One

Time is a face on the water:this was a proverb from the long-ago, in far-off Mejis. Eddie Dean had never been there.

Except he had, in a way. Roland had carried all four of his companions—Eddie, Susannah, Jake, Oy—to Mejis one night, storying long as they camped on I-70, the Kansas Turnpike in a Kansas that never was. That night he had told them the story of Susan Delgado, his first love. Perhaps his only love. And how he had lost her.

The saying might have been true when Roland had been a boy not much older than Jake Chambers, but Eddie thought it was even truer now, as the world wound down like the main-spring in an ancient watch. Roland had told them that even such basic things as the points of the compass could no longer be trusted in Mid-World; what was dead west today might besouth west tomorrow, crazy as that might seem. And time had likewise begun to soften. There were days Eddie could have sworn were forty hours long, some of them followed by nights (like the one on which Roland had taken them to Mejis) that seemed even longer. Then there would come an afternoon when it seemed you could almost see darkness bloom as night rushed over the horizon to meet you. Eddie wondered if time had gotten lost.

They had ridden (and riddled) out of a city called Lud on Blaine the Mono.Blaine is a pain, Jake had said on several occasions, but he—or it—turned out to be quite a bit more than just a pain; Blaine the Mono had been utterly mad. Eddie killed it with illogic (“Somethin you’re just naturally good at, sugar,” Susannah told him), and they had detrained in a Topeka which wasn’t quite part of the world from which Eddie, Susannah, and Jake had come. Which was good, really, because this world—one in which the Kansas City pro baseball team was called The Monarchs, Coca-Cola was called Nozz-A-La, and the big Japanese car-maker was Takuro rather than Honda—had been overwhelmed by some sort of plague which had killed damn near everyone.So stick thatin your Takuro Spirit and drive it, Eddie thought.

The passage of time had seemed clear enough to him through all of this. During much of it he’d been scared shitless—he guessed all of them had been, except maybe for Roland—but yes, it had seemed real and clear. He’d not had that feeling of time slipping out of his grasp even when they’d been walking up I-70 with bullets in their ears, looking at the frozen traffic and listening to the warble of what Roland called a thinny.

But after their confrontation in the glass palace with Jake’s old friend the Tick-Tock Man and Roland’s old friend (Flagg…or Marten…or—just perhaps—Maerlyn), time had changed.

Not right away, though. We traveled in that damned pink ball…saw Roland kill his mother by mistake…and when we came back…

Yes, that was when it had happened. They had awakened in a clearing perhaps thirty miles from the Green Palace. They had still been able to see it, but all of them had understood that it was in another world. Someone—or some force—had carried them over or through the thinny and back to the Path of the Beam. Whoever or whatever it had been, it had actually been considerate enough to pack them each a lunch, complete with Nozz-A-La sodas and rather more familiar packages of Keebler cookies.

Near them, stuck on the branch of a tree, had been a note from the being Roland had just missed killing in the Palace: “Renounce the Tower. This is your last warning.” Ridiculous, really. Roland would no more renounce the Tower than he’d kill Jake’s pet billy-bumbler and then roast him on a spit for dinner.None of them would renounce Roland’s Dark Tower. God help them, they were in it all the way to the end.

We got some daylight left,Eddie had said on the day they’d found Flagg’s warning note.You want to use it, or what?

Yes,Roland of Gilead had replied.Let’s use it .

And so they had, following the Path of the Beam through endless open fields that were divided from each other by belts of straggly, annoying underbrush. There had been no sign of people. Skies had remained low and cloudy day after day and night after night. Because they followed the Path of the Beam, the clouds directly above them sometimes roiled and broke open, revealing patches of blue, but never for long. One night they opened long enough to disclose a full moon with a face clearly visible on it: the nasty, complicitous squint-and-grin of the Peddler. That made it late summer by Roland’s reckoning, but to Eddie it looked like half-past no time at all, the grass mostly listless or outright dead, the trees (what few there were) bare, the bushes scrubby and brown. There was little game, and for the first time in weeks—since leaving the forest ruled by Shardik, the cyborg bear—they sometimes went to bed with their bellies not quite full.

Yet none of that, Eddie thought, was quite as annoying as the sense of having lost hold of time itself: no hours, no days, no weeks, noseasons, for God’s sake. The moon might have told Roland it was the end of summer, but the world around them looked like the first week of November, dozing sleepily toward winter.

Time, Eddie had decided during this period, was in large part created by external events. When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And wheneverything stopped happening, time apparently quit altogether. Just packed up and went to Coney Island. Weird but true.

Hadeverything stopped happening? Eddie considered (and with nothing to do but push Susannah’s wheelchair through one boring field after another, there was plenty of time for consideration). The only peculiarity he could think of since returning from the Wizard’s Glass was what Jake called the Mystery Number, and that probably meant nothing. They’d needed to solve a mathematical riddle in the Cradle of Lud in order to gain access to Blaine, and Susannah had suggested the Mystery Number was a holdover from that. Eddie was far from sure she was right, but hey, it was a theory.

And really, what could be so special about the number nineteen? Mystery Number, indeed. After some thought, Susannah had pointed out it was prime, at least, like the numbers that had opened the gate between them and Blaine the Mono. Eddie had added that it was the only one that came between eighteen and twenty every time you counted. Jake had laughed at that and told him to stop being a jerk. Eddie, who had been sitting close to the campfire and carving a rabbit (when it was done, it would join the cat and dog already in his pack), told Jake to quit making fun of his only real talent.

Two

They might have been back on the Path of the Beam five or six weeks when they came to a pair of ancient double ruts that had surely once been a road. It didn’t follow the Path of the Beam exactly, but Roland swung them onto it anyway. It bore closely enough to the Beam for their purposes, he said. Eddie thought being on a road again might refocus things, help them to shake that maddening becalmed-in-the-Horse-Latitudes feeling, but it didn’t. The road carried them up and across a rising series of fields like steps. They finally topped a long north–south ridge. On the far side, their road descended into a dark wood. Almost a fairy-tale wood, Eddie thought as they passed into its shadows. Susannah shot a small deer on their second day in the forest (or maybe it was the third day…or the fourth), and the meat was delicious after a steady diet of vegetarian gunslinger burritos, but there were no orcs or trolls in the deep glades, and no elves—Keebler or otherwise. No more deer, either.

“I keep lookin for the candy house,” Eddie said. They’d been winding their way through the great old trees for several days by then. Or maybe it had been as long as a week. All he knew for sure was that they were still reasonably close to the Path of the Beam. They could see it in the sky…and they could feel it.

“What candy house is this?” Roland asked. “Is it another tale? If so, I’d hear.”

Of course he would. The man was a glutton for stories, especially those that led off with a “Once upon a time when everyone lived in the forest.” But the way he listened was a little odd. A little off. Eddie had mentioned this to Susannah once, and she’d nailed it with a single stroke, as she often did. Susannah had a poet’s almost uncanny ability to put feelings into words, freezing them in place.

“That’s cause he doesn’t listen all big-eyed like a kid at bedtime,” she said. “That’s just how youwant him to listen, honeybunch.”

“And howdoes he listen?”

“Like an anthropologist,” she had replied promptly. “Like an anthropologist tryin to figure out some strange culture by their myths and legends.”

She was right. And if Roland’s way of listening made Eddie uncomfortable, it was probably because in his heart, Eddie felt that if anyone should be listening like scientists, it should be him and Suze and Jake. Because they came from a far more sophisticated where and when. Didn’t they?

Whether they did or didn’t, the four had discovered a great number of stories that were common to both worlds. Roland knew a tale called “Diana’s Dream” that was eerily close to “The Lady or the Tiger,” which all three exiled New Yorkers had read in school. The tale of Lord Perth was similar to the Bible story of David and Goliath. Roland had heard many tales of the Man Jesus, who died on the cross to redeem the sins of the world, and told Eddie, Susannah, and Jake that Jesus had His fair share of followers in Mid-World. There were also songs common to both worlds. “Careless Love” was one. “Hey Jude” was another, although in Roland’s world, the first line of this song was “Hey Jude, I see you, lad.”

Eddie passed at least an hour telling Roland the story of Hansel and Gretel, turning the wicked child-eating witch into Rhea of the Cöos almost without thinking of it. When he got to the part about her trying to fatten the children up, he broke off and asked Roland: “Do you know this one? A version of this one?”

“No,” Roland said, “but it’s a fair tale. Tell it to the end, please.”

Eddie did, finishing with the requiredThey lived happily ever after, and the gunslinger nodded. “No one everdoes live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Jake said.

Oy was trotting at the boy’s heel, looking up at Jake with the usual expression of calm adoration in his gold-ringed eyes. “Yeah,” the bumbler said, copying the boy’s rather glum inflection exactly.

Eddie threw an arm around Jake’s shoulders. “Too bad you’re over here instead of back in New York,” he said. “If you were back in the Apple, Jakey-boy, you’d probably have your own child psychiatrist by now. You’d be working on these issues about your parents. Getting to the heart of your unresolved conflicts. Maybe getting some good drugs, too. Ritalin, stuff like that.”

“On the whole, I’d rather be here,” Jake said, and looked down at Oy.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I don’t blame you.”

“Such stories are called ‘fairy tales,’ ” Roland mused.

“Yeah,” Eddie replied.

“There were no fairies in this one, though.”

“No,” Eddie agreed. “That’s more like a category name than anything else. In our world you got your mystery and suspense stories…your science fiction stories…your Westerns…your fairy tales. Get it?”

“Yes,” Roland said. “Do people in your world always want only one story-flavor at a time? Only one taste in their mouths?”

“I guess that’s close enough,” Susannah said.

“Does no one eat stew?” Roland asked.

“Sometimes at supper, I guess,” Eddie said, “but when it comes to entertainment, wedo tend to stick with one flavor at a time, and don’t let any one thing touch another thing on your plate. Although it sounds kinda boring when you put it that way.”

“How many of these fairy tales would you say there are?”

With no hesitation—and certainly no collusion—Eddie, Susannah, and Jake all said the same word at exactly the same time: “Nineteen!” And a moment later, Oy repeated it in his hoarse voice: “Nie-teen!”

They looked at each other and laughed, because “nineteen” had become a kind of jokey catchword among them, replacing “bumhug,” which Jake and Eddie had pretty much worn out. Yet the laughter had a tinge of uneasiness about it, because this business about nineteen had gotten a trifle weird. Eddie had found himself carving it on the side of his most recent wooden animal, like a brand:Hey there, Pard, welcome to our spread! We call it the Bar-Nineteen . Both Susannah and Jake had confessed to bringing wood for the evening fire in armloads of nineteen pieces. Neither of them could say why; it just felt right to do it that way, somehow.

Then there was the morning Roland had stopped them at the edge of the wood through which they were now traveling. He had pointed at the sky, where one particularly ancient tree had reared its hoary branches. The shape those branches made against the sky was the number nineteen. Clearly nineteen. They had all seen it, but Roland had seen it first.

Yet Roland, who believed in omens and portents as routinely as Eddie had once believed in lightbulbs and Double-A batteries, had a tendency to dismiss his ka-tet’s odd and sudden infatuation with the number. They had grown close, he said, as close as any ka-tet could, and so their thoughts, habits, and little obsessions had a tendency to spread among them all, like a cold. He believed that Jake was facilitating this to a certain degree.

“You’ve got the touch, Jake,” he said. “I’m not sure that it’s as strong in you as it was in my old friend Alain, but by the gods I believe it may be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake had replied, frowning in puzzlement. Eddie did—sort of—and guessed that Jake would know, in time. If time ever began passing in a normal way again, that was.

And on the day Jake brought the muffin-balls, it did.

Three

They had stopped for lunch (more uninteresting vegetarian burritos, the deermeat now gone and the Keebler cookies little more than a sweet memory) when Eddie noticed that Jake was gone and asked the gunslinger if he knew where the kid had gotten off to.

“Peeled off about half a wheel back,” Roland said, and pointed along the road with the two remaining fingers of his right hand. “He’s all right. If he wasn’t, we’d all feel it.” Roland looked at his burrito, then took an unenthusiastic bite.

Eddie opened his mouth to say something else, but Susannah got there first. “Here he is now. Hi there, sugar, what you got?”

Jake’s arms were full of round things the size of tennis balls. Only these balls would never bounce true; they had little horns sticking up from them. When the kid got closer, Eddie could smell them, and the smell was wonderful—like fresh-baked bread.

“I think these might be good to eat,” Jake said. “They smell like the fresh sourdough bread my mother and Mrs. Shaw—the housekeeper—got at Zabar’s.” He looked at Susannah and Eddie, smiling a little. “Do you guys know Zabar’s?”

“Isure do,” Susannah said. “Best of everything, mmm-hmmm. And theydo smell fine. You didn’t eat any yet, did you?”

“No way.” He looked questioningly at Roland.

The gunslinger ended the suspense by taking one, plucking off the horns, and biting into what was left. “Muffin-balls,” he said. “I haven’t seen any in gods know how long. They’re wonderful.” His blue eyes were gleaming. “Don’t want to eat the horns; they’re not poison but they’re sour. We can fry them, if there’s a little deerfat left. That way they taste almost like meat.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Eddie said. “Knock yourself out. As for me, I think I’ll skip the mushroom muff-divers, or whatever they are.”

“They’re not mushrooms at all,” Roland said. “More like a kind of ground berry.”

Susannah took one, nibbled, then helped herself to a bigger bite. “You don’t want to skip these, sweetheart,” she said. “My Daddy’s friend, Pop Mose, would have said ‘These areprime. ’ ” She took another of the muffin-balls from Jake and ran a thumb over its silky surface.

“Maybe,” he said, “but there was this book I read for a report back in high school—I think it was calledWe Have Always Lived in the Castle —where this nutty chick poisoned her whole family with things like that.” He bent toward Jake, raising his eyebrows and stretching the corners of his mouth in what he hoped was a creepy smile. “Poisoned her whole family and they died inAG-o-ny !”

Eddie fell off the log on which he had been sitting and began to roll around on the needles and fallen leaves, making horrible faces and choking sounds. Oy ran around him, yipping Eddie’s name in a series of high-pitched barks.

“Quit it,” Roland said. “Where did you find these, Jake?”

“Back there,” he said. “In a clearing I spotted from the path. It’sfull of these things. Also, if you guys are hungry for meat…I know I am…there’s all kinds of sign. A lot of the scat’s fresh.” His eyes searched Roland’s face. “Very…fresh…scat.” He spoke slowly, as if to someone who wasn’t fluent in the language.

A little smile played at the corners of Roland’s mouth. “Speak quiet but speak plain,” he said. “What worries you, Jake?”

When Jake replied, his lips barely made the shapes of the words. “Men watching me while I picked the muffin-balls.” He paused, then added: “They’re watching us now.”

Susannah took one of the muffin-balls, admired it, then dipped her face as if to smell it like a flower. “Back the way we came? To the right of the road?”

“Yes,” Jake said.

Eddie raised a curled fist to his mouth as if to stifle a cough, and said: “How many?”

“I think four.”

“Five,” Roland said. “Possibly as many as six. One’s a woman. Another a boy not much older than Jake.”

Jake looked at him, startled. Eddie said, “How long have they been there?”

“Since yesterday,” Roland said. “Cut in behind us from almost dead east.”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Susannah asked. She spoke rather sternly, not bothering to cover her mouth and obscure the shapes of the words.

Roland looked at her with the barest twinkle in his eye. “I was curious as to which of you would smell them out first. Actually, I had my money on you, Susannah.”

She gave him a cool look and said nothing. Eddie thought there was more than a little Detta Walker in that look, and was glad not to be on the receiving end.

“What do we do about them?” Jake asked.

“For now, nothing,” the gunslinger said.

Jake clearly didn’t like this. “What if they’re like Tick-Tock’s ka-tet? Gasher and Hoots and those guys?”

“They’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they would have set on us already and they’d be fly-food.”

There seemed no good reply to that, and they took to the road again. It wound through deep shadows, finding its way among trees that were centuries old. Before they had been walking twenty minutes, Eddie heard the sound of their pursuers (or shadowers): snapping twigs, rustling underbrush, once even a low voice. Slewfeet, in Roland’s terminology. Eddie was disgusted with himself for remaining unaware of them for so long. He also wondered what yon cullies did for a living. If it was tracking and trapping, they weren’t very good at it.

Eddie Dean had become a part of Mid-World in many ways, some so subtle he wasn’t consciously aware of them, but he still thought of distances in miles instead of wheels. He guessed they’d come about fifteen from the spot where Jake rejoined them with his muffin-balls and his news when Roland called it a day. They stopped in the middle of the road, as they always did since entering the forest; that way the embers of their campfire stood little chance of setting the woods on fire.

Eddie and Susannah gathered a nice selection of fallen branches while Roland and Jake made a little camp and set about cutting up Jake’s trove of muffin-balls. Susannah rolled her wheelchair effortlessly over the duff under the ancient trees, piling her selections in her lap. Eddie walked nearby, humming under his breath.

“Lookit over to your left, sugar,” Susannah said.

He did, and saw a distant orange blink. A fire.

“Not very good, are they?” he asked.

“No. Truth is, I feel a little sorry for em.”

“Any idea what they’re up to?”

“Unh-unh, but I think Roland’s right—they’ll tell us when they’re ready. Either that or decide we’re not what they want and just sort of fade away. Come on, let’s go back.”

“Just a second.” He picked up one more branch, hesitated, then took yet another. Then it was right. “Okay,” he said.

As they headed back, he counted the sticks he’d picked up, then the ones in Susannah’s lap. The total came to nineteen in each case.

“Suze,” he said, and when she glanced over at him: “Time’s started up again.”

She didn’t ask him what he meant, only nodded.

Four

Eddie’s resolution about not eating the muffin-balls didn’t last long; they just smelled too damned good sizzling in the lump of deerfat Roland (thrifty, murderous soul that he was) had saved away in his scuffed old purse. Eddie took his share on one of the ancient plates they’d found in Shardik’s woods and gobbled them.

“These are as good as lobster,” he said, then remembered the monsters on the beach that had eaten Roland’s fingers. “As good as Nathan’s hotdogs is what I meant to say. And I’m sorry for teasing you, Jake.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jake said, smiling. “You never tease hard.”

“One thing you should be aware of,” Roland said. He was smiling—he smiled more these days, quite a lot more—but his eyes were serious. “All of you. Muffin-balls sometimes bring very lively dreams.”

“You mean they make you stoned?” Jake asked, rather uneasily. He was thinking of his father. Elmer Chambers had enjoyed many of the weirder things in life.

“Stoned? I’m not sure I—”

“Buzzed. High. Seeing things. Like when you took the mescaline and went into the stone circle where that thing almost…you know, almost hurt me.”

Roland paused for a moment, remembering. There had been a kind of succubus imprisoned in that ring of stones. Left to its own devices, she undoubtedly would have initiated Jake Chambers sexually, then fucked him to death. As matters turned out, Roland had made it speak. To punish him, it had sent him a vision of Susan Delgado.

“Roland?” Jake was looking at him anxiously.

“Don’t concern yourself, Jake. There are mushrooms that do what you’re thinking of—change consciousness, heighten it—but not muffin-balls. These are berries, just good to eat. If your dreams are particularly vivid, just remind yourself youare dreaming.”

Eddie thought this a very odd little speech. For one thing, it wasn’t like Roland to be so tenderly solicitous of their mental health. Not like him to waste words, either.

Things have started again and he knows it, too,Eddie thought.There was a little time-out there, but now the clock’s running again. Game on, as they say.

“We going to set a watch, Roland?” Eddie asked.

“Not by my warrant,” the gunslinger said comfortably, and began rolling himself a smoke.

“You really don’t think they’re dangerous, do you?” Susannah said, and raised her eyes to the woods, where the individual trees were now losing themselves in the general gloom of evening. The little spark of campfire they’d noticed earlier was now gone, but the people following them were still there. Susannah felt them. When she looked down at Oy and saw him gazing in the same direction, she wasn’t surprised.

“I think that may be their problem,” Roland said.

“What’sthat supposed to mean?” Eddie asked, but Roland would say no more. He simply lay in the road with a rolled-up piece of deerskin beneath his neck, looking up at the dark sky and smoking.

Later, Roland’s ka-tet slept. They posted no watch and were undisturbed.

Five

The dreams, when they came, were not dreams at all. They all knew this except perhaps for Susannah, who in a very real sense was not there at all that night.

My God, I’m back in New York,Eddie thought. And, on the heels of this: Reallyback in New York. This is really happening .

It was. He was in New York. On Second Avenue.

That was when Jake and Oy came around the corner from Fifty-fourth Street. “Hey, Eddie,” Jake said, grinning. “Welcome home.”

Game on,Eddie thought.Game on.

One

Jake fell asleep looking into pure darkness—no stars in that cloudy night sky, no moon. As he drifted off, he had a sensation of falling that he recognized with dismay: in his previous life as a so-called normal child he’d often had dreams of falling, especially around exam time, but these had ceased since his violent rebirth into Mid-World.

Then the falling feeling was gone. He heard a brief chiming melody that was somehowtoo beautiful: three notes and you wanted it to stop, a dozen and you thought it would kill you if it didn’t. Each chime seemed to make his bones vibrate.Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it? he thought, for although the chiming melody was nothing like the sinister warble of the thinny, somehow it was.

It was.

Then, just when he truly believed he could bear it no longer, the terrible, gorgeous tune stopped. The darkness behind his closed eyes suddenly lit up a brilliant dark red.

He opened them cautiously on strong sunlight.

And gaped.

At New York.

Taxis bustled past, gleaming bright yellow in the sunshine. A young black man wearing Walkman earphones strolled by Jake, bopping his sandaled feet a little bit to the music and going “Cha-da-ba, cha-da-bow!” under his breath. A jackhammer battered Jake’s eardrums. Chunks of cement dropped into a dumptruck with a crash that echoed from one cliff-face of buildings to another. The world was a-din with racket. He had gotten used to the deep silences of Mid-World without even realizing it. No, more. Had come to love them. Still, this noise and bustle had its attractions, and Jake couldn’t deny it. Back in the New York groove. He felt a little grin stretch his lips.

“Ake! Ake!” cried a low, rather distressed voice.

Jake looked down and saw Oy sitting on the sidewalk with his tail curled neatly around him. The billy-bumbler wasn’t wearing little red booties and Jake wasn’t wearing the red Oxfords (thank God), but this was still very like their visit to Roland’s Gilead, which they had reached by traveling in the pink Wizard’s Glass. The glass ball that had caused so much trouble and woe.

No glass this time…he’d just gone to sleep. But this was no dream. It was more intense than any dream he’d ever had, and more textured. Also…

Also, people kept detouring around him and Oy as they stood to the left of a midtown saloon called Kansas City Blues. While Jake was making this observation, a woman actually steppedover Oy, hitching up her straight black skirt a bit at the knee in order to do so. Her preoccupied face (I’m just one more New Yorker minding my business, so don’t screw with mewas what that face said to Jake) never changed.

They don’t see us, but somehow they sense us. And if they can sense us, we must really be here.

The first logical question was Why? Jake considered this for a moment, then decided to table it. He had an idea the answer would come. Meantime, why not enjoy New York while he had it?

“Come on, Oy,” he said, and walked around the corner. The billy-bumbler, clearly no city boy, walked so close to him that Jake could feel his breath feathering against his ankle.

Second Avenue,he thought. Then:My God —

Before he could finish the thought, he saw Eddie Dean standing outside of the Barcelona Luggage store, looking dazed and more than a little out of place in old jeans, a deerskin shirt, and deerskin moccasins. His hair was clean, but it hung to his shoulders in a way that suggested no professional had seen to it in quite some time. Jake realized he himself didn’t look much better; he was also wearing a deerskin shirt and, on his lower half, the battered remains of the Dockers he’d had on the day he left home for good, setting sail for Brooklyn, Dutch Hill, and another world.

Good thing no one can see us,Jake thought, then decided that wasn’t true. If people could see them, they’d probably get rich on spare change before noon. The thought made him grin. “Hey, Eddie,” he said. “Welcome home.”

Eddie nodded, looking bemused. “See you brought your friend.”

Jake reached down and gave Oy an affectionate pat. “He’s my version of the American Express Card. I don’t go home without him.”

Jake was about to go on—he felt witty, bubbly, full of amusing things to say—when someone came around the corner, passed them without looking (as everyone else had), and changed everything. It was a kid wearing Dockers that looked like Jake’s because theywere Jake’s. Not the pair he had on now, but they were his, all right. So were the sneakers. They were the ones Jake had lost in Dutch Hill. The plaster-man who guarded the door between the worlds had torn them right off his feet.

The boy who had just passed them was John Chambers, it washim, only this version looked soft and innocent and painfully young.How did you survive? he asked his own retreating back.How did you survive the mental stress of losing your mind, and running away from home, and that horrible house in Brooklyn? Most of all, how did you survive the doorkeeper? You must be tougher than you look.

Eddie did a doubletake so comical that Jake laughed in spite of his own shocked surprise. It made him think of those comic-book panels where Archie or Jughead is trying to look in two directions at the same time. He looked down and saw a similar expression on Oy’s face. Somehow that made the whole thing even funnier.

“What thefuck ?” Eddie asked.

“Instant replay,” Jake said, and laughed harder. It came out sounding goofy as shit, but he didn’t care. Hefelt goofy. “It’s like when we watched Roland in the Great Hall of Gilead, only this is New York and it’s May 31st, 1977! It’s the day I took French Leave from Piper! Instant replay, baby!”

“French—?” Eddie began, but Jake didn’t give him a chance to finish. He was struck by another realization. Exceptstruck was too mild a word. He wasburied by it, like a man who just happens to be on the beach when a tidal wave rolls in. His face blazed so brightly that Eddie actually took a step back.

“The rose!” he whispered. He felt too weak in the diaphragm to speak any louder, and his throat was as dry as a sandstorm. “Eddie,the rose !”

“What about it?”

“This is the day I see it!” He reached out and touched Eddie’s forearm with a trembling hand. “I go to the bookstore…then to the vacant lot. I think there used to be a delicatessen—”

Eddie was nodding and beginning to look excited himself. “Tom and Jerry’s Artistic Deli, corner of Second and Forty-sixth—”

“The deli’s gone but the rose is there! That me walking down the street is going to see it,and we can see it, too !”

At that, Eddie’s own eyes blazed. “Come on, then,” he said. “We don’t want to lose you. Him. Whoever the fuck.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake said. “I know where he’s going.”

Two

The Jake ahead of them—New York Jake, spring-of-1977 Jake—walked slowly, looking everywhere, clearly digging the day. Mid-World Jake remembered exactly how that boy had felt: the sudden relief when the arguing voices in his mind

had finally stopped their squabbling. Back by the board fence that had been, where the two businessmen had been playing tic-tac-toe with a Mark Cross pen. And, of course, there had been the relief of being away from the Piper School and the insanity of his Final Essay for Ms. Avery’s English class. The Final Essay counted a full twenty-five per cent toward each student’s final grade, Ms. Avery had made that perfectly clear, and Jake’s had been gibberish. The fact that his teacher had later given him an A+ on it didn’t change that, only made it clear that it wasn’t just him; the whole world was losing its shit, going nineteen.

Being out from under all that—even for a little while—had been great. Of course he was digging the day.

Only the day’s not quite right,Jake thought—the Jake walking along behind his old self.Something about it …

He looked around but couldn’t figure it out. Late May, bright summer sun, lots of strollers and window-shoppers on Second Avenue, plenty of taxis, the occasional long black limo; nothing wrong with any of this.

Except there was.

Everythingwas wrong with it.

Three

Eddie felt the kid twitch his sleeve. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Jake asked.

Eddie looked around. In spite of his own adjustment problems (his involved coming back to a New York that was clearly a few years behind his when), he knew what Jake meant. Somethingwas wrong.

He looked down at the sidewalk, suddenly sure he wouldn’t have a shadow. They’d lost their shadows like the kids in one of the stories…one of the nineteen fairy tales…or was it maybe something newer, likeThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe orPeter Pan ? One of what might be called the Modern Nineteen?

Didn’t matter in any case, because their shadows were there.

Shouldn’t be, though,Eddie thought.Shouldn’t be able to see our shadows when it’s this dark.

Stupid thought. Itwasn’t dark. It wasmorning, for Christ’s sake, a bright May morning, sunshine winking off the chrome of passing cars and the windows of the stores on the east side of Second Avenue brightly enough to make you squint your eyes. Yet still it seemed somehow dark to Eddie, as if all this were nothing but fragile surface, like the canvas backdrop of a stage set. “At rise we see the Forest of Arden.” Or a Castle in Denmark. Or the Kitchen of Willy Loman’s House. In this case we see Second Avenue, midtown New York.

Yes, like that. Only behind this canvas you wouldn’t find the workshop and storage areas of backstage but only a great bulging darkness. Some vast dead universe where Roland’s Tower had already fallen.

Please let me be wrong,Eddie thought.Please let this just be a case of culture shock or the plain old heebie-jeebies .

He didn’t think it was.

“How’d we get here?” he asked Jake. “There was no door…” He trailed off, and then asked with some hope: “Maybe itis a dream?”

“No,” Jake said. “It’s more like when we traveled in the Wizard’s Glass. Except this time there was no ball.” A thought struck him. “Did you hear music, though? Chimes? Just before you wound up here?”

Eddie nodded. “It was sort of overwhelming. Made my eyes water.”

“Right,” Jake said. “Exactly.”

Oy sniffed a fire hydrant. Eddie and Jake paused to let the little guy lift his leg and add his own notice to what was undoubtedly an already crowded bulletin board. Ahead of them, that other Jake—Kid Seventy-seven—was still walking slowly and gawking everywhere. To Eddie he looked like a tourist from Michigan. He even craned up to see the tops of the buildings, and Eddie had an idea that if the New York Board of Cynicism caught you doing that, they took away your Bloomingdale’s charge card. Not that he was complaining; it made the kid easy to follow.

And just as Eddie was thinking that, Kid Seventy-seven disappeared.

“Where’d you go? Christ, where’d you go?”

“Relax,” Jake said. (At his ankle, Oy added his two cents’ worth: “Ax!”) The kid was grinning. “I just went into the bookstore. The…um…Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, it’s called.”

“Where you gotCharlie the Choo-Choo and the riddle book?”

“Right.”

Eddie loved the mystified, dazzled grin Jake was wearing. It lit up his whole face. “Remember how excited Roland got when I told him the owner’s name?”

Eddie did. The owner of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind was a fellow named Calvin Tower.

“Hurry up,” Jake said. “I want to watch.”

Eddie didn’t have to be asked twice. He wanted to watch, too.

Four

Jake stopped in the doorway to the bookstore. His smile didn’t fade, exactly, but it faltered.

“What is it?” Eddie asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Dunno. Something’s different, I think. It’s just…so much has happened since I was here…”

He was looking at the chalkboard in the window, which Eddie thought was actually a very clever way of selling books. It looked like the sort of thing you saw in diners, or maybe the fish markets.

TODAY’S SPECIALS

From Mississippi! Pan-Fried William Faulkner

Hardcovers Market Price

Vintage Library Paperbacks 75c each

From Maine! Chilled Stephen King

Hardcovers Market Price

Book Club Bargains

Paperbacks 75c each

From California! Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler

Hardcovers Market Price

Paperbacks 7 for $5.00

Eddie looked beyond this and saw that other Jake—the one without the tan or the look of hard clarity in his eyes—standing at a small display table. Kiddie books. Probably both the Nineteen Fairy Tales and the Modern Nineteen.

Quit it,he told himself.That’s obsessive-compulsive crap and you know it .

Maybe, but good old Jake Seventy-seven was about to make a purchase from that table which had gone on to change—and very likely to save—their lives. He’d worry about the number nineteen later. Or not at all, if he could manage it.

“Come on,” he told Jake. “Let’s go in.”

The boy hung back.

“What’s the matter?” Eddie asked. “Tower won’t be able to see us, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Towerwon’t be able to,” Jake said, “but what ifhe can?” He pointed at his other self, the one who had yet to meet Gasher and Tick-Tock and the old people of River Crossing. The one who had yet to meet Blaine the Mono and Rhea of the Cöos.

Jake was looking at Eddie with a kind of haunted curiosity. “What if I seemyself ?”

Eddie supposed that might really happen. Hell,anything might happen. But that didn’t change what he felt in his heart. “I think we’re supposed to go in, Jake.”

“Yeah…” It came out in a long sigh. “I do, too.”

Five

They went in and they weren’t seen and Eddie was relieved to count twenty-one books on the display table that had attracted the boy’s notice. Except, of course, when Jake picked up the two he wanted—Charlie the Choo-Chooand the riddle book—that left nineteen.

“Find something, son?” a mild voice inquired. It was a fat fellow in an open-throated white shirt. Behind him, at a counter that looked as if it might have been filched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, a trio of old guys were drinking coffee and nibbling pastries. A chessboard with a game in progress sat on the marble counter.

“The guy sitting on the end is Aaron Deepneau,” Jake whispered. “He’s going to explain the riddle about Samson to me.”

“Shh!” Eddie said. He wanted to hear the conversation between Calvin Tower and Kid Seventy-seven. All of a sudden that seemed very important…only why was it so fuckingdark in here?

Except it’s not dark at all.The east side of the street gets plenty of sun at this hour, and with the door open, this place is getting all of it. How can you say it’s dark?

Because it somehow was. The sunlight—thecontrast of the sunlight—only made it worse. The fact that you couldn’t exactlysee that darkness made it worse still…and Eddie realized a terrible thing: these people were in danger. Tower, Deepneau, Kid Seventy-seven. Probably him and Mid-World Jake and Oy, as well.

All of them.

Six

Jake watched his other, younger self take a step back from the bookshop owner, his eyes widening in surprise.Because his name is Tower, Jake thought.That’s what surprised me. Not because of Roland’s Tower, though —I didn’t know about that yet—but because of the picture I put on the last page of my Final Essay.

He had pasted a photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the last page, then had scribbled all over it with a black Crayola, darkening it as best he could.

Tower asked him his name. Seventy-seven Jake told him and Tower joked around with him a little. It was good joking-around, the kind you got from adults who really didn’t mind kids.

“Good handle, pard,” Tower was saying. “Sounds like the footloose hero in a Western novel—the guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, and then travels on. Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe…”

Jake took a step closer to his old self (part of him was thinking what a wonderful sketch all this would make onSaturday Night Live ), and his eyes widened slightly. “Eddie!” He was still whispering, although he knew the people in the bookstore couldn’t—

Except maybe on some level they could. He remembered the lady back on Fifty-fourth Street, twitching her skirt up at the knee so she could step over Oy. And now Calvin Tower’s eyes shifted slightly in his direction before going back to the other version of him.

“Might be good not to attract unnecessary attention,” Eddie muttered in his ear.

“I know,” Jake said, “but look atCharlie the Choo-Choo, Eddie!”

Eddie did, and for a moment saw nothing—except for Charlie himself, of course: Charlie with his headlight eye and not-quite-trustworthy cowcatcher grin. Then Eddie’s eyebrows went up.

“I thoughtCharlie the Choo-Choo was written by a lady named Beryl Evans,” he whispered.

Jake nodded. “I did, too.”

“Then who’s this—” Eddie took another look. “Who’s this Claudia y Inez Bachman?”

“I have no idea,” Jake said. “I never heard of her in my life.”

Seven

One of the old men at the counter came sauntering toward them. Eddie and Jake drew away. As they stepped back, Eddie’s spine gave a cold little wrench. Jake was very pale, and Oy was giving out a series of low, distressed whines. Something was wrong here, all right. In a way theyhad lost their shadows. Eddie just didn’t know how.

Kid Seventy-seven had taken out his wallet and was paying for the two books. There was some more talk and good-natured laughter, then he headed for the door. When Eddie started after him, Mid-World Jake grabbed his arm. “No, not yet—I come back in.”

“I don’t care if you alphabetize the whole place,” Eddie said. “Let’s wait out on the sidewalk.”

Jake thought about this, biting his lip, then nodded. They headed for the door, then stopped and moved aside as the other Jake returned. The riddle book was open. Calvin Tower had lumbered over to the chessboard on the counter. He looked around with an amiable smile.

“Change your mind about that cup of coffee, O Hyper-borean Wanderer?”

“No, I wanted to ask you—”

“This is the part about Samson’s Riddle,” Mid-World Jake said. “I don’t think it matters. Although the Deepneau guy sings a pretty good song, if you want to hear it.”

“I’ll pass,” Eddie said. “Come on.”

They went out. And although things on Second Avenue were still wrong—that sense of endless dark behind the scenes, behind the verysky —it was somehow better than in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. At least there was fresh air.

“Tell you what,” Jake said. “Let’s go down to Second and Forty-sixth right now.” He jerked his head toward the version of him listening to Aaron Deepneau sing. “I’ll catch up with us.”

Eddie considered it, then shook his head.

Jake’s face fell a little. “Don’t you want to see the rose?”

“You bet your ass I do,” Eddie said. “I’m wild to see it.”

“Then—”

“I don’t feel like we’re done here yet. I don’t know why, but I don’t.”

Jake—the Kid Seventy-seven version of him—had left the door open when he went back inside, and now Eddie moved into it. Aaron Deepneau was telling Jake a riddle they would later try on Blaine the Mono: What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks. Mid-World Jake, meanwhile, was once more looking at the notice-board in the bookstore window (Pan-Fried William Faulkner, Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler). He wore a frown of the kind that expresses doubt and anxiety rather than ill temper.

“That sign’s different, too,” he said.

“How?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Is it important?”

Jake turned to him. The eyes below the furrowed brow were haunted. “I don’t know. It’s another riddle. Ihate riddles!”

Eddie sympathized.When is a Beryl not a Beryl? “When it’s a Claudia,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Better step back, Jake, or you’re going to run into yourself.”

Jake gave the oncoming version of John Chambers a startled glance, then did as Eddie suggested. And when Kid Seventy-seven started on down Second Avenue with his new books in his left hand, Mid-World Jake gave Eddie a tired smile. “Ido remember one thing,” he said. “When I left this bookstore, I was sure I’d never come here again. But I did.”

“Considering that we’re more ghosts than people, I’d say that’s debatable.” Eddie gave the back of Jake’s neck a friendly scruff. “And if youhave forgotten something important, Roland might be able to help you remember. He’s good at that.”

Jake grinned at this, relieved. He knew from personal experience that the gunslinger reallywas good at helping people remember. Roland’s friend Alain might have been the one with the strongest ability to touch other minds, and his friend Cuthbert had gotten all the sense of humor in that particular ka-tet, but Roland had developed over the years into onehell of a hypnotist. He could have made a fortune in Las Vegas.

“Can we follow me now?” Jake asked. “Check out the rose?” He looked up and down Second Avenue—a street that was somehow bright and dark at the same time—with a kind of unhappy perplexity. “Things are probably better there. The rose makes everything better.”

Eddie was about to say okay when a dark gray Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of Calvin Tower’s bookshop. It parked by the yellow curb in front of a fire hydrant with absolutely no hesitation. The front doors opened, and when Eddie saw who was getting out from behind the wheel, he seized Jake’s shoulder.

“Ow!” Jake said. “Man, that hurts!”

Eddie paid no attention. In fact the hand on Jake’s shoulder clamped down even tighter.

“Christ,” Eddie whispered. “Dear Jesus Christ, what’s this? What in hell isthis ?”

Eight

Jake watched Eddie go past pale to ashy gray. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. Not without difficulty, Jake pried the clamping hand off his shoulder. Eddie made as if to point with that hand, but didn’t seem to have the strength. It fell against the side of his leg with a little thump.

The man who had gotten out on the passenger side of the Town Car walked around to the sidewalk while the driver opened the rear curbside door. Even to Jake their moves looked practiced, almost like steps in a dance. The man who got out of the back seat was wearing an expensive suit, but that didn’t change the fact that he was basically a dumpy little guy with a potbelly and black hair going gray around the edges.Dandruffy black hair, from the look of his suit’s shoulders.

To Jake, the day suddenly felt darker than ever. He looked up to see if the sun had gone behind a cloud. It hadn’t, but it almost seemed to him that there was a black corona forming around its brilliant circle, like a ring of mascara around a startled eye.

Half a block farther downtown, the 1977 version of him was glancing in the window of a restaurant, and Jake could remember the name of it: Chew Chew Mama’s. Not far beyond it was Tower of Power Records, where he would thinkTowers are selling cheap today . If that version of him had looked back, he would have seen the gray Town Car…but he hadn’t. Kid Seventy-seven’s mind was fixed firmly on the future.

“It’s Balazar,” Eddie said.

“What?”

Eddie was pointing at the dumpy guy, who had paused to adjust his Sulka tie. The other two now stood flanking him. They looked simultaneously relaxed and watchful.

“Enrico Balazar. And looking much younger. God, he’s almost middle-aged!”

“It’s 1977,” Jake reminded him. Then, as the penny dropped: “That’s the guy you and Rolandkilled ?” Eddie had told Jake the story of the shoot-out at Balazar’s club in 1987, leaving out the gorier parts. The part, for instance, where Kevin Blake had lobbed the head of Eddie’s brother into Balazar’s office in an effort to flush Eddie and Roland into the open. Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “The guy Roland and I killed. And the one who was driving, that’s Jack Andolini. Old Double-Ugly, people used to call him, although never to his face. He went through one of those doors with me just before the shooting started.”

“Roland killed him, too. Didn’t he?”

Eddie nodded. It was simpler than trying to explain how Jack Andolini had happened to die blind and faceless beneath the tearing claws and ripping jaws of the lobstrosities on the beach.

“The other bodyguard’s George Biondi. Big Nose. I killed him myself.Will kill him. Ten years from now.” Eddie looked as if he might faint at any second.

“Eddie, are you okay?”

“I guess so. I guess I have to be.” They had drawn away from the bookshop’s doorway. Oy was still crouched at Jake’s ankle. Down Second Avenue, Jake’s other, earlier self had disappeared.I’m running by now, Jake thought.Maybe jumping over the UPS guy’s dolly. Sprinting all-out for the delicatessen, because I’m sure that’s the way back to Mid-World. The way back to him.

Balazar peered at his reflection in the window beside theTODAY’S SPECIALS display-board, gave the wings of hair above his ears one last little fluff with the tips of his fingers, then stepped through the open door. Andolini and Biondi followed.

“Hard guys,” Jake said.

“The hardest,” Eddie agreed.

“From Brooklyn.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why are hard guys from Brooklyn visiting a used-book store in Manhattan?”

“I think that’s what we’re here to find out. Jake, did I hurt your shoulder?”

“I’m okay. But I don’t really want to go back in there.”

“Neither do I. So let’s go.”

They went back into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

Nine

Oy was still at Jake’s heel and still whining. Jake wasn’t crazy about the sound, but he understood it. The smell of fear in the bookstore was palpable. Deepneau sat beside the chessboard, gazing unhappily at Calvin Tower and the newcomers, who didn’t look much like bibliophiles in search of the elusive signed first edition. The other two old guys at the counter were drinking the last of their coffee in big gulps, with the air of fellows who have just remembered important appointments elsewhere.

Cowards,Jake thought with a contempt he didn’t recognize as a relatively new thing in his life.Lowbellies .Being old forgives some of it, but not all of it.

“We just have a couple of things to discuss, Mr. Toren,” Balazar was saying. He spoke in a low, calm, reasonable voice, without even a trace of accent. “Please, if we could step back into your office—”

“We don’t have business,” Tower said. His eyes kept drifting to Andolini. Jake supposed he knew why. Jack Andolini looked the ax-wielding psycho in a horror movie. “Come July fifteenth, we might have business.Might . So we could talk after the Fourth. I guess. If you wanted to.” He smiled to show he was being reasonable. “But now? Gee, I just don’t see the point. It’s not even June yet. And for your information my name’s not—”

“He doesn’t see the point,” Balazar said. He looked at Andolini; looked at the one with the big nose; raised his hands to his shoulders, then dropped them.What’s wrong with this world of ours? the gesture said. “Jack? George? This man took a check from me—the amount before the decimal point was a one followed by five zeroes—and now he says he doesn’t see the point of talking to me.”

“Unbelievable,” Biondi said. Andolini said nothing. He simply looked at Calvin Tower, muddy brown eyes peering out from beneath the unlovely bulge of his skull like mean little animals peering out of a cave. With a face like that, Jake supposed, you didn’t have to talk much to get your point across. The point being intimidation.

