Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett [85]
“Cats can’t feed on beer!” snapped Granny Weatherwax.
“Well, I’m fed up with waiting,” said Nanny. “Look, there’s a little hole in the pointy end, too. I’m going to blow into it!”
She tried to, at least. Her cheeks went big and red and her eyes bulged, and it was pretty clear that if the horn didn’t blow, then she would—at which point, the horn gave up. There was a distant and unmistakably curly rumbling noise, which got louder and louder.
“I can’t see anything yet,” said Granny, looking into the wide mouth of the horn.
Tiffany pulled her away just as You galloped out of the Cornucopia with her tail straight out and her ears flattened. She skidded across the table, leaped onto Granny Weatherwax’s dress, scrambled onto her shoulder, and turned and spat defiance.
With a cry of “Crivvvvvvvvens!” Feegles poured out of the horn.
“Behind the sofa, everyone!” yelled Nanny. “Run!”
Now the rumble was like thunder. It grew and grew and then—
—stopped.
In the silence, three pointy hats rose from behind the sofa. Small blue faces rose from behind everything.
Then there was a noise very similar to pwat! and something small and wizened rolled out of the mouth of the Horn and dropped onto the floor. It was a very dried-up pineapple.
Granny Weatherwax brushed some dust off her dress.
“You’d better learn to use this,” she said to Tiffany.
“How?”
“Don’t you have any idea?”
“No!”
“Well, it’s turned up for you, madam, and it’s dangerous!”
Tiffany gingerly picked up the Cornucopia, and again there was that definite feeling of some hugely heavy thing pretending, very successfully, to be light.
“Maybe it needs some magic word,” suggested Nanny Ogg. “Or there’s somewhere special that you press….”
As Tiffany turned it in the light, something gleamed for a moment.
“Hold on, these look like words,” she said. She read:
All that you desire, I give upon a name, murmured the memory of Dr. Bustle.
The next line said:
I grow, I shrink, Dr. Bustle translated.
“I think I might have an idea,” she said, and in memory of Miss Treason she declared: “Ham sandwich!”
Nothing happened.
Then Dr. Bustle lazily translated, and Tiffany said:
With a fwlap a ham sandwich sailed out of the mouth of the Cornucopia and was expertly caught by Nanny, who bit into it.
“Not bad at all!” she announced. “Try a few more.”
said Tiffany, and there was the kind of sound you get when you disturb a cave full of bats.
“Stop!” she yelled, but nothing stopped. Then Dr. Bustle whispered and she shouted:
There were a…lot of sandwiches. The pile reached the ceiling, in fact. Only the tip of Nanny Ogg’s hat was visible, but there were some muffled noises farther down the heap.
An arm thrust out, and Nanny Ogg forced her way through the wall of bread and sliced pig, chewing thoughtfully.
“No mustard, I notice. Hmm. Well, we can see that everyone around here has a good supper tonight,” she said. “And I can see I’m going to have to make an awful lot of soup, too. Best not to try it again in here, though, all right?”
“I don’t like it at all,” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “Where does all that stuff come from, eh? Magic food never fed anyone properly!”
“It’s not magic, it’s a god thing,” said Nanny Ogg. “Like manners from heaven, that sort of stuff. I expect it’s made out of raw firmament.”
In fact it’s merely a living metaphor for the boundless fecundity of the natural world, whispered Dr. Bustle in Tiffany’s head.
“You don’t get manners from heaven,” said Granny.
“This was in foreign parts, a long time ago,” said Nanny, turning to Tiffany. “If I was you, dear, I’d take it out into the woods tomorrow and see what it can do. Although, if you don’t mind, I could really do with some fresh grapes right now.”
“Gytha Ogg, you can’t use the Cornucopia of the Gods as a…a larder!” said Granny. “The feet business was bad enough!”
“But it is one,” said Nanny Ogg innocently. “It’s the larder. It’s, like, everything waiting to grow next spring.”