The Paper Magician (3 page)

“Nonsense,” Mg. Thane said as he hunched over the board, seemingly unbothered by the hair falling into his eyes and the long sleeves hindering his hands. “I have a personal motto to never Fold on one’s lap.”

Ceony’s blundering thoughts paused at that. “
One’s
lap, or your own?” she asked.

Mg. Thane glanced up at her and she spied laughter in his eyes, even if it didn’t quite sound in his throat. “I think a person would think me quite peculiar if I were to Fold in his lap, wouldn’t you say?”

“They might think you peculiar besides,” she said, only processing the words after they had passed from her lips. She flushed. Her well-practiced snarkiness had tasted so much sweeter before the man’s revealed philanthropy. Perhaps the best way to handle the situation with her donor-gone-teacher would be to act like nothing extraordinary had happened just minutes ago. That would be easiest.

It helped that Mg. Thane smiled before returning his eyes to the board before him. “Everything is made of Folds,” he explained as he worked, Folding a square sheet of orange paper in half, then in half again. “But you know that. The trick is getting the Folds right. Everything must be aligned just so, or the spells won’t work. Just as you can’t enchant a mirror if it doesn’t reflect a perfect image.”

“Or bake a cobbler if you don’t have the right ingredients,” Ceony said softly. Mg. Thane only nodded, but she felt even that small approval was important. Ceony watched his average-looking hands move the paper this way and that, rotating it and flipping it over. It bent under his touch like water, and he never struggled in getting the paper to obey his direction. Ceony studied the movements, storing their images in her memory.

Mg. Thane Folded the paper into what looked like a kite, then opened it into a tall diamond. Not too complex. Still, Ceony couldn’t see the bird among the paper until he had nearly finished. Not a bird like those hanging in the kitchen, but one with a long neck and tail, and broad, triangular wings creased to perfect points.

He held it out in his palm and said, “Breathe.”

Ceony inhaled, but the command hadn’t been for her.

The paper bird shook its head, and though it had no legs, it hopped once on Mg. Thane’s hand before flapping its orange wings and taking to the air. It flitted around the library, bobbing through the air almost like a real bird. Ceony watched it with wide eyes. It circled the room twice before perching upon a high shelf holding an assortment of calligraphy books.

She had heard of animation, of course, and seen Jonto for herself, but actually watching the magic unfold was, well,
magical
. She had never seen this sort of spell before. No paper magicians taught at Tagis Praff. And, as Mg. Aviosky had said, England had only twelve registered. Thirteen, once she completed her apprenticeship. But that was two to six years away, and Ceony still had difficulty imaging herself as a true Folder.

But she dearly wanted magic, even magic as simple as this.

“And you can do that with anything?” Ceony asked.

“You may use your imagination,” Mg. Thane replied, “but creating something completely new is time-consuming. You must discover which Folds work and which don’t.”

“How many do you know?”

Mg. Thane only chuckled quietly to himself, as though the question were absurd. In his hands he had already created another creature, a tiny frog of green paper. He commanded it, “Breathe,” and it bounded away, pausing every so often to look about and choose a new direction. Ceony half expected a long tongue to shoot from its mouth to taste for flies, but of course the simple creature hadn’t been created with one.

“Jonto,” Mg. Thane said, now Folding a sheet of white parchment, “was particularly tricky. He took me months to get right, especially with the spinal column and the jaw. Human anatomy is a mite bit complicated, especially when it comes to figuring out what sort of Folds something like a shoulder joint prefers. But though he is made of one thousand, six hundred and nine pieces of paper, he animates as a whole. Make it whole, and it will rise whole. That’s your first lesson of the day.”

His hands stilled, revealing a stout fish between them, puffed out in the middle to form a three-dimensional body. Folds similar to the orange bird’s wings formed its pectoral fins. Mg. Thane picked it up, whispered to it, and released it. The fish soared upward through the air as a real fish would in water, its tail fin paddling back and forth until it hit the ceiling—which Ceony noticed had been covered with long pieces of white paper tied together with a simple string. The white fish used its puckering mouth to bite down on the string and untie its looping knot.

