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 nodüng. 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 die 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. She must 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 they do 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 had 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 turn-ing 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 is nothing but strikes mid-town
lanes. 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's
heazry."
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.
Part Two
Telling Tales
Contents -Prev / Next
Part Two: Telling Tales -- Chapter I: The Pavilion
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 even petted 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 strong probability— 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
