The Fifth Elephant

slides out when you need it, and when you don’t there’s no sign that it’s there.
    He reached over and took her hand.
    “Wolves never look back,” he whispered.
    * Not rock and iron in their dead form, as they are now, but living rock and iron. The dwarfs have quite an inventive mythology about minerals.
    * Vampires evolve long names. It’s something to do to pass the long years.
    * At least, of the sort she normally wore.
    † And, just lately, Corporal Nobbs.
    * They couldn’t bring themselves to utter the word “her.”
    * At least, by proper explorers. Just living there doesn’t count.
    * At least, if you hit them hard enough.
    * Especially if it was green, and bubbled.
    * Except that the ones around it were not good stones to tread on if it was a Tuesday.
    * As a member of the dead community, Reg Shoes naturally thought of himself as an ethnic majority.
    * Miles and Miles of Bloody Uberwald.
    * One that no other creature in the world would ever adopt.
    * After all, this made it so much harder for the hand to feed you tomorrow.
    * Detritus’s silicon based brain was, as with most trolls, highly sensitive to changes in temperature. When the thermometer was very low he could be dangerously intellectual.
    * whatever the name Vimes rec
    † Buckwheat dumplings stuffed with stuff.
    † Bread made from parsnips, and widely considered to be much tastier than the dull wheat kind.
    * He’d noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: It fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination—but at the end of the day they’d settle quite happily for egg and chips, if it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.
    * Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of “democracy” with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone † had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straightaway.
    † Apart from women, children, slaves, idiots and people who weren’t really our kind of people.
    * The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler, and wrote a set of rules for which he termed “the noble art of fisticuffs” which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren’t allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble chest outthrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn’t read the Marquis’s book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were “Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler—”
    * The key was in the pattern of scars.
    * The treacle mines below Ankh-Morpork had long been exhausted, leaving only a street name to remember them by. But the collision with the Fifth Elephant had buried thousands of acres of prehistoric sugar cane around the borders of Uberwald and the resulting dense crystalline sugar was the foundation of a large mining, confectionery and dentistry industry.

About the Author
    TERRY PRATCHETT’s novels have sold more than forty-five million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. He lives in England.
    www.terrypratchettbooks.com
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Terry Pratchett’s acclaimed Discworld novels have been number one bestsellers in England for more than a decade, elevating him among the most celebrated practitioners of satire and parody including Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen. At last, his irreverent humor—brilliantly displayed in The Fifth Elephant —is being embraced across America.
    Unanimous Praise for
THE FIFTH ELEPHANT
    “He’s arguably the purely funniest English writer since Wodehouse.”
    Washington Post Book World
    “Acclaimed British author Pratchett continues to distinguish himself from his colleagues with clever plot lines and genuinely likable characters in this first-rate addition to his long-running Discworld fantasy series…Pratchett cheerfully takes readers on an exuberant tale of mystery and invention. Along the way, he skewers everything from monarchy to fascism, as well as communism and capitalism, oil wealth and