The Paper Magician

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  She swallowed against a dry throat and prayed.

  Thankfully the small bird began to descend, sea-spray splotching its wings and slowing it down. Ceony pushed her glider faster until she came up beside it. Daring to release one handhold, she snatched the bird from the air and tried to determine how to land without breaking every bone in her body.

  “Here, is it?” Ceony shouted over the whistle of the wind, her voice only cracking once. The bird pulsed beneath her.

  Ceony circled the glider around a dozen times, taking each loop lower and lower, aiming for a spot well away from the water.

  “I don’t suppose I can command you to land, can I?” she asked the glider. “Take me to the ground, softly?”

  The glider seemed to heed her as the birds had last night. It arched its wings up and dropped in altitude, making Ceony’s stomach lurch, but its speed slowed and it glided almost smoothly onto a length of dirt patched with crabgrass.

  Ceony’s fingers stubbornly held to their pained, crooked positions even as she unhooked them from the handholds. The glider continued to slide along the ground, and she looked over the sides, checking for puddles to ensure her ride would stay dry. “Cease,” she commanded it, and the glider drooped and teetered onto its left side. “Cease,” she told the little bird, and it too went still. She tucked it into the large crease along the center of the glider’s body, hoping to give it time to dry off without being blown away.

  Fennel in her arms, Ceony gazed out onto the rocky coast along the sea edge made purple and orange by the lowering sun ahead of them, which cast a golden road across the seawater as it considered its set. Ceony looked about the unfamiliar place ridged with black rocks of all shapes and sizes and free of trees. No sandy beaches comprised the coast here, just steep cliffs formed by the bellies of long-dead volcanoes. One wrong step on those and she’d drown.

  Ceony sucked in a long breath and pulled a piece of cheese from her bag.

  “Stay quiet, Fennel,” she instructed as she set the dog down on the ground. “Stay away from puddles and let me know if you smell anything sour.”

  Ceony nibbled on the cheese as she walked toward the rocks, searching for a safe way down. She thought Lira very smart. If Ceony were a criminal, she would try to escape England as quickly as possible after committing such a heinous deed. Straight for the coast, where a ship of her accomplices could pick her up. The only faster way out of the country seemed to be by paper glider, and Ceony greatly doubted Lira had one of those.

  Ceony pulled her Tatham pistol from her bag and held its wooden and steel barrel against her breast, pointing the muzzle over her shoulder. She found a drop between two large crags that did not look too steep and carefully climbed her way down. Fennel sniffed all about it before following after, slipping only once. Down on solid rock, much closer to the water, Ceony smoothed her skirt and continued forward. She didn’t need to muffle her footfalls; the crashing of waves against yet more rocks below hid her presence, even if they did make her hands shake. She stayed close to the cliffs. Her heart quickened, and while the ocean air made her skin cold, her blood pulsed hot and her insides grew taut as guitar strings.

  A burst of salty wind tossed the last locks of her hair from her braid. She snatched the whipping strands from the breeze and hurriedly tied them at the nape of her neck before climbing downward once more, where droplets of water from those crashing waves pattered her cheek. She tried to stand between them and Fennel, who began to huff excitedly—perhaps he had smelled something.

  A loud, uneven cry pulled her attention toward the ocean. Whirling around, she pointed the pistol not at a person, but at a squatting seagull staring at her with red-veined eyes. Half-molted feathers and stitches speckled its neck. Pieces of dried, blanched skin hung off its face and legs in strips, and the top of its beak had been broken in half.

  Ceony froze, clutching the pistol in her hands. A dead bird. A living dead bird. The work of an Excisioner.

  The gull cried once more and flew out over the ocean. Ceony’s heart started beating again when it was out of sight.

  Her teeth chattered. She told herself it was from the ocean’s cool mist.

