pantry would do well enough tonight, he reckoned—Roland went into the dry streambed
and smelled the roses, strolling slowly among the dead trees and listening to their song.
Both the smell and the sound were refreshing.
Feeling a little better, he gathered wood from beneath the trees (snapping off a few of the
lower branches for good measure, leaving dry, splintered stumps that reminded him a little
of Patrick’s pencils) and piled kindling in the center. Then he struck a light, speaking the
old catechism almost without hearing it: “Spark-a-dark, who’s my sire? Will I lay me? Will
I stay me? Bless this camp with fire.”
While he waited for the fire to first grow and then die down to a bed of rosy embers,
Roland took out the watch he had been given in New York. Yesterday it had stopped,
although he had been assured the battery that ran it would last for fifty years.
Now, as late afternoon faded to evening, the hands had very slowly begun to move
backward.
He looked at this for a little while, fascinated, then closed the cover and looked at the
siguls inscribed there: key and rose and Tower. A faint and eldritch blue light had begun to
gleam from the windows that spiraled upward.
They didn’t know it would do that,he thought, and then put the watch carefully back in his
lefthand front pocket, checking first (as he always did) that there was no hole for it to fall through. Then he cooked. He and Patrick ate well.
Oy would touch not a single bite.
Six
Other than the night he had spent in palaver with the man in black—the night during which
Walter had read a bleak fortune from an undoubtedly stacked deck—those twelve hours of
dark by the dry stream were the longest of Roland’s life. The weariness settled over him
ever deeper and darker, until it felt like a cloak of stones. Old faces and old places marched in front of his heavy eyes: Susan, riding hellbent across the Drop with her blond hair flying out behind; Cuthbert running down the side of Jericho Hill in much the same fashion,
screaming and laughing; Alain Johns raising a glass in a toast; Eddie and Jake wrestling in
the grass, yelling, while Oy danced around them, barking.
Mordred was somewhere out there, and close, yet again and again Roland found himself
drifting toward sleep. Each time he jerked himself awake, staring around wildly into the
dark, he knew he had come nearer to the edge of unconsciousness. Each time he expected
to see the spider with the red mark on its belly bearing down on him and saw nothing but
the hobs, dancing orange in the distance. Heard nothing but the sough of the wind.
But he waits. He bides. And if I sleep—whenI sleep—he’ll be on us.
Around three in the morning he roused himself by willpower alone from a doze that was
on the very verge of tumbling him into deeper sleep. He looked around desperately,
rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms hard enough to make mirks and fouders and
sankofites explode across his field of vision. The fire had burned very low. Patrick lay
about twenty feet from it, at the twisted base of a cottonwood tree. From where Roland sat,
the boy was no more than a hide-covered hump. Of Oy there was no immediate sign.
Roland called to the bumbler and got no response. The gunslinger was about to try his feet
when he saw Jake’s old friend a little beyond the edge of the failing firelight—or at least
the gleam of his gold-ringed eyes. Those eyes looked at Roland for a moment, then
disappeared, probably when Oy put his snout back down on his paws.
He’s tired, too,Roland thought,and why not?
The question of what would become of Oy after tomorrow tried to rise to the surface of the
gunslinger’s troubled, tired mind, and Roland pushed it away. He got up (in his weariness
his hands slipped down to his formerly troublesome hip, as if expecting to find the pain still there), went to Patrick, and shook him awake. It took some doing, but at last the boy’s eyes
opened. That wasn’t good enough for Roland. He grasped Patrick’s shoulders and pulled
him up to a sitting position. When the boy tried to slump back down again, Roland shook
him.Hard . He looked at Roland with dazed incomprehension.
“Help me build up the fire, Patrick.”
Doing that should wake him up at least a little. And once the fire was burning bright again,
Patrick would have to stand a brief watch. Roland didn’t like the idea, knew full well that
leaving Patrick in charge of the night would be dangerous, but trying to watch the rest of it on his own would be even more dangerous. He needed sleep. An hour or two would be
enough, and surely Patrick could stay awake that long.
Patrick was willing enough to gather up some sticks and put them on the fire, although he
moved like a bougie—a reanimated corpse. And when the fire was blazing, he slumped
back down in his former place with his arms between his bony knees, already more asleep
than awake. Roland thought he might actually have to slap the boy to bring him around,
and would later wish—bitterly—that he had done just that.
“Patrick, listen to me.” He shook Patrick by the shoulders hard enough to make his long
hair fly, but some of it flopped back into his eyes. Roland brushed it away. “I need you to
stay awake and watch. Just for an hour…just until…look up, Patrick! Look! Gods, don’t
youdare go to sleep on me again! Do you see that? The brightest star of all those close to
us!”
It was Old Mother Roland was pointing to, and Patrick nodded at once. There was a gleam
of interest in his eye now, and the gunslinger thought that was encouraging. It was Patrick’s “I want to draw” look. And if he sat drawing Old Mother as she shone in the
widest fork of the biggest dead cottonwood, then the chances were good that he’d stay
awake. Maybe until dawn, if he got fully involved.
“Here, Patrick.” He made the boy sit against the base of the tree. It was bony and knobby
and—Roland hoped—uncomfortable enough to prohibit sleep. All these movements felt to
Roland like the sort you made underwater. Oh, he was tired.So tired. “Do you still see the
star?”
Patrick nodded eagerly. He seemed to have thrown off his sleepiness, and the gunslinger
thanked the gods for this favor.
“When it goes behind that thick branch and you can’t see it or draw it anymore without
getting up…you call me. Wake me up, no matter how hard it is. Do you understand?”
Patrick nodded at once, but Roland had now traveled with him long enough to know that
such a nod meant little or nothing. Eager to please, that’s what he was. If you asked him if
nine and nine made nineteen, he would nod with the same instant enthusiasm.
“When you can’t see it anymore from where you’re sitting…” His own words seemed to
be coming from far away, now. He’d just have to hope that Patrick understood. The
tongueless boy had taken out his pad, at least, and a freshly sharpened pencil.
That’s my best protection,Roland’s mind muttered as he stumbled back to his little pile of
hides between the campfire and Ho Fat II.He won’t fall asleep while he’s drawing, will he?
He hoped not, but supposed he didn’t really know. And it didn’t matter, because he,
Roland of Gilead, was going to sleep in any case. He’d done the best he could, and it would
have to be enough.
“An hour,” he muttered, and his voice was far and wee in his own ears. “Wake me in an
hour…when the star…when Old Mother goes behind…”
But Roland was unable to finish. He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore.
Exhaustion grabbed him and bore him swiftly away into dreamless sleep.
Seven
Mordred saw it all through the far-seeing glass eyes. His fever had soared, and in its bright flame, his own exhaustion had at least temporarily departed. He watched with avid interest
as the gunslinger woke the mute boy—the Artist—and bullied him into helping him build
up the fire. He watched, rooting for the mute to finish this chore and then go back to sleep
before the gunslinger could stop him. That didn’t happen, unfortunately. They had camped
near a grove of dead cottonwoods, and Roland led the Artist to the biggest tree. Here he
pointed up at the sky. It was strewn with stars, but Mordred reckoned Old White
Gunslinger Daddy was pointing to Old Mother, because she was the brightest. At last the Artist, who didn’t seem to be rolling a full barrow (at least not in the brains department)