Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine Cranes by Kanishk Tantia
3400 words, ~17 minutes reading time
Issue 8, Summer 2025
In my memories, Dadu’s house is flimsy. The paper walls are subtly textured, gossamer thin lines of magic spiderwebbing across the surface. The childlike instinct to draw on them is strong, but stronger still is the fear of disrupting the magic, of somehow breaking those delicate lines until the house falls on us. It’s paper, after all, and paper isn’t strong, isn’t built to last. As a child, I didn’t understand the difference between delicacy and weakness. The house was delicate, and I was always afraid it would collapse.
Dadu, my grandfather, didn’t help these fears with his stories. Stories of storms and how the paper could wash away under the assault of the monsoons. He reveled in my squeals as I burrowed under layers of blankets and shuddered in equal parts cold and worry. But the house always stood, and the morning always brought warm golden light scattered over the origami walls.
Now when I visit, I stay at the village inn. Even though Dadu left me the house and grimoire, even though I know I’ll need to trek uphill to empty it out, I choose to stay away, like I have all these years. To visit now, to claim it as my own with him gone, gives rise to some poignant emotion I cannot quite place or confront. But the grimoire waits, and it would be safer with me, unused, unsullied, waiting for a real Paper Magician to use it one day. Not me, but someone else.
Clearing out the house won’t take time anyway. Blessed with the capacity for near-infinite creation, things had little value for Dadu. His house was always sparse, his desire for things limited to what he could fold from the pages of the grimoire.
“We thought the house would fall apart by now.” The innkeeper ladles hot soup into my bowl. There aren’t many strangers in the village, and each is a source of gossip. “It’s paper, isn’t it?”
I say nothing, and he leaves me with a grunt and a receipt. As the soup cools, I find myself playing with the paper, folding and creasing it until a crane sits in my palm. The first shape Dadu ever taught me years ago, while I sat at his workbench, legs dangling off a stool.
The crane flaps its wings once, twice, testing them. The folds are strong but the paper is ordinary, the magic dissipating already.
Dadu’s creations were made from the pages of his grimoire, with magic everlasting in the paper. My crane, however, flies only briefly before falling into the bowl of soup.
I fish it out. I didn’t want the responsibility of eternal creations, not once I understood how long and lonely eternity could be.
I enter barefoot, to avoid any streaks or scuff marks on the paper. Magic paper still catches marks. Even now, the muddy brown footprints of my childhood adventures lead from the front door to the kitchen. Little splatter steps, ending where Dadu noticed and dunked me into the sink. He’s had years to wash them away, and I wonder why he never did.
A paper toad limps over, his surface painstakingly speckled with green and yellow, pinprick black eyes peek out from beneath the detailed ridges of his eyebrows.
Balji’s always the first to greet me, though he’s really searching for Ma.
“Take him with you.” Dadu would tell her, traipsing in from his workshop or from the paper couch in the living room. “Before I turn him into a lampshade or something. He’s yours anyway.”
Ma would scoop Balji up, petting him, stroking his forehead until the pink tongue flickered.
“Don’t be silly.” She’d hug Dadu until the grumbling melted from his face. “He doesn’t want to be a lampshade. Right, Balji?”
Balji always hopped when Ma said that. He wasn’t particularly sentient, with the barest shred of magical intelligence, but he was made to be very agreeable. The gift of magic skipped Ma, so Dadu designed a companion for her, meant to agree and encourage his daughter forever.
As I pluck Balji up, paint flakes from the paper. Ma was the one who patched him up, made sure he looked fresh and whole. He’s old now, and I feel age-worn paper and brittle paint chipping away. I remember her pushing Balji and Dadu into the workshop, refusing to let them out until Balji was hopping and skipping like he was freshly folded. I’ll patch him up later, maybe daub on some paint as best I can, a little apology for not being around.
Instinctively, I look towards the stairs. I expect Dadu, heading up from his basement workshop, mock-grumbling just so he has something to say. Nobody appears. Perhaps Balji can sense the emptiness, can sense the passing of his creator, because he burrows deeper into my pocket until only his eyes peek out. Or perhaps he likes the warmth.
“Sorry I haven’t visited.” I whisper the words to Balji, but they’re really for someone else. “I’ve been busy.”
