Incantations to order, was her motto.
Her shop was rather old, but she kept it nice and clean. For the best part of a decade the old sorceress had been selling custom-made on-the-spot incantations to her customers. It was a unique service and very popular. When they came, her guests could always rely on being offered a cup of tea or a coffee and given a seat while they explained their situation and told her what they wanted. She had done very well out of it, until recently. Her customers had been dwindling for several weeks. It took a while before she found out that she had competition. The word was that a woman was peddling incantations from her home. From what she could find out, the woman’s spells were nowhere near as good or as powerful as hers, but she was selling them at much cheaper prices.
She decided to fight fire with fire. She went into her back room and opened the cupboard. The shelves were crammed with books. She selected a dozen or so that she felt might contain what she was looking for. She would be breaking new ground. This had never been attempted before. She was a long time going back through all of her many volumes of magic spells. Finally, she found what she was looking for. It was a complex incantation and she would have to spend some time practising it. That evening, after dark, and holding the selected book, she carefully climbed up through the hatch onto the roof.
She stood looking out at the town’s lights while she gathered her thoughts. She knew the words, but held the book open at the relevant page, to add power to the spell. It would be a special incantation for a large group. She would need to cast for at least five of the town’s blocks. She felt sure that once this was done, word of mouth would do the rest. She took a deep breath and began…
It took only a couple of days for business to pick up nicely.