“I look in the trees and see nineteen. Into the fire, see nineteen. Names make nineteen, like Overholser’s and Callahan’s. But that’s just what I can say, what I can see, what I can get hold of.” Eddie was speaking with desperate speed, looking directly into Roland’s eyes. “Here’s another thing. It has to do with todash. I know you guys sometimes think everything reminds me of getting high, and maybe that’s right, but Roland, going todash is like being stoned.”

Eddie always spoke to him of these things as if Roland had never put anything stronger than graf into his brain and body in all his long life, and that was far from the truth. He might remind Eddie of this at another time, but not now.

“Just being here in your world is like going todash. Because…ah, man, this is hard…Roland, everything here is real, but it’s not.”

Roland thought of reminding Eddie this wasn’t his world, not anymore—for him the city of Lud had been the end of Mid-World and the beginning of all the mysteries that lay beyond—but again kept his mouth closed.

Eddie grasped a handful of duff, scooping up fragrant needles and leaving five black marks in the shape of a hand on the forest floor. “Real,” he said. “I can feel it and smell it.” He put the handful of needles to his mouth and ran out his tongue to touch them. “I can taste it. And at the same time, it’s as unreal as a nineteen you might see in the fire, or that cloud in the sky that looks like a turtle. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand it very well,” Roland murmured.

“The people are real. You…Susannah…Jake…that guy Gasher who snatched Jake…Overholser and the Slightmans. But the way stuff from my world keeps showing up over here, that’s not real. It’s not sensible or logical, either, but that’s not what I mean. It’s just not real . Why do people over here sing ‘Hey Jude’? I don’t know. That cyborg bear, Shardik—where do I know that name from? Why did it remind me of rabbits? All that shit about the Wizard of Oz, Roland—all that happened to us, I have no doubt of it, but at the same time it doesn’t seem real to me. It seems like todash. Like nineteen. And what happens after the Green Palace? Why, we walk into the woods, just like Hansel and Gretel. There’s a road for us to walk on. Muffin-balls for us to pick. Civilization has ended. Everything is coming unraveled. You told us so. We saw it in Lud. Except guess what? It’s not! Booya, assholes, gotcha again!”

Eddie gave a short laugh. It sounded shrill and unhealthy. When he brushed his hair back from his forehead, he left a dark smear of forest earth on his brow.