than he had ever seen in his life were rushing past, together with lorries and the occasional big red bus. There were cars standing all round him. This was a good world indeed!
The Willing Warlock sniffed the delicious smell of petrol and turned to the nearest parked car to see how it worked. It looked rather different from the one he had tried to steal in Wolvercote. Experimentally, he made a magic pass over its bonnet. To his delight, the bonnet promptly sprang open an inch or so. The French wizard had not lied. He had his magic back.
The Willing Warlock was just about to heave up the bonnet and plunge into the mysteries beneath, when he saw a large lady in uniform, with a yellow band round her cap, tramping meaningly towards him. She must be a policewoman. Now he had his magic back, the Willing Warlock did not panic. He simply let go of the bonnet and sauntered casually away. Rather to his surprise, the policewoman did not follow him. She just gave him a look of deep contempt and tucked a message of some kind behind the wiper of the car.
All the same, the Willing Warlock felt it prudent to go on walking. He walked to another street, looking at cars all the time, until something made him look up. In front of him was a grand marble building. CITY BANK, it said, in rich gold letters. Now here, thought the Willing Warlock, was a better way to get a car than simply stealing it. If he robbed this bank, he could buy a car of his very own. He took the toy pistol out of his pocket and went in through the grand door.
Inside it was very hushed and polite and calm. Though there were quite a lot of people there, waiting in front of the cashiers or walking about in the background, nobody seemed to notice the Willing Warlock standing uncertainly waving his pistol. He was forced to go and push the nearest queue of people aside and point the pistol at the lady behind the glass there.
“Money or your life,” he said.
They seemed to notice him then. Somebody screamed. The lady behind the glass went white and put her thumb on a button near her cash-drawer. “How – how much money, sir?” she faltered.
“All of it,” said the Willing Warlock. “Quickly.” Maybe, he thought afterwards, that was a bit greedy. But it seemed so easy. Everyone, on both sides of the glassed-in counter, was standing frozen, staring at him, afraid of the pistol. And the lady readily opened her cash-drawer and began counting out wads of five-pound notes, fumbling with haste and eagerness.
While she was doing it, the door of the bank opened and someone came in. The Willing Warlock glanced over his shoulder and saw it was only a small man in a pin-striped suit, who seemed to be staring like everybody else. The lady was actually passing the Willing Warlock the first bundle of money, when the small man shouted out in a very big voice, “Don’t be a fool! He’s only joking. That’s a toy pistol!”
At once everyone near turned on the Willing Warlock. Three men tried to grab him. An old lady swung her handbag and clouted him round the head. “Take that, you thief!” A bell began to ring loudly. And, worse still, an unholy howling started somewhere outside, coming closer and closer. “That’s the police coming!” screamed the old lady, and she went for the Willing Warlock again.
The Willing Warlock turned and ran, with everyone trying to stop him and getting in his way. The last person who got in his way was the small man in the pin-striped suit. He took hold of the Willing Warlock’s sleeve and said, “Wait a minute—”
The Willing Warlock was so desperate by then that he fired the toy pistol at him. A stream of water came out of it and caught the small man in one eye, drenching his smart suit. The small man ducked and let go. The Willing Warlock burst out through the door of the bank.
The howling outside was hideous. It was coming from a white car labelled POLICE, with a blue flashing light on top, which was racing down the street towards him. There was rather a nice car parked by the kerb, facing towards the police car. A big, shiny, expensive car. Even in his panic, and wondering how the police had been fetched so quickly, that car caught the Willing Warlock’s eye. As the police car screamed to a stop and policemen started to jump out of it, the Willing Warlock tore open the door of the nice car, jumped into the seat behind the steering-wheel, and set it going in a burst of desperate magic.
Behind him, the policemen jumped back into their car, which then did a screaming U-turn and came after him. The Willing Warlock saw them coming in a little mirror somebody had thoughtfully fixed to the windscreen. He flung the nice car round a corner out of sight. But the police car followed. The Willing Warlock screamed round another corner, and another. But the police car stuck to him like a leech.
The Willing Warlock realised that he had better spare a little magic from making the car go in order to make the car look different. So, as he screamed round yet another corner into the main road he had first seen, he put out his last ounce of magic and turned the car bright pink. To his relief, the police car went past him and roared away into the distance.
The Willing Warlock relaxed a little. He had a nice car of his own now and he seemed to be safe for the moment. But he still had to learn how to make the thing go properly, instead of by magic, and, as he soon discovered, there seemed to be all sorts of other rules to driving that he had never even imagined.
For one thing, all the cars kept to the left-hand side, and motorists seemed to get very annoyed when they found a large pink car coming towards them on the other side of the road. Then there were some streets where all the cars seemed to be coming towards the pink car, and the people in those cars shook their fists and pointed and hooted at the Willing Warlock. Then again, sometimes there were lights at crossroads, and people did not seem to like you going past them when they were red.
The Willing Warlock was not very clever, but he did realise quite soon that cars were not often pink. A pink car that broke all these rules was bound to be noticed. So, while he drove on and on, looking for some quiet street where he could learn how the car really worked, he sought about for some other way to disguise the car. He saw that all cars had a plate in front and behind, with letters and numbers on. That made it easy.
He changed the front number plate to WW100 and the back one to XYZ123 and let the car return to its nice shiny grey colour and drove soberly on till he found some back streets lined with quiet houses. By this time, he was quite tired. He had never had much magic and he was out of practice anyway. He was glad to stop and look for the knob that made the engine go.
There were rows of knobs, but none of them seemed to be the one he wanted. One knob squirted water all over the front window. Another opened the side windows and brought wet windy air sighing in. Another flashed lights. Yet another made a loud hooting, which made the Willing Warlock jump. People would notice!
He became panicky, and found his neck going hot and cold in gusts, with a specially cold, panicky spot in the middle, at the back, just above his collar. He tried another knob. That played music. The next knob made voices speak. “Over and out… Yes. Pink. I don’t know how he got a respray that quick, but it’s definitely him…”
The Willing Warlock, in even more of a panic, realised he was listening to the police by magic, and that they were still hunting him. In his panic, he pressed another knob, which made wipers start furiously waving across the windscreen, wiping off the water the first knob had squirted.
“Doh!” said the Willing Warlock, and put up his hand irritably to rub that panicky cold spot at the back of his neck.
The cold place was connected to a long warm hairy muzzle. Whatever owned the muzzle objected to being wiped away. It let out a deep bass growl and a blast of warm smelly air.
The Willing Warlock snatched his hand away. In his terror, he pressed another button, which caused the seat he was in to collapse gently
