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eBook Category: Fantasy/Science Fiction Nebula Award(R) Winner
eBook Description: Friends, family, and fans have all asked me, over the years, to write a sequel to The Last Unicorn. To each in turn I have responded with some variant of the following: "It can't be done. The Last Unicorn is a one-shot, meant from the beginning as a kind of spoof/tribute to the classic European fairytale, an homage to such beloved influences of mine as James Stephens, Lord Dunsany, T. H. White and James Thurber. Writing it was a nightmarish, seemingly endless labor, and when it was done I vowed never to attempt such a balancing act again. So thank you for asking, but no."It wasn't a hard vow to keep: there were other books I wanted to write, and I have always had a real horror of repeating myself. Besides, like everyone else (and quite against my own personal wishes), I grew older. The Last Unicorn is a young man's work, and I am not quite him anymore in so many different ways. Yet here I am, writing an introduction for a sequel to The Last Unicorn. I blame Connor Cochran entirely for the existence of "Two Hearts." He proposed it as a bonus gift for the first 3,000 buyers of the audiobook of The Last Unicorn, and wheedled me into going along by assuring me that I needn't bring back a single one of the original cast--only the world of the novel, nothing more. So, of course, I presented him with four of the major characters, and references to a couple of others, and had an astonishingly fine time doing it. The trouble now, of course, is that I can't abandon Sooz, my young narrator. I'm going to have to bring her back and see where she wants to go ... which will be, as I already know, into the real full-novel sequel to The Last Unicorn. Which I never wanted to write. Bozhe moy, as my Russian uncles used to say. Heaven help me....

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2007

370 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [60 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [56 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [44 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [242 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [49 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [96 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [111 KB] , hiebook (KML) [134 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [68 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [41 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [51 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [79 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [75 KB]
Words: 16435
Reading time: 46-65 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

I have not read The Last Unicorn but, having gobbled with my eyes Two Hearts, I yearn to. Sooz, the young protagonist, is ugly as she is valiant, but she has a heart of gold and a truth serum in her veins. When a child eating griffin in the Midwood brings chaos to her village, takes Jehane, takes Louli, takes dumb little Felicitas, Sooz undertakes an impossible journey to beckon King Lir. Two Hearts is beautiful, powerful, a fairy tale that will capture all ages. It casts poignant characters who dwell in memory long after the tale is told. I am delighted by this introduction to Peter S. Beagle. -Eugen Bacon, Fictionwise Recommender

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 Midwood, singing, to look for the griffin, and we never saw him again.

The second time--after the griffin took Louli, the boy who worked for the miller--the king sent five knights together. One of them did come back, but he died before he could tell anyone what happened.

The third time an entire squadron came. That's what my father said, anyway. I don't know how many soldiers there are in a squadron, but it was a lot, and they were all over the village for two days, pitching their tents everywhere, stabling their horses in every barn, and boasting in the tavern how they'd soon take care of that griffin for us poor peasants. They had musicians playing when they marched into the Midwood--I remember that, and I remember when the music stopped, and the sounds we heard afterward.

After that, the village didn't send to the king anymore. We didn't want more of his men to die, and besides they weren't any help. So from then on all the children were hurried indoors when the sun went down, and the griffin woke from its day's rest to hunt again. We couldn't play together, or run errands or watch the flocks for our parents, or even sleep near open windows, for fear of the griffin. There was nothing for me to do but read books I already knew by heart, and complain to my mother and father, who were too tired from watching after Wilfrid and me to bother with us. They were guarding the other children too, turn and turn about with the other families--and our sheep, and our goats--so they were always tired, as well as frightened, and we were all angry with each other most of the time. It was the same for everybody.

And then the griffin took Felicitas.