“Do you have real magic books here?” the boy asked the old man.

“Oh, yes,” the man said.

“Like with magic words that let you do things?”

“Certainly, among the other sorts,” the man said.

“Like, I could fly or make a million pounds of gold appear?” the boy asked.

“Is that what you’re interested in?”

“Yeah, sure,” the boy said.

“Well, then,” the old man said, ducking beneath the counter and rifling through the things stored behind it, “perhaps you are ready for something like this.”

He rose, holding a leather bound book with words pressed into the cover. The old man set the book down facing the boy, who read them aloud.

“Words of Power: The Magic Words To Accomplish Anything,” the boy said. He looked up at the old man. “Is this for real?”

“Go ahead, open it and see for yourself.”

The boy lifted the cover and flipped pages until he came to the first substantial text, which he again read aloud.

“The only words you must know and use to unlock all the power of the universe and have your fondest wishes are ‘please’ and ‘thank you’,” he recited. With a snort, he shoved the book away with so much force that it fell down behind the counter. “Load of bullshit, just like I thought. Later, weirdo.”

“Wait!” the old man cried as he scrambled to recover the fallen tome. The boy was already out the door.

The old man put the book back up on the counter, this time facing himself, and did his best to smooth the bent pages. They were quite brittle with age, though, and more than one of them had been damaged by the fall.

“Please show me the words I must use to repair a damaged book,” the old man said, and the book flipped to a different page, where certain words enlarged and rearranged themselves while others vanished. He recited the resulting formula, then waited while the book restored itself to a better condition than it had been when he’d first pulled it out. “Hmm, I don’t know why I never thought of that before. Thank you.”

The book closed with a snap, and the old man put it away.