The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Series, Book 1)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  His fingers seized her hair once more and hauled her to her feet. “Dark and dangerous waters . . . ,” he repeated.

  A new laughter—Lira’s laughter—filled the room, and Ceony felt herself crack like a hot glass pan set in snow. She didn’t see the woman, however, and Shadow-Emery didn’t seem to hear her. At least, he didn’t react.

  “Didn’t you know, little girl?” Lira’s distant voice echoed through the dark office, as if her larynx had been embedded into the very walls. “The rules of Excision are very clear cut, especially for the heart.”

  “I d-don’t understand,” Ceony said with a dry tongue, her eyes locked on Shadow-Emery’s, her fingers clutching his to keep him from pulling her hair from her scalp.

  Lira laughed again, the sound somewhat fainter. “No man can harm his true love within his own heart. Don’t you see what that means?

  “He doesn’t love you, you beef-witted girl.”

  She laughed again, thinking the situation truly wholesome and fun, and then the noise faded. Where she went, Ceony didn’t know—the laughter died out like a fire caught in the rain. With Ceony so thoroughly trapped, Lira must have abandoned the heart to finish whatever it was she had planned. Another gruesome spell. Escape across the ocean, with Emery’s heart in tow.

  Emery would die if she did.

  More tears trickled down Ceony’s face, and she squeezed Shadow-Emery’s wrist. “I know,” she whispered. I know you don’t love me.

  Not yet.

  And it was that last thought that drove her.

  “Do you think you’re the only one who’s done something wrong?” she asked. “Do you really think no one in this world has made a mistake but you? Are you so blind that you can’t see beyond this room?”

  Shadow-Emery snarled, but Ceony didn’t flinch. She dug her nails into his wrist until he released her hair; then she pushed him back. She would not be the mouse in this. She would not.

  “What about Lira?” she asked, gesturing to the door as though the Excisioner stood behind it. “What about what she’s done?”

  Shadow-Emery’s glower only darkened.

  “What about me?” Ceony asked, fainter, pressing both palms to her own heart. “What about my mistakes? I think about them, too, but where would I be if I thought of nothing else? What sort of person would I be if I drowned in them?

  “What about the time I was supposed to pick up my baby sister from school because my mom was having surgery on her foot?” she asked. “It was the middle of January, but I didn’t go because I had a diorama I was supposed to present in English the next day and I wanted to get it done. It took me three hours, Emery! Three hours my sister stood in the cold, waiting for me. She got pneumonia and almost died because my homework was more important than her!

  “And I’ve stolen before,” she continued, taking a small step forward. “I saw an old man drop six quid on the side of the street and I pocketed it. Took the long way home so he wouldn’t notice.”

  Shadow-Emery cackled once more. “You think those are comparable to these blackened halls? You think your cold sister and sticky fingers tip the scales?”

  “Who gave you the right to judge my mistakes against your own?” Ceony shot back. Her heart wrenched with guilt, twisting as her own memories bubbled up. “Do you want to know why I lived in the Mill Squats for so long? My dad had a good job as a chauffeur for the prime minister’s family, but when I was twelve I stole the buggy and crashed it into the queen’s wall. My dad lost his job and all our savings went to pay for that automobile. We had no money left, so we had to move to the gloomy side of town, all because of me. All because I wanted to drive a buggy and didn’t listen when my parents told me no.

  “And what about Anise? Hm?” she asked, more tears sliding down her face. “Do you know about Anise Hatter? Do you?!”

  Shadow-Emery didn’t answer.

  “She was my best friend!” Ceony cried. “She was my best friend, and our first year of secondary school was hard on her. I don’t know why, because I never asked. She just waned, withdrew into herself, became sickly. And one day before winter break she asked me to come by and see her. Said she wanted to talk. I was late. It doesn’t matter why, but I was late. And when I got there I found her in her bathtub with her wrists slit up to her elbows.”

