The Onion Girl (62 page)
Authors: Charles de Lint
I tried calling him that night, but there was no answer and he had his machine turned off, so I dictated a cheerful response to Sophie, hoping to jolly him out of the mood he seemed to be in. I'm usually pretty good at that.
I'd be writing my own letters, but while I've been practicing printing and drawing with my left hand, my script is still pretty much illegible and my drawing skills seem to lie in the other hand, because nothing I draw looks remotely like what it's supposed to.
“Want me to open it for you?” Sophie asks.
“Sure.”
She runs a finger under the flap and tears it open across the top, then hands it to me so that I can read it while she pushes me down the sidewalk. I know she's not reading over my shoulderâSophie would never do thatâbut I guess something in my body language tells her. She stops pushing and comes around to the front of the wheelchair, hunches down on her ankles with her hands resting on the chair's arms.
“What's wrong?” she asks.
“Geordie broke up with Tanya,” I say.
“Oh, no.”
I nod. “He says while he's tried and tried, he just can't fit into the life
they have there. But every day Tanya fits in better. He's coming back to Newford at the end of the month.”
they have there. But every day Tanya fits in better. He's coming back to Newford at the end of the month.”
“What are you going to do?”
What she means is, what are you going to do about Daniel? But I don't believe that's even a question.
“Nothing,” I say. “Be supportive. Be his friend.”
“But you and Geordie ⦠I know how you feel about him. And no matter what you think, he loves you as more than a friend.”
I shake my head. “He loves glamour girls. I mean look at Tanya. She's a movie star, for god's sake. And remember how gorgeous Sam was?”
She comes back with her old argument.
“That's only because he didn't think he could have you,” she says.
I shake my head again. “I don't think so. And anyway, it doesn't matter. My relationship with Daniel's the best I've ever had, bar none. I'm not going to throw it away because I still have feelings for Geordie.”
“Butâ”
“And besides,” I say. “I'm in love with Daniel.”
At least I think I am.
“Does he love you?” Sophie asks.
“I think so.”
Though he's never said so.
Sophie gets up and gives me a hug.
“Then I'm happy for you,” she says. “For both of you.”
I nod, schooling my face to stay calm because all I want to do is cry. I'm not even sure why. Everything I told Sophie is true. I really do care about Daniel and I don't see any future beyond friendship with Geordie. If it was going to happen, it would've happened a long time ago. And I'm happy with Daniel.
But there's this great well of sorrow inside me all the same, just pressing against my chest and making it hard to breathe.
“But poor Geordie,” Sophie says as she starts to push the wheelchair back down the sidewalk again.
I nod. He's as much the Onion Boy as I'm an Onion Girl and now he's got another layer of pain and disappointment to add to the ones that are already there, messing up his life as surely as they've always messed up mine.
“Poor Geordie,” I agree.
And maybe I mean poor me as well. Because nothing's guaranteed.
Daniel and I are doing great right now, but I'm still the Onion Girl. Maybe he's willing to believe in faerie and the dreamlands. Maybe he likes who he sees me to be. But there are still all those other layers lying in wait to trip him up that he doesn't know anything about. The hurt kid. The junkie. The hooker. What was done to me and what I did to others, especially my sister.
Daniel and I are doing great right now, but I'm still the Onion Girl. Maybe he's willing to believe in faerie and the dreamlands. Maybe he likes who he sees me to be. But there are still all those other layers lying in wait to trip him up that he doesn't know anything about. The hurt kid. The junkie. The hooker. What was done to me and what I did to others, especially my sister.
But then I guess we all have a mess of one kind or another lying somewhere deep inside us. There's no such thing as a perfect life. The trick is to accept each other's weaknesses and lend our strengths when we can.
Walk large, as Joe would say.
I smile. Right now, I'd settle for just being able to walk.
But I'll aim for large. One step at a time.
It wasn't Indian summer, because it wasn't officially autumn yet and surely you couldn't have the one without the other, but it was one of the balmiest evenings the city had experienced in weeks. Like large numbers of other office workers, when Wendy left her desk at the end of the day and stepped outside the paper's offices, she simply wasn't ready to go home yet. Instead she mingled with the crowds on Lee Street and finally snagged herself a small table on the patio of The Rusty Lion from which she could sip a glass of wine and people-watch to her heart's content.