To her amazement, snow began to fall. Paper snowflakes cascaded through the air, some as small as Ceony’s thumbnail, some as large as her hand. Hundreds of them poured down as the paper ceiling gave way, all somehow timed just right so that they fell like real snow. Ceony stood from her chair, laughing, and held out her hand to catch one. To her astonishment it felt cold, but didn’t melt against her palm. Only tingled.

“When did you do this?” she asked, her breath fogging in the library’s air as more snowflakes fell like crisp confetti from the ceiling. “This would take . . . ages to make.”

“Not ages,” Mg. Thane said. “You’ll get quicker as you learn.” He still sat on the floor, completely unfazed by the magic around him. But of course he would be—it was his creation. “
Magician
Aviosky mentioned you hadn’t exactly jumped at the news of your assignment, and I can’t blame you. But casting through paper has its own whimsy.”

Ceony let her captured snowflake fall from her hand and turned to Mg. Thane, wondering at him.
He did all of this for me?

Perhaps the man wasn’t so mad after all.
Or maybe it’s a madness that I can learn to appreciate.

As the last snowflakes fell, Mg. Thane rose and pulled a thin hardcover book from the shelf behind him. He gestured for Ceony to once again sit in the chair. She complied.

He handed her the volume. The cover had a silver-embossed mouse on it and the words
Pip’s Daring Escape
. Her mind quietly registered that subtle prickling beneath her skin as she accepted the book; she wondered if she would ever get used to it.

“A children’s book?” she asked. At least the snowflakes had had some majesty to them.

“I’m not one to waste time, Ceony,” he said. As though reading her thoughts, he eyed the scattered snowflakes with a frown, one that showed more in the tilt of his eyes than the curve of his lips. Ceony imagined he would have preferred them to fall in neat rows all perfectly aligned with one another, but real snow never fell that way. “I’m going to teach you something. Consider it homework.”

Ceony slumped in the chair. “Homework? But I’m not even settled—”

“Read the first page,” he said with a jab of his chin.

Rolling her lips together, Ceony opened the book to its first page, which showed a small gray mouse sitting atop a leaf. Her memory sprang to life, whispering that Ceony had seen this picture before, and her mind spun until it settled on a rainy afternoon some seven years ago when she’d been babysitting her neighbor’s son. He’d been sobbing at the door for half an hour, mourning the departure of his mother. That family had owned this book, albeit a very worn edition. Ceony remembered reading it to him. The boy had stopped sobbing by page four.

She didn’t mention the memory to Mg. Thane.

“ 
‘One morning Pip the mouse came outside to get some exercise, only to discover a golden wedge of cheese sitting just outside his stump,
’ 
” she read. As she moved to turn the page, Mg. Thane stopped her.

“Good,” he said. “Now read it again.”

Ceony paused. “Again?”

He pointed to the book.

Suppressing another sigh, Ceony read,
“ 
‘One morning Pip the mouse came outside to get some—
’ 
”

“Put some effort into it, Ceony!” Mg. Thane said with a laugh. “Did they not cover story illusion at Praf
f
?”

“I . . . no.” In fact, Ceony had no idea what the man referred to, and she could already feel herself getting frustrated, despite her best attempts not to. She wasn’t used to doing something wrong twice, especially when she didn’t understand what she had done wrong the first time.

Folding his arms, Mg. Thane leaned against the table and asked, “What is the story written on?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“The kind you should answer.”

Ceony’s eyes narrowed. His tone carried an air of chastisement, but his expression seemed lax enough. “It’s obviously written on paper.”

Mg. Thane snapped his fingers. “There we are! And paper is your domain now. So make it mean something. And calm down,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

Ceony flushed, and she cursed her light skin for making it so obvious. Clearing her throat, she reread the passage slowly, letting herself cool down.

Mg. Thane motioned with his hand for a third repetition.

Swallowing, Ceony shut her eyes and tried to take herself back to her neighbor’s house, with the little boy on her knee and his beloved book in her hands.
Like you’re reading it to him
, she thought.
Make it “mean” something.
Then perhaps the paper magician would leave her be. She had already thrice reformed her assessment of his sanity.