“Iwant to talk toyou, ” Balazar said. He spoke in a patient, reasonable tone of voice, but his eyes were fixed on Tower’s face with a terrible intensity. “Why? Because my employers in this matterwant me to talk to you. That’s good enough for me. And do you know what? I think you can afford five minutes of chitchat for your hundred grand. Don’t you?”

“The hundred thousand is gone,” Tower said bleakly. “As I’m sure you and whoever hired you must know.”

“That’s of no concern to me,” Balazar said. “Why would it be? It was your money. What concerns me is whether or not you’re going to take us out back. If not, we’ll have to have our conversation right here, in front of the whole world.”

The whole world now consisted of Aaron Deepneau, one billy-bumbler, and a couple of expatriate New Yorkers none of the men in the bookstore could see. Deepneau’s counter-buddies had run like the lowbellies they were.

Tower made one last try. “I don’t have anyone to mind the store. Lunch-hour is coming up, and we often have quite a few browsers during—”

“This place doesn’t do fifty dollars a day,” Andolini said, “and we all know it, Mr. Toren. If you’re really worried you’re going to miss a big sale, lethim run the cash register for a few minutes.”

For one horrible second, Jake thought the one Eddie had called “Old Double-Ugly” meant none other than John “Jake” Chambers. Then he realized Andolini was pointing past him, at Deepneau.

Tower gave in. Or Toren. “Aaron?” he asked. “Do you mind?”

“Not if you don’t,” Deepneau said. He looked troubled. “Sure you want to talk with these guys?”

Biondi gave him a look. Jake thought Deepneau stood up under it remarkably well. In a weird way, he felt proud of the old guy.

“Yeah,” Tower said. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t lose his butthole virginity on our account,” Biondi said, and laughed.

“Watch your mouth, you’re in a place of scholarship,” Balazar said, but Jake thought he smiled a little. “Come on, Toren. Just a little chat.”

“That’s not my name! I had it legally changed on—”

“Whatever,” Balazar said soothingly. He actually patted Tower’s arm. Jake was still trying to get used to the idea that all this…all thismelodrama …had happened after he’d left the store with his two new books (new to him, anyway) and resumed his journey. That it had all happened behind his back.

“A squarehead’s always a squarehead, right, boss?” Biondi asked jovially. “Just a Dutchman. Don’t matter what he calls himself.”

Balazar said, “If I want you to talk, George, I’ll tell you what I want you to say. Have you got that?”

“Okay,” Biondi said. Then, perhaps after deciding that didn’t sound quite enthusiastic enough: “Yeah! Sure.”

“Good.” Balazar, now holding the arm he had patted, guided Tower toward the back of the shop. Books were piled helter-skelter here; the air was heavy with the scent of a million musty pages. There was a door markedEMPLOYEES ONLY . Tower produced a ring of keys, and they jingled slightly as he picked through them.

“His hands are shaking,” Jake murmured.

Eddie nodded. “Mine would be, too.”

Tower found the key he wanted, turned it in the lock, opened the door. He took another look at the three men who had come to visit him—hard guys from Brooklyn—then led them into the back room. The door closed behind them, and Jake heard the sound of a bolt being shot across. He doubted Tower himself had done that.

Jake looked up into the convex anti-shoplifting mirror mounted in the corner of the shop, saw Deepneau pick up the telephone beside the cash register, consider it, then put it down again.

“What do we do now?” Jake asked Eddie.

“I’m gonna try something,” Eddie said. “I saw it in a movie once.” He stood in front of the closed door, then tipped Jake a wink. “Here I go. If I don’t do anything but bump my head, feel free to call me an asshole.”

Before Jake could ask him what he was talking about, Eddie walked into the door. Jake saw his eyes close and his mouth tighten in a grimace. It was the expression of a man who expects to take a hard knock.

Only therewas no hard knock. Eddie simply passed through the door. For one moment his moccasin-clad foot was sticking out, and then it went through, too. There was a low rasping sound, like a hand being passed over rough wood.

Jake bent down and picked Oy up. “Close your eyes,” he said.

“Eyes,” the bumbler agreed, but continued to look at Jake with that expression of calm adoration. Jake closed his own eyes, squinting them shut. When he opened them again, Oy was mimicking him. Without wasting any time, Jake walked into the door with theEMPLOYEES ONLY sign on it. There was a moment of darkness and the smell of wood. Deep in his head, he heard a couple of those disturbing chimes again. Then he was through.

Ten

It was a storage area much bigger than Jake had expected—almost as big as a warehouse and stacked high with books in every direction. He guessed that some of those stacks, held in place by pairs of upright beams that provided shoring rather than shelving, had to be fourteen or sixteen feet high. Narrow, crooked aisles ran between them. In a couple he saw rolling platforms that made him think of the portable boarding ramps you saw in smaller airports. The smell of old books was the same back here as in front, but ever so much stronger, almost overwhelming. Above them hung a scattering of shaded lamps that provided yellowish, uneven illumination. The shadows of Tower, Balazar, and Balazar’s friends leaped grotesquely on the wall to their left. Tower turned that way, leading his visitors to a corner that really was an office: there was a desk with a typewriter and a Rolodex on it, three old filing cabinets, and a wall covered with various pieces of paperwork. There was a calendar with some nineteenth-century guy on the May sheet Jake didn’t recognize…and then he did. Robert Browning. Jake had quoted him in his Final Essay.

Tower sat down in the chair behind his desk, and immediately seemed sorry he’d done that. Jake could sympathize. The way the other three crowded around him couldn’t have been very pleasant. Their shadows jumped up the wall behind the desk like the shadows of gargoyles.

Balazar reached into his suitcoat and brought out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and put it down on Tower’s desk. “Recognize this?”

Eddie moved forward. Jake grabbed at him. “Don’t go close! They’ll sense you!”

“I don’t care,” Eddie said. “I need to see that paper.”

Jake followed, not knowing what else to do. Oy stirred in his arms and whined. Jake shushed him curtly, and Oy blinked. “Sorry, buddy,” Jake said, “but you have to keep quiet.”

Was the 1977 version of him in the vacant lot yet? Once inside it, that earlier Jake had slipped somehow and knocked himself unconscious. Had that happened yet? No sense wondering. Eddie was right. Jake didn’t like it, but he knew it was true: they were supposed to behere, not there, and they were supposed to see the paper Balazar was now showing Calvin Tower.

Eleven

Eddie got the first couple of lines before Jack Andolini said, “Boss, I don’t like this. Something feels hinky.”

Balazar nodded. “I agree. Is someone back here with us, Mr. Toren?” He still sounded calm and courteous, but his eyes were everywhere, assessing this large room’s potential for concealment.

“No,” Tower said. “Well, there’s Sergio; he’s the shop cat. I imagine he’s back here somew—”

“This ain’t no shop,” Biondi said, “it’s a hole you pour money into. One of those chi-chi designers’d have trouble making enough to cover the overhead on a joint this big, and abookstore ? Man, who are you kidding?”

Himself, that’s who,Eddie thought.He’s been kidding himself .

As if this thought had summoned them, those terrible chimes began again. The hoods gathered in Tower’s storeroom office didn’t hear them, but Jake and Oy did; Eddie could read it on their distressed faces. And suddenly this room, already dim, began to grow dimmer still.

We’re going back,Eddie thought.Jesus, we’re going back! But not before —

He bent forward between Andolini and Balazar, aware that both men were looking around with wide, wary eyes, not caring. What he cared about was the paper. Someone had hired Balazar first to get it signed (probably) and then to shove it under Tower/Toren’s nose when the time was right (certainly). In most cases,Il Roche would have been content to send a couple of his hard boys—what he called his “gentlemen”—on an errand like that. This job, however, was important enough to warrant his personal attention. Eddie wanted to know why.

Those chimes wriggled through his head again, making him shiver. This time they were louder. The shadows drew thicker, leaping up the storage room’s walls. The darkness Eddie had sensed out on the street was breaking through. They might be swept away, and that would be bad. They might be drowned in it, and that would be worse, of course it would, being drowned in darkness would surely be an awful way to go.

And suppose there werethings in that darkness? Hungry things like the doorkeeper?

There are. That was Henry’s voice. For the first time in almost two months. Eddie could imagine Henry standing just behind him and grinning a sallow junkie’s grin: all bloodshot eyes and yellow, uncared-for teeth.You know there are. But when you hear the chimes, you got to go, bro, as I think you know .

“Eddie!” Jake cried. “It’s coming back! Do you hear it?”

“Grab my belt,” Eddie said. His eyes raced back and forth over the paper in Tower’s pudgy hands. Balazar, Andolini, and Big Nose were still looking around. Biondi had actually drawn his gun.

“Your—?”

“Maybe we won’t be separated,” Eddie said. The chimes were louder than ever, and he groaned. The words of the agreement blurred in front of him. Eddie squinted his eyes, bringing the print back together:

July 15th, 1976. Not quite a year ago.

Eddie felt the darkness sweeping down on them, and tried to cram the rest of it through his eyes and into his brain: enough, maybe, to make sense of what was going on here. If he could do that, it would be at least a step toward figuring out what all this meant to them.

If the chimes don’t drive me crazy. If the things in the darkness don’t eat us on the way back.

“Eddie!” Jake. And terrified, by the sound. Eddie ignored him.

There was more, but now the chimes were hideous, head-bursting. For just one moment Eddie understood—hell, could almostsee —how thin this world had become. All of the worlds, probably. As thin and worn as his own jeans. He caught one final phrase from the agreement:…if these conditions are met, will have the right to sell or otherwise dispose of the property to Sombraor any other party. Then the words were gone, everything was gone, spinning into a black whirlpool. Jake held onto Eddie’s belt with one hand and Oy with the other. Oy was barking wildly now, and Eddie had another confused image of Dorothy being swirled away to the Land of Oz.

Therewere things in the darkness: looming shapes behind weird phosphorescent eyes, the sort of things you saw in movies about exploring the deepest cracks of the ocean floor. Except in those movies, the explorers were always inside a steel diving-bell, while he and Jake—

The chimes grew to an ear-splitting volume. Eddie felt as if he had been jammed headfirst into the works of Big Ben as it was striking midnight. He screamed without hearing himself. And then it was gone, everything was all gone—Jake, Oy, Mid-World—and he was floating somewhere beyond the stars and the galaxies.

Susannah!he cried.Where are you, Suze?

No answer. Only darkness.

One

Once upon a time, back in the sixties (before the world moved on), there had been a woman named Odetta Holmes, a pleasant and really quite socially conscious young woman who was wealthy, good-looking, and perfectly willing to look out for the other guy (or gal). Without even realizing it, this woman shared her body with a far less pleasant creature named Detta Walker. Detta did not give a tin shit for the other guy (or gal). Rhea of the Cöos would have recognized Detta, and called her sister. On the other side of Mid-World, Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger, had drawn this divided woman to him and had created a third, who was far better, far stronger, than either of the previous two. This was the woman with whom Eddie Dean had fallen in love. She called him husband, and thus herself by the name of his father. Having missed the feminist squabbles of later decades, she did this quite happily. If she did not call herself Susannah Dean with pride as well as happiness, it was only because her mother had taught her that pride goeth before a fall.

Now there was a fourth woman. She had been born out of the third in yet another time of stress and change. She cared nothing for Odetta, Detta, or Susannah; she cared for nothing save the new chap who was on his way. The new chap needed to be fed. The banqueting hall was near. That was what mattered and all that mattered.

This new woman, every bit as dangerous in her own way as Detta Walker had been, was Mia. She bore the name of no man’s father, only the word that in the High Speech meansmother .

Two

She walked slowly down long stone corridors toward the place of feasting. She walked past the rooms of ruin, past the empty naves and niches, past forgotten galleries where the apartments were hollow and none was the number. Somewhere in this castle stood an old throne drenched in ancient blood. Somewhere ladderways led to bone-walled crypts that went gods knew how deep. Yet therewas life here; life and rich food. Mia knew this as well as she knew the legs under her and the textured, many-layered skirt swishing against them. Rich food. Life for you and for your crop, as the saying went. And she was so hungry now. Of course! Wasn’t she eating for two?

She came to a broad staircase. A sound, faint but powerful, rose up to her: the beat-beat-beat of slo-trans engines buried in the earth below the deepest of the crypts. Mia cared nothing for them, nor for North Central Positronics, Ltd., which had built them and set them in motion tens of thousands of years before. She cared nothing for the dipolar computers, or the doors, or the Beams, or the Dark Tower which stood at the center of everything.

What she cared about was the smells. They drifted up to her, thick and wonderful. Chicken and gravy and roasts of pork dressed in suits of crackling fat. Sides of beef beaded with blood, wheels of moist cheese, huge Calla Fundy shrimp like plump orange commas. Split fish with staring black eyes, their bellies brimming with sauce. Great pots of jambalaya and fanata, the vastcaldo largo stews of the far south. Add to this a hundred fruits and a thousand sweets, and still you were only at the beginning! The appetizers! The first mouthfuls of the first course!

Mia ran quickly down the broad central staircase, the skin of her palm skimming silkily along the bannister, her small slippered feet stuttering on the steps. Once she’d had a dream that she had been pushed in front of an underground train by an awful man, and her legs had been cut off at the knee. But dreams were foolish. Her feet were there, and the legs above them, weren’t they? Yes! And so was the babe in her belly. The chap, wanting to be fed. He was hungry, and so was she.

Three

From the foot of the stairs, a wide corridor floored with polished black marble ran ninety feet to a pair of tall double doors. Mia hurried that way. She saw her reflection floating below her, and the electric flambeaux that burned in the depths of the marble like torches underwater, but she did not see the man who came along behind her, descending the sweeping curve of the stairs not in dress pumps but in old and range-battered boots. He wore faded jeans and a shirt of blue chambray instead of court clothes. One gun, a pistol with a worn sandalwood grip, hung at his left side, the holster tied down with rawhide. His face was tanned and lined and weathered. His hair was black, although now seeded with growing streaks of white. His eyes were his most striking feature. They were blue and cold and steady. Detta Walker had feared no man, not even this one, but she had feared those shooter’s eyes.

There was a foyer just before the double doors. It was floored with red and black marble squares. The wood-paneled walls were hung with faded portraits of old lords and ladies. In the center was a statue made of entwined rose marble and chrome steel. It seemed to be a knight errant with what might have been a sixgun or a short sword raised above his head. Although the face was mostly smooth—the sculptor had done no more than hint at the features—Mia knew who it was, right enough. Who it must be.

“I salute thee, Arthur Eld,” she said, and dropped her deepest curtsy. “Please bless these things I’m about to take to my use. And to the use of my chap. Good evening to you.” She could not wish him long days upon the earth, for his days—and those of most of his kind—were gone. Instead she touched her smiling lips with the tips of her fingers and blew him a kiss. Having made her manners, she walked into the dining hall.

It was forty yards wide and seventy yards long, that room. Brilliant electric torches in crystal sheaths lined both sides. Hundreds of chairs stood in place at a vast ironwood table laden with delicacies both hot and cold. There was a white plate with delicate blue webbing, aforspecial plate, in front of each chair. The chairs were empty, theforspecial banquet plates were empty, and the wineglasses were empty, although the wine to fill them stood in golden buckets at intervals along the table, chilled and ready. It was as she had known it would be, as she had seen it in her fondest, clearest imaginings, as she had found it again and again, and would find it as long as she (and the chap) needed it. Wherever she found herself, this castle was near. And if there was a smell of dampness and ancient mud, what of that? If there were scuttering sounds from the shadows under the table—mayhap the sound of rats or even fortnoy weasels—why should she care? Abovetable, all was lush and lighted, fragrant and ripe and ready for taking. Let the shadows belowtable take care of themselves. That was none of her business, no, none of hers.

“Here comes Mia, daughter of none!” she called gaily to the silent room with its hundred aromas of meats and sauces and creams and fruits. “I am hungry and I will be fed! Moreover, I’ll feed my chap! If anyone would say against me, let him step forward! Let me see him very well, and he me!”

No one stepped forward, of course. Those who might once have banqueted here were long gone. Now there was only the deep and sleepy beat of the slo-trans engines (and those faint and unpleasant scampering sounds from the Land of Undertable). Behind her, the gunslinger stood quietly, watching. Nor was it for the first time. He saw no castle but he saw her; he saw her very well.

“Silence gives consent!” she called. She pressed her hand to her belly, which had begun to protrude outward. To curve. Then, with a laugh, she cried: “Aye, so it does! Here comes Mia to the feast! May it serve both her and the chap who grows inside her! May it serve them very well!”

And she did feast, but not in one place and never from one of the plates. She hated the plates, the white-and-blueforspecials . She didn’t know why and didn’t care to know. What she cared about was the food. She walked along the table like a woman at the world’s grandest buffet, taking things with her fingers and tossing them into her mouth, sometimes chewing meat hot and tender right off the bone before slinging the joints back onto their serving platters. A few times she missed these and the chunks of meat would go rolling across the white linen tablecloth, leaving splotches of juice in nosebleed stains. One of these rolling roasts overturned a gravy-boat. One smashed a crystal serving dish filled with cranberry jelly. A third rolled clean off the far side of the table, where Mia heard something drag it underneath. There was a brief, squealing squabble, followed by a howl of pain as something sank its teeth into something else. Then silence. It was brief, though, and soon broken by Mia’s laughter. She wiped her greasy fingers on her bosom, doing it slowly. Enjoying the way the stains of the mixed meats and juices spread on the expensive silk. Enjoying the ripening curves of her breasts and the feel of her nipples under her fingertips, rough and hard and excited.

She made her way slowly down the table, talking to herself in many voices, creating a kind of lunatic chitchat.

How they hangin, honey?

Oh they hanging just fine, thank you so much for asking, Mia.

Do you really believe that Oswald was working alone when he shot Kennedy?

Never in a million years, darling—that was a CIA job the whole way. Them, or those honky millionaires from the Alabama steel crescent.

Bombingham, Alabama, honey, ain’t it the truth?

Have you heard the new Joan Baez record?

My God, yes, doesn’t she sing like an angel? I hear that she and Bob Dylan are going to get themselves married…

And on and on, chitter and chatter. Roland heard Odetta’s cultured voice and Detta’s rough but colorful profanity. He heard Susannah’s voice, and many others, as well. How many women in her head? How many personalities, formed and half-formed? He watched her reach over the empty plates that weren’t there and empty glasses (also not there), eating directly from the serving platters, chewing everything with the same hungry relish, her face gradually picking up the shine of grease, the bodice of her gown (which he did not see but sensed) darkening as she wiped her fingers there again and again, squeezing the cloth, matting it against her breasts—these motions were too clear to mistake. And at each stop, before moving on, she would seize the empty air in front of her and throw a plate he could not see either on the floor at her feet or across the table at a wall that must exist in her dream.

“There!”she’d scream in the defiant voice of Detta Walker.“There, you nasty old Blue Lady, I done broke it again! I broke yo’ fuckin plate, and how do you like it? How do you like it now?”

Then, stepping to the next place, she might utter a pleasant but restrained little trill of laughter and ask so-and-so how their boy so-and-so was coming along down there at Morehouse, and wasn’t it wonderful to have such a fine school for people of color, just the mostwonderful! …thing!And how is your Mamma, dear? Oh I am sosorry to hear it, we’ll all be praying for her recovery.

Reaching across another of those make-believe plates as she spoke. Grabbing up a great tureen filled with glistening black roe and lemon rinds. Lowering her face into it like a hog dropping its face into the trough. Gobbling. Raising her face again, smiling delicately and demurely in the glow of the electric torches, the fish eggs standing out like black sweat on her brown skin, dotting her cheeks and her brow, nestling around her nostrils like clots of old blood—Oh yes, I think we are making wonderful progress, folks like that Bull Connor are living in the sunset years now, and the best revenge on them is that they know it—and then she would throw the tureen backward over her head like a crazed volleyball player, some of the roe raining down in her hair (Roland could almost see it), and when the tureen smashed against the stone, her polite isn’t-this-a-wonderful-party face would cramp into a ghoulish Detta Walker snarl and she might scream,“Dere, you nasty old Blue Lady, how datfeel? You want to stick some of dat caviar up yo dry-ass cunt, you go on and do it! You go right on! Dat be fine, sho!”

And then she would move on to the next place. And the next. And the next. Feeding herself in the great banquet hall. Feeding herself and feeding her chap. Never turning to see Roland at all. Never realizing that this place did not, strictly speaking, even exist.

Four

Eddie and Jake had been far from Roland’s mind and concerns as the four of them (five, if Oy was counted) bedded down after feasting on the fried muffin-balls. He had been focused on Susannah. The gunslinger was quite sure she would go wandering again tonight, and again he would follow after her when she did. Not to see what she was up to; he knew what it would be in advance.

No, his chief purpose had been protection.

Early that afternoon, around the time Jake had returned with his armload of food, Susannah had begun to show signs Roland knew: speech that was clipped and short, movements that were a little too jerky to be graceful, an absent tendency to rub at her temple or above her left eyebrow, as if there was a pain there. Did Eddie not see those signs? Roland wondered. Eddie had been a dull observer indeed when Roland first met him, but he had changed greatly since then, and…

And he loved her.Loved her. How could he and not see what Roland saw? The signs weren’t quite as obvious as they had been on the beach at the edge of the Western Sea, when Detta was preparing to leap forward and wrest control from Odetta, but they were there, all right, and not so different, at that.

On the other hand, Roland’s mother had had a saying,Love stumbles . It could be that Eddie was simply too close to her to see.Or doesn’t want to, Roland thought.Doesn’t want to face the idea that we might have to go through that whole business again. The business of making her face herself and her divided nature.

Except this time it wasn’t abouther . Roland had suspected this for a long time—since before their palaver with the people of River Crossing, in fact—and now he knew. No, it wasn’t abouther .

And so he’d lain there, listening to their breathing lengthen as they dropped off one by one: Oy, then Jake, then Susannah. Eddie last.

Well…notquite last. Faintly, very faintly, Roland could hear a murmur of conversation from the folk on the other side of yonder south hill, the ones who were trailing them and watching them. Nerving themselves to step forward and make themselves known, very likely. Roland’s ears were sharp, but not quite sharp enough to pick out what they were saying. There were perhaps half a dozen murmured exchanges before someone uttered a loud shushing hiss. Then there was silence, except for the low, intermittent snuffling of the wind in the treetops. Roland lay still, looking up into the darkness where no stars shone, waiting for Susannah to rise. Eventually she did.

But before that, Jake, Eddie, and Oy went todash.

Five

Roland and his mates had learned about todash (what there was to learn) from Vannay, the tutor of court in the long-ago when they had been young. They had been a quintet to begin with: Roland, Alain, Cuthbert, Jamie, and Wallace, Vannay’s son. Wallace, fiercely intelligent but ever sickly, had died of the falling sickness, sometimes called king’s evil. Then they had been four, and under the umbrella of true ka-tet. Vannay had known it as well, and that knowing was surely part of his sorrow.

Cort taught them to navigate by the sun and stars; Vannay showed them compass and quadrant and sextant and taught them the mathematics necessary to use them. Cort taught them to fight. With history, logic problems, and tutorials on what he called “the universal truths,” Vannay taught them how they could sometimes avoid having to do so. Cort taught them to kill if they had to. Vannay, with his limp and his sweet but distracted smile, taught them that violence worsened problems far more often than it solved them. He called it the hollow chamber, where all true sounds became distorted by echoes.

He taught them physics—what physics there was. He taught them chemistry—what chemistry was left. He taught them to finish such sentences as “That tree is like a” and “When I’m running I feel as happy as a” and “We couldn’t help laughing because.” Roland hated these exercises, but Vannay wouldn’t let him slip away from them. “Your imagination is a poor thing, Roland,” the tutor told him once—Roland might have been eleven at the time. “I will not let you feed it short rations and make it poorer still.”

He had taught them the Seven Dials of Magic, refusing to say if he believed in any of them, and Roland thought it was tangential to one of these lessons that Vannay had mentioned todash. Or perhaps you capitalized it, perhaps it was Todash. Roland didn’t know for sure. He knew that Vannay had spoken of the Manni sect, people who were far travelers. And hadn’t he also mentioned the Wizard’s Rainbow?

Roland thought yes, but he had twice had the pink bend o’ the rainbow in his own possession, once as a boy and once as a man, and although he had traveled in it both times—with his friends on the second occasion—it had never taken him todash.

Ah, but how would you know?he asked himself.How would you know, Roland, when you were inside it?

Because Cuthbert and Alain would have told him, that was why.

Are you sure?

Some feeling so strange as to be unidentifiable rose in the gunslinger’s bosom—was it indignation? horror? perhaps even a sense of betrayal?—as he realized that no, hewasn’t sure. All he knew was that the ball had taken him deep into itself, and he had been lucky to ever get out again.

There’s no ball here,he thought, and again it was that other voice—the dry, implacable voice of his old limping tutor, whose grief for his only son had never really ended—that answered him, and the words were the same:

Are you sure?

Gunslinger, are yousure?

Six

It started with a low crackling sound. Roland’s first thought was the campfire: one of them had gotten some green fir boughs in there, the coals had finally reached them, and they were producing that sound as the needles smoldered. But—

The sound grew louder, became a kind of electric buzzing. Roland sat up and looked across the dying fire. His eyes widened and his heart began to speed up.

Susannah had turned from Eddie, had drawn away a little, too. Eddie had reached out and so had Jake. Their hands touched. And, as Roland looked at them, they commenced fading in and out of existence in a series of jerky pulses. Oy was doing the same thing. When they were gone, they were replaced by a dull gray glow that approximated the shapes and positions of their bodies, as if something was holding their places in reality. Each time they came back, there would be that crackling buzz. Roland could see their closed eyelids ripple as the balls rolled beneath.

Dreaming. But notjust dreaming. This was todash, the passing between two worlds. Supposedly the Manni could do it. And supposedly some pieces of the Wizard’s Rainbow couldmake you do it, whether you wanted to or not. One piece of it in particular.

They could get caught between and fall,Roland thought.Vannay said that, too. He said that going todash was full of peril .

What else had he said? Roland had no time to recall, for at that moment Susannah sat up, slipped the soft leather caps Roland had made her over the stumps of her legs, then hoisted herself into her wheelchair. A moment later she was rolling toward the ancient trees on the north side of the road. It was directly away from the place where the watchers were camped; there was that much to be grateful for.

Roland stayed where he was for a moment, torn. But in the end, his course was clear enough. He couldn’t wake them up while they were in the todash state; to do so would be a horrible risk. All he could do was follow Susannah, as he had on other nights, and hope she didn’t get herself into trouble.

You might also do some thinking about what happens next. That was Vannay’s dry, lecturely voice. Now that his old tutor was back, he apparently meant to stay for awhile.Reason was never your strong point, but you must do it, nevertheless. You’ll want to wait until your visitors make themselves known, of course —until you can be sure of what they want—but eventually, Roland, you must act. Think first, however. Sooner would be better than later.

Yes, sooner was always better than later.

There was another loud, buzzing crackle. Eddie and Jake were back, Jake lying with his arm curled around Oy, and then they were gone again, nothing left where they had been but a faint ectoplasmic shimmer. Well, never mind. His job was to follow Susannah. As for Eddie and Jake, there would be water if God willed it.

Suppose you come back here and they’re gone? It happens, Vannay said so. What will you tell her if she wakes and finds them both gone, her husband and her adopted son?

It was nothing he could worry about now. Right now there was Susannah to worry about, Susannah to keep safe.

Seven

On the north side of the road, old trees with enormous trunks stood at considerable distances from each other. Their branches might entwine and create a solid canopy overhead, but at ground level there was plenty of room for Susannah’s wheelchair, and she moved along at a good pace, weaving between the vast ironwoods and pines, rolling downhill over a fragrant duff of mulch and needles.

Not Susannah. Not Detta or Odetta, either. This one calls herself Mia.

Roland didn’t care if she called herself Queen o’ Green Days, as long as she came back safe, and the other two were still there when she did.

He began to smell a brighter, fresher green: reeds and water-weeds. With it came the smell of mud, the thump of frogs, the sarcastichool! hool! salute of an owl, the splash of water as something jumped. This was followed by a thin shriek as something died, maybe the jumper, maybe the jumped-upon. Underbrush began to spring up in the duff, first dotting it and then crowding it out. The tree-cover thinned. Mosquitoes and chiggers whined. Binnie-bugs stitched the air. The bog-smells grew stronger.

The wheels of the chair had passed over the duff without leaving any trace. As duff gave way to straggling low growth, Roland began to see broken twigs and torn-off leaves marking her passage. Then, as she reached the more or less level low ground, the wheels began to sink into the increasingly soft earth. Twenty paces farther on, he began to see liquid seeping into the tracks. She was too wise to get stuck, though—too crafty. Twenty paces beyond the first signs of seepage, he came to the wheelchair itself, abandoned. Lying on the seat were her pants and shirt. She had gone on into the bog naked save for the leather caps that covered her stumps.

Down here there were ribbons of mist hanging over puddles of standing water. Grassy hummocks rose; on one, wired to a dead log that had been planted upright, was what Roland at first took for an ancient stuffy-guy. When he got closer, he saw it was a human skeleton. The skull’s forehead had been smashed inward, leaving a triangle of darkness between the staring sockets. Some sort of primitive war-club had made that wound, no doubt, and the corpse (or its lingeringspirit ) had been left to mark this as the edge of some tribe’s territory. They were probably long dead or moved on, but caution was ever a virtue. Roland drew his gun and continued after the woman, stepping from hummock to hummock, wincing at the occasional jab of pain in his right hip. It took all his concentration and agility to keep up with her. Partly this was because she hadn’t Roland’s interest in staying as dry as possible. She was as naked as a mermaid and moved like one, as comfortable in the muck and swamp-ooze as on dry land. She crawled over the larger hummocks, slid through the water between them, pausing every now and then to pick off a leech. In the darkness, the walking and sliding seemed to merge into a single slithering motion that was eely and disturbing.

She went on perhaps a quarter of a mile into the increasingly oozy bog with the gunslinger following patiently along behind her. He kept as quiet as possible, although he doubted if there was any need; the part of her that saw and felt and thought was far from here.

At last she came to a halt, standing on her truncated legs and holding to tough tangles of brush on either side in order to keep her balance. She looked out over the black surface of a pond, head up, body still. The gunslinger couldn’t tell if the pond was big or small; its borders were lost in the mist. Yet there was light here, some sort of faint and unfocused radiance which seemed to lie just beneath the surface of the water itself, perhaps emanating from submerged and slowly rotting logs.

She stood there, surveying this muck-crusted woodland pond like a queen surveying a…a what? What did she see? A banquet hall? That was what he had come to believe. Almost to see. It was a whisper from her mind to his, and it dovetailed with what she said and did. The banqueting hall was her mind’s ingenious way of keeping Susannah apart from Mia as it had kept Odetta apart from Detta all those years. Mia might have any number of reasons for wanting to keep her existence a secret, but surely the greatest of these had to do with the life she carried inside her.

The chap, she called it.

Then, with a suddenness that still startled him (although he had seen this before, as well), she began to hunt, slipping in eerie splashless silence first along the edge of the pond and then a little way out into it. Roland watched her with an expression that contained both horror and lust as she knitted and wove her way in and out of the reeds, between and over the tussocks. Now, instead of picking the leeches off her skin and throwing them away, she tossed them into her mouth like pieces of candy. The muscles in her thighs rippled. Her brown skin gleamed like wet silk. When she turned (Roland had by this time stepped behind a tree and become one of the shadows), he could clearly see the way her breasts had ripened.

The problem, of course, extended beyond “the chap.” There was Eddie to consider, as well.What the hell’s wrong with you, Roland? Roland could hear him saying.That might be ourkid. I mean, you can’t know for sure that it isn’t. Yeah, yeah, I know something had her while we were yanking Jake through, but that doesn’t necessarily mean…

On and on and on, blah-blah-blah as Eddie himself might say, and why? Because he loved her and would want the child of their union. And because arguing came as naturally to Eddie Dean as breathing. Cuthbert had been the same.

In the reeds, the naked woman’s hand pistoned forward and seized a good-sized frog. She squeezed and the frog popped, squirting guts and a shiny load of eggs between her fingers. Its head burst. She lifted it to her mouth and ate it greedily down while its greenish-white rear legs still twitched, licking the blood and shiny ropes of tissue from her knuckles. Then she mimed throwing something down and cried out“How you like that, you stinkin Blue Lady?” in a low, guttural voice that made Roland shiver. It was Detta Walker’s voice. Detta at her meanest and craziest.

With hardly a pause she moved on again, questing. Next it was a small fish…then another frog…and then a real prize: a water-rat that squeaked and writhed and tried to bite. She crushed the life out of it and stuffed it into her mouth, paws and all. A moment later she bent her head down and regurgitated the waste—a twisted mass of fur and splintered bones.

Show him this, then—always assuming that he and Jake get back from whatever adventure they’re on, that is. And say, “I know that women are supposed to have strange cravings when they carry a child, Eddie, but doesn’t this seem a littletoostrange? Look at her, questing through the reeds and ooze like some sort of human alligator. Look at her and tell me she’s doing that in order to feed your child. Anyhuman child.”

Still he would argue. Roland knew it. What hedidn’t know was what Susannah herself might do when Roland told her she was growing something that craved raw meat in the middle of the night. And as if this business wasn’t worrisome enough, now there was todash. And strangers who had come looking for them. Yet the strangers were the least of his problems. In fact, he found their presence almost comforting. He didn’t know what they wanted, and yet hedid know. He had met them before, many times. At bottom, they always wanted the same thing.

Eight

Now the woman who called herself Mia began to talk as she hunted. Roland was familiar with this part of her ritual as well, but it chilled him nevertheless. He was looking right at her and it was still hard to believe all those different voices could be coming from the same throat. She asked herself how she was. She told herself she was doing fine, thank you sovereh much. She spoke of someone named Bill, or perhaps it was Bull. She asked after someone’s mother. She asked someone about a place called Morehouse, and then in a deep, gravelly voice—a man’s voice, beyond doubt—she told herself that she didn’t go to Morehouse orno house. She laughed raucously at this, so it must have been some sort of joke. She introduced herself several times (as she had on other nights) as Mia, a name Roland knew well from his early life in Gilead. It was almost a holy name. Twice she curtsied, lifting invisible skirts in a way that tugged at the gunslinger’s heart—he had first seen that sort of curtsy in Mejis, when he and his friends Alain and Cuthbert had been sent there by their fathers.

She worked her way back to the edge of the

   (hall)

pond, glistening and wet. She stayed there without moving for five minutes, then ten. The owl uttered its derisive salute again—hool!—and as if in response, the moon came out of the clouds for a brief look around. When it did, some small animal’s bit of shady concealment disappeared. It tried to dart past the woman. She snared it faultlessly and plunged her face into its writhing belly. There was a wet crunching noise, followed by several smacking bites. She held the remains up in the moonlight, her dark hands and wrists darker with its blood. Then she tore it in half and bolted down the remains. She gave a resounding belch and rolled herself back into the water. This time she made a great splash, and Roland knew tonight’s banqueting was done. She had even eaten some of the binnie-bugs, snatching them effortlessly out of the air. He could only hope nothing she’d taken in would sicken her. So far, nothing had.

While she made her rough toilet, washing off the mud and blood, Roland retreated back the way he’d come, ignoring the more frequent pains in his hip and moving with all his guile. He had watched her go through this three times before, and once had been enough to see how gruesomely sharp her senses were while in this state.

He paused at her wheelchair, looking around to make sure he’d left no trace of himself. He saw a bootprint, smoothed it away, then tossed a few leaves over it for good measure. Not too many; too many might be worse than none at all. With that done, he headed back toward the road and their camp, not hurrying anymore. She would pause for a little housekeeping of her own before going on. What would Mia see as she was cleaning Susannah’s wheelchair, he wondered? Some sort of small, motorized cart? It didn’t matter. What did was how clever she was. If he hadn’t awakened with a need to make water just as she left on one of her earlier expeditions, he quite likely still wouldn’t know about her hunting trips, and he was supposed to be clever about such things.

Not as clever as she, maggot. Now, as if the ghost of Vannay were not enough, here was Cort to lecture him.She’s shown you before, hasn’t she?

Yes. She had shown him cleverness as three women. Now there was this fourth.

Nine

When Roland saw the break in the trees ahead—the road they’d been following, and the place where they’d camped for the night—he took two long, deep breaths. These were meant to steady him and didn’t succeed very well.

Water if God wills it,he reminded himself.About the great matters, Roland, you have no say.

Not a comfortable truth, especially for a man on a quest such as his, but one he’d learned to live with.

He took another breath, then stepped out. He released the air in a long, relieved sigh as he saw Eddie and Jake lying deeply asleep beside the dead fire. Jake’s right hand, which had been linked with Eddie’s left when the gunslinger had followed Susannah out of camp, now circled Oy’s body.

The bumbler opened one eye and regarded Roland. Then he closed it again.

Roland couldn’t hear her coming, but sensed her just the same. He lay down quickly, rolled over onto his side, and put his face in the crook of his elbow. And from this position he watched as the wheelchair rolled out of the trees. She had cleaned it quickly but well. Roland couldn’t see a single spot of mud. The spokes gleamed in the moonlight.

She parked the chair where it had been before, slipped out of it with her usual grace, and moved across to where Eddie lay. Roland watched her approach her husband’s sleeping form with some anxiety. Anyone, he thought, who had met Detta Walker would have felt that anxiety. Because the woman who called herselfmother was simply too close to what Detta had been.

Lying completely still, like one in sleep’s deepest sling, Roland prepared himself to move.

Then she brushed the hair back from the side of Eddie’s face and kissed the hollow of his temple. The tenderness in that gesture told the gunslinger all he needed to know. It was safe to sleep. He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

One

When Roland woke in the morning, Susannah was still asleep but Eddie and Jake were up. Eddie had built a small new fire on the gray bones of the old one. He and the boy sat close to it for the warmth, eating what Eddie called gunslinger burritos. They looked both excited and worried.

“Roland,” Eddie said, “I think we need to talk. Something happened to us last night—”

“I know,” Roland said. “I saw. You went todash.”

“Todash?” Jake asked. “What’s that?”

Roland started to tell them, then shook his head. “If we’re going to palaver, Eddie, you’d better wake Susannah up. That way we won’t have to double back over the first part.” He glanced south. “And hopefully our new friends won’t interrupt us until we’ve had our talk. They’re none of this.” But already he was wondering about that.

He watched with more than ordinary interest as Eddie shook Susannah awake, quite sure but by no means positive that itwould be Susannah who opened her eyes. It was. She sat up, stretched, ran her fingers through her tight curls. “What’s your problem, honeychile? I was good for another hour, at least.”

“We need to talk, Suze,” Eddie said.

“All you want, but not quite yet,” she said. “God,but I’m stiff.”

“Sleeping on hard ground’ll do it every time,” Eddie said.

Not to mention hunting naked in the bogs and damps,Roland thought.

“Pour me some water, sug.” She held out her palms, and Eddie filled them with water from one of the skins. She dashed this over her cheeks and into her eyes, gave out a little shivery cry, and said, “Cold.”

“Old!” Oy said.

“Not yet,” she told the bumbler, “but you give me a few more months like the last few, and Iwill be. Roland, you Mid-World folks know about coffee, right?”

Roland nodded. “From the plantations of the Outer Arc. Down south.”

“If we come across some, we’ll hook it, won’t we? You promise me, now.”

“I promise,” Roland said.

Susannah, meanwhile, was studying Eddie. “What’s going on? You boys don’t look so good.”

“More dreams,” Eddie said.

“Me too,” Jake said.

“Not dreams,” the gunslinger said. “Susannah, how didyou sleep?”

She looked at him candidly. Roland did not sense even the shadow of a lie in her answer. “Like a rock, as I usually do. One thing all this travelingis good for—you can throw your damn Nembutal away.”

“What’s this toadish thing, Roland?” Eddie asked.

“Todash,” he said, and explained it to them as well as he could. What he remembered best from Vannay’s teachings was how the Manni spent long periods fasting in order to induce the right state of mind, and how they traveled around, looking for exactly the right spot in which to induce the todash state. This was something they determined with magnets and large plumb-bobs.

“Sounds to me like these guys would have been right at home down in Needle Park,” Eddie said.

“Anywhere in Greenwich Village,” Susannah added.

“ ‘Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it?’ ” Jake said in a grave, deep voice, and they all laughed. Even Roland laughed a little.

“Todash is another way of traveling,” Eddie said when the laughter had stopped. “Like the doors. And the glass balls. Is that right?”

Roland started to say yes, then hesitated. “I think they might all be variations of the same thing,” he said. “And according to Vannay, the glass balls—the pieces of the Wizard’s Rainbow—make going todash easier. Sometimestoo easy.”

Jake said, “We really flickered on and off like…like lightbulbs? What you call sparklights?”

“Yes—you appeared and disappeared. When you were gone, there was a dim glow where you’d been, almost as if something were holding your place for you.”

“Thank God if it was,” Eddie said. “When it ended…when those chimes started playing again and we kicked loose…I’ll tell you the truth, I didn’t think we were going to get back.”

“Neither did I,” Jake said quietly. The sky had clouded over again, and in the dull morning light, the boy looked very pale. “I lost you.”

“I was never so glad to see anyplace in my life as I was when I opened my eyes and saw this little piece of road,” Eddie said. “And you beside me, Jake. Even Rover looked good to me.” He glanced at Oy, then over at Susannah. “Nothing like this happened to you last night, hon?”

“We’d have seen her,” Jake said.

“Not if she todashed off to someplace else,” Eddie said.

Susannah shook her head, looking troubled. “I just slept the night away. As I told you. What about you, Roland?”

“Nothing to report,” Roland said. As always, he would keep his own counsel until his instinct told him it was time to share. And besides, what he’d said wasn’t exactly a lie. He looked keenly at Eddie and Jake. “There’s trouble, isn’t there?”

Eddie and Jake looked at each other, then back at Roland. Eddie sighed. “Yeah, probably.”

“How bad? Do you know?”

“I don’t think we do. Do we, Jake?”

Jake shook his head.

“But I’ve got some ideas,” Eddie went on, “and if I’m right, we’ve got a problem. Abig one.” He swallowed. Hard. Jake touched his hand, and the gunslinger was concerned to see how quickly and firmly Eddie took hold of the boy’s fingers.

Roland reached out and drew Susannah’s hand into his own. He had a brief vision of that hand seizing a frog and squeezing the guts out of it. He put it out of his mind. The woman who had done that was not here now.

“Tell us,” he said to Eddie and Jake. “Tell us everything. We would hear it all.”

“Every word,” Susannah agreed. “For your fathers’ sakes.”

Two

They recounted what had happened to them in the New York of 1977. Roland and Susannah listened, fascinated, as they told of following Jake to the bookstore, and of seeing Balazar and his gentlemen pull up in front.

“Huh!” Susannah said. “The very same bad boys! It’s almost like a Dickens novel.”

“Who is Dickens, and what is a novel?” Roland asked.

“A novel’s a long story set down in a book,” she said. “Dickens wrote about a dozen. He was maybe the best who ever lived. In his stories, folks in this big city called London kept meeting people they knew from other places or long ago. I had a teacher in college who hated the way that always happened. He said Dickens’s stories were full of easy coincidences.”

“A teacher who either didn’t know about ka or didn’t believe in it,” Roland said.

Eddie was nodding. “Yeah, this is ka, all right. No doubt.”

“I’m more interested in the woman who wroteCharlie the Choo-Choo than this storyteller Dickens,” Roland said. “Jake, I wonder if you’d—”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Jake said, unbuckling the straps of his pack. Almost reverently, he slid out the battered book telling the adventures of Charlie the locomotive and his friend, Engineer Bob. They all looked at the cover. The name below the picture was still Beryl Evans.

“Man,” Eddie said. “That is so weird. I mean, I don’t want to get sidetracked, or anything…” He paused, realizing he had just made a railroading pun, then went on. Roland wasn’t very interested in puns and jokes, anyway. “…but that isweird . The one Jake bought—Jake Seventy-seven—was by Claudia something Bachman.”

“Inez,” Jake said. “Also, there was ay . A lowercasey . Any of you know what that means?”

