The Paper Magician (7 page)

He turned the paper over and over, Folding it up and up, somehow managing to get each Fold perfect without a ruler. “The trick is to make it even,” he explained. “Every panel must be the same length and width, or the spell won’t hold. You can measure it if you like, but focusing on that first Fold and using it as a guide works just as well. If there’s anything left over, you can cut it off.”

He finished the fan, having nothing to spare, and pinched its bottom. “It doesn’t need to be secured,” he added. Turning the fan away from Ceony and toward the door, he flapped it lightly. One, two, three gusts of wind spat out from the paper, too strong to be ordinary, but too weak to do any harm.

He set the fan down. “Simple enough. I want you to practice it while I’m gone.”

The words tumbled over one another in Ceony’s mind. “G-Gone?” she repeated. “Gone where?”

“Magician’s business, as usual,” he said, standing. He left his board on the floor and returned to the stack of things he’d brought in. “
The Art of Papier-Mâché
,” he said, reading the title of the lowest book in the stack. He pointed to the ledger above it. “I want you to record notes on it while you read. Take thorough enough notes and I won’t make you write a report.”

Ceony’s jaw fell. “But—”

“
A Living Paper Garden
,” he said, gesturing to the next book in the stack. “Do the same. I bookmarked chapters five, six, and twelve; they have exercises in them I’d like you to do. And
A Tale of Two Cities
. It’s just a good book. Have you read it?”

Ceony stared at the paper magician, words caught in her throat. He’d gone mad again. He’d tricked her into thinking he wasn’t mad, and yet now he’d proved—

“And I want that paper fan perfected,” he added, withdrawing his hand. “Made well, it can give gusts that would embarrass a thunderstorm. And the reading I previously assigned you.”

Shaking her head, Ceony stood and asked, “How long do you plan to be gone?”

Mg. Thane shrugged. “Hopefully not too long. It’s quite the bother to break one’s routine too many days in a row. Do you know Patrice’s contact information, just in case?”

“Patrice?” Ceony repeated, her voice a little higher. “
Magician
Aviosky? I . . . yes, but—”

“Excellent!” Mg. Thane clapped her on the shoulder and strode out of the library. “I’ll be on my way. Try not to burn anything down.”

Ceony followed after him. “You’re leaving
now
?”

“I am,” he replied as he vanished into his bedroom. Somehow in the few minutes between receiving the telegram and delivering the pile of homework to the library, he had managed to pack a bag. He returned to the hallway with it in tow. He swept a hand back through his dark hair, and in that moment Ceony saw a flicker in his eyes and a thinning of his lips. He was worried.

“Is everything . . . all right?” she asked, hesitating at the threshold of the library, unsure of her bounds.

“Hm?” he asked, his countenance smoothing between ticks of the library clock. “Quite fine. Do take care, Ceony.” He walked down the hallway as far as the lavatory, where he turned around and added, “And keep the doors locked.”

Ceony watched him disappear down the stairs and listened to the quiet padding of his shoes below. Fennel licked her sock.

Hurrying to the library window, Ceony peered outside to see Mg. Thane walk past the paper flowers in his yard and beyond the warded gate, down the dirt road. Did he have a buggy waiting for him?

Ceony didn’t realize she had her face pressed to the glass until her breath fogged her vision. The paper magician stepped out of her line of sight and left her alone in his cluttered, barely familiar cottage set in the middle of no-man’s-land.

Keep the doors locked.

Ceony’s heart drooped in her chest.

C
HAPTER
5

P
APIER
-
MÂCHÉ IS TRADITIONALLY DONE
in two forms
, Ceony wrote in her ledger with a tired hand,
paper strips and paper mulch, to which is added either glue or starch.

Sighing, Ceony set her pencil down and stared across her bedroom to its single window over the bed. The sun cast leafy shadows across her pillow.

Would Mg. Thane return today? She didn’t have even a tenth of her latest homework stack completed if he did. Surely he wouldn’t penalize her for that, but Ceony had come to learn that the paper magician only sometimes did what she expected.

The house, its doors and windows still locked from last night, sat quiet enough that if Ceony held her breath, she could hear the library clock ticking in the next room. Fennel had taken to adventuring downstairs, and Ceony had shoved Jonto’s inanimate bones into a closet in the office and left him there. Now the place seemed . . . lifeless.

