The Paper Magician

“No more games,” Lira snarled, taking another step, then another. Ceony backtracked, her gun slipping from her clammy fingers.

Her back bumped into the rock shelf, her elbow touching Mg. Thane’s heart.

The cavern twirled before her and Ceony felt herself fall, a sudden whoosh swooping around her. The sunlight at the mouth of the cave jerked from her eyes and she hit something warm and firm. A loud PUM-Pom-poom sounded all around her.

“Oh, the bane of the unprepared,” crooned Lira’s low-pitched voice around her, echoing between unseen walls.

She broke the echo with a heinous cackle that unsettled every nerve in Ceony’s body. “Now I have Emery and his suckling brat.”





CHAPTER 8



A STEADY THREE-BEAT DRUM surrounded Ceony, vibrating in the very floor itself. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a crimson-cast room, its walls more bowed than straight. The one to her right appeared concave, and the one to her left looked convex. Even the floor wasn’t flat. She could see via a muted light, but when she searched she found no candles, lanterns, not even a single electric wire. The room’s heat pressed into her, and when she tried to stand she stumbled, the constant PUM-Pom-poom beat shaking her already shaky legs.

Fennel barked beside her—it seemed Lira’s trap, whatever it was, had caught him up as well.

She spied a narrow river of what looked like blood flowing between the wall and floor to her right, and she gasped. She had seen something like this room before, only it had been very small and had lain out on a metal table enchanted to stay cold. She had seen it after she had removed it from a dead frog.

This was Mg. Thane’s heart, and Ceony stood inside it.

PUM-Pom-poom. PUM-Pom-poom. Ceony couldn’t tell if she heard the throbbing walls or her own chest. She breathed hard and deep and spun around, examining the strange chamber, feeling as though her body couldn’t get enough air.

Something dark caught the corner of her eye and she turned to see Lira, who held the Tatham pistol in her hands like a child’s toy. She slipped the trigger guard over her index finger and spun the gun around her knuckle.

Fennel growled a soft, papery growl, and Ceony scooped him into her arms, trying not to look as terrified as she felt. The muscles in her legs had turned to icicles.

Lira smiled. “Emery surrounds himself with fools. The heart trap was only a backup. Someplace I could put you where you wouldn’t run away.”

She stilled the pistol and clasped it in her right hand, looking as if she could crush it. “Did you really think you could beat me with this?”

Ceony gaped. She trembled. She had to get away. She couldn’t face Lira, not like this. She wasn’t prepared. She knew nothing of the dark arts, what to expect or how to combat them. She hadn’t thought this through at all!

She took a step back, and Lira took two steps forward. Sweat beaded on Ceony’s back, gluing her shirt to her skin. Ceony stepped back once more—

—and the entire chamber shifted around her.

She nearly dropped Fennel as the red, fleshy walls morphed into a blue sky speckled with wispy clouds, the bloody streams transformed into carpets of lush, green grass. The distant beat of Mg. Thane’s heart dulled to a quiet echo. Ceony smelled clover and sun-heated leaves, felt a warm summer breeze on her face. A few thick-boughed, leafy trees sprang up some ways away from her, one dangling an umber birdhouse from its second-lowest branch. Numerous gray boxes occupied the space between the trees and herself. Each stood about four or five feet high and seemed to be made of shorter weathered boxes.

Ceony’s gaze shifted back and forth, fear and confusion coating each other in her thoughts. She wiped her hands on her skirt.

Laughter touched her ears.

She whirled around and saw four children before her, their heads sporting broad-brimmed canvas hats with tightly woven nets draping over their faces and necks, and long gloves pulled up past their elbows. Their ages looked to range from three to twelve, or so Ceony guessed.

Fennel wriggled from under her arm and jumped down on the grass, running about to join the children. He ran quickly for having legs made of cardstock.

A round honeybee buzzed by her, and by instinct Ceony swatted it away. It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed the buzzing speckles surrounding each of the gray boxes, swarming and churning like humming clouds.

Ceony’s lip parted in surprise. Was this a honey farm?

In the middle of Thane’s heart?

A tall, thickly built man approached a buzzing box behind the children. He wore sturdy canvas over his entire body, tucked into his shoes and drawn with a string under his chin. Ceony had a difficult time seeing his face through the netted veil hanging from his hat, especially when honeybees began crawling over it.