None of them did, but Roland said there had been names like it in Mejis. “I believe it was some sort of added honorific. And I’m not sure itis to the side. Jake, you said the sign in the window was different from before. How?”

“I can’t remember. But you know what? I think if you hypnotized me again—you know, with the bullet—I could.”

“And in time I may,” Roland said, “but this morning time is short.”

Back to that again,Eddie thought.Yesterday it hardly existed, and now it’s short .But it’s all about time, somehow, isn’t it? Roland’s old days, our old days, and these new days. These dangerous new days .

“Why?” Susannah asked.

“Our friends,” Roland said, and nodded to the south. “I have a feeling they’ll be making themselves known to us soon.”

“Arethey our friends?” Jake asked.

“That reallyis to the side,” Roland said, and again wondered if that were really true. “For now, let’s turn the mind of our khef to this Bookstore of the Mind, or whatever it’s called. You saw the harriers from the Leaning Tower greensticking the owner, didn’t you? This man Tower, or Toren.”

“Pressuring him, you mean?” Eddie asked. “Twisting his arm?”

“Yes.”

“Sure they were,” Jake said.

“Were,” Oy put in. “Sure were.”

“Bet you anything that Tower and Toren are really the same name,” Susannah said. “Thattoren ’s Dutch for ‘tower.’ ” She saw Roland getting ready to speak, and held up her hand. “It’s the way folks often do things in our bit of the universe, Roland—change the foreign name to one that’s more…well…American.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “So Stempowicz becomes Stamper…Yakov becomes Jacob…or…”

“Or Beryl Evans becomes Claudia y Inez Bachman,” Jake said. He laughed but didn’t sound very amused.

Eddie picked a half-burned stick out of the fire and began to doodle with it in the dirt. One by one the Great Letters formed: C…L…A…U. “Big Nose evensaid Tower was Dutch. ‘A squarehead’s always a squarehead, right, boss?’ ” He looked at Jake for confirmation. Jake nodded, then took the stick and continued on with it: D…I…A.

“Him being Dutch makes a lot of sense, you know,” Susannah said. “At one time, the Dutch owned most of Manhattan.”

“You want another Dickens touch?” Jake asked. He wrotey in the dirt after CLAUDIA, then looked up at Susannah. “How about the haunted house where I came through into this world?”

“The Mansion,” Eddie said.

“The Mansion inDutch Hill, ” Jake said.

“Dutch Hill. Yeah, that’s right. Goddam.”

“Let’s go to the core,” Roland said. “I think it’s the agreement paper you saw. And you felt youhad to see it, didn’t you?”

Eddie nodded.

“Did your need feel like a part of following the Beam?”

“Roland, I think itwas the Beam.”

“The way to the Tower, in other words.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. He was thinking about the way clouds flowed along the Beam, the way shadows bent along the Beam, the way every twig of every tree seemed to turn in its direction.All things serve the Beam, Roland had told them, and Eddie’s need to see the paper Balazar had put in front of Calvin Tower had felt like a need, harsh and imperative.

“Tell me what it said.”

Eddie bit his lip. He didn’t feel as scared about this as he had about carving the key which had ultimately allowed them to rescue Jake and pull him through to this side, but it was close. Because, like the key, this was important. If he forgot something, worlds might crash.

“Man, I can’t remember it all, not word for word—”

Roland made an impatient gesture. “If I need that, I’ll hypnotize you andget it word for word.”

“Do you think it matters?” Susannah asked.

“I think itall matters,” Roland said.

“What if hypnosis doesn’t work on me?” Eddie asked. “What if I’m not, like, a good subject?”

“Leave that to me,” Roland said.

“Nineteen,” Jake said abruptly. They all turned toward him. He was looking at the letters he and Eddie had drawn in the dirt beside the dead campfire. “Claudia y Inez Bachman. Nineteen letters.”

Three

Roland considered for a moment, then let it pass. If the number nineteenwas somehow part of this, its meaning would declare itself in time. For now there were other matters.

“The paper,” he said. “Let’s stay with that for now. Tell me everything about it you can remember.”

“Well, it was a legal agreement, with the seal at the bottom and everything.” Eddie paused, struck by a fairly basic question. Rolandprobably got this part of it—he’d been a kind of law enforcement officer, after all—but it wouldn’t hurt to be sure. “You know about lawyers, don’t you?”

Roland spoke in his driest tone. “You forget that I came from Gilead, Eddie. The most inner of the Inner Baronies. We had more merchants and farmers and manufactors than lawyers, I think, but the count would have been close.”

Susannah laughed. “You make me think of a scene from Shakespeare, Roland. Two characters—might have been Falstaff and Prince Hal, I’m not sure—are talkin about what they’re gonna do when they win the war and take over. And one of em says, ‘First we’ll kill all the lawyers.’ ”

“It would be a fairish way to start,” Roland said, and Eddie found his thoughtful tone rather chilling. Then the gunslinger turned to him again. “Go on. If you can add anything, Jake, please do. And relax, both of you, for your fathers’ sakes. For now I only want a sketch.”

Eddie supposed he’d known that, but hearing Roland say it made him feel better. “All right. It was a Memorandum of Agreement. That was right at the top, in big letters. At the bottom it saidAgreed to, and there were two signatures. One was Calvin Tower. The other was Richard someone. Do you remember, Jake?”

“Sayre,” Jake said. “Richard Patrick Sayre.” He paused briefly, lips moving, then nodded. “Nineteen letters.”

“And what did it say, this agreement?” Roland asked.

“Not all that much, if you want to know the truth,” Eddie said. “Or that’s what it seemed like to me, anyway. Basically it said that Tower owned a vacant lot on the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Second Avenue—”

“Thevacant lot,” Jake said. “The one with the rose in it.”

“Yeah, that one. Anyway, Tower signed this agreement on July 15th, 1976. Sombra Corporation gave him a hundred grand. What he gave them, so far as I could tell, was a promise not to sell the lot to anyone but Sombra for the next year, to take care of it—pay the taxes and such—and then to give Sombra first right of purchase, assuming he hasn’t sold it to them by then, anyway. Which he hadn’t when we were there, but the agreement still had a month and a half to run.”

“Mr. Tower said the hundred thousand was all spent,” Jake put in.

“Was there anything in the agreement about this Sombra Corporation having a topping privilege?” Susannah asked.

Eddie and Jake thought it over, exchanged a glance, then shook their heads.

“Sure?” Susannah asked.

“Not quite, butpretty sure,” Eddie said. “You think it matters?”

“I don’t know,” Susannah said. “The kind of agreement you’re talking about…well, without a topping privilege, it just doesn’t seem to make sense. What does it boil down to, when you stop to think about it? ‘I, Calvin Tower, agree to think about selling you my vacant lot. You pay me a hundred thousand dollars and I’ll think about it for a whole year. When I’m not drinking coffee and playing chess with my friends, that is. And when the year’s up, maybe I’ll sell it to you and maybe I’ll keep it and maybe I’ll just auction it off to the highest bidder. And if you don’t like it, sweetcheeks, you just go spit.’ ”

“You’re forgetting something,” Roland said mildly.

“What?” Susannah asked.

“This Sombra is no ordinary law-abiding combination. Ask yourself if an ordinary law-abiding combination would hire someone like Balazar to carry their messages.”

“You have a point,” Eddie said. “Tower wasmucho scared.”

“Anyway,” Jake said, “it makes at least a few things clearer. The sign I saw in the vacant lot, for instance. This Sombra Company also got the right to ‘advertise forthcoming projects’ there for their hundred thousand. Did you see that part, Eddie?”

“I think so. Right after the part about Tower not permitting any liens or encumbrances on his property, because of Sombra’s ‘stated interest,’ wasn’t it?”

“Right,” Jake said. “The sign I saw in the lot said…” He paused, thinking, then raised his hands and looked between them, as if reading a sign only he could see:“MILLS CONSTRUCTION AND SOMBRA REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATES ARE CONTINUING TO REMAKE THE FACE OF MANHATTAN. And then,COMING SOON, TURTLE BAY LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS.”

“So that’s what they want it for,” Eddie said. “Condos. But—”

“What are condominiums?” Susannah asked, frowning. “It sounds like some newfangled kind of spice rack.”

“It’s a kind of co-op apartment deal,” Eddie said. “They probably had em in your when, but by a different name.”

“Yeah,” Susannah said with some asperity. “We called em coops. Or sometimes we wentway downtown and called em apartment buildings.”

“It doesn’t matter because it was never about condos,” Jake said. “Never about the building the sign said they were going to put there, for that matter. All that’s only, you know…shoot, what’s the word?”

“Camouflage?” Roland suggested.

Jake grinned. “Camouflage, yeah. It’s about therose, not the building! And they can’t get at it until they own the ground it grows on. I’m sure of it.”

“You may be right about the building’s not meaning anything,” Susannah said, “but that Turtle Bay name has a certain resonance, wouldn’t you say?” She looked at the gunslinger. “That part of Manhattan iscalled Turtle Bay, Roland.”

He nodded, unsurprised. The Turtle was one of the twelve Guardians, and almost certainly stood at the far end of the Beam upon which they now traveled.

“The people from Mills Construction might not know about the rose,” Jake said, “but I bet the ones from Sombra Corporation do.” His hand stole into Oy’s fur, which was thick enough at the billy-bumbler’s neck to make his fingers disappear entirely. “I think that somewhere in New York City—in some business building, probably in Turtle Bay on the East Side—there’s a door markedSOMBRA CORPORATION . And someplace behind that door there’sanother door. The kind that takes you here.”

For a minute they sat thinking about it—about worlds spinning on a single axle in dying harmony—and no one said anything.

Four

“Here’s what I think is happening,” Eddie said. “Suze, Jake, feel free to step in if you think I’m getting it wrong. This guy Cal Tower’s some sort of custodian for the rose. He may not know it on a conscious level, but he must be. Him and maybe his whole family before him. It explains the name.”

“Only he’s the last,” Jake said.

“You can’t be sure of that, hon,” Susannah said.

“No wedding ring,” Jake responded, and Susannah nodded, giving him that one, at least provisionally.

“Maybe at one time there were lots of Torens owning lots of New York property,” Eddie said, “but those days are gone. Now the only thing standing between the Sombra Corporation and the rose is one nearly broke fat guy who changed his name. He’s a…what do you call someone who loves books?”

“A bibliophile,” Susannah said.

“Yeah, one of those. And George Biondi may not be Einstein, but he said at least one smart thing while we were eavesdropping. He said Tower’s place wasn’t a real shop but just a hole you poured money into. What’s going on with him is a pretty old story where we come from, Roland. When my Ma used to see some rich guy on TV—Donald Trump, for instance—”

“Who?” Susannah asked.

“You don’t know him, he would’ve been just a kid back in ’64. And it doesn’t matter. ‘Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,’ my mother would tell us. ‘It’s the American way, boys.’

“So here’s Tower, and he’s sort of like Roland—the last of his line. He sells off a piece of property here and a piece there, making his taxes, making his house payments, keeping up with the credit cards and the doctor bills, paying for his stock. And yeah, I’m making this up…except somehow it doesn’t feel that way.”

“No,” Jake said. He spoke in a low, fascinated voice. “It doesn’t.”

“Perhaps you shared his khef,” Roland said. “More likely, you touched him. As my old friend Alain used to. Go on, Eddie.”

“And every year he tells himself the bookstore’ll turn around. Catch on, maybe, the way things in New York sometimes do. Get out of the red and into the black and then he’ll be okay. And finally there’s only one thing left to sell: lot two-ninety-eight on Block Nineteen in Turtle Bay.”

“Two-nine-eight adds up to nineteen,” Susannah said. “I wish I could decide if that means something or if it’s just Blue Car Syndrome.”

“What’s Blue Car Syndrome?” Jake asked.

“When you buy a blue car, you see blue cars everywhere.”

“Not here, you don’t,” Jake said.

“Not here,” Oy put in, and they all looked at him. Days, sometimes whole weeks would go by, and Oy would do nothing but give out the occasional echo of their talk. Then he would say something that might almost have been the product of original thought. But you didn’t know. Not for sure. Not even Jake knew for sure.

The way we don’t know for sure about nineteen,Susannah thought, and gave the bumbler a pat on the head. Oy responded with a companionable wink.

“He holds onto that lot until the bitter end,” Eddie said. “I mean hey, he doesn’t even own the crappy building his bookstore’s in, he only leases it.”

Jake took over. “Tom and Jerry’s Artistic Deli goes out of business, and Tower has it torn down. Because part of him wants to sell the lot. That part of him says he’d be crazy not to.” Jake fell silent for a moment, thinking about how some thoughts came in the middle of the night. Crazy thoughts, crazy ideas, and voices that wouldn’t shut up. “But there’sanother part of him, another voice—”

“The voice of the Turtle,” Susannah put in quietly.

“Yes, the Turtle or the Beam,” Jake agreed. “They’re probably the same thing. And this voice tells him he has to hold onto it at all costs.” He looked at Eddie. “Do you think he knows about the rose? Do you think he goes down there sometimes and looks at it?”

“Does a rabbit shit in the woods?” Eddie responded. “Sure he goes. And sure heknows . On some level hemust know. Because a corner lot in Manhattan…how much would a thing like that be worth, Susannah?”

“In my time, probably a million bucks,” she said. “By 1977, God knows. Three? Five?” She shrugged. “Enough to let sai Tower go on selling books at a loss for the rest of his life, provided he was reasonably careful about how he invested the principal.”

Eddie said, “Everything about this shows how reluctant he is to sell. I mean Suze already pointed out how little Sombra got for their hundred grand.”

“But theydid get something,” Roland said. “Something very important.”

“A foot in the door,” Eddie said.

“You say true. And now, as the term of their agreement winds down, they send your world’s version of the Big Coffin Hunters. Hard-caliber boys. If greed or necessity doesn’t compel Tower to sell them the land with the rose on it, they’ll terrify him into it.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. And who would stand on Tower’s side? Maybe Aaron Deepneau. Maybe no one. “So what do we do?”

“Buy it ourselves,” Susannah said promptly. “Of course.”

Five

There was a moment of thunderstruck silence, and then Eddie nodded thoughtfully. “Sure, why not? The Sombra Corporation doesn’t have a topping privilege in their little agreement—they probably tried, but Tower wouldn’t go for it. So sure, we’ll buy it. How many deerskins do you think he’ll want? Forty? Fifty? If he’s a real hard bargainer, maybe we can throw in some relics from the Old People. You know, cups and plates and arrowheads. They’d be conversation pieces at cocktail parties.”

Susannah was looking at him reproachfully.

“Okay, maybe not so funny,” Eddie said. “But we have to face the facts, hon. We’re nothing but a bunch of dirty-ass pilgrims currently camped out in some other reality—I mean, this isn’t even Mid-World anymore.”

“Also,” Jake said apologetically, “we weren’t even really there, at least not the way you are when you go through one of the doors. They sensed us, but basically we were invisible.”

“Let’s take one thing at a time,” Susannah said. “As far as money goes, I have plenty. If we could get at it, that is.”

“How much?” Jake asked. “I know that’s sort of impolite—my mother’d faint if she heard me ask someone that, but—”

“We’ve come a little bit too far to worry about being polite,” Susannah said. “Truth is, honey, I don’t exactly know. My dad invented a couple of new dental processes that had to do with capping teeth, and he made the most of it. Started a company called Holmes Dental Industries and handled the financial side mostly by himself until 1959.”

“The year Mort pushed you in front of the subway train,” Eddie said.

She nodded. “That happened in August. About six weeks later, my father had a heart attack—the first of many. Some of it was probably stress over what happened to me, but I won’t own all of it. He was a hard driver, pure and simple.”

“You don’t have to ownany of it,” Eddie said. “I mean, it’s not as if youjumped in front of that subway car, Suze.”

“I know. But how you feel and how long you feel it doesn’t always have a lot to do with objective truth. With Mama gone, it was my job to take care of him and I couldn’t handle it—I could never completely get the idea that it was my fault out of my head.”

“Gone days,” Roland said, and without much sympathy.

“Thanks, sug,” Susannah said dryly. “You havesuch a way of puttin things in perspective. In any case, my Dad turned over the financial side of the company to his accountant after that first heart attack—an old friend named Moses Carver. After my Dad passed, Pop Mose took care of things for me. I’d guess that when Roland yanked me out of New York and into this charming piece of nowhere, I might have been worth eight or ten million dollars. Would that be enough to buy Mr. Tower’s lot, always assuming he’d sell it to us?”

“He probablywould sell it for deerskins, if Eddie’s right about the Beam,” Roland said. “I believe a deep part of Mr. Tower’s mind and spirit—the ka that made him hold onto the lot for so long in the first place—has been waiting for us.”

“Waiting for the cavalry,” Eddie said with a trace of a grin. “Like Fort Ord in the last ten minutes of a John Wayne movie.”

Roland looked at him, unsmiling. “He’s been waiting for the White.”

Susannah held her brown hands up to her brown face and looked at them. “Then I guess he isn’t waiting for me,” she said.

“Yes,” Roland said, “he is.” And wondered, briefly, what color that other one was. Mia.

“We need a door,” Jake said.

“We need at least two,” Eddie said. “One to deal with Tower, sure. But before we can do that, we need one to go back to Susannah’s when. And I mean as close to when Roland took her as we can possibly get. It’d be a bummer to go back to 1977, get in touch with this guy Carver, and discover he had Odetta Holmes declared legally dead in 1971. That the whole estate had been turned over to relatives in Green Bay or San Berdoo.”

“Or to go back to 1968 and discover Mr. Carver was gone,” Jake said. “Funneled everything into his own accounts and retired to the Costa del Sol.”

Susannah was looking at him with a shocked oh-my-lands expression that would have been funny under other circumstances. “Pop Mose’d never do such a thing! Why, he’s my godfather!”

Jake looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I read lots of mystery novels—Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Ed McBain—and stuff like that happens in them all the time.”

“Besides,” Eddie said, “big money can do weird things to people.”

She gave him a cold and considering glance that looked strange, almost alien, on her face. Roland, who knew something Eddie and Jake didn’t, thought it a frog-squeezing look. “How wouldyou know?” she asked. And then, almost at once, “Oh, sugar, I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said. He smiled. The smile looked stiff and unsure of itself. “Heat of the moment.” He reached out, took her hand, squeezed it. She squeezed back. The smile on Eddie’s face grew a little, started to look as if it belonged there.

“It’s just that I know Moses Carver. He’s as honest as the day is long.”

Eddie raised his hand—not signaling belief so much as an unwillingness to go any further down that path.

“Let me see if I understand your idea,” Roland said. “First, it depends upon our ability to go back to your world of New York at not just one point of when, but two.”

There was a pause while they parsed that, and then Eddie nodded. “Right. 1964, to start with. Susannah’s been gone a couple of months, but nobody’s given up hope or anything like that. She strolls in, everybody claps. Return of the prodigal daughter. We get the dough, which might take a little time—”

“The hard part’s apt to be getting Pop Mose to let go of it,” Susannah said. “When it comes to money in the bank, that man got a tight grip. And I’m pretty sure that in his heart, he still sees me as eight years old.”

“But legally it’s yours, right?” Eddie asked. Roland could see that he was still proceeding with some caution. Hadn’t quite got over that crack—How wouldyou know?—just yet. And the look that had gone with it. “I mean, he can’t stop you from taking it, can he?”

“No, honey,” she said. “My dad and Pop Mose made me a trust fund, but it went moot in 1959, when I turned twenty-five.” She turned her eyes—dark eyes of amazing beauty and expression—upon him. “There. You don’t need to devil me about my age anymore, do you? If you can subtract, you can figure it out for yourself.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Eddie said. “Time is a face on the water.”

Roland felt gooseflesh run up his arms. Somewhere—perhaps in a glaring, blood-colored field of roses still far from here—a rustie had just walked over his grave.

Six

“Has to be cash,” Jake said in a dry, businesslike tone.

“Huh?” Eddie looked away from Susannah with an effort.

“Cash,” Jake repeated. “No one’d honor a check, even a cashier’s check, that was thirteen years old. Especially not one for millions of dollars.”

“How do you know stuff like that, sug?” Susannah asked.

Jake shrugged. Like it or not (usually he didn’t), he was Elmer Chambers’s son. Elmer Chambers wasn’t one of the world’s good guys—Roland would never call him part of the White—but he had been a master of what network execs called “the kill.”A Big Coffin Hunter in TV Land, Jake thought. Maybe that was a little unfair, but saying that Elmer Chambers knew how to play the angles was definitelynot unfair. And yeah, he was Jake, son of Elmer. He hadn’t forgotten the face of his father, although he had times when he wished that wasn’t so.

“Cash, by all means cash,” Eddie said, breaking the silence. “A deal like this has to be cash. If there’s a check, we cash it in 1964, not 1977. Stick it in a gym-bag—did they have gym-bags in 1964, Suze? Never mind. Doesn’t matter. We stick it in a bag and take it to 1977. Doesn’t have to be the same day Jake boughtCharlie the Choo-Choo andRiddle-De-Dum, but it ought to be close.”

“And it can’t be after July fifteenth of ’77,” Jake put in.

“God, no,” Eddie agreed. “We’d be all too likely to find Balazar’d persuaded Tower to sell, and there we’d be, bag of cash in one hand, thumbs up our asses, and big grins on our faces to pass the time of day.”

There was a moment of silence—perhaps they were considering this lurid image—and then Roland said, “You make it sound very easy, and why not? To you three, the concept of doorways between this world and your world of tack-sees and astin and fottergrafs seems almost as mundane as riding a mule would to me. Or strapping on a sixgun. And there’s good reason for you to feel that way. Each of you has been through one of these doors. Eddie has actually gone both ways—into this world and then back into his own.”

“I gotta tell you that the return trip to New York wasn’t much fun,” Eddie said. “Too much gunplay.”Not to mention my brother’s severed head rolling across the floor of Balazar’s office.

“Neither was getting through the door on Dutch Hill,” Jake added.

Roland nodded, ceding these points without yielding his own. “All my life I’ve accepted what you said the first time I knew you, Jake—what you said when you were dying.”

Jake looked down, pale and without answer. He did not like to recall that (it was mercifully hazy in any case), and knew that Roland didn’t, either.Good! he thought.You shouldn’twant to remember! You let me drop! You let me die!

“You said there were other worlds than these,” Roland said, “and there are. New York in all its multiple whens is only one of many. That we are drawn there again and again has to do with the rose. I have no doubt of that, nor do I doubt that in some way I do not understand the roseis the Dark Tower. Either that or—”

“Or it’s another door,” Susannah murmured. “One that opens on the Dark Tower itself.”

Roland nodded. “The idea has done more than cross my mind. In any case, the Manni know of these other worlds, and in some fashion have dedicated their lives to them. They believe todash to be the holiest of rites and most exalted of states. My father and his friends have long known of the glass balls; this I have told you. That the Wizard’s Rainbow, todash, and these magical doors may all be much the same is something we have guessed.”

“Where you going with this, sug?” Susannah asked.

“I’m simply reminding you that I have wandered long,” Roland said. “Because of changes in time—asoftening of time which I know you all have felt—I’ve quested after the Dark Tower for over a thousand years, sometimes skipping over whole generations the way a sea-bird may cruise from one wave-top to the next, only wetting its feet in the foam. Never in all this time did I come across one of these doors between the worlds until I came to the ones on the beach at the edge of the Western Sea. I had no idea what they were, although I could have told you something of todash and the bends o’ the rainbow.”

Roland looked at them earnestly.

“You speak as though my world were as filled with magical doorways as yours is with…” He thought about it. “…with airplanes or stage-buses. That’s not so.”

“Where we are now isn’t the same as anywhere you’ve been before, Roland,” Susannah said. She touched his deeply tanned wrist, her fingers gentle. “We’re not in your world anymore. You said so yourself, back in that version of Topeka where Blaine finally blew his top.”

“Agreed,” Roland said. “I only want you to realize that such doors may be far more rare than you realize. And now you’re speaking not of one but two. Doors you can aim in time, the way you’d aim a gun.”

I do not aim with my hand,Eddie thought, and shivered a little. “When you put it that way, Roland, itdoes sound a little iffy.”

“Then what do we do next?” Jake asked.

“I might be able to help you with that,” a voice said.

They all turned, only Roland without surprise. He had heard the stranger when he arrived, about halfway through their palaver. Roland did turn with interest, however, and one look at the man standing twenty feet from them on the edge of the road was enough to tell him that the newcomer was either from the world of his new friends, or from one right next door.

“Who are you?” Eddie asked.

“Where are your friends?” Susannah asked.

“Where are you from?” Jake asked. His eyes were alight with eagerness.

The stranger wore a long black coat open over a dark shirt with a notched collar. His hair was long and white, sticking up on the sides and in front as if scared. His forehead was marked with a T-shaped scar. “My friends are still back there a little piece,” he said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the woods in a deliberately nonspecific way. “I now call Calla Bryn Sturgis my home. Before that, Detroit, Michigan, where I worked in a homeless shelter, making soup and running AA meetings. Work I knew quite well. Before that—for a short while—Topeka, Kansas.”

He observed the way the three younger ones started at that with a kind of interested amusement.

“Before that, New York City. And beforethat, a little town called Jerusalem’s Lot, in the state of Maine.”

Seven

“You’re from our side,” Eddie said. He spoke in a kind of sigh. “Holy God, you’re really from our side!”

“Yes, I think I am,” the man in the turned-around collar said. “My name is Donald Callahan.”

“You’re a priest,” Susannah said. She looked from the cross that hung around his neck—small and discreet, but gleaming gold—to the larger, cruder one that scarred his forehead.

Callahan shook his head. “No more. Once. Perhaps one day again, with the blessing, but not now. Now I’m just a man of God. May I ask…when are you from?”

“1964,” Susannah said.

“1977,” Jake said.

“1987,” Eddie said.

Callahan’s eyes gleamed at that. “1987. And I came here in 1983, counting as we did then. So tell me something, young man, something very important. Had the Red Sox won the World Series yet when you left?”

Eddie threw back his head and laughed. The sound was both surprised and cheerful. “No, man, sorry. They came within one out of it last year—at Shea Stadium this was, against the Mets—and then this guy named Bill Buckner who was playing first base let an easy grounder get through his wickets. He’ll never live it down. Come on over here and sit down, what do you say? There’s no coffee, but Roland—that’s this beat-up-lookin guy on my right—makes a pretty fair cup of woods tea.”

Callahan turned his attention to Roland and then did an amazing thing: dropped to one knee, lowered his head slightly, and put his fist against his scarred brow. “Hile, gunslinger, may we be well-met on the path.”

“Hile,” Roland said. “Come forward, good stranger, and tell us of your need.”

Callahan looked up at him, surprised.

Roland looked back at him calmly, and nodded. “Well-met or ill, it may be you will find what you seek.”

“And you may also,” Callahan said.

“Then come forward,” Roland said. “Come forward and join our palaver.”

Eight

“Before we really get going, can I ask you something?”

This was Eddie. Beside him, Roland had built up the fire and was rummaging in their combined gunna for the little earthen pot—an artifact of the Old People—in which he liked to brew tea.

“Of course, young man.”

“You’re Donald Callahan.”

“Yes.”

“What’s yourmiddle name?”

Callahan cocked his head a little to the side, raised one eyebrow, then smiled. “Frank. After my grandfather. Does it signify?”

Eddie, Susannah, and Jake shared a look. The thought that went with it flowed effortlessly among them: Donald Frank Callahan. Equals nineteen.

“Itdoes signify,” Callahan said.

“Perhaps,” Roland said. “Perhaps not.” He poured water for the tea, manipulating the waterskin easily.

“You seem to have suffered an accident,” Callahan said, looking at Roland’s right hand.

“I make do,” Roland said.

“Gets by with a little help from his friends, you might say,” Jake added, not smiling.

Callahan nodded, not understanding and knowing he need not: they were ka-tet. He might not know that particular term, but the term didn’t matter. It was in the way they looked at each other and moved around each other.

“You know my name,” Callahan said. “May I have the pleasure of knowing yours?”

They introduced themselves: Eddie and Susannah Dean, of New York; Jake Chambers, of New York; Oy of Mid-World; Roland Deschain, of Gilead that was. Callahan nodded to each in turn, raising his closed fist to his forehead.

“And to you comes Callahan, of the Lot,” he said when the introductions were done. “Or so I was. Now I guess I’m just the Old Fella. That’s what they call me in the Calla.”

“Won’t your friends join us?” Roland said. “We haven’t a great deal to eat, but there’s always tea.”

“Perhaps not just yet.”

“Ah,” Roland said, and nodded as if he understood.

“In any case, we’ve eaten well,” Callahan said. “It’s been a good year in the Calla—until now, anyway—and we’ll be happy to share what we have.” He paused, seemed to feel he had gone too far too fast, and added: “Mayhap. If all goes well.”

“If,” Roland said. “An old teacher of mine used to call it the only word a thousand letters long.”

Callahan laughed. “Not bad! In any case, we’re probably better off for food than you are. We also have fresh muffin-balls—Zalia found em—but I suspect you know about those. She said the patch, although large, had a picked-over look.”

“Jake found them,” Roland said.

“Actually, it was Oy,” Jake said, and stroked the bumbler’s head. “I guess he’s sort of a muffin-hound.”

“How long have you known we were here?” Callahan asked.

“Two days.”

Callahan contrived to look both amused and exasperated. “Since we cut your trail, in other words. And we tried to be so crafty.”

“If you didn’t think you needed someone craftier than you are, you wouldn’t have come,” Roland said.

Callahan sighed. “You say true, I say thankya.”

“Do you come for aid and succor?” Roland asked. There was only mild curiosity in his voice, but Eddie Dean felt a deep, deep chill. The words seemed to hang there, full of resonance. Nor was he alone in feeling that. Susannah took his right hand. A moment later Jake’s hand crept into Eddie’s left.

“That is not for me to say.” Callahan sounded suddenly hesitant and unsure of himself. Afraid, maybe.

“Do you know you come to the line of Eld?” Roland asked in that same curiously gentle voice. He stretched a hand toward Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. Even toward Oy. “For these are mine, sure. As I am theirs. We are round, and roll as we do. And you know what we are.”

“Areyou?” Callahan asked. “Are youall ?”

Susannah said, “Roland, what are you getting us into?”

“Naught be zero, naught be free,” he said. “I owe not you, nor you owe me. At least for now. They have not decided to ask.”

They will,Eddie thought. Dreams of the rose and the deli and little todash-jaunts aside, he didn’t think of himself as particularly psychic, but he didn’tneed to be psychic to know that they—the people from whom this Callahan had come as representative—wouldask. Somewhere chestnuts had fallen into a hot fire, and Roland was supposed to pull them out.

But notjust Roland.

You’ve made a mistake here, Pops,Eddie thought.Perfectly understandable, but a mistake, all the same. We’re not the cavalry. We’re not the posse. We’re not gunslingers.We’re just three lost souls from the Big Apple who —

But no. No. Eddie had known who they were since River Crossing, when the old people had knelt in the street to Roland. Hell, he’d known since the woods (what he still thought of as Shardik’s Woods), where Roland had taught them to aim with the eye, shoot with the mind, kill with the heart. Not three, not four. One. That Roland should finish them so,complete them so, was horrible. He was filled with poison and had kissed them with his poisoned lips. He had made them gunslingers, and had Eddie really thought there was no work left for the line of Arthur Eld in this mostly empty and husked-out world? That they would simply be allowed to toddle along the Path of the Beam until they got to Roland’s Dark Tower and fixed whatever was wrong there? Well, guess again.

It was Jake who said what was in Eddie’s mind, and Eddie didn’t like the look of excitement in the boy’s eyes. He guessed plenty of kids had gone off to plenty of wars with that same excited gonna-kick-some-ass look on their faces. Poor kid didn’t know he’d been poisoned, and that made him pretty dumb, because no one should have known better.

“They will, though,” he said. “Isn’t that true, Mr. Callahan? They will ask.”

“I don’t know,” Callahan said. “You’d have to convince them…”

He trailed off, looking at Roland. Roland was shaking his head.

“That’s not how it works,” the gunslinger said. “Not being from Mid-World you may not know that, but that’s not how it works. Convincing isn’t what we do. We deal in lead.”

Callahan sighed deeply, then nodded. “I have a book.Tales of Arthur, it’s called.”

Roland’s eyes gleamed. “Doyou? Do you, indeed? I would like to see such a book. I would like it very well.”

“Perhaps you shall,” Callahan said. “The stories in it are certainly not much like the tales of the Round Table I read as a boy, but…” He shook his head. “I understand what you’re saying to me, let’s leave it at that. There are three questions, am I right? And you just asked me the first.”

“Three, yes,” Roland said. “Three is a number of power.”

Eddie thought,If you want to try a realnumber of power, Roland old buddy, try nineteen .

“And all three must be answered yes.”

Roland nodded. “And if they are, you may ask no more. We may be cast on, sai Callahan, but no man may cast us back. Make sure your people”—he nodded toward the woods south of them—“understand that.”

“Gunslinger—”

“Call me Roland. We’re at peace, you and I.”

“All right, Roland. Hear me well, do ya, I beg. (For so we say in the Calla.) We who come to you are only half a dozen. We six cannot decide. Only the Calla can decide.”

“Democracy,” Roland said. He pushed his hat back from his forehead, rubbed his forehead, and sighed.

“But if we six agree—especially sai Overholser—” He broke off, looking rather warily at Jake. “What? Did I say something?”

Jake shook his head and motioned Callahan to continue.

“If we six agree, it’s pretty much a done deal.”

Eddie closed his eyes, as if in bliss. “Say it again, pal.”

Callahan eyed him, puzzled and wary. “What?”

“Done deal. Or anything from your where and when.” He paused. “Our side of the big ka.”

Callahan considered this, then began to grin. “I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind,” he said. “I went on a bender, broke the bank, kicked the bucket, blew my top, walked on thin ice, rode the pink horse down nightmare alley. Like that?”

Roland looked puzzled (perhaps even a little bored), but Eddie Dean’s face was a study in bliss. Susannah and Jake seemed caught somewhere between amusement and a kind of surprised, recollective sadness.

“Keep em coming, pal,” Eddie said hoarsely, and made acome on, man gesture with both hands. He sounded as if he might have been speaking through a throatful of tears. “Just keep em coming.”

“Perhaps another time,” Callahan said gently. “Another time we may sit and have our own palaver about the old places and ways of saying. Baseball, if it do ya. Now, though, time is short.”

“In more ways than you know, maybe,” Roland said. “What would you have of us, sai Callahan? And now you must speak to the point, for I’ve told you in every way I can that we are not wanderers your friends may interview, then hire or not as they do their farmhands or saddle-tramps.”

“For now I ask only that you stay where you are and let me bring them to you,” he said. “There’s Tian Jaffords, who’s really responsible for us being out here, and his wife, Zalia. There’s Overholser, the one who most needs to be convinced that we need you.”

“Wewon’t convince him or anyone,” Roland said.

“I understand,” Callahan said hastily. “Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear. And there’s Ben Slightman and his boy, Benny. Ben the Younger is an odd case. His sister died four years ago, when she and Benny were both ten. No one knows if that makes Ben the Younger a twin or a singleton.” He stopped abruptly. “I’ve wandered. I’m sorry.”

Roland gestured with an open palm to show it was all right.

“You make me nervous, hear me I beg.”

“You don’t need to beg us nothing, sugar,” Susannah said.

Callahan smiled. “It’s only the way we speak. In the Calla, when you meet someone, you may say, ‘How from head to feet, do ya, I beg?’ And the answer, ‘I do fine, no rust, tell the gods thankee-sai.’ You haven’t heard this?”

They shook their heads. Although some of the words were familiar, the overall expressions only underlined the fact that they had come to somewhere else, a place where talk was strange and customs perhaps stranger.

“What matters,” Callahan said, “is that the borderlands are terrified of creatures called the Wolves, who come out of Thunderclap once a generation and steal the children. There’s more to it, but that’s the crux. Tian Jaffords, who stands to lose not just one child this time but two, says no more, the time has come to stand and fight. Others—men like Overholser—say doing that would be disaster. I think Overholser and those like him would have carried the day, but your coming has changed things.” He leaned forward earnestly. “Wayne Overholser isn’t a bad man, just a frightened man. He’s the biggest farmer in the Calla, and so he has more to lose than some of the rest. But if he could be convinced that we might drive the Wolves off…that we could actually win against them…I believe he might also stand and fight.”

“I told you—” Roland began.

“You don’t convince,” Callahan broke in. “Yes, I understand. I do. But if they see you, hear you speak, and then convince themselves…?”

Roland shrugged. “There’ll be water if God wills it, we say.”

Callahan nodded. “They say it in the Calla, too. May I move on to another, related matter?”

Roland raised his hands slightly—as if, Eddie thought, to tell Callahan it was his nickel.

For a moment the man with the scar on his brow said nothing. When he did speak, his voice had dropped. Eddie had to lean forward to hear him. “I have something. Something you want. That you may need. It has reached out to you already, I think.”

“Why do you say so?” Roland asked.

Callahan wet his lips and then spoke a single word: “Todash.”

Nine

“What about it?” Roland asked. “What about todash?”

“Haven’t you gone?” Callahan looked momentarily unsure of himself. “Haven’tany of you gone?”

“Say we have,” Roland said. “What’s that to you, and to your problem in this place you call the Calla?”

Callahan sighed. Although it was still early in the day, he looked tired. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” he said, “and by quite a lot. You are considerably more—what’s the word?—trig, I suppose. More trig than I expected.”

“You expected to find nothing but saddle-tramps with fast hands and empty heads, isn’t that about the size of it?” Susannah asked. She sounded angry. “Well, joke’s on you, honeybunch. Anyway, we may be tramps, but we got no saddles. No need for saddles with no horses.”

“We’ve brought you horses,” Callahan said, and that was enough. Roland didn’t understand everything, but he thought he now had enough to clarify the situation quite a bit. Callahan had known they were coming, known how many they were, known they were walking instead of riding. Some of those things could have been passed on by spies, but not all. And todash…knowing that some or all of them had gone todash…

“As for empty heads, we may not be the brightest four on the planet, but—” She broke off suddenly, wincing. Her hands went to her stomach.

“Suze?” Eddie asked, instantly concerned. “Suze, what is it? You okay?”

“Just gas,” she said, and gave him a smile. To Roland that smile didn’t look quite real. And he thought he saw tiny lines of strain around the corners of her eyes. “Too many muffin-balls last night.” And before Eddie could ask her any more questions, Susannah turned her attention back to Callahan. “You got something else to say, then say it, sugar.”

“All right,” Callahan said. “I have an object of great power. Although you are still many wheels from my church in the Calla, where this object is hidden, I think it’s already reached out to you. Inducing the todash state is only one of the things it does.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “If you will render us—for the Calla is my town now, too, ye ken, where I hope to finish my days and then be buried—the service I beg, I will give you this…this thing.”

“For the last time, I’d ask you to speak no more so,” Roland said. His tone was so harsh that Jake looked around at him with dismay. “It dishonors me and my an-tet. We’re bound to do as you ask, if we judge your Calla in the White and those you call Wolves as agents of the outer dark: Beam-breakers, if you ken. We may takeno reward for our services, and you must not offer. If one of your own mates were to speak so—the one you call Tian or the one you call Overholster—”

(Eddie thought to correct the gunslinger’s pronunciation and then decided to keep his mouth shut—when Roland was angry, it was usually best to stay silent.)

“—that would be different. They know nothing but legends, mayhap. But you, sai, have at least one book which should have taught you better. I told you we deal in lead, and so we do. But that doesn’t make us hired guns.”

“All right, all right—”

“As for what you have,” Roland said, his voice rising and overriding Callahan’s, “you’d be rid of it, would you not? It terrifies you, does it not? Even if we decide to ride on past your town, you’d beg us to take it with us, would you not?Would you not? ”

“Yes,” Callahan said miserably. “You speak true and I say thankee. But…it’s just that I heard a bit of your palaver…enough to know you want to go back…to pass over, as the Manni say…and not just to one place but two…or maybe more…and time…I heard you speak of aiming time like a gun…”

Jake’s face filled with understanding and horrified wonder. “Which one is it?” he asked. “It can’t be the pink one from Mejis, because Roland went inside it, it never sent him todash. So which one?”

A tear spilled down Callahan’s right cheek, then another. He wiped them away absently. “I’ve never dared handle it, but I’ve seen it. Felt its power. Christ the Man Jesus help me, I have Black Thirteen under the floorboards of my church. And it’s come alive. Do you understand me?” He looked at them with his wet eyes.“It’s come alive.”

Callahan put his face in his hands, hiding it from them.

Ten

When the holy man with the scar on his forehead left to get his trailmates, the gunslinger stood watching him go without moving. Roland’s thumbs were hooked into the waistband of his old patched jeans, and he looked as if he could stand that way well into the next age. The moment Callahan was out of sight, however, he turned to his own mates and made an urgent, almost bearish, clutching gesture at the air:Come to me . As they did, Roland squatted on his hunkers. Eddie and Jake did the same (and to Susannah, hunkers were almost a way of life). The gunslinger spoke almost curtly.

“Time is short, so tell me, each of you, and don’t shilly-shally: honest or not?”

“Honest,” Susannah said at once, then gave another little wince and rubbed beneath her left breast.

“Honest,” said Jake.

“Onnes,” said Oy, although he had not been asked.

“Honest,” Eddie agreed, “but look.” He took an unburned twig from the edge of the campfire, brushed away a patch of pine-duff, and wrote in the black earth underneath:

Calla Callahan

“Live or Memorex?” Eddie said. Then, seeing Susannah’s confusion: “Is it a coincidence, or does it mean something?”

“Who knows?” Jake asked. They were all speaking in low tones, heads together over the writing in the dirt. “It’s like nineteen.”

“I think it’s only a coincidence,” Susannah said. “Surely noteverything we encounter on our path is ka, is it? I mean, these don’t evensound the same.” And she pronounced them,Calla with the tongue up, making the broad-a sound,Callahan with the tongue down, making a much sharper a-sound. “Calla’s Spanish in our world…like many of the words you remember from Mejis, Roland. It means street or square, I think…don’t hold me to it, because high school Spanish is far behind me now. But if I’m right, using the word as a prefix for the name of a town—or a whole series of them, as seems to be the case in these parts—makes pretty good sense. Not perfect, but pretty good. Callahan, on the other hand…” She shrugged. “What is it? Irish? English?”

“It’s sure not Spanish,” Jake said. “But the nineteen thing—”

“Piss on nineteen,” Roland said rudely. “This isn’t the time for number games. He’ll be back here with his friends in short order, and I would speak to you an-tet of another matter before he does.”

“Do you think he could possibly be right about Black Thirteen?” Jake asked.

“Yes,” Roland said. “Based just on what happened to you and Eddie last night, I think the answer is yes. Dangerous for us to have such a thing if heis right, but have it we must. I fear these Wolves out of Thunderclap will if we don’t. Never mind, that need not trouble us now.”

Yet Roland looked very troubled indeed. He turned his regard toward Jake.

“You started when you heard the big farmer’s name. So did you, Eddie, although you concealed it better.”

“Sorry,” Jake said. “I have forgotten the face of—”

“Not even a bit have you,” Roland said. “Unless I have, as well. Because I’ve heard the name myself, and recently. I just can’t remember where.” Then, reluctantly: “I’m getting old.”

“It was in the bookstore,” Jake said. He took his pack, fiddled nervously with the straps, undid them. He flipped the pack open as he spoke. It was as if he had to make sureCharlie the Choo-Choo andRiddle-De-Dum were still there, still real. “The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. It’s so weird. Once it happened to me and once Iwatched it happen to me. That’d make a pretty good riddle all by itself.”

Roland made a rapid rotating gesture with his diminished right hand, telling him to go on and be quick.

“Mr. Tower introduced himself,” Jake said, “and then I did the same. Jake Chambers, I said. Andhe said—”

“ ‘Good handle, partner,’ ” Eddie broke in. “That’s what he said. Then he said Jake Chambers sounded like the name of the hero in a Western novel.”

“ ‘The guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, then moves on,’ ” Jake quoted. “And then he said, ‘Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe.’ ” He looked at Susannah and repeated it. “Wayne D. Overholser. And if you tell methat’s a coincidence, Susannah…” He broke into a sunny, sudden grin. “I’ll tell you to kiss my white-boy ass.”

