The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Series, Book 1)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Even stranger, no paper ornaments adorned the walls or the ceiling—they had been left starkly bare. A simple twin-sized bed rested against the only window. A set of three shelves had been built into the wall beside it, and a simple writing desk with one drawer rested a couple paces from the bed’s foot. There was a small closet, large enough for Ceony’s few changes of clothes, and a small table with a new candlestick and holder upon it.

  It offered her a little more space than her dorm room at Tagis Praff, albeit with fewer shelves. Still, she thought her dorm room somewhat warmer and more hospitable, though that may have been because she’d earned her place there. She’d wanted to be there.

  “Thank you,” she managed, setting her suitcase down. She briefly thought of the 1845 Tatham percussion-lock pistol she had stowed away in there—a graduation gift from her father, for she had planned on being a Smelter—and decided to unpack later, away from watching eyes. Mg. Thane must have expected as much, for the tour continued on.

  “Down here,” Mg. Thane continued as Ceony shut her bedroom door behind her, “is the lavatory, my room, and the library,” he said, stopping at the end of the hall and another set of stairs. To Mg. Aviosky he said, “I’ve set up the bonding in here,” and gestured to the library.

  Ceony’s steps slowed. So the tour ended at the bonding.

  She eyed the door at the end of the hall, identical to the one in the kitchen that opened onto the stairwell. “What’s on the third floor?” Ceony asked. Perhaps something uplifting lingered up there. Perhaps she’d find a window to leap from. Judging by the height of the ceilings on the first and second floors, the third was by far the tallest, which was strange for a backcountry house like this one.

  “The big spells,” Mg. Thane answered, his expression plain but his bright eyes smiling. Did he know how much those eyes gave away?

  Ceony made a note not to tell him. She needed all the advantages she could get if she were to survive here.

  With Mg. Thane barring the stairs to the third floor with his shoulder, Ceony dragged her feet after Mg. Aviosky into the library, which appeared only slightly larger than her bedroom and had bookshelves only on the sidewalls, albeit ones that stretched clear to the ceiling. As Ceony expected, books had been crammed into every available space, spine against spine, some forming double rows so she couldn’t see what titles lay in the first. The shelves seemed recently dusted—very recently, for the moment Ceony thought it she sneezed, which made her notice the path of dust highlighted by a large window on the far wall. Her eyes landed on a loop of paper chains that surrounded the window, as well as the pinewood table beneath it, which held stacks of paper in varying sizes and colors organized from lightest to darkest, and then from roughest to smoothest. A small telegraph hung off its back-right corner.

  The table’s single chair had been turned around, and upon it rested a short easel bearing a canvas of thick, plain paper, eggshell white and fine grained. No ornamentation, no hoopla, just a plain sheet of paper.

  Studying it, Ceony realized what it was.

  Her grave.

  She knew about material bonding—it was one of the dozens of subjects she studied over the last year of rigorous courses at the school. It was nothing fancy, just an oath that tied your spirit into the subject, allowing you to conduct magic through it and only it. A woman could not, for instance, cast spells with both glass and fire. Only one. Ceony couldn’t bond paper and still hope to be a Smelter, enchanting jewelry and bespelling bullets as she had often daydreamed during her lessons.

  It wasn’t fair, but there was no use in further complaining. They all knew it. Mg. Aviosky knew it, and Mg. Thane likely knew it, too. Ceony had earned the right to choose her material, but because those before her had neglected Folding—the weakest of the magics—she had been forced into it.

  Mg. Thane handed her a smaller piece of standard white eight-by-eleven paper. Ceony pinched it between her fingers and turned it over, but it bore no instruction. No writing of any kind graced its surface, nor did any Folds, magical or otherwise.

  “What is this for?” she asked.

  “Feel it,” Mg. Thane said, clasping his hands behind his back once more.

  Ceony continued pinching the paper, waiting for some sort of clarification, but Mg. Thane merely held his stance. After several seconds Ceony pressed the simple paper between her palms and rubbed her hands back and forth, thoroughly “feeling” the paper.

