by Stephen King
“Whatever comes, we’ll do as we must. And I’ll always love you, no matter what comes.”
She smiled. He said it as a man would state any dry fact: sky is up, earth is down, water flows south.
“Roland, how old are you?” She was sometimes troubled by the idea that, young as she herself was, Roland was even younger. When he was concentrating on something, he could look so hard he frightened her. When he smiled, he looked not like a lover but a kid brother.
“Older than I was when I came here,” he said. “Older by far. And if I have to stay in sight of Jonas and his men another six months, I’ll be hobbling and needing a boost in the arse to get aboard my horse.”
She grinned at that, and he kissed her nose.
“And thee’ll take care of me?”
“Aye,” he said, and grinned back at her. Susan nodded, then also turned on her back. They lay that way, hip to hip, looking up at the sky. She took his hand and placed it on her breast. As he stroked the nipple with his thumb, it raised its head, grew hard, and began to tingle. This sensation slipped quickly down her body to the place that was still throbbing between her legs. She squeezed her thighs together and was both delighted and dismayed to find that doing so only made matters worse.
“Ye must take care of me,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve pinned everything on you. All else is cast aside.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Never doubt it. But for now, Susan, you must go on as you have been. There’s more time yet to pass; I know that because Depape is back and will have told his tale, but they still haven’t moved in any way against us. Whatever he found out, Jonas still thinks it’s in his interest to wait. That’s apt to make him more dangerous when he does move, but for now it’s still Castles.”
“But after the Reaping Bonfire—Thorin—”
“You’ll never go to his bed. That you can count on. I set my warrant on it.”
A little shocked at her own boldness, she reached below his waist. “Here’s a warrant ye can set on me, if ye would,” she said.
He would. Could. And did.
When it was over (for Roland it had been even sweeter than the first time, if that was possible), he asked her: “That feeling you had out at Citgo, Susan—of being watched. Did you have it this time?”
She looked at him long and thoughtfully. “I don’t know. My mind was in other places, ye ken.” She touched him gently, then laughed as he jumped—the nerves in the half-hard, half-soft place where her palm stroked were still very lively, it seemed.
She took her hand away and looked up at the circle of sky above the grove. “So beautiful here,” she murmured, and her eyes drifted closed.
Roland also felt himself drifting. It was ironic, he thought. This time she hadn’t had that sensation of being watched . . . but the second time, he had. Yet he would have sworn there was no one near this grove.
No matter. The feeling, megrim or reality, was gone now. He took Susan’s hand, and felt her fingers slip naturally through his, entwining.
He closed his eyes.
9
All of this Rhea saw in the glass, and wery interesting viewing it made, aye, wery interesting, indeed. But she’d seen shagging before—sometimes with three or four or even more doing it all at the same time (sometimes with partners who were not precisely alive)—and the hokey-pokey wasn’t very interesting to her at her advanced age. What she was interested in was what would come after the hokey-pokey.
Is our business done? the girl had asked.
Mayhap there’s one more little thing, Rhea had responded, and then she told the impudent trull what to do.
Aye, she’d given the girl very clear instructions as the two of them stood in the hut doorway, the Kissing Moon shining down on them as Susan Delgado slept the strange sleep and Rhea stroked her braid and whispered instructions in her ear. Now would come the fulfillment of that interlude . . . and that was what she wanted to see, not two babbies shagging each other like they were the first two on earth to discover how ’twas done.
Twice they did it with hardly a pause to natter in between (she would have given a good deal to hear that natter, too). Rhea wasn’t surprised; at his young age, she supposed the brat had enough spunkum in his sack to give her a week’s worth of doubles, and from the way the little slut acted, that might be to her taste. Some of them discovered it and never wanted aught else; this was one, Rhea thought.
But let’s see how sexy you feel in a few minutes, you snippy bitch, she thought, and leaned deeper into the pulsing pink light thrown from the glass. She could sometimes feel that light aching in the very bones of her face . . . but it was a good ache. Aye, wery good indeed.
