“That’s too easy.” The gunslinger’s face was still against Susannah’s shoulder, but his words were clear enough. “Some responsibilities can’t be shirked. Some sins can’t be shirked. Yes, Rhea was there—in a way, at least—but I can’t shift it all to the Cöos, much as I might like to.”

“It wasn’t her, either,” Eddie said. “That’s not what I mean.”

Roland raised his head. “What in hell’s name are you talking about?”

“Ka,” Eddie said. “Ka like a wind.”

3

In their packs there was food none of them had put there—cookies with Keebler elves on the packages, Saran Wrapped sandwiches that looked like the kind you could get (if you were desperate, that was) from turnpike vending machines, and a brand of cola neither Eddie, Susannah, nor Jake knew. It tasted like Coke and came in a red and white can, but the brand was Nozz-A-La.

They ate a meal with their backs to the grove and their faces to the distant glam-gleam of the Green Palace, and called it lunch. If we start to lose the light in an hour or so, we can make it supper by voice vote, Eddie thought, but he didn’t believe they’d need to. His interior clock was running again now, and that mysterious but usually accurate device suggested that it was early afternoon.

At one point he stood up and raised his soda, smiling into an invisible camera. “When I’m travelling through the Land of Oz in my new Takuro Spirit, I drink Nozz-A-La!” he proclaimed. “It fills me up but never fills me out! It makes me happy to be a man! It makes me know God! It gives me the outlook of an angel and the balls of a tiger! When I drink Nozz-A-La, I say ‘Gosh! Ain’t I glad to be alive!’ I say—”

“Sit down, you bumhug,” Jake said, laughing.

“Ug,” Oy agreed. His snout was on Jake’s ankle, and he was watching the boy’s sandwich with great interest.

Eddie started to sit, and then that strange albino leaf caught his eye again. That’s no leaf, he thought, and walked over to it. No, not a leaf but a scrap of paper. He turned it over and saw columns of “blah blah” and “yak yak” and “all the stuff’s the same.” Usually newspapers weren’t blank on one side, but Eddie wasn’t surprised to find this one was—the Oz Daily Buzz had only been a prop, after all.

Nor was the blank side blank. Printed on it in neat, careful letters, was this message:

Below that, a little drawing:

Eddie brought the note back to where the others were eating. Each of them looked at it. Roland held it last, ran his thumb over it thoughtfully, feeling the texture of the paper, then gave it back to Eddie.