The Paper Magician

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Ceony shook her head no.

  Mg. Thane dropped to the floor with his board, setting the square of paper on top of it. “Let’s see how astute you actually are, Ceony,” he said. A challenge, then.

  She focused. The paper magician Folded the paper from corner to corner so it made a triangle. The thick parchment held the Fold well. “This is a half-point Fold—any Fold that turns a square into a triangle. And this is a full-point Fold”—he Folded the paper in half again—“any Fold that turns a triangle into a smaller triangle. With none to spare, of course.”

  Ceony nodded, watching quietly. He had done these two Folds when making the paper bird yesterday, before turning them into a second square and then the kite. He had her repeat the Folds and say their names, all while emphasizing that the paper’s edges had to be completely aligned for the magic to take. Then his eyes took that faraway look again, becoming not quite as bright as they should have been.

  “We’ll start you on animation,” he said, peering out the window again. “It’s a good place to learn the Folds.”

  “I can work on this,” Ceony said, “if you need to do something else.”

  Though deep in that space of wanting and knowing, she wished he’d stay and teach her.

  What a silly thought that was.

  Mg. Thane nodded and stood, his long coat rustling about his legs. She felt the disappointment keenly. When he disappeared into the hallway, Fennel poked his head in and trotted right up to Ceony’s hip, where he turned around three times before lying down and sleeping. Ceony had a feeling a dog made of paper couldn’t get tired, though. Must have all been in the enchantment.

  She held her half-point and full-point Folds in her hands and stared out the open doorway, wondering after Mg. Thane. A thread of guilt tugged between her ribs as she remembered his working late to create Fennel for her. But surely that couldn’t be the source of his . . . mental absence. And she’d been on her best behavior. Today, at least.

  “I ought to make it up to him,” she murmured to Fennel. “After all, any apprentice needs her magician’s favor, or I’ll be here six years instead of two.”

  Though her mind knew the Folds, she practiced them until her hands knew them, too, then resigned herself to the kitchen, where she pulled spices and wines out of the cupboards and recited Pip’s Daring Escape under her breath, testing out different voice inflections that might coax the images on page four to life. She set one pot of water on the stove to boil for pasta and washed out last night’s saucepan, setting it on the stove as well. She melted butter and added flour and milk to start a white sauce, something with lemon and garlic to go with the tied-up chicken in the icebox. When she couldn’t find a lemon, she settled on tomato and basil. Everyone liked tomato and basil, and if Mg. Thane kept the ingredients stocked in his house, Ceony could be confident that he liked them as well—and that they were safe to use. Ceony had noted throughout her life that people with one sort of allergy often had others. She’d already started her apprenticeship on the wrong foot; hives would only make the other foot wrong, too.

  When the chicken was nearly done, the bread sliced, and the sauce stirred into the penne, Mg. Thane emerged from his study.

  “I need to give you more assignments if you have time to do this,” he commented as Ceony peeked into the oven to check on the poultry. “I don’t think this house has smelled this good since I’ve lived in it.”

  Ceony stifled a grin at the compliment and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I wanted to thank you, for everything. And apologize, for my behavior yesterday. I wasn’t quite myself.”

  “This wasn’t necessary,” he said, his bright eyes curious.

  “It will be done in just a minute,” she said, scuttling to the cupboards to locate the green ceramic bowl she had seen earlier. It rested on the highest shelf, so Ceony climbed onto the counter to grab it. “If you want to sit down, I set the table already.”

  Mg. Thane smiled, or did something between a smirk and a smile. It touched both eyes and lips. “All right. Thank you. But then I’m assigning you reading material and giving you two hundred sheets of paper to Fold.”

  Ceony dumped the pasta into the ceramic bowl and set it on the table first, then carefully transferred the chicken and roasted vegetables to a broad plate—Mg. Thane had no serving trays—and set that in front of Mg. Thane. He said nothing, but the arch of his eyebrows told her he was impressed. At least, Ceony hoped that’s what it meant. It could also have meant that the magician had been saving that chicken for something else, and noted that Ceony had cooked it without permission. If that were the case, hopefully the taste would smooth out any hard feelings.