Balji wriggles in response. I can’t blame him. There was no argument, no rift, no fight. Just time, and the lack of it, and the impossibility of doing things I didn’t need to do because there was always so much I did need to do.
The last time I saw Dadu was at Ma’s funeral, where we exchanged a few grief-stricken words. I expected him to come by in a paper suit, but he wore cloth, dark and pinstriped, and looked lesser for it.
I remember him staring at the freshly covered patch of earth. He stood there for a while, after everyone else left, and when I approached, I saw his hands moving, fiddling with a piece of paper.
“You’re folding something? Here? Now?” It felt insensitive, given Ma had never been able to, and had always been a little jealous she didn’t have the gifts we did.
He looked embarrassed and hid the paper behind his back. Red-rimmed eyes, but no tears on his face.
“It’s not your fault.” The words rushed out, as though he’d been waiting to say them. “It’s fickle–magic. It’s nobody’s fault it skipped her. You didn’t take anything from her.”
Dadu must have known he’d see this day. Magicians lived a long time, long enough to see the ungifted pass. Long enough for it to be too long. Dadu, I suppose, had lived long enough to face it, to make peace with knowing he would outlive his daughter.
“I know.”
“I know you know, I just wanted to say it. It helps, hearing someone else say it.”
“I wish she had the magic instead of me.” I looked at him and heard my voice break. I knew it was silly, but it was hard not to feel like I’d taken something from her. “She wanted it. She would have loved it.”
“I’ve wished I could give her mine every single day.” Dadu looked at me, and I saw something within him change, some remnant of strength leaving his body. “Every single day, since I first held her.”
He looked small, an old man at his daughter’s funeral. But I didn’t want that. I wanted, needed the legendary Paper Magician, unflappable and brave and eternal. Instead, I saw just how long eternity was in the shrunken man before me.
“Stop folding. Just…for today.”
“It’s not for me, it’s—”
I took the paper from his unresisting hands and crumpled it, ruining it until it fluttered into the mud, shining magical lines irrecoverably broken.
“Stop.”
It wasn’t the last time I heard from him. There were letters, flying through the sky at first but eventually hand-delivered by the postal service. We wished each other well on birthdays. He never asked for more. I assumed he was fine. He was the Paper Magician, after all. A legend. Legends are always fine.
Most of the house is as I remember, paper furniture and appliances, folded by Dadu and hand-painted by Ma. We spent summers here, Ma carefully dabbing at worn corners and refreshing coats of paint while I played in the backyard. I think she enjoyed it, being close to the magic.
Back then, I wanted to be the next Paper Magician. I told her about all the things I’d make, grand things, eternal things. She smiled, and I never noticed the little pinpricks of pain as she encouraged my dreams.
I lay a hand on a couch, patterned with red and brown, cunningly painted to resemble texture where there is none. The surface is smooth and cold, magic pulsating within.
“What would you like to be, I wonder?” I whisper to the couch, probing the magic inside, wondering if there’s a more convenient shape to fold it into. “Something small? Playing cards, maybe? You’d fit nicely into a box.”
But the lines are set, happy with their existence, and won’t bend anymore.
I withdraw my hand and move to the next. And the next. But each piece radiates contentment, unwilling to change. And yet, though I still don’t know how I’ll clear them out, I feel relief. These aren’t my creations. Changing them would rid the world of more memories I don’t want to lose.
“I’ll figure it out later.” I mutter to Balji, who has made himself well at home in my pocket. “Is there anything in the workshop?”
Balji nods vigorously. I haven’t been inside Dadu’s workshop in years, but I remember it well. Paper shavings on the floor, blueprints of origami designs lining the walls, dozens of prototypes made with ordinary paper before Dadu would consider opening his grimoire.
It hasn’t changed much, a small space packed with old designs, abandoned relics, remnants of Dadu’s time as the Paper Magician. The regalia of a legend. Now, they’re echoes of echoes, my memories of his memories.
One wall is taken up by a large desk, and that truly has changed. It was cramped before, cluttered with strips of paper and manuals on origami. Dadu sat here for hours every day, and after incessant pestering, I sat with him as he taught me to make the basic shapes, to fold, to imbue magic into my creations.
I made my first crane here, a feeble little thing with barely a scrap of power. Dadu had been proud, and I’d been proud of making him proud.
