Wolves of the Calla

Slightman the Elder nodded, then put his glasses back on. "Must have been something like the Wolves in the elden days, don't you think? Enough like em so Andy can't tell em apart. It's all I can figure."

Is it really? Roland thought.

He produced the Tavery twins' map, opened it, and tapped an arroyo in the hill country northeast of town. It wound its way deeper and deeper into those hills before ending in one of the Calla's old garnet mines. This one was a shaft that went thirty feet into a hillside and then stopped. The place wasn't really much like Eyebolt Canyon in Mejis (there was no thi

And if things were left out? If some of what he said was a lie?

If the Wolves got wind of the lie and believed it?

That would be good, wouldn't it? Good if they lunged and snapped in the right direction, but at the wrong thing?

Yes, but I'll need to trust someone with the whole truth eventually. Who? '

Not Susa

Not Eddie, because Eddie might let something crucial slip to Susa

Not Jake, because Jake had become fast friends with Be

He was on his own again, and this condition had never felt more lonely to him.

"Look," he said, tapping the arroyo. "Here's a place you might think of, Slightman. Easy to get in, not so easy to get back out. Suppose we were to take all the children of a certain age and tuck them away safe in this little bit of a mine?"

He saw understanding begin to dawn in Slightman's eyes. Something else, too. Hope, maybe.

"If we hide the children, they know where," Eisenhart said. "It's as if they smell em, like ogres in a kid's cradle-story."

"So I'm told," Roland said. "What I suggest is that we could use that."

"Make em bait, you mean. Gunslinger, that's hard."

Roland, who had no intention of putting the Calla's children in the abandoned garnet mine-or anywhere near it-nodded his head. "Hard world sometimes, Eisenhart."

"Say thankya," Eisenhart replied, but his face was grim. He touched the map. "Could work. Aye, could work… if ye could suck all the Wolves in."

Wherever the children wind up, I'll need help putting them there, Roland thought. There'll have to be people who know where to go and what to do. A plan. But not yet. For now I can play the game I'm playing. It's like Castles. Because someone's hiding.

Did he know that? He did not.

Did he smell it? Aye, he did.

Now it's twenty-four, Roland thought. Twenty-four days until the Wolves.

It would have to be enough.

Chapter VI:

Gran-pere's Tale

ONE

Eddie, a city boy to the core, was almost shocked by how much he liked the Jaffords place on the River Road. I could live in a place like this, he thought. That'd be okay. It'd do me fine.

It was a long log cabin, craftily built and chinked against the winter winds. Along one side there were large windows which gave a view down a long, gentle hill to the rice-fields and the river. On the other side was the barn and the dooryard, beaten dirt that had been prettied up with circular islands of grass and flowers and, to the left of the back porch, a rather exotic little vegetable garden. Half of it was filled with a yellow herb called madrigal, which Tian hoped to grow in quantity the following year.

Susa

What Eddie liked was the way it all seemed to work together and produce a feeling of home. You couldn't exactly say what caused that feeling, because it was no one thing, but-

Yeah, there is one thing. And it doesn't have anything to do with the rustic log-cabin look of the place or the vegetable garden and the pecking chickens or the beds of flowers, either.

It was the kids. At first Eddie had been a little stu

"Them on the end're Heddon and Hedda," Zalia said, pointing to the pair of dark blonds. "They're ten. Make your ma

Heddon sketched a bow, at the same time tapping his grimy forehead with the side of an even grimier fist. Covering all the bases, Eddie thought. The girl curtsied.

"Long nights and pleasant days," said Heddon.

"That's pleasant days and long lives, dummikins," Hedda stage-whispered, then curtsied and repeated the sentiment in what she felt was the correct ma

"The two young'uns is Lyman and Lia," Zalia said.

Lyman, who appeared all eyes and gaping mouth, bowed so violendy he nearly fell in the dirt. Lia actually did tumble over while making her curtsy. Eddie had to struggle to keep a straight face as Hedda picked her sister out of the dust, hissing.

"And this 'un," she said, kissing the large baby in her arms, "is Aaron, my little love."

"Your singleton," Susa

"Aye, lady, so he is."

Aaron began to struggle, kicking and twisting. Zalia put him down. Aaron hitched up his diaper and trotted off toward the side of the house, yelling for his Da'.

"Heddon, go after him and mind him," Zalia said.

"Maw-Maw, no!" He sent her frantic eye-signals to the effect that he wanted to stay right here, listening to the strangers and eating them up with his eyes.

"Maw-Maw, yes," Zalia said. "Garn and mind your brother, Heddon."

The boy might have argued further, but at that moment Tian Jaffords came around the corner of the cabin and swept the little boy up into his arms. Aaron crowed, knocked off his Da's straw hat, pulled at his Da's sweaty hair.

Eddie and Susa

Man and woman or boy and girl? Both at the same time, Eddie thought. Because their ages don't matter.

The female, sweaty and laughing, had to be six-six, with breasts that looked twice as big as Eddie's head. Around her neck on a string was a wooden crucifix. The male had at least six inches on his sister-in-law. He looked at the newcomers shyly, then began sucking his thumb with one hand and squeezing his crotch with the other. To Eddie the most amazing thing about them wasn't their size but their eerie resemblance to Tian and Zalia. It was like looking at the clumsy first drafts of some ultimately successful work of art. They were so clearly idiots, the both of them, and so clearly, so closely, related to people who weren't. Eerie was the only word for them.;