The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog by Frances Sackett

magic. Everything seemed the same, except that the one time when it worked, you were really mad. So I figured I’d try to make you mad again. And so I said the meanest things I could think of, and look! You were able to change The Dog back.”
    What she said made sense, Peter thought. He had been angry last night when he changed The Dog into a mushroom, and angry, too, today when the magic finally worked. Still . . .
    â€œBut why?” he demanded, looking at The Dog. “Why can I only do magic when I’m mad? And why didn’t you tell me?”
    The Dog scratched his ear, and his eyes shifted uneasily away from Peter’s. “I wasn’t sure you had to be mad,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. There are actuallya lot of different emotions that enable magicians to do magic. Greed, hate, anger—those are definitely the three big ones, but there are others, too. My old magician once made a whole house disappear because he was resentful.”
    Peter had about a thousand questions he wanted to ask, but before he could, Izzy spoke up. “Why did he want the house to disappear?”
    The Dog snorted. “It was built closer to his house than he wanted, and it had a pool. The kids were always playing and laughing outside. He could have made it so he couldn’t hear them, but instead one day,
poof!
The family that lived there thought a freak tornado had carried their home away, but then, most people will believe anything rather than believing in magic.”
    â€œSo he just made their house disappear?” Celia said. The smile on her face faded.
    â€œYes, that’s right.”
    â€œHe sounds like a jerk, your magician,” said Peter.
    â€œOf course he was a jerk,” said The Dog. “He was a magician.”
    â€œCan’t magicians be nice?” asked Izzy.
    â€œA magician can start out a good person,” said The Dog. “I’m sure many of them are very decent kids to begin with. But from what I saw with my master, the more magic you do, the more you want to do magic. And the more you want to do magic, the more you open your mind to the bad emotions that allow you to channel your power. Sooner or later, the bad emotions become a part of who you are. Why, just look at Peter! He’s still shaking with anger, and he probably can’t even tell you why.”
    Peter looked down at his hands. He hadn’t realized it before, but they were, in fact, shaking. He pressed them against his thighs.
    â€œAre you angry, Peter?” asked Celia.
    â€œNo,” Peter tried to say, but the word shot out of his mouth, sounding, well, angry.
    â€œWhy are you mad?” asked Izzy, moving closer to him.
    â€œIt’s just . . . It’s because . . .” Looking at Izzy, Peter couldn’t actually remember why he was so angry. Celia had said mean things and taken credit for turning The Dog back into a dog. But she’d figured out how Peter’s magic worked, and she had only said the mean things to help him. The Dog had turned Izzy and Celia into birds—but last night The Dog had actually taught Peter how to do magic. Wasn’t that just as good as, if not better than, getting to fly? “I’m not angry anymore,” he said, realizing as the words came out of his mouth that they were true. He took Izzy’s hand. “I’m not sure why I was mad before. I’m sorry.”
    â€œIt’s not really Peter’s fault,” The Dog said. “It’s just something that will happen if he does magic often enough. Kind of a side effect, I guess you’d call it.”
    â€œYou mean if Peter does magic all the time, he’s going to end up as mean as your magician?” asked Celia.
    The Dog pawed the carpet. “My master met a few other magicians,” he said, “and he made it sound as though they were just as evil as he was. It seems likely that will