“Did she see you there?” The gunslinger’s blue eyes were sharp, almost blazing. His horse clearly felt some change, for it stopped. So did Jake’s. Here they were on East Road, less than a mile from where Red Molly Doolin had once killed a Wolf out of Thunderclap. Here they were, facing each other.

“No,” Jake said. “She didn’t see me.”

Roland was thinking of the night he had followed her into the swamp. He had known she was someplace else in her mind, had sensed that much, but not quite where. Whatever visions he’d taken from her mind had been murky. Now he knew. He knew something else as well: Jake was troubled by his dinh’s decision to let Susannah go on this way. And perhaps he was right to be troubled. But—

“It’s not Susannah you saw, Jake.”

“I know. It’s the one who still has her legs. She calls herself Mia. She’s pregnant and she’s scared to death.”

Roland said, “If you would speak to me dan-dinh, tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking. Then I’ll give you the wisdom of my heart, such wisdom as I have.”

“You won’t…Roland, you won’t scold me?”

This time Roland was unable to conceal his astonishment. “No, Jake. Far from it. Perhaps I should ask you not to scold me .”

The boy smiled wanly. The horses began to amble again, this time a little faster, as if they knew there had almost been trouble and wanted to leave the place of it behind.

Two

Jake wasn’t entirely sure how much of what was on his mind was going to come out until he actually began to talk. He had awakened undecided all over again concerning what to tell Roland about Andy and Slightman the Elder. In the end he took his cue from what Roland had just said— Tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking—and left out the meeting by the river entirely. In truth, that part seemed far less important to him this morning.

He told Roland about the way Mia had run down the stairs, and about her fear when she’d seen there was no food left in the dining room or banqueting hall or whatever it was. Then the kitchen. Finding the roast with the rat battened on it. Killing the competition. Gorging on the prize. Then him, waking with the shivers and trying not to scream.

He hesitated and glanced at Roland. Roland made his impatient twirling gesture—go on, hurry up, finish.

Well,he thought, he promised not to scold and he keeps his word.