The Paper Magician

Ceony nodded. Reaching into Emery’s still-warm chest, she pulled out her paper heart and pressed his own back into place.

Emery’s back arched and he sucked in a rush of air. The cavity closed so suddenly Ceony barely had time to pull her fingers free. The golden glimmer vanished.

Ceony held her breath. Emery remained still, asleep.

Pressing her ear to his chest, she listened for the heartbeat. It met her with a drowsy but steady PUM-Pom-poom.

She smiled. She didn’t have the strength to do anything more.

“He’ll be all right, but call a doctor,” she said, her voice light and airy. She thought she sounded like a child. She smoothed Emery’s hair back from his forehead and, though Mg. Aviosky watched from the foot of the bed, leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.

“Miss Twill—” Aviosky began as Ceony stood, but the woman didn’t finish her sentence, whatever it may have been. Perhaps because Ceony looked so terrible. Perhaps because Mg. Aviosky saw this as a good deed. Perhaps it was the way Ceony’s legs shook as though they had aged one hundred years in the space of one night.

Mg. Aviosky’s gaze prickled Ceony’s back as Ceony stepped away from Magician Emery Thane, pulled herself up the stairs, and collapsed into her own bed.



Ceony awoke with lead bones and a mild headache in the center of her forehead. Soreness had settled into her muscles—her legs and forearms especially—warning her of further soreness on the morrow. She felt her pulse tickling hot spots on her back where she had skidded across the rock shelf along the Foulness coast. Her stomach, though it felt quite small, chortled in protest for food, and she had hardly enough saliva in her mouth to swallow.

Someone handed her a glass of water.

She didn’t recognize the man kneeling at her bedside, but Mg. Aviosky stood behind him and helped Ceony prop herself up on a pillow. Ceony drained the cup in four and a half gulps and thirsted for more.

She noticed the conical stethoscope around the stranger’s neck—he looked about fifty, with thorough hair loss and round-lensed spectacles—and concluded he was the doctor she had asked Mg. Aviosky to retrieve. She hadn’t intended the doctor for her own use.

Morning light in the window told her she’d been asleep for some time.

“Dehydration,” the doctor said, pressing his finger into Ceony’s wrist, then watching to see how long his white print took to recolor. “And quite scratched. And in need of a bath. But you’ll certainly survive, Miss Twill.”

Ceony cleared her throat. “Emer—Thane—Magician Thane,” she stuttered, feeling her cheeks heat under Mg. Aviosky’s scrutiny. “Is he all right?”

Mg. Aviosky said, “As you predetermined, Miss Twill, he will be healthy after a few days’ rest. Dr. Newbold has affirmed it.”

Releasing a long breath of relief, Ceony sunk down into her pillow. Dr. Newbold leaned forward and touched his stethoscope to her chest with no formality, but doctors tended to be quite familiar. Nodding his head once, he said, “Liquids and soft foods for twenty-four hours. If you have to chew it, don’t eat it, unless you want to cramp.”

He rifled through a short-handled bag on the floor, one that had been patched several times, for Ceony noticed the stitchings along its seams were three distinctly different shades of black. From the bag Dr. Newbold pulled a shallow jar of green gel. It looked like the aloe cream the nurse at Tagis Praff always kept on the third shelf of the medicine cabinet between beds one and two.

“This will help your abrasions heal more swiftly,” he explained. “Twice a day, or whenever they sting.”

“And Em—Magician Thane?” she asked.

“No abrasions on him,” Dr. Newbold answered. “Magic wounds are a strange sort. Tricky. If he acts oddly after he wakes, call me back.” He held up a finger as a warning. “And let him wake on his own. The body often knows what it needs without our meddling.”

“But how will I know if he’s acting strange?” Ceony asked. “He’s strange already.”

Mg. Aviosky clucked her tongue, and Ceony felt herself smiling. When Mg. Aviosky clucked again, Ceony wiped the grin from her face and managed to force a flush down into her chest, where the magician wouldn’t see it.

To the doctor, Mg. Aviosky said, “Will you return tonight to check on his progress?”

Dr. Newbold shook his head in the negative. “No, no, I don’t believe it’s necessary. He seems stable to me, especially now that he’s in his own bed. I don’t like patients lying on the floor unless they absolutely must.”

“I can tend to him,” Ceony said, sitting up. Her back ached as she did. “I don’t mind, and it’s just watching to make sure nothing seems amiss, right?” she asked, glancing from the doctor to Mg. Aviosky. “I’m his apprentice and I’m all right. And I know you’re busy, Magician Aviosky.”