Terry Pratchett - Discworld 12 Witches Abroad

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over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge

among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and

the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of supersti-

tion.

Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like

'Hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's Third Law.' And everyone

knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance

became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance

about huge and important things like matter and creation,

and people stopped patiently building their little houses of

rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started get-

ting interested in the chaos itself - partly because it was a

lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it

made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt.

And instead of getting on with proper science (Note: Like

finding that bloody butterfly whose flapping wings cause all

these storms we've been having lately and getting it to

stop.) scientists suddenly went around saying how impossible

it was to know anything, and that there wasn't really any-

thing you could call reality to know anything about, and how

all this was tremendously exciting, and incidentally did you

know there were possibly all these little universes all over

the place but no-one can see them because they are all

curved in on themselves? Incidentally, don't you think this is

a rather good t-shirt?

Like stories.

Because stories are important.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact,

it's the other way around.

Stories exist independently of their players. If you know

that, the knowledge is power.

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have

been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the be-

ginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have

died and the strongest have survived and they have grown

fat on the retelling ... stories, twisting and blowing through

the darkness.

And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent

pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves

deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water

follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time

fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs

deeper.

This is called the theory of narrative causality and it

means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up

all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that

have ever been.

This is why history keeps on repeating all the time.

So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods.

if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical

life form, warping lives in the service only of the story it-

self. (Note: And people are wrong about urban myths. Logic

and reason say that these are fictional creations, retold

again and again by people who are hungry for evidence of

weird coincidence, natural justice and so on. They aren't.

They keep on happening all the time, everywhere, as the

stories bounce back and forth across the universe. At any

one time hundreds of dead grandmothers are being whisked

away on the roof-racks of stolen cars and loyal alsatians are

choking on the fingers of midnight burglars. And they're not

confined to any one world. Hundreds of female Mercurian

jivpts turn four tiny eyes on their rescuers and say, 'My

brood-husband will be livid - it was his travel module.' Urban

myths are alive.)

It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and be-

come the bicarbonate of history.

Once upon a time ...

Grey hands gripped the hammer and swung it, striking the

post so hard that it sank a foot into the soft earth.

Two more blows and it was fixed immovably.

From the trees around the clearing the snakes and birds

watched silently. In the swamp the alligators drifted like

patches of bad-assed water.

sleeve draped emptily.

'And the hat,' she said.

It was tall, and round, and black. It glistened.

The piece of mirror gleamed between the darkness of the

hat and the coat.

'Will it work?' he said.

'Yes,' she said. 'Even mirrors have their reflection. We

got to fight mirrors with mirrors.' She glared up through the

trees to a slim white tower in the distance. 'We've got to

find her reflection.'

'It'll have to reach out a long way, then.'

'Yes. We need all the help we can get.'

She looked around the clearing.

She had called upon Mister Safe Way, Lady Bon Anna,

Hotaloga Andrews and Stride Wide Man. They probably

weren't very good gods.

But they were the best she'd been able to make.

This is a story about stories.

Or what it really means to be a fairy godmother.

But it's also, particularly, about reflections and mirrors.

All across the multiverse there are backward tribes (Note:

Considered backward, that is, by people who wear more

clothes than they do.) who distrust mirrors and images be-

cause, they say, they steal a bit of a person's soul and

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摘要：

overamountainstream,lookingforthegoldofknowledgeamongthegravelofunreason,thesandofuncertaintyandthelittlewhiskeryeight-leggedswimmingthingsofsupersti-tion.Occasionallyhewouldstraightenupandsaythingslike'Hurrah,I'vediscoveredBoyle'sThirdLaw.'Andeveryoneknewwheretheystood.Butthetroublewasthatignorance...

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Terry Pratchett - Discworld 12 Witches Abroad

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