Hi, I'm Lovar Burton, and this is Lovar Burton Reed.

In every episode, I hand-pick a different piece of short fiction than I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them, and I hope you will

know too.

You know, I love stories that have kids as the protagonists.

It's like an invitation to revisit childhood, right?

To experience the magic and mysticism and inventive thinking that we embrace these kids.

In today's story, we revisit a childhood memory and weaves it into fantasy, and it's

by a writer whom I particularly love.

Peter S. Beagle.

Beagle is an author and screenwriter who's received the Hugo, the Nebula, Locus, and Mythopeic

awards, and you know him as the author of the fantasy novel entitled The Last Unicorn,

which is considered a modern classic.

Or maybe you've read one of his other novels, or novel ads, or short stories, or pieces

of memoir.

His new novel, I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, will be published by Saga Books in the

US and by Orion in the UK, both available in May of 2024.

Mr. Beagle recently released two volumes of his collected works called The Essential

Peter S. Beagle, and he included today's story in that collection.

It's a little adventure loosely grounded in his own time growing up in the Bronx in

the 1940s and 50s, and includes some of his real-life childhood friends, Phil and Jake.

The boys end up taking on a literal manifestation of death.

...