Trio of Sorcery Read Free Page A

things started flitting about her the moment she began doing something that dark. Rather than stop her, though, Memaw just stared her down until she stopped of her own accord.
    Then Memaw told her, in blunt and no uncertain terms, about the Threefold Law. “Now,” she finished. “I don’t for a minute think that boy doesn’t deserve a set down. But if you give more tit than he gave tat, you will be getting every bit of that, times three, right in your face. Reckon you want that?”
    Now, by this point, she was accustomed to actually stopping and thinking things through when confronted by such a question, and it didn’t take much thinking to realize that no, she didn’t want that. All he’d done was taunt her. Well, she’d taunted him back, she’d made him furious, and gotten him in trouble at school for fighting on top of that. The score was probably even at this point.
    But Memaw hadn’t let it rest there. “You want to teach some sprout a lesson, you put the Mirror on him,” she continued, an ever-so-slightly malicious smile on her face. “I’ll show you.”
    So that afternoon she had taken the doll and showed Di how to cast the Mirror of Consequences on someone. It was hard. It was the hardest spell she had ever done tothat point, even with assistance, and it was still hard, to this day, because you had to be absolutely fair about it, or it wouldn’t work, it would be flawed, and the flaws would break it. What it did was to reflect everything that someone did right back at him. So there were immediate consequences to his actions and words, instead of delayed. If he taunted someone, those taunts would be reflected back on him, so that instead of getting the laughs he’d gotten before from calling her Wednesday, people wouldn’t find it quite so funny, and would think about the time he’d called them, or a friend, similar names. If he tried to fight, he would lose; either his opponent would suddenly find more strength and skill than he normally had, or an authority figure would take notice and intervene right away. The more he hated, the more he would be hated.
    But it wasn’t all one-way, this Mirror. If he started acting nice to people, that would be reflected too. People would like him more, just for starters.
    Now they call that “instant karma,” she reflected.
    â€œYou’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she’d said to Memaw, who only smirked.
    Well, Jimmy got his dose of instant karma when everyone started calling him “Mason Jar.” It was a stupid name, it wasn’t even that much of an insult except that Jimmy was built like a fireplug. But it got his goat. And when he came at people, the teachers noticed instantly. He didn’t have any time to taunt her anymore, and without him to keep it going, people stopped calling her Wednesday.
    Later that year his dad’s job moved them down south, so she had no idea what happened to him. But Memaw had reminded her to take the spell off him, so she did. Reluctantly, but she did. Did he ever learn his lesson? Maybe. Maybe not. Whether he did or not, as Memaw reminded her, was up to him, not her.
    â€œYou can’t make someone change,” she’d said. “All you can do is make it uncomfortable for ’em not to. And if you aren’t around to supervise, well, better take the heat off before they boil over.”
    Memaw had let Di read virtually anything she wanted to, from the old grimoires in spidery handwriting to the comic books that she got with her allowance money. And maybe that was the reason why, all those comic books, and the idea that if you had power you had to do something good with it, that she’d done what she had done. She still could not imagine herself saying anything but yes to the question that had been posed to her, the night she turned sixteen.
    She didn’t remember most of it, actually. Which the few