Jake takes a step toward the ball, meaning to pick it up and dash it to the floor... and he can do that, he realizes, for the ball is real. It’s the one thing in this vision that is. But before he can put his hands to it, it flashes a soundless explosion of pink light. Jake throws his hands up in front of his face to keep from being blinded, and then he is ( melting I’m melting what a world oh what a world )

falling, he is being whirled down through the pink storm,

out of Oz and back to Kansas, out of Oz and back to Kansas, out of Oz and back to—

Chapter V

THE PATH OF THE BEAM

1

“—home,” Eddie muttered. His voice sounded thick and punch-drunk to his own ears. “Back home, because there’s no place like home, no indeed.”

He tried to open his eyes and at first couldn’t. It was as if they were glued shut. He put the heel of his hand to his forehead and pushed up, tightening the skin on his face. It worked; his eyes popped open. He saw neither the throneroom of the Green Palace nor (and this was what he had really expected) the richly appointed but somehow claustrophobic bedroom in which he had just been.

He was outside, lying in a small clearing of winter-white grass. Nearby was a little grove of trees, some still with their last brown leaves clinging to the branches. And one branch with an odd white leaf, an albino leaf. There was a pretty trickle of running water farther into the grove. Standing abandoned in the high grass was Susannah’s new and improved wheelchair. There was mud on the tires, Eddie saw, and a few late leaves, crispy and brown, caught in the spokes. A few swatches of grass, too. Overhead was a skyful of still white clouds, every bit as interesting as a laundry-basket full of sheets.

The sky was clear when we went inside the Palace, he thought, and realized time had slipped again. How much or how little, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know—Roland’s world was like a transmission with its gear-teeth all but stripped away; you never knew when time was going to pop into neutral or race you away in overdrive.

Was this Roland’s world, though? And if it was, how had they gotten back to it?

“How should I know?” Eddie croaked, and got slowly to his feet, wincing as he did so. He didn’t think he was hungover, but his legs were sore and he felt as if he had just taken the world’s heaviest Sunday afternoon nap.