  The paper magician’s eyes smiled, and he took the slightly wrinkled paper back without comment. “Do you know the words?” he asked, softer. Perhaps her eyes were as easy to read as his.

  Ceony nodded, numb. The long talk she had had with Mg. Aviosky in the buggy surfaced in her mind. “It’s this or nothing. It has to be that way, for balance,” Mg. Aviosky had said. “Don’t let rumor and comedy dissuade you, Miss Twill. Folding takes a keen eye and deft hands—you have both. The others have accepted this fate; so must you.”

  Accepted this fate. But had they? Were the words only meant to persuade Ceony to be more willing to sign away her dreams?

  The two magicians watched her, Mg. Aviosky with her usual blank-canvas countenance and Mg. Thane with a strange sort of humor to his eyes.

  Ceony pressed her lips together. As far as magic went, she knew it was paper or nothing, and she’d rather be a Folder than a failure.

  She lifted a clammy hand and pressed it to the sheet of paper resting on the chair. Closing her eyes and gritting her teeth, she said, “Material made by man, your creator summons you. Link to me as I link to you through my years until the day I die and become earth.”

  Such simple words, but they did the deed.

  Ceony’s hand grew warm, and heat flashed back through her arm and body, then left just as quickly.

  It was done.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I ALWAYS FOUND BONDING incredibly anticlimactic,” Mg. Thane commented as he picked up the easel from the chair. “Do you want to save it?”

  Ceony blinked a few times and held her bonding hand to her chest. “Save what?”

  He shook the large paper in his hand. “Some find it sentimental.”

  “No,” she said, perhaps a little too sharply. Mg. Thane didn’t seem to notice and placed the paper against the wall, and the easel atop the table perfectly parallel to the paper stacks.

  Finding no empty table space, Mg. Aviosky crouched on the floor and opened her hard plastic briefcase, crafted by the hands of a Polymaker—a type of magician who had come into being only thirty years ago, after a rubber magician had discovered plastic itself. From the briefcase Mg. Aviosky pulled a crisply folded red apron and a short, black top hat: the garb of an apprentice.

  Despite the gnawing inside her stomach and the pieces of heartfelt dreams collecting in a heap at the base of her skull, Ceony accepted the clothing with a quiet reverence.

  Unlike the green student apron, the apprentice apron had pleats across the thighs and thin scarlet trim around the collar. The fabric covered more of the bust as well. It tied behind the neck and around the ribs and had two small half-circle pockets at either hip.

  The top hat, stiff and shiny, was a mark of experience. Students didn’t have top hats. Even though the road Ceony had stepped onto would be narrow and unexciting, at least the apron and hat proved her worth. Proved she had achieved something, for graduating from Tagis Praff, especially in a single year and at the top of her class, had been no easy feat.

  “Thank you,” she said, hugging the apron to her chest.

  Mg. Aviosky smiled, the sort of smile she had always given Ceony at the school. The smile that made Ceony like her so much. If only I could study under her, Ceony thought. Given the choice, she would rather enchant glass than paper.

  Mg. Aviosky squared her shoulders, dispelling that notion rather abruptly. “I’ll see myself out,” she said, “unless you have another paper servan
t to do it for me.”

  Mg. Thane’s eyes smiled as he said, “It’s no bother to escort you, Patrice. Ceony?”

  “I’ll . . . stay here, if you don’t mind,” she said. Ceony had the feeling that, should she get to the buggy with Mg. Aviosky now, she’d run away and never come back. And, though she despised it, Ceony knew she needed to wait for her new responsibility to settle before she could trust herself near any easy exits. She had bound herself to paper indefinitely, and it did her no good to push through a year at Tagis Praff just to throw it all away now.

  Mg. Thane nodded once, then handed her back the wrinkled piece of paper he had had her “feel.” Confused, Ceony accepted it. It took a couple of seconds—enough time for Magicians Thane and Aviosky to reach the library door—for her to realize something had changed about the parchment.