The desk is empty now, magical paper gleaming even though it bears the marks of recent work. The chair is worn in, and I wonder why Dadu never made himself a better seat, why he didn’t patch it until it was comfortable.
His grimoire lies on the desk, flung to the side. The cover is a velvety purple, bearing the signs of repeated use, faded in patches where Dadu’s fingers opened and closed it repeatedly. Within, the infinite possibility of creation. For a moment my fingers meet his, but my hands are smaller than the imprints he left behind.
“Maybe I’ll fix you up a little first, Balji. Make you a bit stronger?” I pat him gently, but Balji is curiously still. When I look at him, he blinks, no traces of his usual agreeableness. “Or not. Whatever you prefer, little guy.”
Hesitantly, I reach for the grimoire. I’ve never used it. I was eager for it once, before Ma died. And since then, it’s been a burden, a responsibility towards not just people, but the things I would create. And yet, I want to hold it, at least once. Perhaps to satisfy the child I was.
It feels curiously light when I pick it. I flip it open, expecting to see the sheen of magic waiting to become something beyond mere paper. Instead, there’s nothing left. No pages, just a few strands of feeble thread.
No more magic.
Where did it go? Dadu was always more careful than that, expeditious with his use of the paper, unwilling to use it for small joys or merriment. I asked him, once, to make me something. It was my birthday, and I was seven.
“Are you ready to care for it your whole life?” He asked, looking deep into my eyes, pressing up close to my face until I felt the scratch of his beard. “To make something eternal is to be responsible for it forever.”
I nodded vigorously, somewhat jealous Ma had Balji, and I had nothing.
“And what would you like?”
“A parrot.” I’d seen the birds in pictures, but there were none around. “A lot of parrots.”
He smiled and retreated into his workshop. Every so often, Ma would go in with him and emerge covered in paint, winking at me.
On my birthday, he showered me in parrots. Colorful, raucous, cheerful parrots, dripping with energy and excitement, and in a moment of awe, I forgot what I’d asked for. Thankfully, they knew that children ask for burdens they cannot handle. Within days, the magic faded and only scraps of inert paper remained, but I’d grown bored of the flock by then, childlike obsession flitting to something else.
Years later, I realized the effort made to save a single piece of magical paper. Each sheet was precious, each creation a defiance of time and life and nature.
So, where had they gone?
As if in response to the unspoken query, Balji shuffles and leaps from my pocket, landing softly on the workbench. I worry the paper will tear, but he seems fine. He hops in small, jittery movements towards the far end of the bench, towards a tiny jar secreted away within a paper-cubby. He taps it a few times, and I chuckle.
“Want me to open it?”
He hops, and I decide to humor the little fellow. The jar is unlikely to answer my questions, but I can’t see the harm in opening it. It’s one of the few non-paper things in the house, a clay jar with carved runes. A relic from his travels, or a gift from a friend, perhaps.
Did he have friends? He must have. He must have had a life beyond the one I knew, must have been more than Dadu and more than the Paper Magician. I feel like I’m desperately pushing against the door to a world I only have hints for, a world filled with my grandfather’s life. A world I avoided until it was too late to become a part of it.
I pull the lid open.
“It’s bigger on the inside?” I look at Balji, who blinks. Well, frogs don’t know a lot about magic, and magical frogs are no exception. But this isn’t Dadu’s magic; it’s not something he could have made. Another mystery I will never solve.
Carefully, I reach inside and feel the cool, crisp texture of folded paper. Grasping it between my forefinger and thumb, I pull the paper out and feel the near transparent spiderweb of magic holding it back, waiting to be set free.
A crane.
I set it on the workbench and reach into the jar again. Another crane. And another. And another.
After a hundred cranes, I can picture Dadu folding them. Pulling pages from his grimoire, ensuring each crane is perfectly symmetrical, perfectly balanced.
At three hundred cranes, the worktop has no more space and I start settling them on the ground. These are Dadu’s last creations. I won’t damage them.
“Stubborn old man.” I mutter under my breath, as Balji, safely within my pocket, watches the flood of cranes emerging from the clay jar. “He could have asked if I wanted to help.”
