The Onion Girl (64 page)

Authors: Charles de Lint

BOOK: The Onion Girl

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They (fairy tales) make rivers run
with-wine only to make us remember,
for one wild moment,
that they run with water.

âG. K. CHESTERTON, from
Orthodoxy

It was you, it was you, who said that dreams come true
And it was you, it was you, who said that mine would, too
And it was you who said that all I had to do was to believe
But when your ivory towers tumbled down, they tumbled down
on me

âFRED EAGLESMITH
from “It Was You”

It's the family you choose that counts.

âANDREW VACHSS

Author's Note

I hope regular readers of my books will forgive the reappearance in these pages of the short story “In the House of My Enemy,” but having dealt with this element of backstory once already, I didn't have the heart to recast the events for this book simply to say it in new words. Jilly goes through enough already with what happens to her in this novel.

Special thanks to Holly Cole who, while she didn't write “The Onion Girl,” which gives this book its title, certainly made the song her own with the interpretation she did on her CD,
Dark Dear Heart
; Fred Eaglesmith for all those little pieces taken from the edge of life and for making them so heartfelt and real, and for letting me quote from his unrecorded song “It Was You”; Jane B. Winans for sharing her professor's comments on fairy tales; Gillian OâMeagher for bravely sharing her own horrendous experiences of surviving a car crash; Paul Brandon for reminding me of Jilly and Natty's friendship; Andrew and Alice VachssâAndrew for his ongoing support and Burke, Alice for all those intriguing animal stories; Honey Vachss for inspiration; David Tamulevich and Cat Eldridge for those wonderful packets of CDs they keep sending me, God bless 'em; Charles Vess, Rodger Turner, Pat Caven, Terri Windling, the Kunzies, and the Red Rock Girls for general goodwill and keeping me sane (or happily not, as the case might be); Karen Shaffer for bravely sharing her own war stories, and for kindly vetting the manuscript and being her red-slippered marvelous self; and to MaryAnn, as always, for her love, comfort, and support, her astute reader's eye and red pen, and for getting me to add those two chapters.

For those readers who continue to write and ask for musical references, inspiration was obviously well served by Holly Cole and Fred Eaglesmith, as noted above. (Which makes me think, I'd like to hear Holly cover a
Fred song.) But I was also charmed and swayed by any number of other albums over the year and a half it took to write this book. A few of the highlights were:
Places In Between
by Terri Hendrix;
Covenant
and
Over and Under
by Greg Brown;
Transcendental Blues
by Steve Earle;
The Green World
by Dar Williams,
Too Much Plenty
by Beki Hemingway;
Somewhere Near Paterson
by Richard Shindell;
Fists of Flood
by Jennifer Daniels;
Broke Down
by Slaid Cleaves; and
To the Teeth
by Ani DiFranco.

When I'm actually sitting down to write that first draft, however, the music tends to be instrumental, or in a language I don't understand. Along the lines of World and Celtic music, I was listening to: Robert Michaels; Kevin Crawford; LÃºnasa (my favorite Celtic group, bar noneâthanks, Paul, for that initial introduction); Kathryn Tickell; Lisa Lynne; Alan Stivell's
Back to Breizh; Tone Poems III
(a CD of slide and resophonic guitar and mandolin overseen by David Grisman); Kim Angelis;
Small Awakenings
by Kathryn Briggs;
Pipeworks
, a wonderful CD of Northumbrian piping by Rua's Jimmy Young; Los Lobos; Lila Downs (she has the voice of a Latina angel, not to mention a demon); Badi Assad â¦ well, you get the idea. I was all over the place.

This past year or so I also rediscovered the joy of Bill Evans's recordings for Riverside, particularly
Moonbeams
and
How My Heart Sings!,
and I can't seem to keep
Beyond the Missouri Sky
by Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell's
Good Dog, Happy Man,
or
The Tatum Group Masterpieces Volume 8
(featuring Tatum with Ben Webster) out of the player. I also keep returning to CDs by Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk, and Lester Young.

The above only scratches the surface, but I hope it will point my fellow music junkies to some of the pleasure I received from those artists.

If any of you are on the Internet, come visit my home page at
www.charlesdelint.com
.

âCharles de Lint
Ottawa, Autumn 2000

Chapter Seven originally appeared as a short story called “In the House of My Enemy,” in the collection
Dreams Underfoot
by Charles de Lint (Tor Books, 1993). Copyright Â© 1993 by Charles de Lint.

Grateful acknowledgments are made to Fred Eaglesmith and BASH Music for the use of lines from Fred's song “It Was You.” Copyright Â© by BASH Music. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information about his music, contact Sweetwater Music, General Delivery, Alberton, Ontario, Canada L0R 1A0, or visit his Web site at
www.FredEaglesmith.com
. For more information about BASH Music, contact them at 1218 17th Ave. South, Nashville, TN 37212, or on the Web at
www.bluewatermusic.com
.

By Charles de Lint from Tom Doherty Associates

ANGEL OF DARKNESS
DREAMS UNDERFOOT
THE FAIR IN EMAIN MACHA
FORESTS OF THE HEART
FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM
GREENMANTLE
I'LL BE WATCHING YOU
INTO THE GREEN
THE IVORY AND THE HORN
JACK OF KINROWAN
THE LITTLE COUNTRY
MEMORY AND DREAM
MOONHEART
MOONLIGHT AND VINES
MULENGRO
THE ONION GIRL
SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING
SPIRITS IN THE WIRES
SPIRITWALK
SVAHA
TAPPING THE DREAM TREE
TRADER
WIDDERSHINS
THE WILD WOOD
YARROW

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE ONION GIRL

Edited by Terri Windling

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^Â®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429911276

First eBook Edition : March 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

De Lint, Charles.

The onion girl/Charles de Lint.

p. cm.