“We will,” he said.

Three

Susannah is in Central Park, and it’s coldenough to see her breath. The sky overhead is white from side to side, asnow-sky. She’s looking down at the polar bear (who’s rolling around on hisrocky island, seeming to enjoy the cold just fine) when a hand snakes aroundher waist. Warm lips smack her cold cheek. She turns and there stand Eddie andJake. They are wearing identical grins and nearly identical red stocking caps.Eddie’s says MERRY across the front and Jake’s says CHRISTMAS. She opens hermouth to tell them “You boys can’t be here, you boys are dead,” and thenshe realizes, with a great and singing relief, that all that business was justa dream she had. And really, how could you doubt it? There are no talkinganimals called billy-bumblers, not really, no taheen-creatures with the bodiesof humans and the heads of animals, no places called Fedic or Castle Discordia.

Most of all, there are no gunslingers.John Kennedy was the last, her chauffeur Andrew was right about that.

“Brought you hot chocolate,” Eddie saysand holds it out to her. It’s the perfect cup of hot chocolate, mit schlag ontop and little sprinkles of nutmeg dotting the cream; she can smell it, and asshe takes it she can feel his fingers inside his gloves and the first flakes ofthat winter’s snow drift down between them. She thinks how good it is to bealive in plain old New York, how great that reality is reality, that they aretogether in the Year of Our Lord—

What Year of Our Lord?

She frowns, because this is a seriousquestion, isn’t it? After all, Eddie’s an eighties man and she never got anyfurther than 1964 (or was it ‘65?). As for Jake, Jake Chambers with the wordCHRISTMAS printed on the front of his happy hat, isn’t he from the seventies?And if the three of them represent three decades from the second half of thetwentieth century, what is their commonality? What year is this?

“NINETEEN,” says a voice out of the air(perhaps it is the voice of Bango Skank, the Great Lost Character), “thisis NINETEEN, this is CHASSIT. All your friends are dead.”

With each word the world becomes moreunreal. She can see through Eddie and Jake. When she looks down at the polarbear she sees it’s lying dead on its rock island with its paws in the air. Thegood smell of hot chocolate is fading, being replaced by a musty smell: old plaster,ancient wood. The odor of a hotel room where no one has slept for years.

No, her mind moans. No, I wantCentral Park, I want Mr. MERRY and Mr. CHRISTMAS, I want the smell of hotchocolate and the sight of December’s first hesitant snowflakes, I’ve hadenough of Fedic, In-World, Mid-World, and End-World. I want My-World. Idon’t care if I ever see the Dark Tower.

Eddie’s and Jake’s lips move in unison,as if they are singing a song she can’t hear, but it’s not a song; the wordsshe reads on their lips just before the dream breaks apart are

Four

“Watch out for Dandelo.”

She woke up with these words on her ownlips, shivering in the early not-quite-dawn light. And the breath-seeing partof her dream was true, if no other. She felt her cheeks and wiped away thewetness there. It wasn’t quite cold enough to freeze the tears to her skin, butjust-a-damn-bout.

She looked around the dreary room here inthe Fedic Hotel, wishing with all her heart that her dream of Central Park hadbeen true. For one thing, she’d had to sleep on the floor—the bed wasbasically nothing but a rust-sculpture waiting to disintegrate—and herback was stiff. For another, the blankets she’d used as a makeshift mattressand the ones she’d wrapped around her had all torn to rags as she tossed andturned. The air was heavy with their dust, tickling her nose and coating herthroat, making her feel like she was coming down with the world’s worst cold.Speaking of cold, she was shivering. And she needed to pee, which meantdragging herself down the hall on her stumps and half-numbed hands.

And none of that was really what was wrongwith Susannah Odetta Holmes Dean this morning, all right? The problem was thatshe had just come from a beautiful dream to a world

(this is NINETEEN all your friends aredead)

where she was now so lonely that she felthalf-crazy with it. The problem was that the place where the sky wasbrightening was not necessarily the east. The problem was that she was tiredand sad, homesick and heartsore, griefstruck and depressed. The problem wasthat, in this hour before dawn, in this frontier museum-piece of a hotel roomwhere the air was full of musty blanket-fibers, she felt as if all but the lasttwo ounces of fuck-you had been squeezed out of her. She wanted the dream back.

She wanted Eddie.

“I see you’re up, too,” said a voice, andSusannah whirled around, pivoting on her hands so quickly she picked up asplinter.

The gunslinger leaned against the doorbetween the room and the hall. He had woven the straps into the sort of carrierwith which she was all too familiar, and it hung over his left shoulder. Hungover his right was a leather sack filled with their new possessions and theremaining Orizas. Oy sat at Roland’s feet, looking at her solemnly.

“You scared the living Jesus out of me, saiDeschain,” she said.

“You’ve been crying.”

“Isn’t any of your nevermind if I have beenor if I haven’t.”

“We’ll feel better once we’re out of here,”he said. “Fedic’s curdled.”

She knew exactly what he meant. The windhad kicked up fierce in the night, and when it screamed around the eaves of thehotel and the saloon next door, it had sounded to Susannah like the screams ofchildren—wee ones so lost in time and space they would never find theirway home.

“All right, but Roland—before we crossthe street and go into that Dogan, I want your promise on one thing.”

“What promise would you have?”

“If something looks like gettingus—some monster out of the Devil’s Arse or one from the todashbetween-lands—you put a bullet in my head before it happens. When itcomes to yourself you can do whatever you want, but… what? What are you holdingthat out for?” It was one of his revolvers.

“Because I’m only really good with one ofthem these days. And because I won’t be the one to take your life. If you shoulddecide to do it yourself, however—”

“Roland, your fucked-up scruples nevercease to amaze me,” she said. Then she took the gun with one hand and pointedto the harness with the other. “As for that thing, if you think I’m gonna ridein it before I have to, you’re crazy.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “It’sbetter when it’s the two of us, isn’t it?”

She sighed, then nodded. “A little bit,yeah, but far from perfect. Come on, big fella, let’s blow this place. My assis an ice-cube and the smell is killing my sinuses.”

Five

He put her in the rolling office-chair oncethey were back in the Dogan and pushed her in it as far as the first set ofstairs, Susannah holding their gunna and the bag of Orizas in her lap. At thestairs the gunslinger booted the chair over the edge and then stood withSusannah on his hip, both of them wincing at the crashing echoes as the chairtumbled over and over to the bottom.

“That’s the end of that,” she saidwhen the echoes had finally ceased. “You might as well have left it at the topfor all the good it’s going to do me now.”

“We’ll see,” Roland said, starting down.“You might be surprised.”

“That thing ain’t gonna work fo’ shit an webofe know it,” Detta said. Oy uttered a short, sharp bark, as if to say That’sright.

Six

The chair did survive its tumble,however. And the next, as well. But when Roland hunkered to examine the poorbattered thing after being pushed down a third (and extremely long) flight ofstairs, one of the casters was bent badly out of true. It reminded him a littleof how her abandoned wheelchair had looked when they’d come upon it after thebattle with the Wolves on the East Road.