They were at last done . . . for the time being, at least. They clasped hands and drifted off to sleep.
“Now,” Rhea murmured. “Now, my little one. Be a good girl and do as ye were told.”
As if hearing her, Susan’s eyes opened—but there was nothing in them. They woke and slept at the same time. Rhea saw her gently pull her hand free of the boy’s. She sat up, bare breasts against bare thighs, and looked around. She got to her feet—
That was when Musty, the six-legged cat, jumped into Rhea’s lap, waowing for either food or affection. The old woman shrieked with surprise, and the wizard’s glass at once went dark—puffed out like a candleflame in a gust of wind.
Rhea shrieked again, this time with rage, and seized the cat before it could flee. She hurled it across the room, into the fireplace. That was as dead a hole as only a summer fireplace can be, but when Rhea cast a bony, misshapen hand at it, a yellow gust of flame rose from the single half-charred log lying in there. Musty screamed and fled from the hearth with his eyes wide and his split tail smoking like an indifferently butted cigar.
“Run, aye!” Rhea spat after him. “Begone, ye vile cusk!”
She turned back to the glass and spread her hands over it, thumb to thumb. But although she concentrated with all her might, willed until her heart was beating with a sick fury in her chest, she could do no more than bring back the ball’s natural pink glow. No images appeared. This was bitterly disappointing, but there was nothing to be done. And in time she would be able to see the results with her own two natural eyes, if she cared to go to town and do so.
Everybody would be able to see.
Her good humor restored, Rhea returned the ball to its hiding place.
10
Only moments before he would have sunk too deep in sleep to have heard it, a warning bell went off in Roland’s mind. Perhaps it was the faint realization that her hand was no longer entwined with his; perhaps it was raw intuition. He could have ignored that faint bell, and almost did, but in the end his training was too strong. He came up from the threshold of real sleep, fighting his way back to clarity as a diver kicks for the surface of a quarry. It was hard at first, but became easier; as he neared wakefulness, his alarm grew.
He opened his eyes and looked to his left. Susan was no longer there. He sat up, looked to his right, and saw nothing above the cut of the stream . . . yet he felt that she was in that direction, all the same.
“Susan?”
No response. He got up, looked at his pants, and Cort—a visitor he never would have expected in such a romantic bower as this—spoke up gruffly in his mind. No time, maggot.
He walked naked to the bank and looked down. Susan was there, all right, also naked, her back to him. She had unbraided her hair. It hung, loose gold, almost all the way to the lyre of her hips. The chill air rising from the surface of the stream shivered the tips of it like mist.
She was down on one knee at the edge of the running water. One arm was plunged into it almost to the elbow; she searched for something, it seemed.
“Susan!”
No answer. And now a cold thought came to him: She’s been infested by a demon. While I slept, heedless, beside her, she’s been infested by a demon. Yet he did not think he really believed that. If there had been a demon near this clearing, he w
ould have felt it. Likely both of them would have felt it; the horses, too. But something was wrong with her.
She brought an object up from the streambed and held it before her eyes in her dripping hand. A stone. She examined it, then tossed it back—plunk. She reached in again, head bent, two sheafs of her hair now actually floating on the water, the stream prankishly tugging them in the direction it flowed.
“Susan!”
No response. She plucked another stone out of the stream. This one was a triangular white quartz, shattered into a shape that was almost like the head of a spear. Susan tilted her head to the left and took a sheaf of her hair in her hand, like a woman who means to comb out a nest of tangles. But there was no comb, only the rock with its sharp edge, and for a moment longer Roland remained on the bank, frozen with horror, sure that she meant to cut her own throat out of shame and guilt over what they’d done. In the weeks to come, he was haunted by a clear knowledge: if it had been her throat she’d intended, he wouldn’t have been in time to stop her.
