The Paper Magician

“Please live,” she whispered to Mg. Thane. “I don’t mind being a paper magician if you’re the one to teach me, so please live. Otherwise I’ll be ornery for the rest of my life and no good to anyone.”


She touched his hair, took a deep breath, and retreated back up the stairs to wait. She thumbed through the library, picking out books on Folding and flipping through their pages, pausing wherever something looked important or interesting, then staring at the pictures—or the text—until she felt the information write itself in her memory. She listened for Mg. Aviosky’s stirring downstairs, hoping the woman would sleep long.

Instead, her ears picked up the faintest tapping on the library window.

She turned and saw a paper bird in the morning light, its tail bent at an awkward angle and the tips of its right wing ragged, as though it had experienced a bit of a stir. Opening the window, the green bird flapped in. It was the first of the six she had crafted.

Ceony cupped the paper creature in her hands. “Tell me you found her. Tell me you saw something, please.”

The bird hopped.

“Is that a yes?”

The bird hopped.

“Could you take me there? If I mended you?”

The bird hopped.

Growing jittery, Ceony set the bird down and straightened its tail, then shuffled through Mg. Thane’s things until she found some glue, which she used to seal the tiny tears on the bird’s wings. It pecked at the stuff, getting glue on its paper beak.

“Stop that,” Ceony said, hefting her heavy bag onto her shoulder. She scooped up the bird, stepped into the hall, and then stopped.

What would she do, hire a buggy? How would she explain? Could she even afford one? How far out was Lira? The paper bird couldn’t tell her.

And what if Mg. Aviosky had woken and was waiting for her to come down? She had no time to argue her way out! She had to move swiftly, before Lira did . . .

Pausing, Ceony turned about and looked at the stairway behind her, the one that led to the mysterious third floor. The “big” spells, as Mg. Thane had put it. Even during Mg. Thane’s absence, she hadn’t ventured up there. Could something useful be up there?

Swallowing hard, Ceony took the stairs two at a time. The top seven all groaned in protest of her weight. She wondered if the knob would be locked, but when she reached out and clasped it, it turned with only mild resistance.

She smelled old dust and mildew, and the temperature felt decidedly cooler than downstairs. The third floor looked to be all one room with an extraordinarily high ceiling from which dangled a rope that opened a door facing the sky.

Ceony gaped at the two things the morning light streaming through dirty windows revealed to her. Fennel hopped up the stairs behind her and sniffed her shoes.

The first was a giant paper glider, the sort that boys folded at their desks and threw at girls they liked when the teacher’s back was turned. The second looked very similar to the bird Ceony held in her hand, albeit unfinished.

Both were three times the size of the buggy that had dropped Ceony off at the house just weeks earlier.

“You are mad,” she whispered, walking toward the glider. It had a thin coat of dust on the top, and two handholds near the nose. No seat to sit in, no belt to strap in.

Surely Mg. Thane hadn’t flown in this. No one could fly! It must have been a prototype. Surely a man couldn’t find groceries a bothersome chore if he could retrieve them in this!

She marveled at it, and the handholds near its nose. So it did fly, or was supposed to. Only something like this would enable her to catch up to Lira. Mg. Thane depended on her.

For the first time since her assignment, Ceony found herself wishing for a more boring solution.

Straightening her shoulders and balling her hands into fists, she said, “Let’s go, Fennel,” and walked around the glider’s long wing. One hand on the green bird and the other on her bag, she stepped over the glider’s nose and straddled it. The thick paper had been greatly reinforced and didn’t bow under her weight.

Thank the heavens.

Ceony pulled the cord to the door in the ceiling. A few dead leaves fell down on top of her, carrying the scent of dew and the sound of birdsong.

Taking a deep breath, Ceony lay on her stomach and grabbed the handholds of the glider. She could only pray it worked like an animation, or else she’d never find the right spell in time.

She commanded the bird, “Take me to Lira.”

The little bird flapped its wings and flew out the door.

“Breathe,” Ceony told the glider.

It bucked beneath her like a wild bull. Ceony shrieked. Fennel jumped onto the glider and growled.

Ceony gripped the handholds and pulled them toward her.

The glider arched its pointed nose upward and took off through the gap in the roof.





CHAPTER 7