There'd been a time in her life when she would have felt awkward, sitting at a table by herself like this, but years spent in the company of avowed individualists such as Jilly had managed to cure her of the misconception that a woman out alone for a drink or dinner was somehow to be pitied. She certainly enjoyed going out with friends, but there could also be something inexplicably exhilarating about such a moment on one's own. Freed of any conversational or other companionable responsibilities, you were able to watch the parade of the world go by without worrying that you might, however inadvertently, slight someone.
It was at times such as this that Wendy loved living in the city. Like Sophie, she'd grown up in Newford, and while she enjoyed visiting the countryside, she only really felt comfortable downtown, surrounded by people and buildings and traffic. The energy of the city seemed to twin the way the blood moved in her veins, the way air was drawn in and out
of her lungs, although that brief visit she'd had to the red rock canyons of the dreamlands had left an enormous impression on her as well.
of her lungs, although that brief visit she'd had to the red rock canyons of the dreamlands had left an enormous impression on her as well.
It was the first time she could remember that she yearned to go away to some primal place, unrelated to the city, and she wasn't sure if it had been those canyons themselves or the dreamlands as a whole that had woken such a longing in her. Probably both.
She was thinking of that when she spotted the striking couple coming down the sidewalk toward where she was sitting with her glass of wine. There were both dark-complexioned and exotic in a city that already had a wonderful ethnic mix, particularly in this area of town. The man was tall and handsome, like a riverboat gambler or a Mexican senor, in black cowboy boots, jeans and jacket, with a white shirt and bolo tie, wearing a black flat-brimmed hat decorated with a hatband of turquoise and silver. His companion was almost as tall and even more attractive. Her cowboy boots were red with faded blue jeans tucked into them. She had a white shirt as well, with a short deerskin jacket overtop. She wore no hat, maybe to show off her gorgeous blue-black hair with the two white streaks running back from her temples.
Looking at the pair, Wendy could feel a poem waking up inside her, the same way Sophie or Jilly would have been reaching for a sketchbook, or simply fixing the image in their minds to come back to later in the studio.
Just as they were nearing her, the man did something odd. He lifted his head and sniffed at the air, then his dark gaze met her own and he steered his companion to the iron-worked fence beside Wendy's table. He smiled at her, teeth white against his skin, and paused, leaning an arm casually on the railing.
“I know you,” he said.
“I ⦠uh ⦔
“No,” he corrected himself, his voice a drawl. “I don't know youâI just know where you've been.”
Okay, this was too weird, Wendy thought. If he hadn't had the woman with him, she'd have got up from her table and gone into the restaurant, or called the waiter over. Or maybe she wouldn't have. He was so mesmerizing that she couldn't seem to move.
“Where ⦠where I've been ⦠?” she found herself saying.
He nodded. “The scent's still on you.”
His companion laid a hand on his arm.
“Cody, don't,” she said. “You're scaring her.”
“Am I?” he asked Wendy.
“No,” she said, too quickly. “Well, maybe a little.”
“What's your name?” the woman asked.
Wendy turned gratefully in her direction. There was something way too unsettling in the man's eyes. But the woman's were just as darkâjust as ageless and dreaming.
“Um, Wendy.”
“It's nice to meet you, Wendy,” the woman said. “I'm Margaret, and this is Cody.”
Wendy's gaze returned to the man.
“Cody?” she said. “As in Cody who owns those red rock canyons in the dreamlands?”
Cody laughed. “Nobody owns those canyons, darling. But I've got a place there and that's what I smell on you.”
Margaret was regarding her curiously while he spoke.
“But you don't have the blood,” she said. “How did you cross over on your own?”
“I went with a friend,” Wendy explained. “We had to bring a message to these guys who were camping thereâBo and Jack.”
She went on to explain a little about how she'd snuck along with Cassie to cross over into the dreamlands and then how Joe had sent her and Cassie to the mesa.
