The Glass Magician

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  “Yes,” Mg. Aviosky said, stiff. “I recall. I also recall you were both incredibly vague about just what you experienced there, which only fuels my concern.”

  Ceony shook her head. She felt hot, as if her own pulse were steadily bringing her blood to a boil. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is—”

  “I will decide what does and doesn’t matter, Miss Twill!” Mg. Aviosky shot back.

  “No!” she shouted, loud enough that Mg. Aviosky retreated a step. “You don’t understand what it was like in there. You can’t understand what happened! I know his heart better than my own, don’t you see?”

  Mg. Aviosky didn’t respond.

  “I feel like I’ve known him all my life,” Ceony continued, quieter now. “Like he was always meant to be a part of it. And Folding . . . I love Folding because he taught it to me, because he showed me the beauty in simple things. The beauty I have within myself.”

  “Miss Twill—”

  “I love him,” Ceony said, and Mg. Aviosky’s eyes widened almost to the size of polo balls. “And it’s as though I’ve always loved him. As though that feeble paper heart I gave him were my own . . .”

  She paused, realizing she had said too much. She had stunned Mg. Aviosky into silence.

  Ceony stood straighter and forced herself to speak calmly. “I haven’t broken any rules,” she said. “I’m well versed on them. I could recite them to you verbatim, if necessary. Until I break a rule, it’s unnecessary for you to take any action, especially as drastic as this. I believe that’s something on which we both can agree.”

  Mg. Aviosky pursed her lips.

  “For now,” Ceony said, her tone as formal as she could make it, “I would like to continue studying under Magician Thane.”

  Ceony walked to the door, but before opening it, she said, “If it makes a difference, I’m sure Magician Thane would not give you a similar speech. I can assure you my infatuation is entirely one-sided.”

  Ceony hurried back into the hallway, which felt significantly cooler than the lavatory. She pressed both hands to her cheeks, then her neck, urging her skin to cool. She pinched the front of her blouse and shook it to get some air. Her heels clicked loudly against the hallway’s tiled floor.

  She blinked rapidly to avoid crying. How dare Mg. Aviosky stick her nose where it didn’t belong!

  She sucked in a deep breath and held it for several steps.

  Her shoulders remembered the weight of Emery’s arm around them, and she could feel the warm press of his lips against her forehead as she shivered in the black waters of the river by the cottage. She thought of how he often wore an inscrutable expression to conceal his thoughts, of the late nights he spent in contemplation. What did he conceal behind those mindful expressions, those unreadable glances?

  Entirely one-sided. But was it?

  She banished the thoughts from her mind and swallowed the small lump forming in her throat. Now was not the time for girlish ponderings.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Ceony saw no sign of Mg. Aviosky, but she did catch Delilah’s eye. Ceony must have looked a wreck judging from the way Delilah’s face scrunched. Ceony managed a nod—they were safe, as far as Grath went—and turned away, fanning herself with both hands. Giving herself a moment to calm down.

  Emery was waiting just outside Parliament’s east doors, standing by a buggy, apparently having a conversation with the driver. When he saw Ceony, his eyes narrowed.

  The driver hurried around to his side of the car. Emery met Ceony halfway and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Ceony shook her head and stepped past him. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just Magician Aviosky being herself.”

  The concern didn’t leave his green eyes—if anything, it intensified—but he didn’t push for an answer. Reaching around Ceony, he opened the door to the buggy and helped her in.

  It was a long, silent ride home.

  CHAPTER 11

  CEONY, LEANING AGAINST THE cover of her origami textbook, carefully aligned the edges of her full-point Fold before setting the crease with her thumbnail. She lifted the newly formed triangle and opened it up, then pressed it down into a square Fold. It was the fourth crane-style bird she had Folded, for she knew from experience one could never have too many paper birds.

  A knock sounded at her bedroom door; Ceony glanced under the bed—ensuring her secrets were well concealed—before saying, “Come in.”

  Emery opened the door and took two steps into her room—a threshold he had only begun crossing one month ago. He eyed the partially formed bird in Ceony’s hands, the birds beside her, the links of a shield chain, and likely the Folded stars, bats, and Ripple spell scattered over the floor. Ceony hadn’t bothered to hide those; she figured it would look less suspicious with everything out in the open.

