When the darkness let them go, they were almost forty feet down the road from their camp. Jake sat up slowly, then turned to Oy. “You all right, boy?”

“Oy.”

Jake patted the bumbler’s head. He looked around at the others. All here. He sighed, relieved.

“What’s this?” Eddie asked. He had taken Jake’s other hand when the chimes began. Now, caught in their interlocked fingers, was a crumpled pink object. It felt like cloth; it also felt like metal.

“I don’t know,” Jake said.

“You picked it up in the lot, just after Susannah screamed,” Roland said. “I saw you.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. I guess maybe I did. Because it was where the key was, before.”

“What is it, sugar?”

“Some kind of bag.” He held it by the straps. “I’d say it was my bowling bag, but that’s back at the lanes, with my ball inside it. Back in 1977.”

“What’s written on the side?” Eddie asked.

But they couldn’t make it out. The clouds had closed in again and there was no moonlight. They walked back to their camp together, slowly, shaky as invalids, and Roland built up the fire. Then they looked at the writing on the side of the rose-pink bowling bag.

NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES

was what it said.

“That’s not right,” Jake said. “Almost, but not quite. What it says on my bag is NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID- TOWNLANES . Timmy gave it to me one day when I bowled a two-eighty-two. He said I wasn’t old enough for him to buy me a beer.”

“A bowling gunslinger,” Eddie said, and shook his head. “Wonders never cease, do they?”

Susannah took the bag and ran her hands over it. “What kind of weave is this? Feels like metal. And it’s heavy .”

Roland, who had an idea what the bag was for—although not who or what had left it for them—said, “Put it in your knapsack with the books, Jake. And keep it very safe.”

“What do we do next?” Eddie asked.

“Sleep,” Roland said. “I think we’re going to be very busy for the next few weeks. We’ll have to take our sleep when and where we find it.”

“But—”

“Sleep,” Roland said, and spread out his skins.

Eventually they did, and all of them dreamed of the rose. Except for Mia, who got up in the night’s last dark hour and slipped away to feast in the great banquet hall. And there she feasted very well.

She was, after all, eating for two.

Part Two

Telling Tales

Chapter I

The Pavilion

One