The Glass Magician

Their small tour group gathered together by the side of the shuttle. For the second time that day, Ceony felt as though someone was watching her. Gooseflesh sprang up on her arms, but none of the other apprentices seemed to notice—their attention was focused on the mill. Perhaps being in a new city had heightened her paranoia.

“I think it could look quite nice with some curtains,” Delilah suggested.

“And some perfume,” Ceony added. Still, she imagined that all the paper she had Folded these last three months must have come from this mill, so that meant something. Without this factory, she would be out of a job.

A tall woman in a purple jacket and an alarmingly short skirt that barely covered her knees appeared from inside the first building just as the shuttle drove off. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and her eyelids were lined perfectly with kohl. She cradled a clipboard in the nook of her left elbow.

“Hello, hello,” she said, counting each head with a bob of her finger. She took dainty steps around the pebble-strewn road. “Seems we’re missing a few. Will they be on their way?”

Ceony glanced around her. “I think this is it.”

“Oh. Well, all right. Still a decent group.” The woman nodded. “My name is Miss Johnston, and I’ll be your tour guide today. Please stay together as a group, and don’t touch anything unless instructed to do so. If we can do this, the tour will move along swiftly.”

George mumbled something under his breath, but Ceony didn’t catch it. Likely for the best. She found herself disliking the man just a little bit more every time he opened his mouth.

Miss Johnston scribbled something onto her clipboard. “This way, follow me,” she said as she led them into the first building, over a path of old stonework that had been repaired several times over with mismatching mortar. The single door into the factory was tucked under a faded brick arch, and Miss Johnston continued to chatter as the apprentices entered the building single file. “Sir John Spilman built the first paper mill in Dartford in 1588. The Dartford Paper Mill was initially founded and built by the London Paper Mills Company in 1862 after excise duty on paper was abolished. Then it was restructured in 1889. The paper mill helped industrialize Dartford, which was traditionally a hub for chalk mining, lime burning, the wool industry, and other forms of agriculture.”

Delilah leaned close to Ceony and asked, “What’s lime burning?”

Ceony shrugged.

They walked into a large reception foyer with green and gray floor tiling and very sparse furniture. A great many potted plants, ranging from petunias to leafy ferns, occupied every corner and cranny. Ceony spied no electric wires—all the light emanated from the tall, age-stained windows over the door. To her surprise, the broccoli smell diminished somewhat in this foyer. That, or Ceony’s nose had grown accustomed to it.

A secretary behind a high beige desk glanced up at the group as it entered, but the apprentices didn’t hold her interest for long.

“Back here are meeting rooms for our employees,” Miss Johnston said, walking backward and gesturing to two unpainted doors on the far side of the room, half-hidden by a wild-looking fern. “As you follow me into this hallway, you’ll hear the water race beneath your feet. The mill pumps water from the river through a half dozen Smelted turbines beneath the factory, which power our newest machines, all of which were made right here in England. The Dartford Paper Mill prides itself on keeping all its affairs native.”

As the tour continued, each ensuing room required more explanation than the last on how the different machines worked, what each employee did, and the history behind anything and everything in view. They walked through the large collection room that made up the entire back half of the first building, where logs that had been carried in by boat were ground in a wood chipper before being sent to the pulp room. Though Miss Johnston kept the tour group far away from the chipping itself, Ceony still had to cover her ears. She couldn’t hear Miss Johnston’s endless lecture on the workings of the mill until they reached the pulp room, where the smell of broccoli and unbrushed teeth grew so strong Ceony would have gagged had Delilah not handed her a spare handkerchief to cover her nose with.

Unfortunately, most of the interesting parts of the mill, such as the forming and pressing sections, lingered far behind the yellow paint lines on the floor that dictated where tour groups were allowed to walk. Rows of boxes and half-empty shelves blocked the machinery, which Ceony would actually have enjoyed seeing.