I’ll scream, I can’t help it, I have toscream—

She was drawing in her breath to do justthat when suddenly the itch was gone. The pain was gone, as well. She reachedtoward the side of her mouth, then hesitated.

I don’t dare.

You better dare! Dettaresponded indignantly. After all you been through—all we beenthrough—you must have enough backbone left to touch yo’ own damnface, you yella bitch!

She brought her fingers down to the skin.The smooth skin. The sore which had so troubled her since Thunderclapwas gone. She knew that when she looked in a mirror or a still pool of water,she would not even see a scar.

Fifteen

Patrick worked a little longer—firstwith the eraser, then with the pencil, then with the eraser again—butSusannah felt no itch and not even a faint tingle. It was as though, once hehad passed some critical point, the sensations just ceased. She wondered howold Patrick had been when Dandelo snipped all the erasers off the pencils.Four? Six? Young, anyway. She was sure that his original look of puzzlementwhen she showed him one of the erasers had been unfeigned, and yet once hebegan, he used it like an old pro.

Maybe it’s like riding a bicycle,she thought. Once you learn how, you never forget.

She waited as patiently as she could, andafter five very long minutes, her patience was rewarded. Smiling, Patrickturned the pad around and showed her the picture. He had erased the blemishcompletely and then faintly shaded the area so that it looked like the rest ofher skin. He had been careful to brush away every single crumb of rubber.

“Very nice,” she said, but that was afairly shitty compliment to offer genius, wasn’t it?

So she leaned forward, put her arms aroundhim, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. “Patrick, it’s beautiful.”

The blood rushed so quickly and so stronglyinto his face that she was alarmed at first, wondering if he might not have astroke in spite of his youth. But he was smiling as he held out the pad to herwith one hand, making tearing gestures again with the other. Wanting her totake it. Wanting her to have it.

Susannah tore it off very carefully,wondering in a dark back corner of her mind what would happen if she toreit—tore her—right down the middle. She noted as she did thatthere was no amazement in his face, no astonishment, no fear. He had to haveseen the sore beside her mouth, because the nasty thing had pretty muchdominated her face for all the time he’d known her, and he had drawn it in near-photographicdetail. Now it was gone—her exploring fingers told her so—yetPatrick wasn’t registering any emotion, at least in regard to that. Theconclusion seemed clear enough. When he’d erased it from his drawing, he’d alsoerased it from his own mind and memory.

“Patrick?”

He looked at her, smiling. Happy that shewas happy. And Susannah was very happy. The fact that she was alsoscared to death didn’t change that in the slightest.

“Will you draw something else for me?”

He nodded. Made a mark on his pad, thenturned it around so she could see:

?

She looked at the question-mark for amoment, then at him. She saw he was clutching the eraser, his wonderful newtool, very tightly.

Susannah said: “I want you to draw mesomething that isn’t there.”

He cocked his head quizzically to the side.She had to smile a little in spite of her rapidly thumping heart—Oylooked that way sometimes, when he wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what youmeant.

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.”

And she did, very carefully. Patrick listened.At some point Roland heard Susannah’s voice and awoke. He came over, looked ather in the dim red light of the embering campfire, started to look away, thensnapped back, eyes widening. Until that moment, she hadn’t been sure Rolandwould see what was no longer there, either. She thought it at least possiblethat Patrick’s magic would have been strong enough to erase it from thegunslinger’s memory, too.

“Susannah, thy face! What’s happened tothy—”

“Hush, Roland, if you love me.”

The gunslinger hushed. Susannah returnedher attention to Patrick and began to speak again, quietly but urgently.Patrick listened, and as he did, she saw the light of understanding begin toenter his gaze.

Roland replenished the fire without havingto be asked, and soon their little camp was bright under the stars.

Patrick wrote a question, putting itthriftily to the left of the question-mark he had already drawn:

How tall?

Susannah took Roland by the elbow andpositioned him in front of Patrick. The gunslinger stood about six-foot-three.She had him pick her up, then held a hand roughly three inches over his head.Patrick nodded, smiling.

“And look you at something that has to beon it,” she said, and took a branch from their little pile of brush. She brokeit over her knee, creating a point of her own. She could remember the symbols,but it would be best if she didn’t think about them overmuch. She sensed theyhad to be absolutely right or the door she wanted him to make for her wouldeither open on some place she didn’t want to go, or would not open at all.Therefore once she began to draw in the mixed dirt and ash by the campfire, shedid it as rapidly as Patrick himself might have done, not pausing long enoughto cast her eye back upon a single symbol. For if she looked back at one shewould surely look back at all, and she would see something that looked wrong toher, and uncertainty would set in like a sickness. Detta—brash,foul-mouthed Detta, who had turned out on more than one occasion to be hersavior—might step in and take over, finish for her, but she couldn’tcount on that. On her heart’s deepest level, she still did not entirely trustDetta not to send everything to blazes at a crucial moment, and for no otherreason than the black joy of the thing. Nor did she fully trust Roland, whomight want to keep her for reasons he did not fully understand himself.

So she drew quickly in the dirt and ashes,not looking back, and these were the symbols that flowed away beneath theflying tip of her makeshift implement:

“Unfound,” Roland breathed. “Susannah,what—how—”

“Hush,” she repeated.

Patrick bent over his pad and began todraw.

Sixteen

She kept looking around for the door, butthe circle of light thrown by their fire was very small even after Roland hadset it to blazing. Small compared to the vast darkness of the prairie, atleast. She saw nothing. When she turned to Roland she could see the unspokenquestion in his eyes, and so, while Patrick kept working, she showed him thepicture of her the young man had drawn. She indicated the place where theblemish had been. Holding the page close to his face, Roland at last saw theeraser’s marks. Patrick had concealed what few traces he’d left behind withgreat cunning, and Roland had found them only with the closest scrutiny; it waslike casting for an old trail after many days of rain.

“No wonder the old man cut off hiserasers,” he said, giving the picture back to her.

“That’s what I thought.”

From there she skipped ahead to her singletrue intuitive leap: that if Patrick could (in this world, at least) un-createby erasing, he might be able to create by drawing. When she mentioned the herdof bannock that had seemed mysteriously closer, Roland rubbed his forehead likea man who has a nasty headache.

“I should have seen that. Should haverealized what it meant, too. Susannah, I’m getting old.”