The Dark Tower

“This man is as crazy as Los’ the Red,”Fumalo said, not without respect.

“All right,” Fimalo said. He sighed andonce more clasped his hands before him. “I have done what I can do.” Henodded to his other two thirds, who were looking attentively back at him.

Feemalo and Fumalo each dropped to oneknee: Feemalo his right, Fumalo his left. They lifted away the lids of thewicker boxes they had carried and tilted them forward. (Susa

Inside one was food: roasts of chicken andpork, joints of beef, great pink rounds of ham. Susa

Inside the other basket were big cable-knitsweaters, one green and one red: Christmas colors.

“There’s also long underwear, coats,fleece-lined shor’-boots, and gloves,” said Feemalo. “For Empathica’s deadlycold at this time of year, and you’ll have months of walking ahead.”

“On the outskirts of town we’ve left you alight aluminum sledge,” Fimalo said. “You can throw it in the back of yourlittle cart and then use it to carry the lady and your gu

“You no doubt wonder why we do all this,since we disapprove of your journey,” said Feemalo. “The fact is, we’regrateful for our survival—”

“We really did think we were done for,”Fumalo broke in. “ ‘The quarterback is toast,’ Eddie might have said.”

And this, too, hurt her… but not as much aslooking at all that food. Not as much as imagining how it would feel to slipone of those bulky sweaters over her head and let the hem fall all the way tothe middle of her thighs.

“My decision was to try and talk you out ofgoing if I could,” said Fimalo—the only one who spoke of himself in thefirst-person singular, Susa

“You can’t kill him!” Fumalo burst out.“Don’t you see that, you wooden-headed killing machine, don’t you see?All you can do is get overeager and play into his dead hands! How can you be sostu—”

“Hush,” Fimalo said mildly, and Fumalohushed at once. “He’s taken his decision.”

“What will you do?” Roland asked. “Oncewe’ve pushed on, that is?”

The three of them shrugged in perfectmirror unison, but it was Fimalo—the so-called uffi’s superego—whoanswered. “Wait here,” he said. “See if the matrix of creation lives or dies.In the meanwhile, try to refurbish Le Casse and bring it to some of itsprevious glory. It was a beautiful place once. It can be beautiful again. Andnow I think our palaver’s done. Take your gifts with our thanks and goodwishes.”

“Grudging good wishes,” said Fumalo,and actually smiled. Coming from him, that smile was both dazzling andunexpected.

Susa

Two things stopped her. One was therealization that a single step forward was all it would take to destroy whatlittle remained of her will; she’d run to the center of the bridge and fall onher knees before that deep basket of clothes and go grubbing through it like apredatory housewife at the a

Yet even that wouldn’t have been enough tohold her back. What did was a memory of the day they’d seen the crow with thegreen stuff in its beak, the crow that had been going Croo, croo!instead of Caw, caw! Only devilgrass, true, but green stuff, all thesame. Living stuff. That was the day Roland had told her to hold her tongue,had told her—what was it? Before victory comes temptation. Shenever would have suspected that her life’s greatest temptation would be acable-knit fisherman’s sweater, but—

She suddenly understood what the gunslingermust have known, if not from the first then from soon after the three StephenKings appeared: this whole thing was a shuck. She didn’t know what, exactly,was in those wicker baskets, but she doubted like hell that it was food andclothes.

She settled within herself.

“Well?” Fimalo asked patiently. “Will youcome and take the presents I’d give you? You must come, if you’d have them, forhalfway across the bridge is as far as I can go myself. Just beyond Feemalo andFumalo is the King’s dead-line. You and she may pass both ways. We may not.”

Roland said, “We thank you for yourkindness, sai, but we’re going to refuse. We have food, and clothing is waitingfor us up ahead, still on the hoof. Besides, it’s really not that cold.”

“No,” Susa

“We’ll be pushing on,” Roland said, andmade another bow over his cocked leg.

“Say thankya, say may ya do well,” Susa

She and Roland began to turn away. And thatwas when Feemalo and Fumalo, still down on their knees, reached inside the openbaskets before them.

Susa

Five

Fimalo stood where he was, on the far sideof the bridge. His hands were still clasped in front of him, but he no longerlooked like Stephen King. He now wore the long, yellow-complexioned face of an oldman who is dying slowly and not well. What hair he had was a dirty gray ratherthan luxuriant black. His skull was a peeling garden of eczema. His cheeks,chin, and forehead were lumped with pimples and open sores, some pustulatingand some bleeding.

“What are you, really?” Roland asked him.

“A hume, just as you are,” said Fimalo,resignedly. “Rando Thoughtful was my name during my years as the Crimson King’sMinister of State. Once upon a time, however, I was plain old Austin Cornwell,from upstate New York. Not the Keystone World, I regret to say, but another. Iran the Niagara Mall at one time, and before that I had a successful career inadvertising. You might be interested to know I worked on accounts for bothNozz-A-La and the Takuro Spirit.”

Susa