11

The new day dawned clear and bright and cold. In the strong morning sunlight, the thing Eddie had spotted the evening before was more clearly visible… but he still couldn’t tell what it was. Another riddle, and he was getting damned sick of them.

He stood squinting at it, shading his eyes from the sun, with Susannah on one side of him and Jake on the other. Roland was back by the camp-fire, packing what he called their gunna, a word which seemed to mean all their worldly goods. He appeared not to be concerned with the thing up ahead, or to know what it was.

How far away? Thirty miles? Fifty? The answer seemed to depend on how far could you see in all this flat land, and Eddie didn’t know the answer. One thing he felt quite sure of was that Jake had been right on at least two counts-it was some kind of building, and it sprawled across all four lanes of the highway. It must; how else could they see it? It would have been lost in the thinny… wouldn’t it?

Maybe it’s standing in one of those open patches-what Suze calls “the holes in the clouds.” Or maybe the thinny ends before we get that far. Or maybe it’s a goddam hallucination. In any case, you might as well put it out of your mind for the time being. Got a little more turnpikin’ to do.

Still, the building held him. It looked like an airy Arabian Nights confection of blue and gold… except Eddie had an idea that the blue was stolen from the sky and the gold from the newly risen sun.

“Roland, come here a second!”

At first he didn’t think the gunslinger would, but then Roland cinched a rawhide lace on Susannah’s pack, rose, put his hands in the small of his back, stretched, and walked over to them.

“Gods, one would think no one in this band has the wit to housekeep but me,” Roland said.

“We’ll pitch in,” Eddie said, “we always do, don’t we? But look at that thing first.”

Roland did, but only with a quick glance, as if he did not even want to acknowledge it.

“It’s glass, isn’t it?” Eddie asked.

Roland took another brief look. “I wot,” he said, a phrase which seemed to mean Reckon so, partner.

“We’ve got lots of glass buildings where I come from, but most of them are office buildings. That thing up ahead looks more like something from Disney World. Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t you want to look at it?” Susannah asked.

Roland did take another look at the distant blaze of light on glass, but once again it was quick-little more than a peek.

“Because it’s trouble,” Roland said, “and it’s in our road. We’ll get there in time. No need to live in trouble until trouble comes.”

“Will we get there today?” Jake asked.

Roland shrugged, his face still closed. “There’ll be water if God wills it,” he said.

“Christ, you could have made a fortune writing fortune cookies,” Eddie said. He hoped for a smile, at least, but got none. Roland simply walked back across the road, dropped to one knee, shouldered his purse and his pack, and waited for the others. When they were ready, the pilgrims resumed their walk east along Interstate 70. The gunslinger led, walking with his head down and his eyes on the toes of his boots.

12

Roland was quiet all day, and as the building ahead of them neared (trouble, and in our road, he had said), Susannah came to realize it wasn’t grumpiness they were seeing, or worry about anything which lay any farther ahead of them than tonight. It was the story he’d promised to tell them that Roland was thinking about, and he was a lot more than worried.

By the time they stopped for their noon meal, they could clearly see the building ahead-a many-turreted palace which appeared to be made entirely of reflective glass. The thinny lay close around it, but the palace rose serenely above all, its turrets trying for the sky. Madly strange here in the flat countryside of eastern Kansas, of course it was, but Susannah thought it the most beautiful building she had ever seen in her life; even more beautiful than the Chrysler Building, and that was going some.

As they drew closer, she found it more and more difficult to look elsewhere. Watching the reflections of the puffy clouds sailing across the glass castle’s blue-sky wains and walls was like watching some splendid illusion… yet there was a solidity to it, as well. An inarguability. Some of that was probably just the shadow it threw-mirages did not, so far as she knew, create shadows-but not all. It just was. She had no idea what such a fabulosity was doing out here in the land of Stuckey’s and Hardee’s (not to mention Boing Boing Burgers), but there it was. She reckoned that time would tell the rest.

13

They made camp in silence, watched Roland build the wooden chimney that would be their fire in silence, then sat before it in silence, watching the sunset turn the huge glass edifice ahead of them into a castle of fire. Its towers and battlements glowed first a fierce red, then orange, then a gold which cooled rapidly to ocher as Old Star appeared in the firmament above them-

No, she thought in Delta’s voice. Ain’t dat one, girl. Not ’tall. That’s the North Star. Same one you seen back home, sittin on yo’ daddy’s lap.

But it was Old Star she wanted, she discovered; Old Star and Old Mother. She was astounded to find herself homesick for Roland’s world, and then wondered why she should be so surprised. It was a world, after all, where no one had called her a nigger bitch (at least not yet), a world where she had found someone to love… and made good friends as well. That last made her feel a little bit like crying, and she hugged Jake to her. He let himself be hugged, smiling, his eyes half-closed. At some distance, unpleasant but bearable even without bullet earplugs, the thinny warbled its moaning song.

When the last traces of yellow began to fade from the castle up the road, Roland left them to sit in the turnpike travel lane and returned to his fire. He cooked more leaf-wrapped deermeat, and handed the food around. They ate in silence (Roland actually ate almost nothing, Susannah observed). By the time they were finished, they could see the Milky Way scattered across the walls of the castle ahead of them, fierce points of reflection that burned like fire in still water.

Eddie was the one who finally broke the silence. “You don’t have to,” he said. “You’re excused. Or absolved. Or whatever the hell it is you need to take that look off your face.”

Roland ignored him. He drank, tilting the waterskin up on his elbow like some hick drinking moonshine from a jug, head back, eyes on the stars. The last mouthful he spat to the roadside.

“Life for your crop,” Eddie said. He did not smile.

Roland said nothing, but his cheek went pale, as if he had seen a ghost. Or heard one.