Then the paralysis broke and he hurled himself down the bank, unmindful of the sharp stones that gouged the soles of his feet. Before he reached her, she had already used the edge of the quartz to cut off part of the golden tress she held.
Roland seized her wrist and pulled it back. He could see her face clearly now. What could have been mistaken for serenity from the top of the bank now looked like what it really was: vacuity, emptiness.
When he took hold of her, the smoothness of her face was replaced by a dim and fretful smile; her mouth quivered as if she felt distant pain, and an almost formless sound of negation came from her mouth: “Nnnnnnnnn—”
Some of the hair she had cut off lay on her thigh like gold wire; most had fallen into the stream and been carried away. Susan pulled against Roland’s hand, trying to get the sharp edge back to her hair, wanting to continue her mad barbering. The two of them strove together like arm-wrestlers in a barroom contest. And Susan was winning. He was physically the stronger, but not stronger than the enchantment which held her. Little by little the white triangle of quartz moved back toward her hanging hair. That frightening sound—Nnnnnnnnnn—kept drifting from her mouth.
“Susan! Stop it! Wake up!”
“Nnnnnnnn—”
Her bare arm quivering visibly in the air, the muscles bunched like hard little rocks. And the quartz moving closer and closer to her hair, her cheek, the socket of her eye.
Without thinking about it—it was the way he always acted most successfully—Roland moved his face close to the side of hers, giving up another four inches to the fist holding the stone in order to do it. He put his lips against the cup of her ear and then clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Clucked sidemouth, in fact.
Susan jerked back from that sound, which must have gone through her head like a spear. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly, and the pressure she was exerting against Roland’s grip eased a little. He took the chance and twisted her wrist.
“Ow! Owwww!”
The stone flew out of her opening hand and splashed into the water. Susan gazed at him, now fully awake, her eyes filled with tears and bewilderment. She was rubbing her wrist . . . which, Roland thought, was likely to swell.
“Ye hurt me, Roland! Why did ye hurt m . . .”
She trailed off, looking around. Now not just her face but the whole set of her body expressed bewilderment. She moved to cover herself with her hands, then realized they were still alone and dropped them to her sides. She glanced over her shoulder at the footprints—all of them bare—leading down the bank.
“How did I get down here?” she asked. “Did thee carry me, after I fell asleep? And why did thee hurt me? Oh, Roland, I love thee—why did ye hurt me?”
He picked up the strands of hair that still lay on her thigh and held them in front of her. “You had a stone with a sharp edge. You were trying to cut yourself with it, and you didn’t want to stop. I hurt you because I was scared. I’m just glad I didn’t break your wrist . . . at least, I don’t think I did.”
Roland took it and rotated it gently in either direction, listening for the grate of small bones.
He heard nothing, and the wrist turned freely. As Susan watched, stunned and confused, he raised it to his lips and kissed the inner part, above the delicate tracery of veins.
11
Roland had tied Rusher just far enough into the willows so the big gelding could not be seen by anyone who happened to come riding along the Drop.
“Be easy,” Roland said, approaching. “Be easy a little longer, goodheart.”
Rusher stamped and whickered, as if to say he could be easy until the end of the age, if that was what were required.
Roland flipped open his saddlebag and took out the steel utensil that served as either a pot or a frypan, depending on his needs. He started away, then turned back. His bedroll was tied behind Rusher’s saddle—he had planned to spend the night camped out on the Drop, thinking. There had been a lot to think about, and now there was even more.
He pulled one of the rawhide ties, reached inside the blankets, and pulled out a small metal box. This he opened with a tiny key he drew from around his neck. Inside the box was a small square locket on a fine silver chain (inside the locket was a line-drawing of his mother), and a handful of extra shells—not quite a dozen. He took one, closed it in his fist, and went back to Susan. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.
“I don’t remember anything after we made love the second time,” she said. “Only looking up at the sky and thinking how good I felt and going to sleep. Oh, Roland, how bad does it look?”
