The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn

Works by Peter S. Beagle Novels A Fine and Private Place The Last Unicorn Lila the Werewolf The Folk of the Air The Innkeeper’s Song The Unicorn Sonata Tamsin A Dance for Emilia Return Summerlong In Calabria The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey Nonfiction I See by My Outfit The California Feeling (with Michael Bry) American Denim The Lady and Her Tiger (with Pat Derby) The Garden of Earthly Delights In the Presence of Elephants (with Pat Derby) Collections The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle Giant Bones The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances The Line Between Your Friendly Neighborhood Magician We Never Talk About My Brother Strange Roads (with Lisa Snellings-Clark) Four Years, Five Seasons (Audiobook Only) Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle Sleight of Hand The Overneath The Karkadann Triangle (with Patricia A. McKillip) The Way Home Anthologies Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn Edited by Peter S. Beagle, Janet Berliner, and Martin Greenberg The Secret History of Fantasy Edited by Peter S. Beagle The Urban Fantasy Anthology Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe Lansdale The New Voices of Fantasy Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman The Unicorn Anthology Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman ACE Published by Berkley An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright © 2023 by Peter S. Beagle “Two Hearts” copyright © 2005 by Peter S. Beagle Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. “Two Hearts” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2005. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Beagle, Peter S., author. | Beagle, Peter S. Two hearts. | Beagle, Peter S. Sooz. Title: The way home : two novellas from the world of The last unicorn / Peter S. Beagle. Description: New York : Ace, [2023] Identifiers: LCCN 2022043477 (print) | LCCN 2022043478 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593547397 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593547410 (ebook) Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novellas. Classification: LCC PS3552.E13 W39 2023 (print) | LCC PS3552.E13 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20221024 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022043477 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022043478 Cover design and illustration by Jim Tierney Book design by Daniel Brount, adapted for ebook by Estelle Malmed This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. pid_prh_6.0_143000472_c0_r0 CONTENTS Cover Works by Peter S. Beagle Title Page Copyright Two Hearts Sooz Dedication Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Acknowledgments About the Author _143000472_ TWO HEARTS My brother, wilfrid, keeps saying it’s not fair that it should all have happened to me. Me being a girl, and a baby, and too stupid to lace up my own sandals properly. But I think it’s fair. I think everything happened exactly the way it should have done. Except for the sad parts, and maybe those, too. I’m Sooz, and I am nine years old. Ten next month, on the anniversary of the day the griffin came. Wilfrid says it was because of me, that the griffin heard that the ugliest baby in the world had just been born, and it was going to eat me, but I was too ugly, even for a griffin. So it nested in the Midwood (we call it that, but its real name is the Midnight Wood, because of the darkness under the trees), and stayed to eat our sheep and our goats. Griffins do that if they like a place. But it didn’t ever eat children, not until this year. I only saw it once—I mean, once before—rising up above the trees one night, like a second moon. Only there wasn’t a moon, then. There was nothing in the whole world but the griffin, golden feathers all blazing on its lion’s body and eagle’s wings, with its great front claws like teeth, and that monstrous beak that looked so huge for its head. Wilfrid says I screamed for three days, but he’s lying, and I didn’t hide in the root cellar like he says, either, I slept in the barn those two nights, with our dog Malka. Because I knew Malka wouldn’t let anything get me. I mean my parents wouldn’t have, either, not if they could have stopped it. It’s just that Malka is the biggest, fiercest dog in the whole village, and she’s not afraid of anything. And after the griffin took Jehane, the blacksmith’s little girl, you couldn’t help seeing how frightened my father was, running back and forth with the other men, trying to organize some sort of patrol, so people could always tell when the griffin was coming. I know he was frightened for me and my mother, and doing everything he could to protect us, but it didn’t make me feel any safer, and Malka did. But nobody knew what to do, anyway. Not my father, nobody. It was bad enough when the griffin was only taking the sheep, because almost everyone here sells wool or cheese or sheepskin things to make a living. But once it took Jehane, early last spring, that changed everything. We sent messengers to the king—three of them—and each time the king sent someone back to us with them. The first time, it was one knight, all by himself. His name was Douros, and he gave me an apple. He rode away into the