Roland seemed amused. “I don’t think that’s what you really want to know, Eddie.”

He was right about that—old long, tall, and ugly made a habit of being right. It was, as far as Eddie was concerned, one of his most irritating characteristics. “All right. How long have you been talking? That’s what I really want to know.”

“Are you uncomfortable? Want to go to bed?”

He’s making fun of me, Eddie thought... but even as the idea occurred to him, he knew it wasn’t true. And no, he wasn’t uncomfortable. There was no stiffness in his joints, although he had been sitting cross-legged ever since Roland had begun by telling them about Rhea and the glass ball, and he didn’t need to go to the toilet. Nor was he hungry. Jake was munching the single leftover burrito, but probably for the same reason folks climbed Mount Everest... because it was there. And why should he be hungry or sleepy or stiff? Why, when the fire still burned and the moon was not yet down?

He looked at Roland’s amused eyes and saw the gunslinger was reading his thoughts.

“No, I don’t want to go to bed. You know I don’t. But, Roland... you’ve been talking a long time.” He paused, looked down at his hands, then looked up again, smiling uneasily. “Days, I would have said.”

“But time is different here. I’ve told you that; now you see for yourself. Not all nights are the same length just recently. Days, either... but we notice time more at night, don’t we? Yes, I think we do.”

“Is the thinny stretching time?” And now that he had mentioned it, Eddie could hear it in all its creepy glory—a sound like vibrating metal, or maybe the world’s biggest mosquito.

“It might be helping, but mostly it’s just how things are in my world.”

Susannah stirred like a woman who rises partway from a dream that holds her like sweet quicksand. She gave Eddie a look that was both distant and impatient. “Let the man talk, Eddie.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Let the man talk.”

And Oy, without raising his snout from Jake’s ankle: “An. Awk.”

“All right,” Eddie said. “No problem.”

Roland swept them with his eyes. “Are you sure? The rest is...” He didn’t seem able to finish, and Eddie realized that Roland was scared.