  “You’ve been busy,” he commented, scratching the back of his head. “And here I thought I wasn’t giving you enough free time.”

  Ceony flipped her paper over and formed another square Fold. “I do plan to test for my magicianship at two years,” she said. “I need to practice if I’m to pass.”

  Emery smiled without teeth, but his eyes showed something else—nostalgia, or something similar. Dolefulness, maybe?

  “So ready to leave?” he asked.

  Ceony paused in her Folding. “It’s not like that—”

  “I know,” he said, and the look disappeared, his eyes masking whatever shadows played about that light in his head.

  Ceony hated it when he did that.

  He rescanned the room, perhaps frowning inwardly at the lack of organization in Ceony’s work. “Do keep in touch, after the magicianship,” he said. “I’d be surprised if it took you more than two years.”

  Ceony kept her focus on her bird. Are you saying that because it’s what you want, or because it’s the polite thing to say? she wondered.

  Emery stepped back into the living room, closing Ceony’s door with a delicate touch. Ceony formed two chicken Folds before retrieving her scissors and her paper doll—stolen back from the cottage—from under her bed. She needed to make every possible preparation before facing Grath tomorrow.

  She had nearly finished. Two more snips, and the silhouette would be free. If Ceony cut it out correctly, the spell would work. If not, she’d have to start over from scratch, but she didn’t have time to do that before her one thirty appointment tomorrow.

  Chewing on her lower lip, Ceony carefully cut the line at the doll’s right hip. It fell away from its bordering paper.

  Ceony grasped the doll by the shoulders and stood, taking it to the bedroom closet, away from direct line of sight of the door, as the bedroom didn’t have a lock. She straightened it as best she could, the two-dimensional head flopping, and said, “Stand.”

  To her relief and exuberance, the paper cutout stiffened and stood on its own accord, feeling almost like thin cardboard. She released its shoulders.

  Now for the real test. Mimicking Emery’s demonstration of the spell, she stood two feet away from the doll, arranged herself to match the silhouette, and said, “Copy.”

  Wispy color—similar to that of a story illusion—began to form on the doll. Orange glazed the head; the shirt turned gray, the skirt, navy. The colors molded and darkened until a perfect, flat replica of Ceony stood across from her. It bore the same hopeful expression Ceony must have been wearing when she gave the “Copy” command. Even the backside of the doll matched Ceony’s backside. From straight on, it looked like a real person. From any other view, it was obviously a paper doll.

  Ceony stepped back and sat on her bed, studying her work. A decent illusion, for paper, though the doll couldn’t speak, and its interactions with its environment would be incredibly limited. It had no joints, after all, and no brain. A Gaffer could create a much better illusion, if a less opaque one. Or a Polymaker. Polymakers always made such complex things out of plastic.

  She stared at the doll, her exuberance fading.

  She thought of Lira.r />
  Emery Thane’s heart bore dozens of corners and alleyways that she hadn’t seen during her short stay there. For instance, she knew about none of Emery’s previous love interests besides Lira, whom he had married. Staring at the paper doll, Ceony couldn’t help but notice the physical differences between herself and Lira.

  Thanks to her keen memory, Ceony could picture Lira down to the stitches in her clothing. She pushed away thoughts of the black-clad Excisioner who had stolen Emery’s heart in more ways than one, and instead pulled up the image of the woman with whom Emery had fallen in love—the Lira from the flowery hill at sunset and from the quaint wedding where, for the briefest instant, Ceony had stood in her place.

  Though Ceony hated to admit it, Lira was one of the most stunning women she had ever laid eyes on, far more stunning than what Ceony saw in the mirror. Or, in this case, in her paper doll. Lira had dark, curling hair; long, dark lashes; and dark eyes. Ceony had oddly orange hair kinked with a few awkward waves, blond eyelashes and eyebrows, and pale eyes. Lira was built like one of those girls Ceony saw on glamour photographs outside risqué theatres; Ceony had a much narrower frame, all sharper angles and straight lines. She was short, too, the top of her head measuring about equal with Emery’s Adam’s apple. With the right shoes, Lira could have looked him in the eye.