Susannah laughed. “No need of that, sass-box. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence. And when we meet Callahan’s farmer friend, I intend to ask him what his middle name is. I set my warrant that it’ll not only begin with D, it’ll be something like Dean or Dane, just four letters—” Her hand went back to the place below her breast. “Thisgas ! My! What I wouldn’t give for a roll of Tums or even a bottle of—” She broke off again. “Jake, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Jake was holdingCharlie the Choo-Choo in his hands, and his face had gone dead white. His eyes were huge, shocked. Beside him, Oy whined uneasily. Roland leaned over to look, and his eyes also widened.

“Good gods,” he said.

Eddie and Susannah looked. The title was the same. The picture was the same: an anthropomorphic locomotive puffing up a hill, its cowcatcher wearing a grin, its headlight a cheerful eye. But the yellow letters across the bottom, Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans, were gone. There was no credit line there at all.

Jake turned the book and looked at the spine. It saidCharlie the Choo-Choo and McCauley House, Publishers. Nothing else.

South of them now, the sound of voices. Callahan and his friends, approaching. Callahan from the Calla. Callahan of the Lot, he had also called himself.

“Title page, sugar,” Susannah said. “Look there, quick.”

Jake did. Once again there was only the title of the story and the publisher’s name, this time with a colophon.

“Look at the copyright page,” Eddie said.

Jake turned the page. Here, on the verso of the title page and beside the recto where the story began, was the copyright information. Except therewas no information, not really.

Copyright 1936,

it said. Numbers which added up to nineteen.

The rest was blank.

One

Susannah was able to observe a good deal on that long and interesting day, because Roland gave her the chance and because, after her morning’s sickness passed off, she felt wholly herself again.

Just before Callahan and his party drew within earshot, Roland murmured to her, “Stay close to me, and not a word from you unless I prompt it. If they take you for my sh’veen, let it be so.”

Under other circumstances, she might have had something pert to say about the idea of being Roland’s quiet little side-wife, his nudge in the night, but there was no time this morning, and in any case, it was far from a joking matter; the seriousness in his face made that clear. Also, the part of the faithful, quiet second appealed to her. In truth,any part appealed to her. Even as a child, she had rarely been so happy as when pretending to be someone else.

Which probably explains all there is about you worth knowing, sugar,she thought.

“Susannah?” Roland asked. “Do you hear me?”

“Hear you well,” she told him. “Don’t you worry about me.”

“If it goes as I want, they’ll see you little and you’ll see them much.”

As a woman who’d grown up black in mid-twentieth-century America (Odetta had laughed and applauded her way through Ralph Ellison’sInvisible Man, often rocking back and forth in her seat like one who has been visited by a revelation), Susannah knew exactly what he wanted. And would give it to him. There was a part of her—a spiteful Detta Walker part—that would always resent Roland’s ascendancy in her heart and mind, but for the most part she recognized him for what he was: the last of his kind. Maybe even a hero.

Two

Watching Roland make the introductions (Susannah was presented dead last, after Jake, and almost negligently), she had time to reflect on how fine she felt now that the nagging gas-pains in her left side had departed. Hell, even the lingering headache had gone its way, andthat sucker had been hanging around—sometimes in the back of her head, sometimes at one temple or the other, sometimes just above her left eye, like a migraine waiting to hatch—for a week or more. And of course there were the mornings. Every one found her feeling nauseated and with a bad case of jelly-leg for the first hour or so. She never vomited, but for that first hour she always felt on the verge of it.

She wasn’t stupid enough to mistake such symptoms, but had reason to know they meant nothing. She just hoped she wouldn’t embarrass herself by swelling up as her Mama’s friend Jessica had done, not once but twice. Two false pregnancies, and in both cases that woman had looked ready to bust out twins. Triplets, even. But of course Jessica Beasley’s periods had stopped, and that made it all too easy for a woman to believe she was with child. Susannah knew she wasn’t pregnant for the simplest of reasons: she was still menstruating. She had begun a period on the very day they had awakened back on the Path of the Beam, with the Green Palace twenty-five or thirty miles behind them. She’d had another since then. Both courses had been exceptionally heavy, necessitating the use of many rags to soak up the dark flow, and before then her menses had always been light, some months no more than a few of the spots her mother called “a lady’s roses.” Yet she didn’t complain, because before her arrival in this world, her periods had usually been painful and sometimes excruciating. The two she’d had since returning to the Path of the Beam hadn’t hurt at all. If not for the soaked rags she’d carefully buried to one side of their path or the other, she wouldn’t have had a clue that it was her time of the month. Maybe it was the purity of the water.

Of course she knew what all this was about; it didn’t take a rocket scientist, as Eddie sometimes said. The crazy, scrambled dreams she couldn’t recall, the weakness and nausea in the mornings, the transient headaches, the strangely fierce gas attacks and occasional cramps all came down to the same thing: she wanted his baby. More than anything else in the world, she wanted Eddie Dean’s chap growing in her belly.

What shedidn’t want was to puff up in a humiliating false pregnancy.

Never mind all that now,she thought as Callahan approached with the others.Right now you’ve got to watch. Got to see what Roland and Eddie and Jake don’t see. That way nothing gets dropped. And she felt she could do that job very well.

Really, she had never felt finer in her life.

Three

Callahan came first. Behind him were two men, one who looked about thirty and another who looked to Susannah nearly twice that. The older man had heavy cheeks that would be jowls in another five years or so, and lines carving their courses from the sides of his nose down to his chin. “I-want lines,” her father would have called them (and Dan Holmes had had a pretty good set of his own). The younger man wore a battered sombrero, the older a clean white Stetson that made Susannah want to smile—it looked like the kind of hat the good guy would wear in an old black-and-white Western movie. Still, she guessed a lid like that didn’t come cheap, and she thought the man wearing it had to be Wayne Overholser. “The big farmer,” Roland had called him. The one that had to be convinced, according to Callahan.

But not by us,Susannah thought, which was sort of a relief. The tight mouth, the shrewd eyes, and most of all those deep-carved lines (there was another slashed vertically into his brow, just above the eyes) suggested sai Overholser would be a pain in the ass when it came to convincing.

Just behind these two—specifically behind the younger of the two—there came a tall, handsome woman, probably not black but nonetheless nearly as dark-skinned as Susannah herself. Bringing up the rear was an earnest-looking man in spectacles and farmer’s clothes and a likely-looking boy probably two or three years older than Jake. The resemblance between this pair was impossible to miss; they had to be Slightman the Elder and Younger.

Boy may be older than Jake in years,she thought,but he’s got a soft look about him, all the same . True, but not necessarily a bad thing. Jake had seen far too much for a boy not yet in his teens.Done too much, as well.

Overholser looked at their guns (Roland and Eddie each wore one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips; the .44 Ruger from New York City hung under Jake’s arm in what Roland called a docker’s clutch), then at Roland. He made a perfunctory salute, his half-closed fist skimming somewhere at least close to his forehead. There was no bow. If Roland was offended by this, it didn’t show on his face. Nothing showed on his face but polite interest.

“Hile, gunslinger,” the man who had been walking beside Overholser said, and this one actually dropped to one knee, with his head down and his brow resting on his fist. “I am Tian Jaffords, son of Luke. This lady is my wife, Zalia.”

“Hile,” Roland said. “Let me be Roland to you, if it suits. May your days be long upon the earth, sai Jaffords.”

“Tian. Please. And may you and your friends have twice the—”

“I’m Overholser,” the man in the white Stetson broke in brusquely. “We’ve come to meet you—you and your friends—at the request of Callahan and young Jaffords. I’d pass the formalities and get down to business as soon as possible, do ya take no offense, I beg.”

“Ask pardon but that’s not quite how it is,” Jaffords said. “There was a meeting, and the men of the Calla voted—”

Overholser broke in again. He was, Susannah thought, just that kind of man. She doubted he was even aware he was doing it. “The town, yes. The Calla. I’ve come along with every wish to do right by my town and my neighbors, but this is a busy time for me, none busier—”

“Charyou tree,” Roland said mildly, and although Susannah knew a deeper meaning for this phrase, one that made her back prickle, Overholser’s eyes lit up. She had her first inkling then of how this day was going to go.

“Come reap, yessir, say thankee.” Off to one side, Callahan was gazing into the woods with a kind of studied patience. Behind Overholser, Tian Jaffords and his wife exchanged an embarrassed glance. The Slightmans only waited and watched. “You understand that much, anyway.”

“In Gilead we were surrounded by farms and freeholds,” Roland said. “I got my share of hay and corn in barn. Aye, and sharproot, too.”

Overholser was giving Roland a grin that Susannah found fairly offensive. It said,We know better than that, don’t we, sai? We’re both men of the world, after all . “Where are you from really, sai Roland?”

“My friend, you need to see an audiologist,” Eddie said.

Overholser looked at him, puzzled. “Beg-my-ear?”

Eddie made athere, you see? gesture and nodded. “Exactly what I mean.”

“Be still, Eddie,” Roland said. Still as mild as milk. “Sai Overholser, we may take a moment to exchange names and speak a good wish or two, surely. For that is how civilized, kindly folk behave, is it not?” Roland paused—a brief, underlining pause—and then said, “With harriers it may be different, but there are no harriers here.”

Overholser’s lips pressed together and he looked hard at Roland, ready to take offense. He saw nothing in the gunslinger’s face that offered it, and relaxed again. “Thankee,” he said. “Tian and Zalia Jaffords, as told—”

Zalia curtsied, spreading invisible skirts to either side of her battered corduroy pants.

“—and here are Ben Slightman the Elder and Benny the Younger.”

The father raised his fist to his forehead and nodded. The son, his face a study in awe (it was mostly the guns, Susannah surmised), bowed with his right leg out stiffly in front of him and the heel planted.

“The Old Fella you already know,” Overholser finished, speaking with exactly the sort of offhand contempt at which Overholser himself would have taken deep offense, had it been directed toward his valued self. Susannah supposed that when you were the big farmer, you got used to talking just about any way you wanted. She wondered how far he might push Roland before discovering that he hadn’t been pushing at all. Because some men couldn’t be pushed. They might go along with you for awhile, but then—

“These are my trailmates,” Roland said. “Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers, of New York. And this is Susannah.” He gestured at her without turning in her direction. Overholser’s face took on a knowing, intensely male look Susannah had seen before. Detta Walker had had a way of wiping that look off men’s faces that she didn’t believe sai Overholser would care for at all.

Nonetheless, she gave Overholser and the rest of them a demure little smile and made her own invisible-skirts curtsy. She thought hers as graceful in its way as the one made by Zalia Jaffords, but of course a curtsy didn’t look quite the same when you were missing your lower legs and feet. The newcomers had marked the part of her that was gone, of course, but their feelings on that score didn’t interest her much. Shedid wonder what they thought of her wheelchair, though, the one Eddie had gotten her in Topeka, where Blaine the Mono had finished up. These folks would never have seen the like of it.

Callahan may have,she thought.Because Callahan’s from our side. He —

The boy said, “Is that a bumbler?”

“Hush, do ya,” Slightman said, sounding almost shocked that his son had spoken.

“That’s okay,” Jake said. “Yeah, he’s a bumbler. Oy, go to him.” He pointed at Ben the Younger. Oy trotted around the campfire to where the newcomer stood and looked up at the boy with his gold-ringed eyes.

“I never saw a tame one before,” Tian said. “Have heard of em, of course, but the world has moved on.”

“Mayhap not all of it has moved on,” Roland said. He looked at Overholser. “Mayhap some of the old ways still hold.”

“Can I pat him?” the boy asked Jake. “Will he bite?”

“You can and he won’t.”

As Slightman the Younger dropped on his hunkers in front of Oy, Susannah certainly hoped Jake was right. Having a billy-bumbler chomp off this kid’s nose would not set them on in any style at all.

But Oy suffered himself to be stroked, even stretching his long neck up so he could sample the odor of Slightman’s face. The boy laughed. “What did you say his name was?”

Before Jake could reply, the bumbler spoke for himself. “Oy!”

They all laughed. And as simply as that they were together, well-met on this road that followed the Path of the Beam. The bond was fragile, but even Overholser sensed it. And when he laughed, the big farmer looked as if he might be a good enough fellow. Maybe frightened, and pompous to be sure, but there was something there.

Susannah didn’t know whether to be glad or afraid.

Four

“I’d have a word alone with’ee, if it does ya,” Overholser said. The two boys had walked off a little distance with Oy between them, Slightman the Younger asking Jake if the bumbler could count, as he’d heard some of them could.

“I think not, Wayne,” Jaffords said at once. “It was agreed we’d go back to our camp, break bread, and explain our need to these folk. And then, if they agreed to come further—”

“I have no objection to passing a word with sai Overholser,” Roland said, “nor will you, sai Jaffords, I think. For is he not your dinh?” And then, before Tian could object further (or deny it): “Give these folks tea, Susannah. Eddie, step over here with us a bit, if it do ya fine.”

This phrase, new to all their ears, came out of Roland’s mouth sounding perfectly natural. Susannah marveled at it. If she had tried saying that, she would have sounded as if she were sucking up.

“We have food south aways,” Zalia said timidly. “Food and graf and coffee. Andy—”

“We’ll eat with pleasure, and drink your coffee with joy,” Roland said. “But have tea first, I beg. We’ll only be a moment or two, won’t we, sai?”

Overholser nodded. His look of stern unease had departed. So had his stiffness of body. From the far side of the road (close to where a woman named Mia had slipped into the woods only the night before), the boys laughed as Oy did something clever—Benny with surprise, Jake with obvious pride.

Roland took Overholser’s arm and led him a little piece up the road. Eddie strolled with them. Jaffords, frowning, made as if to go with them anyway. Susannah touched his shoulder. “Don’t,” she said in a low voice. “He knows what he’s doing.”

Jaffords looked at her doubtfully for a moment, then came with her. “P’raps I could build that fire up for you a bit, sai,” Slightman the Elder said with a kindly look at her diminished legs. “For I see a few sparks yet, so I do.”

“If you please,” Susannah said, thinking how wonderful all this was. How wonderful, how strange. Potentially deadly as well, of course, but she had come to learn that also had its charms. It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.

Five

Up the road about forty feet from the others, the three men stood together. Overholser appeared to be doing all the talking, sometimes gesturing violently to punctuate a point. He spoke as if Roland were no more than some gunbunny hobo who happened to come drifting down the road with a few no-account friends riding drogue behind him. He explained to Roland that Tian Jaffords was a fool (albeit a well-meaning one) who did not understand the facts of life. He told Roland that Jaffords had to be restrained, cooled off, not only in his best interests but in those of the entire Calla. He insisted to Roland that if anythingcould be done, Wayne Overholser, son of Alan, would be first in line to do it; he’d never shirked a chore in his life, but to go against the Wolves was madness. And, he added, lowering his voice, speaking of madness, there was the Old Fella. When he kept to his church and his rituals, he was fine. In such things, a little madness made a fine sauce. This, however, was summat different. Aye, and by a long hike.

Roland listened to it all, nodding occasionally. He said almost nothing. And when Overholser was finally finished, Calla Bryn Sturgis’s big farmer simply looked with a kind of fixed fascination at the gunman who stood before him. Mostly at those faded blue eyes.

“Are ye what ye say?” he asked finally. “Tell me true, sai.”

“I’m Roland of Gilead,” the gunslinger said.

“From the line of Eld? Ye do say it?”

“By watch and by warrant,” Roland said.

“But Gilead…” Overholser paused. “Gilead’s long gone.”

“I,” Roland said, “am not.”

“Would ye kill us all, or cause us to be killed? Tell me, I beg.”

“What wouldyou, sai Overholser? Not later; not a day or a week or a moon from now, but at this minute?”

Overholser stood a long time, looking from Roland to Eddie and then back to Roland again. Here was a man not used to changing his mind; if he did so, it would hurt him like a rupture. From down the road came the laughter of the boys as Oy fetched something Benny had thrown—a stick almost as big as the bumbler was himself.

“I’d listen,” Overholser said at last. “I’d do that much, gods help me, and say thankee.”

“In other words he explained all the reasons why it was a fool’s errand,” Eddie told her later, “and then did exactly what Roland wanted him to do. It was like magic.”

“Sometimes Rolandis magic,” she said.

Six

The Calla’s party had camped in a pleasant hilltop clearing not far south of the road but just enough off the Path of the Beam so that the clouds hung still and moveless in the sky, seemingly close enough to touch. The way there through the woods had been carefully marked; some of the blazes Susannah saw were as big as her palm. These people might be crackerjack farmers and stockmen, but it was clear the woods made them uneasy.

“May I spell ye on that chair a bit, young man?” Overholser asked Eddie as they began the final push upslope. Susannah could smell roasting meat and wondered who was tending to the cooking if the entire Callahan-Overholser party had come out to meet them. Had the woman mentioned someone named Andy? A servant, perhaps? She had. Overholser’s personal? Perhaps. Surely a man who could afford a Stetson as grand as the one now tipped back on his head could afford a personal.

“Do ya,” Eddie said. He didn’t quite dare to add “I beg” (Still sounds phony to him,Susannah thought), but he moved aside and gave over the wheelchair’s push-handles to Overholser. The farmer was a big man, it was a fair slope, and now he was pushing a woman who weighed close on to a hundred and thirty pounds, but his breathing, although heavy, remained regular.

“Might I ask you a question, sai Overholser?” Eddie asked.

“Of course,” Overholser replied.

“What’s your middle name?”

There was a momentary slackening of forward motion; Susannah put this down to mere surprise. “That’s an odd ’un, young fella; why d’ye ask?”

“Oh, it’s a kind of hobby of mine,” Eddie said. “In fact, I tell fortunes by em.”

Careful, Eddie, careful,Susannah thought, but she was amused in spite of herself.

“Oh, aye?”

“Yes,” Eddie said. “You, now. I’ll bet your middle name begins with”—he seemed to calculate—“with the letter D.” Only he pronounced itDeh, in the fashion of the Great Letters in the High Speech. “And I’d say it’s short. Five letters? Maybe only four?”

The slackening of forward push came again. “Devil say please!” Overholser exclaimed. “How’d you know? Tell me!”

Eddie shrugged. “It’s no more than counting and guessing, really. In truth, I’m wrong almost as often as I’m right.”

“More often,” Susannah said.

“Tell ya my middle name’s Dale,” Overholser said, “although if anyone ever explained me why, it’s slipped my mind. I lost my folks when I was young.”

“Sorry for your loss,” Susannah said, happy to see that Eddie was moving away. Probably to tell Jake she’d been right about the middle name: Wayne Dale Overholser. Equals nineteen.

“Is that young man trig or a fool?” Overholser asked Susannah. “Tell me, I beg, for I canna’ tell myself.”

“A little of both,” she said.

“No question about this push-chair, though, would you say? It’s trig as a compass.”

“Say thankya,” she said, then gave a small inward sigh of relief. It had come out sounding all right, probably because she hadn’t exactly planned on saying it.

“Where did it come from?”

“Back on our way a good distance,” she said. This turn of the conversation did not please her much. She thought it was Roland’s job to tell their history (or not tell it). He was their dinh. Besides, what was told by only one could not be contradicted. Still, she thought she could say a little more. “There’s a thinny. We came from the other side of that, where things are much different.” She craned around to look at him. His cheeks and neck had flushed, but really, she thought, he was doing very well for a man who had to be deep into his fifties. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yar,” he said, hawked, and spat off to the left. “Not that I’ve seen or heard it myself, you understand. I never wander far; too much to do on the farm. Those of the Calla aren’t woodsy people as a rule, anyway, do ya kennit.”

Oh yes, I think I kennit,Susannah thought, spying another blaze roughly the size of a dinner plate. The unfortunate tree so marked would be lucky to survive the coming winter.

“Andy’s told of the thinny many and many-a. Makes a sound, he says, but can’t tell what it is.”

“Who’s Andy?”

“Ye’ll meet him for y’self soon enough, sai. Are’ee from this Calla York, like yer friends?”

“Yes,” she said, again on her guard. He swung her wheelchair around a hoary old ironwood. The trees were sparser now, and the smell of cooking much stronger. Meat…and coffee. Her stomach rumbled.

“And they be not gunslingers,” Overholser said, nodding at Jake and Eddie. “You’ll not tell me so, surely.”

“You must decide that for yourself when the time comes,” Susannah said.

He made no reply for a few moments. The wheelchair rumbled over a rock outcropping. Ahead of them, Oy padded along between Jake and Benny Slightman, who had made friends with boyhood’s eerie speed. She wondered if it was a good idea. For the two boys were different. Time might show them how much, and to their sorrow.

“He scared me,” Overholser said. He spoke in a voice almost too low to hear. As if to himself. “ ’Twere his eyes, I think. Mostly his eyes.”

“Would you go on as you have, then?” Susannah asked. The question was far from as idle as she hoped it sounded, but she was still startled by the fury of his response.

“Are’ee mad, woman? Course not—not if I saw a way out of the box we’re in. Hear me well! That boy”—he pointed at Tian Jaffords, walking ahead of them with his wife—“that boy as much as accused me of running yella. Had to make sure they all knew I didn’t have any children of the age the Wolves fancy, aye. Not likehe has, kennit. But do’ee think I’m a fool that can’t count the cost?”

“Not me,” Susannah said, calmly.

“But dohe ? I halfway think so.” Overholser spoke as a man does when pride and fear are fighting it out in his head. “Do I want to give the babbies to the Wolves? Babbies that’re sent back roont to be a drag on the town ever after? No! But neither do I want some hardcase to lead us all to blunder wi’ no way back!”

She looked over her shoulder at him and saw a fascinating thing. He now wanted to say yes. To find a reason to say yes. Roland had brought him that far, and with hardly a word. Had only…well, had only looked at him.

There was movement in the corner of her eye. “HolyChrist !” Eddie cried. Susannah’s hand darted for a gun that wasn’t there. She turned forward in the chair again. Coming down the slope toward them, moving with a prissy care that she couldn’t help find amusing even in her startlement, was a metal man at least seven feet high.

Jake’s hand had gone to the docker’s clutch and the butt of the gun that hung there.

“Easy, Jake!” Roland said.

The metal man, eyes flashing blue, stopped in front of them. It stood perfectly still for perhaps ten seconds, plenty of time for Susannah to read what was stamped on its chest.North Central Positronics, she thought,back for another curtain call. Not to mention LaMerk Industries .

Then the robot raised one silver arm, placing a silver hand against its stainless-steel forehead. “Hile, gunslinger, come from afar,” it said. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

Roland raised his fingers to his own forehead. “May you have twice the number, Andy-sai.”

“Thankee.” Clickings from its deep and incomprehensible guts. Then it leaned forward toward Roland, blue eyes flashing brighter. Susannah saw Eddie’s hand creep to the sandalwood grip of the ancient revolver he wore. Roland, however, never flinched.

“I’ve made a goodish meal, gunslinger. Many good things from the fullness of the earth, aye.”

“Say thankee, Andy.”

“May it do ya fine.” The robot’s guts clicked again. “In the meantime, would you perhaps care to hear your horoscope?”

One

At around two in the afternoon of that day, the ten of them sat down to what Roland called a rancher’s dinner. “During the morning chores, you look forward with love,” he told his friends later. “During the evening ones, you look back with nostalgia.”

Eddie thought he was joking, but with Roland you could never be completely sure. What humor he had was dry to the point of desiccation.

It wasn’t the best meal Eddie had ever had, the banquet put on by the old people in River Crossing still held pride of place in that regard, but after weeks in the woods, subsisting on gunslinger burritos (and shitting hard little parcels of rabbit turds maybe twice a week), it was fine fare indeed. Andy served out whopping steaks done medium rare and smothered in mushroom gravy. There were beans on the side, wrapped things like tacos, and roasted corn. Eddie tried an ear of this and found it tough but tasty. There was coleslaw which, Tian Jaffords was at pains to tell them, had been made by his own wife’s hands. There was also a wonderful pudding called strawberry cosy. And of course there was coffee. Eddie guessed that, among the four of them, they must have put away at least a gallon. Even Oy had a little. Jake put down a saucer of the dark, strong brew. Oy sniffed, said “Coff!” and then lapped it up quickly and efficiently.

There was no serious talk during the meal (“Food and palaver don’t mix” was but one of Roland’s many little nuggets of wisdom), and yet Eddie learned a great deal from Jaffords and his wife, mostly about how life was lived out here in what Tian and Zalia called “the borderlands.” Eddie hoped Susannah (sitting by Overholser) and Jake (with the youngster Eddie was already coming to think of as Benny the Kid) were learning half as much. He would have expected Roland to sit with Callahan, but Callahan sat with no one. He took his food off a little distance from all of them, blessed himself, and ate alone. Not very much, either. Mad at Overholser for taking over the show, or just a loner by nature? Hard to tell on such short notice, but if someone had put a gun to his head, Eddie would have voted for the latter.

What struck Eddie with the most force was how goddamcivilized this part of the world was. It made Lud, with its warring Grays and Pubes, look like the Cannibal Isles in a boy’s sea-story. These people had roads, law enforcement, and a system of government that made Eddie think of New England town meetings. There was a Town Gathering Hall and a feather which seemed to be some sort of authority symbol. If you wanted to call a meeting, you had to send the feather around. If enough people touched it when it came to their place, there was a meeting. If they didn’t, there wasn’t. Two people were sent to carry the feather, and their count was trusted without question. Eddie doubted if it would work in New York, but for a place like this it seemed a fine way to run things.

There were at least seventy other Callas, stretching in a mild arc north and south of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Calla Bryn Lockwood to the south and Calla Amity to the north were also farms and ranches. They also had to endure the periodic depredations of the Wolves. Farther south were Calla Bryn Bouse and Calla Staffel, containing vast tracts of ranchland, and Jaffords said they suffered the Wolves as well…at least he thought so. Farther north, Calla Sen Pinder and Calla Sen Chre, which were farms and sheep.

“Farms of a good size,” Tian said, “but they’re smaller as ye go north, kennit, until ye’re in the lands where the snows fall—so I’m told; I’ve never seen it myself—and wonderful cheese is made.”

“Those of the north wear wooden shoes, or so ’tis said,” Zalia told Eddie, looking a little wistful. She herself wore scuffed clodhoppers called shor’boots.

The people of the Callas traveled little, but the roads were there if they wanted to travel, and trade was brisk. In addition to them, there was the Whye, sometimes called Big River. This ran south of Calla Bryn Sturgis all the way to the South Seas, or so ’twas said. There were mining Callas and manufacturing Callas (where things were made by steam-press and even, aye, by electricity) and even one Calla devoted to nothing but pleasure: gambling and wild, amusing rides, and…

But here Tian, who had been talking, felt Zalia’s eyes on him and went back to the pot for more beans. And a conciliatory dish of his wife’s slaw.

“So,” Eddie said, and drew a curve in the dirt. “These are the borderlands. The Callas. An arc that goes north and south for…how far, Zalia?”

“ ’Tis men’s business, so it is,” she said. Then, seeing her own man was still at the embering fire, inspecting the pots, she leaned forward a bit toward Eddie. “Do you speak in miles or wheels?”

“A little of both, but I’m better with miles.”

She nodded. “Mayhap two thousand miles so”—she pointed north—“and twice that,so .” To the south. She remained that way, pointing in opposite directions, then dropped her arms, clasped her hands in her lap, and resumed her former demure pose.

“And these towns…these Callas…stretch the whole way?”

“So we’re told, if it please ya, and the tradersdo come and go. Northwest of here, the Big River splits in two. We call the east branch Devar-Tete Whye—the Little Whye, you might say. Of course we see more river-travel from the north, for the river flows north to south, do ya see.”

“I do. And to the east?”

She looked down. “Thunderclap,” she said in a voice Eddie could barely hear. “None go there.”

“Why?”

“It’s dark there,” said she, still not looking up from her lap. Then she raised an arm. This time she pointed in the direction from which Roland and his friends had come. Back toward Mid-World. “There,” she said, “the world is ending. Or so we’re told. And there…” She pointed east and now raised her face to Eddie’s. “There, in Thunderclap, it’salready ended. In the middle are we, who only want to go our way in peace.”

“And do you think it will happen?”

“No.” And Eddie saw she was crying.

Two

Shortly after this, Eddie excused himself and stepped into a copse of trees for a personal moment. When he rose from his squat, reaching for some leaves with which to clean himself, a voice spoke from directly behind him.

“Not those, sai, do it please ya. Those be poison flurry. Wipe with those and how you’ll itch.”

Eddie jumped and wheeled around, grabbing the waistband of his jeans with one hand and reaching for Roland’s gunbelt, hanging from the branch of a nearby tree, with the other. Then he saw who had spoken—orwhat —and relaxed a little.

“Andy, it’s not really kosher to creep up behind people when they’re taking a dump.” Then he pointed to a thatch of low green bushes. “What about those? How much trouble will I get into if I wipe with those?”

There were pauses and clicks.

“What?” Eddie asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Andy said. “I’m simply processing information, sai.Kosher: unknown word.Creeping up: I didn’t, I walked, if it do ye fine.Taking a dump: likely slang for the excretion of—”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “that’s what it is. But listen—if you didn’t creep up on me, Andy, how come I didn’t hear you? I mean, there’sunderbrush . Most people make noise when they go through underbrush.”

“I am not a person, sai,” Andy said. Eddie thought he sounded smug.

“Guy, then. How can a big guy like you be so quiet?”

“Programming,” Andy said. “Those leaves will be fine, do ya.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, then grabbed a bunch. “Oh yeah. Programming. Sure. Should have known. Thankee-sai, long days, kiss my ass and go to heaven.”

“Heaven,” said Andy. “A place one goes after death; a kind of paradise. According to the Old Fella, those who go to heaven sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, forever and ever.”

“Yeah? Who’s gonna sit at his left hand? All the Tupperware salesmen?”

“Sai, I don’t know.Tupperware is an unknown word to me. Would you like your horoscope?”

“Why not?” Eddie said. He started back toward the camp, guided by the sounds of laughing boys and a barking billy-bumbler. Andy towered beside him, shining even beneath the cloudy sky and seeming to not make a sound. It was eerie.

“What’s your birth date, sai?”

Eddie thought he might be ready for this one. “I’m Goat Moon,” he said, then remembered a little more. “Goat with beard.”

“Winter’s snow is full of woe, winter’s child is strong and wild,” said Andy. Yes, that was smugness in its voice, all right.

“Strong and wild, that’s me,” Eddie said. “Haven’t had a real bath in over a month, you better believe I’m strong and wild. What else do you need, Andy old guy? Want to look at my palm, or anything?”

“That will not be necessary, sai Eddie.” The robot sounded unmistakably happy and Eddie thought,That’s me, spreading joy wherever I go. Even robots love me. It’s my ka. “This is Full Earth, say we all thankya. The moon is red, what is called the Huntress Moon in Mid-World that was. You will travel, Eddie! You will travel far! You and your friends! This very night you return to Calla New York. You will meet a dark lady. You—”

“I want to hear more about this trip to New York,” Eddie said, stopping. Just ahead was the camp. He was close enough so he could see people moving around. “No joking around, Andy.”

“You will go todash, sai Eddie! You and your friends. You must be careful. When you hear thekammen —the chimes, ken ya well—you must all concentrate on each other. To keep from getting lost.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Eddie asked.

“Programming,” Andy said. “Horoscope is done, sai. No charge.” And then, what struck Eddie as the final capping lunacy: “Sai Callahan—the Old Fella, ye ken—says I have no license to tell fortunes, so must never charge.”

“Sai Callahan says true,” Eddie said, and then, when Andy started forward again: “But stay a minute, Andy. Do ya, I beg.” It was absolutely weird how quickly that started to sound okay.

Andy stopped willingly enough and turned toward Eddie, his blue eyes glowing. Eddie had roughly a thousand questions about todash, but he was currently even more curious about something else.

“You know about these Wolves.”

“Oh, yes. I told sai Tian. He was wroth.” Again Eddie detected something like smugness in Andy’s voice…but surely that was just the way it struck him, right? A robot—even one that had survived from the old days—couldn’t enjoy the discomforts of humans? Could it?

Didn’t take you long to forget the mono, did it, sugar?Susannah’s voice asked in his head. Hers was followed by Jake’s.Blaine’s a pain . And then, just his own:If you treat this guy like nothing more than a fortune-telling machine in a carnival arcade, Eddie old boy, you deserve whatever you get.

“Tell me about the Wolves,” Eddie said.

“What would you know, sai Eddie?”

“Where they come from, for a start. The place where they feel like they can put their feet up and fart right out loud. Who they work for. Why they take the kids. And why the ones they take come back ruined.” Then another question struck him. Perhaps the most obvious. “Also, how do you know when they’re coming?”

Clicks from inside Andy. A lot of them this time, maybe a full minute’s worth. When Andy spoke again, its voice was different. It made Eddie think about Officer Bosconi, back in the neighborhood. Brooklyn Avenue, that was Bosco Bob’s beat. If you just met him, walking along the street and twirling his nightstick, Bosco talked to you like you were a human being and so was he—howya doin, Eddie, how’s your mother these days, how’s your goodfornothin bro, are you gonna sign up for PAL Middlers, okay, seeya at the gym, stay off the smokes, have a good day. But if he thought maybe you’d done something, Bosco Bob turned into a guy you didn’t want to know. That Officer Bosconi didn’t smile, and the eyes behind his glasses were like puddle ice in February (which just happened to be the Time o’ the Goat, over here on this side of the Great Whatever). Bosco Bob had never hit Eddie, but there were a couple of times—once just after some kids lit Woo Kim’s Market on fire—when he felt sure that bluesuit mothafuckwould have hit him, if Eddie had been stupid enough to smart off. It wasn’t schizophrenia—at least not of the pure Detta/Odetta kind—but it was close. There were two versions of Officer Bosconi. One of them was a nice guy. The other one was a cop.

When Andy spoke again, it no longer sounded like your well-meaning but rather stupid uncle, the one who believed the alligator-boy and Elvis-is-alive-in-Buenos-Aires storiesInside View printed were absolutely true. This Andy sounded emotionless and somehow dead.

Like areal robot, in other words.

“What’s your password, sai Eddie?”

“Huh?”

“Password. You have ten seconds. Nine…eight…seven…”

Eddie thought of spy movies he’d seen. “You mean I say something like ‘The roses are blooming in Cairo’ andyou say ‘Only in Mrs. Wilson’s garden’ and thenI say—”

“Incorrect password, sai Eddie…two…one…zero.” From within Andy came a low thudding sound which Eddie found singularly unpleasant. It sounded like the blade of a sharp cleaver passing through meat and into the wood of the chopping block beneath. He found himself thinking for the first time about the Old People, who had surely built Andy (or maybe the people before the Old People, call them the Really Old People—who knew for sure?). Not people Eddie himself would want to meet, if the last remainders in Lud had been any example.

“You may retry once,” said the cold voice. It bore a resemblance to the one that had asked Eddie if Eddie would like his horoscope told, but that was the best you could call it—a resemblance. “Would you retry, Eddie of New York?”

Eddie thought fast. “No,” he said, “that’s all right. The info’s restricted, huh?”

Several clicks. Then: “Restricted: confined, kept within certain set limits, as information in a given document or q-disc; limited to those authorized to use that information; those authorized announce themselves by giving the password.” Another pause to think and then Andy said, “Yes, Eddie. That info’s restricted.”

“Why?” Eddie asked.

He expected no answer, but Andy gave him one. “Directive Nineteen.”

Eddie clapped him on his steel side. “My friend, that don’t surprise me at all. Directive Nineteen it is.”

“Would you care to hear an expanded horoscope, Eddie-sai?”

“Think I’ll pass.”

“What about a tune called ‘The Jimmy Juice I Drank Last Night?’ It has many amusing verses.” The reedy note of a pitch-pipe came from somewhere in Andy’s diaphragm.

Eddie, who found the idea of many amusing verses somehow alarming, increased his pace toward the others. “Why don’t we just put that on hold?” he said. “Right now I think I need another cup of coffee.”

“Give you joy of it, sai,” Andy said. To Eddie he sounded rather forlorn. Like Bosco Bob when you told him you thought you’d be too busy for PAL League that summer.

Three

Roland sat on a stone outcrop, drinking his own cup of coffee. He listened to Eddie without speaking himself, and with only one small change of expression: a minute lift of the eyebrows at the words Directive Nineteen.

Across the clearing from them, Slightman the Younger had produced a kind of bubble-pipe that made extraordinarily tough bubbles. Oy chased them, popped several with his teeth, then began to get the hang of what Slightman seemed to want, which was for him to herd them into a fragile little pile of light. The bubble-pile made Eddie think of the Wizard’s Rainbow, those dangerous glass balls. And did Callahan really have one? The worst of the bunch?

Beyond the boys, at the edge of the clearing, Andy stood with his silver arms folded over the stainless-steel curve of his chest. Waiting to clean up the meal he had hauled to them and then cooked, Eddie supposed. The perfect servant. He cooks, he cleans, he tells you about the dark lady you’ll meet. Just don’t expect him to violate Directive Nineteen. Not without the password, anyway.

“Come over to me, folks, would you?” Roland asked, raising his voice slightly. “Time we had a bit of palaver. Won’t be long, which is good, at least for us, for we’ve already had our own, before sai Callahan came to us, and after awhile talk sickens, so it does.”

They came over and sat near him like obedient children, those from the Calla and those who were from far away and would go beyond here perhaps even farther.

“First I’d hear what you know of these Wolves. Eddie tells me Andy may not say how he comes by what he knows.”

“You say true,” Slightman the Elder rumbled. “Either those who made him or those who came later have mostly gagged him on that subject, although he always warns us of their coming. On most other subjects, his mouth runs everlastingly.”

Roland looked toward the Calla’s big farmer. “Will you set us on, sai Overholser?”

Tian Jaffords looked disappointed not to be called on. His woman looked disappointed for him. Slightman the Elder nodded as if Roland’s choice of speaker was only to be expected. Overholser himself did not puff up as Eddie might have guessed. Instead he looked down at his own crossed legs and scuffed shor’boots for thirty seconds or so, rubbing at the side of his face, thinking. The clearing was so quiet Eddie could hear the minute rasp of the farmer’s palm on two or three days’ worth of bristles. At last he sighed, nodded, and looked up at Roland.

“Say thankee. Ye’re not what I expected, I must say. Nor your tet.” Overholser turned to Tian. “Ye were right to haul us out here, Tian Jaffords. This is a meeting we needed to have, and I say thankee.”

“It wasn’t me got you out here,” Jaffords said. “Was the Old Fella.”

Overholser nodded to Callahan. Callahan nodded back, then sketched the shape of a cross in the air with his scarred hand—as if to say, Eddie thought, that it wasn’t him, either, but God. Maybe so, but when it came to pulling coals out of a hot fire, he’d put two dollars on Roland of Gilead for every one he put on God and the Man Jesus, those heavenly gunslingers.

Roland waited, his face calm and perfectly polite.

Finally Overholser began to talk. He spoke for nearly fifteen minutes, slowly but always to the point. There was the business of the twins, to begin with. Residents of the Calla realized that children birthed in twos were the exception rather than the rule in other parts of the world and at other times in the past, but in their area of the Grand Crescent it was the singletons, like the Jaffordses’ Aaron, who were the rarities. Thegreat rarities.

And, beginning perhaps a hundred and twenty years ago (or mayhap a hundred and fifty; with time the way it was, such things were impossible to pin down with any certainty), the Wolves had begun their raids. They did not come exactly once every generation; that would have been each twenty years or so, and it was longer than that. Still, it wasclose to that.

Eddie thought of asking Overholser and Slightman how the Old People could have shut Andy’s mouth concerning the Wolves if the Wolves had been raiding out of Thunderclap for less than two centuries, then didn’t bother. Asking what couldn’t be answered was a waste of time, Roland would have said. Still, it was interesting, wasn’t it? Interesting to wonder when someone (or something ) had last programmed Andy the Messenger (Many Other Functions).

And why.

The children, Overholser said, one of each set between the ages of perhaps three and fourteen, were taken east, into the land of Thunderclap. (Slightman the Elder put his arm around his boy’s shoulders during this part of the tale, Eddie noticed.) There they remained for a relatively short period of time—mayhap four weeks, mayhap eight. Then most of them would be returned. The assumption made about those few who did not return was that they had died in the Land of Darkness, that whatever evil rite was performed on them killed a few instead of just ruining them.

The ones who came back were at best biddable idiots. A five-year-old would return with all his hard-won talk gone, reduced to nothing but babble and reaching for the things he wanted. Diapers which had been left forgotten two or three years before would go back on and might stay on until such a roont child was ten or even twelve.

“Yer-bugger, Tiastill pisses herself one day out of every six, and can be counted on to shit herself once a moon, as well,” Jaffords said.

“Hear him,” Overholser agreed gloomily. “My own brother, Welland, was much the same until he died. And of course they have to be watched more or less constant, for if they get something they like, they’ll eat it until they bust. Who’s watching yours, Tian?”

“My cuz,” Zalia said before Tian could speak. “Heddon n Hedda can help a little now, as well; they’ve come to a likely enough age—” She stopped and seemed to realize what she was saying. Her mouth twisted and she fell silent. Eddie guessed he understood. Heddon and Hedda could help now, yes. Next year, one of them would still be able to help. The other one, though…

A child taken at the age of ten might come back with a few rudiments of language left, but would never get much beyond that. The ones who were taken oldest were somehow the worst, for they seemed to come back with some vague understanding of what had been done to them. What had been stolen from them. These had a tendency to cry a great deal, or to simply creep off by themselves and peer into the east, like lost things. As if they might see their poor brains out there, circling like birds in the dark sky. Half a dozen such had even committed suicide over the years. (At this, Callahan once more crossed himself.)

The roont ones remained childlike in stature as well as in speech and behavior until about the age of sixteen. Then, quite suddenly, most of them sprouted to the size of young giants.

“Ye can have no idea what it’s like if ye haven’t seen it and been through it,” Tian said. He was looking into the ashes of the fire. “Ye can have no idea of the pain it causes them. When a babby cuts his teeth, ye ken how they cry?”

“Yes,” Susannah said.

Tian nodded. “It’s as if their whole bodies are teething, kennit.”

“Hear him,” Overholser said. “For sixteen or eighteen months, all my brother did was sleep and eat and cry and grow. I can remember him crying evenin his sleep. I’d get out of my bed and go across to him and there’d be a whispering sound from inside his chest and legs and head. ’Twere the sound of his bones growing in the night, hear me.”

Eddie contemplated the horror of it. You heard stories about giants—fee-fi-fo-fum, and all that—but until now he’d never considered what it might be like tobecome a giant.As if their whole bodies are teething, Eddie thought, and shivered.

“A year and a half, no longer than that and it were done, but I wonder how long it must seem to them, who’re brought back with no more sense of time than birds or bugs.”

“Endless,” Susannah said. Her face was very pale and she sounded ill. “It must seem endless.”

“The whispering in the nights as their bones grow,” Overholser said. “The headaches as theirskulls grow.”

“Zalman screamed one time for nine days without stopping,” Zalia said. Her voice was expressionless, but Eddie could see the horror in her eyes; he could see it very well. “His cheekbones pushed up. You could see it happening. His forehead curved out and out, and if you held an ear close to it you could hear the skull creaking as it spread. It sounded like a tree-branch under a weight of ice.

“Nine days he screamed. Nine. Morning, noon, and in the dead of night. Screaming and screaming. Eyes gushing water. We prayed to all the gods there were that he’d go hoarse—that he’d be stricken dumb, even—but none such happened, say thankee. If we’d had a gun, I believe we would have slew him as he lay on his pallet just to end his pain. As it was, my good old da’ was ready to slit ’een’s thr’ut when it stopped. His bones went on yet awhile—his skellington, do ya—but his head was the worst of it and it finally stopped, tell gods thankya, and Man Jesus too.”

She nodded toward Callahan. He nodded back and raised his hand toward her, outstretched in the air for a moment. Zalia turned back to Roland and his friends.

“Now I have five of my own,” she said. “Aaron’s safe, and say thankee, but Heddon and Hedda’s ten, a prime age. Lyman and Lia’s only five, but five’s old enough. Five’s…”

She covered her face with her hands and said no more.

