So lately I've been reading Terry Pratchett books, because they're hilarious. Anyway, after reading this last passage, which comes from the book The Light Fantastic, I decided I should share some of the joy. So here goes:
"In yet another part of the forest a young shaman was undergoing a very essential part of his training. He had eaten of the sacred toadstool, he had smoked the holy rhizome, he had carefully powdered up and inserted into various orifices the mystic mushroom and now, sitting crosslegged under a pine tree, he was concentrating firstly on making contact with the strange and wonderful secrets at the heart of Being but mainly on stopping the top of his head from unscrewing and floating away.
"Blue four-side triangles pinwheeled across his vision. Occasionally he smiled knowingly at nothing very much and said things like 'Wow' and 'Urgh.'
"There was a movement in the air and what he later described as 'like, a sort of explosion only backwards, you know?', and suddenly where there had only been nothing there was a large, battered, wooden chest.
"It landed heavily on the leafmould, extended dozens of little legs, and turned around ponderously to look at the shaman. That is to say, it had no face, but even through the mycological haze he was horribly aware that it was looking at him. And not a nice look, either. It was amazing how baleful a keyhole and a couple of knotholes could be.
"To his intense relief it gave a sort of wooden shrug, and set off through the trees at a canter.
"With superhuman effort the shaman recalled the correct sequence of movements for standing up and even managed a couple of steps before he looked down and gave up, having run out of legs."
Of course, this passage is funnier if you know the history of the chest, which you can read about in The Color of Magic, but the stoned shaman is hilarious enough in itself.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed!
1 comment:
very funny! will have to look into the books.
Post a Comment