The Master Magician (The Paper Magician Series Book 3)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Mordan, twenty-five years in age, was a slender man, though broad in the shoulders, with sandy hair that wavered somewhere between chestnut and wheat. He had a narrow, almost feminine face, with a long nose and pale blue eyes. I didn’t notice much about him beyond that. At that time I only noticed that he existed and that he was a problem. I quickly stepped to Ashlen’s other side, using her body as a shield.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Shh! Talk to me,” I said, quickening my pace. I kept my head down, letting my blonde hair act as a curtain between myself and the turnery. It was natural for a man to take an interest in his employer’s family, perhaps, but Mordan’s interest in me had grown more ardent over the last year, to the point where I could hardly stand on the same side of town as him without some attempt at conversation on his part. Even my blatant regard for other boys while in his presence—whether real or feigned—hadn’t discouraged him.

  I thought I had escaped unseen when he called out my name, his chin still dripping with water. “Smitha!”

  My stomach soured. I pretended not to hear and jerked Ashlen forward when she started to turn her head, but Mordan persisted in his calls. Begrudgingly I slowed my walk and glanced back at him, but I didn’t offer a smile.

  He wiped himself with a towel, which he tucked into the back pocket of his slacks, and jogged toward us.

  “I’m surprised to see you out so late,” he said, nodding to Ashlen. “I thought school ended at the fifteenth hour.”

  “Yes, but lessons cease at age sixteen,” I said. Only a dunce wouldn’t know that. “I finished last year. I only go now to pursue my personal endeavors and to tutor Ashlen.” My personal endeavors included theatre and the study of language, the latter of which I found fascinating, especially older tongues. I planned to use my knowledge to become a playwright, translating ancient tales and peculiar Southlander fables into performances that would charm the most elite of audiences. My tutoring of Ashlen was more a chance for chatter and games than actual studying, but so long as she pulled passing grades, none would be the wiser.

  “Of course,” Mordan nodded with a smile. “You’re at that age, now.”

  There was a glint in his eye that made me recoil. That age? I struggled to mask my reaction. Surely he didn’t mean engagement. As far as Mordan was concerned, I would never be that age.

  Glancing nervously at Ashlen, Mordan continued, “I’ve been meaning to talk—”

  “In fact,” I blurted out, “Ashlen is being tested on geography tomorrow morning, and I promised I’d help her study before dinner. Her family eats especially early, so if you’ll excuse us . . .”

  Ashlen had a dumbfounded look on her face, but I tugged her along before she could question me in front of him. “Good evening to you,” I called. Mordan quickly returned the sentiment, and he may have even waved, but I didn’t look back over my shoulder until the next bend in the road hid the turnery from sight.

  “You’re loony!” Ashlen exclaimed, pulling her arm free from mine. A grin spread on her face before her mouth formed a large O. “Goodness, Smitha, don’t tell me Mordan is still at it.”

  “Absurd, isn’t it?” I rolled my eyes and switched my candy-laden bag to my other shoulder. “He has to be the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”

  “Maybe you should give him a chance, if he’s trying so hard.”

  “Absolutely not. He’s too ridiculous.”

  She merely shrugged. “People can change for those they care about.”

  “Ha!” I snorted. “People don’t change; they are what they are. Did you know he actually pressed the first blooms of spring and left them on my doorstep? He would have given them to me in person, but I didn’t answer the door when I saw it was him. No one else was home.”

  “How do you know they were the first blooms?”

  “Because he told me. In a poem. And Ashlen, the man is as slow as he looks. It was the most wretched thing I’ve ever read in my life, and that includes Mrs. Thornes’ lecture notes on the water cycle!”

  “Oh, Smitha,” she said, touching her lips. “How harsh. He seems nice enough.”

  “But not so nice to look at,” I quipped before glancing at the sun. “I’d best head home before mother throws a fit. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t eat all your candies tonight; I won’t share mine!”