Four

Once the growth-spurt was finished, Overholser said, some of them could be put to work. Others—the majority—weren’t able to manage even such rudimentary tasks as pulling stumps or digging postholes. You saw these sitting on the steps of Took’s General Store or sometimes walking across the countryside in gangling groups, young men and women of enormous height, weight, and stupidity, sometimes grinning at each other and babbling, sometimes only goggling up at the sky.

They didn’t mate, there was that to be grateful for. While not all of them grew to prodigious size and their mental skills and physical abilities might vary somewhat, there seemed to be one universal: they came back sexually dead. “Beggin your pardon for the crudity,” Overholser said, “but I don’t b’lieve my brother Welland had so much as a piss-hardon after they brought him back. Zalia? Have you ever seen your brother with a…you know…”

Zalia shook her head.

“How old were you when they came, sai Overholser?” Roland asked.

“First time, ye mean. Welland and I were nine.” Overholser now spoke rapidly. It gave what he said the air of a rehearsed speech, but Eddie didn’t think that was it. Overholser was a force in Calla Bryn Sturgis; he was, God save us and stone the crows, the big farmer. It was hard for him to go back in his mind to a time when he’d been a child, small and powerless and terrified. “Our Ma and Pa tried to hide us away in the cellar. So I’ve been told, anyway. I remember none of it, m’self, to be sure. Taught myself not to, I s’pose. Yar, quite likely. Some remember better’n others, Roland, but all the tales come to the same: one is took, one is left behind. The one took comes back roont, maybe able to work a little but dead in the b’low the waist. Then…when they get in their thirties…”

When they reached their thirties, the roont twins grew abruptly, shockingly old. Their hair turned white and often fell completely out. Their eyes dimmed. Muscles that had been prodigious (as Tia Jaffords’s and Zalman Hoonik’s were now) went slack and wasted away. Sometimes they died peacefully, in their sleep. More often, their endings weren’t peaceful at all. The sores came, sometimes out on the skin but more often in the stomach or the head. In the brain. All died long before their natural span would have been up, had it not been for the Wolves, and many died as they had grown from the size of normal children to that of giants: screaming in pain. Eddie wondered how many of these idiots, dying of what sounded to him like terminal cancer, were simply smothered or perhaps fed some strong sedative that would take them far beyond pain, far beyond sleep. It wasn’t the sort of question you asked, but he guessed the answer would have been many. Roland sometimes used the worddelah, always spoken with a light toss of the hand toward the horizon.

Many.

The visitors from the Calla, their tongues and memories untied by distress, might have gone on for some time, piling one sorry anecdote on another, but Roland didn’t allow them to. “Now speak of the Wolves, I beg. How many come to you?”

“Forty,” Tian Jaffords said.

“Spread across the whole Calla?” Slightman the Elder asked. “Nay, more than forty.” And to Tian, slightly apologetic: “You were no more’n nine y’self last time they came, Tian. I were in my young twenties. Forty in town, maybe, but more came to the outlying farms and ranches. I’d say sixty in all, Roland-sai, maybe eighty.”

Roland looked at Overholser, eyebrows raised.

“It’s been twenty-three years, ye mind,” Overholser said, “but I’d call sixty about right.”

“You call them Wolves, but what are they really? Are they men? Or something else?”

Overholser, Slightman, Tian, Zalia: for a moment Eddie could feel them sharing khef, could almost hear them. It made him feel lonely and left-out, the way you did when you saw a couple kissing on a streetcorner, wrapped in each other’s arms or looking into each other’s eyes, totally lost in each other’s regard. Well, he didn’t have to feel that way anymore, did he? He had his own ka-tet, his own khef. Not to mention his own woman.

Meanwhile, Roland was making the impatient little finger-twirling gesture with which Eddie had become so familiar.Come on, folks, it said,day’s wasting .

“No telling for sure what they are,” Overholser said. “Theylook like men, but they wear masks.”

“Wolf-masks,” Susannah said.

“Aye, lady, wolf-masks, gray as their horses.”

“Do you say all come on gray horses?” Roland asked.

The silence was briefer this time, but Eddie still felt that sense of khef and ka-tet, minds consulting via something so elemental it couldn’t even rightly be called telepathy; it was more elemental than telepathy.

“Yer-bugger!” Overholser said, a slang term that seemed to meanYou bet your ass, don’t insult me by asking again . “All on gray horses. They wear gray pants that look like skin. Black boots with cruel big steel spurs. Green cloaks and hoods. And the masks. We know they’re masks because they’ve been found left behind. They look like steel but rot in the sun like flesh, buggerdly things.”

“Ah.”

Overholser gave him a rather insulting head-cocked-to-one side look, the sort that askedAre you foolish or just slow? Then Slightman said: “Their horses ride like the wind. Some have ta’en one babby before the saddle and another behind.”

“Do you say so?” Roland asked.

Slightman nodded emphatically. “Tell gods thankee.” He saw Callahan again make the sign of the cross in the air and sighed. “Beg pardon, Old Fella.”

Callahan shrugged. “You were here before I was. Call on all the gods you like, so long as you know I think they’re false.”

“And they come out of Thunderclap,” Roland said, ignoring this last.

“Aye,” Overholser said. “You can see where it lies over that way about a hundred wheels.” He pointed southeast. “For we come out of the woods on the last height of land before the Crescent. Ye can see all the Eastern Plain from there, and beyond it a great darkness, like a rain cloud on the horizon. ’Tis said, Roland, that in the far long ago, you could see mountains over there.”

“Like the Rockies from Nebraska,” Jake breathed.

Overholser glanced at him. “Beg pardon, Jake-soh?”

“Nothing,” Jake said, and gave the big farmer a small, embarrassed smile. Eddie, meanwhile, filed away what Overholser had called him. Not sai but soh. Just something else that was interesting.

“We’ve heard of Thunderclap,” Roland said. His voice was somehow terrifying in its lack of emotion, and when Eddie felt Susannah’s hand creep into his, he was glad of it.

“ ’Tis a land of vampires, boggarts, and taheen, so the stories say,” Zalia told them. Her voice was thin, on the verge of trembling. “Of course the stories are old—”

“The stories are true,” Callahan said. His own voice was harsh, but Eddie heard the fear in it. Heard it very well. “Thereare vampires—other things as well, very likely—and Thunderclap’s their nest. We might speak more of this another time, gunslinger, if it does ya. For now, only hear me, I beg: of vampires I know a good deal. I don’t know if the Wolves take the Calla’s children to them—I rather think not—but yes, thereare vampires.”

“Why do you speak as if I doubt?” Roland asked.

Callahan’s eyes dropped. “Because many do. I did myself. I doubted much and…” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, and when he finished, it was almost in a whisper. “…and it was my undoing.”

Roland sat quiet for several moments, hunkered on the soles of his ancient boots with his arms wrapped around his bony knees, rocking back and forth a little. Then, to Overholser: “What o’ the clock do they come?”

“When they took Welland, my brother, it was morning,” the farmer said. “Breakfast not far past. I remember, because Welland asked our Ma if he could take his cup of coffee into the cellar with him. But last time…the time they come and took Tian’s sister and Zalia’s brother and so many others…”

“I lost two nieces and a nephew,” Slightman the Elder said.

“That time wasn’t long after the noon-bell from the Gathering Hall. We know the day becauseAndy knows the day, and that much he tells us. Then we hear the thunder of their hooves as they come out of the east and see the rooster-tail of dust they raise—”

“So you know when they’re coming,” Roland said. “In fact, you know three ways: Andy, the sound of their hoofbeats, the rise of their dust.”

Overholser, taking Roland’s implication, had flushed a dull brick color up the slopes of his plump cheeks and down his neck. “They come armed, Roland, do ya. With guns—rifles as well as the revolvers yer own tet carries, grenados, too—and other weapons, as well. Fearsome weapons of the Old People. Light-sticks that kill at a touch, flying metal buzz-balls called drones or sneetches. The sticks burn the skin black and stop the heart—electrical, maybe, or maybe—”

Eddie heard Overholser’s next word asant-NOMIC . At first he thought the man was trying to say “anatomy.” A moment later he realized it was probably “atomic.”

“Once the drones smell you, they follow no matter how fast you run,” Slightman’s boy said eagerly, “or how much you twist and turn. Right, Da’?”

“Yer-bugger,” Slightman the Elder said. “Then sprout blades that whirl around so fast you can’t see em and they cut you apart.”

“All on gray horses,” Roland mused. “Every one of em the same color. What else?”

Nothing, it seemed. It was all told. They came out of the east on the day Andy foretold, and for a terrible hour—perhaps longer—the Calla was filled with the thunderous hoofbeats of those gray horses and the screams of desolated parents. Green cloaks swirled. Wolf-masks that looked like metal and rotted in the sun like skin snarled. The children were taken. Sometimes a few pair were overlooked and left whole, suggesting that the Wolves’ prescience wasn’t perfect. Still, it must have been pretty goddam good, Eddie thought, because if the kids were moved (as they often were) or hidden at home (as they almostalways were), the Wolves found them anyway, and in short order. Even at the bottom of sharproot piles or haystacks they were found. Those of the Calla who tried to stand against them were shot, fried by the light-sticks—lasers of some kind?—or cut to pieces by the flying drones. When trying to imagine these latter, he kept recalling a bloody little film Henry had dragged him to.Phantasm, it had been called. Down at the old Majestic. Corner of Brooklyn and Markey Avenue. Like too much of his old life, the Majestic had smelled of piss and popcorn and the kind of wine that came in brown bags. Sometimes there were needles in the aisles. Not good, maybe, and yet sometimes—usually at night, when sleep was long in coming—a deep part of him still cried for the old life of which the Majestic had been a part. Cried for it as a stolen child might cry for his mother.

The children were taken, the hoofbeats receded the way they had come, and that was the end of it.

“No, can’t be,” Jake said. “They must bring them back, don’t they?”

“No,” Overholser said. “The roont ones come back on the train, hear me, there’s a great junkpile of em I could show’ee, and—What? What’s wrong?” Jake’s mouth had fallen open, and he’d lost most of his color.

“We had a bad experience on a train not so very long ago,” Susannah said. “The trains that bring your children back, are they monos?”

They weren’t. Overholser, the Jaffords, and the Slightmans had no idea what a mono was, in fact. (Callahan, who had been to Disneyland as a teenager, did.) The trains which brought the children back were hauled by plain old locomotives (hopefully none of them named Charlie,Eddie thought), driverless and attached to one or perhaps two open flatcars. The children were huddled on these. When they arrived they were usually crying with fear (from sunburns as well, if the weather west of Thunderclap was hot and clear), covered with food and their own drying shit, and dehydrated into the bargain. There was no station at the railhead, although Overholser opined there might have been, centuries before. Once the children had been offloaded, teams of horses were used to pull the short trains from the rusty railhead. It occurred to Eddie that they could figure out the number of times the Wolves had come by counting the number of junked engines, sort of like figuring out the age of a tree by counting the rings on the stump.

“How long a trip for them, would you guess?” Roland asked. “Judging from their condition when they arrive?”

Overholser looked at Slightman, then at Tian and Zalia. “Two days? Three?”

They shrugged and nodded.

“Two or three days,” Overholser said to Roland, speaking with more confidence than was perhaps warranted, judging from the looks of the others. “Long enough for sunburns, and to eat most of the rations they’re left—”

“Or paint themselves with em,” Slightman grunted.

“—but not long enough to die of exposure,” Overholser finished. “If ye’d judge from that how far they were taken from the Calla, all I can say is I wish’ee joy of the riddle, for no one knows what speed the train draws when it’s crossing the plains. It comes slow and stately enough to the far side of the river, but that means little.”

“No,” Roland agreed, “it doesn’t.” He considered. “Twenty-seven days left?”

“Twenty-six now,” Callahan said quietly.

“One thing, Roland,” Overholser said. He spoke apologetically, but his jaw was jutting. Eddie thought he’d backslid to the kind of guy you could dislike on sight. If you had a problem with authority figures, that was, and Eddie always had.

Roland raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“We haven’t said yes.” Overholser glanced at Slightman the Elder, as if for support, and Slightman nodded agreement.

“Ye must ken we have no way of knowing y’are who you say y’are,” Slightman said, rather apologetically. “My family had no books growing up, and there’s none out at the ranch—I’m foreman of Eisenhart’s Rocking B—except for the stockline books, but growing up I heard as many tales of Gilead and gunslingers and Arthur Eld as any other boy…heard of Jericho Hill and such blood-and-thunder tales of pretend…but I never heard of a gunslinger missing two of his fingers, or a brown-skinned woman gunslinger, or one who won’t be old enough to shave for years yet.”

His son looked shocked, and in an agony of embarrassment as well. Slightman looked rather embarrassed himself, but pushed on.

“I cry your pardon if what I say offends, indeed I do—”

“Hear him, hear him well,” Overholser rumbled. Eddie was starting to think that if the man’s jaw jutted out much further, it would snap clean off.

“—but any decision we make will have long echoes. Ye must see it’s so. If we make the wrong one, it could mean the death of our town, and all in it.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” Tian Jaffords cried indignantly. “Do you think ’ese’re a fraud? Good gods, man, have’ee notlooked at him? Do’ee not have—”

His wife grasped his arm hard enough to pinch white marks into his farmer’s tan with the tips of her fingers. Tian looked at her and fell quiet, though his lips were pressed together tightly.

Somewhere in the distance, a crow called and a rustie answered in its slightly shriller voice. Then all was silent. One by one they turned to Roland of Gilead to see how he would reply.

Five

It was always the same, and it made him tired. They wanted help, but they also wanted references. A parade of witnesses, if they could get them. They wanted rescue without risk, just to close their eyes and be saved.

Roland rocked slowly back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. Then he nodded to himself and raised his head. “Jake,” he said. “Come to me.”

Jake glanced at Benny, his new friend, then got up and walked across to Roland. Oy walked at his heel, as always.

“Andy,” Roland said.

“Sai?”

“Bring me four of the plates we ate from.” As Andy did this, Roland spoke to Overholser: “You’re going to lose some crockery. When gunslingers come to town, sai, things get broken. It’s a simple fact of life.”

“Roland, I don’t think we need—”

“Hush now,” Roland said, and although his voice was gentle, Overholser hushed at once. “You’ve told your tale; now we tell ours.”

Andy’s shadow fell over Roland. The gunslinger looked up and took the plates, which hadn’t been rinsed and still gleamed with grease. Then he turned to Jake, where a remarkable change had taken place. Sitting with Benny the Kid, watching Oy do his small clever tricks and grinning with pride, Jake had looked like any other boy of twelve—carefree and full of the old Dick, likely as not. Now the smile had fallen away and it was hard to tell just what his age might have been. His blue eyes looked into Roland’s, which were of almost the same shade. Beneath his shoulder, the Ruger Jake had taken from his father’s desk in another life hung in its docker’s clutch. The trigger was secured with a rawhide loop which Jake now loosened without looking. It took only a single tug.

“Say your lesson, Jake, son of Elmer, and be true.”

Roland half-expected either Eddie or Susannah to interfere, but neither did. He looked at them. Their faces were as cold and grave as Jake’s. Good.

Jake’s voice was also without expression, but the words came out hard and sure.

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand—”

“I don’t see what this—” Overholser began.

“Shut up,” Susannah said, and pointed a finger at him.

Jake seemed not to have heard. His eyes never left Roland’s. The boy’s right hand lay on his upper chest, the fingers spread. “He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.”

Jake paused. Drew in breath. And let it out speaking.

“I kill with my heart.”

“Kill these,” Roland remarked, and with no more warning than that, slung all four of the plates high into the air. They rose, spinning and separating, black shapes against the white sky.

Jake’s hand, the one resting on his chest, became a blur. It pulled the Ruger from the docker’s clutch, swung it up, and began pulling the trigger while Roland’s hand was still in the air. The plates did not seem to explode one after the other but rather all at once. The pieces rained down on the clearing. A few fell into the fire, puffing up ash and sparks. One or two clanged off Andy’s steel head.

Roland snatched upward, open hands moving in a blur. Although he had given them no command, Eddie and Susannah did the same, did it even while the visitors from Calla Bryn Sturgis cringed, shocked by the loudness of the gunfire. And the speed of the shots.

“Look here at us, do ya, and say thankee,” Roland said. He held out his hands. Eddie and Susannah did the same. Eddie had caught three pottery shards. Susannah had five (and a shallow cut on the pad of one finger). Roland had snatched a full dozen pieces of falling shrapnel. It looked like almost enough to make a whole plate, were the pieces glued back together.

The six from the Calla stared, unbelieving. Benny the Kid still had his hands over his ears; now he lowered them slowly. He was looking at Jake as one might look at a ghost or an apparition from the sky.

“My…God,” Callahan said. “It’s like a trick in some old Wild West show.”

“It’s no trick,” Roland said, “never think it. It’s the Way of the Eld. We are of that an-tet, khef and ka, watch and warrant. Gunslingers, do ya. And now I’ll tell you what we will do.” His eyes sought Overholser’s. “What wewill do, I say, for no man bids us. Yet I think nothing I say will discomfort you too badly. If mayhap it does—” Roland shrugged.If it does, too bad, that shrug said.

He dropped the pottery shards between his boots and dusted his hands.

“If those had been Wolves,” he said, “there would have been fifty-six left to trouble you instead of sixty. Four of them lying dead on the ground before you could draw a breath. Killed by a boy.” He gazed at Jake. “What you wouldcall a boy, mayhap.” Roland paused. “We’re used to long odds.”

“The young fella’s a breathtaking shot, I’d grant ye,” said Slightman the Elder. “But there’s a difference between clay dishes and Wolves on horseback.”

“For you, sai, perhaps. Not for us. Not once the shooting starts. When the shooting starts, we kill what moves. Isn’t that why you sought us?”

“Suppose they can’t be shot?” Overholser asked. “Can’t be laid low by even the hardest of hard calibers?”

“Why do you waste time when time is short?” Roland asked evenly. “Youknow they can be killed or you never would have come out here to us in the first place. I didn’t ask, because the answer is self-evident.”

Overholser had once more flushed dark red. “Cry your pardon,” he said.

Benny, meanwhile, continued to stare at Jake with wide eyes, and Roland felt a minor pang of regret for both boys. They might still manage some sort of friendship, but what had just happened would change it in fundamental ways, turn it into something quite unlike the usual lighthearted khef boys shared. Which was a shame, because when Jake wasn’t being called upon to be a gunslinger, he was still only a child. Close to the age Roland himself had been when the test of manhood had been thrust on him. But he would not be young much longer, very likely. And it was a shame.

“Listen to me now,” Roland said, “and hear me very well. We leave you shortly to go back to our own camp and take our own counsel. Tomorrow, when we come to your town, we’ll put up with one of you—”

“Come to Seven-Mile,” Overholser said. “We’ll have you and say thankee, Roland.”

“Our place is much smaller,” Tian said, “but Zalia and I—”

“We’d be so pleased to have’ee,” Zalia said. She had flushed as deeply as Overholser. “Aye, we would.”

Roland said, “Do you have a house as well as a church, sai Callahan?”

Callahan smiled. “I do, and tell God thankya.”

“We might stay with you on our first night in Calla Bryn Sturgis,” Roland said. “Could we do that?”

“Sure, and welcome.”

“You could show us your church. Introduce us to its mysteries.”

Callahan’s gaze was steady. “I’d welcome the chance to do that.”

“In the days after,” Roland said, smiling, “we shall throw ourselves on the hospitality of the town.”

“You’ll not find it wanting,” Tian said. “That I promise ye.” Overholser and Slightman were nodding.

“If the meal we’ve just eaten is any sign, I’m sure that’s true. We say thankee, sai Jaffords; thankee one and all. For a week we four will go about your town, poking our noses here and there. Mayhap a bit longer, but likely a week. We’ll look at the lay of the land and the way the buildings are set on it. Look with an eye to the coming of these Wolves. We’ll talk to folk, and folk will talk to us—those of you here now will see to that, aye?”

Callahan was nodding. “I can’t speak for the Manni, but I’m sure the rest will be more than willing to talk to you about the Wolves. God and Man Jesus knows they’re no secret. And those of the Crescent are frightened to death of them. If they see a chance you might be able to help us, they’ll do all you ask.”

“The Manni will speak to me as well,” Roland said. “I’ve held palaver with them before.”

“Don’t be carried away with the Old Fella’s enthusiasm, Roland,” Overholser said. He raised his plump hands in the air, a gesture of caution. “There are others in town you’ll have to convince—”

“Vaughn Eisenhart, for one,” said Slightman.

“Aye, and Eben Took, do ya,” Overholser said. “The General Store’s the only thing his name’s on, ye ken, but he owns the boarding house and the restaurant out front of it…as well’s a half-interest in the livery…and loan-paper on most of the smallholds hereabouts.

“When it comes to the smallholds, ’ee mustn’t neglect Bucky Javier,” Overholser rumbled. “He ain’t the biggest of em, but only because he gave away half of what he had to his young sister when she married.” Overholser leaned toward Roland, his face alight with a bit of town history about to be passed on. “Roberta Javier, Bucky’s sissa, she’s lucky,” he said. “When the Wolves came last time, she and her twin brother were but a year old. So they were passed over.”

“Bucky’s own twin brother was took the time before,” Slightman said. “Bully’s dead now almost four year. Of the sickness. Since then, there ain’t enough Bucky can do for those younger two. But you should talk to him, aye. Bucky’s not got but eighty acre, yet he’s trig.”

Roland thought,They still don’t see .

“Thank you,” he said. “What lies directly ahead for us comes down to looking and listening, mostly. When it’s done, we’ll ask that whoever is in charge of the feather take it around so that a meeting can be called. At that meeting, we’ll tell you if the town can be defended and how many men we’ll want to help us, if it can be done.”

Roland saw Overholser puffing up to speak and shook his head at him.

“It won’t be many we’d want, in any case,” he said. “We’re gunslingers, not an army. We think differently, act differently, than armies do. We might ask for as many as five to stand with us. Probably fewer—only two or three. But we might need more to help us prepare.”

“Why?” Benny asked.

Roland smiled. “That I can’t say yet, son, because I haven’t seen how things are in your Calla. But in cases like this, surprise is always the most potent weapon, and it usually takes many people to prepare a good surprise.”

“The greatest surprise to the Wolves,” Tian said, “would be if we fought at all.”

“Suppose you decide the Callacan’t be defended?” Overholser asked. “Tell me that, I beg.”

“Then I and my friends will thank you for your hospitality and ride on,” Roland said, “for we have our own business farther along the Path of the Beam.” He observed Tian’s and Zalia’s crestfallen faces for a moment, then said: “I don’t think that’s likely, you know. There’s usually a way.”

“May the meeting receive your judgment favorably,” Overholser said.

Roland hesitated. This was the point where he could hammer the truth home, should he want to. If these people still believed a tet of gunslingers would be bound by what farmers and ranchers decided in a public meeting, they reallyhad lost the shape of the world as it once was. But was that so bad? In the end, matters would play out and become part of his long history. Or not. If not, he would finish his history and his quest in Calla Bryn Sturgis, moldering beneath a stone. Perhaps not even that; perhaps he’d finish in a dead heap somewhere east of town, he and his friends with him, so much rotting meat to be picked over by the crows and the rusties. Ka would tell. It always did.

Meanwhile, they were looking at him.

Roland stood up, wincing at a hard flare of pain in his right hip as he did so. Taking their cues from him, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake also rose.

“We’re well-met,” Roland said. “As for what lies ahead, there will be water if God wills it.”

Callahan said, “Amen.”

One

“Gray horses,” Eddie said.

“Aye,” Roland agreed.

“Fifty or sixty of them, all on gray horses.”

“Aye, so they did say.”

“And didn’t think it the least bit strange,” Eddie mused.

“No. They didn’t seem to.”

“Is it?”

“Fifty or sixty horses, all the same color? I’d say so, yes.”

“These Calla-folk raise horses themselves.”

“Aye.”

“Brought some for us to ride.” Eddie, who had never ridden a horse in his life, was grateful that at least had been put off, but didn’t say so.

“Aye, tethered over the hill.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Smelled em. I imagine the robot had the keeping of them.”

“Why would these folks take fifty or sixty horses, all the same shade, as a matter of course?”

“Because they don’t really think about the Wolves or anything to do with them,” Roland said. “They’re too busy being afraid, I think.”

Eddie whistled five notes that didn’t quite make a melody. Then he said, “Gray horses.”

Roland nodded. “Gray horses.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then laughed. Eddie loved it when Roland laughed. The sound was dry, as ugly as the calls of those giant blackbirds he called rusties…but he loved it. Maybe it was just that Roland laughed so seldom.

It was late afternoon. Overhead, the clouds had thinned enough to turn a pallid blue that was almost the color of sky. The Overholser party had returned to their camp. Susannah and Jake had gone back along the forest road to pick more muffin-balls. After the big meal they’d packed away, none of them wanted anything heavier. Eddie sat on a log, whittling. Beside him sat Roland, with all their guns broken down and spread out before him on a piece of deerskin. He oiled the pieces one by one, holding each bolt and cylinder and barrel up to the daylight for a final look before setting it aside for reassembly.

“You told them it was out of their hands,” Eddie said, “but they didn’t ken that any more than they did the business about all those gray horses. And you didn’t press it.”

“Only would have distressed them,” Roland said. “There was a saying in Gilead: Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie said. “There was a saying in Brooklyn: You can’t get snot off a suede jacket.” He held up the object he was making. It would be a top, Roland thought, a toy for a baby. And again he wondered how much Eddie might know about the woman he lay down with each night. Thewomen . Not on the top of his mind, but underneath. “If you decide wecan help them, then wehave to help them. That’s what Eld’s Way really boils down to, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Roland said.

“And if we can’t get any of them to stand with us, we stand alone.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Roland said. He had a saucer filled with light, sweet gun-oil. Now he dipped the corner of a chamois rag into it, picked up the spring-clip of Jake’s Ruger, and began to clean it. “Tian Jaffords would stand with us, come to that. Surely he has a friend or two who’d do the same regardless of what their meeting decides. In a pinch, there’s his wife.”

“And if we get them both killed, what about their kids? They have five. Also, I think there’s an old guy in the picture. One of em’s Grampy. They probably take care of him, too.”

Roland shrugged. A few months ago, Eddie would have mistaken that gesture—and the gunslinger’s expressionless face—for indifference. Now he knew better. Roland was as much a prisoner of his rules and traditions as Eddie had ever been of heroin.

“What ifwe get killed in this little town, screwing around with these Wolves?” Eddie asked. “Isn’t your last thought gonna be something like, ‘I can’t believe what a putz I was, throwing away my chance to get to the Dark Tower in order to take up for a bunch of snotnose brats.’ Or similar sentiments.”

“Unless we stand true, we’ll never get within a thousand miles of the Tower,” Roland said. “Would you tell me you don’t feel that?”

Eddie couldn’t, because he did. He felt something else, as well: a species of bloodthirsty eagerness. He actually wanted to fight again. Wanted to have a few of these Wolves, whatever they were, in the sights of one of Roland’s big revolvers. There was no sense kidding himself about the truth: he wanted to take a few scalps.

Or wolf-masks.

“What’s really troubling you, Eddie? I’d have you speak while it’s just you and me.” The gunslinger’s mouth quirked in a thin, slanted smile. “Do ya, I beg.”

“Shows, huh?”

Roland shrugged and waited.

Eddie considered the question. It was abig question. Facing it made him feel desperate and inadequate, pretty much the way he’d felt when faced with the task of carving the key that would let Jake Chambers through into their world. Only then he’d had the ghost of his big brother to blame, Henry whispering deep down in his head that he was no good, never had been, never would be. Now it was just the enormity of what Roland was asking. Because everything was troubling him, everything was wrong.Everything . Or maybewrong was the wrong word, and by a hundred and eighty degrees. Because in another way things seemed tooright, too perfect, too…

“Arrrggghh,” Eddie said. He grabbed bunches of hair on both sides of his head and pulled. “I can’t think of a way to say it.”

“Then say the first thing that comes into your mind. Don’t hesitate.”

“Nineteen,” Eddie said. “This whole deal has gone nineteen.”

He fell backward onto the fragrant forest floor, covered his eyes, and kicked his feet like a kid doing a tantrum. He thought:Maybe killing a few Wolves will set me right. Maybe that’s all it will take.

Two

Roland gave him a full minute by count and then said, “Do you feel better?”

Eddie sat up. “Actually I do.”

Roland nodded, smiling a little. “Then can you say more? If you can’t, we’ll let it go, but I’ve come to respect your feelings, Eddie—far more than you realize—and if you’d speak, I’d hear.”

What he said was true. The gunslinger’s initial feelings for Eddie had wavered between caution and contempt for what Roland saw as his weakness of character. Respect had come more slowly. It had begun in Balazar’s office, when Eddie had fought naked. Very few men Roland had known could have done that. It had grown with his realization of how much Eddie was like Cuthbert. Then, on the mono, Eddie had acted with a kind of desperate creativity that Roland could admire but never equal. Eddie Dean was possessed of Cuthbert Allgood’s always puzzling and sometimes annoying sense of the ridiculous; he was also possessed of Alain Johns’s deep flashes of intuition. Yet in the end, Eddie was like neither of Roland’s old friends. He was sometimes weak and self-centered, but possessed of deep reservoirs of courage and courage’s good sister, what Eddie himself sometimes called “heart.”

But it was his intuition Roland wanted to tap now.

“All right, then,” Eddie said. “Don’t stop me. Don’t ask questions. Just listen.”

Roland nodded. And hoped Susannah and Jake wouldn’t come back, at least not just yet.

“I look in the sky—up there where the clouds are breaking right this minute—and I see the number nineteen written in blue.”

Roland looked up. And yes, it was there. He saw it, too. But he also saw a cloud like a turtle, and another hole in the thinning dreck that looked like a gunnywagon.

“I look in the trees and see nineteen. Into the fire, see nineteen. Names make nineteen, like Overholser’s and Callahan’s. But that’s just what I cansay, what I cansee, what I can get hold of.” Eddie was speaking with desperate speed, looking directly into Roland’s eyes. “Here’s another thing. It has to do with todash. I know you guys sometimes think everything reminds me of getting high, and maybe that’s right, but Roland, going todash is like being stoned.”

Eddie always spoke to him of these things as if Roland had never put anything stronger than graf into his brain and body in all his long life, and that was far from the truth. He might remind Eddie of this at another time, but not now.

“Just being here in your world is like going todash. Because…ah, man, this is hard…Roland, everything here is real, but it’s not.”

Roland thought of reminding Eddie this wasn’this world, not anymore—for him the city of Lud had been the end of Mid-World and the beginning of all the mysteries that lay beyond—but again kept his mouth closed.

Eddie grasped a handful of duff, scooping up fragrant needles and leaving five black marks in the shape of a hand on the forest floor. “Real,” he said. “I can feel it and smell it.” He put the handful of needles to his mouth and ran out his tongue to touch them. “I can taste it. And at the same time, it’s as unreal as a nineteen you might see in the fire, or that cloud in the sky that looks like a turtle. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand it very well,” Roland murmured.

“The people are real. You…Susannah…Jake…that guy Gasher who snatched Jake…Overholser and the Slightmans. But the way stuff from my world keeps showing up over here, that’snot real. It’s not sensible or logical, either, but that’s not what I mean.It’s just not real . Why do people over here sing ‘Hey Jude’? I don’t know. That cyborg bear, Shardik—where do I know that name from? Why did it remind me of rabbits? All that shit about the Wizard of Oz, Roland—all that happened to us, I have no doubt of it, but at the same time it doesn’t seem real to me. It seems like todash. Like nineteen. And what happens after the Green Palace? Why, we walk into the woods, just like Hansel and Gretel. There’s a road for us to walk on. Muffin-balls for us to pick. Civilization has ended. Everything is coming unraveled. You told us so. We saw it in Lud. Except guess what? It’s not! Booya, assholes, gotcha again!”

Eddie gave a short laugh. It sounded shrill and unhealthy. When he brushed his hair back from his forehead, he left a dark smear of forest earth on his brow.

“The joke is that, out here a billion miles from nowhere, we come upon a storybook town. Civilized. Decent. The kind of folks you feel you know. Maybe you don’t like em all—Overholser’s a little hard to swallow—but you feel you know em.”

Eddie was right about that, too, Roland thought. He hadn’t even seen Calla Bryn Sturgis yet, and already it reminded him of Mejis. In some ways that seemed perfectly reasonable—farming and ranching towns the world over bore similarities to each other—but in other ways it was disturbing. Disturbing ashell . The sombrero Slightman had been wearing, for instance. Was it possible that here, thousands of miles from Mejis, the men should wear similar hats? He supposed it might be. But was it likely that Slightman’s sombrero should remind Roland so strongly of the one worn by Miguel, the oldmozo at Seafront in Mejis, all those years before? Or was that only his imagination?

As for that, Eddie says I have none,he thought.

“The storybook town has a fairy-tale problem,” Eddie was continuing. “And so the storybook people call on a band of movie-show heroes to save them from the fairy tale villains. I know it’s real—people are going to die, very likely, and the blood will be real, the screams will be real, the crying afterward will be real—but at the same time there’s something about it that feels no more real than stage scenery.”

“And New York?” Roland asked. “How did that feel to you?”

“The same,” Eddie said. “I mean, think about it. Nineteen books left on the table after Jake tookCharlie the Choo-Choo and the riddle book…and then, out of all the hoods in New York,Balazar shows up!That fuck!”

“Here, here, now!” Susannah called merrily from behind them. “No profanity, boys.” Jake was pushing her up the road, and her lap was full of muffin-balls. They both looked cheerful and happy. Roland supposed that eating well earlier in the day had something to do with it.

Roland said, “Sometimes that feeling of unreality goes away, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not exactly unreality, Roland. It—”

“Never mind splitting nails to make tacks. Sometimes it goes away. Doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Eddie said. “When I’m with her.”

He went to her. Bent. Kissed her. Roland watched them, troubled.

Three

The light was fading out of the day. They sat around the fire and let it go. What little appetite they’d been able to muster had been easily satisfied by the muffin-balls Susannah and Jake had brought back to camp. Roland had been meditating on something Slightman had said, and more deeply than was probably healthy. Now he pushed it aside still half-chewed and said, “Some of us or all of us may meet later tonight in the city of New York.”

“I only hope I get to go this time,” Susannah said.

“That’s as ka will,” Roland said evenly. “The important thing is that you stay together. If there’s only one who makes the journey, I think it’s apt to be you who goes, Eddie. If only one makes the journey, that one should stay exactly where he…or mayhapshe …is until the bells start again.”

“Thekammen, ” Eddie said. “That’s what Andy called em.”

“Do you all understand that?”

They nodded, and looking into their faces, Roland realized that each one of them was reserving the right to decide what to do when the time came, based upon the circumstances. Which was exactly right. They were either gunslingers or they weren’t, after all.

He surprised himself by uttering a brief snort of a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Jake asked.

“I was just thinking that long life brings strange companions,” Roland said.

“If you mean us,” Eddie said, “lemme tell you something, Roland—you’re not exactly Norman Normal yourself.”

“I suppose not,” Roland said. “If it’s a group that crosses—two, a trio, perhaps all of us—we should join hands when the chimes start.”

“Andy said we had to concentrate on each other,” Eddie said. “To keep from getting lost.”

Susannah surprised them all by starting to sing. Only to Roland, it sounded more like a galley-chorus—a thing made to be shouted out verse by verse—than an actual song. Yet even without a real tune to carry, her voice was melodious enough:“Children, when ye hear the music of the clarinet…Children, when ye hear the music of the flute! Children, when ye hear the music of the tam-bou-rine…Ye must bow down and wor-ship the iyyy-DOL!”

“What is it?”

“A field-chant,” she said. “The sort of thing my grandparents and great-grandparents might have sung while they were picking ole massa’s cotton. But times change.” She smiled. “I first heard it in a Greenwich Village coffee-house, back in 1962. And the man who sang it was a white blues-shouter named Dave Van Ronk.”

“I bet Aaron Deepneau was there, too,” Jake breathed. “Hell, I bet he was sitting at the next damntable .”

Susannah turned to him, surprised and considering. “Why do you say so, sugar?”

Eddie said, “Because he overheard Calvin Tower saying this guy Deepneau had been hanging around the Village since…what’d he say, Jake?”

“Not the Village, Bleecker Street,” Jake said, laughing a little. “Mr. Tower said Mr. Deepneau was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. That must be a harmonica.”

“It is,” Eddie said, “and while I might not bet the farm on what Jake’s saying, I’d go a lot more than pocket-change. Sure, Deepneau was there. It wouldn’t even surprise me to find out that Jack Andolini was tending the bar. Because that’s just how things work in the Land of Nineteen.”

“In any case,” Roland said, “those of us who cross should stay together. And I mean within a hand’s reach, all the time.”

“I don’t think I’ll be there,” Jake said.

“Why do you say so, Jake?” the gunslinger asked, surprised.

“Because I’ll never fall asleep,” Jake said. “I’m too excited.”

But eventually they all slept.

Four

He knows it’s a dream, something brought on by no more than Slightman’s chance remark, and yet he can’t escape it.Always look for the back door,Cort used to tell them, but if there’s a back door in this dream, Roland cannot find it. I heard of Jericho Hill and such blood-and-thunder tales of pretend,that was what Eisenhart’s foreman had said, only Jericho Hill had seemed real enough to Roland. Why would it not? He had been there. It had been the end of them. The end of a whole world.

The day is suffocatingly hot; the sun reaches its roofpeak and then seems to stay there, as if the hours have been suspended. Below them is a long sloping field filled with great gray-black stone faces, eroded statues left by people who are long gone, and Grissom’s men advance relentlessly among them as Roland and his final few companions withdraw ever upward, shooting as they go. The gunfire is constant, unending, the sound of bullets whining off the stone faces a shrill counterpoint that sinks into their heads like the bloodthirsty whine of mosquitoes. Jamie DeCurry has been killed by a sniper, perhaps Grissom’s eagle-eyed son or Grissom himself. With Alain the end was far worse; he was shot in the dark the night before the final battle by his two best friends, a stupid error, a horrible death. There was no help. DeMullet’s column was ambushed and slaughtered at Rimrocks and when Alain rode back after midnight to tell them, Roland and Cuthbert…the sound of their guns…and oh, when Alain cried out their names—

And now they’re at the top and there’s nowhere left to run. Behind them to the east is a shale-crumbly drop to the Salt—what five hundred miles south of here is called the Clean Sea. To the west is the hill of the stone faces, and Grissom’s screaming, advancing men. Roland and his own men have killed hundreds, but there are still two thousand left, and that’s a conservative estimate. Two thousand men, their howling faces painted blue, some armed with guns and even a few with Bolts—against a dozen. That’s all that’s left of them now, here at the top of Jericho Hill, under the burning sky. Jamie dead, Alain dead under the guns of his best friends—stolid, dependable Alain, who could have ridden on to safety but chose not to—and Cuthbert has been shot. How many times? Five? Six? His shirt is soaked crimson to his skin. One side of his face has been drowned in blood; the eye on that side bulges sightlessly on his cheek. Yet he still has Roland’s horn, the one which was blown by Arthur Eld, or so the stories did say. He will not give it back. “For I blow it sweeter than you ever did,” he tells Roland, laughing. “You can have it again when I’m dead. Neglect not to pluck it up, Roland, for it’s your property.”

Cuthbert Allgood, who had once ridden into the Barony of Mejis with a rook’s skull mounted on the pommel of his saddle. “The lookout,” he had called it, and talked to it just as though it were alive, for such was his fancy and sometimes he drove Roland half-mad with his foolishness, and here he is under the burning sun, staggering toward him with a smoking revolver in one hand and Eld’s Horn in the other, blood-bolted and half-blinded and dying…but still laughing. Ah dear gods, laughing and laughing.

“Roland!” he cries. “We’ve been betrayed! We’re outnumbered! Our backs are to the sea! We’ve got em right where we want em! Shall we charge?”

And Roland understands he is right. If their quest for the Dark Tower is really to end here on Jericho Hill—betrayed by one of their own and then overwhelmed by this barbaric remnant of John Farson’s army—then let it end splendidly.

“Aye!” he shouts. “Aye, very well. Ye of the castle, to me! Gunslingers, to me! To me, I say!”

“As for gunslingers, Roland,” Cuthbert says, “I am here. And we are the last.”

Roland first looks at him, then embraces him under that hideous sky. He can feel Cuthbert’s burning body, its suicidal trembling thinness. And yet he’s laughing. Bert is still laughing.

“All right,” Roland says hoarsely, looking around at his few remaining men. “We’re going into them. And will accept no quarter.”

“Nope, no quarter, absolutely none,” Cuthbert says.

“We will not accept their surrender if offered.”

“Under no circumstances!” Cuthbert agrees, laughing harder than ever. “Not even should all two thousand lay down their arms.”

“Then blow that fucking horn.”

Cuthbert raises the horn to his bloody lips and blows a great blast—the final blast, for when it drops from his fingers a minute later (or perhaps it’s five, or ten; time has no meaning in that final battle), Roland will let it lie in the dust. In his grief and bloodlust he will forget all about Eld’s Horn.

“And now, my friends—hile!”

“Hile!” the last dozen cry beneath that blazing sun. It is the end of them, the end of Gilead, the end of everything, and he no longer cares. The old red fury, dry and maddening, is settling over his mind, drowning all thought.One last time, then,he thinks. Let it be so.

“To me!” cries Roland of Gilead. “Forward! For the Tower!”

“The Tower!” Cuthbert cries out beside him, reeling. He holds Eld’s Horn up to the sky in one hand, his revolver in the other.

“No prisoners!” Roland screams. “NO PRISONERS!”

They rush forward and down toward Grissom’s blue-faced horde, he and Cuthbert in the lead, and as they pass the first of the great gray-black faces leaning in the high grass, spears and bolts and bullets flying all around them, the chimes begin. It is a melody far beyond beautiful; it threatens to tear him to pieces with its stark loveliness.

Not now,he thinks, ah, gods, not now—let me finish it. Let me finish it with my friend at my side and have peace at last. Please.

He reaches for Cuthbert’s hand. For one moment he feels the touch of his friend’s blood-sticky fingers, there on Jericho Hill where his brave and laughing existence was snuffed out…and then the fingers touching his are gone. Or rather, his have melted clean through Bert’s. He is falling, he is falling, the world is darkening, he is falling, the chimes are playing, thekammenare playing (“Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it?”) and he is falling, Jericho Hill is gone, Eld’s Horn is gone, there’s darkness and red letters in the darkness, some are Great Letters, enough so he can read what they say, the words say —

Five

They saidDON’T WALK . Although, Roland saw, people were crossing the street in spite of the sign. They would take a quick look in the direction of the flowing traffic, and then go for it. One fellow crossed in spite of an oncoming yellow tack-see. The tack-see swerved and blared its horn. The walking man yelled fearlessly at it, then shot up the middle finger of his right hand and shook it after the departing vehicle. Roland had an idea that this gesture probably did not mean long days and pleasant nights.

It was night in New York City, and although there were people moving everywhere, none were of his ka-tet. Here, Roland admitted to himself, was one contingency he had hardly expected: that the one person to show up would be him. Not Eddie, but him. Where in the name of all the gods was he supposed to go? And what was he supposed to do when he got there?

Remember your own advice,he thought.“If you show up alone,” you told them, “stay where you are.”

But did that mean to just roost on…he looked up at the green street-sign…on the corner of Second Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, doing nothing but watching a sign change fromDON’T WALK in red toWALK in white?

While he was pondering this, a voice called out from behind him, high and delirious with joy.“Roland! Sugarbunch! Turn around and see me! See me very well!”

Roland turned, already knowing what he would see, but smiling all the same. How terrible to relive that day at Jericho Hill, but what an antidote was this—Susannah Dean, flying down Fifty-fourth Street toward him, laughing and weeping with joy, her arms held out.

“My legs!”She was screaming it at the top of her voice. “My legs! I have my legs back! Oh Roland, honeydoll, praise the Man Jesus, I HAVE MY LEGS BACK!”

Six

She threw herself into his embrace, kissing his cheek, his neck, his brow, his nose, his lips, saying it over and over again: “My legs, oh Roland do you see, I can walk, I canrun, I have my legs, praise God and all the saints,I have my legs back. ”

“Give you every joy of them, dear heart,” Roland said. Falling into the patois of the place in which he had lately found himself was an old trick of his—or perhaps it was habit. For now it was the patois of the Calla. He supposed if he spent much time here in New York, he’d soon find himself waving his middle finger at tack-sees.