  Ceony didn’t know much about what Lira had been like before becoming an Excisioner—only that she had been a nurse and far more pleasant—but she knew she and Emery’s ex-wife were very, very different people.

  So how could she possibly believe that a man like Emery would fall for a simple girl like her?

  Ceony fell back onto the bed and stared up at the beige ceiling. She thought again of the fortuity box she’d Folded the day Emery awoke from his Excision-induced slumber. Its vision had been as crisp as anything she’d seen in Emery’s heart, yet the future was always changing. Any psychic at the county fair knew as much. Would Emery’s future include her at all if she were to read it now? She didn’t think she wanted to know, assuming the paper magician cared enough to humor her a second time.

  Ceony pushed Lira out of her mind and thought instead of all the small moments that had fueled her hope—the signs that Emery might harbor some affection for her, too.

  And Mg. Aviosky had obviously sensed something between them if she had gone so far as to set up another apprenticeship for Ceony. It couldn’t all be in Ceony’s head.

  “You’re my apprentice. I don’t . . . don’t think I need to remind you of that.”

  Ceony deflated. Or perhaps what Mg. Aviosky saw truly was entirely one-sided. No wonder she hadn’t spoken to Emery first. Mg. Thane, that is.

  Shutting her eyes, Ceony let her mind drift until it settled on a memory six weeks after her trip into the paper magician’s heart. An especially hot Wednesday afternoon. It was the first moment she had thought, Maybe this will work. Maybe I’m someone worth falling for.

  She had taken it upon herself to start a small vegetable garden in the narrow backyard of the cottage, where the soil wasn’t covered in paper plants. She crouched over the small lot she had prepared, dark topsoil spread out before her and staining her gloves, the sun casting patterns over her skirt as it shined through the wicker brim of her hat. She picked herself off the ground after planting the last seeds—radishes—and bent backward so that her sore back cracked in four places.

  Emery appeared beside her. “Congratulations, Ceony, you’ve successfully made a very large stretch of dirt.”

  “You’ll thank me in a month or so,” she countered, pulling off her gloves. “And next year you’ll be begging me to make it even bigger.”

  Emery smiled, then reached forward and ran his thumb over Ceony’s cheek, brushing off some of the dirt there. Ceony, of course, had humiliated herself by flushing redder than the tomatoes that would soon be growing at her feet.

  But he hadn’t moved his hand, not right away. He hesitated, looking at her, those beautiful emerald eyes burning holes through her skin.

  “Wh-What?” Ceony stuttered.

  He smiled and dropped his hand. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about how much I like your name.”

  Ceony opened her eyes, bringing herself back to the present. She sat up, her gaze meeting the empty eyes of her paper doll. “Cease,” she said, and the paper collapsed to the floor, losing its color in the process.

  Then Ceony slid off the mattress and knelt on the floor, reaching under her bed. She hadn’t been able to take much from the cottage—she would have to explain all of it, if Emery ever discovered her cache—but her fingers wrapped around a corded paper stem, and she pulled out one of the red roses Emery had crafted for her birthday, its red paper petals still perfectly crisp.

  She fingered the flower’s lifelike bud.

  I can wait two years, she thought, turning the rose in her hand. I can wait two years for him, longer if need be. If he would ever love me, I’d wait my entire life.

  But even two years felt like an eternity. What if Emery found someone else? Ceony could only pray they returned to the cottage soon so that the paper magician could go back to being a recluse and not meet anyone new.

  She sighed and returned the rose to its hiding place. How much time she had wasted moping around like a lovesick schoolgirl!

  She gathered her paper doll and stashed it away, then returned to her work. Setting the half-formed paper bird aside, she began Folding a series of small Burst spells. She could not spend more time mooning over Emery. He could wait. He had to wait.

  For now, Ceony had to prepare. It was up to her to control the Excisioners. It was up to her to protect him, and herself.

  She stayed up late Folding her spells and carefully arranging them in her bag—the same bag she had armed herself with when she faced Lira on Foulness Island.

  Before she went to bed, she loaded her Tatham percussion-lock pistol and added its weight to her bounty of spells.

  One didn’t always need magic to win a fight.