  Ceony sat on her chair on the other side of the square table, then stood up again and asked, “Do you know how to carve a bird?”

  “I believe Jonto does.”

  Ceony paled. She spied mirth in his eyes. Was that a joke?

  Regardless, she picked up a fork and knife and sliced into the chicken herself. Gathering a few teaspoons of courage, she asked, “I was also wondering if my apprenticeship included a stipend of some sort, or a wage.”

  Mg. Thane laughed—light laughter that didn’t come from the chest or the throat, but somewhere in between. “Ah, I understand. The plot thickens.”

  Ceony flushed. “No, what I said earlier was sincere, really. But people should talk over dinner, especially if they’re going to live in the same house, and I thought my wages would be a good place to start, is all.”

  “The school board decides your stipend,” Mg. Thane said, scooping up some tomato-basil pasta onto his plate. “So yes, you have one. I believe it’s ten pounds a month, plus anything else I decide to pay you on the side.”

  Ten pounds? She focused on loading her own plate to hide her wide eyes. More than she had thought. She could send half of that home every month, should she be frugal.

  She glanced back to the paper magician. “And . . . what will you pay me on the side?”

  Mg. Thane held his fork loosely in his hand. “I’ll not starve you, if that’s your worry.”

  Ceony considered his tuna and rice and thought to make a point on the note of starving, but she bit back her tongue and took her seat. The paper magician made no move to say grace, and she seldom did, so she cut herself a morsel of chicken, watching him from the corner of her eye.

  He stabbed his fork into two pieces of pasta and raised them to his lips. He tasted them, chewing, and his eyes brightened just a bit more. “I’d say, Ceony,” he said after swallowing, “had I not been present for the lessons, I’d think you’d found a way to enchant pasta.”

  Ceony smiled. “You like it?”

  He nodded, scooping up another bite. “It tastes just as good as it smells. That’s a sign of a well-rounded person. I should congratulate you.”

  “On my person or my pasta?”

  Light danced in his eyes. He didn’t answer.

  Ceony tasted her chicken, relieved it wasn’t too dry. Three bites into her own dinner, Mg. Thane said, “Oldest of four.”

  “Two sisters, one brother,” Ceony replied. “Do you have a large family? You seem like someone who suffered through a great deal of sisters.”

  “I’ve suffered through a great many people, but none of them sisters. I’m an only child.”

  That explains a few things, Ceony thought.

  A few seconds of silence passed between chewing bites. Not wanting the time to grow long, Ceony asked, “When do you get groceries?”

  He glanced at her. “When I run out, I suppose. Groceries are my most dreaded chore.”

  “Why?”

  He lowered his fork and leaned his chin onto his hand, elbow on the table edge.

  “They require going to the city,” he stated. “And it’s hot out, besides.”

  Ceony paused as she cut into the next morsel of chicken. “Do you
freckle?”

  He laughed. “Now there’s a conversation turn—”

  “I mean,” Ceony began, “I could understand not going outside if you freckle.” She glanced to her hands, spotted with freckles of her own. They had a tendency to cover any bit of skin exposed to the sun between March and October.

  “I don’t freckle,” he said. She must have been frowning at her hands, for he added, “And there’s nothing wrong with freckles, Ceony. Heaven forbid you look like everyone else in this place.”

  Ceony smiled and shoved some pasta in her mouth to keep the grin contained.

  “And since you have so much extra time,” Mg. Thane said, “your first quiz will be tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER 4

  MG. THANE KEPT HIS promise by giving Ceony her first quiz the next morning—six o’clock in the morning, to be precise, and with Jonto as his messenger. Ceony awoke to the skeleton’s Folded countenance grinning inches from her nose and shrieked loud enough to bring Fennel, who had been sniffing for mice in the living room downstairs. Ceony commanded the skeleton to “Cease” as Mg. Thane had earlier, and to her relief, the paper butler fell into a harmless heap of cardstock bones at the foot of her bed.

