Stephen King - The wind through the keyhole

Everlynne watched her go with a fond smile, then turned back to me.

“There’s a boy-” I began.

She nodded. “Bill Streeter. I know his name and his story. We don’t go to town, but sometimes the town comes to us. Friendly birds twitter news in our ears, if you take my meaning.”

“I take it well,” I said.

“Bring him tomorrow, after your heads have shrunk back to their normal size,” said she. “We’re a company of women, but we’re happy to take an orphan boy… at least until he grows enough hair on his upper lip to shave. After that, women trouble a boy, and it might not be so well for him to stay here. In the meantime, we can set him about his letters and numbers… if he’s trig enough to learn, that is. Would you say he’s trig enough, Roland, son of Gabrielle?”

It was odd to be called from my mother’s side rather than my father’s, but strangely pleasant. “I’d say he’s very trig.”

“That’s well, then. And we’ll find a place for him when it’s time for him to go.”

“A plot and a place,” I said.

Everlynne laughed. “Aye, just so, like in the story of Tim Stoutheart. And now we’ll break bread together, shall we? And with meadow wine we’ll toast the prowess of young men.”

We ate, we drank, and all in all, it was a very merry meeting. When the sisters began to clear the trestle tables, Prioress Everlynne took me to her private quarters, which consisted of a bedroom and a much larger office where a cat slept in a bar of sun on a huge oaken desk heaped high with papers.

“Few men have been here, Roland,” she said. “One was a fellow you might know. He had a white face and black clothes. Do you know the man of whom I speak?”

“Marten Broadcloak,” I said. The good food in my stomach was suddenly sour with hate. And jealousy, I suppose-nor just on behalf of my father, whom Gabrielle of Arten had decorated with cuckold’s horns. “Did he see her?”

“He demanded to, but I refused and sent him hence. At first he declined to go, but I showed him my knife and told him there were other weapons in Serenity, aye, and women who knew how to use them. One, I said, was a gun. I reminded him he was deep inside the haci, and suggested that, unless he could fly, he had better take heed. He did, but before he went he cursed me, and he cursed this place.” She hesitated, stroked the cat, then looked up at me. “There was a time when I thought perhaps the skin-man was his work.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Nor I, but neither of us will ever be entirely sure, will we?” The cat tried to climb into the vast playground of her lap, and Everlynne shooed it away. “Of one thing I am sure: he spoke to her anyway, although whether through the window of her cell late at night or only in her troubled dreams, no one will ever know. That secret she took with her into the clearing, poor woman.”

To this I did not reply. When one is amazed and heartsick, it’s usually best to say nothing, for in that state, any word will be the wrong word.

“Your lady-mother quit her retirement with us shortly after we turned this Broadcloak fellow around. She said she had a duty to perform, and much to atone for. She said her son would come here. I asked her how she knew and she said, ‘Because ka is a wheel and it always turns.’ She left this for you.”

Everlynne opened one of the many drawers of her desk and removed an envelope. Written on the front was my name, in a hand I knew well. Only my father would have known it better. That hand had once turned the pages of a fine old book as she read me “The Wind Through the Keyhole.” Aye, and many others. I loved all the stories held in the pages that hand turned, but never so much as I loved the hand itself. Even more, I loved the sound of the voice that told them as the wind blew outside. Those were the days before she was mazed and fell into the sad bitchery that brought her under a gun in another hand. My gun, my hand.

Everlynne rose, smoothing her large apron. “I must go and see how things are advancing in other parts of my little kingdom. I’ll bid you goodbye now, Roland, son of Gabrielle, only asking that you pull the door shut when you go. It will lock itself.”

“You trust me with your things?” I asked.

She laughed, came around the desk, and kissed me again. “Gunslinger, I’d trust you with my life,” said she, and left. She was so tall she had to duck her head when she went through the door.

I sat looking at Gabrielle Deschain’s last missive for a long time. My heart was full of hate and love and regret-all those things that have haunted me ever since. I considered burning it, unread, but at last I tore the envelope open. Inside was a single sheet of paper. The lines were uneven, and the pigeon-ink in which they had been written was blotted in many places. I believe the woman who wrote those lines was struggling to hold onto a few last shreds of sanity. I’m not sure many would have understood her words, but I did. I’m sure my father would have, as well, but I never showed it to him or told him of it.

The feast I ate was rotten what I thought was a palace was a dungeon how it burns Roland

I thought of Wegg, dying of snakebite.

If I go back and tell what I know what I overheard

Gilead may yet be saved a few years you may be saved a few years your father little that he ever cared for me

The words “little that he ever cared for me” had been crossed out with a series of heavy lines, but I could read them anyway. he says I dare not he says “Bide at Serenity until death finds you.” he says “If you go back death will find you early.” he says “Your death will destroy the only one in the world for whom you care.” he says “Would you die at your brat’s hand and see every goodness every kindness every loving thought poured out of him like water from a dipper? for Gilead that cared for you little and will die anyway?”

But I must go back. I have prayed on it and meditated on it and the voice I hear always speaks the same words: THIS IS WHAT KA DEMANDS

There was a little more, words I traced over and over during my wandering years after the disastrous battle at Jericho Hill and the fall of Gilead. I traced them until the paper fell apart and I let the wind take it-the wind that blows through time’s keyhole, ye ken. In the end, the wind takes everything, doesn’t it? And why not? Why other? If the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all.

I stayed in Everlynne’s office until I had myself under control. Then I put my mother’s last word-her dead-letter-in my purse and left, making sure the door locked behind me. I found Jamie and we rode to town. That night there were lights and music and dancing; many good things to eat and plenty of liquor to wash it down with. There were women, too, and that night Silent Jamie left his virginity behind him. The next morning…

“That night,” Roland said, “there were lights and music and dancing; many good things to eat and plenty of liquor to wash it down with.”

“Booze,” Eddie said, and heaved a seriocomic sigh. “I remember it well.”

It was the first thing any of them had said in a very long time, and it broke the spell that had held them through that long and windy night. They stirred like people awaking from a deep dream. All except Oy, who still lay on his back in front of the fireplace with his short paws splayed and the tip of his tongue lolling comically from the side of his mouth.

Roland nodded. “There were women, too, and that night Silent Jamie left his virginity behind him. The next morning we reboarded Sma’ Toot, and made our way back to Gilead. And so it happened, once upon a bye.”