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He didn’t draw long. When Susa
Sleepily, Patrick reached up and touchedthe sore below her own cheek. She winced, then held steady at his gentle touch.The sore had clotted over again, but it throbbed painfully. Even smiling hurther these days. The hand fell away and Patrick slept.
The stars had come out. Roland was lookingraptly up at them.
“What do you see?” she asked him.
“What do you see?” he asked in turn.
She looked at the brightening celestiallandscape. “Well,” she said, “there’s Old Star and Old Mother, but they seem tohave moved west. And that there—oh my goodness!” She placed her hands onhis stubbly cheeks (he never seemed to grow an actual beard, only a bristlyscruff) and turned it. “That wasn’t there back when we left from the Western Sea,I know it wasn’t. That one’s in our world, Roland—we call it theBig Dipper!”
He nodded. “And once, according to theoldest books in my father’s library, it was in the sky of our world, as well.Lydia’s Dipper, it was called. And now here it is again.” He turned to her,smiling. “Another sign of life and renewal. How the Crimson King must hate tolook up from his entrapment and see it riding the sky again!”
Six
Not long after, Susa
Seven
She’s in Central Park again, under abright gray sky from which the first few snowflakes are once more drifting;carolers nearby are singing not “Silent Night” or “What Child Is This” but theRice Song: “Rice be a green-o, See what we seen-o, Seen-o the green-o,Come-come-commala!” She takes off her cap, afraid it will have changed somehow,but it still says MERRY CHRISTMAS! and
(no twins here)
she is comforted.
She looks around and there stand Eddieand Jake, gri
Eddie is wearing a sweatshirt that saysI DRINK NOZZ-A-LA!
Jake is wearing one that says I DRIVETHE TAKURO SPIRIT!
None of this is precisely new. What shesees behind them, standing near a carriage-path leading back to Fifth Avenue,most certainly is. It’s a door about six and a half feet high, and made ofsolid ironwood, from the look of it. The doorknob’s of solid gold, andfiligreed with a shape the lady gunslinger finally recognizes: two crossedpencils. Eberhard-Faber #2’s, she has no doubt. And the erasers have been cutoff.
Eddie holds out a cup of hot chocolate.It’s the perfect kind mit schlag on top, and a little sprinkling ofnutmeg dotting the cream. “Here,” he says, “I brought you hot chocolate.”
She ignores the outstretched cup. She’sfascinated by the door. “It’s like the ones along the beach, isn’t it?” sheasks.
“Yes,” Eddie says.
“No,” Jake says at the same time.
“You’ll figure it out,” they saytogether, and grin at each other, delighted.
She walks past them. Writ upon the doorsthrough which Roland drew them were THE PRISONER and THE LADY OFSHADOWS and THE PUSHER. Writ upon this one is .And below that:
THE ARTIST
She turns back to them and they aregone.
Central Park is gone.
She is looking at the ruination of Lud,gazing upon the waste lands.
On a cold and bitter breeze she hearsfour whispered words: “Time’s almost up… hurry…”
Eight
She woke in a kind of panic, thinking Ihave to leave him… and best I do it before I can s’much as see his Dark Toweron the horizon. But where do I go? And how can I leave him to face both Mordredand the Crimson King with only Patrick to help him?
This idea caused her to reflect on a bittercertainty: come a showdown, Oy would almost certainly be more valuable toRoland than Patrick. The bumbler had proved his mettle on more than oneoccasion and would have been worthy of the title gunslinger, had he buta gun to sling and a hand to sling it with. Patrick, though… Patrick was a…well, a pencil-slinger. Faster than blue blazes, but you couldn’t kill muchwith an Eberhard-Faber unless it was very sharp.
She’d sat up. Roland, leaning against thefar side of her little scooter and keeping the watch, hadn’t noticed. And shedidn’t want him to notice. That would lead to questions. She lay backdown, pulling her hides around her and thinking of their first hunt. Sheremembered how the yearling buck had swerved and run right at her, and howshe’d decapitated it with the Oriza. She remembered the whistling sound in thechilly air, the one that resulted when the wind blew through the littleattachment on the bottom of the plate, the attachment that looked so much likePatrick’s pencil sharpener. She thought her mind was trying to make some sortof co
There was at least one thing she didknow, from her time in Calla Bryn Sturgis. The meaning of the symbols writ uponthe door was UNFOUND.
Time’s almost up. Hurry.
The next day her tears began.
Nine
There were still plenty of bushes behindwhich she could go to do her necessary (and cry her tears, when she could nolonger hold them back), but the land continued to flatten and open. Around noonof their second full day on the road, Susa
“Roland!” she said. “Yonder’s a herd ofbuffalo, or maybe they’re bison! Sure as death n taxes!”
“Aye, do you say so?” Roland asked, withonly passing interest. “We called em ba
Patrick was standing in the back of Ho FatII, sketching madly. He switched his grip on the pencil he was using, nowholding the yellow barrel against his palm and shading with the tip. She couldalmost smell the dust boiling up from the herd as he shaded it with his pencil.Although it seemed to her that he’d taken the liberty of moving the herd fiveor even ten miles closer, unless his vision was a good deal sharper than herown. That, she supposed, was entirely possible. In any case, her eyes hadadjusted and she could see them better herself. Their great shaggy heads. Eventheir black eyes.
“There hasn’t been a herd of buffalo thatsize in America for almost a hundred years,” she said.
“Aye?” Still only polite interest. “Butthey’re in plenty here, I should say. If a little tet of em comes withinpistol-shot range, let’s take a couple. I’d like to taste some fresh meat thatisn’t deer. Would you?”
She let her smile answer for her. Rolandsmiled back. And it occurred to her again that soon she would see him no more,this man she’d believed was either a mirage or a daemon before she had come toknow him both an-tet and dan-dinh. Eddie was dead, Jake was dead, and soon shewould see Roland of Gilead no more. Would he be dead, as well? Would she?
She looked up into the glare of the sun,wanting him to mistake the reason for her tears if he saw them. And they movedon into the southeast of that great and empty land, into the ever-strengtheningbeat-beat-beat that was the Tower at the axis of all worlds and time itself.