Certainly the box had a ghostly air to it, as of something derelict which had come to rest, however temporarily, after long wandering. The gunslinger very much would have liked to give it a second caress—the dark, dense wood begged his hand—but he had heard the vast hum of the thing inside rise a notch before falling back to its former drone . The wise man doesn’t poke a sleeping bear with a stick,he told himself. It was true, but it didn’t change what he wanted. He did touch the wood once more, lightly, with just the tips of his fingers, then smelled them. There was an aroma of camphor and fire and—he would have sworn it—the flowers of the far north country, the ones that bloom in the snow.

Three objects had been carved on top of the box: a rose, a stone, and a door. Beneath the door was this:

Roland reached out again. Callahan made a move forward, as if to stop him, and then subsided. Roland touched the carving beneath the image of the door. Again the hum beneath it rose—the hum of the black ball hidden inside the box.

“Un…?” he whispered, and ran the ball of his thumb across the raised symbols again. “Un…found?” Not what he read but what his fingertips heard.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s what it says,” Callahan whispered back. He looked pleased, but still grasped Roland’s wrist and pushed it, wanting the gunslinger’s hand away from the box. A fine sweat had broken on his brow and forearms. “It makes sense, in a way. A leaf, a stone, an unfound door. They’re symbols in a book from my side. Look Homeward, Angel, it’s called.”

A leaf, a stone, a door,Roland thought. Only substitute rose for leaf. Yes. That feels right.

“Will you take it?” Callahan asked. Only his voice rose slightly now, out of its whisper, and the gunslinger realized he was begging.

“You’ve actually seen it, Pere, have you?”

“Aye. Once. It’s horrible beyond telling. Like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside God’s shadow. Will you take it, gunslinger?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

Faintly, Roland heard the chime of bells—a sound so beautifully hideous it made you want to grind your teeth against it. For a moment the walls of Pere Callahan’s church wavered. It was as if the thing in the box had spoken to them: Do you see how little it all matters? How quickly and easily I can take it all away, should I choose to do so? Beware, gunslinger! Beware, shaman! The abyss is all around you. You float or fall into it at my whim.

Then the kammen were gone.

“When?” Callahan reached over the box in its hole and grasped Roland’s shirt. “When?”

“Soon,” Roland said.

Too soon,his heart replied.

Chapter V

The Tale of Gray Dick

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