"Diana Wynne Jones - Mixed Magics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

followed. The Willing Warlock screamed around another corner, and
another. But the police car stuck to him like a leech.

The Willing Warlock realized that he had better spare a little magic from
making the car go in order to make the car look differ-ent. So as he
screamed around 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 toward them
on the other side of the road. Then there were some streets where all the
cars seemed to be coming toward 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 realize 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 gray color 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 sigh-ing 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, realized he was listening to
the police by magic, and that they were still hunting him. In his panic he