“And now that place is in you, isn't it?” Cody said. “It's got its hooks into your heart and you can't stop dreaming about it.”
Wendy nodded. “Something like that.”
“Those boys are gone now,” Cody said, “and I'm not using the place anymore. Margaret and I have found us another spot where our hearts beat a little quicker.”
“I can't imagine any place that would be better,” Wendy told him.
“I can see that,” he said. “It's like you found your heart home there and you never even knew you were looking for it.”
Wendy nodded again.
Cody glanced at his companion who gave him a small nod in response.
“Tell you what, darling,” he said. “Why don't you look after that camp for me? Think of it as a permanent loan. I know I said nobody can own a place like that, but we all put claims on a landscape anyway, now
don't we? You can hold that one for me and call it your own, too. I'm good at sharing.” He grinned and gave Margaret a wink. “Hell, I'm good at a lot of things, aren't I, darling?”
don't we? You can hold that one for me and call it your own, too. I'm good at sharing.” He grinned and gave Margaret a wink. “Hell, I'm good at a lot of things, aren't I, darling?”
Margaret elbowed him in the ribsâhard, it seemed to Wendy, but he didn't react in the least.
“What do you say?” he asked Wendy.
“Me? But ⦠I ⦔
She had to take a deep breath to steady herself. This was all so amazing that she couldn't believe it was happening to her. But reluctantly, she had to shake her head.
“I couldn't,” she said. “I mean, I'd love to, but I wouldn't know how to begin to get back there.”
“I'll give you a key,” he said, but he looked at his companion.
Margaret dug into the pocket of her jeans and brought out a small red stone, worn smooth and round from either erosion or simply from having been carried around in a pocket for years.
“Use this,” she said, passing the red stone over to Wendy.
Wendy accepted it gingerly, expecting she didn't know what. But something. A flash of light. An immediate crossing over into the dreamlands. But the stone simply lay on her palm, catching the light.
“When you come up on a doorway,” Cody said, “hold that key in your hand and put your mind into those deep red canyons. When you step through, it'll take you there.”
“Any doorway?”
Cody shrugged. “Any one you can step through, darling. Between's a kind of magic that doesn't take a lot of preparation or skill.”
“I ⦠thank you,” Wendy said. “Really. I mean that.”
“I know you do, darling,” Cody told her. “That's why I'm sharing it with you, though if you ask me, I think you already had your own hold on it, just no way to get back.”
That was exactly how it had been feeling, Wendy thought.
“Now you take care of that place,” Cody said.
Wendy nodded. “I will.”
“And maybe we'll see you there sometime,” Margaret added.
Then smiling, the pair moved on down the sidewalk. Wendy watched their backs until they were lost in the crowd, then looked down at the red stone she still held in her hand.
She had this sudden sense that the world had tilted underfoot while
her attention had been distracted by the conversation she'd just had. She lifted her head, turning her gaze to the door that led from the patio back into the restaurant.
her attention had been distracted by the conversation she'd just had. She lifted her head, turning her gaze to the door that led from the patio back into the restaurant.
No, she thought. That was too obvious. People'd freak if they saw her step through and simply disappear.
That was saying it would even work.
No, she told that little rational voice inside her head. It
will
work.
will
work.
She got up and went inside to the women's washroom. After making sure that she was alone in there, she took a breath, then moved toward the door of one of the cubicles, stone in hand, those red rock canyons firm in her mind. She pushed the door open and stepped through, then stopped dead in her tracks.
“Hol-ee ⦔ she murmured.
On both sides and behind her was the women's washroom of The Rusty Lion. But before her, where the toilet cubicle should have been, she was looking through a door that led out into a stunning vista of red cliffs and canyons, pines and hoodoos, with a sky so big above it defied any measurement.
Grinning foolishly, Wendy stepped back and the vista disappeared. But she knew she could have stepped through. She'd felt the breeze on her face, smelled the red dirt and the pines.
Oh, wait until I tell Jilly and Sophie, she thought as she went back toward her table on the patio, red stone stowed carefully away in her pocket.
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