  Could Excisioners truly reanimate the deceased? The thought made Ceony shudder inside and out. But why a bird? Was it a messenger? Ceony hadn’t seen a note tied to its mangled legs . . . Perhaps it had already dropped its message off, or it was a spy of some sort. Ceony didn’t know enough about Excision to know. Perhaps someone was trying to contact Lira. Someone trying to help her escape.

  The cheese she had eaten grew heavy in her stomach. Ceony scooped Fennel into her arms and turned him away from the ocean, as much for her own comfort as anything.

  Ceony picked her way along the rocky coast for perhaps a quarter mile before she saw a dark half oval ahead of her—a cavern of some sort. A splendid place to hide, for sure. Clutching Fennel and readying her pistol, she crept toward it.

  The sun had sunk one-third of its majesty behind the horizon when she reached the cavern. There were no lanterns or torches to light, but the cavern didn’t look too deep. Spying about and seeing no one, Ceony moved inside the cave, keeping her back to one of its rough walls.

  Fennel squirmed. She hushed him. She didn’t need a paper dog reminding her what a fool brain she had inside her skull.

  Her heart thrummed as she neared the back of the cave. She spied a pair of shoes set near the opposite wall. Someone else had been here, and recently, for the shoes looked fairly new and fairly clean, albeit not the ones Lira had worn at Mg. Thane’s home.

  Pumpom . . . pumpom . . . A heartbeat. But not hers. No, this one beat much slower than her own.

  Ceony inched forward, squinting in the dim light slinking in through the cavern’s mouth. The base of the back wall jutted forward, making an uneven shelf about four feet high. Something glowed along its ridge.

  Ceony gasped. There, in a shallow bowl amid the black rock, gleamed a pool of wine-colored blood shimmering gold about its edges. Beating calmly in its center rested Mg. Thane’s heart, just as she had seen it clenched in Lira’s hands.

  Gooseflesh prickled her skin as Ceony approached it. Mg. Thane’s heart. She had found it.

  She had found it too easily.

  Fennel huffed and jumped from Ceony’s arms just as Ceony spun around, clutching her pistol in both hands. There, a few paces in from the mouth of the cave, stood Lira.

  She looked just as she had in Mg. Thane’s dining room, though her pants had been torn just above the left knee and the humidity caused her hair to hang heavier from her scalp. Her dark eyes narrowed beneath rows of long, dark eyelashes, very different from Ceony’s blond. They made her look both menacing and beautiful. She could not have been any older than Mg. Thane. Not so much older than Ceony herself.

  “I thought I hadn’t hit you hard enough,” she said, eyes dropping to the pistol for only a moment. Lira wore no guns that Ceony could see, only several vials of blood strapped to one side of a leather belt, and a long dagger strapped to the other. “But it seems my generosity in letting you live has turned against me.”

  She smiled as if she had told a joke.

  “Lira, isn’t it?” Ceony asked, leveling her pistol. She hoped the woman didn’t notice how it trembled in her hands. “I’m taking this back. Don’t interfere, and I won’t shoot you.”

  Shoot her. Ceony had never shot a real person in her life, only targets.

  Lira took a step forward. Ceony’s palms sweat. Lira, smirking, asked, “Do you even know how to use that?”

  Gritting her teeth, Ceony leveled the pistol and cocked back its hammer. She could never afford the enchanted bullets that always met their mark, but she prided herself on her aim regardless.

  The Excisioner took one more step forward and paused. She slipped a vial of blood off her belt. Ceony struggled to hold the gun steady. Mg. Thane’s heart beat loudly behi
nd her—or was that her own pulse?

  “Put it down,” Ceony said. Clearing her throat, she repeated, “Put it down or I’ll shoot you, I swear I will. I’m taking this heart back with me.”

  Lira’s face turned to a scowl so gradually Ceony hardly saw it change. “I’m not letting some ginger tart take what’s rightfully mine.”

  With a thumbnail she uncorked the vial and spilled blood into her palm. She stepped forward.

  Ceony stepped back. “I’ll kill you!” she cried.

