The essential peter s be.., p.36
The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1, page 36
Not ballet, of course; not the self-consciousness that suggested lessons of any sort. Her movements were just this side of the jump-and-whirl of hopscotch, and there were moments when she might have been skipping double-Dutch without the ropes. But it was dancing, pure and private, and there was music to it—you had only to look at the intense brown face for that. Luz was hearing music, and to watch her for even a little time was to hear it too.
“Every day,” Emilia said. “Her parents don’t know—I asked them. She waits for Alex to wake up, and while she waits she dances. Nowhere else, just here. I hoped you’d see.”
Luz never looked up toward the house, toward us.
I said, “She doesn’t dance like Millamant.” Emilia didn’t bother to answer anything that dumb. We watched a while longer before I said, “He told you, whatever became of him—his soul, his spirit, his molecules—he’d always know you. But he didn’t say whether you’d know him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Emilia said. She took my arm, hugging it tightly, and her face was as bright and young as the child’s. “Jake, Jake, it doesn’t matter whether I know him or not. It doesn’t matter.”
Luz was still dancing on the sidewalk when the taxi came to take me to the train station. I said goodbye as I walked past her, trying not to stare. But she danced me escort to the cab door, and I looked into her eyes as I got in, and as we drove away. And what I think I know, I think I know, and it doesn’t matter at all.
About Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle is the internationally bestselling and much-beloved author of numerous classic fantasy novels and collections, including The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, The Line Between, Sleight of Hand, Summerlong, In Calabria, and, most recently, The Overneath. He is the editor of The Secret History of Fantasy and the co-editor of The Urban Fantasy Anthology.
Beagle published his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, at nineteen, while still completing his degree in creative writing. Beagle’s follow-up, The Last Unicorn, is widely considered one of the great works of fantasy. It has been made into a feature-length animated film, a stage play, and a graphic novel. He has written widely for both stage and screen, including the screenplay adaptations for The Last Unicorn, the animated film of The Lord of the Rings, and the well-known “Sarek” episode of Star Trek.
As one of the fantasy genre’s most-lauded authors, Beagle has received the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Locus Awards as well as the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He has also been honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award and the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award. In 2017, he was named 34th Damon Knight Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association for his contributions to fantasy and science fiction.
Beagle lives in Richmond, California.
About Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen’s (Owl Moon, The Midnight Circus, the How Do Dinosaurs series) four hundredth book came out in 2020, and she is starting the new count with Arch of Bone—with her eye on five hundred! She has been writing and publishing since the early 1960s, when she sold her first book (about female pirates) on her twenty-second birthday. But Yolen began her publishing career as a journalist (short-lived) and as an editor (longer-lived) for Knopf and Harcourt, in the children’s department.
Yolen graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has six honorary doctorates for her body of work. She was the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, in a lecture series that began in 1927. Yolen was also president for two years of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and she served on the board of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for forty-five years.
Yolen’s books and stories have won three World Fantasy Awards, two Nebula Awards, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Medals, three SCBWI Awards, the Massachusetts Book Center Award, two Golden Kite Awards, and a Caldecott Medal, as well as many others. She was nominated in 2020 by the United States for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She was the first Western Mass author to win a New England Public Radio Arts and Humanities Award.
Yolen has also received awards from both the Jewish Book Council and the Catholic Book Council, making her very ecumenical. Her award from the New England Science Fiction Association set her good coat on fire, which she takes as a lesson about the dangers of awards.
Yolen lives in Western Massachusetts and St Andrews, Scotland.
About Stephanie Law
Stephanie Law’s work is an exploration of mythology mixed with her personal symbolism. Her art journeys through surreal otherworlds, populated by dreamlike figures, masked creatures, and winged shadows. In her early career, she worked with various fantasy game, magazine, and book publishers as an illustrator. She created the Shadowscapes Tarot, a best-selling deck that has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and she is the author of the watercolor technique book series Dreamscapes. She currently focuses on working with galleries for showcasing her personal work and with botanical gardens and environmental organizations for her botanical art, while continuing to publish such projects as her recent art book Descants & Cadences, which features her aesthetics of mythos woven with movement and the natural world, and Succulent Dragons, which combines her love of the intricate patterns of nature and whimsical fantastical creatures.
Law lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Peter S. Beagle, The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1