She glanced down. The words in the papier-mâché book blurred in and out. Yawning, she shut both it and the ledger and dropped them onto the floor, hearing a loud thunk in return. She pulled out
Anatomy of the Human Body Volume II
and flipped to her bookmark halfway through the chapter detailing the cardiovascular system. She stared at a picture of a dissected artery, turned the page, and stared at a diagram of a heart cut longwise to show its four chambers. She read a paragraph and shut the book again.

She heard Fennel climb up the stairs, pause, then climb back down. Eager to get away from her desk, Ceony abandoned her work and went downstairs.

She found Fennel sniffing about the door to Mg. Thane’s office, perhaps smelling Jonto, since Mg. Thane would never leave food sitting out. Ceony opened the door and the paper dog ran in, sniffing as he went. He stood on his hind legs to investigate the paper chains hanging from the window and, as suspected, trotted to the closet to smell after the paper butler.

Ceony glanced to the ivy-covered window. So quiet in the house. So irresponsible for a magician to leave his new apprentice on her own, wasn’t it? She should report it to Mg. Aviosky.

She lowered her gaze to the desk.
Might as well take advantage of his absence before I do that
, she thought.

The tiniest smile teased her lips as she sat down in Mg. Thane’s desk chair and began opening his drawers, none of which had been locked. She found nothing interesting—a few ledgers of conference notes, spare pens and pencils, a bizarre multipointed paper star that looked like it belonged on the end of a mace. A lint brush, a small sewing kit. Ceony made sure to leave everything straight and tidy before closing each drawer. She had no doubt Mg. Thane would notice a pen knocked a few millimeters out of place.

She reached for the wire note holder, running her fingers over the edge of the thank-you letter she had mailed out over a year ago. Fifteen thousand pounds.

She chewed on her lip, not wanting to dwell on that mystery for the moment. She thumbed through the other letters, reading off names, some preceded by “Mg.” or “Dr.” She spotted one that read “Alfred Hughes.” Thinking of the telegram, she pulled it free, only to discover it was an old Christmas card without a photo. Her memory tickled at her—she’d heard that name before. A Mg. Alfred Hughes sat on the Magicians’ Cabinet, didn’t he? Yes . . . he did. A Siper—a rubber magician. He’d given a speech at Tagis Praff once. Mg. Thane had friends in high places.

Oddly enough, none of the letters read “Thane” on them—none appeared to be from family. Mg. Thane had mentioned being an only child, but what about his parents? His cousins? Surely he had cousins.

She scoured the bookshelves next, finding more textbooks and old novels, ledgers filled from cover to cover. The only thing that stood out was a Granger Academy yearbook dated 1888–1889. Apparently she and Mg. Thane had attended the same secondary school, albeit twelve years apart. Odd that Mg. Aviosky would assign her to a magician so young, but there were few other options for Folders. Perhaps that was why she had sat so rigidly in the buggy.

Fennel pawed at her shoes.

“I know, I have work to do,” Ceony said, suppressing a sigh. She scooped the paper dog into her arms, laughing as he wagged his tail, and carefully pushed Mg. Thane’s chair back under the desk.

She spent the rest of the day Folding frogs and fans, reading more about anatomy than she ever wanted to know, and doodling in the margins of her notes on papier-mâché.

When Mg. Thane didn’t return the next day, Ceony began to worry.

She had never considered herself someone prone to worrying, and it seemed almost silly to worry over someone whom she’d only worked with for a short time, let alone someone she hadn’t wanted to work with in the first place, but she worried.

She imagined that flicker in his eyes just before he’d left, thought of the privacy of the telegram. And she worried.

She thought again to contact Mg. Aviosky, but didn’t. What would she say? Today, at least, she had no desire to get Emery Thane in trouble, so she busied herself with chores to take her mind off of things.

She fried fish and chips for lunch, enough for one. She wiped down the countertops and swept out the kitchen. She gathered her laundry to wash it.

Outside her bedroom, Ceony peered down the hallway to Mg. Thane’s bedroom door, which he had left closed. It would be kind to wash his, too, wouldn’t it?

