Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett [86]
Tiffany put it down very carefully. There was something…alive about the Cornucopia. She wasn’t at all sure that it was just some magical tool. It seemed to be listening.
As it touched the tabletop, it began to shrink until it was the size of a small vase.
“’Scuse me?” said Rob Anybody. “But does it do beer?”
“Beer?” said Tiffany, without thinking.
There was a trickling noise. All eyes turned to look at the vase. Brown liquid was foaming over the lip.
Then all the eyes turned to Granny Weatherwax, who shrugged.
“Don’t look at me,” she said sourly. “You’re going to drink it anyway!”
It is alive, Tiffany thought, as Nanny Ogg hurried off to find some more mugs. It learns. It’s learned my language….
Around midnight, Tiffany woke up because a white chicken was standing on her chest. She pushed it off and reached down for her slippers, and found only chickens. When she got the candle alight, she saw half a dozen chickens on the end of the bed. The floor was covered in chickens. So were the stairs. So was every room down below. In the kitchen, chickens had overflowed into the sink.
They weren’t making much noise, just the occasional werk a chicken makes when it’s a bit uncertain about things, which is more or less all the time.
The chickens were shuffling along patiently to make room. Werk. They were doing this because the Cornucopia, now grown just a bit bigger than a full-grown chicken, was gently firing out a chicken every eight seconds. Werk.
As Tiffany watched, another one landed on the mountain of ham sandwiches. Werk.
Marooned on top of the Cornucopia was You, looking very puzzled. Werk. And in the middle of the floor Granny Weatherwax snored gently in the big armchair, surrounded by fascinated hens. Werk. Apart from the snoring, the chorus of werks, and the rustle of shuffling chickens, it was all very peaceful in the candlelight. Werk.
Tiffany glared at the kitten. She rubbed up against things when she wanted to be fed, didn’t she? Werk. And made meep noises? Werk. And the Cornucopia could work out languages, couldn’t it? Werk.
Now she whispered: “No more chickens,” and after a few seconds the flow of chickens ceased. Werk.
But she couldn’t really leave it like that. She shook Granny by the shoulder and, as the old woman awoke, she said: “The good news is a lot of the ham sandwiches have gone…er….”
Werk.
CHAPTER NINE
Green Shoots
It was much colder the next morning, a numb dull coldness that could practically freeze the flames on a fire.
Tiffany let the broomstick settle between the trees a little way from Nanny Ogg’s cottage. The snow hadn’t drifted much here, but it came up to her knees, and cold had put a crispness on it that crackled like a stale loaf when Tiffany trod it.
In theory she was out in the woods to get the hang of the Cornucopia, but really she was there to keep it out of the way. Nanny Ogg hadn’t been too upset about the chickens. After all, she now owned five hundred hens, which were currently standing around in her shed going werk. But the floors were a mess, there were chicken doo-dahs even on the banisters, and as Granny had pointed out (in a whisper), supposing someone had said “sharks”?
The Cornucopia lay on her lap while she sat on a stump among snow-covered trees. Once the forest had been pretty. Now it was hateful. Dark trunks against snowdrifts, a striped world of black and white, bars against the light. She longed for horizons.
Funny…the Cornucopia was always very slightly warm, even out here, and seemed to know in advance what size it ought to be. “I grow, I shrink,” thought Tiffany. And I’m feeling pretty small.
What next? What now? She’d kept hoping that the…the power would drop on her, just like the Cornucopia had done. It hadn’t.
There was life under the snow. She felt it in her fingertips. Somewhere down there, out of reach, was the real Summer. Using the Cornucopia as a scoop, she scraped away at the snow until she reached dead leaves. There was life down there in the white webs of fungi and pale, new roots. A half-frozen worm crawled slowly away and