  Ceony covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a sob. How vivid that memory was, even with the years masking it from the rest of the world. How many nights after that incident had Ceony lain awake, wondering what would have happened had she arrived just a half hour earlier? For someone else, they would have blurred together, become a mass of days full of grief and tears.

  But Ceony’s memory was perfect, and she had counted those nights. Seventeen. She remembered every hour spent crying, every nightmare of Anise’s white face and her bloodied arms, her glass eyes staring into nothing. She remembered every counseling session and every bad grade that followed.

  The worst part was knowing everything—remembering everything. Everything but the reason why. Anise hadn’t even left a note. Even her own parents had been speechless at the funeral.

  “Was it my fault?” Ceony asked, almost whispering. “Was it my fault she killed herself?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Was it your fault Lira and the others killed that family?”

  She sucked in a long breath, swallowed, and murmured, “I forgive you.”

  Shadow-Emery twitched.

  “I forgive you, Emery,” Ceony repeated. “I’ve seen all of it, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t intend any of this to happen.” She blinked away tears and stifled a sob lurking deep in her throat. “But I forgive you. It’s okay now.”

  He shifted. Warm hope sparked in Ceony’s chest. Something she had said had hit him. She took one step toward him.

  He growled and seized her by her upper arm, flinging her back to the floor.

  “You don’t have the power to forgive,” that low, unnatural voice spat.

  “Then forgive yourself!” she shouted, pushing herself back up. She pressed her palm against the wall for support. “Everyone has a dark side! But it’s their choice whether or not they cultivate it. Don’t you understand? Lira’s exploited hers, but not you. Not you, Emery Thane.

  “You’re a good person!” she exclaimed, her own voice ricocheting off the walls as Lira’s had moments before. “I’ve only known you less than a month and even I can see what a good person you are!”

  Shadow-Emery retreated into the shadows.

  “So let go,” she begged. “Let go of the hate, the anger, the sadness. And let go of me. I can’t help you if you don’t let go!”

  The office around her flashed red and peach. A laborious PUM-Pom-poom filled the air, which became hotter, moister. Ceony blinked and found herself once more in the literal chamber of Emery’s heart, silent save for its waning beat. Empty, save for herself and the broken pieces of Fennel at her feet.

  Dropping to her knees, Ceony collected the pieces of her paper companion with reverence, smoothing crumpled corners and folding them carefully along their original creases.

  “You’re a good boy,” she whispered as she stacked the pieces one on top of another, filling her lungs to their limit with every breath to keep from crying. She was tired of crying, and like her mother had always said, crying solved nothing.

  After setting Fennel into her bag, she pulled free a piece of bread and swallowed it half-chewed, enough to alleviate the hunger cramping her belly.

  She eyed the valve across the carpet of skin and veins.

  “One more,” she promised herself. “One more until the end. And even if there’s no door to freedom, at least you know you tried. One more, Ceony.”

  CHAPTER 14

  SHE PASSED THROUGH BLINDLY, pushing her tired limbs through the tunnel that constricted around her like the big snakes at the London Zoo. But as Ceony had decide
d with Shadow-Emery, she would not be the mouse. With a grunt and an extra shove with her left leg, she reached the other side of the valve.

  Just like chamber three, the fourth chamber opened up already playing a vision, though this vision seemed . . . different. Ceony did not find herself in a room, garden, or city. She had a feeling that this place was not a memory, either. She had never seen this landscape before, and she had a distinct feeling that, outside of Emery’s heart, it didn’t exist.

  Before her stretched miles and miles of dry ground—not quite desert, but not quite anything else, either. Just tired, bronze ground stretching in all directions, unbroken by mountains or rivers or forests. Not a single weed or mound marred its surface. It stretched forever until it met a gray-blue sky lined with pale cerise, a sky perpetually caught in the moments before sunrise. Nothing broke the sky, not a single cloud or strip of color, no birds or seedlings caught upon the wind. There was no wind.

