“Jake’s been dreaming about you, too,”Eddie tells her. “It’s the only reason I know I’m not going crazy. Any crazierthan usual, at least.”
She takes Eddie’s hand—that familiar,well-loved hand. And when the fingers close over hers, she thinks she will dieof joy. She will have many questions—so will they—but for the timebeing she has only one that feels important. As the snow begins to fall morethickly around them, landing in his hair and in his lashes and on the shouldersof his sweatshirt, she asks it.
“You and Jake—what’s your last name?”
“Toren,” he says. “It’s German.”
Before either of them can say anythingelse, Jake joins them. And will I tell you that these three lived happily everafter? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.
And they did live.
Beneath the flowing and sometimes glimpsedglammer of the Beam that connects Shardik the Bear and Maturin the Turtle byway of the Dark Tower, they did live.
That’s all.
That’s enough.
Say thankya.
CODA
FOUND
One
I’ve told my tale all the way to the end,and am satisfied. It was (I set my watch and warrant on it) the kind only agood God would save for last, full of monsters and marvels and voyaging hereand there. I can stop now, put my pen down, and rest my weary hand (although perhapsnot forever; the hand that tells the tales has a mind of its own, and a way ofgrowing restless). I can close my eyes to Mid-World and all that lies beyondMid-World. Yet some of you who have provided the ears without which no tale cansurvive a single day are likely not so willing. You are the grim, goal-orientedones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than thedestination no matter how many times it has been proven to you. You are theunfortunate ones who still get the lovemaking all confused with the paltrysquirt that comes to end the lovemaking (the orgasm is, after all, God’s way oftelling us we’ve finished, at least for the time being, and should go tosleep). You are the cruel ones who deny the Grey Havens, where tired charactersgo to rest. You say you want to know how it all comes out. You say you want tofollow Roland into the Tower; you say that is what you paid your money for, theshow you came to see.
I hope most of you know better. Wantbetter. I hope you came to hear the tale, and not just munch your way throughthe pages to the ending. For an ending, you only have to turn to the last pageand see what is there writ upon. But endings are heartless. An ending is aclosed door no man (or Manni) can open. I’ve written many, but most only forthe same reason that I pull on my pants in the morning before leaving thebedroom—because it is the custom of the country.
And so, my dear Constant Reader, I tell youthis: You can stop here. You can let your last memory be of seeing Eddie,Susannah, and Jake in Central Park, together again for the first time,listening to the children’s choir sing “What Child Is This.” You can be contentin the knowledge that sooner or later Oy (probably a canine version with a longneck, odd gold-ringed eyes, and a bark that sometimes sounds eerily likespeech) will also enter the picture. That’s a pretty picture, isn’t it? Ithink so. And pretty close to happily ever after, too. Close enough forgovernment work, as Eddie would say.
Should you go on, you will surely bedisappointed, perhaps even heartbroken. I have one key left on my belt, but allit opens is that final door, the one marked
Endings are heartless.
Ending is just another word for goodbye.
Two
Would you still?
Very well, then, come. (Do you hear me sigh?)Here is the Dark Tower, at the end of End-World. See it, I beg.
See it very well.
Here is the Dark Tower at sunset.
Three
He came to it with the oddest feeling ofremembrance; what Susannah and Eddie called déjà vu.
The roses of Can’-Ka No Rey opened beforehim in a path to the Dark Tower, the yellow suns deep in their cups seeming toregard him like eyes. And as he walked toward that gray-black column, Rolandfelt himself begin to slip from the world as he had always known it. He calledthe names of his friends and loved ones, as he had always promised himself hewould; called them in the gloaming, and with perfect force, for no longer wasthere any need to reserve energy with which to fight the Tower’s pull. To givein—finally—was the greatest relief of his life.
He called the names of his compadresand amoras, and although each came from deeper in his heart, each seemedto have less business with the rest of him. His voice rolled away to thedarkening red horizon, name upon name. He called Eddie’s and Susannah’s. Hecalled Jake’s, and last of all he called his own. When the sound of it had diedout, the blast of a great horn replied, not from the Tower itself but from theroses that lay in a carpet all around it. That horn was the voice of theroses, and cried him welcome with a kingly blast.
In my dreams the horn was always mine,he thought. I should have known better, for mine was lost with Cuthbert, atJericho Hill.
A voice whispered from above him: Itwould have been the work of three seconds to bend and pick it up. Even in thesmoke and the death. Three seconds. Time, Roland—it always comes back tothat.
That was, he thought, the voice of theBeam—the one they had saved. If it spoke out of gratitude it could havesaved its breath, for what good were such words to him now? He remembered aline from Browning’s poem: One taste of the old times sets all to rights.
Such had never been his experience. In hisown, memories brought only sadness. They were the food of poets and fools,sweets that left a bitter aftertaste in the mouth and throat.
Roland stopped for a moment still ten pacesfrom the ghostwood door in the Tower’s base, letting the voice of theroses—that welcoming horn—echo away to nothing. The feeling of déjàvu was still strong, almost as though he had been here after all. And ofcourse he had been, in ten thousand premonitory dreams. He looked up at thebalcony where the Crimson King had stood, trying to defy ka and bar his way.There, about six feet above the cartons that held the few remaining sneetches(the old lunatic had had no other weapons after all, it seemed), he saw two redeyes, floating in the darkening air, looking down at him with eternal hatred.From their backs, the thin silver of the optic nerves (now tinted red-orangewith the light of the leaving sun) trailed away to nothing. The gunslingersupposed the Crimson King’s eyes would remain up there forever, watchingCan’-Ka No Rey while their owner wandered the world to which Patrick’s eraserand enchanted Artist’s eye had sent him. Or, more likely, to the space betweenthe worlds.
Roland walked on to where the path ended atthe steel-banded slab of black ghostwood. Upon it, a sigul that he now knewwell was engraved three-quarters of the way up: