| Sophie Etoile | |
|---|---|
| Vital statistics | |
| Gender | Female |
| Race | Human |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Birthplace | |
| Date of Birth | Unknown |
| Location | Newford |
| Books appeared in | The Onion Girl, Dreams Underfoot |
Sophie Etoile is a half human-half Fae artist.
What[]
Etoile is half human-half Fae abstract artist and Jilly Coppercorn's "soul sister". She own and runs an art studio— Yoors Street Studio, Newford—the one that the Five Coyotes Singing Studio works out of.
Books and Stories this Character Appears In[]
- Dreams Underfoot #1 —
- "The Moon is Drowning While I Sleep" (13th story)
- "In the House of My Enemy" (14th story)
- The Ivory and the Horn #6
- The Onion Girl #11
- Tapping the Dream Tree #12
- Promises to Keep #21
- The Very Best of Charles de Lint — "The Moon Is Drowning While I Sleep"
- "The Moon Is Drowning While I Sleep" — Dreams Underfoot and The Very Best of Charles de Lint
Bio[]
✥ Sophie Etoile is the owner of the Yoors Street Studio in which the Five Coyotes Singing Studio works out of sometimes. She is one of the Newford art crowd and a Newford resident. She is the "soul sister" of Jilly Coppercorn since they understand each other so well and because they look so much alike. ~ The Wordwood
✥ Sophie is supposedly the daughter of the moon faerie. She travels to the Spiritworld via her dreams, where she has created the city of Mabon. There, her boyfriend Jeck Crow lives. ~ Characters
About[]
✥ Sophie travels to the Otherworld in her dreams and founded the city of Mabon. Her boyfriend Jeck Crow lives there. ~ The Wordwood
Personality and Character[]
Physical Decription[]
Sophie has soft auburn hair, which hangs in ringlets. She is described as having soft features, as though she had been rendered by Rosetti or Burne-Jones. Sophie tends to look tidy, despite generally always wearing t-shirts and baggy cotton pants.
Art / Talent[]
- Sophie is an abstract painter ~ Characters
- As an artist, Sophie has a penchant for painting bright colours and loosely-rendered figures.~ The Wordwood |Sophie Etoile
- Part of an artist's group called "Five Coyotes Singing Studio" with Isabelle Copely, Jilly Coppercorn, Meg Mullally, and Claudia Feder. ~ The Wordwood |Sophie Etoile.
Art Piece for Five Coyote's Group Show—Theme: child abuse[]
✥ Stolen Childhood, by Sophie Etoile. Copperplate engraving. Five Coyotes Singing Studio, Newford, 1988.
A child in a ragged dress stands in front of a ramshackle farmhouse. In one hand she holds adoll—a stick with a ball stuck in one end and a skirt on the other. She wears a lost expression, holding the doll as though she doesn’t quite know what to do with it. A shadowed figure stands behind the screen door, watching her. ~ "In the House of My Enemy" — Dreams Underfoot
Other Details[]
- Name of Studio: Yoors Street Studio
- There are no pictures of her in the Five Coyotes brochure: cameras don’t seem to work all that well around her.
- She has serial dreams in which she visits the city of Mabon in the dream world. This is due to her being half Fae.
- Jilly believes that Sophie possesses faerie blood, because she is the daughter of the Moon Faerie (Candida Etoile). ~ The Wordwood
- Sophie has a problem known as “the jinx,” since modern electronics & mechanical devices don’t work well around her.
- Sophie didn't believe the Crow Girls or Otherworlders existed... the only magic she saw in the world was what people made for each other.
Tribe of Friends[]
Creatures she Encounters:[]
Quicks, Bogles, Haunts, Crows, Hag-witch,
- Quicks and Bogles and small monsters. All eyes and teeth and spindly black limbs and crooked hands with too many joints to the fingers. The tree is full of crows and their cawing adds to the mocking hubbub of sound
History / Background[]
Connections (characters, places)[]
| Name | What | Connection | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jilly Coppercorn | artist; | close friend, "soul sister"; Five Coyote member | they're alike & understand each other so well; artist's group called "Five Coyotes Singing Studio"; |
| Wendy St. James | third member of trio |
"Tribe of Small Fierce Women"; Five Coyotes |
Jilly's phrase; trio: Jilly, Sophie, Wendy; |
| Jeck Crow | seventh son of a 7th son | boyfriend | can only appear human in the Otherworld as he'd be a crow otherwise; hair is as iridescent and black as a crow's wing; |
| Christy Riddell | writer | friend | tells her lucid dreaming is like consensual reality: if dream people agree it's real |
| Granny Weather | hag witch | her dreamworld | helps her rescue The Moon; Bogles ask Sophie's help against her |
| Bogles | dark creatures | trapped the moon | offered Sophie wish to let Moon die |
| Isabelle Copely | artist; | Fellow Five Coyotes member | artist's group called "Five Coyotes Singing Studio"; |
| Meg Mullaly | artist; | Fellow Five Coyote member | artist's group called "Five Coyotes Singing Studio"; |
| Claudia Feder | artist; | Fellow art group member | artist's group called "Five Coyotes Singing Studio"; |
| Candida Etoile | Moon Faerie | mother | Every month she leaves the Otherworld so that she can rejuvenate; Husband: Jean Etoile; |
| Mabon | city | her dream world | visits Jeck Crow there |
| Annie Mackle | young pregnant girl | staying with Jilly; she likes Sophie too | Jilly enters a crude drawing of hers in the "Abuse" show posthumously |
| Yoors Street Studio | Art Studio | houses the group | artists in the group work out of the studio sometimes for group projects |
Events in the Series (spoilery area)[]
✥ Dreams Underfoot — "The Moon Is Drowning While I Sleep": Sophie dreams of trudging through a bog and meeting a hag who shows her a woman tapped facedown with a giant rock pinning her with quicks, bogles, haunts surrounding her—she is The Moon. She next meets Jeck Crow; they become lovers. Both Jeck and Granny Weather urge her to save The Moon and how to do it. Finding strength and courage to face the monsters, Sophie goes to save the Moon and discovers things about herself. Not believing any of it is true, she visits Christy Riddell to ask about lucid dreaming. (from the story)
✥ "In the House of My Enemy" — Dreams Underfoot: Sophie was the one friend of Jilly's that Annie Mackle wasn't shy around. Annie named her baby after Jiily and Shophie—"
✥ Tapping the Dream Tree — "Granny Weather": the witch Granny Weather, captured by malevolent bogles, summons the aid of Sophie Etoile. Sophie saves her boyfriend, Jeck, in the Dreamworld by using lucid dreaming, personal sacrifice and good sense. ~ Charles de Lint: Tapping the Dream Tree (2002) Description (see reviews at bottom)