The rest of the crew were busy pulling off the camouflage nets and fake tree branches and getting ready to take off. Except for Sullivan, who was sleeping off having a huge spell bound to him, and Faye, because she wasn’t really part of the crew at all, and she was too sad and angry to be of much help anyways. The crew was muted and solemn as they worked. She wandered around, watching for a bit, but felt even more awkward when they saw how hard she’d been crying. So she’d popped up to the top of the dirigible to sit on one of the two huge gas bags to stay out of the way.
A little later, the Japanese pirate Torch lady climbed up a rope and got on top of the bag, too. She was wearing dirty coveralls, and a dark red sash, and carrying her shoes in her hand so she wouldn’t accidentally hurt anything. It was totally unnecessary on the futuristic high-tech skin of the Traveler, but it was probably a necessary habit picked up on their old ship.
Now that Faye was paying more attention to the information the Spellbound curse was giving her, she could tell just how strong this Torch was. Her Power was amazingly developed, and that made Faye feel guilty, like she was peeking in on somebody’s secrets. A little, greedy voice inside her head said that much Power would be better served with Faye, but Faye just told that stupid greedy voice to shut up. The Torch saw Faye, saw that she was crying, and came over anyway. She sat down cross-legged on the bouncy surface across from her and didn’t say anything for a minute.
Faye thought about Traveling away, but something in the Torch lady’s expression made it so that Faye didn’t.
“I am sorry about Mr. Talon. He was a gentleman.”
“Yeah, he really was,” Faye sniffed. She hadn’t expected to get all emotional and weepy in front of somebody who had once set her on fire, even if it had been by accident. “I’m gonna miss him.”
“Of course.”
“And I’m gonna avenge him.”
Now the Torch gave her a gentle smile. “Spoken like a knight. Mr. Talon would be proud I am sure.”
Faye couldn’t help it. She really started to blubber. The Torch lady scooted over and gave Faye a hug, and that made Faye completely forgive her for the whole accidentally setting her on fire thing. “I’m sorry. I forgot your name.”
“They call me Lady Origami.” She had a gentle smile. She wasn’t very old, but she smiled like Faye thought a mother was supposed to. “It is fine, sometimes, to cry… Here… This is what I do when I am sad but do not want to be. This is how I got this name.” She unbuttoned one of the multitude of pockets on her coveralls and pulled out a sheet of soft paper. She began to fold it, one way, then another, then another, way too fast for Faye to understand. Then she crumpled it a bit to make it seem more natural and more alive, but even that was just another type of folding.
She handed Faye a very lifelike bird. Faye marveled at it. Now that was magic. “How’d you do that?”
“It is art. I learned from my father when I was a little girl. The folding changes things. Every sheet starts the same, until you fold it and it becomes new.”
Faye studied the bird. It had been a plain, flat old piece of paper, and now it was a bird. That sure was neat… Faye used her head map and focused on the bird. It took her nearly two whole seconds to unfold the entire thing in her mind. It was all just connections on the same piece, but change the connections, smoosh together new ones, and you changed the thing. And then she realized something. “That’s what I do. I fold stuff.”
“Yes. They all may look the same, but every sheet has a destiny. The artist shows that destiny.”
This was intriguing. Faye focused hard on her head map, studying the bird in her hand. Faye smooshed together bits of space so she could step through them. This art of Lady Origami’s moved smooshed bits too, but kept them there, and once you did that, it turned the whole thing into something new and exciting. Faye reached down and began unfolding. Lady Origami just frowned, curious as to why her artwork was being mangled. Faye was clumsy, but she managed not to rip anything. “This is how magic works!”
“I do not understand.”
“Magic is all the same. They all talk about geometry and stuff, but magic is all the same at first, until it gets folded! Then it makes a new thing!” Faye’s mind was blown. Her magic kept track of the lines as the bird unraveled. She envisioned the flat sheet in her head map, and then viewed it in three dimensions and decided to make something new. She quickly thought through all the necessary connections, and began smooshing things back together.
Lady Origami was perplexed, but she didn’t say anything as Faye kept folding and twisting things. It took her a whole lot longer to do it with her clumsy hands than with her fast brain. Faye proudly held up the rough thing that had once been a swan.
“I am not sure what—”
“It’s a Holstein!” Faye exclaimed.
Lady Origami took it back, obviously confused. Now that she was looking at it in cold reality and not as the majestic animal she conceived in her head map, it was ugly as sin, but at least it was shaped right and had enough legs. “Ah yes. Of course.”
“A cow!”
“Oh.” She nodded appreciatively. “I can see that… That is one of the spotted ones? We crashed the Bulldog Marauder on some. Very nice,” she lied, trying not to hurt Faye’s feelings. “I did not know anyone from the West knew this art.”
“Art? No. This is what I do when I Travel. I make connections. I can’t believe I never saw this before. Don’t you see?” Faye jabbered excitedly. “This is exactly how magic works! The whole world, the universe, that’s the sheet. Actives normally get to fold just one part to change the world! Maybe they can grow that bit, make some changes, but they don’t ever really unfold the whole sheet and make something new, but it’s the folds that decide what each part does! That’s how the Chairman could change between different kinds of magic. He unfolded his connection and made new ones.”
Faye could tell that she’d completely lost her audience. Lady Origami just had a look on her face that said Faye had gone crazy. That was okay, Faye was used to that, but this was a big deal.
“Do you got any more paper?”
Lady Origami had a lot of pockets.
Magic, a sharp knife, some demon ink, whiskey to dull the pain, and a steady hand… That’s all it took to turn a man into a weapon.
Who was he kidding? Jake Sullivan had always been a weapon. It was just time to quit pretending he could ever be anything else.
Killing. That’s all he’d ever been good for. Even when he’d tried to help, tried to be on the side of the angels, all he’d done was kill.
As a boy, his head had been filled with big ideals about courage and sacrifice and defending the innocent. He’d lied about his age and joined General Roosevelt’s First Volunteer Active Brigade. He’d even talked his brothers into it. Think of the adventure… What horseshit. The Sullivan brothers’ grand adventure had turned into years of endless trench warfare, killing with bullets, gravity, and bare hands. He’d survived the biggest battle in history with his body relatively intact, while one brother had lost his life and the other had lost his mind.