Wolves of the Calla

"Thank God," Eddie said. "It's like something out of a George Romero zombie movie."

"Susa

"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 fu

"We are ka-tet, Susa

"What the hell are you trying to imply?" Eddie asked him. He might have had said more, but before he could get started, Susa

"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 Susa

"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," Susa

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," Susa

"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 Susa

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.

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?"

Susa

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

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 Susa

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."