A Sudden Wild Magic

But there was more. Brother Tony marched him into a side street lined with more of the windowed buildings and showed him a glass door leading into a concrete place called Star House. “This is where you’ll be working.”

“Working?” said Tod.

“Yes, you have to earn the money to live, you know. It’s not difficult. It’s only a firm of accountants. Get there just before nine on Monday— today being Friday, of course — and go up to the fourth floor to Garter and Sixsmith and just walk in. You’ll find they’ll accept you as my replacement as soon as you give your name. Have you got all that?”

“Fourth floor at nine on Monday, Gutter and Sick-smith,” Tod repeated like one hypnotized. He had never, ever in his life, worked for wages. Perhaps the gods had decided it would be good for his soul. He knew numbers of people, back in the Pentarchy, who did work. His cousin Michael did. But Tod had never, ever had the slightest curiosity to know how it felt.

“Right. Then we’ll go and get the car,” Brother Tony said.

“Car?” Tod felt a certain brightening. There was a car went with this? His eye fell on a vehicle standing by Star House, large and sleek and gray, clearly a thing of power and beauty, and otherworld at once seemed a slightly better place.

“Yes, I’ll be leaving it with you,” Brother Tony joyed Tod’s heart by saying. “It belongs to Arth and I can’t take it to Hong Kong anyway. This way.”

They went briskly around a few more corners, and Tod’s step was nearly as jaunty as Brother Tony’s, until they came into the other end of the road from which they had started. It was lined with cars, parked closely on either side. Halfway down the line, Brother Tony stopped and felt for keys. Though none of the cars near was as beautiful as the gray one, there was a red one and a white one which were trim and passable. Tod’s spirits were quite high until he saw the car which Brother Tony was actually unlocking. Up to then, his eye had passed over it because he had not thought it was a car.

It was small. It had a domed top, like the head of an amiable but stupid dog, and a curious posture, down at the front and up at the back, as if the stupid dog were engaged in sniffing the gutter; and to make it more remarkable, it was not one colour but several random ones. The domed top was orange. One flimsy-looking door was green. The down- bending bonnet was sky-blue. The rest was a rusty sort of cream. It was like a jester — or someone’s idea of a joke.

“This,” Tod said, “is a car?”

“Yes,” Brother Tony answered, flinging wide the green door of the motley monster. He threw his leather bag in upon a smart pile of luggage on the rear seat. “It’s a Deux Chevaux. That means two horses, by the way. Get in.”

But it’s not even one horse! Tod thought, dubiously opening the other door, which was pink and appeared to be made of tin. It bent about as he moved it. He climbed in upon a seat made of the cloth they wiped dishes with in the kitchen of his Residence in Haurbath and gingerly sat. “Watch carefully,” Brother Tony was saying. “You’ll have to drive it back here. So watch the way too.”

“Where are we going?” Tod asked.

“To meet Paulie. The ritual will transfer her affections to you as soon as she sees you, don’t worry,” Brother Tony said cheerfully. “I just have to bring you together.”

Arth seemed to have thought of everything. Tod sat in wordless misery watching his companion insert a key into the shaky fascia of the little monster. In response, the monster growled and produced a tinny chugging which caused it to shake all over. Loose metal flapped. Tod shut his eyes. Then forced them open again because he was supposed to watch.

A few seconds were enough to show him that the controls were identical to those of his own superlative Delmo-Mendacci. He wondered if one was not borrowed from the other, and if so, which world had borrowed from which. He was inclined to think otherworld must have stolen the idea of cars from the Pentarchy. This thing Brother Tony was driving was so clearly a debased copy of a dim notion of a car. It went with the same disgraceful chugging with which it had begun, in what was probably a westerly direction, slowly and with obvious effort, toward the outskirts of the town. Tod hoped they were going right beyond the town, but those hopes were dashed when they had chugged into a wider, quieter neighborhood and Brother Tony announced they were nearly there. Fawn-colored houses, these were, or delicately reddish, standing individually at the back of little pieces of grass and driveway, each one a slightly different shape from its neighbors to show that it was the residence of persons who could afford to choose.