  A small, almost thoughtless spell, but for the first moment since bonding to paper, Ceony felt like she might actually have some real power.

  Mg. Thane quizzed her on the different paper types he had shown her in his office the day before. Thanks to her keen memory, Ceony got all of them right. The paper magician graded her with a content nod, then left her to her studies.

  Her “studies” included reading the textbooks Mg. Thane had assigned her. She started with Marcus Waters’s Guide to Pyrotechnics, as it sounded the most interesting, but the print was tiny and the book was only sparsely populated with figures, making it somewhat difficult to understand. She read only half a chapter. After a trip to the kitchen for toast, she started on Anatomy of the Human Body Volume I, which proved a much more fascinating—if slightly grotesque—read.

  Over the next few days Ceony helped herself freely to the paper stacks in the library to practice her basic Folds. Mg. Thane had a habit of quizzing her at random times and without warning, so she fought to learn quickly. Thursday he quizzed her twice. Friday she practiced so many Folds she developed a blister on the tip of her right index finger. As a result, on Saturday Mg. Thane taught her how to make snowflakes—the same that had fallen from the library ceiling her first day as an apprentice.

  “Cuts follow the same rules as Folds, more or less,” he explained, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the library with his board across his lap. “You must make them precise if they’re going to work, unless they’re for decoration. Then it doesn’t matter.”

  “Are these decoration?” Ceony asked, thinking of the small snowflake she had filched and hidden in her desk drawer. Last she checked, it had still felt cold.

  Mg. Thane Folded a white square of paper into half-corner Folds, which turned it into a narrow triangle. “What do you think?”

  She thought of the falling snow, the intricate snowflakes in all shapes and sizes scattered over the carpet. Each had been unique, just like real snow. “It’s decorative,” she answered.

  “Very astute,” Mg. Thane said, lifting a pair of scissors. “There is one cut that the snowflakes must have in order to become cold. Observe.”

  He held up the triangle and pressed his scissors into its thickest Fold, cutting just a centimeter below the highest point. He sliced out a small almond-shaped portion of paper and let it tumble onto his board.

  “Chill,” he commanded. Nothing happened to the paper that Ceony could see, but when he handed it to her, it felt frosty. The coldness soothed her blister.

  “The rest is creative inclination,” he said.

  By Monday the kitchen had run low on groceries.

  “I can fetch them myself,” Ceony said. “I don’t mind.”

  Mg. Thane looked up from his desk, where a small ledger sat open, its cover pinned down on one side by a mug of lemon tea and on the other side by a butter knife. He held a pen in his left hand. “That’s not a requirement, Ceony,” he said.

  “I don’t mind,” she repeated, smoothing the pleats in her skirt. “If I’m going to live here I might as well pull my weight.” And I wouldn’t mind taking a break from this house. “I can’t keep making decent meals with the scraps left in your cupboards, if I may say so.”

  Mg. Thane smiled, again more in his eyes than in his mouth. “Also not a requirement. How is your reading coming?”

  “I’m finished with human anatomy, and nearly finished with the Tao one.”

  Mg. Thane turned around in his chair and scanned the shelves behind him. Leaning down, he pulled a thick volume from the bottom shelf to his right and held it out to her. Its cover read Anatomy of the Human Body Volume II.

  Ceony frowned and took the book.

  “But if you insist,” he went on, “I can call a buggy for you. Don’t be out too late.” He tapped the uninked side of his pen to his lips. “I suppose I should teach you animation. When you get back, then.”

  He handed her several bills—she was surprised that he trusted her with his money already—and went back to his ledger.

  Her lessons in animation didn’t actually start until her second week of tutelage. She began by prepping an eight-inch square of yellow paper with all its Folds, which she had to name as she completed them. The result was a crinkled square that had a starlike pattern pressed into it. Prepping the paper would make subsequent Folds easier to make, though the final creation would be more sluggish—so Mg. Thane explained.

