The Master Magician

Ceony paused. “Is this a hint for my test?”


Emery stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. “I am not allowed to give you any hints, Ceony. I wouldn’t dare jeopardize your passing.”

His tone grew a little more serious on that last sentence. Stepping over to the table against the west wall, he patted his hand on a worn book as thick as Ceony’s wrist. Her shoulders slumped. Surely this tome wouldn’t help her win her magicianship.

But she was not any more willing to risk her chances of passing than Emery was. Sighing—louder than necessary—Ceony grasped the heavy volume in both hands and heaved it onto her hip.

The telegraph on the table began tapping.

Emery raised an eyebrow. Ceony held still and listened intently, translating the Morse code in her head. An interesting query. I acce—

“Study hard,” Emery said with a hand on her back. He pushed her toward the hallway.

“But what about—”

His eyes brightened. “It’s a secret, dearest.” And with that, he shut the library door.

Ceony frowned, then pressed her ear to the wood, trying to make out the sound of the telegraph. Two seconds later Emery pounded against the door. He had already learned all her eavesdropping tactics during their time together.

Frowning, Ceony retreated into her bedroom and cracked open the dissertation, waving away the dust that spun up from its thick cover.

“Chapter One: The Half-Point Fold.”

It was going to be a long night.



The clouds thickened after the sunset, veiling the night stars. By the time Ceony turned off her lamp to go to sleep, rain had begun to fall. It came first as a sprinkle, then a shower. A gale picked up and woke Ceony as it whistled through the eaves, ripping bits of paper illusion spells from the walls and fence. No amount of waterproofing could save the spells from a squall like this one.

As the night grew colder, rain turned to hail. It clacked against the roof and window like a thousand telegraphed messages. Covering her head with her pillow, Ceony returned to her slumber . . .

Rain surrounded her in her bedroom, pouring down through a vanished roof, pelting the furniture and peeling paper art from the walls. Ceony stood in the middle of the room in a black skirt and white button-up shirt with a gray ascot around her neck—her student uniform from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined. She stood over a drain in the floor, but something was clogging it. Rainwater puddled about her feet, and she smashed her shoe into the drain over and over, trying to force the water down.

The obstruction wouldn’t budge.

She turned but couldn’t find the door to the room. The furniture had vanished as well, leaving her with only wood and rain. Raindrops grew in size, falling now like long quilting needles, splashing against her skin, dribbling from her uniform into the growing lake churning around her legs. The cold water climbed up her knees, her thighs.

Ceony’s heart seized. She frantically waded through the dark water, searching for something to stand on, but found nothing. No desk, no bed, no ladder or stool. No doors anywhere. Even the windowsill had vanished beneath the beating storm.

“Help!” she cried, but her voice couldn’t pierce the racket of the percussing rain. It beat into her harder and harder, prodding her like shards of glass. Water surged over her hips, her navel.

She couldn’t swim. She tried to float, tried to push her pelvis toward the sky as Emery had instructed her the one time he tried to teach her, but she only sank.

Her head went below the water. She flailed, kicked off the floor to come back up.

Breaking through the water’s surface, she heard someone cry, “Ceony!”

She turned toward the voice, splashing in the water, desperately trying to keep air in her lungs. And there she was. Delilah. Sitting atop a bookshelf floating on its side, reaching her hand out toward Ceony. In her other hand, she clutched the compact mirror she’d given Ceony for her twentieth birthday, its embellished Celtic knot pressed into her palm.

“Swim!” Delilah shouted.

“I can’t!” Ceony cried. Water lapped into her mouth and she coughed. Her toes sought the floorboards, but they had vanished. Everything had vanished but the water and the rain. She was drowning in an endless ocean, no land in sight.

Delilah reached her hand out farther. “Hurry!” she cried.

Ceony kicked and paddled, reaching once, twice for Delilah’s fingers. On the third attempt, she caught Delilah’s wrist.

But Delilah frowned. Her brown eyes rolled back into her head, and Ceony stared in horror as Delilah’s arm fragmented from her body in uneven pieces, drizzling blood into the water. Ceony screamed as the rest of her friend disassembled like a broken mannequin, until the only tangible trace of her was a scarlet mess atop a sinking bookshelf—