  Lira began chanting in that mysterious tongue. Ceony didn’t understand any of it—the spells were so different from the materials she had studied. Lira’s hand began to glow gold. She took another step forward.

  Ceony fired.

  The pistol jerked back in Ceony’s hands, its boom! filling the cavern and stinging Ceony’s ears. The sharp scent of gunpowder scoured her nose and slipped into her mouth. Fennel whined at her ankles.

  Lira’s eyes widened as wetness, dark as dried rose petals, bloomed over her right breast. She grunted and dropped to one knee, her hand still glowing. Her lips muttered something too quiet for Ceony to hear.

  Ceony lowered the pistol. Her eyes felt ready to pop from their sockets. Her mouth went dry and her hands turned cold. Thought fled her, swirled above her head, and returned just as Lira pressed her glowing palm to the wound on her chest.

  The strange light spiraled under her hand for less than two seconds before flashing once and disappearing. Lira sucked in a deep breath and stood, then popped her neck once to the left and once to the right. She dropped something small and metal from her hand. It clinked against the cavern floor.

  A bullet.

  Ceony nearly dropped her gun. Had . . . had Lira just healed herself?

  Her mind spun. Excision had power over flesh. Lira took a step forward, seemingly unscathed save for the stain on her dark shirt. Ceony had only one bullet. Only one, and it rested on the dark rock behind Lira.

  Lira had started her healing spell before Ceony had fired. Lira had wanted Ceony to use up her shot. Fear had played Ceony right into the Excisioner’s hands.

  And now all Ceony had was a bag full of paper, the least offensive material a magician could wield. Even rubber would have suited her better here.

  “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 donning 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.

  Rubbing her eyes to ensure what she saw was real, Ceony stepped forward and called out to the canvas-clad man.

  “Excuse me!” she shouted, but the man didn’t turn, even when she repeated herself. The eldest boy ran an uneven circle around her, but his eyes never saw her, only peered through her. He didn’t notice her presence at all. None of them did.

  And Lira . . . where was Lira? Ceony moved around the bee boxes searching for her, the insects ignoring her as readily as the people did. She scanned beyond the trees to shallow, rolling hills, but saw no sign of the Excisioner.

  She pulled a white sheet of paper from her bag and held it between both hands. It made her feel safer.

  “You’re it!” shouted a girl of about eight, two auburn pigtails peeking out from beneath her face net. She ran away from the eldest boy, laughing even as bees swa
rmed from half a dozen boxes.

  “Don’t touch the hives!” the adult shouted as he pawed at his bee box. He had a low, brawny voice, deep and rugged. He pulled a tray from the box’s top, and Ceony marveled at the thick, amber honeycomb clinging to it. The man brought it to a wheelbarrow, bees crawling all over his protected arms, and scraped honey into a tall bucket. Ceony’s mouth watered, but still she wondered, How did I get here?

  More importantly: Where is here?

  Surely Lira’s spell hadn’t whisked her away. Why would a practitioner of the forbidden arts ship Ceony to a remote—and rather jolly—honey farm?

  Fennel stood on his hind legs as he tried to get a better look at a particularly fat bee flying about his head. Another bee buzzed about Ceony but never landed, never tried to sting her. At least, if it did, she didn’t feel it.

  “Emery, get me that spoon, will you?” the man shouted, pointing to a long metal spoon in the grass.

  The name made Ceony’s eyes dart to the second-youngest child, perhaps six years old, running between hives to the spoon. Still clutching the paper, Ceony ran to him and peered through the pale netting over his face. The child didn’t notice her at all, even as she crouched in front of him. She saw uneven patches of black hair sticking out from under his hat and bright, green eyes.

  “Magician Thane,” she whispered. The eyes gave him away. The child phased through her like a ghost and handed the spoon to the man whom Ceony could only assume was his father. The man patted Mg. Thane’s head—Emery’s head—and the boy grinned a wide grin before returning to play with his siblings, darting between boxes with a precision that told Ceony he could do so blindfolded.