Night Shift at the Nice List Records Hall

The Nice List Records Hall is round and very tall, with shelves that go up and up until they disappear into the dark. At night, when the day clerks have gone home, only two people work there. One is Archivist Ottoline, a snowy owl in half-moon spectacles. The other is Gilbert, a penguin on exchange from the South Pole, who wears a bow tie at all times, even in the bath.

Their job is the slips. Somewhere in the world it is always daytime, which means somewhere a child is always being kind. And every time a child is kind, a little paper slip rolls itself up inside a brass capsule, shoots along the pipes to the Records Hall, and lands in the basket with a plink.

"Plink," went the tube. Ottoline unrolled the slip. "Shared the last strawberry with a little sister," she read. "Hoo-hum, lovely."

Plink. "Let the cat have the warm spot on the sofa." Plink. "Said thank you to the bus driver, twice, because the first time was too quiet." Ottoline filed each one in its drawer, while Gilbert climbed the ladder for the high shelves.

The stove ticked. The slips plinked. It was a perfectly ordinary night, until Gilbert began to fan himself with a filing card. "Most irregular," he said. "It is far too warm in here for a penguin." And before Ottoline could say hoo, he opened the big round window.

In rushed the wind, and it went straight for the basket. Up flew the slips, hundreds of them, swirling round the hall like a snowstorm made of paper. They fluttered past the shelves and round the ladder and over the stove, and one landed right on Gilbert's beak.

Gilbert shut the window with a bang, and the two of them got to work. Ottoline swooped in great slow circles, scooping slips out of the air with her wings. Gilbert flopped onto his tummy and slid across the polished floor, catching slips in his bow tie, and then in a teapot, and then in a hat he found on the coat stand.

At last the hall was still again. They counted the slips into neat piles. Nine hundred and ninety-nine. Ottoline counted again. Nine hundred and ninety-nine.

"There should be a thousand," said Gilbert, and his flippers drooped. "One child's kindness is missing, and it's my fault."

They looked under the stove. They looked behind the ladder. They looked inside the teapot twice. "Hoo-hum," said Ottoline, and she did what owls do when they are thinking very hard. She turned her head slowly, all the way round, to look behind herself.

And there, tucked into the soft feathers at the back of her own neck, was the last slip. Gilbert held his breath while she unrolled it. Tucked a blanket over Grandpa when he fell asleep in his chair, it said. Leo, aged five.

"Oh," said Gilbert softly. "That is a very good one." "It is the quiet kind," said Ottoline. "Those are often the best." And she filed it in a small drawer near the stove, where it would stay warm. The label on the drawer said: Kindness, Quiet Kind.

By the time the sky turned pink, every slip had a home. The day clerks came in, stamping snow off their boots, and the night shift was over.

Ottoline took off her spectacles, folded them, and settled onto the very top shelf, where owls like to sleep in the daytime. Gilbert loosened his bow tie, just a little, and stood by the window, because penguins sleep standing up.

Below them, the stove ticked slowly, and the slips went on plinking softly into the basket, one by one, from children being kind somewhere in the sunshine. And high in the round, quiet hall, an owl and a penguin slept.