The Paper Magician

“As a child,” Ceony said, glancing to his face.

He turned the paper over and over, Folding it up and up, somehow managing to get each Fold perfect without a ruler. “The trick is to make it even,” he explained. “Every panel must be the same length and width, or the spell won’t hold. You can measure it if you like, but focusing on that first Fold and using it as a guide works just as well. If there’s anything left over, you can cut it off.”

He finished the fan, having nothing to spare, and pinched its bottom. “It doesn’t need to be secured,” he added. Turning the fan away from Ceony and toward the door, he flapped it lightly. One, two, three gusts of wind spat out from the paper, too strong to be ordinary, but too weak to do any harm.

He set the fan down. “Simple enough. I want you to practice it while I’m gone.”

The words tumbled over one another in Ceony’s mind. “G-Gone?” she repeated. “Gone where?”

“Magician’s business, as usual,” he said, standing. He left his board on the floor and returned to the stack of things he’d brought in. “The Art of Papier-Maché,” he said, reading the title of the lowest book in the stack. He pointed to the ledger above it. “I want you to record notes on it while you read. Take thorough enough notes and I won’t make you write a report.”

Ceony’s jaw fell. “But—”

“A Living Paper Garden,” he said, gesturing to the next book in the stack. “Do the same. I bookmarked chapters five, six, and twelve; they have exercises in them I’d like you to do. And A Tale of Two Cities. It’s just a good book. Have you read it?”

Ceony stared at the paper magician, words caught in her throat. He’d gone mad again. He’d tricked her into thinking he wasn’t mad, and yet now he’d proved—

“And I want that paper fan perfected,” he added, withdrawing his hand. “Made well, it can give gusts that would embarrass a thunderstorm. And the reading I previously assigned you.”

Shaking her head, Ceony stood and asked, “How long do you plan to be gone?”

Mg. Thane shrugged. “Hopefully not too long. It’s quite the bother to break one’s routine too many days in a row. Do you know Patrice’s contact information, just in case?”

“Patrice?” Ceony repeated, her voice a little higher. “Magician Aviosky? I . . . yes, but—”

“Excellent!” Mg. Thane clapped her on the shoulder and strode out of the library. “I’ll be on my way. Try not to burn anything down.”

Ceony followed after him. “You’re leaving now?”

“I am,” he replied as he vanished into his bedroom. Somehow in the few minutes between receiving the telegram and delivering the pile of homework to the library, he had managed to pack a bag. He returned to the hallway with it in tow. He swept a hand back through his dark hair, and in that moment Ceony saw a flicker in his eyes and a thinning of his lips. He was worried.

“Is everything . . . all right?” she asked, hesitating at the threshold of the library, unsure of her bounds.

“Hm?” he asked, his countenance smoothing between ticks of the library clock. “Quite fine. Do take care, Ceony.” He walked down the hallway as far as the lavatory, where he turned around and added, “And keep the doors locked.”

Ceony watched him disappear down the stairs and listened to the quiet padding of his shoes below. Fennel licked her sock.

Hurrying to the library window, Ceony peered outside to see Mg. Thane walk past the paper flowers in his yard and beyond the warded gate, down the dirt road. Did he have a buggy waiting for him?

Ceony didn’t realize she had her face pressed to the glass until her breath fogged her vision. The paper magician stepped out of her line of sight and left her alone in his cluttered, barely familiar cottage set in the middle of no-man’s-land.

Keep the doors locked.

Ceony’s heart drooped in her chest.





CHAPTER 5



PAPIER-MCHé IS TRADITIONALLY DONE in two forms, Ceony wrote in her ledger with a tired hand, paper strips and paper mulch, to which is added either glue or starch.

Sighing, Ceony set her pencil down and stared across her bedroom to its single window over the bed. The sun cast leafy shadows across her pillow.

Would Mg. Thane return today? She didn’t have even a tenth of her latest homework stack completed if he did. Surely he wouldn’t penalize her for that, but Ceony had come to learn that the paper magician only sometimes did what she expected.