But I’d always be an outsider,he thought.Why, I can’t even say “aspirin.” Every time I try, the word comes out wrong .

She took his right hand, dragged it down with surprising force, and placed it on her shin. “Do you feel it?” she demanded. “I mean, I’m not just imagining it, am I?”

Roland laughed. “Did you not run to me as if with wings on em like Raf? Yes, Susannah.” He put his left hand, the one with all the fingers, on her left leg. “One leg and two legs, each with a foot below them.” He frowned. “We ought to get you some shoes, though.”

“Why? This is a dream. It has to be.”

He looked at her steadily, and slowly her smile faded.

“Not? Really not?”

“We’ve gone todash. We are really here. If you cut your foot, Mia, you’ll have a cut foot tomorrow, when you wake up aside the campfire.”

The other name had come out almost—but not quite—on its own. Now he waited, all his muscles wire-tight, to see if she would notice. If she did, he’d apologize and tell her he’d gone todash directly from a dream of someone he’d known long ago (although there had only been one woman of any importance after Susan Delgado, and her name had not been Mia).

But shedidn’t notice, and Roland wasn’t much surprised.

Because she was getting ready to go on another of her hunting expeditions—as Mia—when thekammenrang. And unlike Susannah, Mia has legs. She banquets on rich foods in a great hall, she talks with all her friends, she didn’t go to Morehouse or to no house, and she has legs. So this one has legs. This one is both women, although she doesn’t know it .

Suddenly Roland found himself hoping that they wouldn’t meet Eddie. He might sense the difference even if Susannah herself didn’t. And that could be bad. If Roland had had three wishes, like the foundling prince in a child’s bedtime story, right now all three would have been for the same thing: to get through this business in Calla Bryn Sturgis before Susannah’s pregnancy—Mia’spregnancy—became obvious. Having to deal with both things at the same time would be hard.

Perhaps impossible.

She was looking at him with wide, questioning eyes. Not because he’d called her by a name that wasn’t hers, but because she wanted to know what they should do next.

“It’s your city,” he said. “I would see the bookstore. And the vacant lot.” He paused. “And the rose. Can you take me?”

“Well,” she said, looking around, “it’s my city, no doubt about that, but Second Avenue sure doesn’t look like it did back in the days when Detta got her kicks shoplifting in Macy’s.”

“So you can’t find the bookstore and the vacant lot?” Roland was disappointed but far from desolate. There would be a way. There was always a—

“Oh, no problem there,” she said. “The streets are the same. New York’s just a grid, Roland, with the avenues running one way and the streets the other. Easy as pie. Come on.”

The sign had gone back toDON’T WALK , but after a quick glance uptown, Susannah took his arm and they crossed Fifty-fourth to the other side. Susannah strode fearlessly in spite of her bare feet. The blocks were short but crowded with exotic shops. Roland couldn’t help goggling, but his lack of attention seemed safe enough; although the sidewalks were crowded, no one crashed into them. Roland could hear his bootheels clopping on the sidewalk, however, and could see the shadows they were casting in the light of the display windows.

Almost here,he thought.Were the force that brought us any more powerful, we wouldbe here .

And, he realized, the force might indeed grow stronger, assuming that Callahan was right about what was hidden under the floor of his church. As they drew closer to the town and to the source of the thing doing this…

Susannah twitched his arm. Roland stopped immediately. “Is it your feet?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and Roland saw she was frightened. “Why is it sodark ?”

“Susannah, it’s night.”

She gave his arm an impatient shake. “I know that, I’m not blind. Can’t you…” She hesitated. “Can’t youfeel it?”

Roland realized he could. For one thing, the darkness on Second Avenue really wasn’t dark at all. The gunslinger still couldn’t comprehend the prodigal way in which these people of New York squandered the things those of Gilead had held most rare and precious. Paper; water; refined oil; artificial light. This last was everywhere. There was the glow from the store windows (although most were closed, the displays were still lit), the even harsher glow from a popkin-selling place called Blimpie’s, and over all this, peculiar orange electric lamps that seemed to drench the very air with light. Yet Susannah was right. There was a black feel to the air in spite of the orange lamps. It seemed to surround the people who walked this street. It made him think about what Eddie had said earlier:This whole deal has gone nineteen .

But this darkness, more felt than seen, had nothing to do with nineteen. You had to subtract six in order to understand what was going on here. And for the first time, Roland really believed Callahan was right.

“Black Thirteen,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s brought us here, sent us todash, and we feel it all around us. It’s not the same as when I flew inside the grapefruit, but it’slike that.”

“It feels bad,” she said, speaking low.

“Itis bad,” he said. “Black Thirteen’s very likely the most terrible object from the days of Eld still remaining on the face of the earth. Not that the Wizard’s Rainbow was from then; I’m sure it existed even before—”

“Roland! Hey, Roland! Suze!”

They looked up and in spite of his earlier misgivings, Roland was immensely relieved to see not only Eddie, but Jake and Oy, as well. They were about a block and a half farther along. Eddie was waving. Susannah waved back exuberantly. Roland grabbed her arm before she started to run, which was clearly her intention.

“Mind your feet,” he said. “You don’t need to pick up some sort of infection and carry it back to the other side.”

They compromised at a rapid walk. Eddie and Jake, both shod, ran to meet them. Pedestrians moved out of their way without looking, or even breaking their conversations, Roland saw, and then observed that wasn’t quite true. There was a little boy, surely no older than three, walking sturdily along next to his mother. The woman seemed to notice nothing, but as Eddie and Jake swung around them, the toddler watched with wide, wondering eyes…and then actually stretched out a hand, as if to stroke the briskly trotting Oy.

Eddie pulled ahead of Jake and arrived first. He held Susannah out at arm’s length, looking at her. His expression, Roland saw, was really quite similar to that of the tot.

“Well? What do you think, sugar?” Susannah spoke nervously, like a woman who has come home to her husband with some radical new hairdo.

“A definite improvement,” Eddie said. “I don’t need em to love you, but they’re way beyond good and into the land of excellent. Christ, now you’re an inch taller than I am!”

Susannah saw this was true and laughed. Oy sniffed at the ankle that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen this woman, and then he laughed, too. It was an odd barky-bark of a sound, but quite clearly a laugh for all that.

“Like your legs, Suze,” Jake said, and the perfunctory quality of this compliment made Susannah laugh again. The boy didn’t notice; he had already turned to Roland. “Do you want to see the bookstore?”

“Is there anything to see?”

Jake’s face clouded. “Actually, not much. It’s closed.”

“I would see the vacant lot, if there’s time before we’re sent back,” Roland said. “And the rose.”

“Do they hurt?” Eddie asked Susannah. He was looking at her closely indeed.

“They feel fine,” she said, laughing.“Fine.”

“You look different.”

“I bet!” she said, and executed a little barefoot jig. It had been moons and moons since she had last danced, but the exultancy she so clearly felt made up for any lack of grace. A woman wearing a business suit and swinging a briefcase bore down on the ragged little party of wanderers, then abruptly veered off, actually taking a few steps into the street to get around them. “You bet I do, I gotlegs !”

“Just like the song says,” Eddie told her.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” he said, and slipped an arm around her waist. But again Roland saw him give her that searching, questioning look.But with luck he’ll leave it alone, Roland thought.

And that was what Eddie did. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then turned to Roland. “So you want to see the famous vacant lot and the even more famous rose, huh? Well, so do I. Lead on, Jake.”

Seven

Jake led them down Second Avenue, pausing only long enough so they could all take a quick peek into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. No one was wasting light in this shop, however, and there really wasn’t much to see. Roland was hoping for a look at the menu sign, but it was gone.

Reading his mind in the matter-of-fact way of people who share khef, Jake said, “He probably changes it every day.”

“Maybe,” Roland said. He looked in through the window a moment longer, saw nothing but darkened shelves, a few tables, and the counter Jake had mentioned—the one where the old fellows sat drinking coffee and playing this world’s version of Castles. Nothing to see, but something to feel, even through the glass: despair and loss. If it had been a smell, Roland thought, it would have been sour and a bit stale. The smell of failure. Maybe of good dreams that never grew. Which made it the perfect lever for someone like Enrico“Il Roche” Balazar.

“Seen enough?” Eddie asked.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

Eight

For Roland, the eight-block journey from Second and Fifty-fourth to Second and Forty-sixth was like visiting a country in which he had until that moment only half-believed.How much stranger must it be for Jake? he wondered. The bum who’d asked the boy for a quarter was gone, but the restaurant he’d been sitting near was there: Chew Chew Mama’s. This was on the corner of Second and Fifty-second. A block farther down was the record store, Tower of Power. It was still open—according to an overhead clock that told the time in large electric dots, it was only fourteen minutes after eight in the evening. Loud sounds were pouring out of the open door. Guitars and drums. This world’s music. It reminded him of the sacrificial music played by the Grays, back in the city of Lud, and why not? Thiswas Lud, in some twisted, otherwhere-and-when way. He was sure of it.

“It’s the Rolling Stones,” Jake said, “but not the one that was playing on the day I saw the rose. That one was ‘Paint It Black.’ ”

“Don’t you recognize this one?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, but I can’t remember the title.”

“Oh, but you should,” Eddie said. “It’s ‘Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown.’ ”

Susannah stopped, looked around. “Jake?”

Jake nodded. “He’s right.”

Eddie, meanwhile, had fished a piece of newspaper from the security-gated doorway next to Tower of Power Records. A section ofThe New York Times, in fact.

“Hon, didn’t your Ma ever teach you that gutter-trolling is generally not practiced by the better class of people?” Susannah asked.

Eddie ignored her. “Look at this,” he said. “All of you.”

Roland bent close, half-expecting to see news of another great plague, but there was nothing so shattering. At least not as far as he could tell.

“Read me what it says,” he asked Jake. “The letters swim in and out of my mind. I think it’s because we’re todash—caught in between—”

“RHODESIAN FORCES TIGHTEN HOLD ON MOZAMBIQUE VILLAGES,”Jake read.“TWO CARTER AIDES PREDICT A SAVING OF BILLIONS IN WELFARE PLAN. And down here,CHINESE DISCLOSE THAT 1976 QUAKE WAS DEADLIEST IN FOUR CENTURIES. Also—”

“Who’s Carter?” Susannah asked. “Is he the President before…Ronald Reagan?” She garnished the last two words with a large wink. Eddie had so far been unable to convince her that he was serious about Reagan’s being President. Nor would she believe Jake when the boy told her he knew it sounded crazy, but the idea was at least faintly plausible because Reagan had been governor of California. Susannah had simply laughed at this and nodded, as if giving him high marks for creativity. She knew Eddie had talked Jake into backing up his fish story, but she would not be hooked. She supposed she could see Paul Newman as President, maybe even Henry Fonda, who had looked presidential enough inFail-Safe, but the host ofDeath Valley Days ? Not on your bottom.

“Never mind Carter,” Eddie said. “Look at thedate .”

Roland tried, but it kept swimming in and out. It would almost settle into Great Letters that he could read, and then fall back into gibberish. “What is it, for your father’s sake?”

“June second,” Jake said. He looked at Eddie. “But if time’s the same here and over on the other side, shouldn’t it be Junefirst ?”

“But it’snot the same,” Eddie said grimly. “It’snot . Time goes by faster on this side. Game on. And the game-clock’s running fast.”

Roland considered. “If we come here again, it’s going to be later each time, isn’t it?”

Eddie nodded.

Roland went on, talking to himself as much as to the others. “Every minute we spend on the other side—the Calla side—a minute anda half goes by over here. Or maybe two.”

“No, not two,” Eddie said. “I’m sure it’s not going double-time.” But his uneasy glance back down at the date on the newspaper suggested he wasn’t sure at all.

“Even if you’re right,” Roland said, “all we can do now is go forward.”

“Toward the fifteenth of July,” Susannah said. “When Balazar and his gentlemen stop playing nice.”

“Maybe we ought to just let these Calla-folk do their own thing,” Eddie said. “I hate to say that, Roland, but maybe we should.”

“We can’t do that, Eddie.”

“Why not?”

“Because Callahan’s got Black Thirteen,” Susannah said. “Our help is his price for turning it over. And we need it.”

Roland shook his head. “He’ll turn it over in any case—I thought I was clear about that. He’s terrified of it.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I got that feeling, too.”

“We have to help them because it’s the Way of Eld,” Roland told Susannah. “And because the way of ka is always the way of duty.”

He thought he saw a glitter far down in her eyes, as though he’d said something funny. He supposed he had, but Susannah wasn’t the one he had amused. It had been either Detta or Mia who found those ideas funny. The question was which one. Or had it been both?

“I hate how it feels here,” Susannah said. “Thatdark feeling.”

“It’ll be better at the vacant lot,” Jake said. He started walking, and the others followed. “The rose makes everything better. You’ll see.”

Nine

When Jake crossed Fiftieth, he began to hurry. On the downtown side of Forty-ninth, he began to jog. At the corner of Second and Forty-eighth, he began to run. He couldn’t help it. He got a littleWALK help at Forty-eighth, but the sign on the post began to flash red as soon as he reached the far curb.

“Jake, wait up!” Eddie called from behind him, but Jake didn’t. Perhaps couldn’t. Certainly Eddie felt the pull of the thing; so did Roland and Susannah. There was a hum rising in the air, faint and sweet. It was everything the ugly black feeling around them was not.

To Roland the hum brought back memories of Mejis and Susan Delgado. Of kisses shared in a mattress of sweet grass.

Susannah remembered being with her father when she was little, crawling up into his lap and laying the smooth skin of her cheek against the rough weave of his sweater. She remembered how she would close her eyes and breathe deeply of the smell that was his smell and his alone: pipe tobacco and wintergreen and the Musterole he rubbed into his wrists, where the arthritis first began to bite him at the outrageous age of twenty-five. What these smells meant to her was that everything was all right.

Eddie found himself remembering a trip to Atlantic City when he’d been very young, no more than five or six. Their mother had taken them, and at one point in the day she and Henry had gone off to get ice cream cones. Mrs. Dean had pointed at the boardwalk and had said,You put your fanny right there, Mister Man, and keep it there until we get back . And he did. He could have sat there all day, looking down the slope of the beach at the gray pull and flow of the ocean. The gulls rode just above the foam, calling to each other. Each time the waves drew back, they left a slick expanse of wet brown sand so bright he could hardly look at it without squinting. The sound of the waves was both large and lulling.I could stay here forever, he remembered thinking.I could stay here forever because it’s beautiful and peaceful and…and all right. Everything here is all right.

That was what all five of them felt most strongly (for Oy felt it, too): the sense of something that was wonderfully and beautifully all right.

Roland and Eddie grasped Susannah by the elbows without so much as an exchanged glance. They lifted her bare feet off the sidewalk and carried her. At Second and Forty-seventh the traffic was against them, but Roland threw up a hand at the oncoming headlights and cried,“Hile! Stop in the name of Gilead!”

And they did. There was a scream of brakes, a crump of a front fender meeting a rear one, and the tinkle of falling glass, but they stopped. Roland and Eddie crossed in a spotlight glare of headlights and a cacophony of horns, Susannah between them with her restored (and already very dirty) feet three inches off the ground. Their sense of happiness and rightness grew stronger as they approached the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. Roland felt the hum of the rose racing deliriously in his blood.

Yes,Roland thought.By all the gods, yes. This is it. Perhaps not just a doorway to the Dark Tower, but the Tower itself. Gods, the strength of it! The pullof it! Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie —if only you were here!

Jake stood on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, looking at a board fence about five feet high. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. From the darkness beyond the fence came a strong harmonic humming. The sound of many voices, all singing together. Singing one vast open note.Here is yes, the voices said.Here is you may. Here is the good turn, the fortunate meeting, the fever that broke just before dawn and left your blood calm. Here is the wish that came true and the understanding eye. Here is the kindness you were given and thus learned to pass on. Here is the sanity and clarity you thought were lost. Here, everything is all right.

Jake turned to them. “Do you feel it?” he asked. “Do you?”

Roland nodded. So did Eddie.

“Suze?” the boy asked.

“It’s almost the loveliest thing in the world, isn’t it?” she said.Almost, Roland thought.She said almost. Nor did he miss the fact that her hand went to her belly and stroked as she said it.

Ten

The posters Jake remembered were there—Olivia Newton-John at Radio City Music Hall, G. Gordon Liddy and the Grots at a place called the Mercury Lounge, a horror movie calledWar of the Zombies,NO TRESPASSING . But—

“That’snot the same,” he said, pointing at a graffito in dusky pink. “It’s the same color, and the printing looks like the same person did it, but when I was here before, it was a poem about the Turtle. ‘See theTURTLE of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth.’ And then something about following the Beam.”

Eddie stepped closer and read this: “OhSUSANNAH-MIO , divided girl of mine, Done parked herRIG in theDIXIE PIG , in the year of ’99.” He looked at Susannah. “What in the hell doesthat mean? Any idea, Suze?”

She shook her head. Her eyes were very large. Frightened eyes, Roland thought. But which woman was frightened? He couldn’t tell. He only knew that Odetta Susannah Holmes had been divided from the beginning, and that “mio” was very close to Mia. The hum coming from the darkness behind the fence made it hard to think of these things. He wanted to go to the source of the hum right now.Needed to, as a man dying of thirst needs to go to water.

“Come on,” Jake said. “We can climb right over. It’s easy.”

Susannah looked down at her bare, dirty feet, and took a step backward. “Not me,” she said. “I can’t. Not without shoes.”

Which made perfect sense, but Roland thought there was more to it than that. Mia didn’twant to go in there. Mia understood something dreadful might happen if she did. To her, and to her baby. For a moment he was on the verge of forcing the issue, of letting the rose take care of both the thing growing inside her and her troublesome new personality, one so strong that Susannah had shown up here with Mia’s legs.

No, Roland.That was Alain’s voice. Alain, who had always been strongest in the touch.Wrong time, wrong place.

“I’ll stay with her,” Jake said. He spoke with enormous regret but no hesitation, and Roland was swept by his love for the boy he had once allowed to die. That vast voice from the darkness beyond the fence sang of that love; he heard it. And of simple forgiveness rather than the difficult forced march of atonement? He thought it was.

“No,” she said. “You go on, honeybunch. I’ll be fine.” She smiled at them. “This is my city too, you know. I can look out for myself. And besides—” She lowered her voice as if confiding a great secret. “I think we’re kind of invisible.”

Eddie was once again looking at her in that searching way, as if to ask her how she couldnot go with them, bare feet or no bare feet, but this time Roland wasn’t worried. Mia’s secret was safe, at least for the time being; the call of the rose was too strong for Eddie to be able to think of much else. He was wild to get going.

“We should stay together,” Eddie said reluctantly. “So we don’t get lost going back. You said so yourself, Roland.”

“How far is it from here to the rose, Jake?” Roland asked. It was hard to talk with that hum singing in his ears like a wind. Hard to think.

“It’s pretty much in the middle of the lot. Maybe thirty yards, but probably less.”

“The second we hear the chimes,” Roland said, “we run for the fence and Susannah. All three of us. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Eddie said.

“All three of us and Oy,” Jake said.

“No, Oy stays with Susannah.”

Jake frowned, clearly not liking this. Roland hadn’t expected him to. “Jake, Oy also has bare feet…and didn’t you say there was broken glass in there?”

“Ye-eahh…” Drawn-out. Reluctant. Then Jake dropped to one knee and looked into Oy’s gold-ringed eyes. “Stay with Susannah, Oy.”

“Oy! Ay!”Oy stay. It was good enough for Jake. He stood up, turned to Roland, and nodded.

“Suze?” Eddie asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Emphatic. No hesitation. Roland was now almost sure it was Mia in control, pulling the levers and turning the dials.Almost . Even now he wasn’t positive. The hum of the rose made it impossible to be positive of anything except that everything—everything—could be all right.

Eddie nodded, kissed the corner of her mouth, then stepped to the board fence with its odd poem: Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine. He laced his fingers together into a step. Jake was into it, up, and gone like a breath of breeze.

“Ake!” Oy cried, and then was silent, sitting beside one of Susannah’s bare feet.

“You next, Eddie,” Roland said. He laced his remaining fingers together, meaning to give Eddie the same step Eddie had given Jake, but Eddie simply grabbed the top of the fence and vaulted over. The junkie Roland had first met in a jet plane coming into Kennedy Airport could never have done that.

Roland said, “Stay where you are. Both of you.” He could have meant the woman and the billy-bumbler, but it was only the woman he looked at.

“We’ll be fine,” she said, and bent to stroke Oy’s silky fur. “Won’t we, big guy?”

“Oy!”

“Go see your rose, Roland. While you still can.”

Roland gave her a last considering look, then grasped the top of the fence. A moment later he was gone, leaving Susannah and Oy alone on the most vital and vibrant streetcorner in the entire universe.

Eleven

Strange things happened to her as she waited.

Back the way they’d come, near Tower of Power Records, a bank clock alternately flashed the time and temperature: 8:27, 64. 8:27, 64. 8:27, 64. Then, suddenly, it was flashing 8:34, 64. 8:34, 64. She never took her eyes off it, she would swear to that. Had something gone wrong with the sign’s machinery?

Must’ve,she thought.What else could it be? Nothing, she supposed, but why did everything suddenly feel different? Evenlook different?Maybe it was mymachinery that went wrong .

Oy whined and stretched his long neck toward her. As he did, she realized why things looked different. Besides somehow slipping seven uncounted minutes by her, the world had regained its former, all-too-familiar perspective. Alower perspective. She was closer to Oy because she was closer to the ground. The splendid lower legs and feet she’d been wearing when she had opened her eyes on New York were gone.

How had it happened? And when? In the missing seven minutes?

Oy whined again. This time it was almost a bark. He was looking past her, in the other direction. She turned that way. Half a dozen people were crossing Forty-sixth toward them. Five were normal. The sixth was a white-faced woman in a moss-splotched dress. The sockets of her eyes were empty and black. Her mouth hung open seemingly all the way down to her breastbone, and as Susannah watched, a green worm crawled over the lower lip. Those crossing with her gave her her own space, just as the other pedestrians on Second Avenue had given Roland and his friends theirs. Susannah guessed that in both cases, the more normal promenaders sensed something out of the ordinary and steered clear. Only this woman wasn’t todash.

This woman was dead.

Twelve

The hum rose and rose as the three of them stumbled across the trash-and brick-littered wilderness of the vacant lot. As before, Jake saw faces in every angle and shadow. He saw Gasher and Hoots; Tick-Tock and Flagg; he saw Eldred Jonas’s gunbunnies, Depape and Reynolds; he saw his mother and father and Greta Shaw, their housekeeper, who looked a little like Edith Bunker on TV and who always remembered to cut the crusts off his sandwiches. Greta Shaw who sometimes called him ’Bama, although that was a secret, just between them.

Eddie saw people from the old neighborhood: Jimmie Polio, the kid with the clubfoot, and Tommy Fredericks, who always got so excited watching the street stickball games that he made faces and the kids called him Halloween Tommy. There was Skipper Brannigan, who would have picked a fight with Al Capone himself, had Capone shown sufficient bad judgment to come to their neighborhood, and Csaba Drabnik, the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. He saw his mother’s face in a pile of broken bricks, her glimmering eyes re-created from the broken pieces of a soft-drink bottle. He saw her friend, Dora Bertollo (all the kids on the block called her Tits Bertollo because she had really big ones, big as fuckin watermelons). And of course he saw Henry. Henry standing far back in the shadows, watching him. Only Henry was smiling instead of scowling, and he looked straight. Holding out one hand and giving Eddie what looked like a thumbs-up.Go on, the rising hum seemed to whisper, and now it whispered in Henry Dean’s voice.Go on, Eddie, show em what you’re made of. Didn’t I tell those other guys? When we were out behind Dahlie’s smokin Jimmie Polio’s cigarettes, didn’t I tell em? “My little bro could talk the devil into settin himself on fire,” I said. Didn’t I? Yes. Yes he had.And that’s the way I always felt, the hum whispered.I always loved you. Sometimes I put you down, but I always loved you. You were my little man.

Eddie began to cry. And these were good tears.

Roland saw all the phantoms of his life in this shadowed, brick-strewn ruin, from his mother and his cradle-amah right up to their visitors from Calla Bryn Sturgis. And as they walked, that sense of rightness grew. A feeling that all his hard decisions, all the pain and loss and spilled blood, had not been for nothing, after all. There was a reason. There was a purpose. There was life and love. He heard it all in the song of the rose, and he too began to cry. Mostly with relief. Getting here had been a hard journey. Many had died. Yet here they lived; here they sang with the rose. His life had not all been a dry dream after all.

They joined hands and stumbled forward, helping each other to avoid the nail-studded boards and the holes into which an ankle could plunge and twist and perhaps break. Roland didn’t know if one could break a bone while in the todash state, but he had no urge to find out.

“This is worth everything,” he said hoarsely.

Eddie nodded. “I’ll never stop now. Might not stop even if I die.”

Jake gave him a thumb-and-forefinger circle at that, and laughed. The sound was sweet in Roland’s ears. It was darker in here than it had been on the street, but the orange streetlights on Second and Forty-sixth were strong enough to provide at least some illumination. Jake pointed at a sign lying in a pile of boards. “See that? It’s the deli sign. I pulled it out of the weeds. That’s why it is where it is.” He looked around, then pointed in another direction. “And look!”

This sign was still standing. Roland and Eddie turned to read it. Although neither of them had seen it before, they both felt a strong sense ofdéjà vu, nonetheless.

MILLS CONSTRUCTION AND SOMBRA REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATES

ARE CONTINUING TO REMAKE THE FACE OF MANHATTAN!

COMING SOON TO THIS LOCATION:

TURTLE BAY LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS!

CALL 661-6712 FOR INFORMATION!

YOU WILL BE SO GLAD YOU DID!

As Jake had told them, the sign looked old, in need of either refreshment or outright replacement. Jake had remembered the graffito which had been sprayed across the sign, and Eddie remembered it from Jake’s story, not because it meant anything to him but simply because it was odd. And there it was, just as reported:BANGO SKANK . Some long-gone tagger’s calling card.

“I think the telephone number on the sign’s different,” Jake said.

“Yeah?” Eddie asked. “What was the old one?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Then how can you be sure this one’s different?”

In another place and at another time, Jake might have been irritated by these questions. Now, soothed by the proximity of the rose, he smiled, instead. “I don’t know. I guess I can’t. But it sure seems different. Like the sign in the bookstore window.”

Roland barely heard. He was walking forward over the piles of bricks and boards and smashed glass in his old cowboy boots, his eyes brilliant even in the shadows. He had seen the rose. There was something lying beside it, in the spot where Jake had found his version of the key, but Roland paid this no heed. He only saw the rose, growing from a clump of grass that had been stained purple with spilled paint. He dropped to his knees before it. A moment later Eddie joined him on his left, Jake on his right.

The rose was tightly furled against the night. Then, as they knelt there, the petals began to open, as if in greeting. The hum rose all around them, like a song of angels.

Thirteen

At first Susannah was all right. She held on despite the fact that she had lost over a foot and a half of herself—the self that had arrived here, anyway—and was now forced into her old familiar (and hatefully subservient) posture, half-kneeling and half-sitting on the filthy sidewalk. Her back was propped against the fence surrounding the vacant lot. A sardonic thought crossed her mind—All I need’s a cardboard sign and a tin cup.

She held on even after seeing the dead woman cross Forty-sixth Street. The singing helped—what she understood to be the voice of the rose. Oy helped, too, crowding his warmth close to her. She stroked his silky fur, using the reality of him as a steadying-point. She told herself again and again that she wasnot insane. All right, she’d lost seven minutes.Maybe . Or maybe the guts inside that newfangled clock down there had just hic-cupped. All right, she’d seen a dead woman crossing the street.Maybe . Or maybe she’d just seen some strung-out junkie, God knew there was no shortage of them in New York—

A junkie with a little green worm crawling out of her mouth?

“I could have imagined that part,” she said to the bumbler. “Right?”

Oy was dividing his nervous attention between Susannah and the rushing headlights, which might have looked to him like large, predatory animals with shining eyes. He whined nervously.

“Besides, the boys’ll be back soon.”

“Oys,” the bumbler agreed, sounding hopeful.

Why didn’t I just go in with em? Eddie would have carried me on his back, God knows he’s done it before, both with the harness and without it.

“I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I just couldn’t.”

Because some part of her was frightened of the rose. Of getting too close to it. Had that part been in control during the missing seven minutes? Susannah was afraid it had been. If so, it was gone now. Had taken back its legs and just walked off on them into New York, circa 1977. Not good. But it had taken her fear of the rose with it, and thatwas good. She didn’t want to be afraid of something that felt so strong and so wonderful.

Another personality? Are you thinking the lady who brought the legs was another personality?

Another version of Detta Walker, in other words?

The idea made her feel like screaming. She thought she now understood how a woman would feel if, five years or so after an apparently successful cancer operation, the doctor told her a routine X-ray had picked up a shadow on her lung.

“Not again,” she murmured in a low, frantic voice as a fresh group of pedestrians schooled past. They all moved away from the board fence a little, although it reduced the space between them considerably. “No, not again. It can’t be. I’m whole. I’m…I’mfixed .”

How long had her friends been gone?

She looked downstreet at the flashing clock. It said 8:42, but she wasn’t sure she could trust it. It felt longer than that. Much longer. Maybe she should call to them. Just give a halloo. How y’all doin in there?

No. No such thing. You’re a gunslinger, girl. At least that’s whathesays. What he thinks. And you’re not going to change what he thinks by hollering like a schoolgirl just seen a garter snake under a bush. You’re just going to sit here and wait. You can do it. You’ve got Oy for company and you —

Then she saw the man standing on the other side of the street. Just standing there beside a newsstand. He was naked. A ragged Y-cut, sewn up with large black industrial stitches, began at his groin, rose, and branched at his sternum. His empty eyes gazed at her. Through her. Through the world.

Any possibility that this might only have been a hallucination ended when Oy began to bark. He was staring directly across at the naked dead man.

Susannah gave up her silence and began to scream for Eddie.

Fourteen

When the rose opened, disclosing the scarlet furnace within its petals and the yellow sun burning at the center, Eddie saw everything that mattered.

“Oh my Lord,” Jake sighed from beside him, but he might have been a thousand miles away.

Eddie saw great things and near misses. Albert Einstein as a child, not quite struck by a runaway milk-wagon as he crossed a street. A teenage boy named Albert Schweitzer getting out of a bathtub and not quite stepping on the cake of soap lying beside the pulled plug. A NaziOberleutnant burning a piece of paper with the date and place of the D-Day invasion written on it. He saw a man who intended to poison the entire water supply of Denver die of a heart attack in a roadside rest stop on I-80 in Iowa with a bag of McDonald’s french fries on his lap. He saw a terrorist wired up with explosives suddenly turn away from a crowded restaurant in a city that might have been Jerusalem. The terrorist had been transfixed by nothing more than the sky, and the thought that it arced above the just and unjust alike. He saw four men rescue a little boy from a monster whose entire head seemed to consist of a single eye.

But more important than any of these was the vast, accretive weight of small things, from planes which hadn’t crashed to men and women who had come to the correct place at the perfect time and thus founded generations. He saw kisses exchanged in doorways and wallets returned and men who had come to a splitting of the way and chosen the right fork. He saw a thousand random meetings that weren’t random, ten thousand right decisions, a hundred thousand right answers, a million acts of unacknowledged kindness. He saw the old people of River Crossing and Roland kneeling in the dust for Aunt Talitha’s blessing; again heard her giving it freely and gladly. Heard her telling him to lay the cross she had given him at the foot of the Dark Tower and speak the name of Talitha Unwin at the far end of the earth. He saw the Tower itself in the burning folds of the rose and for a moment understood its purpose: how it distributed its lines of force to all the worlds that were and held them steady in time’s great helix. For every brick that landed on the ground instead of some little kid’s head, for every tornado that missed the trailer park, for every missile that didn’t fly, for every hand stayed from violence, there was the Tower.

And the quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.

But something’s wrong with it,he thought.

There was a jagged dissonance buried in the hum, like bits of broken glass. There was a nasty flickering purple glare in its hot heart, some cold light that did not belong there.

“There are two hubs of existence,” he heard Roland say.“Two!” Like Jake, he could have been a thousand miles away. “The Tower…and the rose. Yet they are the same.”

“The same,” Jake agreed. His face was painted with brilliant light, dark red and bright yellow. Yet Eddie thought he could see that other light, as well—a flickering purple reflection like a bruise. Now it danced on Jake’s forehead, now on his cheek, now it swam in the well of his eye; now gone, now reappearing at his temple like the physical manifestation of a bad idea.

“What’s wrong with it?” Eddie heard himself ask, but there was no answer. Not from Roland or Jake, not from the rose.

Jake raised one finger and began to count. Counting petals, Eddie saw. But there was really no need to count. They all knew how many petals there were.

“Wemust have this patch,” Roland said. “Own it and then protect it. Until the Beams are reestablished and the Tower is made safe again. Because while the Tower weakens, this is what holds everything together. And this is weakening, too. It’s sick. Do you feel it?”

Eddie opened his mouth to say of course he felt it, and that was when Susannah began to scream. A moment later Oy joined his voice to hers, barking wildly.

Eddie, Jake, and Roland looked at each other like sleepers awakened from the deepest of dreams. Eddie made it to his feet first. He turned and stumbled back toward the fence and Second Avenue, shouting her name. Jake followed, pausing only long enough to snatch something out of the snarl of burdocks where the key had been before.

Roland spared one final, agonized look at the wild rose growing so bravely here in this tumbled wasteland of bricks and boards and weeds and litter. It had already begun to furl its petals again, hiding the light that blazed within.

I’ll come back,he told it. I swear by the gods of all the worlds, by my mother and father and my friends that were, that I’ll come back.

Yet he was afraid.

Roland turned and ran for the board fence, picking his way through the tumbled litter with unconscious agility in spite of the pain in his hip. As he ran, one thought returned to him and beat at his mind like a heart:Two. Two hubs of existence. The rose and the Tower. The Tower and the rose.

All the rest was held between them, spinning in fragile complexity.

Fifteen

Eddie threw himself over the fence, landed badly and asprawl, leaped to his feet, and stepped in front of Susannah without even thinking. Oy continued to bark.

“Suze! What? What is it?” He reached for Roland’s gun and found nothing. It seemed that guns did not go todash.

“There!” she cried, pointing across the street. “There! Do you see him? Please, Eddie,please tell me you see him !”

Eddie felt the temperature of his blood plummet. What he saw was a naked man who had been cut open and then sewed up again in what could only be an autopsy tattoo. Another man—a living one—bought a paper at the nearby newsstand, checked for traffic, then crossed Second Avenue. Although he was shaking open the paper to look at the headline as he did it, Eddie saw the way he swerved around the dead man.The way people swerved around us, he thought.

“There was another one, too,” she whispered. “A woman. She was walking. And there was a worm. I saw a worm c-c-crawling—”

“Look to your right,” Jake said tightly. He was down on one knee, stroking Oy back to quietness. In his other hand he held a crumpled pink something. His face was as pale as cottage cheese.

They looked. A child was wandering slowly toward them. It was only possible to tell it was a girl because of the red-and-blue dress she wore. When she got closer, Eddie saw that the blue was supposed to be the ocean. The red blobs resolved themselves into little candy-colored sailboats. Her head had been squashed in some cruel accident, squashed until it was wider than it was long. Her eyes were crushed grapes. Over one pale arm was a white plastic purse. A little girl’s best I’m-going-to-the-car-accident-and-don’t-know-it purse.

Susannah drew in breath to scream. The darkness she had only sensed earlier was now almost visible. Certainly it was palpable; it pressed against her like earth. Yet she would scream. Shemust scream. Scream or go mad.

“Not a sound,” Roland of Gilead whispered in her ear. “Do not disturb her, poor lost thing. For your life, Susannah!” Susannah’s scream expired in a long, horrified sigh.

“They’re dead,” Jake said in a thin, controlled voice. “Both of them.”

“The vagrant dead,” Roland replied. “I heard of them from Alain Johns’s father. It must have been not long after we returned from Mejis, for after that there wasn’t much more time before everything…what is it you say, Susannah? Before everything ‘went to hell in a handbasket.’ In any case, it was Burning Chris who warned us that if we ever went todash, we might see vags.” He pointed across the street where the naked dead man still stood. “Such as him yonder have either died so suddenly they don’t yet understand what’s happened to them, or they simply refuse to accept it. Sooner or later theydo go on. I don’t think there are many of them.”

“Thank God,” Eddie said. “It’s like something out of a George Romero zombie movie.”

“Susannah, what happened to your legs?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “One minute I had em, and the next minute I was the same as before.” She seemed to become aware of Roland’s gaze and turned toward him. “You see somethin funny, sugar?”

“We are ka-tet, Susannah. Tell us what really happened.”

“What the hell are you trying to imply?” Eddie asked him. He might have said more, but before he could get started, Susannah grasped his arm.

“Caught me out, didn’t you?” she asked Roland. “All right, I’ll tell you. According to that fancy dot-clock down there, I lost seven minutes while I was waiting for you boys. Seven minutes and my fine new legs. I didn’t want to say anything because…” She faltered, then went on. “Because I was afraid I might be losing my mind.”

That’s not what you’re afraid of,Roland thought. Not exactly.

Eddie gave her a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek. He glanced nervously across the street at the nude corpse (the little girl with the squashed head had, thankfully, wandered off down Forty-sixth Street toward the United Nations), then back at the gunslinger. “If what you said before is true, Roland, this business of time slipping its cogs is very bad news. What if instead of just seven minutes, it slips three months? What if the next time we get back here, Calvin Tower’s sold his lot? We can’t let that happen. Because that rose, man…that rose…” Tears had begun to slip out of Eddie’s eyes.

“It’s the best thing in the world,” Jake said, low.

“In all the worlds,” Roland said. Would it ease Eddie and Jake to know that this particular time-slip had probably been in Susannah’s head? That Mia had come out for seven minutes, had a look around, and then dived back into her hole like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day? Probably not. But he saw one thing in Susannah’s haggard face: she either knew what was going on, or suspected very strongly.It must be hellish for her, he thought.

“We have to do better than this if we’re really going to change things,” Jake said. “This way we’re not much better than vags ourselves.”

“We have to get to ’64, too,” Susannah said. “If we’re going to get hold of my dough, that is. Can we, Roland? If Callahan’s got Black Thirteen, will it work like a door?”

What it will work is mischief,Roland thought.Mischief and worse . But before he could say that (or anything else), the todash chimes began. The pedestrians on Second Avenue heard them no more than they saw the pilgrims gathered by the board fence, but the corpse across the street slowly raised his dead hands and placed them over his dead ears, his mouth turning down in a grimace of pain. And then they could see through him.

“Hold onto each other,” Roland said. “Jake, get your hand into Oy’s fur, and deep! Never mind if it hurts him!”

Jake did as Roland said, the chimes digging deep into his head. Beautiful but painful.

“Like a root canal without Novocain,” Susannah said. She turned her head and for one moment she could see through the board fence. It had become transparent. Beyond it was the rose, its petals now closed but still giving off its own quietly gorgeous glow. She felt Eddie’s arm slip around her shoulders.

“Hold on, Suze—whatever you do, hold on.”

She grasped Roland’s hand. For a moment longer she could see Second Avenue, and then everything was gone. The chimes ate up the world and she was flying through blind darkness with Eddie’s arm around her and Roland’s hand squeezing her own.

Sixteen

When the darkness let them go, they were almost forty feet down the road from their camp. Jake sat up slowly, then turned to Oy. “You all right, boy?”

“Oy.”

Jake patted the bumbler’s head. He looked around at the others. All here. He sighed, relieved.

“What’s this?” Eddie asked. He had taken Jake’s other hand when the chimes began. Now, caught in their interlocked fingers, was a crumpled pink object. It felt like cloth; it also felt like metal.

“I don’t know,” Jake said.

“You picked it up in the lot, just after Susannah screamed,” Roland said. “I saw you.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. I guess maybe I did. Because it was where the key was, before.”

“What is it, sugar?”

“Some kind of bag.” He held it by the straps. “I’d say it was my bowling bag, but that’s back at the lanes, with my ball inside it. Back in 1977.”

“What’s written on the side?” Eddie asked.

But they couldn’t make it out. The clouds had closed in again and there was no moonlight. They walked back to their camp together, slowly, shaky as invalids, and Roland built up the fire. Then they looked at the writing on the side of the rose-pink bowling bag.

NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES

was what it said.

“That’s not right,” Jake said. “Almost, but not quite. What it says on my bag isNOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-TOWNLANES . Timmy gave it to me one day when I bowled a two-eighty-two. He said I wasn’t old enough for him to buy me a beer.”

“A bowling gunslinger,” Eddie said, and shook his head. “Wonders never cease, do they?”

Susannah took the bag and ran her hands over it. “What kind of weave is this? Feels like metal. And it’sheavy .”

Roland, who had an idea what the bag was for—although not who or what had left it for them—said, “Put it in your knapsack with the books, Jake. And keep it very safe.”

“What do we do next?” Eddie asked.

“Sleep,” Roland said. “I think we’re going to be very busy for the next few weeks. We’ll have to take our sleep when and where we find it.”

“But—”

“Sleep,” Roland said, and spread out his skins.

Eventually they did, and all of them dreamed of the rose. Except for Mia, who got up in the night’s last dark hour and slipped away to feast in the great banquet hall. And there she feasted very well.

She was, after all, eating for two.

One

If anything about the ride into Calla Bryn Sturgis surprised Eddie, it was how easily and naturally he took to horseback. Unlike Susannah and Jake, who had both ridden at summer camp, Eddie had never evenpetted a horse. When he’d heard the clop of approaching hooves on the morning after what he thought of as Todash Number Two, he’d felt a sharp pang of dread. It wasn’t the riding he was afraid of, or the animals themselves; it was the possibility—hell, the strongprobability —of looking like a fool. What kind of gunslinger had never ridden a horse?

Yet Eddie still found time to pass a word with Roland before they came. “It wasn’t the same last night.”

Roland raised his eyebrows.

“It wasn’t nineteen last night.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“I don’t know, either,” Jake put in, “but he’s right. Last night New York felt like the real deal. I mean, I know we were todash, but still…”

“Real,” Roland had mused.

And Jake, smiling, said: “Real as roses.”

Two

The Slightmans were at the head of the Calla’s party this time, each leading a pair of mounts by long hacks. There was nothing very intimidating about the horses of Calla Bryn Sturgis; certainly they weren’t much like the ones Eddie had imagined galloping along the Drop in Roland’s tale of long-ago Mejis. These beasts were stubby, sturdy-legged creatures with shaggy coats and large, intelligent eyes. They were bigger than Shetland ponies, but a very long cast from the fiery-eyed stallions he had been expecting. Not only had they been saddled, but a proper bedroll had been lashed to each mount.

As Eddie walked toward his (he didn’t need to be told which it was, he knew: the roan), all his doubts and worries fell away. He only asked a single question, directed at Ben Slightman the Younger after examining the stirrups. “These are going to be too short for me, Ben—can you show me how to make them longer?”

When the boy dismounted to do it himself, Eddie shook his head. “It’d be best if I learned,” he said. And with no embarrassment at all.

As the boy showed him, Eddie realized he didn’t really need the lesson. He saw how it was done almost as soon as Benny’s fingers flipped up the stirrup, revealing the leather tug in back. This wasn’t like hidden, subconscious knowledge, and it didn’t strike him as anything supernatural, either. It was just that, with the horse a warm and fragrant reality before him, he understood how everything worked. He’d only had one experience exactly like this since coming to Mid-World, and that had been the first time he’d strapped on one of Roland’s guns.

“Need help, sugar?” Susannah asked.

“Just pick me up if I go off on the other side,” he grunted, but of course he didn’t do any such thing. The horse stood steady, swaying just the slightest bit as Eddie stepped into the stirrup and then swung into the plain black ranchhand’s saddle.

