The Robot Who Wanted a Very Boring Birthday

How it begins

Pip wanted a very boring birthday.

A ribbon tickled his left elbow. He liked ribbons best when they were not attached to an announcement.

"One candle," he told Fern. "One biscuit. Perhaps a leaf falling slowly."

Fern the fox wrote this down.

Then she added a parade.

Pip had been the woodland village's repair robot for seventy-four years. He mended gates, unstuck drawers, and helped the church clock remember which way tomorrow went. On his birthday, he wanted nothing exciting to need him.

At nine o'clock, Fern knocked on his door.

Behind her stood a brass band, a juggling badger, and a cart carrying something beneath a blanket.

"Surprise!"

Pip's little chest light blinked twice.

"That is certainly one."

The band began. The badger dropped an orange. Under the blanket, something squeaked.

Pip looked toward his quiet chair beneath the apple tree.

"Is the leaf still coming?"

Fern did not hear him over the trumpet.

The cart blanket slipped. A mechanical swan rose into the air, flapped three times, and landed in the village pond with a splash large enough to rinse the mayor.

Everyone cheered.

Pip reached for his repair bag.

Fern finally noticed.

"You don't have to fix it. It's your birthday."

"I know," he said. "That was part of the plan."

She looked at the band, the wet mayor, and the swan now rotating slowly beside a confused duck.

Then she looked at the list in her paw.

One candle. One biscuit. A leaf falling slowly.

"Pip," she asked, "when you said boring, did you mean peaceful?"

His chest light steadied.

"That is a much better word."

Fern sat beside him on the step. For the first time that morning, nobody was announcing anything.

A small brown leaf let go of the apple tree.

Pip watched it all the way down.

"There," he said. "We could begin with that."