I don’t care, I don’t want to see it—

And won’t, he realizes as Roland draws closer; all that has already happened. For this is not August, the time of Full Earth, but late fall or early winter. He can tell by the serape Roland wears, a souvenir of his trip to the Outer Arc, and by the vapor that smokes from his mouth and nose each time he exhales: no central heating in Gilead, and it’s cold up here.

There are other changes as well: Roland is now wearing the guns which are his birthright, the big ones with the sandalwood grips. His father passed them on at the banquet, Jake thinks. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does. And Roland’s face, although still that of a boy, is not the open, untried face of the one who idled up this same corridor five months before; the boy who was ensnared by Marten has been through much since then, and his battle with Cort has been the very least of it.

Jake sees something else, too: the boy gunslinger is wearing the red cowboy boots. He doesn’t know it, though. Because this isn’t really happening.

Yet somehow it is. They are inside the wizard’s glass, they are inside the pink storm (those pink halos revolving around the light fixtures remind Jake of The Falls of the Hounds, and the moonbows revolving in the mist), and this is happening all over again.

“Roland!” Eddie calls from where he and Susannah stand by the tapestry. Susannah gasps and squeezes his shoulder, wanting him to be silent, but Eddie ignores her. “No, Roland! Don’t! Bad idea!”

“No! Olan!” Oy yaps.

Roland ignores both of them, and he passes by Jake a hand’s breadth away without seeing him. For Roland, they are not here; red boots or no red boots, this ka-tet is far in his future.

He stops at a door near the end of the corridor, hesitates, then raises his fist and knocks. Eddie starts down the corridor toward him, still holding Susannah’s hand... now he looks almost as if he is dragging her.

“Come on, Jake,” says Eddie.

“No, I don’t want to.”

“It’s not about what you want, and you know it. We’re supposed to see. If we can’t stop him, we can at least do what we came here to do. Now come on!”

Heart heavy with dread, his stomach clenched in a knot, Jake comes along. As they approach Roland—the guns look enormous on his slim hips, and his unlined but already tired face somehow makes Jake feel like weeping—the gunslinger knocks again.

“She ain’t there, sugar!” Susannah shouts at him. “She ain’t there or she ain’t answering the door, and which one it is don’t matter to you! Leave it! Leave her! She ain’t worth it! Just bein your mother don’t make her worth it! Go away!”