  Ashlen stuck out her tongue at me and trotted off the road into the wild grass. Her home lay over the hill, and that was the fastest way to reach it.

  She grinned back at me as she went and waved a hand, her fingers fluttering the words “Don’t get fat” over her shoulder. The signs were part of the hand talk I had invented at fourteen, when I first learned of a silent language that had once been spoken in the Aluna Islands in the far north, beyond the lands where wizards were said to dwell. That would not be the last time Ashlen spoke to me in our secret signs, but it would be the last time she looked at me with any semblance of a smile.

  My family lived in a modest home, though large by Euwan standards. My little sister Marrine and I had our own bedrooms. After bidding Ashlen farewell, I retired to my room and stashed my share of the honey taffies in the back of my bottom dresser drawer, where I hoped Marrine wouldn’t find them if she came snooping, which she often did. My sister begged for punishment, and I had a variety of penalties waiting for her if she crossed me.

  A small oval mirror sat atop my dresser, and I studied myself in it, appreciating the rosiness my walk had put in my cheeks. Retrieving my boar-bristle hair brush, I ran it through my waist-long hair several times from root to tip. I knew I was pretty, with a heart-shaped face free of blemishes, small nose, and big green eyes. The doctor himself had told me they were big, and I had learned that batting them just so often helped persuade the boys—and often grown men—in town to see things my way.

  At seventy-six of one hundred strokes I heard my mother’s voice in the hallway.

  “Smitha! Could you fetch some firewood?”

  I groaned in my throat. I wasn’t the one who had diminished the supply, and the last thing I wanted to do was dirty my dress gathering firewood. I cringe to remember my behavior then, but it is part of the story, and so I will tell it honestly.

  Hearing Mother’s steps, I set down my brush and crouched against the side of my dresser. The door opened. I held my breath. Mother sighed before closing it and retreating.

  I smiled to myself and picked up my hairbrush to finish my one hundred strokes. After taking a moment to admire my reflection, I braided my hair loosely over my shoulder, savored one more honey taffy, and quietly stepped into the hall.

  My mother didn’t notice me until I reached our kitchen, large given that we were a family of only four. My mother, still in good years, spooned drippings over the large breast of a pheasant in the oven. It was from her that I got my blonde hair, though I hoped my hips wouldn’t grow so wide. Across the room, a pot boiled on the hearth. Someone else had fetched the firewood, I noticed.

  Straightening, Mother wiped her forehead and glanced at me. “I called for you.”

  “Oh,” I said, fingering my braid, “I was at the latrine. Sorry.”

  Mother rolled her eyes and turned to a bowl of cornbread batter on the counter. “Well, you’re here now, so would you wash and butter that pan for me?” She jerked her head toward a square pan resting beside the washbasin.

  Frowning, and knowing I didn’t have an excuse, I dragged my feet to the ice box for the butter.

  After the cornbread baked, the pheasant browned, and I had grudgingly mashed the potatoes from the cook pot, I stepped out of the kitchen to cool off. I had not yet reached my room when I heard the front door open and my father exclaim, “Smells good! Room for one more?”

  “Always.” I could hear my mother’s smile. “It’s good to see you, Mordan. How was work?”

  Cursing to myself, I hurried down the hall, almost crashing into Marrine. With her plain brown hair pulled into a messy ponytail, her narrow-set eyes, and a cleft to her chin, I was
obviously the better looking sister, so much so that a stranger would never guess that Marrine and I were related.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “Is Pa home?”

  “Shh!” I hissed at her, but rather than explain, I ducked into my room and shut the door. I rushed to my window and opened the pane, wincing at how boldly it creaked. Ashlen would be more than happy to have me for dinner, and with an extra mouth in the kitchen, surely my parents wouldn’t miss me.

  This was not the first time Mordan had come to eat, of course, but I had a bad feeling about it. He was getting bolder in his attentions. Besides, the best way to tell a man he had less chance with you than a fair hog was to ignore him so completely that even he forgot he existed.