  Ceony smelled nothing, not even the scent of dust and earth, and she heard nothing outside of herself—no crawling creatures, no whistles, thunder, moans, threats. No weeping, no rain. No heartbeat. Silence surrounded her. Endless silence on an endless plane.

  Only one thing disturbed the endlessness of the place. One thing, one very large thing that no heart-traveler could ever miss in her adventure.

  A canyon. A giant crack zigzagged over the dry, bland ground far to her left. The . . . north, she supposed. It was as good a direction as any. No bridges spanned it; no rivers filled it.

  Ceony approached the canyon carefully, testing the solidity of the ground around it as she neared. Bronze sand, the same color as the earth, filled its deepness. A deepness that Ceony could tell had once been much deeper than it was. As she thought it, she saw a handful of sand drop from midair and rain onto the canyon floor.

  Crouching, Ceony felt the edge of the giant crack. None of it came away in her fingers, even when she scratched it with her nails. The rock stayed hard and firm. Another handful of sand dropped to the canyon floor, seeming to make no difference in the canyon’s depth whatsoever. But Ceony knew that enough handfuls would fill it, eventually. After all, it took time to mend one’s heart. Enough time could heal a heart as broken as this one. It was half-healed already.

  “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

  Ceony turned around to see Emery Thane standing before her in his indigo coat, looking just as he had at the banquet and the church, though more . . . tired. His shoulders slouched, and dark circles lined his eyes. He was a tad translucent, but Ceony didn’t point it out to him.

  A sliver of the real Emery Thane. One she could interact with.

  She answered, “Yes.”

  He nodded once, solemn.

  “But if you help me get out, I think I can save you,” she added, standing. “I’ve come all this way hoping there’d be a way out, at the end.”

  Emery’s eyes scanned the expanse. “She’s too strong. I’ll never be able to stop her, or the others.”

  “We can stop her if we work together,” Ceony assured him, and as she did, a realization struck her. Doubts, she thought. This chamber must be his doubts and regrets, just as the second chamber was his hopes. The heart had the dark to balance out the light, the uncertainty to balance the dreams. All carefully balanced, but with her caught in the middle. “But I need your help, Emery. I’m only an apprentice, and I haven’t been an apprentice for very long.”

  “Hmmm,” he hummed, neither in agreement nor disagreement. His gaze fell to her bag. “May I see him?”

  It took a moment of processing before Ceony understood the request. She carefully lifted Fennel from her bag and handed his broken body to Emery.

  Emery examined the pieces, a slight frown touching his lips. He held out a hand. It took her a moment to understand what he wanted. Ceony reached into her bag and handed him paper, relishing the tingle it sent through her fingers.

  He worked deftly, unsnapping the turquoise collar from about the crushed Folds and re-Folding, reconnecting pieces of paper. Ceony handed him a second and third piece of paper, watching with her hands clasped to her breast as Emery remade Fennel’s head, a perfect replica of what it had been before.

  He handed the paper dog back to Ceony, who whispered, “Breathe.”

  Fennel shook his head and squirmed in Ceony’s grasp, wanting to be put down. Ceony laughed and hugged the dog to her chest. Fennel licked her cheek twice before resuming his insistent squirming. Ceony set him down, and he ran in circles beside her, stretching out his legs.

  “Thank you,” she said, grinning and wiping her eyes. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, a slim acknowledgment of gratitude, and gazed over the expanse once more, toward the pink horizon. He didn’t seem to notice the canyon beside them.

  “You might not live through this,” he said. “It will be my fault if you don’t.”

  “Last I checked,” Ceony began, “I volunteered of my own volition to rescue you.”

  “Yet you’re caught in your own curse,” he replied, gesturing to the nothingness before them.

  Ceony pondered that for a moment before saying, “Emery.”

  He glanced at her.

  “I think you can break the spell holding me here,” she said, albeit with some hesitation. “After all, it’s your heart, isn’t it? You have more claim to it than anyone, especially Lira. How else could you be speaking with me if it weren’t true?”

