9

In a dark hour of the following morning, Olive Thorin crept from the room where she now slept to the one she had shared for almost forty years with her husband. The floor was cold under her bare feet and she was shivering by the time she reached the bed… but the chilly floor wasn’t the only reason she was shivering. She slid in beside the gaunt, snoring man in the nightcap, and when he turned away from her (his knees and back crackling loudly as he did), she pressed against him and hugged him tightly. There was no passion in this, but only a need to share a bit of his warmth. His chest-narrow but almost as well-known to her as her own plump one-rose and fell under her hands, and she began to quiet a little. He stirred, and she thought for a moment he would wake and find her sharing his bed for the first time in gods knew how long.

Yes, wake, she thought, do. She didn’t dare wake him of her own-all her courage had been exhausted just getting here, creeping through the dark following one of the worst dreams she had ever had in her life-but if he woke, she would take it as a sign and tell him she had dreamed of a vast bird, a cruel golden-eyed roc that flew above the Barony on wings that dripped blood.

Wherever its shadow fell, there was blood, she would tell him, and its shadow fell everywhere. The Barony ran with it, from Hambry all the way out to Eyebolt. And I swelled big fire in the wind. I ran to tell you and you were dead in your study, sitting by the hearth with your eyes gouged out and a skull in your lap.

But instead of waking, in his sleep he took her hand, as he had used to, do before he had begun to look at the young girls-even the serving-wenches-when they passed, and Olive decided she would only lie here, and be still and let him hold her hand. Let it be like the old days for a bit, when everything had been right between them.

She slept a little herself. When she woke, dawn’s first gray light was creeping in through the windows. He had dropped her hand- had, in fact, scooted away from her entirely, to his edge of the bed. It wouldn’t do for him to wake and find her here, she decided, and the urgency of her nightmare was gone. She turned back the covers, swung her feet out, then looked at him once more. His nightcap had come askew. She put it right, her hands smoothing the cloth and the bony brow beneath. He stirred again. Olive waited until he had quieted, then got up. She slipped back to her own room like a phantom.

10

The midway booths opened in Green Heart two days before Reaping-Fair, and the first folks came to try their luck at the spinning wheel and the bottle-toss and the basket-ring. There was also a pony-train-a cart filled with laughing children, pulled along a figure eight of narrow-gauge rails.

(“Was the pony named Charlie?” Eddie Dean asked Roland.

(“I think not,” Roland said. “We have a rather unpleasant word that sounds like that in the High Speech.”

(“What word?” Jake asked.

(“The one,” said the gunslinger, “that means death.”)

Roy Depape stood watching the pony plod its appointed rounds for a couple of turns, remembering with some nostalgia his own rides in such a cart as a child. Of course, most of his had been stolen.

When he had looked his fill, Depape sauntered on down to the Sheriff’s office and went in. Herk Avery, Dave, and Frank Claypool were cleaning an odd and fantastical assortment of guns. Avery nodded at Depape and went back to what he was doing. There was something strange about the man, and after a moment or two Depape realized what it was: the Sheriff wasn’t eating. It was the first time he’d ever come in here that the Sheriff didn’t have a plate of grub close at hand.

“All ready for tomorrow?” Depape asked.

Avery gave him a half-irritated, half-smiling look. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“One that Jonas sent me to ask,” Depape said, and at that Avery’s queer, nervy smile faltered a little.

“Aye, we’re ready.” Avery swept a meaty arm over the guns. “Don’t ye see we are?”

Depape could have quoted the old saying about how the proof of the pudding was in the eating, but what was the point? Things would work out if the three boys were as fooled as Jonas thought they were; if they weren’t fooled, they would likely carve Herk Avery’s fat butt off the top of his legs and feed it to the handiest pack of wolverines. It didn’t make much never mind to Roy Depape one way or the other.

“Jonas also ast me to remind you it’s early.”

“Aye, aye, we’ll be there early,” Avery agreed. “These two and six more good men. Fran Lengyll’s asked to go along, and he’s got a machine-gun.” Avery spoke this last with ringing pride, as if he himself had invented the machine-gun. Then he looked at Depape slyly. “What about you, coffin-hand? Want to go along? Won’t take me more’n an eyeblink to deputize ye.”

“I have another chore. Reynolds, too.” Depape smiled. “There’s plenty of work for all of us. Sheriff-after all, it’s Reaping.”

11

That afternoon, Susan and Roland met at the hut in the Bad Grass. She told him about the book with the torn-out pages, and Roland showed her what he’d left in the hut’s north corner, secreted beneath a mouldering pile of skins.

She looked first at this, then at him with wide and frightened eyes. “What’s wrong? What does thee suspect is wrong?”

He shook his head. Nothing was wrong… not that he could tell, anyway. And yet he had felt a strong need to do what he’d done, to leave what he’d left. It wasn’t the touch, nothing like it, but only intuition.

“I think everything is all right… or as right as things can be when the odds may turn out fifty of them for each of us. Susan, our only chance is to take them by surprise. You’re not going to risk that, are you? Not planning to go to Lengyll, waving your father’s stockline book around?”

She shook her head. If Lengyll had done what she now suspected, he’d get his payback two days from now. There would be reaping, all right. Reaping aplenty. But this… this frightened her, and she said so.

“Listen.” Roland took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I’m only trying to be careful. If things go badly-and they could- you’re the one most likely to get away clean. You and Sheemie. If that happens, Susan, you-thee-must come here and take my guns. Take them west to Gilead. Find my father. He’ll know thee are who thee says by what thee shows. Tell him what happened here. That’s all.”

“If anything happens to thee, Roland, I won’t be able to do anything. Except die.”

His hands were still on her face. Now he used them to make her head shake slowly, from side to side. “You won’t die,” he said. There was a coldness in his voice and eyes that struck her not with fear but awe. She thought of his blood-of how old it must be, and how cold it must sometimes flow. “Not with this job undone. Promise me.”

“I… I promise, Roland. I do.”

“Tell me aloud what you promise.”

“I’ll come here. Get yer guns. Take them to yer da. Tell him what happened.”

He nodded and let go of her face. The shapes of his hands were printed faintly on her cheeks.

“Ye frightened me,” Susan said, and then shook her head. That wasn’t right. “Ye do frighten me.”

“I can’t help what I am.”

“And I wouldn’t change it.” She kissed his left cheek, his right cheek, his mouth. She put her hand inside his shirt and caressed his nipple. It grew instantly hard beneath the tip of her finger. “Bird and bear and hare and fish,” she said, now making soft butterfly kisses all over his face. “Give your love her fondest wish.”

After, they lay beneath a bearskin Roland had brought along and listened to the wind sough through the grass.