Leaving her own dirty clothes in a pile near the stairs, Ceony let herself into the paper magician’s bedroom and spied around.

His bed was larger than hers, understandably, and the window across from its foot was larger as well. Three different candlesticks sat atop the dresser by the door, which was missing three of its bronze handles. A collection of beads, some sort of jewelry box, and a variety of paper gadgets that looked like chunks of machinery sat all around them. A bottle of brandy and a glass sat on the nightstand beside a novel without a cover, a bottle with a ship inside of it, and a tall paper box painted gray, violet, and peach.

There was a shelf stacked with larger sheets of paper, writing utensils, and books; a closet full of more long coats and dress slacks; and a hamper brimming with dirty clothes.

She put her hands on either side of her face like a horse’s blinders and went straight for the hamper. No snooping today. She was nineteen years old—she could respect a man’s privacy.

She washed clothes until her knuckles turned red, then hung them on a line in the backyard to dry.

Ceony woke up alone again the next day. After finishing her anatomy book, she took down the laundry and folded it. Unsure of where Mg. Thane kept the particulars of his clothing, she left it on his bed for him to put away when he returned.

She paused at a bookshelf on her way out. Good heavens, the man owned a lot of books. She perused the titles, wondering why these books had been kept in his room instead of in the library. Not snooping, not really. Just curiosity.

She found only a handful of textbooks—most of the volumes appeared to be leisure reading, both by popular and unpopular authors. She found a second copy of
A Tale of Two Cities
and a poetry book by Matthew Arnold. At the end of that particular shelf she found a hymnal.

“Strange,” she said, pulling the leather-bound book off the shelf. Her fingers left prints in the dust sprinkling its cover. Mg. Thane didn’t seem the religious sort. He didn’t say grace at dinner. The spine cracked. Ceony flipped through the pages, noting the excellent condition of the book’s spine.

Then she discovered the gold-etched inscription on the cover. It read “The Thanes.”

“Thanes?” she asked aloud. Who was the other Thane? Mg. Thane certainly wasn’t married, and the book looked too new to belong to his parents. Perhaps the paper magician had a bastard child out in Norwich and this had been someone’s clever way of blackmailing him.

She laughed at the idea and flipped back through the pages again, spying hymns both familiar and unfamiliar.

Something fell out from the back pages—pressed wildflowers.

Crouching, Ceony picked up the purple and orange blossoms with a soft touch and examined their brittle beauty. She wasn’t sure what sort of flowers these were. Which of the Thanes had kept them here?

Fennel barked from the hallway. Ceony returned the hymnal to its place on the shelf and wiped her dusty fingers on her skirt. She stepped out of her mentor’s room and shut the door behind her.

She didn’t enter it again.

A few days later, at approximately six in the morning, Ceony woke to a loud pounding on her bedroom door. She shrieked and jumped to her feet, remembering first Mg. Thane’s admonition to keep the doors locked—

“We’re learning about paper boats today!” Mg. Thane’s cheery voice said from the other side of the door. “Bright and early! Up we go!”

Ceony’s pulse pounded in her neck. Pulling the top blanket off her bed and hiding her nightgown with it, she cracked open the door. Mg. Thane stood there just as he had left, fully dressed and wearing that indigo coat.

“I . . . when did you get back?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Just now. Where did you put Jonto?”

“In the . . . ,” she began, but instead said, “How did things go? Did you see this friend of yours?”

“Things went, at least,” he answered. “And thank you for doing my laundry, but you didn’t need to, as I wasn’t here to wear it. Library in ten minutes.”

He clapped his hands once and strode down the hallway.

Six days. The man had been gone six days, and that was all he had to say about it?

Ceony shut the door and rubbed the back of her neck.
Then again, what right do I have to know where he goes?

Shaking her head, she dressed and combed through her hair, braiding it behind her left ear. At least he hadn’t mentioned more testing.

By the time Ceony made it to the library, Mg. Thane had already taken his usual position on the carpet with his board on his lap. A few pieces of rectangular paper rested beside him. Ceony studied him as he approached. Unsoiled clothes, clean shaven, but his shoulders had a slight stoop to them, and faint circles lined his eyes. Tired, then, but from what? Why make the effort of another lesson when he should be getting some rest?