Soul Music

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 geegaws. 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 draft 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.”
    “I’m going to sit on it,” said the Dean.
    The other wizards felt something draining out of their souls and sudden uncertainty sloshing into its place.
    “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, old chap,” said the Senior Wrangler. “You don’t know where it might take you.”
    “Don’t care,” said the Dean. He still didn’t take his eyes off the thing.
    “I mean it’s not of this world,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    “I’ve been of this world for more than seventy years,” said the Dean, “and it is extremely boring.”
    He stepped into the circle and put his hand on the thing’s saddle.
    It trembled.
    EXCUSE ME.
    The tall dark figure was suddenly there, in the doorway, and then in a few strides was in the circle.
    A skeletal hand dropped onto the Dean’s shoulder and propelled him gently but unstoppably aside.
    THANK YOU.
    The figure vaulted into the saddle and reached out for the handlebars. It looked down at the thing it bestrode.
    Some situations you had to get exactly right…
    A finger pointed at the Dean.
    I NEED YOUR CLOTHES.
    The Dean backed away.
    “What?”
    GIVE ME YOUR COAT.
    The Dean, with great reluctance, shrugged off his leather robe and handed it over.
    Death put it on. That was better…
    NOW, LET ME SEE…
    A blue glow flickered under his fingers and spread in jagged blue lines, forming a corona at the tip of every feather and bead.
    “We’re in a cellar!” said the Dean. “Doesn’t that matter?”
    Death gave him a look.
    NO.

    Modo straightened up, and paused to admire his rose bed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he’d ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful, sometimes. Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word.
    The flower bed erupted.
    Modo had a brief vision of flames and something arcing into the sky before his vision was blotted out by a rain of beads, feathers, and soft black petals.
    He shook his head, and ambled off to fetch his shovel.

    “Sarge?”
    “Yes, Nobby?”
    “You know your teeth…”
    “What teeth?”
    “The teeth like in your mouth?”
    “Oh, right. Yep. What about ’em?”
    “How come they fit together at the back?”
    There was a pause while Sergeant Colon prodded the recesses of his mouth with his tongue.
    “It uh ah—” he began, and untangled himself. “Interesting observation, Nobby.”
    Nobby finished rolling a cigarette.
    “Reckon we should shut the gates, Sarge?”
    “Might as well.”
    With the exact minimum amount of effort they swung the huge gates together. It wasn’t much of a precaution. The