The Paper Magician

A canyon. A giant crack zigzagged over the dry, bland ground far to her left. The . . . north, she supposed. It was as good a direction as any. No bridges spanned it; no rivers filled it.

Ceony approached the canyon carefully, testing the solidity of the ground around it as she neared. Bronze sand, the same color as the earth, filled its deepness. A deepness that Ceony could tell had once been much deeper than it was. As she thought it, she saw a handful of sand drop from midair and rain onto the canyon floor.

Crouching, Ceony felt the edge of the giant crack. None of it came away in her fingers, even when she scratched it with her nails. The rock stayed hard and firm. Another handful of sand dropped to the canyon floor, seeming to make no difference in the canyon’s depth whatsoever. But Ceony knew that enough handfuls would fill it, eventually. After all, it took time to mend one’s heart. Enough time could heal a heart as broken as this one. It was half-healed already.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?”

Ceony turned around to see Emery Thane standing before her in his indigo coat, looking just as he had at the banquet and the church, though more . . . tired. His shoulders slouched, and dark circles lined his eyes. He was a tad translucent, but Ceony didn’t point it out to him.

A sliver of the real Emery Thane. One she could interact with.

She answered, “Yes.”

He nodded once, solemn.

“But if you help me get out, I think I can save you,” she added, standing. “I’ve come all this way hoping there’d be a way out, at the end.”

Emery’s eyes scanned the expanse. “She’s too strong. I’ll never be able to stop her, or the others.”

“We can stop her if we work together,” Ceony assured him, and as she did, a realization struck her. Doubts, she thought. This chamber must be his doubts and regrets, just as the second chamber was his hopes. The heart had the dark to balance out the light, the uncertainty to balance the dreams. All carefully balanced, but with her caught in the middle. “But I need your help, Emery. I’m only an apprentice, and I haven’t been an apprentice for very long.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed, neither in agreement nor disagreement. His gaze fell to her bag. “May I see him?”

It took a moment of processing before Ceony understood the request. She carefully lifted Fennel from her bag and handed his broken body to Emery.

Emery examined the pieces, a slight frown touching his lips. He held out a hand. It took her a moment to understand what he wanted. Ceony reached into her bag and handed him paper, relishing the tingle it sent through her fingers.

He worked deftly, unsnapping the turquoise collar from about the crushed Folds and re-Folding, reconnecting pieces of paper. Ceony handed him a second and third piece of paper, watching with her hands clasped to her breast as Emery remade Fennel’s head, a perfect replica of what it had been before.

He handed the paper dog back to Ceony, who whispered, “Breathe.”

Fennel shook his head and squirmed in Ceony’s grasp, wanting to be put down. Ceony laughed and hugged the dog to her chest. Fennel licked her cheek twice before resuming his insistent squirming. Ceony set him down, and he ran in circles beside her, stretching out his legs.

“Thank you,” she said, grinning and wiping her eyes. “Thank you.”

He nodded, a slim acknowledgment of gratitude, and gazed over the expanse once more, toward the pink horizon. He didn’t seem to notice the canyon beside them.

“You might not live through this,” he said. “It will be my fault if you don’t.”

“Last I checked,” Ceony began, “I volunteered of my own volition to rescue you.”

“Yet you’re caught in your own curse,” he replied, gesturing to the nothingness before them.

Ceony pondered that for a moment before saying, “Emery.”

He glanced at her.

“I think you can break the spell holding me here,” she said, albeit with some hesitation. “After all, it’s your heart, isn’t it? You have more claim to it than anyone, especially Lira. How else could you be speaking with me if it weren’t true?”

She caught the slightest quirk to his lips—almost a smile, but the doubt that weighted the air prevented it from forming.

He didn’t reply, so Ceony asked, “Can you . . . see it? The spell? How it works?”

“No,” he answered. “But I can feel it. I suppose I could break it, though it will make me . . . tired.”

“Tired?” Ceony asked, the word reminding her of her own fatigue. “Will it . . . hurt you?”

Again, an almost-smile. This version of Emery Thane was more similar to the real one than the others, notwithstanding his pessimism. He said, “I think I’ll manage.”

Ceony beckoned Fennel to her. She felt light, invigorated, as if the last chamber hadn’t happened at all. As if her own chamber of hope had added this moment to its foundation. She could do this.

“I need you to teach me some new spells,” she said. “Anything that can help but won’t take much time. You taught me so much, but . . .”