{4.5\/5} “Most people are wide awake only now and then — on special occasions, as you might say. But a magician is wide awake all the time, on call for everything, which is why post people call him a magician. And he is never more so than at the moment of his own death.”<\/p>\n
The Innkeeper’s Song<\/strong> by Peter S. Beagle, published in 1993<\/p>\n Tikat’s fianc\u00e9<\/span>e Lukassa fell into a river and was washed downstream. At night after all the other searchers had gone home, Tikat sees a woman on a horse who sang — and Lukassa rose up out of the river, alive once more. The women ride off, and Tikat pursues them until he almost dies. He’s rescued by a man who can turn into a fox — or vice versa.<\/p>\n Three women on horseback, one white as a ghost, ask to stay at an inn. The innkeeper knows they’re trouble and attempts to refuse, but they steer around his lies. He ends up giving them his own room.<\/p>\n Beagle draws you into his world right away, and makes you feel like you’ve been to this world before.<\/p>\n It’s about what happens when you cross paths with a wizard, and what happens when you become a wizard’s pupil. It’s about how eventually you might tell the truth to the person who needs to hear it.<\/p>\n