  She turned it over in her hands. It still bore no Folds, no writing, but it felt different in a way difficult to describe. It still felt like paper, of course—a medium lightweight that a sketch artist might find useful—but something beneath her skin tingled at the feel of it. Was this the result of the bond? Was this why Mg. Thane had insisted she touch the paper before, so she would notice the difference now?

  Somewhat confused, Ceony set the paper on the chair and hurried to the library door, peeking out to see Magicians Aviosky and Thane moving down the hallway, discussing something too quietly for Ceony to hear. She couldn’t help but follow them. Ceony crept through the hallway as the magicians vanished down the stairs, then crept down the stairs as they vanished into the dining room, making sure to step over the creaking ninth step. She scuttled after them and saw that as Mg. Aviosky finally stepped outside, Mg. Thane followed her, keeping the front door propped open with his heel. They spoke in hushed tones, so naturally Ceony suspected it was about something she was not meant to hear. Mg. Aviosky never did trust her to do as told.

  She padded quietly down the hall, eyeing the unmoving pile of Jonto’s paper bones near the door. She still couldn’t make out her teachers’ conversation, but dared inch no closer.

  Instead, she turned the knob to Mg. Thane’s study and let herself in.

  This room had more organized clutter than all the others, highlighted by a circle-top window on the far wall, facing the bespelled front gate. Yellow paper curtains had been drawn back to reveal glass that had not been washed on the outside for quite some time. Beneath the window sat metal shelves bearing more books, folders, and ledgers similar to the one Mg. Thane had been holding earlier. Kitty-corner to that shelf rested three cedar-wood triplets, four shelves high, weighed down with neat stacks of paper pressed into one another to minimize empty space. Yet more papers had already been Folded—starter Folds, perhaps, to save time. A great deal of trinket spells likely started with those V-shaped Folds. Ceony assumed a great deal of her apprenticeship would be spent making starter Folds of no importance for Mg. Thane to use at his leisure. She sighed.

  A second, square window, blocked on the outside by some sort of ivy, had various paper chains hanging down in front of it, some tight-knit with sharp angles, others made of large loops torn on the ends and fitted together so loosely that a simple tug would pull the entire thing apart. Some chains were blue, some pink, others multicolored. The color didn’t matter, of course. Ceony knew that much from her History of Materials course at Tagis Praff.

  She noticed small scraps of paper in the pale-green carpeting. Mg. Thane hadn’t cleaned in here, or perhaps he had only recently worked on a spell to further terrorize Ceony before her arrival. She scanned for such a spell, but the room held so much stuff she could barely tell a tabletop from a desk. The walls, in contrast, were mostly bare, save for Mg. Thane’s framed Magician’s Certificate and more shelves of folders pressed into the corners behind the desk.

  She heard the front door shut, but Ceony didn’t hurry herself. She crouched down and picked up the paper bits from the carpet, unfolding them in her fingers. Felt that subtle, curious tingle beneath her skin once again. She wondered at the paper bits. None was larger than her thumbnail, and all appeared to be in strange symmetrical patterns.

  The door to the study opened. “Amusing yourself?” Mg. Thane asked, his tone light.

  At least he doesn’t have a temper, she thought. Out loud she said, “You were making snowflakes.” She studied a paper cut in the shape of an elongated heart. “That’s what these are from, aren’t they?”

  He nodded, his face calm save for a glitter in his green eyes. “Very astute.”

  Ceony stood and brushed off her brown skirt, which covered her from rib to calf. She would have thought he mocked her had his eyes not gleamed their sincerity. What a confusing man.

  “Ceony,” Mg. Thane said, leaning against the doorframe. He folded his arms against his chest, his long sleeves drooping down from them. “I presume I can call you by your first name.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Folding is not as dreary as I’m sure you believe it to be. It may not be as exciting as Smelting or as innovative as Polymaking, but it has its own outlets for creativity. May I show you?”

  Ceony hid a frown and tried very hard not to look incredibly bored at the suggestion. After all, she would be apprenticing under this man for at least two years, if not longer. She needed him to like her. She forced a polite smile on her face and moved toward the door.