  Balling my skirt between my legs, I lifted myself over the sill and dropped a few feet to the ground below. I had only made it halfway across the yard when I heard my name called out from behind me. Mordan’s voice raked over my bones like the teeth of a dull plow.

  He walked toward me, waving a hand. Why had he stepped outside now? Perhaps he needed to use the latrine, or he might have spied me in my escape. Regardless, I had been caught, and no amount of talking would see me to Ashlen’s house now without sure embarrassment.

  I released my hair. “Oh, Mordan, I didn’t notice you.”

  He stopped about four paces ahead of me. “Your father graciously invited me over to dinner.”

  “Is it time already?”

  He nodded, then suddenly became bashful, staring at the ground and slouching in the shoulders. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you, but I haven’t gotten the chance.”

  My belly clenched. “Oh?”

  “But . . .” he hesitated, scanning the yard. “Not here. And I’ve got a delivery in about an hour . . . Smitha, would you mind meeting me? The dock, around sunset?”

  His eyes, hopeful as a child’s, finally found mine.

  At that moment I truly appreciated my study of theatre, for I know I masked my horror perfectly. For Mordan to want to speak to me alone—and at so intimate a spot!—could only mean one thing: his interest in me had come to a head, and no amount of feigned ignorance would dissuade him.

  Mordan wanted to marry me. I almost retched on his shoes at the prospect.

  “All right,” I lied, and a mixture of relief and warmth spread over his delicate features.

  Before he could say more, I touched his arm and added, “We’d best hurry, or dinner will be served cold!”

  I walked past him, but he caught up quickly, staying by my side until we sat at the table, where I had the forethought to wedge Marrine between us. I remained silent as my father told our family, in great detail, of the work he had done that day. While not one for exaggeration, my father always told every last corner of a story, explaining even mundane things so accurately that I often felt I wore his eyes. Tonight, though, halfway through his tale of broken spokes, he interrupted himself for gossip—something for which he rarely spared a moment’s thought.

  “Magler said there’s a fire up north, near Trent,” he said, carefully wiping gravy from his lips before it could drizzle into his thick, brown beard. “Already burned through two silos and a horse run.”

  “A fire?” asked Mother. “It’s too early in the year for that. Did they have a dry winter?”

  “Rumor says it was the craft.”

  That interested me. “Wizards? Really?”

  “Chard, Smitha, I’ll not take that talk in here,” Mother said.

  Let me take a moment to say that wizards were unseen in these parts, and supposedly rare even in the unclaimed lands far north, where they trained in magicks beyond even my imagination, and none of them for good. A traveling bard once whispered that they have an academy there, though to this day I’m not sure where. I certainly never thought I’d one day search for it, myself.

  Mordan’s eyes left me to meet my father’s. “What’s the rumor?”

  “Some political war or some such, which led to two of them fighting one another. Perhaps even a chase. I have a hard time believing any man could throw fire, but that’s what Magler claimed. He heard it from a foods merchant passing by this morning.”

  Marrine, mouth half full of cornbread, said, “I’d like to meet a wizard.”

  Mordan smiled. “They can be a dangerous sort. Tales often fantasize them, for better or for worse.”

  “So long as they don’t come down here,” Mother said, roughly heaping a second helping of potatoes onto her plate, spoon clinking against the china. I hoped she wouldn’t butter them. Mother gained weight in the most unsightly of places. “Mordan, how is your sister? I recall you mentioning her a little while ago.”

  Mordan’s blue eyes glanced back to me, as they had already done several times during the meal, smiling even when his mouth was not. I did not smile back. Returning his focus to Mother, he described a sister of his who lived somewhere in the west, but I paid little attention to what he said. Instead I wolfed down my food and excused myself to my room. If either parent disapproved, they did not voice it in front of a guest.

