“Tell her!” Eddie shouted. “You brought her, so go on and tell her, man!” And after a moment he added in a lower tone, “And then tell me how come she doesn’t remember herself.”

4

Roland did not respond. Not at once. He bent, pinched the hilt of the knife between the two remaining fingers of his right hand, transferred it carefully to his left, and slipped it into the scabbard at the side of one gunbelt. He was still trying to grapple with what he had sensed in the Lady’s mind. Unlike Eddie, she had fought him, fought him like a cat, from the moment he came forward until they rolled through the door. The fight had begun the moment she sensed him. There had been no lapse, because there had been no surprise. He had experienced it but didn’t in the least understand it. No surprise at the invading stranger in her mind, only the instant rage, terror, and the commencement of a battle to shake him free. She hadn’t come close to winning that battle—could not, he suspected—but that hadn’t kept her from trying like hell. He had felt a woman insane with fear and anger and hate.

He had sensed only darkness in her—this was a mind entombed in a cave-in.

Except—

Except that in the moment they burst through the doorway and separated, he had wished—wished desperately—that he could tarry a moment longer. One moment would have told so much. Because the woman before them now wasn’t the woman in whose mind he had been. Being in Eddie’s mind had been like being in a room with jittery, sweating walls. Being in the Lady’s had been like lying naked in the dark while venomous snakes crawled all over you.

Until the end.

She had changed at the end.

And there had been something else, something he believed was vitally important, but he either could not understand it or remember it. Something like

(a glance)

the doorway itself, only in her mind. Something about

(you broke the forspecial it was you)

some sudden burst of understanding. As at studies, when you finally saw—

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie said disgustedly. “You’re nothing but a goddam machine.”

He strode past Roland, went to the woman, knelt beside her, and when she put her arms around him, panic-tight, like the arms of a drowning swimmer, he did not draw away but put his own arms around her and hugged her back.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I mean, it’s not great, but it’s okay.”

“Where are we?” she wept. “I was sitting home watching TV so I could hear if my friends got out of Oxford alive and now I’m here and I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE HERE IS!”

“Well, neither do I,” Eddie said, holding her tighter, beginning to rock her a little, “but I guess we’re in it together. I’m from where you’re from, little old New York City, and I’ve been through the same thing—well, a little different, but same principle—and you’re gonna be just fine.” As an afterthought he added: “As long as you like lobster.”