The Onion Girl Read Free Page A

trees. I head over, happy to have something new to focus on. When I get there, I find a guy sitting with his back against one of the trees, legs sprawled out in front of him. He’s wearing jeans, scuffed work boots, and a T-shirt with faded writing on it that I can just make out. Oh, and he’s got the head of a coyote or wolf, but I know who he is all the same.
    â€œHey, Joe. I haven’t seen you for a while.”
    Joseph Crazy Dog’s the only guy I know who’d be wearing that “Don’t! Buy! Thai!” T-shirt in the dreamlands. Like they have boycotts here.
    Unlike Sophie, he’s up-front about his otherworld origins. The funny thing is, no one pays much attention to that. Most people just assume he’s this city Indian come down from the rez, living on the street, and he won’t take his meds. Or they know him as Bones, sitting in Fitzhenry Park, telling fortunes with a handful of what gave him his name, scattering the rodent and bird bones on a piece of deerskin, reading stories in how they fall. Stories about what’s been, what is, or what might be.
    The wolf head shimmers while I’m standing there, morphing into the face I know with its dark, coppery cast and broad features. Square chin, eyes set wide, nose flat. His long black hair’s tied back in a single braid festooned with feathers and beads. I’ve always loved his eyes. They shift
like mercury, one moment the clown, one moment the wise man. Impossible to capture in a painting. I know; I’ve tried.
    Joe shrugs in response to my greeting. He takes another drag from his cigarette as I sit down beside him.
    â€œYou know how it is,” he says. “I’m always crossing back and forth and you’ve been busy.”
    â€œIt seems like I’m always busy. Maybe I spend too much time trying to be too many things for too many people.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t be the first, though you do seem to have made more of a career of it than most. Could be this accident of yours is the spirits’ way of telling you to spend a little time on yourself for a change. Kind of like forcing the issue.”
    â€œWhat accident?”
    â€œSee, that’s what I mean. You just don’t pay enough attention to yourself.”
    Sometimes Joe can drive me crazy with his obliqueness.
    â€œIs this one of your lessons?” I ask.
    Joe’s been working with me on and off for a couple of years now to prepare me to be able to cross over into the spiritworld like he does, walking in my body. The way that came about was out of this long conversation we had, back when Zeffy and Nia got lost in the otherworld. I wanted to accompany Joe while he was looking for them, but he wouldn’t let me.
    The way he put it was, “It’s dangerous for anybody, walking there in their own skin, but especially for someone like you. You’re like a magnet for the spirits, Jilly. Got a light inside you that shines too bright. I’ve told you, I can teach you how to navigate that place, but you’ve got to give me a few years so you can study it properly.”
    â€œBut Sophie just goes there,” I said to him then.
    â€œSure she does,” he told me. “Only she doesn’t go in her skin. She dreams her way across—she’d have to, seeing how she shines about as bright as you—and that’s the only way you can go, too, until you learn more.”
    â€œI don’t have those kind of dreams.”
    â€œMaybe you just don’t remember them.” He smiled at me, those crazy eyes of his grinning. “That light you carry’s got to have come from somewhere. I don’t know many people who shine so bright without having touched a spirit or two along the way.”

    â€œI guess,” I said. “I only wish I could be the one to decide when it happens.”
    â€œYou’ve got to accept your blessings as they come. Most people don’t even get one, and when