Still looking back toward the Green Palace, Roland said: “To your world, or any other.”

“Who’s the Crimson King?” Susannah asked abruptly.

“Susannah, I know not.”

They were quiet, then, watching Roland look toward the palace where he had faced a false wizard and a true memory and somehow opened the door back to his own world by so doing.

Our world, Eddie thought, slipping an arm around Susannah. Our world now. If we go back to America, and perhaps we’ll have to before this is over, we’ll arrive as strangers in a strange land, no matter what when it is. This is our world now. The world of the Beams, and the Guardians, and the Dark Tower.

“We got some daylight left,” he said to Roland, and put a hesitant hand on the gunslinger’s shoulder. When Roland immediately covered it with his own hand, Eddie smiled. “You want to use it, or what?”

“Yes,” Roland said. “Let’s use it.” He bent and shouldered his pack.

“What about the shoes?” Susannah asked, looking doubtfully at the little red pile they had made.

“Leave them here,” Eddie said. “They’ve served their purpose. Into your wheelchair, girl.” He put his arms around her and helped her in.

“All God’s children have shoes,” Roland mused. “Isn’t that what you said, Susannah?”

“Well,” she said, settling herself, “the correct dialect adds a soupçon of flavor, but you’ve got the essence, honey, yes.”

“Then we’ll undoubtedly find more shoes as God wills it,” Roland said.

Jake was looking into his knapsack, taking inventory of the foodstuffs that had been added by some unknown hand. He held up a chicken leg in a Baggie, looked at it, then looked at Eddie. “Who do you suppose packed this stuff?”

Eddie raised his eyebrows, as if to ask Jake how he could possibly be so stupid. “The Keebler Elves,” he said. “Who else? Come on, let’s go.”

5

They clustered near the grove, five wanderers on the face of an empty land. Ahead of them, running across the plain, was a line in the grass which exactly matched the lane of rushing clouds in the sky. This line was nothing so obvious as a path... but to the awakened eye, the way that everything bent in the same direction was as clear as a painted stripe.

The Path of the Beam. Somewhere ahead, where this Beam intersected all the others, stood the Dark Tower. Eddie thought that, if the wind were right, he would almost be able to smell its sullen stone.

And roses—the dusky scent of roses.

He took Susannah’s hand as she sat in her chair; Susannah took Roland’s; Roland took Jake’s. Oy stood two paces before them, head up, scenting the autumn air that combed his fur with unseen fingers, his gold-ringed eyes wide.