The Onion Girl (43 page)

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Authors: Charles de Lint

BOOK: The Onion Girl
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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.
I see Jack catch himself from asking Bo more about this curse and get back on track to the business at hand.
“How well do you know Tyson?” he asks me.
“Haven't done more than pass through it a few times,” I tell him.
“I'm the same with Newford, so I'll take it, you take Tyson.”
It's good planning. When you know a place too well, you tend to miss things a stranger doesn't, like, there's no sense in checking out this alley, those blocks, that part of town because you think she'd never go there. But all too often, that's exactly where she'd be.
“All we're doing is observing,” I say, looking from one to the other. “No cowboying. One of us finds her, we get the others before we make a move.”
“Unless she takes a swipe at us,” Jack says.
I nod. “That goes without saying.”
Whiskey Jack and I leave Bo at the fire and go our separate ways. I spend most of the day making a slow pass through the town, from downtown Tyson, over to the Ramble and Stokesville. I even take a turn through all those new suburbs that are spreading like weeds on the south side of town. I make good time, slipping in and out of the middleworld when I need to get from one part of town to the other quickly. The middleworld's a handy place for that sort of thing—not to mention, just plain everyday spying. You can see out fine, but most people can't see in. Don't even know you're there.
I catch hints of canid presence, but whenever I track one down it turns out to be somebody with the blood, yeah, but so thin they can't even see me peering out at them from the middleworld. Twice I come across a pureblood—or as pure as you're going to get outside of
manidò-akì
—but they're minding their own business and don't have any connection that I can see to Jilly's sister. They're not hiding their scent, and I don't recognize either of them.
I can't ask people, but I talk to a lot of dogs, especially in Stokesville and on the edges of the Ramble where there's more of them and they run free. They're not exactly articulate, but a couple of old yellow hounds point me in the direction of the Ramble so I go back there. I don't find
Jilly's sister or her friend, but I do run across a backyard with about a dozen pit bulls staked out on short chains. It doesn't take a lot to realize that someone's breeding them to fight.
Their heads lift when I come into the yard, but they're smart enough to see I'm out of range of their chains and they've probably been trained with beatings not to start in on barking every time something unusual happens to show its face. I look at the back door of the clapboard house, waiting for someone to come out. No one shows and I have to admit I'm disappointed. I'd like to discuss how I feel about this kind of thing with whoever's set it up. I force down the urge to hunt him down and do a little drumming on his face and turn back to the dogs.
“You want out of here?” I ask them.
They regard me with flat, hard gazes until one honey blonde gives a slow nod of her head.
Anyone watching would think I was crazy to just walk up to her the way I do. I'm not worried. I can tell the canid blood runs strong in her. She knows I'm here to help.
I can't break the chain that's keeping her staked in place, but I don't have to. I just kneel down and undo her collar. She bumps her head against my arm by way of thanks. I don't make the mistake of trying to give her a pat. These aren't pets. And besides, they're cousins. Do you go around patting your cousins on the head?
The next one starts to snarl at my approach. The honey blonde pushes by me and gives a quick short bark that shuts him right up. He trembles—with anger, not fear—as I reach for his collar, but doesn't snap at me, doesn't move except to back away once his collar's lying in the dirt.
I free the rest of them, the honey blonde following me from stake to stake until I'm done.
“You're going to have a hard time of it,” I tell them.
They just look back at me with expressions that don't give away anything.
I think about leaving them here to fend for themselves. How long are they going to last with no one to look out for them? Even in this part of town no one's going to stand for a pack of dogs running wild. Not to mention mistreated the way they've been, they might take it into their heads to get a little bit of their own back, just on general principles.
So I show them a way into the dreamlands, take them to a stretch of alleyway I noticed a few streets back where the layers of the middleworld are thin enough to push through, if you know enough to recognize the way. The honey blonde ushers the pack through. When it's her turn, she hesitates for a moment, then comes over and bumps her head against my leg, the way you might punch a friend on the arm. I lift a finger to my brow and I swear she grins before she bounds off after the others.
Then they're gone and I go back to looking again.

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