by Betsy James
And, of course, to Ursula K. Le Guin, whose maps continue to expand our known world.
Author’s Notes
About Listening at the Gate
I began the stories that eventually became Listening at the Gate when I was a teenager. I hid them under the bed in a locked tin box, and eventually I tore them up. But I did not forget them, and years later, as a professional artist, I retold them in a long series of narrative watercolors. It is upon those stories and paintings that these books are based.
About the Roadsouls
Every society, it seems, needs to believe there can be humans who exist outside culture. Historically it is the Romani people—“Gypsies”—who have been unjustly described as glamorous, itinerant thieves who steal children, can foresee the future, and are unconstrained by the rules that limit the rest of us.
This need to believe—an “archetype”—must fulfill itself somewhere. But since it doesn’t fit the Romani, I offer instead the Roadsouls: Roadsouls really are like that.