Title: The Fifth Elephant
Author(s): Terry Pratchett
Release year: 1999
Publisher: Doubleday
Why in Database:
In this book, as in many entries about Discworld, all three turtle references all about A’Tuin:
They say the world is flat and supported on the back of four elephants who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle.
They say that the elephants, being such huge beasts, have bones of rock and iron, and nerves of gold for better conductivity over long distances.
He knew the legend, of course. There had once been five elephants, not four, standing on the back of Great A’Tuin, but one had lost its footing or had been shaken loose and had drifted off into a curved orbit before eventually crashing down, a billion tons of enraged pachyderm.
Sometimes, though, knockermen came back. And the ones that survived went on to survive again, because surviving is a matter of practice. And sometimes they would talk a little of what they heard, all alone in the deep mines…the tap-tapping of dead dwarfs trying to get back into the world, the distant laughter of Agi Hammerthief, the heartbeat of the turtle that carried the world.
Author: XYuriTT
