Stories: All-New Tales - By Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio Page 0,101

time I went haring to the front door to make them take it away again, or at least make whoever was delivering it tell me where the things were coming from. But all the man did was shove a birdcage into my hands with two pretty white pigeons in it and go away. The van he drove off in was unlabelled. I raged at Housebot for opening the door, but that does no good. Housebot only has sixty sentences in its repertoire and just kept saying, “Madam, you have a delivery,” until I turned its voice off.

We have had a partridge fight under the sofa.

I took the pigeon cage outside onto the patio and opened it. But will those birds fly away! I seem to be stuck with them too. At least they will eat porridge oats. The partridges won’t. We have run out of tinned sweet corn.

I give up. I’m going to spend the rest of the day watching old movies.

Liam called. I asked him if he had had the nerve to send me four birds and two trees. He said, “What are you talking about? I only rang to see if you’d still got my wristwatch.” I hung up on him. Oaf.

December 27, 2233

THE SALES START TODAY! I was late getting off to them because of the beastly bird food. When I brought up Avian Foodstuffs, I found to my disgust that the smallest amount they deliver is in twenty-kilo bags. Where would I put all that birdseed? I turned the computer off and went out to the corner shop. It was still closed. I had to walk all the way to Carnaby Street before I found anything open and then all the way back carrying ten tins of sweet corn. I had promised to meet Carla and Sabrina in Harrods for coffee and I was so late that I missed them.

Not a good day. And I couldn’t find a single thing I wanted in the Sales.

I came home—my Stiltskins were killing me—to find, dumped in the middle of my living room, yet another tree with a partridge tied to it, a second cage of two white pigeons and a large coop with three different birds in it. It took me a while to place these last, until I remembered a picture book my second stepfather had given me when I was small. Under H for Hen there was a bird something like these, except that one was round and brown and gentle looking. Not these. Hens they may be, but they have mean witchy faces, ugly speckled feathers and a floppy red bit on top that makes them look like some kind of alien. When I got home, they were engaged in trying to peck one another naked. The room was full of ugly little feathers. I shrieked at Housebot and then made it take the lot out onto the patio, where I made haste to let the beastly hens out. They ran around cackling and pecking the partridges, the potted plants and the three trees. They were obviously hungry. I sighed and got on to Avian Foodstuffs again. Problems there. Food for which kind of bird? they queried. Hens, I tapped in. Pigeons. Partridges. They have just delivered three twenty-kilo sacks. They are labelled differently, but they look suspiciusly the same inside to me. I know because I opened all three and scattered a heap from each around the patio—and another heap indoors because I have had to rescue the partridges. They all eat all kinds.

Exhausted after this. I phoned Carla and Sabrina. Sabrina was useless. She had just found some Stiltskins half price in pink and couldn’t think of anything else except should she buy them. “Toss a coin,” I told her. Carla was at least sympathetic. “Help!” I told her. “I’m being stalked by a flutter that keeps sending me birds.”

“Are you sure it isn’t one of Liam’s practical jokes?” Carla asked. Shrewd point. He probably rang with that nonsense about his watch just to make sure I was home. “And haven’t you told your Housebot thingy not to let any of this livestock in?” Carla said.

“I have, I have!” I cried out. “But the darn thing takes not the blindest bit of notice!”

“Reprogramme it,” Carla advised. “It must have slipped a cog or something.”

Or Liam reprogrammed it, I thought. So I spent an hour with the manual, pushing buttons, by which time I was so livid that I rang Liam. Got his answering