Jack here just ignore my
crow blood, but Cody's old school. He and Raven have been feuding since time began. I've had a run-in or two with him in the past myself, so now I just stay out of his way.
crow blood, but Cody's old school. He and Raven have been feuding since time began. I've had a run-in or two with him in the past myself, so now I just stay out of his way.
Jack laughs. “Didn't you hear? Cody's got himself a magpie girlfriend these days.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“I swear it's the truth.”
We have another smoke before we take full canid shapes and start to dig a hole in the dirt beside the dead unicorn. We work at it until the grave's deep enough to hold it, then shift back to human form and roll the body in.
“Damn shame,” Jack says.
I nod. Creatures like this can't leave the dreamlands. There's so much medicine caught up in that horn of theirs that even if they can make the shift to human form, the horn stays there on their brow. Makes it kind of hard to stay unnoticed in the World As It Is.
But they're rare in the dreamlands, too. I only ever saw one before this. It was back when I was a kid, before I'd ever crossed over into the World As It Is. I was out scouting with one of my uncles one night, the two of us sailing high on crow wings, when he suddenly banked and went into a long, descending curve that took us to the top boughs of an old pine tree. I don't know where exactly we were. Deep in the wild, for sure.
“Look,” he said.
And then I saw it. High on a crag of granite, horn shining silver in the moonlight. It lifted its head and sang to the moon. The sound of its voice was sweet as honey, but it made the marrow in my bones tremble and resonate like I was feeling distant thunder.
Animiki
. The Grandfather Thunders.
Animiki
. The Grandfather Thunders.
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