- a celebration of
-
Fifty Years of Pratchett
ยฉ 2023 Duleigh Lawrence-Townshend. All rights reserved. The author asserts the right to be identified as the author of this story for all portions not previously copyrighted by Terry Pratchett. This story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a review or commentary. If you see this story on any website other than Literotica.com, it has been copied without the author's permission.
Fifty years ago, a young British journalist published his first book,
The Carpet People
and the world was never the same; it became flat, round, and smelled of turtles. Ten years later in 1981 I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club
{
how geeky is that?
}
and they sent me the new work of a little known
(
on this side of The Pond
)
British author named Terry Pratchett. The book,
Strata
, still has an honored location in my library, PTerry, as he was known in the infancy of the internet, a strange and mysterious realm named usenet, taught me several things in that book - people can build planets and sometimes they come out flat, Death is a cool dude, and
The Broken Drum
is an awesome pub
{
you can't beat it
}
.
Two years later it was followed by
The Colour of Magic,
and I was hooked. I out-geeked the other geeks at the weekly Dungeons & Dragons games by insisting that our world rest on the backs of four elephants who in turn were riding on the back of a giant turtle. In the third discworld novel,
Equal Rites
, PTerry explored what would happen if a girl became a wizard. In that book he mentions the existence of what he called an enchantress if just momentarily, and then he never mentioned the enchantress again. Top witch Granny Weatherwax describes enchantresses as "being no better than they should be," but all we know about enchantresses is that they are female magic users, but we don't know if they are witches, warlocks, or wizards. It's assumed that a witch wears more clothes than an enchantress.
Sadly, Sir Terry journeyed onward with Death before I could free up the time to help him with his exposition of the marvels of enchantresses, it's been eight years and I'm finally ready to help, but Sir Terry is nowhere to be found. So, I guess I will give it a go, and if he doesn't like it, I'm sure he'll find a way to let me know.
This is a work of love, a fan fiction written for the 2023 Geek Pride Event. Many of these characters are the creation of Sir Terry Pratchett, as is the multiverse in which they live. If you would like to find out which of these characters is or is not a creation of Terry please contact this author. This tale was not written to make money or steal the fame that Sir Terry rightfully earned, but to enjoy one more romp in the shadow of Cori Celesti and remind the world of what we lost on March 12, 2015.
"One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry."
- (
Terry Pratchett, 28 Nov 1992 on alt.fan.pratchett
)
______________________________________________
ENCHANTRESS
A Tale of Discworld
{
With parenthetical annotations
}
Introduction
On a distant world, a world filled with poets, artisans, and scientists, a world filled with as much sensibility as ours, the watchers of the sky used powerful devices to search the heavens. These devices were powerful enough to probe galaxies trazillions {
their unit of math, not mine
} of anomalies distant {
one anomaly is the distance light must travel before it becomes bored and changes to something else out of the utter monotony, henceforth the name
}. One such device operator looked at his device, then rubbed all four of his eyes and looked again. He saw what is best described as a testudine, a reptile with a bony shell that covers its body, a turtle. This particular turtle appeared to have on its back as it swam through space. "Chief!" he called out to the shift supervisor, "You gotta see this!"
The shift supervisor stood from his desk, hitched up his trousers and sauntered over to the shocked observer and recited the universal managerial inquiry, "All right, whadeya got?"
The observer pointed to the object on the screen with a shaking pollex, "this!"
The shift supervisor bent over the observer's shoulders and squinted at the screen, then he took off his glasses {
both pairs
} rubbed his eyes {
all four
} and looked again. After a long, watery look the shift supervisor sighed as he slowly straightened up. Shaking his heads, he realized what he had just seen. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a monetary note of significant value and stuffed it in a gaily decorated can that advertised the need to collect funds for a baby shower gift for Brenda and Mark. He called out to the entire shift, "All right guys, you got me, I get it... I pitched in... now enough antics. Let's get back to work." Convinced that it was a joke to get him to donate to the office pool he handled the situation by the book. He looked at the operator and said, "Sid, send that image over to the theology department and let's get back to work people! We have a universe to map!"
Sid turned back to his monitor but the rend in the space/time continuum had rippled closed and the vision of the turtle was gone from sight. He shrugged and sent the saved image to the theology department and resumed mapping his section of the universe and the turtle was eventually forgotten. The supervisor sat down and made a note in his log... giant turtle. Last month it was a giant winged snake. Maybe his wife was right, maybe it was time to retire...
But had they tried... had they looked beyond the veil, or maybe the vale, or even the Vail, they would have seen her more clearly and they would have trembled in fear. Or they would have laughed it off, had a drink, fired Sid, erased the tapes, and rescanned the universe until they got the answer they wanted. Either way the turtle would remain.
Sadly, they were scanning the universe when they should have been scanning the multiverse.
Take a look into the multiverse and you will see what they missed, watch as she swims into view, Great A'Tuin, the Giant Star Turtle (
Chelys galactica
), massive and glorious, the Queen of the Interstellar Pathways. She swims through the multiverse following whatever migratory paths were written into her genome by the greatest prankster of all, The Creator. Her eyes, each the size of a sea, look forward to a destination known only to her. She possesses a brain the size of a continent that moves at a speed that makes glaciers look downright spry. Her immense flippers propel her through the nothingness that is open space with massive strokes that take generations to complete. Her carapace is frosted with frozen methane, scarred with meteor craters, and coated with the intergalactic dust of eons of travel.
On her back stand four tremendous elephants, Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen, the World Elephants (
Elephantidae Kosmosea
). Tail to tail they stand patiently watching the stars drift by as they bear the weight of the world on their shoulders... really, they do. This isn't a figurative exclamation; they're actually carrying the entire world on their shoulders. They wouldn't know a metaphor if one played
Begin the Beguine
using their trunk as a clarinet. The entire world and all who live there is their burden. Ten thousand miles in diameter the discworld rests on their backs, around the circumference of the disk is the eternal waterfall that is the Rimfall. At the center of the discworld is the hub, a mountain that stands ten miles in height, the name of the peak is Cori Celesti, which at the top is the palace complex named Dunmanifestin, the home of the Disc's many gods. Most of them are completely mad.
As impressive or as unimaginable as the turtle/elephant/discworld is, what is really impressive is what follows. Behind A'Tuin trails eight newly hatched space turtles, each one carrying four infant world elephant calves bearing up a small prehistoric discworld on their shoulders. Each proto-discworld is full of volcanoes, lava and early dinosaurs. Each tiny disc world was showing signs of growing their own hub mountain and soon their tiny hub mountains will begin to spawn their very own mad little gods. In some corners of the multiverse, it's the gods that create the planets, here it's the other way around.
Swimming through space in trail behind their mother, the baby star turtles are entirely cute and would look right at home in a plastic dish resting under a plastic palm tree, but soon they must head out on their own into the multiverse.
______________________________________________
