Eddie’s resolution about not eating the muffin-balls didn’t last long; they just smelled too damned good sizzling in the lump of deerfat Roland (thrifty, murderous soul that he was) had saved away in his scuffed old purse. Eddie took his share on one of the ancient plates they’d found in Shardik’s woods and gobbled them.

“These are as good as lobster,” he said, then remembered the monsters on the beach that had eaten Roland’s fingers. “As good as Nathan’s hotdogs is what I meant to say. And I’m sorry for teasing you, Jake.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jake said, smiling. “You never tease hard.”

“One thing you should be aware of,” Roland said. He was smiling—he smiled more these days, quite a lot more—but his eyes were serious. “All of you. Muffin-balls sometimes bring very lively dreams.”

“You mean they make you stoned?” Jake asked, rather uneasily. He was thinking of his father. Elmer Chambers had enjoyed many of the weirder things in life.

“Stoned? I’m not sure I—”

“Buzzed. High. Seeing things. Like when you took the mescaline and went into the stone circle where that thing almost…you know, almost hurt me.”

Roland paused for a moment, remembering. There had been a kind of succubus imprisoned in that ring of stones. Left to its own devices, she undoubtedly would have initiated Jake Chambers sexually, then fucked him to death. As matters turned out, Roland had made it speak. To punish him, it had sent him a vision of Susan Delgado.

“Roland?” Jake was looking at him anxiously.

“Don’t concern yourself, Jake. There are mushrooms that do what you’re thinking of—change consciousness, heighten it—but not muffin-balls. These are berries, just good to eat. If your dreams are particularly vivid, just remind yourself you are dreaming.”

Eddie thought this a very odd little speech. For one thing, it wasn’t like Roland to be so tenderly solicitous of their mental health. Not like him to waste words, either.

Things have started again and he knows it, too,Eddie thought. There was a little time-out there, but now the clock’s running again. Game on, as they say.

“We going to set a watch, Roland?” Eddie asked.

“Not by my warrant,” the gunslinger said comfortably, and began rolling himself a smoke.

“You really don’t think they’re dangerous, do you?” Susannah said, and raised her eyes to the woods, where the individual trees were now losing themselves in the general gloom of evening. The little spark of campfire they’d noticed earlier was now gone, but the people following them were still there. Susannah felt them. When she looked down at Oy and saw him gazing in the same direction, she wasn’t surprised.

“I think that may be their problem,” Roland said.