  CHAPTER 12

  WHEN SHE AND EMERY arrived at the Parliament building the next day, Ceony protested less vehemently when she was told to sit outside the conference room and wait with Delilah.

  “It won’t be as long this time,” Emery whispered as the others associated with Criminal Affairs filtered into the double-door conference room. His breath against her neck gave her shivers, but she hid them well enough. “For the love of all gods, I hope it’s not as long as last time.”

  He sighed and turned to the conference room, where Mg. Aviosky lingered outside the doors with a frown. This time, however, the expression was directed at Emery. Ceony wondered at that.

  The doors closed, and Delilah and Ceony took their seats.

  Ceony waited as long as she could stand it—about five minutes—before turning to Delilah. “Let’s go. Hurry!”

  They scrambled from the foyer to the women’s lavatory, passing tired-looking guards. Ceony checked the stalls to ensure the room’s vacancy, then secured the deadbolt on the door.

  “Did you bring it?” Ceony asked Delilah.

  Delilah, who had begun wringing a handkerchief in her small hands, nodded and hurried to the dresser. From behind it, she pulled out a medium-sized frameless oval mirror with only a thin plastic backing. The mirror shined brightly in the light from the chandelier, free of any cracks or tarnishing. Gaffer’s glass. It looked barely large enough for Ceony to fit through—just a few inches wider than her shoulders and hips.

  Ceony held it carefully in her arms.

  “Don’t break it, or I won’t be able to pull you back,” Delilah said. “I had to transport it here late last night after Magician Aviosky went to bed. I thought for sure one of the guards would catch me. Turn it around.”

  Ceony turned the mirror toward Delilah, who traced it with her finger and synced it with the lavatory mirror. Ceony would take the glider from Emery’s cottage to the rendezvous point—she would be a little late—and warp back to Parliament through the oval mirr
or in her hands. A quick escape, should things get nasty. If all went as planned, she’d have Grath incapacitated and a dozen paper birds flying to alert local police.

  Delilah re-enchanted the lavatory mirror, pulling up the image of the cottage’s lavatory. She then kissed both of Ceony’s cheeks.

  “Be quick, and be careful,” she whispered. “I swear I’ll break my promise and get the magicians involved if you’re not back in an hour.”

  “Give me two,” Ceony said. “Just to be safe.”

  “One and a half, tops,” Delilah countered. She took a deep breath. “Go, you stupid girl. And don’t get yourself killed!”

  Still gripping the oval mirror, Ceony climbed onto the dresser and stepped into the cottage bathroom—a bit of a squeeze, given the height of the bathroom mirror. She stepped down onto the porcelain sink, then leapt to the tiled floor. With everything she needed already prepared and in her bag, she darted from the bathroom, down the hall, and up the stairs to the third floor, where Emery’s “big” spells lay, including the glider, a giant paper bird, and some other strange contraption he hadn’t yet finished, which she only knew from snooping. No other furniture save for a stool occupied the large, bare-walled space, which was in need of a good sweeping.

  After securing a shield chain around her torso, Ceony stood on the glider and pulled the cord that opened the door in the cottage’s roof, receiving an angry cry from a raven in the process. Then, situating herself on the glider and gripping its handholds, she said, “Breathe.”

  The contraption bucked like a wild horse beneath her. Ceony jerked back on the handles, and the glider soared upward through the roof nose first, nearly tossing Ceony from its back. Only after Ceony had straightened it out in the sky, pointing it south, did she realize she would have to return to the cottage to shut the door in the roof. She could only hope it wouldn’t rain before then.

  Ceony soared toward London far faster than any buggy could take her, freed from the limitations of roads and rivers, and she stayed as far as she could from the rivers. It all looked like one of the elaborate train sets toy stores sold at Christmastime, but with fewer hills and a duller track. She glided westward, preferring to circumvent the city instead of fly directly over it, for she wanted as few witnesses as possible. Wind thrashed her hair, lashing her braid about like a whip. Ceony pressed herself against the glider, urging it to go faster. She only had so much time before Delilah’s resolve broke, and she feared it would be less than the agreed-upon hour and a half. She held her breath when she flew over the gray-cast River Thames, but it couldn’t be avoided.