The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg Read Free Book Online Page B

blinked the memories away. This apprenticeship wasn’t just another job; there would be no going back were she to be laid off. She’d be bound to paper and only paper, yet not legally authorized to do anything with it. She’d be a spent magician.
    “You look like you’ve eaten something sour,” Mg. Thane said, pulling a thick sheet of slate-colored paper from the upper-right pile on the desk, just beside the telegraph.
    “I was just thinking of what a waste it would be, to bond something and then quit, is all.”
    “I agree. Well, let me show you some basic Folds, unless you covered that at Praf f ?”
    Ceony shook her head no.
    Mg. Thane dropped to the floor with his board, setting the square of paper on top of it. “Let’s see how astute you actually are, Ceony,” he said. A challenge, then.
    She focused. The paper magician Folded the paper from corner to corner so it made a triangle. The thick parchment held the Fold well. “This is a half-point Fold—any Fold that turns a square into a triangle. And this is a full-point Fold”—he Folded the paper in half again—“any Fold that turns a triangle into a smaller triangle. With none to spare, of course.”
    Ceony nodded, watching quietly. He had done these two Folds when making the paper bird yesterday, before turning them into a second square and then the kite. He had her repeat the Folds and say their names, all while emphasizing that the paper’s edges had to be completely aligned for the magic to take. Then his eyes took that faraway look again, becoming not quite as bright as they should have been.
    “We’ll start you on animation,” he said, peering out the window again. “It’s a good place to learn the Folds.”
    “I can work on this,” Ceony said, “if you need to do something else.”
    Though deep in that space of wanting and knowing, she wished he’d stay and teach her.
    What a silly thought that was.
    Mg. Thane nodded and stood, his long coat rustling about his legs. She felt the disappointment keenly. When he disappeared into the hallway, Fennel poked his head in and trotted right up to Ceony’s hip, where he turned around three times before lying down and sleeping. Ceony had a feeling a dog made of paper couldn’t get tired, though. Must have all been in the enchantment.
    She held her half-point and full-point Folds in her hands and stared out the open doorway, wondering after Mg. Thane. A thread of guilt tugged between her ribs as she remembered his working late to create Fennel for her. But surely that couldn’t be the source of his . . . mental absence. And she’d been on her best behavior. Today, at least.
    “I ought to make it up to him,” she murmured to Fennel. “After all, any apprentice needs her magician’s favor, or I’ll be here six years instead of two.”
    Though her mind knew the Folds, she practiced them until her hands knew them, too, then resigned herself to the kitchen, where she pulled spices and wines out of the cupboards and recited Pip’s Daring Escape under her breath, testing out different voice inflections that might coax the images on page four to life. She set one pot of water on the stove to boil for pasta and washed out last night’s saucepan, setting it on the stove as well. She melted butter and added flour and milk to start a white sauce, something with lemon and garlic to go with the tied-up chicken in the icebox. When she couldn’t find a lemon, she settled on tomato and basil. Everyone liked tomato and basil, and if Mg. Thane kept the ingredients stocked in his house, Ceony could be confident that he liked them as well—and that they were safe to use. Ceony had noted throughout her life that people with one sort of allergy often had others. She’d already started her apprenticeship on the wrong foot; hives would only make the other foot wrong, too.
    When the chicken was nearly done, the bread sliced, and the sauce stirred into the penne, Mg. Thane emerged from his study.
    “I need to