Then do it, Eddie. It was Henry’s voice again, that old resident of his head, but now Henry sounded sober and clear-minded. Henry sounded like his friend instead of his enemy, as if all the old conflicts were finally settled, all the old hatchets buried. Do it—make the devil set himself on fire. It’ll hurt a little, maybe, but you’ve hurt worse. Hell, I hurt you worse myself, and you survived. Survived just fine. And you know where to look.

Of course. In their palaver around the campfire Jake had finally managed to light. Roland had asked the kid a riddle to loosen him up, Jake had struck a spark into the kindling, and then they had all sat around the fire, talking. Talking and riddling.

Eddie knew something else, too. Blaine had answered hundreds of riddles as they ran southeast along the Path of the Beam, and the others believed that he had answered every single one of them without hesitation. Eddie had thought much the same... but now, as he cast his mind back over the contest, he realized an interesting thing: Blaine had hesitated.

Once.

He was pissed, too. Like Roland was.

The gunslinger, although often exasperated by Eddie, had shown real anger toward him just a single time after the business of carving the key, when Eddie had almost choked. Roland had tried to cover the depth of that anger—make it seem like nothing but more exasperation—but Eddie had sensed what was underneath. He had lived with Henry Dean for a long time, and was still exquisitely attuned to all the negative emotions. It had hurt him, too—not Roland’s anger itself, exactly, but the contempt with which it had been laced. Contempt had always been one of Henry’s favorite weapons.

Why did the dead baby cross the road? Eddie had asked. Because it was stapled to the chicken, nyuck-nyuck-nyuck!

Later, when Eddie had tried to defend his riddle, arguing that it was tasteless but not pointless, Roland’s response had been strangely like Blaine’s: I don’t care about taste. It’s senseless and unsolvable, and that’s what makes it silly. A good riddle is neither.