Stephen King - The Dark Tower

“Maybe it’s happened already,” Susannah said.

“No,” Roland said.

“How can you be sure?” she asked.

He gave her a wintry, humorless smile. “Because,” he said, “we’d no longer be here.”

“How can we stop it from happening?” Eddie asked. “That guy Trampas told Ted it was ka.”

“Maybe he got it wrong,” Jake said, but his voice was thin. Trailing. “It was only a rumor, so maybe he got it wrong. And hey, maybe King’s got until July. Or August. Or what about September? It could be September, doesn’t that seem likely? September’s the 9-month, after all…”

They looked at Roland, who was now sitting with his leg stretched out before him. “Here’s where it hurts,” he said, as if speaking to himself. He touched his right hip…then his ribs…last the side of his head. “I’ve been having headaches. Worse and worse. Saw no reason to tell you.” He drew his diminished right hand down his right side. “This is where he’ll be hit. Hip smashed. Ribs busted. Head crushed. Thrown dead into the ditch. Ka…and the end of ka.” His eyes cleared and he turned urgently to Susannah. “What date was it when you were in New York? Refresh me.”

“June first of 1999.”

Roland nodded and looked to Jake. “And you? The same, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then to Fedic…a rest…and on to Thunderclap.” He paused, thinking, then spoke four words with measured emphasis. “There is still time.”

“But time moves faster over there—”

“And if it takes one of those hitches—”

“Ka—”

Their words overlapped. Then they fell quiet again, looking at him again.

“We can change ka,” Roland said. “It’s been done before. There’s always a price to pay — ka-shume, mayhap — but it can be done.”

“How do we get there?” Eddie asked.

“There’s only one way,” Roland said. “Sheemie must send us.”

Silence in the cave, except for a distant roll of the thunder that gave this dark land its name.

“We have two jobs,” Eddie said. “The writer and the Breakers. Which comes first?”

“The writer,” Jake said. “While there’s still time to save him.”

But Roland was shaking his head.

“Why not?” Eddie cried. “Ah, man, why not? You know how slippery time is over there! And it’s one-way! If we miss the window, we’ll never get another chance!”

“But we have to make Shardik’s Beam safe, too,” Roland said.

“Are you saying Ted and this guy Dinky wouldn’t let Sheemie help us unless we help them first?”

“No. Sheemie would do it for me, I’m sure. But suppose something happened to him while we were in the Keystone World? We’d be stranded in 1999.”

“There’s the door on Turtleback Lane—” Eddie began.

“Even if it’s still there in 1999, Eddie, Ted told us that Shardik’s Beam has already started to bend.” Roland shook his head. “My heart says yonder prison is the place to start. If any of you can say different, I will listen, and gladly.”

They were quiet. Outside the cave, the wind blew.

“We need to ask Ted before we make any final decision,” Susannah said at last.

“No,” Jake said.

“No!” Oy agreed. Zero surprise there; if Ake said it, you could take it to the bumbler bank, as far as Oy was concerned.

“Ask Sheemie, ” Jake said. “Ask Sheemie what he thinks we should do.”

Slowly, Roland nodded.

When Jake awoke from a night of troubled dreams, most of them set in the Dixie Pig, a thin and listless light was seeping into the cave. In New York, that kind of light had always made him want to skip school and spend the entire day on the sofa, reading books, watching game-shows on TV, and napping the afternoon away. Eddie and Susannah were curled up together inside a single sleeping-bag. Oy had eschewed the bed which had been left him in order to sleep beside Jake. He was curled into a U, snout on left forepaw. Most people would have thought him asleep, but Jake saw the sly glimmer of gold beneath his lids and knew that Oy was peeking. The gunslinger’s sleeping-bag was unzipped and empty.

Jake thought about this for a moment or two, then got up and went outside. Oy followed along, padding quietly over the tamped dirt as Jake walked up the trail.

Roland looked haggard and unwell, but he was squatting on his hunkers, and Jake decided that if he was limber enough to do that, he was probably okay. He squatted beside the gunslinger, hands dangling loosely between his thighs. Roland glanced at him, said nothing, then looked back toward the prison the staff called Algul Siento and the inmates called the Devar-Toi. It was a brightening blur beyond and below them. The sun — electric, atomic, whatever — wasn’t shining yet.

Oy plopped down next to Jake with a little whuffing sound, then appeared to go back to sleep. Jake wasn’t fooled.

“Hile and merry-greet-the-day,” Jake said when the silence began to feel oppressive.

Roland nodded. “Merry see, merry be.” He looked as merry as a funeral march. The gunslinger who had danced a furious commala by torchlight in Calla Bryn Sturgis might have been a thousand years in his grave.

“How are you, Roland?”

“Good enough to hunker.”

“Aye, but how are you?”

Roland glanced at him, then reached into his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. “Old and full of aches, as you must know. Would you smoke?”

Jake considered, then nodded.

“They’ll be shorts,” Roland warned. “There’s plenty in my purse I was glad to have back, but not much blow-weed.”

“Save it for yourself, if you want.”

Roland smiled. “A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” He rolled a pair of cigarettes, using some sort of leaf which he tore in two, handed one to Jake, then lit them up with a match he popped alight on his thumbnail. In the still, chill air of Can Steek-Tete, the smoke hung in front of them, then rose slowly, stacking on the air. Jake thought the tobacco was hot, harsh, and stale, but he said no word of complaint. He liked it. He thought of all the times he’d promised himself he wouldn’t smoke like his father did — never in life — and now here he was, starting the habit. And with his new father’s agreement, if not approval.

Roland reached out a finger and touched Jake’s forehead…his left cheek…his nose…his chin. The last touch hurt a little. “Pimples,” Roland said. “It’s the air of this place.” He suspected it was emotional upset, as well — grief over the Pere — but to let Jake know he thought that would likely just increase the boy’s unhappiness over Callahan’s passing.

“You don’t have any,” Jake said. “Skin’s as clear as a bell. Luck- ee .”

“No pimples,” Roland agreed, and smoked. Below them in the seeping light was the village. The peaceful village, Jake thought, but it looked more than peaceful; it looked downright dead. Then he saw two figures, little more than specks from here, strolling toward each other. Hume guards patrolling the outer run of the fence, he presumed. They joined together into a single speck long enough for Jake to imagine a bit of their palaver, and then the speck divided again. “No pimples, but my hip hurts like a son of a bitch. Feels like someone opened it in the night and poured it full of broken glass. Hot glass. But this is far worse.” He touched the right side of his head. “It feels cracked.”