Two Hearts
Peter S. Beagle


After 37 years, Peter S. Beagle finally wrote a sequel to The Last Unicorn: a novelette called Two Hearts.

It received a World Fantasy Award nomination, won both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award...and Conlan Press will be releasing it in an illustrated, high-quality 64-page hardcover edition. (See the Updates page for details on release status.)

Please note: Customers who bought any edition of our audiobook of The Last Unicorn prior to February 2009 will get a free copy of this special edition of Two Hearts when it is ready to ship. That offer has ended. If you did not already order the Last Unicorn audiobook, and want to get this special edition of Two Hearts, you will have to buy it after it is printed. In the meantime...

• It is available right now in Peter's latest story collection, The Line Between, also for sale here.
  
  
• You can read it for free on Peter's website..
  
  
• It has been collected in several different BEST FANTASY OF THE YEAR collections (like this one and this one).
  
  
• It is available in Nebula Showcase 2008.
  
  
• It was published as the cover story of the October/November 2005 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine (sold out now, but you might be able to find a used copy).

But of course, none of those options are quite the same as owning a personally-autographed, beautifully-bound, illustrated collector's edition hardcover of your own. When it is finally available we hope you will consider buying one.

And now to tell you everything we can, without giving anything away about the story itself (since spoiling the surprise would be evil).

Here's how this came to pass...

Late in the spring of 2004, with the Last Unicorn audiobook under way but not yet finished, Connor Cochran was working on the text for a Peter S. Beagle promotional postcard. This card was going to be distributed, as a giveaway, to all the people attending the upcoming Mythic Journeys conference in Atlanta. The idea for the back of the card was that it would be a complete summary of all Peter's past work and looming new releases.

When Connor had to write the portion of text describing the Last Unicorn audiobook, some pernicious demon in his subconscious reached out through his hands and typed a sentence to the effect that every audiobook would include a "free, never-before-published story set in the world of Peter's classic novel."

Of course, that's not the sort of thing you can commit Peter S. Beagle to without his permission, even if you are his business manager. So Connor called Peter up and read the copy to him over the phone.

Peter's reaction was blunt. "For 36 years people have been asking me to write a sequel to The Last Unicorn, and for 36 years I've been saying no. There will never be a sequel. Never. That book was one of a kind. I said everything I had to say in it, and since there's nothing else to say I'm not going back. Anyway, I'm not that person anymore. No sequels!"

"You will note," Connor replied, the soul of dispassionate calm, "that I mentioned nothing about a sequel. 'Set in the same world,' it says. You're a writer. That book had a vast landscape, full of other places and people and possibilities. It's been in your head now for 40 years — there must be another story in there somewhere. And hey, I don't care if you don't use any of the characters from the first book at all!"

Peter's one-syllable reply would most accurately be transcribed as "Grrurmupph!" (Give or take one u or m.)

And that was the end of that conversation.

But you know what? Less than a month later, without fanfare or warning, Peter handed Connor an untitled manuscript.

"Here," he said. "I did what you asked. But I don't know if the bloody thing is any good or not."

Connor started reading immediately. A few pages in he realized that Peter hadn't done what Connor had asked at all. In fact, Peter had ignored everything he'd been told. This wasn't a story "set in the world" of The Last Unicorn. Not at all. This was the coda that novel had never had. All the same characters were back: Schmendrick, Molly Grue, King Lir, the unicorn...all of them, but in a fashion that Connor could never — not ever — have foreseen.

Somewhere in the middle of the manuscript Connor started tearing up. By the end he was snurfing and sniffling and wiping both cheeks steadily, because the damn tears just wouldn't stop....

And when he got to the end, knowing he'd had the incredible luck to be the first person on the planet to read this miracle, he turned to Peter and said "This new character you introduced, Sooz. The young girl...you do know she's too interesting to leave here, don't you? Too special? That you have to go write her novel now? And that it has to be the sequel you said you'd never write?"

Peter looked a little sheepish, but nodded. No grrurmupph, this time, just a simple "I know."

And that's how it happened.

Personally, Connor thinks that "Two Hearts" has been there in Peter all the time, weaving itself together inside him the way a perfect wine ages in the dark of a carefully sealed cask. When the story was finally ready to announce itself, that's when the story came out: an apparently effortless creation at least 40 years in the making.