But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. It's just that going to the stones is not. And no one is ever told not to go there, because those who refrain from talking about the stones also know how powerful is the attraction of prohibition. If there's a stone circle you mustn't go near, the imagination suggests, then there should be big brooding trilithons and ancient altar stones screaming with the dark memory of blood-soaked sacrifice. They're about man-height, and barely thicker than a fat man. Out from the trees and into the rushy valley where, on a slight rise in the ground, are the stones. Not running away from something, exactly, or precisely running toward anything, but running just fast enough to keep ahead of a young man although, of course, not so far ahead that he'll give up.

But the Discworld is as coreless as a pancake.Īnd now, spool time forward for thousands of years to a point fifty years or more before the ever-moving now, to a hillside and a young woman, running. The three dwarfs who found the first of the rocks only got free by struggling out of their chain-mail trousers. A love so strong that it drew all iron things to itself. It's just that although there's more iron than gold it's harder to sing songs about. The dwarfs dug them up, because they were made of a kind of iron, and dwarfs, contrary to general opinion, love iron more than gold. Stones came screaming out of the sky, gouged a hole out of Copperhead Mountain, and flattened the forest for ten miles around? Hey, kids, which part do you think they made your town out of? They are interesting, not for what they tell you about cosmology, but for what they say about people. Other theories about the ultimate start involve gods creating the universe out of the ribs, entrails, and testicles of their father. The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.

Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before. The point is, there's always something before. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The Gods like a joke as much as anyone else) but that's not the start. First shot is fired (Note: Probably at the first pawn.

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