Bits about Jilly
CHARACTER
NAME: Jilly Coppercorn
FANDOM: Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint
TIMELINE PERIOD: Not long after the conclusion of the book
BACKGROUND:
What can be said about magic that hasn’t already been written down, talked of, sung and painted? Having touched on that, the reader should be aware that this has absolutely nothing to do with that. Not in the direct sense anyway. Jilly Coppercorn has lived an…..interesting life.
Certainly, her early life was not one a person would envy.
Jilly, who at the time went by a different surname that is of little importance, was all of three years old the first time her eldest brother first started molesting her. Events escalated over a period of five years, usually taking place when her parents were either out drinking or sobering up in the kitchen. At the age of 8, her mother walked in on one of her brother’s rape sessions. The woman walked out of the room, waited till her eldest had finished and then proceeded to berate her 8 year old daughter of being a slut. Jilly was immediately ostracized from her family. Her father, in a misguided attempt to help her, beat her eldest brother and sent little Jilly to a psychiatrist. Jilly who had a surname of no consequence, lost her trust and her faith by the time she turned 9 years old.
She ran away from home for the first time at the age of 10. The summer of her 11th birthday, she made it as far as Newford, a misty port city in California. Newford is a dot on a map filled with druggies, yuppies, artists, hippies and fairies. Things happen in Newford. Nothing less interesting or less strange then the things that go on in other port cities that pepper the Southern Pacific coast, but it must be noted that in Newford, things HAPPEN.
An 11 year old Jilly lived on it’s streets for six months, living primarily off of stale McDonalds food that had sat under the heat lamp too long and was thrown out at the end of the day. She stayed awake at night, mostly from fear of the things that lurk in the dark (things that every little girl knows about and has nothing to do with any sort of vampire or boogeyman). She slept in the daytime, in parks, abandoned cars, wherever she was sure she wouldn’t be caught. She kept clean by washing up in restaurant bathrooms and a particular gas bar where the attendant took a liking to the child and would buy her lunch on his paydays.
She first started drawing at this time, hoping to sell her drawings to tourists. They were nothing particularly noteworthy, done on what paper she could find and pencils. She relied mostly on panhandling and shoplifting. Inevitably she was caught. Due to her slight stature, she wasn’t able to pass herself off as an older child, on top of that her parents had put out a missing persons report (their reasons were beyond her). Rather than going home, Jilly ended up bouncing around foster homes- the foster parents holding surnames even less noteworthy than her original- and the Home for Wayward Girls. When she was 13 and in her fifth or so foster home, she was molested again.
This time, to summarize her words, she didn’t take any crap, booted the pervert in the balls and lit out of there back to Newford. It was there she met one Robert Carson, a young man she eventually ended up getting a room and getting into heavy drugs with. Out of money, food, dope, bills due, too high to panhandle, Mr. Carson comes up with the brilliant idea to sell Jilly’s body for some quick money. Jilly protests, but one thing leads to another. Old Rob finds a man who pays front with heroin and before she knows it, Jilly’s messed up from the smack, crying and the guy’s telling her to go down on him.. 10 minutes and $40 transaction later, Jilly finds herself gagging and vomiting in the gutter and Robert has decided that his new life’s ambition is to be a pimp.
Three years later, Old Rob’s running 5 other girls, but Jilly pays him off with two grand she’s been skimming what she was already giving him and leaves the prostitution racket. Things, however, do not get any better for the girl. Still a junkie, no ID, no skills except for a little bit of drawing when she isn’t lit, which is all the time. She finally collapses and is picked up by a rookie cop named Lou Fucceri who introduces her to the Grasso Street Angel.
It is at this point in Jilly’s long and painful life that things really begin to turn around. It is at this point that Jilly first adopts a surname of consequence. One of her own invention in a split second. Jilly Coppercorn.
Flash forward some 10 odd years or so. Jilly is in her mid 20s and a successful painter, her favorite subject being the streets of Newford with the unexpected addition of faries and wee folk. Well…. She waitresses on the side and lives in a small apartment that maybe isn’t in the BEST part of town, but she’s clean and has accumulated a hodge podge of friends. Open hearted and open minded. A firm believer in magic thanks to not-so-distant-past experiences she only tells to the right sort of people. A believer in consensual reality, the theory that what we see is just what everyone has agreed is real, not what is actually there (although suddenly appearing in Rivelata is a bit out of left field, even for her).
She’s still dealing with scars from her past. Although she puts everything on the line for her friends and has touched many lives, at this point in her story, Jilly herself is unable to keep a romantic relationship. She has plenty of guy friends, but as soon as a guy starts putting out romantic vibes, she gets spooked. The scars run too deep still and from time to time, they are reopened by the painful loss of a friend or being unable to save another who’s suffered from the same abuses as herself.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Jilly remains strong and continues to reach out to others and to paint the streets of Newford with it’s hidden population.