  Inside my little sanctuary, I stretched out on my bed and selected one of three books I had borrowed from Mrs. Thornes, my teacher, which she had borrowed from a scholar in a neighboring village. To me old tongues seemed like secrets—secrets very few people in the world knew, let alone knew well. The book in my hands was written in Hraric, the language of Zareed and the Southlands, where I believed the sun never set, men built their homes on heaps of golden sand, and children ran about naked to escape the heat—with their parents hardly clothed more than that. I had studied some Hraric two years ago. I didn’t consider myself fluent, but as I browsed through this particular book of plays, I could understand the main points of the stories. Southlander tales were far darker and more grotesque than the ones we studied in school, and I soon found myself so absorbed that I hardly heard the scooting of chairs in the kitchen and Mordan’s goodbyes as he went to complete his deliveries. However, I did take special note of the time, and as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, casting violet and carmine light over Euwan, I smiled smartly to myself, imagining Mordan standing alone on that dock long into the night, his only company the proposal I would never allow him to utter.

  While I wish I could say otherwise, my conscience did not bother me that night, and I had no trouble sleeping. Had I known the consequence of my actions, I would never have closed my eyes. I slept late, as there were no requests upon my responsibility on sixth-days. I woke to bright morning sun, dressed, and brushed one hundred strokes into my hair before deciding I ought to have a bath. Spying Marrine in the front room, I asked her to fill the tub for me.

  She looked up from her sketch paper and frowned. “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to carry the water.”

  “I’ll give you a taffy. Honey taffy, with cinnamon.”

  She considered this for a moment, but ultimately shook her head and returned to refining her mediocre talents as an artist. With a sigh I stepped outside into the warming spring air and trudged to the barn to retrieve the washbasin myself. On the far end of the barn where we took our baths, there was an empty stall, which was mostly free of horse-smell. Despite my best efforts, I could not convince my father to let me bathe in my room, so it was an inconvenience I had learned to endure.

  I set the tub in the stall and retrieved the pail for carrying water. As I turned to exit the barn, I shrieked and dropped the bucket, my heart lodging in the base of my throat. Mordan watched me from the open door. I had hoped his shame would keep him at bay for at least a month. Why couldn’t he tuck his tail like any other dog and leave me be?

  “Mordan!” I exclaimed, seizing the pail from the hay-littered floor. I gritted my teeth to still my face. “What are you doing here? And with me about to bathe!”

  “I apologize,” he said, somewhat genuinely, but there was an unusual hardness to his eyes and his voice. “I need to speak with you.”

 
“I’m a little—”

  “Please,” he said, firm.

  I let out a loud sigh for his benefit, letting him know my displeasure at his interruption, but I hung up the pail and followed him out into the yard. I folded my arms tightly to show my disapproval, all while hiding my surprise that he had come to see me so soon after my blatant disregard for him and his intentions. He had not been the first man I had left waiting for me—I suppose it gave me a sense of power, even amusement, to push would-be lovers about as though they were nothing more than checkers on a board. But Mordan was the first who had dared confront me afterward. Still, his backbone shocked me.

  He didn’t stop in the yard, but rather led me across a back road and into the sparse willow-wacks behind my house, on the other side of which sat the Hutches’ home. He stopped somewhere in the center, where there were enough trees that I couldn’t quite see my house or the Hutches’.

  He eyed me sternly, though a glint of hope still lingered in his gaze. “I waited for you at the dock until midnight, Smitha,” he said. “What happened?”

  I kept my arms firmly folded. I preferred subtlety when breaking people, but if this was what it took to sever whatever obligation Mordan thought I had to him, then so be it. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I didn’t want to go.”

  He jerked back, a wounded animal, but then his expression darkened. “Then why agree? I don’t understand. I had—”

  “You’re dense as unbaked bread, Mordan!” I exclaimed, flinging my hands into the air. “Do you think me stupid enough not to read your intentions? Not to notice that pathetic way you look at me when you think my back is turned?”

  His eyes widened, and his face flushed, though from anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t be sure.