The Glass Magician

Something cold and metallic touched Ceony’s skin and snaked up the length of her torso. A chill swept over her.

“He’s here!” called a woman.

Somewhere in the shadows Ceony heard a man chanting, the mumbling of old and unfamiliar words. She felt heat in her skin. She knew that heat.

The chanting paused. “Get the glass out, or the spell will do nothing,” said the voice, calmer than the rest.

A wave struck Ceony, spinning her in the darkness. Rolling her over. A leech dropped from her skin, then another. The chanting resumed, as did the heat. Heat she had felt on Foulness Island.

Blurs of light mingled with the shadow. A broken sunrise.

An Excisioner.

No! Ceony’s mind screamed, but her lips didn’t move; her eyes didn’t open.

The leeches fell away, burned away, and the water sucked her down until the voices faded.




When Ceony opened her eyes, a halo of electric bulbs, none of which were lit, stared down at her like glass eyes with filament pupils. She blinked, focusing her vision. The bulbs protruded out of swirls of brass, which joined together like an upside-down bouquet plugged into the gray-slab ceiling—a ceiling she didn’t recognize.

She blinked again, slowly, her eyelids heavy. Her whole body felt heavy, as if it had been carved out of wood. Her dry tongue shifted in her dry mouth, tasting sand and sour. Her head ached—a calm, dull pounding deep in her brain.

She glanced down at an olive-colored blanket pulled up to her breasts, her arms lying parallel on top of it. A string with a tag hung off her left wrist. She stared at it until her eyes focused enough to read her name: Twill, Ceony. She shifted, feeling a stiff foreign material around her body. She craned against the thick pillow beneath her head to see what she was wearing—a white linen dress, or perhaps robe, that covered her nearly to the chin.

She looked to her right, taking in a row of empty hospital beds, white and flat with short, crib-like grating on the sides. An English flag and pole rested in the corner, near a door. A hospital. She was in a hospital.

When she looked to her left, a mobile curtain blocked her view of the rest of the large community room. Beside her bed rested a simple wooden chair without a cushion. The book A Tale of Two Cities lay open and upside down on it, about half-read.

She lifted her arm, surprised at its weight, and rubbed her eyes. She pulled it back and examined her hand.

That was when she remembered.

The house. Grath. The window, the mirrors. Blood, glass. Mg. Aviosky. Delilah.

She gripped the sides of the narrow mattress and tried to sit up, but the hospital spun around her and her empty stomach threatened to heave. She collapsed back onto the bed, the metal bars of its frame squeaking.

Once again, she lifted her hand and studied it, remembering the bits of glass that had been embedded in her flesh, remembering the pattern of the cuts marring her skin. She could still see them perfectly in her mind’s eye, but her hand bore no bandages, no scars. She lifted her other one, remembering how the glass shard had cut into her fingers when she wielded it, but it was equally unscathed.

A dream? But it had been so vivid, so real. And why would she be in the hospital?

How was she even alive?

She prodded the back of her neck—her hair bound in a loose tail—and felt for bruises, scars, but the skin felt smooth to her touch. She pressed against her bruised cheek, but felt no pain, only the pressure of her own fingertips.

“Ceony.”

She looked up to see Emery stepping around the curtain, dressed in the same clothes he had worn into the train station. Her heart raced at the sight of him, then drooped as she noticed the sling over his shoulder, cradling his right arm.

“You’re hurt,” she said, but the words came out as rasps.

Emery disappeared around the curtain, and she heard him call for water. Moments later a nurse in white came around the curtain with a pitcher and glass, which she set on a small table by Ceony’s bed. She filled the glass partway, then helped Ceony lift her head so she could drink.

The water sent cold chills down her throat and into her arms and legs, but she swallowed it in one gulp. The nurse prepared a little more, urging her to drink in smaller sips.

Ceony finished and coughed. The nurse pressed a hand to her forehead. “You seem well,” she said, “but I’ll have the doctor look at you. How are you feeling?”

Ceony glanced from the nurse to Emery. “Feeling?” she repeated.

“Please,” Emery said, “she only just awoke. Let me talk to her for a moment.”

The nurse nodded and left, leaving the pitcher and cup behind.

Emery refilled the cup and sat on the chair, moving the novel to the floor. He took Ceony’s hand in his—the one not held to his chest by the sling. His warm skin tickled hers.