The Onion Girl

  We should have left all this stuff in the hall, she thought, realizing too late how it would only remind Jilly of what she’d lost.

  You’re going to get better, she wanted to say. You’ll be drawing and painting again before you know it.

  Except what if she couldn’t?

  “So how were classes today?” Jilly asked.

  “Oh, you know,” Desmond told her. “It’s the same old. They all want to be able to paint, right now, without putting in the time to learn how.”

  “Who’s taken over my classes?”

  “Izzy and I are sharing them at the moment,” Sophie said. “Just until …” They can get someone to replace you, she almost said. “You get back.”

  “I think they should be looking for someone a little more long-term than that,” Jilly said.

  Desmond shook his head. “Ah, you’ll be out of here in no time.”

  Jilly hummed a few bars from “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” a song that Ani DiFranco had recently covered for the soundtrack to My Best Friend’s Wedding. They’d rented the video only last week, but Sophie’d slept through most of it.

  “So talk to me,” Jilly said. “What’s going on at the school? I feel like I’ve been in here for months.”

  “Well,” Desmond said in that slow drawl of his. “You know Hannah’s always had this thing for Davie Fenn, right?”

  “Oh, tell me about it. I was seriously thinking of going into high-action matchmaker mode with the pair of them.”

  “No need,” Desmond told her.

  Sophie nodded. “She asked him out on Saturday and he ended up spending the night at her place.”

  “Plus,” Desmond added, “there’ve been many sightings of them holding hands and kissing in public places.”

  “Oh, god, I’m missing everything,” Jilly said. “Details. I need some juicy details …”

  It was good to see Jilly more like her old self, Sophie thought, even if she did mumble some of her words and couldn’t bounce around the room the way she normally did. That was probably one of the oddest things about her being laid up like this. She was so still.

  But after a while Desmond had to go, and Sophie saw the false good cheer for what it had been.

  “There was a letter from Geordie in your mailbox,” Sophie said, digging among the paint tubes and brushes in her knapsack. “I brought it along.”

  “Can you read it to me?”

  “Of course.” Sophie hesitated. “It’s postmarked before the accident. You know he wants to be here, but he has to finish up that studio work first. He told Wendy that he’ll be flying in on the weekend.”

  “I miss him.”

  Sophie nodded. “We all do,” she said.

  Though not the way Jilly would.

  The letter provided a tonic in a way that Jilly’s many visitors couldn’t. It was filled with Geordie’s wry observations on life in L.A., gently poking fun at the Hollywood crowd he was mingling with because Tanya was in the movie business. Underlying it all was a general affection for Jilly that no one could miss.

  Jilly’s eyes were shiny by the time Sophie got to the end of the letter.

  “Do you think he’s happy there?” she asked.

  Sophie shook her head. “Not really. But I guess he’s making the effort for Tanya’s sake.”

  “He wasn’t going to go,” Jilly said. “I’m the one who talked him into going.”

  “But why? I know how you feel about him.”

  That crooked smile pulled at Jilly’s lips. “For all his scruff, Geordie likes a little glamour in a girlfriend. Just look at the women he’s always been attracted to. Remember Sam?”

  “She was gorgeous,” Sophie agreed.

  “Exactly. I can’t compete with that.”

  “You wouldn’t have to. First of all, you’re just as gorgeous.”

  “Right. It’s this gift I have.”

  Sophie ignored her. “And secondly, you’ve got way more going for you than just that. The two of you, you were natural for each other.”

  Jilly slowly shook her head. “I could never be physically close to him. Not the way he’d want. Or deserves. You know how I freak when things start to get intimate.”

  “Maybe it would have been different with Geordie.”

  “Maybe,” Jilly agreed. “But I couldn’t take the chance that it’d spoil what we did have.”

  Except now he’s gone and all you’ve got is him at a distance, Sophie thought. He’s somebody else’s lover, where he should have been yours.

  But there was no way she’d ever come right out and tell Jilly that. She didn’t have to. She could already see the knowledge sitting there in Jilly’s eyes.

