“My legs!”She was screaming it at the top of her voice. “ My legs! I have my legs back! Oh Roland, honeydoll, praise the Man Jesus, I HAVE MY LEGS BACK!”

Six

She threw herself into his embrace, kissing his cheek, his neck, his brow, his nose, his lips, saying it over and over again: “My legs, oh Roland do you see, I can walk, I can run, I have my legs, praise God and all the saints, I have my legs back. ”

“Give you every joy of them, dear heart,” Roland said. Falling into the patois of the place in which he had lately found himself was an old trick of his—or perhaps it was habit. For now it was the patois of the Calla. He supposed if he spent much time here in New York, he’d soon find himself waving his middle finger at tack-sees.

But I’d always be an outsider,he thought. Why, I can’t even say “aspirin.” Every time I try, the word comes out wrong.

She took his right hand, dragged it down with surprising force, and placed it on her shin. “Do you feel it?” she demanded. “I mean, I’m not just imagining it, am I?”

Roland laughed. “Did you not run to me as if with wings on em like Raf? Yes, Susannah.” He put his left hand, the one with all the fingers, on her left leg. “One leg and two legs, each with a foot below them.” He frowned. “We ought to get you some shoes, though.”

“Why? This is a dream. It has to be.”

He looked at her steadily, and slowly her smile faded.

“Not? Really not?”

“We’ve gone todash. We are really here. If you cut your foot, Mia, you’ll have a cut foot tomorrow, when you wake up aside the campfire.”

The other name had come out almost—but not quite—on its own. Now he waited, all his muscles wire-tight, to see if she would notice. If she did, he’d apologize and tell her he’d gone todash directly from a dream of someone he’d known long ago (although there had only been one woman of any importance after Susan Delgado, and her name had not been Mia).

But she didn’t notice, and Roland wasn’t much surprised.

Because she was getting ready to go on another of her hunting expeditions— as Mia— when thekammen rang. And unlike Susannah, Mia has legs. She banquets on rich foods in a great hall, she talks with all her friends, she didn’t go to Morehouse or to no house, and she has legs. So this one has legs. This one is both women, although she doesn’t know it.