The Little Sisters of Eluria

Roland thought he understood, and understanding was a relief.

He looked back at the bearded man, and saw an exceedingly strange thing: the thick black line of scar across the bearded man's cheek and nose was gone. Where it had been was the pinkish-red mark of a healing wound… a cut, or perhaps a slash.

I imagined it.

No, gunslinger, Cort's voice returned. Such as you was not made to imagine. As you well know.

The little bit of movement had tired him out again… or perhaps it was the thinking which had really tired him out. The singing bugs and chiming bells combined and made something too much like a lullaby to resist. This time when Roland closed his eyes, he slept.

III. Five Sisters. Je

When Roland awoke again, he was at first sure that he was still sleeping. Dreaming. Having a nightmare.

Once, at the time he had met and fallen in love with Susan Delgado, he had known a witch named Rhea-the first real witch of Mid-World he had ever met. It was she who had caused Susan's death, although Roland had played his own part. Now, opening his eyes and seeing Rhea not just once but five times over, he thought: This is what comes of remembering those old times. By conjuring Susan, I've conjured Rhea of the Coos, as well. Rhea and her sisters.

The five were dressed in billowing habits as white as the walls and the panels of the ceiling. Their antique crones” faces were framed in wimples just as white, their skin as grey and ru

“He wakes!” one of them cried in a gruesomely coquettish voice.

“Oooo!”

“Ooooh!”

“Ah!”

They fluttered like birds. The one in the centre stepped forward, and as she did, their faces seemed to shimmer like the silk walls of the ward. They weren't old after all, he saw-middle-aged, perhaps, but not old.

Yes. They are old. They changed.

The one who now took charge was taller than the others, and with a broad, slightly bulging brow. She bent towards Roland, and the bells which fringed her forehead tinkled. The sound made him feel sick, somehow, and weaker than he had felt a moment before. Her hazel eyes were intent. Greedy, mayhap. She touched his cheek for a moment, and a numbness seemed to spread there. Then she glanced down, and a look which could have been disquiet cramped her face. She took her hand back.

“Ye wake, pretty man. So ye do. “Tis well.”

“Who are you? Where am l?”

“We are the Little Sisters of Eluria,” she said. “I am Sister Mary. Here is Sister Louise, and Sister Michela, and Sister Coquina-”

“And Sister Tamra,” said the last. “A lovely lass of one-and-twenty. “ She giggled. Her face shimmered, and for a moment she was again as old as the world. Hooked of nose, grey of skin. Roland thought once more of Rhea.

They moved closer, encircling the complication of harness in which he lay suspended, and when Roland shrank away, the pain roared up his back and injured leg again. He groaned. The straps holding him creaked.

“Ooooo!”

“It hurts!”

“Hurts him!”

“Hurts so fierce!”

They pressed even closer, as if his pain fascinated them. And now he could smell them, a dry and earthy smell. The one named Sister Michela reached out -

“Go away! Leave him! Have I not told ye before?”

They jumped back from this voice, startled. Sister Mary looked particularly a

A sixth sister appeared, pushing rudely in between Mary and Tamra. This one perhaps was only one-and-twenty, with flushed cheeks, smooth skin, and dark eyes. Her white habit billowed like a dream. The red rose over her breast stood out like a curse.

“Go! Leave him!”

“Oooo, my dear!” cried Sister Louise in a voice both laughing and angry. “Here's Je

“She has!” laughed Tamra. “Baby's heart is his for the purchase,”

“Oh, so it is!” agreed Sister Coquina.

Mary turned to the newcomer, lips pursed into a tight line. “Ye have no business here, saucy girl.”

“I do if I say I do,” Sister Je

“Order us not,” Sister Mary said, “for we never joke. So you know, Sister Je

The girl's face softened a little, and Roland saw she was afraid. It made him afraid for her. For himself, as well. “Go,” she repeated. “'Tis not the time. Are there not others to tend?”

Sister Mary seemed to consider. The others watched her. At last she nodded, and smiled down at Roland. Again her face seemed to shimmer, like something seen through a heat-haze. What he saw (or thought he saw) beneath was horrible and watchful. “Bide well, pretty man,” she said to Roland. “Bide with us a bit, and we'll heal ye.”

What choice have I? Roland thought.

The others laughed, birdlike titters which rose into the dimness like ribbons. Sister Michela actually blew him a kiss.

“Come, ladies!” Sister Mary cried. “We'll leave Je

“Thank you,” Roland said, looking up at the owner of the cool hand… for he knew it was she who had soothed him.

She took up his fingers as if to prove this, and caressed them. “They mean ye no harm,” she said… yet Roland saw she believed not a word of it, nor did he. He was in trouble here, very bad trouble.

“What is this place?”

“Our place,” she said simply. “The home of the Little Sisters of Eluria. Our convent, if “ee like.”

“This is no convent,” Roland said, looking past her at the empty beds. It's an infirmary. Isn't it?”

“A hospital,” she said, still stroking his fingers. “We serve the doctors… and they serve us. “ He was fascinated by the black curl lying on the cream of her brow-would have stroked it, if he had dared reach up. Just to tell its texture. He found it beautiful because it was the only dark thing in all this white. The white had lost its charm for him. “We are hospitallers… or were, before the world moved on.”

“Are you for the Jesus-man?”

She looked surprised for a moment, almost shocked, and then laughed merrily. “No, not us!”

“If you are hospitallers… nurses… where are the doctors?”

She looked at him, biting at her lip, as if trying to decide something. Roland found her doubt utterly charming, and he realized that, sick or not, he was looking at a woman as a woman for the first time since Susan Delgado had died, and that had been long ago. The whole world had changed since then, and not for the better.

“Would you really know?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, a little surprised. A little disquieted, too. He kept waiting for her face to shimmer and change, as the faces of the others had done. It didn't. There was none of that unpleasant dead-earth smell about her, either.

Wait, he cautioned himself. Believe nothing here, least of all your senses. Not yet.

“I suppose you must,” she said with a sigh. It tinkled the bells at her forehead, which were darker in colour than those the others wore-not black like her hair but charry, somehow, as if they had been hung in the smoke of a campfire. Their sound, however, was brightest silver. “Promise me you'll not scream and wake the pube in yonder bed.”