  Mg. Thane stepped out into the hall, but as Ceony followed after him, her eyes glimpsed something on the cluttered desk that made her pause. Something that wouldn’t have caught her eye at all if the envelope had not matched the stationery set tucked securely into a side pocket of her suitcase.

  She stepped back and reached for the wire note holder that had been packed with various letters and postcards, each aligned with its neighbor along the left edges. She selected the peach-colored envelope near the holder’s center and tugged it free, too stunned this time to feel the tingling sensation in her fingertips. The address was not to Mg. Thane, but to the Magicians’ Cabinet . . . and in her penmanship. She had addressed it there because her donor had been anonymous, and she hadn’t known how else to contact her.

  Or, apparently, him.

  She didn’t need to open the letter to know what it said. She remembered it word for word.

  To my anonymous donor,

  I cannot begin to express to you my utmost gratitude for the scholarship I’ve received by your hand, though I have no name to address my gratitude to. It has been my dream since I was a young girl to learn the secrets of magic, but due to my family’s financial situation and some bad luck on my part, I had truly believed only a few days ago that my dream was unobtainable. However, I am happy to say I’ve officially enrolled in the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, and I plan to make you proud by graduating within one year.

  Words are not adequate for my joy and thanks to you, but I plead for your patience as I try. You may have very well changed my life and my family’s lives for the better, and for good. Because of your generosity I feel capable of achieving anything, for nothing worldly can possibly hold me back from my ambitions now.

  Please know that you have made a vast difference in my life. I only pray one day I might learn your name and find some feeble way to repay you.

  Sincerely and with the warmest regards,

  Ceony Maya Twill

  Feeling a bit stiff, a bit light-headed, she said, “You . . . were my donor?”

  Mg. Thane, just outside the doorway, lifted an eyebrow.

  Ceony turned the letter over in her hands. “This is my thank-you letter,” she said, heart quickening in her chest. She felt a blush creeping up her neck. “My scholarship. It . . . it came from you.”

  The man merely tilted his head to the left. “Tuition at that place is ghastly, isn’t it?”

  “Why?” she asked, swallowing to keep her voice from shaking. The walls of her throat grew sore. “Why . . . sponsor me?”

 
; From the beginning Ceony had known she could only attend magic-preparation school—a requirement for all apprentices—if she received some sort of financial aid. She had studied hard during secondary school and was a nominee for the Mueller Academic Award after her acceptance to Tagis Praff, but lost the scholarship without explanation. Heartbroken, she had packed her bags and readied herself to move to Uxbridge, where she would take work as a housemaid for a year or so to pay for culinary school. Four days before her departure, Tagis Praff contacted her with an anonymous scholarship offer of fifteen thousand pounds, enough to cover one year’s tuition, books, and board. A miracle—no bank would allow a shanty nobody from Whitechapel’s Mill Squats to take out a loan for such a grand sum. She knew that from experience.

  She cried after receiving that telegram. She wrote this letter the next day.

  And Mg. Thane—a man she had not met until that morning and whom she had pegged as some sort of lunatic sorcerer—had been the one to give her the money, without interest or return. Without even a name.

  Mg. Thane didn’t answer her inquiry. Rather, he simply asked, “Shall we?” with a sweeping gesture of his arm. A gesture that closed the matter. If Mg. Thane had wanted to discuss the scholarship, he would have listed his name when he gave it to her.

  Shaken, Ceony set the letter down. Rubbing the back of her neck, she followed the magician out into the hallway and through the kitchen and dining room. He might have closed the matter, but she wouldn’t just let things stand pat. On the stairs she asked, “Did you request me?”

  “I assure you that your assignment was pure coincidence. Or perhaps a bit of bad humor on the part of Magician Aviosky. If you can call it humor. I’ve always found her rather . . . dry.”

  Some coincidence! Too stunned to think of a reply, Ceony traced Mg. Thane’s path back to the library, where her apprentice’s uniform rested on the floor. She slipped on her red apron but left the top hat. It was more for public show, besides.