Soul Music - Motorcycle

The wizards started breathing again.

'Oh, my,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'Rave In . . .' said the Senior Wrangler.

'Now that's what I call Music With Rocks In,' sighed the Dean.

He stepped forward with the rapt expression of a miser in a goldmine. The candlelight glittered off black and silver. There was a lot of both.

'Oh, my,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was like some kind of incantation.

'I say, isn't that my nose-hair mirror?' said the Bursar, breaking the spell. 'That's my nose-hair mirror, I'm sure-'

Except that while the black was black the silver wasn't really silver. It was whatever mirrors and bits of shiny tin and tinsel and wire the Librarian had been able to scrounge and bend into shape . . .

'-it's got the little silver frame . . . why's it on that two-wheeled cart? Two wheels, one after the other? Ridiculous. It'll fall over, depend upon it. And where's the horse going to go, may I ask?' The Senior Wrangler tapped him gently on the shoulder.

'Bursar? Word to the wizard, old chap.'

'Yes? What is it?'

'I think if you don't stop talking this minute the Dean will kill you.'

There were two small cart-wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip. The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw's banquet of gewgaws. A horse's skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point.

It was junk, but as it stood in the flickering glow it had a dark, organic quality - not exactly life, but something dynamic and disquieting and coiled and potent that was making the Dean vibrate on his feet. It radiated something that suggested that, just by existing and looking like it did, it was breaking at least nine laws and twenty-three guidelines.

'Is he in love?' said the Bursar.

'Make it go!' said the Dean. 'It's got to go! It's meant to go!'

'Yes, but what is it?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

'It's a masterpiece,' said the Dean. 'A triumph!'

'Oook?'

'Perhaps you have to push it along with your feet?' whispered the Senior Wrangler.

The Dean shook his head in a preoccupied way. 'We're wizards, aren't we?' he said. 'I expect we could make it go.'

He walked around the circle. The draught from his studded leather robe made the candle- flames waver and the shadows of the thing danced on the wall.

The Senior Wrangler bit his lip. 'Not too certain about that,' he said. 'Looks like it's got more than enough magic in it as it is. Is it . . . er. . . is it breathing or is that just my imagination?' The Senior Wrangler spun around and waved a finger at the Librarian. 'You built it?' he barked.

The orang-utan shook his head. 'Oook.'

'What'd he say?'

'He said he didn't build it, he just put it together,' said the Dean, without turning his head.

'Ook.'

***

Soul Music - p235-236