Hogfather - Terry Pratchett [84]
“Excuse me, madam,” said Ridcully. “But is that a chicken on your shoulder?”
“It’s, er, it’s, er, it’s the Blue Bird of Happiness,” said the Cheerful Fairy. Her voice now had the slightly shaking tone of someone who doesn’t quite believe what she has just said but is going to go on saying it anyway, just in case saying it will eventually make it true.
“I beg your pardon, but it is a chicken. A live chicken,” said Ridcully. “It just went cluck.”
“It is blue,” she said hopelessly.
“Well, that at least is true,” Ridcully conceded, as kindly as he could manage. “Left to myself, I expect I’d have imagined a slightly more streamlined Blue Bird of Happiness, but I can’t actually fault you there.”
The Cheerful Fairy coughed nervously and fiddled with the buttons on her sensible woolly jumper.
“How about a nice game to get us all in the mood?” she said. “A guessing game, perhaps? Or a painting competition? There may be a small prize for the winner.”
“Madam, we’re wizards,” said the Senior Wrangler. “We don’t do cheerful.”
“Charades?” said the Cheerful Fairy. “Or perhaps you’ve been playing them already? How about a singsong? Who knows ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’?”
Her bright little smile hit the group scowl of the assembled wizards. “We don’t want to be Mr. Grumpy, do we?” she added hopefully.
“Yes,” said the Senior Wrangler.
The Cheerful Fairy sagged, and then patted frantically at her shapeless sleeves until she tugged out a balled-up handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes.
“It’s all going wrong again, isn’t it?” she said, her chin trembling. “No one ever wants to be cheerful these days, and I really do try. I’ve made a Joke Book and I’ve got three boxes of clothes for charades and…and…and whenever I try to cheer people up they all look embarrassed…and really I do make an effort…”
She blew her nose loudly.
Even the Senior Wrangler had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Er…” he began.
“Would it hurt anyone just occasionally to try to be a little bit cheerful?” said the Cheerful Fairy.
“Er…in what way?” said the Senior Wrangler, feeling wretched.
“Well, there’s so many nice things to be cheerful about,” said the Cheerful Fairy, blowing her nose again.
“Er…raindrops and sunsets and that sort of thing?” said the Senior Wrangler, managing some sarcasm, but they could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “Er, would you like to borrow my handkerchief? It’s nearly fresh.”
“Why don’t you get the lady a nice sherry?” said Ridcully. “And some corn for her chicken…”
“Oh, I never drink alcohol,” said the Cheerful Fairy, horrified.
“Really?” said Ridcully. “We find it’s something to be cheerful about. Mr. Stibbons…would you be so kind as to step over here for a moment?”
He beckoned him up close.
“There’s got to be a lot of belief sloshing around to let her be created,” he said. “She’s a good fourteen stone, if I’m any judge. If we wanted to contact the Hogfather, how would we go about it? Letter up chimney?”
“Yes, but not tonight, sir,” said Ponder. “He’ll be out delivering.”
“No telling where he’ll be, then,” said Ridcully. “Blast.”
“Of course, he might not have come here yet,” said Ponder.
“Why should he come here?” said Ridcully.
The Librarian pulled the blankets over himself and curled up.
As an orangutan he hankered for the warmth of the rain forest. The problem was that he’d never even seen a rain forest, having been turned into an orangutan when he was already a fully grown human. Something in his bones knew about it, though, and didn’t like the cold of winter at all. But he was also a librarian in those same bones and he flatly refused to allow fires to be lit in the library. As a result, pillows and blankets went missing everywhere else in the University and ended up in a sort of cocoon in the reference section, in which the ape lurked during the worst of the winter.
He turned over and wrapped himself in the Bursar’s curtains.
There