The Paper Magician

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 magician 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.

“What’s in Solihull?” Ceony asked. The city was over a hundred miles away, to the northwest.

Mg. Thane gave her a small smile—one of his odd smiles, for it was all lip and no eye—and said, “Just a friend.” He then turned on his heel and strode out of the library, nearly stepping on Fennel as he went.

Ceony peered after him, watching him cross the hall and disappear into his bedroom. What sort of friend had been “found” in Solihull?

She stood there a moment, wondering at the light fleeing from her mentor’s eyes. She had the feeling of reading a story with all its even pages torn out. What did that telegram say?

Chewing on her bottom lip, Ceony sank back into her chair and returned to her frog, only half her mind on its Folds. She had begun forming its back legs when Mg. Thane returned with a large stack of things in his hands, paper and books and ledgers and pencils. He dropped them beside Ceony and straightened up two paper stacks on the desk before speaking.

“A spontaneous lesson,” the paper magician announced, taking a sheet of off-white typewriter paper from the desk. He picked up his board and sat cross-legged on the floor. Hesitating a few seconds, Ceony took another sheet of the same and joined him.

“Watch carefully, this will be quick,” Mg. Thane said, setting the paper longways before him. He Folded up an inch of it, creased it with his thumb, then turned it over to Fold it up another inch.

“A paper fan,” he explained, flipping the paper over again. “I’m sure you’ve made these before.”