At five hundred cranes, I see the slight imperfections in them. The wobbles, the off-center folds, the tell-tale signs of overwork and arthritis. The first few were perfect. These are flawed, but perfect still.
“I could have helped. If he asked?” I’m talking to Balji but trying to convince myself. “I would have made time.”
Eight hundred cranes, and the jar feels emptier now. I do too. Perhaps Dadu did too, folding cranes with only a paper frog for company, thinking of a daughter he outlived, and a grandchild too busy to bother.
“I wasn’t too busy.” I mumble. “Or, I mean, he never told me. He should have told me.”
Nine hundred and ninety-nine cranes cover the floor and table and shelves, and I set to counting them again. There are still nine-hundred and ninety-nine. One short of a thousand.
I don’t want to think about it, but the memory comes back. Dadu, folding something at Ma’s funeral, me taking it from him, a piece of ruined magical paper crumpled on the ground.
The cranes stare at me, and I feel the burden of their expectations. Of wanting to be free. Of knowing their flock is incomplete, that they will never be a thousand. What must he have felt, in that moment? Creating the last one, reaching for one more page from his grimoire and finding it empty? Knowing he would never make the thousandth?
Knowing it was my fault?
The workshop is oppressive now, the weight of lonely grief too heavy for me to stand. I can’t stay here anymore, and I make my way out, tracing the muddy steps that were once mine, to the upstairs where everything is content and settled and the same.
“I wrote to him. He could have told me what he was doing. Could have let me know he wanted some help.”
Balji nods agreeably. He doesn’t understand, but he’s a comfort anyway.
“I thought he was fine.” I stare at the backyard, at the moon hanging low. Dadu always liked the moon, liked the way it made the house glow, made the weblike magic shine brighter. “He was the Paper Magician.”
I think of Dadu, standing in his suit, looking small and shrunken. I’d fooled myself into thinking he was stronger than I was, that he’d had time to come to terms with Ma passing before him. How I’d sent him cursory letters but hadn’t wanted to see him because seeing him would remind me too much of Ma, would bring up grief I didn’t want and wasn’t prepared to face.
I look around the house and see how much of it still bears the signs of Ma’s work. It’s frozen in time from the days when Ma and I visited. Being so close must have hurt, but getting rid of it would hurt even more. Did he retreat to his workshop then, to work alone, to fold cranes forever?
Nine hundred and ninety-nine. One short.
“It’s my fault. I didn’t know it, back then.” If I hadn’t crumpled the paper at the funeral. If I’d listened, if I’d seen past what I wanted my grandfather to be, and into what he really was. If I’d just visited, once. “I ruined it.”
I expect Balji to hop in agreement. Instead, he pats my hand. He turns his black eyes towards me, and for the first time, I sense a question within him.
Pale moonlight lights up Dadu’s house. Nine hundred and ninety-nine paper cranes sit within a magical jar, excited to fly.
“I wish I had more time.” I look at the jar, speaking to the cranes inside and to Balji within my pocket. “I wish we had more time together.”
The cranes hum, the magic in their folds strong and vibrant. The last magic Dadu left this world.
“I promise, I miss you. I miss both of you.” I can feel the eagerness of the paper cranes within. “It might be too late now, but it’s always been true.”
Balji nods from within my pocket, and I whisper to the jar.
“Fly.”
The cranes rush out in a flurry, pouring from the mouth of the jar as they take flight. One hundred, two hundred, nine hundred and ninety-nine cranes flock to the skies, paper glowing against the night sky. But instead of reaching for the heavens, they gather and wait.
I scoop Balji up in my hand, and whisper to him.
“What would you like to be, Balji?” I probe the folded paper. I can see the paint thinning, the joints aching, the strain of hopping. “Would you like to fly?”
A warm rush greets me, not just agreement but happiness.
“Fly then.” I whisper as the magic takes hold of Balji’s paper. I guide Dadu’s magic with my fingers until a mottled green crane looks up at me, two black eyes glittering in the moonlight, a pink tongue flickering. Balji.
Not just Dadu’s, or Ma’s, but mine too. Three generations of Paper Magicians, from the first to the last.
“Go.” I wave him away, pushing him towards the sky, watching as he joins his family.. Soon, they take off, and the moon is covered with the silhouette of a thousand cranes.
“You’ll never collapse, old friend.”