Jake asked Benny if he had a poncho. The foreman’s son looked doubtfully up at the cloudy sky. “I really don’t think it’s going to rain,” he’d said. “It’s often like this for days around Reaptide—”

“I want it for Oy.” Perfectly calm, perfectly certain.He feels exactly like I do, Eddie thought.As if he’s done this a thousand times before .

The boy drew a rolled oilskin from one of his saddlebags and handed it to Jake, who thanked him, put it on, and then tucked Oy into the capacious pocket which ran across the front like a kangaroo’s pouch. There wasn’t a single protest from the bumbler, either. Eddie thought:If I told Jake I’d expected Oy to trot along behind us like a sheepdog, would he say, “He always rides like this”? No…but he might think it .

As they set off, Eddie realized what all this reminded him of: stories he’d heard of reincarnation. He had tried to shake the idea off, to reclaim the practical, tough-minded Brooklyn boy who had grown up in Henry Dean’s shadow, and wasn’t quite able to do it. The thought of reincarnation might have been less unsettling if it had come to him head-on, but it didn’t. What he thought was that he couldn’t be from Roland’s line, simply couldn’t. Not unless Arthur Eld had at some point stopped by Co-Op City, that was. Like maybe for a redhot and a piece of Dahlie Lundgren’s fried dough. Stupid to project such an idea from the ability to ride an obviously docile horse without lessons. Yet the idea came back at odd moments through the day, and had followed him down into sleep last night: the Eld. The line of the Eld.

Three

They nooned in the saddle, and while they were eating popkins and drinking cold coffee, Jake eased his mount in next to Roland’s. Oy peered at the gunslinger with bright eyes from the front pocket of the poncho. Jake was feeding the bumbler pieces of his popkin, and there were crumbs caught in Oy’s whiskers.

“Roland, may I speak to you as dinh?” Jake sounded slightly embarrassed.

“Of course.” Roland drank coffee and then looked at the boy, interested, all the while rocking contentedly back and forth in the saddle.

“Ben—that is, both Slightmans, but mostly the kid—asked if I’d come and stay with them. Out at the Rocking B.”

“Do you want to go?” Roland asked.

The boy’s cheeks flushed thin red. “Well, what I thought is that if you guys were in town with the Old Fella and I was out in the country—south of town, you ken—then we’d get two different pictures of the place. My Dad says you don’t see anything very well if you only look at it from one viewpoint.”

“True enough,” Roland said, and hoped neither his voice nor his face would give away any of the sorrow and regret he suddenly felt. Here was a boy who was now ashamed of being a boy. He had made a friend and the friend had invited him to stay over, as friends sometimes do. Benny had undoubtedly promised that Jake could help him feed the animals, and perhaps shoot his bow (or his bah, if it shot bolts instead of arrows). There would be places Benny would want to share, secret places he might have gone to with his twin in other times. A platform in a tree, mayhap, or a fishpond in the reeds special to him, or a stretch of riverbank where pirates of eld were reputed to have buried gold and jewels. Such places as boys go. But a large part of Jake Chambers was now ashamed to want to do such things. This was the part that had been despoiled by the doorkeeper in Dutch Hill, by Gasher, by the Tick-Tock Man. And by Roland himself, of course. Were he to say no to Jake’s request now, the boy would very likely never ask again. And never resent him for it, which was even worse. Were he to say yes in the wrong way—with even the slightest trace of indulgence in his voice, for instance—the boy would change his mind.

The boy. The gunslinger realized how much he wanted to be able to go on calling Jake that, and how short the time to do so was apt to be. He had a bad feeling about Calla Bryn Sturgis.

“Go with them after they dine us in the Pavilion tonight,” Roland said. “Go and do ya fine, as they say here.”

“Are you sure? Because if you think you might need me—”

“Your father’s saying is a good one. My old teacher—”

“Cort or Vannay?”

“Cort. He used to tell us that a one-eyed man sees flat. It takes two eyes, set a little apart from each other, to see things as they really are. So aye. Go with them. Make the boy your friend, if that seems natural. He seems likely enough.”

“Yeah,” Jake said briefly. But the color was going down in his cheeks again. Roland was pleased to see this.

“Spend tomorrow with him. And his friends, if he has a gang he goes about with.”

Jake shook his head. “It’s far out in the country. Ben says that Eisenhart’s got plenty of help around the place, and there are some kids his age, but he’s not allowed to play with them. Because he’s the foreman’s son, I guess.”

Roland nodded. This did not surprise him. “You’ll be offered graf tonight in the Pavilion. Do you need me to tell you it’s iced tea once we’re past the first toast?”

Jake shook his head.

Roland touched his temple, his lips, the corner of one eye, his lips again. “Head clear. Mouth shut. See much. Say little.”

Jake grinned briefly and gave him a thumbs-up. “What about you?”

“The three of us will stay with the priest tonight. I’m in hopes that tomorrow we may hear his tale.”

“And see…” They had fallen a bit behind the others, but Jake still lowered his voice. “See what he told us about?”

“That I don’t know,” Roland said. “The day after tomorrow, we three will ride out to the Rocking B. Perhaps noon with sai Eisenhart and have a bit of palaver. Then, over the next few days, the four of us will have a look at this town, both the inner and the outer. If things go well for you at the ranch, Jake, I’d have you stay there as long as you like and as much as they’ll have you.”

“Really?” Although he kept his face well (as the saying went), the gunslinger thought Jake was very pleased by this.

“Aye. From what I make out—what Iken —there’s three big bugs in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Overholser’s one. Took, the storekeeper, is another. The third one’s Eisenhart. I’d hear what you make of him with great interest.”

“You’ll hear,” Jake said. “And thankee-sai.” He tapped his throat three times. Then his seriousness broke into a broad grin. A boy’s grin. He urged his horse into a trot, moving up to tell his new friend that yes, he might stay the night, yes, he could come and play.

Four

“Holy wow,” Eddie said. The words came out low and slow, almost the exclamation of an awestruck cartoon character. But after nearly two months in the woods, the view warranted an exclamation. And there was the element of surprise. At one moment they’d just been clopping along the forest trail, mostly by twos (Overholser rode alone at the head of the group, Roland alone at its tail). At the next the trees were gone and the land itself fell away to the north, south, and east. They were thus presented with a sudden, breathtaking, stomach-dropping view of the town whose children they were supposed to save.

Yet at first, Eddie had no eyes at all for what was spread out directly below him, and when he glanced at Susannah and Jake, he saw they were also looking beyond the Calla. Eddie didn’t have to look around at Roland to know he was looking beyond, too.Definition of a wanderer, Eddie thought,a guy who’s always looking beyond .

“Aye, quite the view, we tell the gods thankee,” Overholser said complacently; and then, with a glance at Callahan, “Man Jesus as well, a’course, all gods is one when it comes to thanks, so I’ve heard, and ’tis a good enough saying.”

He might have prattled on. Probably did; when you were the big farmer, you usually got to have your say, and all the way to the end. Eddie took no notice. He had returned his attention to the view.

Ahead of them, beyond the village, was a gray band of river running south. The branch of the Big River known as Devar-Tete Whye, Eddie remembered. Where it came out of the forest, the Devar-Tete ran between steep banks, but they lowered as the river entered the first cultivated fields, then fell away entirely. He saw a few stands of palm trees, green and improbably tropical. Beyond the moderate-sized village, the land west of the river was a brilliant green shot through everywhere with more gray. Eddie was sure that on a sunny day, that gray would turn a brilliant blue, and that when the sun was directly overhead, the glare would be too bright to look at. He was looking at rice-fields. Or maybe you called them paddies.

Beyond them and east of the river was desert, stretching for miles. Eddie could see parallel scratches of metal running into it, and made them for railroad tracks.

And beyond the desert—or obscuring the rest of it—was simple blackness. It rose into the sky like a vapory wall, seeming to cut into the low-hanging clouds.

“Yon’s Thunderclap, sai,” Zalia Jaffords said.

Eddie nodded. “Land of the Wolves. And God knows what else.”

“Yer-bugger,” Slightman the Younger said. He was trying to sound bluff and matter-of-fact, but to Eddie he looked plenty scared, maybe on the verge of tears. But the Wolves wouldn’t take him, surely—if your twin died, that made you a singleton by default, didn’t it? Well, it had certainly worked for Elvis Presley, but of course the King hadn’t come from Calla Bryn Sturgis. Or even Calla Lockwood to the south.

“Naw, the King was a Mis’sippi boy,” Eddie said, low.

Tian turned in his saddle to look at him. “Beg your pardon, sai?”

Eddie, not aware that he’d spoken aloud, said: “I’m sorry. I was talking to myself.”

Andy the Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions) came striding back up the path from ahead of them in time to hear this. “Those who hold conversation with themselves keep sorry company. This is an old saying of the Calla, sai Eddie, don’t take it personally, I beg.”

“And, as I’ve said before and will undoubtedly say again, you can’t get snot off a suede jacket, my friend. An old saying from Calla Bryn Brooklyn.”

Andy’s innards clicked. His blue eyes flashed. “Snot:mucus from the nose. Also a disrespectful or supercilious person.Suede: this is a leather product which—”

“Never mind, Andy,” Susannah said. “My friend is just being silly. He does this quite frequently.”

“Oh yes,” Andy said. “He is a child of winter. Would you like me to tell your horoscope, Susannah-sai? You will meet a handsome man! You will have two ideas, one bad and one good! You will have a dark-haired—”

“Get out of here, idiot,” Overholser said. “Right into town, straight line, no wandering. Check that all’s well at the Pavilion. No one wants to hear your goddamned horoscopes, begging your pardon, Old Fella.”

Callahan made no reply. Andy bowed, tapped his metal throat three times, and set off down the trail, which was steep but comfortingly wide. Susannah watched him go with what might have been relief.

“Kinda hard on him, weren’t you?” Eddie asked.

“He’s but a piece of machinery,” Overholser said, breaking the last word into syllables, as if speaking to a child.

“And hecan be annoying,” Tian said. “But tell me, sais, what do you think of our Calla?”

Roland eased his horse in between Eddie’s and Callahan’s. “It’s very beautiful,” he said. “Whatever the gods may be, they have favored this place. I see corn, sharproot, beans, and…potatoes? Are those potatoes?”

“Aye, spuds, do ya,” Slightman said, clearly pleased by Roland’s eye.

“And yon’s all that gorgeous rice,” Roland said.

“All smallholds by the river,” Tian said, “where the water’s sweet and slow. And we know how lucky we are. When the rice comes ready—either to plant or to harvest—all the women go together. There’s singing in the fields, and even dancing.”

“Come-come-commala,” Roland said. At least that was what Eddie heard.

Tian and Zalia brightened with surprise and recognition. The Slightmans exchanged a glance and grinned. “Where did you hear The Rice Song?” the Elder asked. “When?”

“In my home,” said Roland. “Long ago. Come-come-commala, rice come a-falla.” He pointed to the west, away from the river. “There’s the biggest farm, deep in wheat. Yours, sai Overholser?”

“So it is, say thankya.”

“And beyond, to the south, more farms…and then the ranches. That one’s cattle…that one sheep…that one cattle…more cattle…more sheep…”

“How can you tell the difference from so far away?” Susannah asked.

“Sheep eat the grass closer to the earth, lady-sai,” Overholser said. “So where you see the light brown patches of earth, that’s sheep-graze land. The others—what you’d call ocher, I guess—that’s cattle-graze.”

Eddie thought of all the Western movies he’d seen at the Majestic: Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Lee Van Cleef. “In my land, they tell legends of range-wars between the ranchers and the sheep-farmers,” he said. “Because, it was told, the sheep ate the grass too close. Took even the roots, you ken, so it wouldn’t grow back again.”

“That’s plain silly, beg your pardon,” Overholser said. “Sheep do crop grass close, aye, but then we send the cows over it to water. The manure they drop is full of seed.”

“Ah,” Eddie said. He couldn’t think of anything else. Put that way, the whole idea of range wars seemed exquisitely stupid.

“Come on,” Overholser said. “Daylight’s wasting, do ya, and there’s a feast laid on for us at the Pavilion. The whole town’ll be there to meet you.”

And to give us a good looking-over, too,Eddie thought.

“Lead on,” Roland said. “We can be there by late day. Or am I wrong?”

“Nup,” Overholser said, then drove his feet into his horse’s sides and yanked its head around (just looking at this made Eddie wince). He headed down the path. The others followed.

Five

Eddie never forgot their first encounter with those of the Calla; that was one memory always within easy reach. Because everything that happened had been a surprise, he supposed, and when everything’s a surprise, experience takes on a dreamlike quality. He remembered the way the torches changed when the speaking was done—their strange, varied light. He remembered Oy’s unexpected salute to the crowd. The upturned faces and his suffocating panic and his anger at Roland. Susannah hoisting herself onto the piano bench in what the locals called themusica . Oh yeah, that memory always. You bet. But even more vivid than this memory of his beloved was that of the gunslinger.

Of Roland dancing.

But before any of these things came the ride down the Calla’s high street, and his sense of foreboding. His premonition of bad days on the way.

Six

They reached the town proper an hour before sunset. The clouds parted and let through the day’s last red light. The street was empty. The surface was oiled dirt. The horses’ hooves made muffled thuds on the wheel-marked hardpack. Eddie saw a livery stable, a place called the Travelers’ Rest that seemed a combination lodging-house and eating-house, and, at the far end of the street, a large two-story that just about had to be the Calla’s Gathering Hall. Off to the right of this was the flare of torches, so he supposed there were people waiting there, but at the north end of town where they entered there were none.

The silence and the empty board sidewalks began to give Eddie the creeps. He remembered Roland’s tale of Susan’s final ride into Mejis in the back of a cart, standing with her hands tied in front of her and a noose around her neck.Her road had been empty, too. At first. Then, not far from the intersection of the Great Road and the Silk Ranch Road, Susan and her captors had passed a single farmer, a man with what Roland had called lamb-slaughterer’s eyes. Later she would be pelted with vegetables and sticks, even with stones, but this lone farmer had been first, standing there with his handful of cornshucks, which he had tossed almost gently at her as she passed on her way to…well, on her way tocharyou tree, the Reap Fair of the Old People.

As they rode into Calla Bryn Sturgis, Eddie kept expecting that man, those lamb-slaughterer’s eyes, and the handful of cornshucks. Because this town felt bad to him. Not evil—evil as Mejis had likely been on the night of Susan Delgado’s death—but bad in a simpler way. Bad as in bad luck, bad choices, bad omens. Bad ka, maybe.

He leaned toward Slightman the Elder. “Where in the heck is everyone, Ben?”

“Yonder,” Slightman said, and pointed to the flare of the torches.

“Why are they so quiet?” Jake asked.

“They don’t know what to expect,” Callahan said. “We’re cut off here. The outsiders wedo see from time to time are the occasional peddler, harrier, gambler…oh, and the lake-boat marts sometimes stop in high summer.”

“What’s a lake-boat mart?” Susannah asked.

Callahan described a wide flatboat, paddlewheel-driven and gaily painted, covered with small shops. These made their slow way down the Devar-Tete Whye, stopping to trade at the Callas of the Middle Crescent until their goods were gone. Shoddy stuff for the most part, Callahan said, but Eddie wasn’t sure he trusted him entirely, at least on the subject of the lake-boat marts; he spoke with the almost unconscious distaste of the longtime religious.

“And the other outsiders come to steal their children,” Callahan concluded. He pointed to the left, where a long wooden building seemed to take up almost half the high street. Eddie counted not two hitching rails or four, but eight.Long ones. “Took’s General Store, may it do ya fine,” Callahan said, with what might have been sarcasm.

They reached the Pavilion. Eddie later put the number present at seven or eight hundred, but when he first saw them—a mass of hats and bonnets and boots and work-roughened hands beneath the long red light of that day’s evening sun—the crowd seemed enormous, untellable.

Theywillthrow shit at us, he thought.Throw shit at us and yell “Charyou tree.” The idea was ridiculous but also strong.

The Calla-folk moved back on two sides, creating an aisle of green grass which led to a raised wooden platform. Ringing the Pavilion were torches caught in iron cages. At that point, they still all flared a quite ordinary yellow. Eddie’s nose caught the strong reek of oil.

Overholser dismounted. So did the others of his party. Eddie, Susannah, and Jake looked at Roland. Roland sat as he was for a moment, leaning slightly forward, one arm cast across the pommel of his saddle, seeming lost in his own thoughts. Then he took off his hat and held it out to the crowd. He tapped his throat three times. The crowd murmured. In appreciation or surprise? Eddie couldn’t tell. Not anger, though, definitely not anger, and that was good. The gunslinger lifted one booted foot across the saddle and lightly dismounted. Eddie left his horse more carefully, aware of all the eyes on him. He’d put on Susannah’s harness earlier, and now he stood next to her mount, back-to. She slipped into the harness with the ease of long practice. The crowd murmured again when they saw her legs were missing from just above the knees.

Overholser started briskly up the path, shaking a few hands along the way. Callahan walked directly behind him, occasionally sketching the sign of the cross in the air. Other hands reached out of the crowd to secure the horses. Roland, Eddie, and Jake walked three abreast. Oy was still in the wide front pocket of the poncho Benny had loaned Jake, looking about with interest.

Eddie realized he could actually smell the crowd—sweat and hair and sunburned skin and the occasional splash of what the characters in the Western movies usually called (with contempt similar to Callahan’s for the lake-boat marts) “foo-foo water.” He could also smell food: pork and beef, fresh bread, frying onions, coffee and graf. His stomach rumbled, yet he wasn’t hungry. No, not really hungry. The idea that the path they were walking would disappear and these people would close in on them wouldn’t leave his mind. They were soquiet ! Somewhere close by he could hear the first nightjars and whippoor-wills tuning up for evening.

Overholser and Callahan mounted the platform. Eddie was alarmed to see that none of the others of the party which had ridden out to meet them did. Roland walked up the three broad wooden steps without hesitation, however. Eddie followed, conscious that his knees were a little weak.

“You all right?” Susannah murmured in his ear.

“So far.”

To the left of the platform was a round stage with seven men on it, all dressed in white shirts, blue jeans, and sashes. Eddie recognized the instruments they were holding, and although the mandolin and banjo made him think their music would probably be of the shitkicking variety, the sight of them was still reassuring. They didn’t hire bands to play at human sacrifices, did they? Maybe just a drummer or two, to wind up the spectators.

Eddie turned to face the crowd with Susannah on his back. He was dismayed to see that the aisle that had begun where the high street ended was indeed gone now. Faces tilted up to look at him. Women and men, old and young. No expression on those faces, and no children among them. These were faces that spent most of their time out in the sun and had the cracks to prove it. That sense of foreboding would not leave him.

Overholser stopped beside a plain wooden table. On it was a large billowy feather. The farmer took it and held it up. The crowd, quiet to begin with, now fell into a silence so disquietingly deep that Eddie could hear the rattling rales in some old party’s chest as he or she breathed.

“Put me down, Eddie,” Susannah said quietly. He didn’t like to, but he did.

“I’m Wayne Overholser of Seven-Mile Farm,” Overholser said, stepping to the edge of the stage with the feather held before him. “Hear me now, I beg.”

“We say thankee-sai,” they murmured.

Overholser turned and held one hand out to Roland and his tet, standing there in their travel-stained clothes (Susannah didn’t stand, exactly, but rested between Eddie and Jake on her haunches and one propped hand). Eddie thought he had never felt himself studied more eagerly.

“We men of the Calla heard Tian Jaffords, George Telford, Diego Adams, and all others who would speak at the Gathering Hall,” Overholser said. “There I did speak myself. ‘They’ll come and take the children,’ I said, meaning the Wolves, a’course, ‘then they’ll leave us alone again for a generation or more. So ’tis, so it’s been, I say leave it alone.’ I think now those words were mayhap a little hasty.”

A murmur from the crowd, soft as a breeze.

“At this same meeting we heard Pere Callahan say there were gunslingers north of us.”

Another murmur. This one was a little louder.Gunslingers…Mid-World…Gilead.

“It was taken among us that a party should go and see. These are the folk we found, do ya. They claim to be…what Pere Callahan said they were.” Overholser now looked uncomfortable. Almost as if he were suppressing a fart. Eddie had seen this expression before, mostly on TV, when politicians faced with some fact they couldn’t squirm around were forced to backtrack. “They claim to be of the gone world. Which is to say…”

Go on, Wayne,Eddie thought,get it out. You can do it .

“…which is to say of Eld’s line.”

“Gods be praised!” some woman shrieked. “Gods’ve sent em to save our babbies, so they have!”

There were shushing sounds. Overholser waited for quiet with a pained look on his face, then went on. “They can speak for themselves—and must—but I’ve seen enough to believe they may be able to help us with our problem. They carry good guns—you see em—and they can use em. Set my watch and warrant on it, and say thankya.”

This time the murmur from the crowd was louder, and Eddie sensed goodwill in it. He relaxed a little.

“All right, then, let em stand before’ee one by one, that ye might hear their voices and see their faces very well. This is their dinh.” He lifted a hand to Roland.

The gunslinger stepped forward. The red sun set his left cheek on fire; the right was painted yellow with torchglow. He put out one leg. The thunk of the worn bootheel on the boards was very clear in the silence; Eddie for no reason thought of a fist knocking on a coffintop. He bowed deeply, open palms held out to them. “Roland of Gilead, son of Steven,” he said. “The Line of Eld.”

They sighed.

“May we be well-met.” He stepped back, and glanced at Eddie.

This part he could do. “Eddie Dean of New York,” he said. “Son of Wendell.”At least that’s what Ma always claimed, he thought. And then, unaware he was going to say it: “The Line of Eld. The ka-tet of Nineteen.”

He stepped back, and Susannah moved forward to the edge of the platform. Back straight, looking out at them calmly, she said, “I am Susannah Dean, wife of Eddie, daughter of Dan, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of Nineteen, may we be well-met and do ya fine.” She curtsied, holding out her pretend skirts.

At this there was both laughter and applause.

While she spoke her piece, Roland bent to whisper a brief something in Jake’s ear. Jake nodded and then stepped forward confidently. He looked very young and very handsome in the day’s end light.

He put out his foot and bowed over it. The poncho swung comically forward with Oy’s weight. “I am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine.”

Ninety-nine?Eddie looked at Susannah, who offered him a very small shrug.What’s this ninety-nine shit? Then he thought what the hell. He didn’t know what the ka-tet of Nineteen was, either, and he’d said it himself.

But Jake wasn’t done. He lifted Oy from the pocket of Benny Slightman’s poncho. The crowd murmured at the sight of him. Jake gave Roland a quick glance—Are you sure?it asked—and Roland nodded.

At first Eddie didn’t think Jake’s furry pal was going to do anything. The people of the Calla—thefolken —had gone completely quiet again, so quiet that once again the evensong of the birds could be heard clearly.

Then Oy rose up on his rear legs, stuck one of them forward, and actually bowed over it. He wavered but kept his balance. His little black paws were held out with the palms up, like Roland’s. There were gasps, laughter, applause. Jake looked thunderstruck.

“Oy!” said the bumbler. “Eld! Thankee!” Each word clear. He held the bow a moment longer, then dropped onto all fours and scurried briskly back to Jake’s side. The applause was thunderous. In one brilliant, simple stroke, Roland (for who else, Eddie thought, could have taught the bumbler to do that) had made these people into their friends and admirers. For tonight, at least.

So that was the first surprise: Oy bowing to the assembled Callafolken and declaring himself an-tet with his traveling-mates. The second came hard on its heels. “I’m no speaker,” Roland said, stepping forward again. “My tongue tangles worse than a drunk’s on Reap-night. But Eddie will set us on with a word, I’m sure.”

This was Eddie’s turn to be thunderstruck. Below them, the crowd applauded and stomped appreciatively on the ground. There were cries ofThankee-sai andSpeak you well andHear him, hear him . Even the band got into the act, playing a flourish that was ragged but loud.

He had time to shoot Roland a single frantic, furious look:What in the blue fuck are you doing to me? The gunslinger looked back blandly, then folded his arms across his chest.

The applause was fading. So was his anger. It was replaced by terror. Overholser was watching him with interest, arms crossed in conscious or unconscious imitation of Roland. Below him, Eddie could see a few individual faces at the front of the crowd: the Slightmans, the Jaffordses. He looked in the other direction and there was Callahan, blue eyes narrowed. Above them, the ragged cruciform scar on his forehead seemed to glare.

What the hell am I supposed to say to them?

Better say somethin, Eds,his brother Henry spoke up.They’re waiting .

“Cry your pardon if I’m a little slow getting started,” he said. “We’ve come miles and wheels and more miles and wheels, and you’re the first folks we’ve seen in many a—”

Many a what? Week, month, year, decade?

Eddie laughed. To himself he sounded like the world’s biggest idiot, a fellow who couldn’t be trusted to hold his own dick at watering-time, let alone a gun. “In many a blue moon.”

They laughed at that, andhard . Some even applauded. He had touched the town’s funnybone without even realizing it. He relaxed, and when he did he found himself speaking quite naturally. It occurred to him, just in passing, that not so long ago the armed gunslinger standing in front of these seven hundred frightened, hopeful people had been sitting in front of the TV in nothing but a pair of yellowing underpants, eating Chee-tos, done up on heroin, and watchingYogi Bear .

“We’ve come from afar,” he said, “and have far yet to go. Our time here will be short, but we’ll do what we can, hear me, I beg.”

“Say on, stranger!” someone called. “You speak fair!”

Yeah?Eddie thought.News to me, fella.

A few cries ofAye andDo ya .

“The healers in my barony have a saying,” Eddie told them. “ ‘First, do no harm.’ ” He wasn’t sure if this was a lawyer-motto or a doctor-motto, but he’d heard it in quite a few movies and TV shows, and it sounded pretty good. “We would do no harm here, do you ken, but no one ever pulled a bullet, or even a splinter from under a kid’s fingernail, without spilling some blood.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Overholser, however, was poker-faced, and in the crowd Eddie saw looks of doubt. He felt a surprising flush of anger. He had no right to be angry at these people, who had done them absolutely no harm and had refused them absolutely nothing (at least so far), but he was, just the same.

“We’ve got another saying in the barony of New York,” he told them. “ ‘There ain’t no free lunch.’ From what we know of your situation, it’s serious. Standing up against these Wolves would be dangerous. But sometimes doing nothing just makes people feel sick and hungry.”

“Hear him, hear him!” the same someone at the back of the crowd called out. Eddie saw Andy the robot back there, and near him a large wagon full of men in voluminous cloaks of either black or dark blue. Eddie assumed that these were the Manni-folk.

“We’ll look around,” Eddie said, “and once we understand the problem, we’ll see what can be done. If we think the answer’s nothing, we’ll tip our hats to you and move along.” Two or three rows back stood a man in a battered white cowboy hat. He had shaggy white eyebrows and a white mustache to match. Eddie thought he looked quite a bit like Pa Cartwright on that old TV show,Bonanza . This version of the Cartwright patriarch looked less than thrilled with what Eddie was saying.

“If we can help, we’ll help,” he said. His voice was utterly flat now. “But we won’t do it alone, folks. Hear me, I beg. Hear me very well. You better be ready to stand up for what you want. You better be ready to fight for the things you’d keep.”

With that he stuck out a foot in front of him—the moccasin he wore didn’t produce the same fist-on-coffintop thud, but Eddie thought of it, all the same—and bowed. There was dead silence. Then Tian Jaffords began to clap. Zalia joined him. Benny also applauded. His father nudged him, but the boy went on clapping, and after a moment Slightman the Elder joined in.

Eddie gave Roland a burning look. Roland’s own bland expression didn’t change. Susannah tugged the leg of his pants and Eddie bent to her.

“You did fine, sugar.”

“No thanks tohim .” Eddie nodded at Roland. But now that it was over, he felt surprisingly good. And talking was really not Roland’s thing, Eddie knew that. He could do it when he had no backup, but he didn’t care for it.

So now you know what you are,he thought.Roland of Gilead’s mouthpiece .

And yet was that so bad? Hadn’t Cuthbert Allgood had the job long before him?

Callahan stepped forward. “Perhaps we could set them on a bit better than we have, my friends—give them a proper Calla Bryn Sturgis welcome.”

He began to applaud. The gatheredfolken joined in immediately this time. The applause was long and lusty. There were cheers, whistles, stamping feet (the foot-stamping a little less than satisfying without a wood floor to amplify the sound). The musical combo played not just one flourish but a whole series of them. Susannah grasped one of Eddie’s hands. Jake grasped the other. The four of them bowed like some rock group at the end of a particularly good set, and the applause redoubled.

At last Callahan quieted it by raising his hands. “Serious work ahead, folks,” he said. “Serious things to think about, serious things to do. But for now, let’s eat. Later, let’s dance and sing and be merry!” They began to applaud again and Callahan quieted them again. “Enough!” he cried, laughing. “And you Manni at the back, I know you haul your own rations, but there’s no reason on earth for you not to eat and drink what you have with us. Join us, do ya! May it do ya fine!”

May it do us all fine,Eddie thought, and still that sense of foreboding wouldn’t leave him. It was like a guest standing on the outskirts of the party, just beyond the glow of the torches. And it was like a sound. A bootheel on a wooden floor. A fist on the lid of a coffin.

Seven

Although there were benches and long trestle tables, only the old folks ate their dinners sitting down. And a famous dinner it was, with literally two hundred dishes to choose among, most of them homely and delicious. The doings began with a toast to the Calla. It was proposed by Vaughn Eisenhart, who stood with a bumper in one hand and the feather in the other. Eddie thought this was probably the Crescent’s version of the National Anthem.

“May she always do fine!” the rancher cried, and tossed off his cup of graf in one long swallow. Eddie admired the man’s throat, if nothing else; Calla Bryn Sturgis graf was so hard that just smelling it made his eyes water.

“DO YA!”thefolken responded, and cheered, and drank.

At that moment the torches ringing the Pavilion went the deep crimson of the recently departed sun. The crowd oohed and aahed and applauded. As technology went, Eddie didn’t think it was such of a much—certainly not compared to Blaine the Mono, or the dipolar computers that ran Lud—but it cast a pretty light over the crowd and seemed to be non-toxic. He applauded with the rest. So did Susannah. Andy had brought her wheelchair and unfolded it for her with a compliment (he also offered to tell her about the handsome stranger she would soon meet). Now she wheeled her way amongst the little knots of people with a plate of food on her lap, chatting here, moving on, chatting there and moving on again. Eddie guessed she’d been to her share of cocktail parties not much different from this, and was a little jealous of her aplomb.

Eddie began to notice children in the crowd. Apparently thefolken had decided their visitors weren’t going to just haul out their shooting irons and start a massacre. The oldest kids were allowed to wander about on their own. They traveled in the protective packs Eddie recalled from his own childhood, scoring massive amounts of food from the tables (although not even the appetites of voracious teenagers could make much of a dent in that bounty). They watched the outlanders, but none quite dared approach.

The youngest children stayed close to their parents. Those of the painful ’tween age clustered around the slide, swings, and elaborate monkey-bar construction at the very far end of the Pavilion. A few used the stuff, but most of them only watched the party with the puzzled eyes of those who are somehow caught just wrongways. Eddie’s heart went out to them. He could see how many pairs there were—it was eerie—and guessed that it was these puzzled children, just a little too old to use the playground equipment unselfconsciously, who would give up the greatest number to the Wolves…if the Wolves were allowed to do their usual thing, that was. He saw none of the “roont” ones, and guessed they had deliberately been kept apart, lest they cast a pall on the gathering. Eddie could understand that, but hoped they were having a party of their own somewhere. (Later he found that this was exactly the case—cookies and ice cream behind Callahan’s church.)

Jake would have fit perfectly into the middle group of children, had he been of the Calla, but of course he wasn’t. And he’d made a friend who suited him perfectly: older in years, younger in experience. They went about from table to table, grazing at random. Oy trailed at Jake’s heels contentedly enough, head always swinging from side to side. Eddie had no doubt whatever that if someone made an aggressive move toward Jake of New York (or his new friend, Benny of the Calla), that fellow would find himself missing a couple of fingers. At one point Eddie saw the two boys look at each other, and although not a word passed between them, they burst out laughing at exactly the same moment. And Eddie was reminded so forcibly of his own childhood friendships that it hurt.

Not that Eddie was allowed much time for introspection. He knew from Roland’s stories (and from having seen him in action a couple of times) that the gunslingers of Gilead had been much more than peace officers. They had also been messengers, accountants, sometimes spies, once in awhile even executioners. More than anything else, however, they had been diplomats. Eddie, raised by his brother and his friends with such nuggets of wisdom asWhy can’t you eat me like your sister does andI fucked your mother and she sure was fine, not to mention the ever-popularI don’t shut up I grow up, and when I look at you I throw up, would never have thought of himself a diplomat, but on the whole he thought he handled himself pretty well. Only Telford was hard, and the band shut him up, say thankya.

God knew it was a case of sink or swim; the Calla-folk might be frightened of the Wolves, but they weren’t shy when it came to asking how Eddie and the others of his tet would handle them. Eddie realized Roland had done him a very big favor, making him speak in front of the entire bunch of them. It had warmed him up a little for this.

He told all of them the same things, over and over. It would be impossible to talk strategy until they had gotten a good look at the town. Impossible to tell how many men of the Calla would need to join them. Time would show. They’d peek at daylight. There would be water if God willed it. Plus every other cliché he could think of. (It even crossed his mind to promise them a chicken in every pot after the Wolves were vanquished, but he stayed his tongue before it could wag so far.) A smallhold farmer named Jorge Estrada wanted to know what they’d do if the Wolves decided to light the village on fire. Another, Garrett Strong, wanted Eddie to tell them where the children would be kept safe when the Wolves came. “For we can’t leave em here, you must kennit very well,” he said. Eddie, who realized he kenned very little, sipped at his graf and was noncommittal. A fellow named Neil Faraday (Eddie couldn’t tell if he was a smallhold farmer or just a hand) approached and told Eddie this whole thing had gone too far. “They never takeall the children, you know,” he said. Eddie thought of asking Faraday what he’d make of someone who said, “Well, onlytwo of them raped my wife,” and decided to keep the comment to himself. A dark-skinned, mustached fellow named Louis Haycox introduced himself and told Eddie he had decided Tian Jaffords was right. He’d spent many sleepless nights since the meeting, thinking it over, and had finally decided that he would stand and fight. If they wanted him, that was. The combination of sincerity and terror Eddie saw in the man’s face touched him deeply. This was no excited kid who didn’t know what he was doing but a full-grown man who probably knew all too well.

So here they came with their questions and there they went with no real answers, but looking more satisfied even so. Eddie talked until his mouth was dry, then exchanged his wooden cup of graf for cold tea, not wanting to get drunk. He didn’t want to eat any more, either; he was stuffed. But still they came. Cash and Estrada. Strong and Echeverria. Winkler and Spalter (cousins of Overholser’s, they said). Freddy Rosario and Farren Posella…or was it Freddy Posella and Farren Rosario?

Every ten or fifteen minutes the torches would change color again. From red to green, from green to orange, from orange to blue. The jugs of graf circulated. The talk grew louder. So did the laughter. Eddie began to hear more frequent cries ofYer-bugger and something that sounded likeDive-down!, always followed by laughter.

He saw Roland speaking with an old man in a blue cloak. The old fellow had the thickest, longest, whitest beard Eddie had ever seen outside of a TV Bible epic. He spoke earnestly, looking up into Roland’s weatherbeaten face. Once he touched the gunslinger’s arm, pulled it a little. Roland listened, nodded, said nothing—not while Eddie was watching him, anyway.But he’s interested, Eddie thought.Oh yeah —old long tall and ugly’s hearing something that interests him a lot.

The musicians were trooping back to the bandstand when someone else stepped up to Eddie. It was the fellow who had reminded him of Pa Cartwright.

“George Telford,” he said. “May you do well, Eddie of New York.” He gave his forehead a perfunctory tap with the side of his fist, then opened the hand and held it out. He wore rancher’s headgear—a cowboy hat instead of a farmer’s sombrero—but his palm felt remarkably soft, except for a line of callus running along the base of his fingers.That’s where he holds the reins, Eddie thought,and when it comes to work, that’s probably it.

Eddie gave a little bow. “Long days and pleasant nights, sai Telford.” It crossed his mind to ask if Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe were back at the Ponderosa, but he decided again to keep his wiseacre mouth shut.

“May’ee have twice the number, son, twice the number.” He looked at the gun on Eddie’s hip, then up at Eddie’s face. His eyes were shrewd and not particularly friendly. “Your dinh wears the mate of that, I ken.”

Eddie smiled, said nothing.

“Wayne Overholser says yer ka-babby put on quite a shooting exhibition with another ’un. I believe yer wife’s wearing it tonight?”

“I believe she is,” Eddie said, not much caring for that ka-babby thing. He knew very well that Susannah had the Ruger. Roland had decided it would be better if Jake didn’t go armed out to Eisenhart’s Rocking B.

“Four against forty’d be quite a pull, wouldn’t you say?” Telford asked. “Yar, a hard pull that’d be. Or mayhap there might be sixty come in from the east; no one seems to remember for sure, and why would they? Twenty-three years is a long time of peace, tell God aye and Man Jesus thankya.”

Eddie smiled and said a little more nothing, hoping Telford would move along to another subject. Hoping Telford would go away, actually.

No such luck. Pissheads always hung around: it was almost a law of nature. “Of course fourarmed against forty…or sixty…would be a sight better than three armed and one standing by to raise a cheer. Especially four armed with hard calibers, may you hear me.”

“Hear you just fine,” Eddie said. Over by the platform where they had been introduced, Zalia Jaffords was telling Susannah something. Eddie thought Suze also looked interested.She gets the farmer’s wife, Roland gets the Lord of the fuckin Rings, Jake gets to make a friend, and what do I get? A guy who looks like Pa Cartwright and cross-examines like Perry Mason .

“Doyou have more guns?” Telford asked. “Surely you must have more, if you think to make a stand against the Wolves. Myself, I think the idea’s madness; I’ve made no secret of it. Vaughn Eisenhart feels the same—”

“Overholser felt that way and changed his mind,” Eddie said in a just-passing-the-time kind of way. He sipped tea and looked at Telford over the rim of his cup, hoping for a frown. Maybe even a brief look of exasperation. He got neither.

“Wayne the Weathervane,” Telford said, and chuckled. “Yar, yar, swings this way and that. Wouldn’t be too sure of him yet, young sai.”

Eddie thought of saying,If you think this is an election you better think again, and then didn’t. Mouth shut, see much, say little.

“Do’ee have speed-shooters, p’raps?” Telford asked. “Or grenados?”

“Oh well,” Eddie said, “that’s as may be.”

“I never heard of a woman gunslinger.”

“No?”

“Or a boy, for that matter. Even a ’prentice. How are we to know you are who you say you are? Tell me, I beg.”

“Well, that’s a hard one to answer,” Eddie said. He had taken a strong dislike to Telford, who looked too old to have children at risk.

“Yet people will want to know,” Telford said. “Certainly before they bring the storm.”

Eddie remembered Roland’s sayingWe may be cast on but no man may cast us back. It was clear they didn’t understand that yet. Certainly Telford didn’t. Of course there were questions that had to be answered, and answered yes; Callahan had mentioned that and Roland had confirmed it. Three of them. The first was something about aid and succor. Eddie didn’t think those questions had been asked yet, didn’t see how they could have been, but he didn’t think they would be asked in the Gathering Hall when the time came. The answers might be given by little people like Posella and Rosario, who didn’t even know what they were saying. People whodid have children at risk.

“Who are you really?” Telford asked. “Tell me, I beg.”

“Eddie Dean, of New York. I hope you’re not questioning my honesty. I hope toChrist you’re not doing that.”

Telford took a step back, suddenly wary. Eddie was grimly glad to see it. Fear wasn’t better than respect, but by God it was better than nothing. “Nay, not at all, my friend! Please! But tell me this—have you ever used the gun you carry? Tell me, I beg.”

Eddie saw that Telford, although nervous of him, didn’t really believe it. Perhaps there was still too much of the old Eddie Dean, the one who reallyhad been of New York, in his face and manner for this rancher-sai to believe it, but Eddie didn’t think that was it. Not the bottom of it, anyway. Here was a fellow who’d made up his mind to stand by and watch creatures from Thunderclap take the children of his neighbors, and perhaps a man like that simply couldn’t believe in the simple, final answers a gun allowed. Eddie had come to know those answers, however. Even to love them. He remembered their single terrible day in Lud, racing Susannah in her wheelchair under a gray sky while the god-drums pounded. He remembered Frank and Luster and Topsy the Sailor; thought of a woman named Maud kneeling to kiss one of the lunatics Eddie had shot to death. What had she said?You shouldn’t’ve shot Winston, for ’twas his birthday. Something like that.

“I’ve used this one and the other one and the Ruger as well,” he said. “And don’t you ever speak to me that way again, my friend, as if the two of us were on the inside of some funny joke.”

“If I offended in any way, gunslinger, I cry your pardon.”

Eddie relaxed a little.Gunslinger . At least the silver-haired son of a bitch had the wit to say so even if he might not believe so.

The band produced another flourish. The leader slipped his guitar-strap over his head and called, “Come on now, you all! That’s enough food! Time to dance it off and sweat it out, so it is!”

Cheers and yipping cries. There was also a rattle of explosions that caused Eddie to drop his hand, as he had seen Roland drop his on a good many occasions.

“Easy, my friend,” Telford said. “Only little bangers. Children setting off Reap-crackers, you ken.”

“So it is,” Eddie said. “Cry your pardon.”

“No need.” Telford smiled. It was a handsome Pa Cartwright smile, and in it Eddie saw one thing clear: this man would never come over to their side. Not, that was, until and unless every Wolf out of Thunderclap lay dead for the town’s inspection in this very Pavilion. And if that happened, he would claim to have been with them from the very first.

Eight

The dancing went on until moonrise, and that night the moon showed clear. Eddie took his turn with several ladies of the town. Twice he waltzed with Susannah in his arms, and when they danced the squares, she turned and crossed—allemande left, allemande right—in her wheelchair with pretty precision. By the ever-changing light of the torches, her face was damp and delighted. Roland also danced, gracefully but (Eddie thought) with no real enjoyment or flair for it. Certainly there was nothing in it to prepare them for what ended the evening. Jake and Benny Slightman had wandered off on their own, but once Eddie saw them kneeling beneath a tree and playing a game that looked suspiciously like mumblety-peg.

When the dancing was done, there was singing. This began with the band itself—a mournful love-ballad and then an uptempo number so deep in the Calla’s patois that Eddie couldn’t follow the lyric. He didn’t have to in order to know it was at least mildly ribald; there were shouts and laughter from the men and screams of glee from the ladies. Some of the older ones covered their ears.

After these first two tunes, several people from the Calla mounted the bandstand to sing. Eddie didn’t think any of them would have gotten very far onStar Search, but each was greeted warmly as they stepped to the front of the band and were cheered lustily (and in the case of one pretty young matron, lustfully ) as they stepped down. Two girls of about nine, obviously identical twins, sang a ballad called “Streets of Campara” in perfect, aching harmony, accompanied by just a single guitar which one of them played. Eddie was struck by the rapt silence in which thefolken listened. Although most of the men were now deep in drink, not a single one of these broke the attentive quiet. No baby-bangers went off. A good many (the one named Haycox among them) listened with tears streaming down their faces. If asked earlier, Eddie would have said of course he understood the emotional weight beneath which this town was laboring. He hadn’t. He knew that now.

When the song about the kidnapped woman and the dying cowboy ended, there was a moment of utter silence—not even the nightbirds cried. It was followed by wild applause. Eddie thought,If they showed hands on what to do about the Wolves right now, not even Pa Cartwright would dare vote to stand aside.

The girls curtsied and leaped nimbly down to the grass. Eddie thought that would be it for the night, but then, to his surprise, Callahan climbed on stage.

He said, “Here’s an even sadder song my mother taught me” and then launched into a cheerful Irish ditty called “Buy Me Another Round You Booger You.” It was at least as dirty as the one the band had played earlier, but this time Eddie could understand most of the words. He and the rest of the town gleefully joined in on the last line of every verse:Before y’ez put me in the ground, buy me another round, you booger you!

Susannah rolled her wheelchair over to the gazebo and was helped up during the round of applause that followed the Old Fella’s song. She spoke briefly to the three guitarists and showed them something on the neck of one of the instruments. They all nodded. Eddie guessed they either knew the song or a version of it.