  When Wendy arrived with Christy and his girlfriend Saskia, Sophie folded up the letter and put it in the drawer of Jilly’s nightstand, then gathered her things and said her good-byes. But she didn’t leave the hospital. Instead she took the stairs down to the cafeteria and got a sandwich and a cup of tea. She was on her second cup when Wendy came in, got herself some tea, and joined Sophie at her table.

  “How did it go at the studio?” Wendy asked. “Did you get it all cleaned up?”

  Sophie nodded. “It’s probably tidier than it’s been in ages.”

  “It must have been so hard, having to deal with all those paintings …”

  “It was the most awful thing you can imagine. But there was something odd about it as well. Only the faerie paintings were destroyed. Whoever did it left all the other ones alone.”

  “Why?”

  Sophie shrugged. “Why would anybody do it in the first place?”

  “You should tell Lou,” Wendy said. “It might be a clue.” She laughed. “I’m rhyming again.”

  Sophie smiled. “Well, you are our resident poet.”

  “I do try. Maybe I should become a DJ. Rappin’ Wendy, she’s really quite friendly.”

  Their laughter died away quickly. It was hard to maintain good humor at a time such as this. The guilt of having any fun at all while Jilly lay immobile upstairs reared immediately.

  “I will tell Lou,” Sophie said. She took a sip of her tea, studied Wendy over the brim of her cup. “How did you find her tonight?” she asked.

  “I’ve never seen her this bummed before. And it’s so weird, when you think about it. Jilly’s always the one who rises above things. Everyone comes to her with their troubles.”

  “The eternal den mother.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  Sophie shrugged. “I know.” She took another sip, then set her cup down. “But what really worries me is how all she wants to do is sleep and visit the dreamlands. It’s like nothing here means much to her anymore, now that she has access to that other world.”

  “As things stand,” Wendy said, “she hasn’t exactly got a whole lot waiting for her here.”

  “She’s got us.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Sophie sighed. “You’re right. But the real trouble is, she’s so caught up in mucking about in the dreamlands that she’s not putting any real effort into getting better. All she does is sleep.”

  “The doctor said she needs to rest—didn’t he?”

  “He also said she’s got to want to get better.”

  But Wendy wouldn’t let it go. “What harm is there in her getting a break from how horrible everything’s become for her?”

  “The dreamlands aren’t real.”

  “But they feel real, don’t they? Isn’t that what you always say about your dreams? It’s like they’re another life.”

  “‘Like,’ not ‘they are.’”

  Wendy shook her head. “You’ve even got a boyfriend there.”

  “But it’s not real.” Sophie tapped the table. “This is real. This is what she has to concentrate on now or she’s never going to get better. They can exercise those paralyzed muscles, but if she doesn’t put some effort into it as well, nothing they do is going to help.”

  “Come on,” Wendy said. “It’s not like she
wants to be paralyzed.”

  “Oh, god. I know that. It’s just …”

  “You can’t stand watching her slip away from us.”

  Sophie nodded.

  “The really sad thing is,” Wendy said, “if that’s what she wants to do, there’s nothing we can do to stop her.”

  That was what scared Sophie the most.

  “I was always afraid of this,” Wendy said after a moment.

  “Of what?”

  “That if Jilly ever actually got access to fairyland, she’d go and never come back.”

  “I can’t imagine the world without Jilly,” Sophie said.

  Wendy sighed. “That’s the trouble. I can. And it would be a horrible, boring place.”

  “We can’t let her go.”

  Wendy only nodded. She didn’t have to repeat what she’d said earlier. Sophie could still hear the words ringing in her head:

  If that’s what she wants to do, there’s nothing we can do to stop her.

  4

  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 deeper—an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access—telling 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 leg—a lot you can do with that, right?—and 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 die—something 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 Jamie—the clerk behind the counter, according to his name tag, if he hadn’t switched it with a co-worker—if 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 broad—which on that small frame makes it look big—dark 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 like—you know, the Puck from English folklore—except 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.