“ 
‘One morning Pip the mouse came outside to get some exercise,
’ 
” she said, reading it with the same inflections she had used seven years ago in attempts to calm her babysitting charge,
“ 
‘only to discover a golden wedge of cheese sitting
just outside
his stump!
’ 
”

“There you have it. Take a look.”

Ceony opened her eyes and nearly dropped the book.

There, like a ghost in the air, sat a little gray mouse with a fidgeting nose. His tail trailed behind him like a tired worm. Beside him stood a stump with a broad leaf and a golden wedge of cheese just like the one illustrated in the book. The image as a whole hovered nose level with her, and she could see through the apparition to the bookshelf on its other side.

Ceony’s throat choked with words. “Wh-What?
I
did that?”

“Mm-hm,” Mg. Thane hummed. “It helps when you can see an image, such as with picture books, but eventually you’ll be able to read novels and have
those
scenes play out for yourself, if you wish. I admit I’m impressed—I thought I’d have to demonstrate first. You seem familiar with the story already.”

Once again she flushed, both over the praise and over being called out for having read what, in her mind, was a childish thing. The ghostly images lasted only a moment longer before fading away, as all unread stories were wont to do.

Ceony shut the book and glanced to her new teacher. “It’s . . . amazing, but I admit it’s also superficial. Aesthetic.”

“But entertaining,” he combated. “Never dismiss the value of entertainment, Ceony. Good-quality entertainment is never free, and it’s something everyone wants.

“One more trick, then.” Mg. Thane pulled a square piece of pale gray paper from the table and began Folding it in his hands, without a board to press against. The Folds seemed relatively simple, but by the time he finished he held what looked like a strange sort of egg carton, one that could only hold four eggs and bore no lid.

He pulled a pen out from somewhere inside his coat and began writing on it. Ceony noted that he was left-handed.

“What is that?” she asked, setting
Pip’s Daring Escape
down on the cushion of the chair as she stood.

The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “A fortuity box,” he answered, flipping the contraption around and lifting its triangular flaps. Standing on her toes, Ceony peeked around his arm to see him scrawling symbols, one in each Folded triangle. She recognized the shapes as fortune symbols, the ones drawn on cards at fortune-tellers’ booths during carnivals.

“I’m no fortune-teller,” she said.

“You are now,” he replied, pinching the fortuity box in his fingers. He tilted it back and forth to show Ceony the placement. “Remember that you are much different now than you were an hour ago, Ceony. Before you merely
read
about magic; now you
have
it. Denying it won’t make you return to ordinary.”

Ceony nodded, wondering at that.

“Now,” he said, leaning back against the table. “Tell me your mother’s maiden name.”

Ceony knit and reknit her fingers, for telling Mg. Thane her mother’s maiden name could be a very bad thing, should he actually be mad. She had heard of a great many ancient curses that involved names during her studies, and she had been cautioned often about the power of names.

Mg. Thane lifted his eyes from the fortuity box. “You
can
trust me, Ceony. If you’re worried, be assured I could look up the information and more by requesting your permanent records from Praff.”

“How comforting,” she mumbled, but it tempted a smile from her. “It’s Philinger.”

Mg. Thane opened the fortuity box like a mouth, then split it the other way, moving it once for every letter in
Philinger
. It was a fairly common last name, so he got the spelling right. “Now, your date of birth.”

She told him, and again he swished the panels of the box back and forth.

“Pick a number.”

“Thirteen.”

“No higher than eight.”

She sighed. “Eight.”

Freeing one hand, Mg. Thane lifted a panel to reveal a symbol Ceony couldn’t see. He waited a moment, his eyes a little unfocused, before saying, “Interesting.”

“What?” Ceony asked, trying to spy around him, but he simply shifted the fortuity box from her line of sight.

“Bad luck to see your own fortune. What
are
they teaching new apprentices these days?” he asked with a click of his tongue, and Ceony could not tell if he jested, for his eyes were downcast to the box and therefore revealed none of their secrets. “It seems you have a bit of an adventure ahead of you.”