“You’re on a quest, aren’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“For what?”
The quest was to save the Dark Tower in this where and the rose in the New York where he and Eddie and
Susannah had come from, but Jake did not want to say this to Benny, much as he liked him. The Tower and the rose were kind of secret things. The ka-tet’s business. But neither did he want to lie.
“Roland doesn’t talk about stuff much,” he said.
A longer pause. The sound of Benny shifting, doing it quietly so as not to disturb Oy. “He scares me a little, your dinh.”
Jake thought about that, then said: “He scares me a little, too.”
“He scares my Pa.”
Jake was suddenly very alert. “Really?”
“Yes. He says it wouldn’t surprise him if, after you got rid of the Wolves, you turned on us. Then he said he was just joking, but that the old cowboy with the hard face scared him. I reckon that must have been your dinh, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Jake said.
Jake had begun thinking Benny had gone to sleep when the other boy asked, “What was your room like back where you came from?”
Jake thought of his room and at first found it surprisingly hard to picture. It had been a long time since he’d thought of it. And now that he did, he was embarrassed to describe it too closely to Benny. His friend lived well indeed by Calla standards—Jake guessed there were very few smallhold kids Benny’s age with their own rooms—but he would think a room such as Jake could describe that of an enchanted prince. The television? The stereo, with all his records, and the headphones for privacy? His posters of Stevie Wonder and The Jackson Five? His microscope, which showed him things too small to see with the naked eye? Was he supposed to tell this boy about such wonders and miracles?
“It was like this, only I had a desk,” Jake said at last.
“A writing desk?” Benny got up on one elbow.
“Well yeah,” Jake said, the tone implying Sheesh, what else?
“Paper? Pens? Quill pens?”
“Paper,” Jake agreed. Here, at least, was a wonder Benny could understand. “And pens. But not quill. Ball.”
“Ball pens? I don’t understand.”
So Jake began to explain, but halfway through he heard a snore. He looked across the room and saw Benny still facing him, but now with his eyes closed.
Oy opened his eyes—they were bright in the darkness—then winked at Jake. After that, he appeared to go back to sleep.
Jake looked at Benny for a long time, deeply troubled in ways he did not precisely understand… or want to.
At last, he went to sleep himself.
THREE
Some dark, dreamless time later, he came back to a semblance of wakefulness because of pressure on his wrist. Something pulling there. Almost painful. Teeth. Oy’s.
“Oy, no, quittit,” he mumbled, but Oy would not stop. He had Jake’s wrist in his jaws and continued to shake it gently from side to side, stopping occasionally to administer a brisk tug. He only quit when Jake finally sat up and stared dopily out into the silver-flooded night.
“Moon,” Oy said. He was sitting on the floor beside Jake, jaws open in an unmistakable grin, eyes bright.
They should have been bright; a tiny white stone burned deep down in each one. ” Moon!”
“Yeah,” Jake whispered, and then closed his fingers around Oy’s muzzle. “Hush!” He let go and looked over at Benny, who was now facing the wall and snoring deeply. Jake doubted if a howitzer shell would wake him.
“Moon,” Oy said, much more quietly. Now he was looking out the window. “Moon, moon. Moon.”
FOUR
Jake would have ridden bareback, but he needed Oy with him, and that made bareback difficult, maybe impossible. Luckily, the little border-pony sai Overholser had loaned him was as tame as a tabby-cat, and there was a scuffy old practice saddle in the barn’s tackroom that even a kid could handle with ease.
Jake saddled the horse, then tied his bedroll behind, to the part Calla cowboys called the boat. He could feel the weight of the Ruger inside the roll—and, if he squeezed, the shape of it, as well. The duster with the commodious pocket in the front was hanging on a nail in the tackroom. Jake took it, whipped it into something like a fat belt, and cinched it around his middle. Kids in his school had sometimes worn their outer shirts that way on warm days. Like those of his room, this memory seemed far away, part of a circus parade that had marched through town… and then left.
That life was richer, a voice deep in his mind whispered.
This one is truer, whispered another, even deeper.
He believed that second voice, but his heart was still heavy with sadness and worry as he led the border-pony out through the back of the barn and away from the house. Oy padded along at his heel, occasionally looking up at the sky and muttering “Moon, moon,” but mostly sniffing the crisscrossing scents on the ground. This trip was dangerous. Just crossing Devar-Tete Whye—going from the Calla side of things to the Thunderclap side—was dangerous, and Jake knew it. Yet what really troubled him was the sense of looming heartache. He thought of Benny, saying it had been great to have Jake at the Rocking B to chum around with. He wondered if Benny would feel the same way a week from now.
“Doesn’t matter,” he sighed. “It’s ka.”
“Ka,” Oy said, then looked up. “Moon. Ka, moon. Moon, ka.”
“Shut up,” Jake said, not unkindly.
“Shut up ka,” Oy said amiably. “Shut up moon. Shut up Ake. Shut up Oy.” It was the most he’d said in months, and once it was out he fell silent. Jake walked his horse another ten minutes, past the bunkhouse and its mixed music of snores, grunts, and farts, then over the next hill. At that point, with the East Road in sight, he judged it safe to ride. He unrolled the duster, put it on, then deposited Oy in the pouch and mounted up.
FIVE
He was pretty sure he could go right to the place where Andy and Slightman had crossed the river, but reckoned he’d only have one good shot at this, and Roland would’ve said pretty sure wasn’t good enough in such a case. So he went back to the place where he and Benny had tented instead, and from there to the jut of granite which had reminded him of a partially buried ship. Once again Oy stood panting into his ear. Jake had no problem sighting on the round rock with the shiny surface. The dead log that had washed up against it was still there, too, because the river hadn’t done anything but fall over the last weeks. There had been no rain whatever, and this was something Jake was counting on to help him.
He scrambled back up to the flat place where he and Benny had tented out. Here he’d left his pony tethered to a bush. He led it down to the river, then scooped up Oy and rode across. The pony wasn’t big, but the water still didn’t come up much higher than his fetlocks. In less than a minute, they were on the far bank.
It looked the same on this side, but wasn’t Jake knew it right away. Moonlight or no moonlight, it was darker somehow. Not exactly the way todash—New York had been dark, and there were no chimes, but there was a similarity, just the same. A sense of something waiting, and eyes that could turn in his direction if he was foolish enough to alert their owners to his presence. He had come to the edge of End-World. Jake’s flesh broke out in goosebumps and he shivered. Oy looked up at him.
“S’all right,” Jake whispered. ‘Just had to get it out of my system.”
He dismounted, put Oy down, and stowed the duster in the shadow of the round rock. He didn’t think he’d need a coat for this part of his excursion; he was sweating, nervous. The babble of the river was loud, and he kept shooting glances across to the other side, wanting to make sure no one was coming. He didn’t want to be surprised. That sense of presence, of others, was both strong and unpleasant. There was nothing good about what lived on this side of the Devar-Tete Whye; of that much Jake was sure. He felt better when he’d taken the docker’s clutch out of the bedroll, cinched it in place, and then added the Ruger. The Ruger made him into a different person, one he didn’t always like. But here, on the far side of the Whye, he was delighted to feel gunweight against his ribs, and delighted to be that person; that gunslinger.