Innkeeper's Song
Peter S Beagle
Set in a shadowy world of magic and mystery, a fantasy novel in which a young man sets off on a wild ride in pursuit of the lover whose death and resurrection he witnessed. From the author of THE LAST UNICORN and A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE.
INNKEEPER’S SONG Peter S. Beagle
FOR PADMA HEJMADI
at last, and for always.
If we were simply friends,
colleagues sharing an art, a language,
a country sketched on restaurant tablecloths,
dayenu—it would have been enough—dayenu
But that we are truly married
is all I know of grace.
“There came three ladies at sundown:
one was as brown as bread is brown,
one was black, with a sailor’s sway,
and one was pale as the moon by day.
The white one wore an emerald ring,
the brown led a fox on a silver string,
and the black one carried a rosewood cane
with a sword inside, for I saw it plain.
They took my own room,they barred the door,
they sang songs I never had heard before.
My cheese and mutton they did destroy,
and they called for wine, and the stable boy.
And once they quarreled and twice they cried—
Their laughter blazed through the countryside,
The ceiling shook and the plaster flew,
and the fox ate my pigeons, all but two.
They rode away with the morning sun,
the white like a queen, the black like a nun,
and the brown one singing with scarlet joy,
and I’ll have to get a new stable boy.”
— The Innkeeper’s Song
PROLOGUE