The crowd waited expectantly, none more so than the lady’s husband. He was delighted but not entirely surprised when she voyaged upon “Maid of Constant Sorrow,” which she had sometimes sung on the trail. Susannah was no Joan Baez, but her voice was true, full of emotion. And why not? It was the song of a woman who has left her home for a strange place. When she finished, there was no silence, as after the little girls’ duet, but a round of honest, enthusiastic applause. There were cries ofYar! andAgain! andMore staves! Susannah offered no more staves (for she’d sung all the ones she knew) but gave them a deep curtsy, instead. Eddie clapped until his hands hurt, then stuck his fingers in the corners of his mouth and whistled.

And then—the wonders of this evening would never end, it seemed—Roland himself was climbing up as Susannah was handed carefully down.

Jake and his new pal were at Eddie’s side. Benny Slightman was carrying Oy. Until tonight Eddie would have said the bumbler would have bitten anyone not of Jake’s ka-tet who tried that.

“Can he sing?” Jake asked.

“News to me if he can, kiddo,” Eddie said. “Let’s see.” He had no idea what to expect, and was a little amused at how hard his heart was thumping.

Nine

Roland removed his holstered gun and cartridge belt. He handed them down to Susannah, who took them and strapped on the belt high at the waist. The cloth of her shirt pulled tight when she did it, and for a moment Eddie thought her breasts looked bigger. Then he dismissed it as a trick of the light.

The torches were orange. Roland stood in their light, gunless and as slim-hipped as a boy. For a moment he only looked out over the silent, watching faces, and Eddie felt Jake’s hand, cold and small, creep into his own. There was no need for the boy to say what he was thinking, because Eddie was thinking it himself. Never had he seen a man who looked so lonely, so far from the run of human life with its fellowship and warmth. To see him here, in this place of fiesta (for it was a fiesta, no matter how desperate the business that lay behind it might be), only underlined the truth of him: he was the last. There was no other. If Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy were of his line, they were only a distant shoot, far from the trunk. Afterthoughts, almost. Roland, however…Roland…

Hush,Eddie thought.You don’t want to think about such things. Not tonight.

Slowly, Roland crossed his arms over his chest, narrow and tight, so he could lay the palm of his right hand on his left cheek and the palm of his left hand on his right cheek. This meant zilch to Eddie, but the reaction from the seven hundred or so Calla-folk was immediate: a jubilant, approving roar that went far beyond mere applause. Eddie remembered a Rolling Stones concert he’d been to. The crowd had made that same sound when the Stones’ drummer, Charlie Watts, began to tap his cow-bell in a syncopated rhythm that could only mean “Honky Tonk Woman.”

Roland stood as he was, arms crossed, palms on cheeks, until they quieted. “We are well-met in the Calla,” he said. “Hear me, I beg.”

“We say thankee!”they roared. And“Hear you very well!”

Roland nodded and smiled. “But I and my friends have been far and we have much yet to do and see. Now while we bide, will you open to us if we open to you?”

Eddie felt a chill. He felt Jake’s hand tighten on his own.It’s the first of the questions, he thought.

Before the thought was completed, they had roared their answer:“Aye, and thankee!”

“Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?”

There goes the second one,Eddie thought, and now it was him squeezing Jake’s hand. He saw Telford and the one named Diego Adams exchange a dismayed, knowing look. The look of men suddenly realizing that the deal is going down right in front of them and they are helpless to do anything about it.Too late, boys, Eddie thought.

“Gunslingers!” someone shouted. “Gunslingers fair and true, say thankee! Say thankee in God’s name!”

Roars of approval. A thunder of shouts and applause. Cries ofthankee andaye and evenyer-bugger .

As they quieted, Eddie waited for him to ask the last question, the most important one: Do you seek aid and succor?

Roland didn’t ask it. He said merely, “We’d go our way for tonight, and put down our heads, for we’re tired. But I’d give’ee one final song and a little step-toe before we leave, so I would, for I believe you know both.”

A jubilant roar of agreement met this. They knew it, all right.

“I know it myself, and love it,” said Roland of Gilead. “I know it of old, and never expected to hear ‘The Rice Song’ again from any lips, least of all from my own. I am older now, so I am, and not so limber as I once was. Cry your pardon for the steps I get wrong—”

“Gunslinger, we say thankee!” a woman called. “Such joy we feel, aye!”

“And do I not feel the same?” the gunslinger asked gently. “Do I not give you joy from my joy, and water I carried with the strength of my arm and my heart?”

“Give you to eat of the green-crop,”they chanted as one, and Eddie felt his back prickle and his eyes tear up.

“Oh my God,” Jake sighed. “He knows somuch …”

“Give you joy of the rice,” Roland said.

He stood for a moment longer in the orange glow, as if gathering his strength, and then he began to dance something that was caught between a jig and a tap routine. It was slow at first, very slow, heel and toe, heel and toe. Again and again his bootheels made that fist-on-coffintop sound, but now it had rhythm.Just rhythm at first, and then, as the gunslinger’s feet began to pick up speed, it was more than rhythm: it became a kind of jive. That was the only word Eddie could think of, the only one that seemed to fit.

Susannah rolled up to them. Her eyes were huge, her smile amazed. She clasped her hands tightly between her breasts. “Oh, Eddie!” she breathed. “Did you know he could do this? Did you have any slightest idea?”

“No,” Eddie said. “No idea.”

Ten

Faster moved the gunslinger’s feet in their battered and broken old boots. Then faster still. The rhythm becoming clearer and clearer, and Jake suddenly realized heknew that beat. Knew it from the first time he’d gone todash in New York. Before meeting Eddie, a young black man with Walkman earphones on his head had strolled past him, bopping his sandaled feet and going “Cha-da-ba, cha-da-bow!” under his breath. And that was the rhythm Roland was beating out on the bandstand, eachBow! accomplished by a forward kick of the leg and a hard skip of the heel on wood.

Around them, people began to clap. Not on the beat, but on the off-beat. They were starting to sway. Those women wearing skirts held them out and swirled them. The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy.Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel:the ecstasy of perfect recognition .

Sweat began to gleam on Roland’s face. He lowered his crossed arms and started clapping. When he did, the Calla-folkenbegan to chant one word over and over on the beat:“Come!…Come!…Come!…Come!” It occurred to Jake that this was the word some kids used for jizz, and he suddenly doubted if that was mere coincidence.

Of course it’s not. Like the black guy bopping to that same beat. It’s all the Beam, and it’s all nineteen.

“Come!…Come!…Come!”

Eddie and Susannah had joined in. Benny had joined in. Jake abandoned thought and did the same.

Eleven

In the end, Eddie had no real idea what the words to “The Rice Song” might have been. Not because of the dialect, not in Roland’s case, but because they spilled out too fast to follow. Once, on TV, he’d heard a tobacco auctioneer in South Carolina. This was like that. There were hard rhymes, soft rhymes, off-rhymes, even rape-rhymes—words that didn’t rhyme at all but were forced to for a moment within the borders of the song. Itwasn’t a song, not really; it was like a chant, or some delirious streetcorner hip-hop. That was the closest Eddie could come. And all the while, Roland’s feet pounded out their entrancing rhythm on the boards; all the while the crowd clapped and chantedCome, come, come, come .

What Eddiecould pick out went like this:

At least three more verses followed these two. By then Eddie had lost track of the words, but he was pretty sure he got the idea: a young man and woman, planting both rice and children in the spring of the year. The song’s tempo, suicidally speedy to begin with, sped up and up until the words were nothing but a jargon-spew and the crowd was clapping so rapidly their hands were a blur. And the heels of Roland’s boots had disappeared entirely. Eddie would have said it was impossible for anyone to dance at that speed, especially after having consumed a heavy meal.

Slow down, Roland,he thought.It’s not like we can call 911 if you vapor-lock.

Then, on some signal neither Eddie, Susannah, nor Jake understood, Roland and the Calla-folkenstopped in mid-career, threw their hands to the sky, and thrust their hips forward, as if in coitus.“COMMALA!” they shouted, and that was the end.

Roland swayed, sweat pouring down his cheeks and brow…and tumbled off the stage into the crowd. Eddie’s heart took a sharp upward lurch in his chest. Susannah cried out and began to roll her wheelchair forward. Jake stopped her before she could get far, grabbing one of the push-handles.

“I think it’s part of the show!” he said.

“Yar, I’m pretty sure it is, too,” Benny Slightman said.

The crowd cheered and applauded. Roland was conveyed through them and above them by willing upraised arms. His own arms were raised to the stars. His chest heaved like a bellows. Eddie watched in a kind of hilarious disbelief as the gunslinger rolled toward them as if on the crest of a wave.

“Roland sings, Roland dances, and to top it all off,” he said, “Roland stage-dives like Joey Ramone.”

“What are you talking about, sugar?” Susannah asked.

Eddie shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. But nothing can top that. It’sgot to be the end of the party.”

It was.

Twelve

Half an hour later, four riders moved slowly down the high street of Calla Bryn Sturgis. One was wrapped in a heavysalide . Frosty plumes came from their mouths and those of their mounts on each exhale. The sky was filled with a cold strew of diamond-chips, Old Star and Old Mother brightest among them. Jake had already gone his way with the Slightmans to Eisenhart’s Rocking B. Callahan led the other three travelers, riding a bit ahead of them. But before leading them anywhere, he insisted on wrapping Roland in the heavy blanket.

“You say it’s not even a mile to your place—” Roland began.

“Never mind your blather,” Callahan said. “The clouds have rolled away, the night’s turned nigh-on cold enough to snow, and you danced a commala such as I’ve never seen in my years here.”

“How many years would that be?” Roland asked.

Callahan shook his head. “I don’t know. Truly, gunslinger, I don’t. I know well enough when I came here—that was the winter of 1983, nine years after I left the town of Jerusalem’s Lot. Nine years after I got this.” He raised his scarred hand briefly.

“Looks like a burn,” Eddie remarked.

Callahan nodded, but said no more on the subject. “In any case, time over here is different, as you all must very well know.”

“It’s in drift,” Susannah said. “Like the points of the compass.”

Roland, already wrapped in the blanket, had seen Jake off with a word…and with something else, as well. Eddie heard the clink of metal as something passed from the hand of the gunslinger to that of the ’prentice. A bit of money, perhaps.

Jake and Benny Slightman rode off into the dark side by side. When Jake turned and offered a final wave, Eddie had returned it with a surprising pang.Christ, you’re not his father, he thought. That was true, but it didn’t make the pang go away.

“Will he be all right, Roland?” Eddie had expected no other answer but yes, had wanted nothing more than a bit of balm for that pang. So the gunslinger’s long silence alarmed him.

At long last Roland replied, “We’ll hope so.” And on the subject of Jake Chambers, he would say no more.

Thirteen

Now here was Callahan’s church, a low and simple log building with a cross mounted over the door.

“What name do you call it, Pere?” Roland asked.

“Our Lady of Serenity.”

Roland nodded. “Good enough.”

“Do you feel it?” Callahan asked. “Do any of you feel it?” He didn’t have to say what he was talking about.

Roland, Eddie, and Susannah sat quietly for perhaps an entire minute. At last Roland shook his head.

Callahan nodded, satisfied. “It sleeps.” He paused, then added: “Tell God thankya.”

“Something’sthere, though,” Eddie said. He nodded toward the church. “It’s like a…I don’t know, a weight, almost.”

“Yes,” Callahan said. “Like a weight. It’s awful. But tonight it sleeps. God be thanked.” He sketched a cross in the frosty air.

Down a plain dirt track (but smooth, and bordered with carefully tended hedges) was another log building. Callahan’s house, what he called the rectory.

“Will you tell us your story tonight?” Roland said.

Callahan glanced at the gunslinger’s thin, exhausted face and shook his head. “Not a word of it, sai. Not even if you were fresh. Mine is no story for starlight. Tomorrow at breakfast, before you and your friends are off on your errands—would that suit?”

“Aye,” Roland said.

“What if it wakes up in the night?” Susannah asked, and cocked her head toward the church. “Wakes up and sends us todash?”

“Then we’ll go,” Roland said.

“You’ve got an idea what to do with it, don’t you?” Eddie asked.

“Perhaps,” Roland said. They started down the path to the house, including Callahan among them as naturally as breathing.

“Anything to do with that old Manni guy you were talking to?” Eddie asked.

“Perhaps,” Roland repeated. He looked at Callahan. “Tell me, Pere, has it ever sentyou todash? You know the word, don’t you?”

“I know it,” Callahan said. “Twice. Once to Mexico. A little town called Los Zapatos. And once…I think…to the Castle of the King. I believe that I was very lucky to get back, that second time.”

“What King are you talking about?” Susannah asked. “Arthur Eld?”

Callahan shook his head. The scar on his forehead glared in the starlight. “Best not to talk about it now,” he said. “Not at night.” He looked at Eddie sadly. “The Wolves are coming. Bad enough. Now comes a young man who tells me the Red Sox lost the World Series again…to theMets ?”

“Afraid so,” Eddie said, and his description of the final game—a game that made little sense to Roland, although it sounded a bit like Points, called Wickets by some—carried them up to the house. Callahan had a housekeeper. She was not in evidence but had left a pot of hot chocolate on the hob.

While they drank it, Susannah said: “Zalia Jaffords told me something that might interest you, Roland.”

The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.

“Her husband’s grandfather lives with them. He’s reputed to be the oldest man in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Tian and the old man haven’t been on good terms in years—Zalia isn’t even sure what they’re pissed off about, it’s that old—but Zalia gets on with him very well. She says he’s gotten quite senile over the last couple of years, but he still has his bright days. And he claims to have seen one of these Wolves. Dead.” She paused. “He claims to have killed it himself.”

“My soul!” Callahan exclaimed. “You don’t say so!”

“I do. Or rather, Zalia did.”

“That,” Roland said, “would be a tale worth hearing. Was it the last time the Wolves came?”

“No,” Susannah said. “And not the time before, when even Overholser would have been not long out of his clouts. The time before that.”

“If they come every twenty-three years,” Eddie said, “that’s almost seventy years ago.”

Susannah nodded. “But he was a man grown, even then. He told Zalia that a moit of them stood out on the West Road and waited for the Wolves to come. I don’t know how many a moit might be—”

“Five or six,” Roland said. He was nodding over his chocolate.

“Anyway, Tian’s Gran-pere was among them. And they killed one of the Wolves.”

“What was it?” Eddie asked. “What did it look like with its mask off?”

“She didn’t say,” Susannah replied. “I don’t think he told her. But we ought to—”

A snore arose, long and deep. Eddie and Susannah turned, startled. The gunslinger had fallen asleep. His chin was on his breastbone. His arms were crossed, as if he’d drifted off to sleep still thinking of the dance. And the rice.

Fourteen

There was only one extra bedroom, so Roland bunked in with Callahan. Eddie and Susannah were thus afforded a sort of rough honeymoon: their first night together by themselves, in a bed and under a roof. They were not too tired to take advantage of it. Afterward, Susannah passed immediately into sleep. Eddie lay awake a little while. Hesitantly, he sent his mind out in the direction of Callahan’s tidy little church, trying to touch the thing that lay within. Probably a bad idea, but he couldn’t resist at least trying. There was nothing. Or rather, a nothing in front of a something.

I could wake it up,Eddie thought.I really think I could .

Yes, and someone with an infected tooth could rap it with a hammer, but why would you?

We’ll have to wake it up eventually. I think we’re going to need it.

Perhaps, but that was for another day. It was time to let this one go.

Yet for awhile Eddie was incapable of doing that. Images flashed in his mind, like bits of broken mirror in bright sunlight. The Calla, lying spread out below them beneath the cloudy sky, the Devar-Tete Whye a gray ribbon. The green beds at its edge: rice come a-falla. Jake and Benny Slightman looking at each other and laughing without a word passed between them to account for it. The aisle of green grass between the high street and the Pavilion. The torches changing color. Oy, bowing and speaking (Eld! Thankee!) with perfect clarity. Susannah singing:“I’ve known sorrow all my days.”

Yet what he remembered most clearly was Roland standing slim and gunless on the boards with his arms crossed at the chest and his hands pressed against his cheeks; those faded blue eyes looking out at thefolken . Roland asking questions, two of three. And then the sound of his boots on the boards, slow at first, then speeding up. Faster and faster, until they were a blur in the torchlight. Clapping. Sweating. Smiling. Yet hiseyes didn’t smile, not those blue bombardier’s eyes; they were as cold as ever.

Yet how he had danced! Great God, how he had danced in the light of the torches.

Come-come-commala, rice come a-falla,Eddie thought.

Beside him, Susannah moaned in some dream.

Eddie turned to her. Slipped his hand beneath her arm so he could cup her breast. His last thought was for Jake. They had better take care of him out at that ranch. If they didn’t, they were going to be one sorry-ass bunch of cowpunchers.

Eddie slept. There were no dreams. And beneath them as the night latened and the moon set, this borderland world turned like a dying clock.

One

Roland awoke from another vile dream of Jericho Hill in the hour before dawn. The horn. Something about Arthur Eld’s horn. Beside him in the big bed, the Old Fella slept with a frown on his face, as if caught in his own bad dream. It creased his broad brow zigzag, breaking the arms of the cross scarred into the skin there.

It was pain that had wakened Roland, not his dream of the horn spilling from Cuthbert’s hand as his old friend fell. The gunslinger was caught in a vise of it from the hips all the way down to his ankles. He could visualize the pain as a series of bright and burning rings. This was how he paid for his outrageous exertions of the night before. If that was all, all would have been well, but he knew there was more to this than just having danced the commala a little too enthusiastically. Nor was it the rheumatiz, as he had been telling himself these last few weeks, his body’s necessary period of adjustment to the damp weather of this fall season. He was not blind to the way his ankles, especially the right one, had begun to thicken. He had observed a similar thickening of his knees, and although his hips still looked fine, when he placed his hands on them, he could feel the way the right one was changing under the skin. No, not the rheumatiz that had afflicted Cort so miserably in his last year or so, keeping him inside by his fire on rainy days. This was something worse. It was arthritis, the bad kind, thedry kind. It wouldn’t be long before it reached his hands. Roland would gladly have fed his right one to the disease, if that would have satisfied it; he had taught it to do a good many things since the lobstrosities had taken the first two fingers, but it was never going to be what it was. Only ailments didn’t work that way, did they? You couldn’t placate them with sacrifices. The arthritis would come when it came and go where it wanted to go.

I might have a year,he thought, lying in bed beside the sleeping religious from Eddie and Susannah and Jake’s world.I might even have two .

No, not two. Probably not even one. What was it Eddie sometimes said?Quit kidding yourself. Eddie had a lot of sayings from his world, but that was a particularly good one. A particularlyapt one.

Not that he would cry off the Tower if Old Bone-Twist Man took his ability to shoot, saddle a horse, cut a strip of rawhide, even to chop wood for a campfire, so simple a thing as that; no, he was in it until the end. But he didn’t relish the picture of riding along behind the others, dependent upon them, perhaps tied to his saddle with the reins because he could no longer hold the pommel. Nothing but a drag-anchor. One they wouldn’t be able to pull up if and when fast sailing was required.

If it gets to that, I’ll kill myself.

But he wouldn’t. That was the truth.Quit kidding yourself.

Which brought Eddie to mind again. He needed to talk to Eddie about Susannah, and right away. This was the knowledge with which he had awakened, and perhaps worth the pain. It wouldn’t be a pleasant talk, but it had to be done. It was time Eddie knew about Mia. She would find it more difficult to slip away now that they were in a town—in a house—but she would have to, just the same. She could argue with her baby’s needs and her own cravings no more than Roland could argue with the bright rings of pain which circled his right hip and knee and both ankles but had so far spared his talented hands. If Eddie wasn’t warned, there might be terrible trouble. More trouble was something they didn’t need now; it might sink them.

Roland lay in the bed, and throbbed, and watched the sky lighten. He was dismayed to see that brightness no longer bloomed dead east; it was a little off to the south, now.

Sunrise was also in drift.

Two

The housekeeper was good-looking, about forty. Her name was Rosalita Munoz, and when she saw the way Roland walked to the table, she said: “One cup coffee, then you come with me.”

Callahan cocked his head at Roland when she went to the stove to get the pot. Eddie and Susannah weren’t up yet. The two of them had the kitchen to themselves. “How bad is it with you, sir?”

“It’s only the rheumatiz,” Roland said. “Goes through all my family on my father’s side. It’ll work out by noon, given bright sunshine and dry air.”

“I know about the rheumatiz,” Callahan said. “Tell God thankya it’s no worse.”

“I do.” And to Rosalita, who brought heavy mugs of steaming coffee. “I tell you thankya, as well.”

She put down the cups, curtsied, and then regarded him shyly and gravely. “I never saw the rice-dance kicked better, sai.”

Roland smiled crookedly. “I’m paying for it this morning.”

“I’ll fix you,” she said. “I’ve a cat-oil, special to me. It’ll first take the pain and then the limp. Ask Pere.”

Roland looked at Callahan, who nodded.

“Then I’ll take you up on it. Thankee-sai.”

She curtsied again, and left them.

“I need a map of the Calla,” Roland said when she was gone. “It doesn’t have to be great art, but it has to be accurate, and true as to distance. Can you draw one for me?”

“Not at all,” Callahan said composedly. “I cartoon a little, but I couldn’t draw you a map that would take you as far as the river, not even if you put a gun to my head. It’s just not a talent I have. But I know two that could help you there.” He raised his voice. “Rosalita! Rosie! Come to me a minute, do ya!”

Three

Twenty minutes later, Rosalita took Roland by the hand, her grip firm and dry. She led him into the pantry and closed the door. “Drop yer britches, I beg,” she said. “Be not shy, for I doubt you’ve anything I haven’t seen before, unless men are built summat different in Gilead and the Inners.”

“I don’t believe they are,” Roland said, and let his pants fall.

The sun was now up but Eddie and Susannah were still down. Roland was in no hurry to wake them. There would be plenty of early days ahead—and late evenings, too, likely—but this morning let them enjoy the peace of a roof over their heads, the comfort of a feather mattress beneath their bodies, and the exquisite privacy afforded by a door between their secret selves and the rest of the world.

Rosalita, a bottle of pale, oily liquid in one hand, drew in a hiss over her full lower lip. She looked at Roland’s right knee, then touched his right hip with her left hand. He flinched away a bit from the touch, although it was gentleness itself.

She raised her eyes to him. They were so dark a brown they were almost black. “This isn’t rheumatiz. It’s arthritis. The kind that spreads fast.”

“Aye, where I come from some call it dry twist,” he said. “Not a word of it to the Pere, or to my friends.”

Those dark eyes regarded him steadily. “You won’t be able to keep this a secret for long.”

“I hear you very well. Yet while I can keep the secret, Iwill keep the secret. And you’ll help me.”

“Aye,” she said. “No fear. I’ll bide’ee.”

“Say thankya. Now, will that help me?”

She looked at the bottle and smiled. “Aye. It’s mint and spriggum from the swamp. But the secret’s the cat’s bile that’s in it—not but three drops in each bottle, ye ken. They’re the rock-cats that come in out of the desert, from the direction of the great darkness.” She tipped up the bottle and poured a little of the oily stuff into her palm. The smell of the mint struck Roland’s nose at once, followed by some other smell, a lower smell, which was far less pleasant. Yes, he reckoned that could be the bile of a puma or a cougar or whatever they meant by a rock-cat in these parts.

When she bent and rubbed it into his kneecaps, the heat was immediate and intense, almost too strong to bear. But when it moderated a bit, there was more relief than he would have dared hope for.

When she had finished anointing him, she said: “How be your body now, gunslinger-sai?”

Instead of answering with his mouth, he crushed her against his lean, undressed body and hugged her tightly. She hugged him back with an artless lack of shame and whispered in his ear, “If ’ee are who ’ee say ’ee are, ’ee mustn’t let un take the babbies. No, not a single one. Never mind what the big bugs like Eisenhart and Telford might say.”

“We’ll do the best we can,” he said.

“Good. Thankya.” She stepped back, looked down. “One part of ’ee has no arthritis, nor rheumatiz, either. Looks quite lively. Perhaps a lady might look at the moon tonight, gunslinger, and pine for company.”

“Perhaps she’ll find it,” Roland said. “Will you give me a bottle of that stuff to take on my travels around the Calla, or is it too dear?”

“Nay, not too dear,” she said. In her flirting, she had smiled. Now she looked grave again. “But will only help’ee a little while, I think.”

“I know,” Roland said. “And no matter. We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back.”

“Aye,” she said. “So it does.”

Four

When he came out of the pantry, buckling his belt, he finally heard stirring in the other room. The murmur of Eddie’s voice followed by a sleepy peal of female laughter. Callahan was at the stove, pouring himself fresh coffee. Roland went to him and spoke rapidly.

“I saw pokeberries on the left of your drive between here and your church.”

“Yes, and they’re ripe. Your eyes are sharp.”

“Never mind my eyes, do ya. I would go out to pick my hat full. I’d have Eddie join me while his wife perhaps cracks an egg or three. Can you manage that?”

“I believe so, but—”

“Good,” Roland said, and went out.

Five

By the time Eddie came, Roland had already half-filled his hat with the orange berries, and also eaten several good handfuls. The pain in his legs and hips had faded with amazing rapidity. As he picked, he wondered how much Cort would have paid for a single bottle of Rosalita Munoz’s cat-oil.

“Man, those look like the wax fruit our mother used to put out on a doily every Thanksgiving,” Eddie said. “Can you really eat them?”

Roland picked a pokeberry almost as big as the tip of his own finger and popped it into Eddie’s mouth. “Does that taste like wax, Eddie?”

Eddie’s eyes, cautious to begin with, suddenly widened. He swallowed, grinned, and reached for more. “Like cranberries, only sweeter. I wonder if Suze knows how to make muffins? Even if she doesn’t, I bet Callahan’s housekeeper—”

“Listen to me, Eddie. Listen closely and keep a rein on your emotions. For your father’s sake.”

Eddie had been reaching for a bush that was particularly heavy with pokeberries. Now he stopped and simply looked at Roland, his face expressionless. In this early light, Roland could see how much older Eddie looked. How much he had grown up was really extraordinary.

“What is it?”

Roland, who had held this secret in his own counsel until it seemed more complex than it really was, was surprised at how quickly and simply it was told. And Eddie, he saw, wasn’t completely surprised.

“How long have you known?”

Roland listened for accusation in this question and heard none. “For certain? Since I first saw her slip into the woods. Saw her eating…” Roland paused. “…what she was eating. Heard her speaking with people who weren’t there. I’ve suspected much longer. Since Lud.”

“And didn’t tell me.”

“No.” Now the recriminations would come, and a generous helping of Eddie’s sarcasm. Except they didn’t.

“You want to know if I’m pissed, don’t you? If I’m going to make this a problem.”

“Are you?”

“No. I’m not angry, Roland. Exasperated, maybe, and I’m scared to fuckin death for Suze, but why would I be angry with you? Aren’t you the dinh?” It was Eddie’s turn to pause. When he spoke again, he was more specific. It wasn’t easy for him, but he got it out. “Aren’t youmy dinh?”

“Yes,” Roland said. He reached out and touched Eddie’s arm. He was astounded by his desire—almost his need—to explain. He resisted it. If Eddie could call him not just dinh buthis dinh, he ought to behave as dinh. What he said was, “You don’t seem exactly stunned by my news.”

“Oh, I’m surprised,” Eddie said. “Maybe not stunned, but…well…” He picked berries and dropped them into Roland’s hat. “I saw some things, okay? Sometimes she’s too pale. Sometimes she winces and grabs at herself, but if you ask her, she says it’s just gas. And her boobs are bigger. I’m sure of it. But Roland, she’s still having her period! A month or so ago I saw her burying the rags, and they were bloody.Soaked . How can that be? If she caught pregnant when we pulled Jake through—while she was keeping the demon of the circle occupied—that’s got to be four months at least, and probably five. Even allowing for the way time slips around now, it’sgotta be.”

Roland nodded. “I know she’s been having her monthlies. And that’s proof conclusive it isn’t your baby. The thing she’s carrying scorns her woman’s blood.” Roland thought of her squeezing the frog in her fist, popping it. Drinking its black bile. Licking it from her fingers like syrup.

“Would it…” Eddie made as if to eat one of the pokeberries, decided against it, and tossed it into Roland’s hat instead. Roland thought it would be a while before Eddie felt the stirrings of true appetite again. “Roland, would it evenlook like a human baby?”

“Almost surely not.”

“What, then?”

And before he could stay them, the words were out. “Better not to name the devil.”

Eddie winced. What little color remained in his face now left it.

“Eddie? Are you all right?”

“No,” Eddie said. “I am most certainly not all right. But I’m not gonna faint like a girl at an Andy Gibb concert, either. What are we going to do?”

“For the time being, nothing. We have too many other things to do.”

“Don’t we just,” Eddie said. “Over here, the Wolves come in twenty-four days, if I’ve got it figured right. Over there in New York, who knows what day it is? The sixth of June? The tenth? Closer to July fifteenth than it was yesterday, that’s for sure. But Roland—if what she’s got inside her isn’t human, we can’t be sure her pregnancy will go nine months. She might pop it in six. Hell, she might pop it tomorrow.”

Roland nodded and waited. Eddie had gotten this far; surely he would make it the rest of the way.

And he did. “We’re stuck, aren’t we?”

“Yes. We can watch her, but there’s not much else we can do. We can’t even keep her still in hopes of slowing things down, because she’d very likely guess why we were doing it. And we need her. To shoot when the time comes, but before that, we’ll have to train some of these people with whatever weapons they feel comfortable with. It’ll probably turn out to be bows.” Roland grimaced. In the end he had hit the target in the North Field with enough arrows to satisfy Cort, but he had never cared for bow and arrow or bah and bolt. Those had been Jamie DeCurry’s choice of weapons, not his own.

“We’re really gonna go for it, aren’t we?”

“Oh yes.”

And Eddie smiled. Smiled in spite of himself. He was what he was. Roland saw it and was glad.

Six

As they walked back to Callahan’s rectory-house, Eddie asked: “You came clean with me, Roland, why not come clean with her?”

“I’m not sure I understand you.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Eddie said.

“All right, but you won’t like the answer.”

“I’ve heard all sorts of answers from you, and I couldn’t say I’ve cared for much more than one in five.” Eddie considered. “Nah, that’s too generous. Make it one in fifty.”

“The one who calls herself Mia—which meansmother in the High Speech—kens she’s carrying a child, although I doubt she kens what kind of a child.”

Eddie considered this in silence.

“Whatever it is, Mia thinks of it as her baby, and she’ll protect it to the limit of her strength and life. If that means taking over Susannah’s body—the way Detta Walker sometimes took over Odetta Holmes—she’ll do it if she can.”

“And probably she could,” Eddie said gloomily. Then he turned directly to Roland. “So what I think you’re saying—correct me if I’ve got it wrong—is that you don’t want to tell Suze she might be growing a monster in her belly because it might impair her efficiency.”

Roland could have quibbled about the harshness of this judgment, but chose not to. Essentially, Eddie was right.

As always when he was angry, Eddie’s street accent became more pronounced. It was almost as though he were speaking through his nose instead of his mouth. “And if anything changes over the next month or so—if she goes into labor and pops out the Creature from the Black Lagoon, for instance—she’s gonna be completely unprepared. Won’t have a clue.”

Roland stopped about twenty feet from the rectory-house. Inside the window, he could see Callahan talking to a couple of young people, a boy and a girl. Even from here he could see they were twins.

“Roland?”

“You say true, Eddie. Is there a point? If so, I hope you’ll get to it. Time is no longer just a face on the water, as you yourself pointed out. It’s become a precious commodity.”

Again he expected a patented Eddie Dean outburst complete with phrases such askiss my ass oreat shit and die . Again, no such outburst came. Eddie was looking at him, that was all. Steadily and a little sorrowfully. Sorry for Susannah, of course, but also for the two of them. The two of them standing here and conspiring against one of the tet.

“I’m going to go along with you,” Eddie said, “but not because you’re the dinh, and not because one of those two is apt to come back brainless from Thunderclap.” He pointed to the pair of kids the Old Fella was talking to in his living room. “I’d trade every kid in this town for the one Suze is carrying. If itwas a kid. My kid.”

“I know you would,” Roland said.

“It’s the rose I care about,” Eddie said. “That’s the only thing worth risking her for. But even so, you’ve got to promise me that if things go wrong—if she goes into labor, or if this Mia chick starts taking over—we’ll try to save her.”

“I would always try to save her,” Roland said, and then had a brief, nightmare image—brief but very clear—of Jake dangling over the drop under the mountains.

“You swear that?” Eddie asked.

“Yes,” Roland said. His eyes met those of the younger man. In his mind, however, he saw Jake falling into the abyss.

Seven

They reached the rectory door just as Callahan was ushering the two young people out. They were, Roland thought, very likely the most gorgeous children he had ever seen. Their hair was black as coal, the boy’s shoulder-length, the girl’s bound by a white ribbon and falling all the way to her bottom. Their eyes were dark, perfect blue. Their skin was creamy-pale, their lips a startling, sensuous red. There were faint spatters of freckles on their cheeks. So far as Roland could tell, the spatters were also identical. They looked from him to Eddie and then back to Susannah, who leaned in the kitchen doorway with a dish-wiper in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. Their shared expression was one of curious wonder. He saw caution in their faces, but no fear.

“Roland, Eddie, I’d like you to meet the Tavery twins, Frank and Francine. Rosalita fetched them—the Taverys live not half a mile away, do ya. You’ll have your map by this afternoon, and I doubt if you’ll ever have seen a finer one in all your life. It’s but one of the talents they have.”

The Tavery twins made their manners, Frank with a bow and Francine with a curtsy.

“You do us well and we say thankya,” Roland told them.

An identical blush suffused their astoundingly creamy complexions; they muttered their thanks and prepared to slip away. Before they could, Roland put an arm around each narrow but well-made pair of shoulders and led the twins a little way down the walk. He was taken less by their perfect child’s beauty than by the piercing intelligence he saw in their blue eyes. He had no doubt they would make his map; he also had no doubt that Callahan had had Rosalita fetch them as a kind of object lesson, were one still needed: with no interference, one of these beautiful children would be a grizzling idiot a month from now.

“Sai?” Frank asked. Now therewas a touch of worry in his voice.

“Fear me not,” Roland said, “but hear me well.”

Eight

Callahan and Eddie watched Roland walk the Tavery twins slowly along the rectory’s flagstoned path and toward the dirt drive. Both men shared the same thought: Roland looked like a benevolent gran-pere.

Susannah joined them, watched, then plucked Eddie’s shirt. “Come with me a minute.”

He followed her into the kitchen. Rosalita was gone and they had it to themselves. Susannah’s brown eyes were enormous, shining.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“Pick me up.”

He did.

“Now kiss me quick, while you have the chance.”

“Is that all you want?”

“Isn’t it enough? It better be, Mister Dean.”

He kissed her, and willingly, but couldn’t help marking how much larger her breasts were as they pressed against him. When he drew his face away from hers, he found himself looking for traces of the other one in her face. The one who called herself Mother in the High Speech. He saw only Susannah, but he supposed that from now on he would be condemned to look. And his eyes kept trying to go to her belly. He tried to keep them away, but it was as if they were weighted. He wondered how much that was between them would change now. It was not a pleasant speculation.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Much.” She smiled a little, and then the smile faded. “Eddie? Is something wrong?”

He grinned and kissed her again. “You mean other than that we’re all probably gonna die here? Nope. Nothing at all.”

Had he lied to her before? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think so. And even if he had, he had never done so with such baldness. With such calculation.

This was bad.

Nine

Ten minutes later, rearmed with fresh mugs of coffee (and a bowl of pokeberries), they went out into the rectory’s small back yard. The gunslinger lifted his face into the sun for a moment, relishing its weight and heat. Then he turned to Callahan. “We three would hear your story now, Pere, if you’d tell it. And then mayhap stroll up to your church and see what’s there.”

“I want you to take it,” Callahan said. “It hasn’t desecrated the church, how could it when Our Lady was never consecrated to begin with? But it’s changed it for the worse. Even when the church was still a-building, I felt the spirit of God inside it. No more. That thing has driven it out. I want you to take it.”

Roland opened his mouth to say something noncommittal, but Susannah spoke before he could. “Roland? You all right?”

He turned to her. “Why, yes. Why would I not be?”

“You keep rubbing your hip.”

Had he been? Yes, he saw, he had. The pain was creeping back already, in spite of the warm sun, in spite of Rosalita’s cat-oil. The dry twist.

“It’s nothing,” he told her. “Just a touch of the rheumatiz.”

She looked at him doubtfully, then seemed to accept.This is a hell of a way to start, Roland thought,with at least two of us keeping secrets. We can’t go on so. Not for long.

He turned to Callahan. “Tell us your tale. How you came by your scars, how you came here, and how you came by Black Thirteen. We would hear every word.”

“Yes,” Eddie murmured.

“Every word,” Susannah echoed.

All three of them looked at Callahan—the Old Fella, the religious who would allow himself to be called Pere but not priest. His twisted right hand went to the scar on his forehead and rubbed at it. At last he said: “ ’Twas the drink. That’s what I believe now. Not God, not devils, not predestination, not the company of saints. ’Twas the drink.” He paused, thinking, then smiled at them. Roland remembered Nort, the weed-eater in Tull who had been brought back from the dead by the man in black. Nort had smiled like that. “But if God made the world, then God made the drink. And that is also His will.”

Ka,Roland thought.

Callahan sat quiet, rubbing the scarred crucifix on his forehead, gathering his thoughts. And then he began to tell his story.

One

It was the drink, that was what he came to believe when he finally stopped it and clarity came. Not God, not Satan, not some deep psychosexual battle between his blessed mither and his blessed Da’. Just the drink. And was it surprising that whiskey should have taken him by the ears? He was Irish, he was a priest, one more strike and you’re out.

From seminary in Boston he’d gone to a city parish in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parishioners had loved him (he wouldn’t refer to them as his flock, flocks were what you called seagulls on their way to the town dump), but after seven years in Lowell, Callahan had grown uneasy. When talking to Bishop Dugan in the Diocese office, he had used all the correct buzzwords of the time to express this unease: anomie, urban malaise, an increasing lack of empathy, a sense of disconnection from the life of the spirit. He’d had a nip in the bathroom before his appointment (followed by a couple of Wintergreen Life Savers, no fool he), and had been particularly eloquent that day. Eloquence does not always proceed from belief, but often proceeds from the bottle. And he was no liar. Hehad believed what he was saying that day in Dugan’s study. Every word. As he believed in Freud, the future of the Mass spoken in English, the nobility of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and the idiocy of his widening war in Vietnam: waist-deep in the Wide Muddy, and the big fool said to push on, as the old folk-tune had it. He believed in large part because those ideas (if theywere ideas and not just cocktail-party chatter) had been currently trading high on the intellectual Big Board. Social Conscience is up two and a third, Hearth and Home down a quarter but still your basic blue-chip stock. Later it all became simpler. Later he came to understand that he wasn’t drinking too much because he was spiritually unsettled but spiritually unsettled because he was drinking too much. You wanted to protest, to saythat couldn’t be it, or notjust that, it was too simple. But itwas that, just that. God’s voice is still and small, the voice of a sparrow in a cyclone, so said the prophet Isaiah, and we all say thankya. It’s hard to hear a small voice clearly if you’re shitass drunk most of the time. Callahan left America for Roland’s world before the computer revolution spawned the acronym GIGO—garbage in, garbage out—but in plenty of time to hear someone at an AA meeting observe that if you put an asshole on a plane in San Francisco and flew him to the east coast, the same asshole got off in Boston. Usually with four or five drinks under his belt. But that was later. In 1964 he had believed what he believed, and plenty of people had been anxious to help him find his way. From Lowell he had gone to Spofford, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. There he stayed for five years, and then he began to feel restless again. Consequently, he began to talk the talk again. The kind the Diocesan Office listened to. The kind that got you moved on down the line. Anomie. Spiritual disconnection (this time from his suburban parishioners). Yes, they liked him (and he liked them), but something still seemed to be wrong. And therewas something wrong, mostly in the quiet bar on the corner (where everybodyalso liked him) and in the liquor cabinet in the rectory living room. Beyond small doses, alcohol is a toxin, and Callahan was poisoning himself on a nightly basis. It was the poison in his system, not the state of the world or that of his own soul, which was bringing him down. Had it always been that obvious? Later (at another AA meeting) he’d heard a guy refer to alcoholism and addiction as the elephant in the living room: how could you miss it? Callahan hadn’t told him, he’d still been in the first ninety days of sobriety at that point and that meant he was supposed to just sit there and be quiet (“Take the cotton out of your ears and stick it in your mouth,” the old-timers advised, and we all say thankya), but hecould have told him, yes indeed. You could miss the elephant if it was amagic elephant, if it had the power—like The Shadow—to cloud men’s minds. To actually make you believe that your problems were spiritual and mental but absolutely not boozical. Good Christ, just the alcohol-related loss of the REM sleep was enough to screw you up righteously, but somehow you never thought of that while you were active. Booze turned your thought-processes into something akin to that circus routine where all the clowns come piling out of the little car. When you looked back in sobriety, the things you’d said and done made you wince (“I’d sit in a bar solving all the problems of the world, then not be able to find my car in the parking lot,” one fellow at a meeting remembered, and we all say thankya). The things youthought were even worse. How could you spend the morning puking and the afternoon believing you were having a spiritual crisis? Yet he had. And his superiors had, possibly because more than a few of them were having their own problems with the magic elephant. Callahan began thinking that a smaller church, a rural parish, would put him back in touch with God and himself. And so, in the spring of 1969, he found himself in New England again. Northern New England, this time. He had set up shop—bag and baggage, crucifix and chasuble—in the pleasant little town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. There he had finally met real evil. Looked it in the face.

Roland speaking from behind him. Because now it was just Eddie and the door. The door withUNFOUND written on it in some strange and lovely language. Once he’d read a novel calledThe Door Into Summer, by…who? One of the science-fiction guys he was always dragging home from the library, one of his old reliables, perfect for the long afternoons of summer vacation. Murray Leinster, Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison…Robert Heinlein. He thought it was Heinlein who’d writtenThe Door Into Summer . Henry always ragging him about the books he brought home, calling him the wittle sissy, the wittle bookworm, asking him if he could read and jerk off at the same time, wanting to know how he could sit fuckin still for so long with his nose stuck in some made-up piece of shit about rockets and time machines. Henry older than him. Henry covered with pimples that were always shiny with Noxzema and Stri-Dex. Henry getting ready to go into the Army. Eddie younger. Eddie bringing books home from the library. Eddie thirteen years old, almost the age Jake is now. It’s 1977 and he’s thirteen and on Second Avenue and the taxis are shiny yellow in the sun. A black man wearing Walkman earphones is walking past Chew Chew Mama’s, Eddie can see him, Eddie knows the black man is listening to Elton John singing—what else?—“Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” The sidewalk is crowded. It’s late afternoon and people are going home after another day in the steel arroyos of Calla New York, where they grow money instead of rice, can ya say prime rate. Women looking amiably weird in expensive business suits and sneakers; their high heels are in their gunna because the workday is done and they’re going home. Everyone seems to be smiling because the light is so bright and the air is so warm, it’s summer in the city and somewhere there’s the sound of a jackhammer, like on that old Lovin’ Spoonful song. Before him is a door into the summer of ’77, the cabbies are getting a buck and a quarter on the drop and thirty cents every fifth of a mile thereafter, it was less before and it’ll be more after but this is now, the dancing point of now. The space shuttle with the teacher on board hasn’t blown up. John Lennon is still alive, although he won’t be much longer if he doesn’t stop messing with that wicked heroin, that China White. As for Eddie Dean, Edward Cantor Dean, he knows nothing about heroin. A few cigarettes are his only vice (other than trying to jack off, at which he will not be successful for almost another year). He’s thirteen. It’s 1977 and he has exactly four hairs on his chest, he counts them religiously each morning, hoping for big number five. It’s the summer after the Summer of the Tall Ships. It’s a late afternoon in the month of June and he can hear a happy tune. The tune is coming from the speakers over the doorway of the Tower of Power record shop, it’s Mungo Jerry singing “In the Summertime,” and—