“I’m sure you’re right,” Roland said, “and we may have business with the ‘old woman’ and the ‘dark man’ yet... but today our business is east. Come on.”

They began walking again.

5

“What about Sheemie?” Jake asked after awhile.

Roland laughed, partly in surprise at the question, partly in pleased remembrance. “He followed us. It couldn’t have been easy for him, and it must have been damned scary in places—there were wheels and wheels of wild country between Mejis and Gilead, and plenty of wild folks, too. Worse than just folks, mayhap. But ka was with him, and he showed up in time for Year’s End Fair. He and that damned mule.”

“Capi,” Jake said.

“Appy,” Oy repeated, padding along at Jake’s heel.

“When we went in search of the Tower, I and my friends, Sheemie was with us. As a sort of squire, I suppose you’d say. He...” But Roland trailed off, biting at his lip, and of that he would say no more.

“Cordelia?” Susannah asked. “The crazy aunt?”

“Dead before the bonfire had burned down to embers. It might have been a heart-storm, or a brain-storm—what Eddie calls a stroke.”

“Perhaps it was shame,” Susannah said. “Or horror at what she’d done.”

“It may have been,” Roland said. “Waking to the truth when it’s too late is a terrible thing. I know that very well.”

“Something up there,” Jake said, pointing at a long stretch of road from which the cars had been cleared. “Do you see?”

Roland did—with his eyes he seemed to see everything—but it was another fifteen minutes or so before Susannah began to pick up the small black specks ahead in the road. She was quite sure she knew what they were, although what she thought was less vision than intuition. Ten minutes after that, she was sure.

They were shoes. Six pairs of shoes placed neatly in a line across the eastbound lanes of Interstate 70.

Chapter II

SHOES IN THE ROAD

1

They reached the shoes at mid-morning. Beyond them, clearer now, stood the glass palace. It glimmered a delicate green shade, like the reflection of a lily pad in still water. There were shining gates in front of it; red pennons snapped from its towers in a light breeze.

The shoes were also red.

Susannah’s impression that there were six pairs was understandable but wrong—there were actually four pairs and one quartet. This latter—four dark red booties made of supple leather—was undoubtedly meant for the four-footed member of their ka-tet. Roland picked one of them up and felt inside it. He didn’t know how many bumblers had worn shoes in the history of the world, but he was willing to guess that none had ever been gifted with a set of silk-lined leather booties.

“Bally, Gucci, eat your heart out,” Eddie said. “This is great stuff.”