Jake slipped back into the tent. Benny was still fast asleep. Jake looked at the other boy—older in years but younger in a lot of the ways that mattered—for several seconds, biting his lip. He didn’t want to get Benny’s father in trouble. Not unless he had to.
Jake lay down and pulled his blankets up to his chin. He had never in his life felt so undecided about so many things, and he wanted to cry. The day had begun to grow light before he was able to get back to sleep.
Chapter VIII: Took’s Store; The Unfound Door
ONE
For the first half hour after leaving the Rocking B, Roland and Jake rode east toward the smallholds in silence, their horses ambling side by side in perfect good fellowship. Roland knew Jake had something serious on his mind; that was clear from his troubled face. Yet the gunslinger was still astounded when Jake curled his fist, placed it against the left side of his chest, and said: “Roland, before Eddie and Susannah join up with us, may I speak to you dan-dinh?”
May I open my heart to your command. But the subtext was more complicated than that, and ancient—predating Arthur Eld by centuries, or so Vannay had claimed. It meant to turn some insoluble emotional problem, usually having to do with a love affair, over to one’s dinh. When one did this, he or she agreed to do exactly as the dinh suggested, immediately and without question. But surely Jake Chambers didn’t have love problems—not unless he’d fallen for the gorgeous Francine Tavery, that was—and how had he known such a phrase in the first place?
Meanwhile Jake was looking at him with a wide-eyed, pale-cheeked solemnity that Roland didn’t much like.
“Dan-dinh—where did you hear that, Jake?”
“Never did. Picked it up from your mind, I think.” Jake added hastily: “I don’t go snooping in there, or anything like that, but sometimes stuff just comes. Most of it isn’t very important, I don’t think, but sometimes there are phrases.”
“You pick them up like a crow or a rustie picks up the bright things that catch its eye from the wing.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“What others? Tell me a few.”
Jake looked embarrassed. “I can’t remember many. Dan-dinh, that means I open my heart to you and agree to do what you say.”
It was more complicated than that, but the boy had caught the essence. Roland nodded. The sun felt good on his face as they clopped along. Margaret Eisenhart’s exhibition with the plate had soothed him, he’d had a good meeting with the lady-sai’s father later on, and he had slept quite well for the first time in many nights.
“Yes.”
“Let’s see. There’s tell-a-me, which means—I think—to gossip about someone you shouldn’t gossip about. It stuck in my head, because that’s what gossip sounds like: tell-a-me.” Jake cupped a hand to his ear.
Roland smiled. It was actually telamei, but Jake had of course picked it up phonetically. This was really quite amazing. He reminded himself to guard his deep thoughts carefully in the future. There were ways that could be done, thank the gods.
“There’s dash-dinh, which means some sort of religious leader. You’re thinking about that this morning, I think, because of… is it because of the old Manni guy? Is he a dash-dinh?”
Roland nodded. “Very much so. And his name, Jake?” The gunslinger concentrated on it. “Can you see his
name in my mind?”
“Sure, Henchick,” Jake said at once, and almost offhandedly. “You talked to him… when? Late last night?”
“Yes.” That he hadn’t been concentrating on, and he would have felt better had Jake not known of it. But the boy was strong in the touch, and Roland believed him when he said he hadn’t been snooping. At least not on purpose.
“Mrs. Eisenhart thinks she hates him, but you think she’s only afraid of him.”
“Yes,” Roland said. “You’re strong in the touch. Much more so than Alain ever was, and much more than you were. It’s because of the rose, isn’t it?”
Jake nodded. The rose, yes. They rode in silence a little longer, their horses’ hooves raising a thin dust. In spite of the sun the day was chilly, promising real fall.
“All right, Jake. Speak to me dan-dinh if you would, and I say thanks for your trust in such wisdom as I have.”
But for the space of almost two minutes Jake said nothing. Roland pried at him, trying to get inside the boy’s head as the boy had gotten inside his (and with such ease), but there was nothing. Nothing at a—
But there was. There was a rat… squirming, impaled on something…
“Where is the castle she goes to?” Jake asked. “Do you know?”
Roland was unable to conceal his surprise. His astonishment, really. And he supposed there was an element of guilt there, as well. Suddenly he understood… well, not everything, but much.
“There is no castle and never was,” he told Jake. “It’s a place she goes to in her mind, probably made up of the stories she’s read and the ones I’ve told by the campfire, as well. She goes there so she won’t have to see what she’s really eating. What her baby needs.”
“I saw her eating a roasted pig,” Jake said. “Only before she came, a rat was eating it. She stabbed it with a meat-fork.”
“Where did you see this?”
“In the castle.” He paused. “In her dream. I was in her dream.”
“Did she see you there?” The gunslinger’s blue eyes were sharp, almost blazing. His horse clearly felt some change, for it stopped. So did Jake’s. Here they were on East Road, less than a mile from where Red Molly Doolin had once killed a Wolf out of Thunderclap. Here they were, facing each other.
“No,” Jake said. “She didn’t see me.”
Roland was thinking of the night he had followed her into the swamp. He had known she was someplace else in her mind, had sensed that much, but not quite where. Whatever visions he’d taken from her mind had been murky. Now he knew. He knew something else as well: Jake was troubled by his dinh’s decision to let Susannah go on this way. And perhaps he was right to be troubled. But—
“It’s not Susannah you saw, Jake.”
“I know. It’s the one who still has her legs. She calls herself Mia. She’s pregnant and she’s scared to death.”
Roland said, “If you would speak to me dan-dinh, tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking. Then I’ll give you the wisdom of my heart, such wisdom as I have.”
“You won’t… Roland, you won’t scold me?”
This time Roland was unable to conceal his astonishment. “No, Jake. Far from it. Perhaps I should ask you not to scold me.”
The boy smiled wanly. The horses began to amble again, this time a little faster, as if they knew there had almost been trouble and wanted to leave the place of it behind.
TWO
Jake wasn’t entirely sure how much of what was on his mind was going to come out until he actually began to talk. He had awakened undecided all over again concerning what to tell Roland about Andy and Slightman the Elder. In the end he took his cue from what Roland had just said— Tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking—and left out the meeting by the river entirely.
In truth, that part seemed far less important to him this morning.
He told Roland about the way Mia had run down the stairs, and about her fear when she’d seen there was no food left in the dining room or banqueting hall or whatever it was. Then the kitchen. Finding the roast with the rat battened on it. Killing the competition. Gorging on the prize. Then him, waking with the shivers and trying not to scream.
He hesitated and glanced at Roland. Roland made his impatient twirling gesture—go on, hurry up, finish.
Well, he thought, he promised not to scold and he keeps his word.
That was true, but Jake was still unable to tell Roland he’d actually considered spilling the beans to Susannah himself.
He did articulate his principal fear, however: that with three of them knowing and one of them not, their katet was broken just when it needed to be the most solid. He even told Roland the old joke, guy with a blowout saying It’s only flat on the bottom. He didn’t expect Roland to laugh, and his expectations were met admirably in this regard. But he sensed Roland was to some degree ashamed, and Jake found this frightening. He had an idea shame was pretty much reserved for people who didn’t know what they were doing.
“And until last night it was even worse than three in and one out,” Jake said. “Because you were trying to keep me out, as well. Weren’t you?”