  She caught the slightest quirk to his lips—almost a smile, but the doubt that weighted the air prevented it from forming.

  He didn’t reply, so Ceony asked, “Can you . . . see it? The spell? How it works?”

  “No,” he answered. “But I can feel it. I suppose I could break it, though it will make me . . . tired.”

  “Tired?” Ceony asked, the word reminding her of her own fatigue. “Will it . . . hurt you?”

  Again, an almost-smile. This version of Emery Thane was more similar to the real one than the others, notwithstanding his pessimism. He said, “I think I’ll manage.”

  Ceony beckoned Fennel to her. She felt light, invigorated, as if the last chamber hadn’t happened at all. As if her own chamber of hope had added this moment to its foundation. She could do this.

  “I need you to teach me some new spells,” she said. “Anything that can help but won’t take much time. You taught me so much, but . . .”

  “But it’s not much use against an Excisioner.” He nodded. “I know.”

  Emery considered for a moment, a crooked finger tucked under his chin. “How much paper do you have left?”

  She pulled the diminished stack from her bag and presented it to him.

  He examined the paper, his eyes bobbing as he counted the pieces, and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I’m going to teach you something I really shouldn’t be teaching you.”

  “But given the circumstances,” she urged.

  He nodded. His lip quirked. “Given the circumstances. Just pretend to forget it once this is over . . . if either of us makes it past this.”

  “We will,” Ceony assured him with a grin. “I know we will. I have some ideas of my own, but I’m not sure they will work.”

  She knelt down, tucking her soiled skirt under her knees, and set the stack of paper on the hard earth beside her. Dirty paper should work just as well as clean, and she didn’t exactly have a table at her disposal.

  Emery watched her for a moment, his eyes lacking their normal luster. Despite that, his expression still proved easy to read—curious. Doubtful, but curious. Finally he asked, “Why are you doing all of this?”

  Ceony paused, one hand on the stack of paper. Fennel nuzzled her elbow. “Doing what?”

  He gestured to the empty expanse surrounding them. “This. All of this. Why have you come so far to help me?”

  She felt her cheeks grow warm and she looked away, stroking Fen
nel to occupy her hands. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to tell this sliver of Emery Thane. She could never utter the words to the magician himself, but knowing the man she spoke to was only a figment pieced together by a suffering heart lent her courage.

  “Because I think I’m falling in love with you,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks redden like the cerise sunrise. “I know I haven’t known you long, but after all this . . .” She lifted her eyes to the horizon where earth met sky. “I feel like I’ve known you forever. I don’t know how many women can claim to have walked a man’s heart, but I’ve walked yours, Emery Thane. And I like the dog.”

  His expression didn’t change save for the tilt of his lips, which very nearly formed a smile before tuckering out and returning to their flat, doubtful line.

  “Very well,” Emery said, kneeling across from her and pulling up his long, baggy sleeves. Not exactly the response she was hoping for, but a start. He continued, “I’ll start with the most complicated first, the one I shouldn’t be teaching you.”

  Ceony nodded as he reached for a sheet of sea-green paper.

  His eyes met hers. “Do you know what happens when paper vibrates very, very fast?”

  “Something I’m not supposed to know,” she guessed.

  “Correct,” he replied. “But allow me to explain . . .”

  CHAPTER 15

  CEONY FINALLY TUCKED HER last paper spell into her bag, careful not to disrupt the organized chaos within. Organized chaos—many necessary things all needing careful placement. Ceony understood Emery’s method of interior decorating just a little better now. She and Emery had not used every piece of paper, just most of them, and their many intricate Folds made the bag bulge at Ceony’s hip.

  Her fingers fluttered over the shield chain around her torso, pinching each link to test its security. After checking the entire chain twice, she called Fennel with a whistle and a snap.

  Emery stepped aside to let the paper dog pass. Fennel’s expertly crafted paws left four-toe prints in the thin layer of dust covering the dry, flat earth, but the prints vanished nearly as quickly as they appeared.