  “Now,” the paper magician said, demonstrating on his own square of paper without preparation Folds, “we’ll start simple. A frog.”

  Ceony remembered the demonstration of the paper frog from her first day. She remembered it well enough that in her mind’s eye she could see Mg. Thane’s fingers forming every Fold, and she felt confident she could create an identical creature without additional instruction. However, she kept this information to herself and watched the paper magician work, searching for any Folds her memory may have missed. She found none and mentally patted herself on the back.

  “Breathe,” Mg. Thane commanded his paper frog, and the animal shook with spirit and hopped from his hand. The paper frog made it two feet from Mg. Thane’s knee before the magician commanded it “Cease” and left it inanimate once more.

  Despite the seeming simplicity of the spell, Ceony’s hands itched to complete it. She steadied them, not wanting to appear hotheaded, not wanting to shirk Mg. Thane’s lesson. She waited for his permission to Fold.

  Her back stiffened just a bit, and she glanced to her yellow square of paper, retracing memories from the past several days. When had that strain of discipline entered her head? She couldn’t recall making the decision to sit as obediently as a paper dog.

  She glanced to Fennel, who scratched behind one of his paper ears in the corner by the door.

  Licking her lips, Ceony began Folding, regardless, following the same steps Mg. Thane had shown her. She felt his eyes on her—an oddly heavy stare—but he made no comment.

  Careful to line up the paper’s edges just so, Ceony formed a paper frog and held it out in her hand, examining her slightly crinkled creation. She whispered “Breathe” to it, and to her relief, the animal came alive. It wiggled one leg, then the other, and jumped sleepy jumps in her palm. A smile tickled her lips.

  Fennel lifted his head and peered toward her, sniffing the air.

  “Well done,” Mg. Thane said. “I want you to practice making them a few times before attempting them without the preparation Folds. Tomorrow we’ll start on cranes and jays.”

  “Only one day on frogs?” Ceony asked as Mg. Thane rose from the floor, his strange indigo coat falling around his legs as he did so.

  The paper magi
cian quirked a dark eyebrow. “You hardly need more than a day,” he said, gesturing to Ceony’s still-hopping frog with his chin. “You’re coming along rather well for someone who wanted to be a Smelter.”

  Ceony started and dropped her frog, which rolled over onto its back and squirmed like a capsized beetle. Fennel rushed across the room and batted at it with his paws. “How did you know about that?”

  Mg. Thane merely smiled and set his Folding board beside the desk, not an inch off of where it had been placed before, centered between the desk’s front-left and back-left legs. “Don’t forget your reading,” he added, and he left the room.

  As promised, Ceony received lessons on Folding birds, as well as fish, and was later quizzed on Folding frogs without paper preparation. She failed that test, but only because Mg. Thane insisted her frog had to beat his in a race, and she lost by two yards. A bizarre way to rate her performance. Ceony would have protested had her teacher not promised she could retake the “test” as many times as she wanted before he submitted her grades to Tagis Praff.

  It was while Folding yet another frog for this challenge that the telegraph in the library began to click. Ceony sat at the library desk, having pushed aside several stacks of paper to give herself a decent workspace, and started at the sudden tap-tap-tap of the telegraph. Fennel, snoozing at her heels, leapt up and began barking at the contraption, though his quiet paper larynx couldn’t compete with the machine. Setting down a half-finished lime-green frog and scooting her chair back, Ceony stood and hunched over the telegraph, eyes scanning the slip of paper jutting out from it.

  found in solihull stop

  The words whipped away from her eyes as a new hand pinched the message’s corner and pulled it from the machine. Ceony didn’t need to turn to know Mg. Thane stood behind her. She spied the name Alfred at the end of the message as it flew past her.

  She stepped back and watched Mg. Thane read the note, his bright-green eyes holding their secrets, for once. She found nothing in his expression save for concentration and a spot on his chin where he had missed shaving that morning. He read the telegram in the space of half a breath and crumpled the paper in his hands.