Roland thought yes, but he had twice had the pink bend o’ the rainbow in his own possession, once as a boy and once as a man, and although he had traveled in it both times—with his friends on the second occasion—it had never taken him todash.

Ah, but how would you know?he asked himself. How would you know, Roland, when you were inside it?

Because Cuthbert and Alain would have told him, that was why.

Are you sure?

Some feeling so strange as to be unidentifiable rose in the gunslinger’s bosom—was it indignation? horror? perhaps even a sense of betrayal?—as he realized that no, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that the ball had taken him deep into itself, and he had been lucky to ever get out again.

There’s no ball here,he thought, and again it was that other voice—the dry, implacable voice of his old limping tutor, whose grief for his only son had never really ended—that answered him, and the words were the same:

Are you sure?

Gunslinger, are yousure ?

Six

It started with a low crackling sound. Roland’s first thought was the campfire: one of them had gotten some green fir boughs in there, the coals had finally reached them, and they were producing that sound as the needles smoldered. But—

The sound grew louder, became a kind of electric buzzing. Roland sat up and looked across the dying fire. His eyes widened and his heart began to speed up.

Susannah had turned from Eddie, had drawn away a little, too. Eddie had reached out and so had Jake. Their hands touched. And, as Roland looked at them, they commenced fading in and out of existence in a series of jerky pulses. Oy was doing the same thing. When they were gone, they were replaced by a dull gray glow that approximated the shapes and positions of their bodies, as if something was holding their places in reality. Each time they came back, there would be that crackling buzz. Roland could see their closed eyelids ripple as the balls rolled beneath.

Dreaming. But not just dreaming. This was todash, the passing between two worlds. Supposedly the Manni could do it. And supposedly some pieces of the Wizard’s Rainbow could make you do it, whether you wanted to or not. One piece of it in particular.

They could get caught between and fall,Roland thought. Vannay said that, too. He said that going todash was full of peril.