So far.

Roland had gone yesterday, and although that made today Eddie’s turn, the gunslinger had gone again, shouldering the hide waterskins and walking off without a word. Eddie found this queerly discreet. He didn’t want to be touched by the gesture—by anything about Roland, for that matter—and found he was, a little, just the same.

She listened attentively to Eddie, not speaking at all, her eyes fixed on his. At one moment Eddie would guess she was five years older than he, at another he would guess fifteen. There was one thing he didn’t have to guess about: he was falling in love with her.

When he had finished, she sat for a moment without saying anything, now not looking at him but beyond him, looking at the waves which would, at nightfall, bring the lobsters and with their alien, lawyerly questions. He had been particularly careful to describe them. Better for her to be a little scared now than a lot scared when they came out to play. He supposed she wouldn’t want to eat them, not after hearing what they had done to Roland’s hand and foot, not after she got a good close look at them. But eventually hunger would win out over did-a-chick and dum-a-chum.

Her eyes were far and distant.

“Odetta?” he asked after perhaps five minutes had gone by. She had told him her name. Odetta Holmes. He thought it was a gorgeous name.

She looked back at him, startled out of her revery. She smiled a little. She said one word.

“No.”

He only looked at her, able to think of no suitable reply. He thought he had never understood until that moment how illimitable a simple negative could be.

“I don’t understand,” he said finally. “What are you no-ing?”

“All this.” Odetta swept an arm (she had, he’d noticed, very strong arms—smooth but very strong), indicating the sea, the sky, the beach, the scruffy foothills where the gunslinger was now presumably searching for water (or maybe getting eaten alive by some new and interesting monster, something Eddie didn’t really care to think about). Indicating, in short, this entire world.

“I understand how you feel. I had a pretty good case of the unrealities myself at first.”

But had he? Looking back, it seemed he had simply accepted, perhaps because he was sick, shaking himself apart in his need for junk.

“You get over it.”

“No,” she said again. “I believe one of two things has happened, and no matter which one it is, I am still in Oxford, Mississippi. None of this is real.”

She went on. If her voice had been louder (or perhaps if he had not been falling in love) it would almost have been a lecture. As it was, it sounded more like lyric than lecture.

Except, he had to keep reminding himself, bullshit’s what it really is, and you have to convince her of that. For her sake.

“I may have sustained a head injury,” she said. “They are notorious swingers of axe-handles and billy-clubs in Oxford Town.”