“Not bad, I should think, but you’ll know better than I. Here.”
He dipped his cooker full of water and set it on the bank. Susan bent over it apprehensively, laying the hair on the left side of her head across her forearm, then moving the arm slowly outward, extending the tress in a band of bright gold. She saw the ragged cut at once. She examined it carefully, then let it drop with a sigh more relieved than rueful.
“I can hide it,” she said. “When it’s braided, no one will know. And after all, ’tis only hair—no more than woman’s vanity. My aunt has told me so often enough, certainly. But Roland, why? Why did I do it?”
Roland had an idea. If hair was a woman’s vanity, then hair-chopping would likely be a woman’s bit of nastiness—a man would hardly think of it at all. The Mayor’s wife, had it been her? He thought not. It seemed more likely that Rhea, up there on her height of land looking north toward the Bad Grass, Hanging Rock, and Eyebolt Canyon, had set this ugly trap. Mayor Thorin had been meant to wake up on the morning after the Reap with a hangover and a bald-headed gilly.
“Susan, can I try something?”
She gave him a smile. “Something ye didn’t try already up yonder? Aye, what ye will.”
“Nothing like that.” He opened the hand he had held closed, showing the shell. “I want to try and find out who did this to you, and why.” And other things, too. He just didn’t know what they were yet.
She looked at the shell. Roland began to move it along the back of his hand, dancing it back and forth in a dexterous weaving. His knuckles rose and fell like the heddles of a loom. She watched this with a child’s fascinated delight. “Where did ye learn that?”
“At home. It doesn’t matter.”
“Ye’d hypnotize me?”
“Aye . . . and I don’t think it would be for the first time.” He made the shell dance a bit faster—now east along his rippling knuckles, now west. “May I?”
“Aye,” she said. “If you can.”
12
He could, all right; the speed with which she went under confirmed that this had happened to Susan before, and recently. Yet he couldn’t get what he wanted from her. She was perfectly cooperative (some sleep eager, Cort would have said), but beyond a certain point she would not go. It wasn’t decorum or modesty, either—as she slept open-eyed before the stream, she told him in a far-off but calm v
oice about the old woman’s examination, and the way Rhea had tried to “fiddle her up.” (At this Roland’s fists clenched so tightly his nails bit into his palms.) But there came a point where she could no longer remember.
She and Rhea had gone to the door of the hut, Susan said, and there they had stood with the Kissing Moon shining down on their faces. The old woman had been touching her hair, Susan remembered that much. The touch revolted her, especially after the witch’s previous touches, but Susan had been unable to do anything about it. Arms too heavy to raise; tongue too heavy to speak. She could only stand there while the witch whispered in her ear.
“What?” Roland asked. “What did she whisper?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “The rest is pink.”
“Pink? What do you mean?”
“Pink,” she repeated. She sounded almost amused, as if she believed Roland was being deliberately dense. “She says, ‘Aye, lovely, just so, it’s a good girl y’are,’ then everything’s pink. Pink and bright.”
“Bright.”
“Aye, like the moon. And then . . .” She paused. “Then I think it becomes the moon. The Kissing Moon, mayhap. A bright pink Kissing Moon, as round and full as a grapefruit.”
He tried other ways into her memory with no success—every path he tried ended in that bright pinkness, first obscuring her recollection and then coalescing into a full moon. It meant nothing to Roland; he’d heard of blue moons, but never pink ones. The only thing of which he was sure was that the old woman had given Susan a powerful command to forget.
He considered taking her deeper—she would go—but didn’t dare. Most of his experience came from hypnotizing his friends—classroom exercises that were larky and occasionally spooky. Always there had been Cort or Vannay present to make things right if they went off-track. Now there were no teachers to step in; for better or worse, the students had been left in charge of the school. What if he took her deep and couldn’t get her back up again? And he had been told there were demons in the below-mind as well. If you went down to where they were, they sometimes swam out of their caves to meet you . . .