The Master Magician

“Mm hm,” the paper magician replied. “Just in a different buggy.”


Ceony smiled—what a wonderful day this was turning out to be!—and reached up with her free hand, running it along the side of Emery’s head. “I still can’t get used to how short it is. Why did you cut it?”

“So I’d look more gentlemanly.”

Ceony snorted, but the mischievous glint in Emery’s eyes made her wonder if his statement was, perhaps, not a joke.

Emery didn’t call a buggy; he already had one parked outside the hall and just down the street. The driver waited by the engine and opened the door for them when they arrived, and he smiled when he saw Ceony’s uniform. All of England will know I’m a Folder when I wear this, she thought, leaning against the back of the seat. No more aprons. I’m legitimate now. This time next year I might even have an apprentice of my own!

That boggled her mind. Would more Folders be assigned at the end of the school year? Was she even ready to train an apprentice?

“Maybe I’ll start volunteering at the school,” Ceony said. “Tagis Praff, I mean. Perhaps I can do a guest lecture or become a teaching assistant. There aren’t any Folders employed there, and more students might sign up for Folding if they understood it better.”

“Not a bad idea,” Emery said with a smile. “I’d comment on the commute, but I suppose your glassiness would get you there quickly.”

She nodded. “I’ll order a Gaffer’s mirror to minimize any accidents.”

“Only now does she think about minimizing accidents,” Emery murmured. He laughed. “You are an enigma, Ceony. To think how dull my life would have been over the last two years had I not been forced to tutor you . . .”

“You, forced?” Ceony scoffed. “Pardon me, Magician Thane, but I wanted to be a Smelter.”

“You want to be everything,” he countered.

“Well, if the option exists . . .” She grinned and turned in her seat, watching the late-afternoon sunlight whip through the buggy windows, dancing about Emery like fairies.

“Hmm?” he asked.

She exhaled slowly through her nose. “Just thinking.”

“About how much you adore me?”

“About how skinny you are,” she teased. “I leave for three weeks and you can’t even feed yourself properly.”

“I’ll amend it soon enough.”

Ceony began to speak, but spotted the post office outside Emery’s window. She turned about and looked out her own.

“We missed the turn,” she said. “Ruffio’s is down Steel Drive.”

“Oh, we’re not going to Ruffio’s just yet,” he explained. “We have a quick stop to make first. Your family knows.”

“I take it this is the ‘favor’ you asked my father about?”

“Mm.”

Ceony relaxed in her seat and pulled off her white gloves as she watched buildings and people zoom past her window. The stop was apparently not at all close to the bakery where she was to meet her family—the buggy continued down the road, pulling farther and farther away from Steel Drive. The buildings outside her window grew less commercial and shrank in size until they turned to houses, and then the spaces between houses stretched wider and wider. The buggy eventually turned off the paved street and took a narrow dirt road that cut between two grassy knolls.

She turned back to Emery. “Where are we going?”

Rather than meeting her eyes, Emery looked ahead, watching the scenery unfurl through the windshield. “You’ll recognize it.”

Ceony, lip pinched between her teeth, twisted back for her window and leaned closer to it, fingers resting on the buggy door. Wind tousled her hair, but the clip holding it back remained firm.

The knolls grew in number as the buggy continued onward. Their grassy faces became wilder, more unkempt, and some began to sport trees. Wildflowers in shades of fuchsia, marigold, and amethyst coated an especially large hill just off the bumpy road, and the tips of grass were beginning to turn golden under the late-spring sun.

The buggy slowed, and Ceony stared at that flowery hill. She did recognize it, though she had never stepped foot on it, not in reality. No—this was a place cherished in Emery’s heart, one she had seen embedded in his hopes. One she had seen in the vision given to her by a fortuity box two years ago.

Her heart raced. It hammered against her ribs and the base of her throat. A cool sensation like falling water cascaded over her. She didn’t even notice that Emery had left the buggy until he came around to her door and opened it.

He took her hand. Leaving her framed certificate on the seat, Ceony stepped out of the buggy and followed Emery wordlessly up the hillside. Her heart pounded harder with each step, and not because of the exercise.

They reached the top of the hill, upon which grew a familiar maroon-leafed plum tree, its fruit only days from being ripe.