wayward Like its mistress.'
She raised her hand to poke it back in, but Roland took her fingers
before she could. 'It's beautiful,' he said. 'Black as night and as
beautiful as forever.'
He sat up - it took an effort; weariness dragged at his body like soft
hands. He kissed the curl. She closed her eyes and sighed. He felt
her trembling beneath his lips. The skin of her brow was very cool;
the dark curve of the wayward curl like silk.
'Push back your wimple, as you did before,' he said.
She did it without speaking. For a moment he only looked at her.
Jenna looked back gravely, her eyes never leaving his. He ran his
hands through her hair, feeling its smooth weight (like rain, he
thought, rain with weight), then took her shoulders and kissed each
of her cheeks. He drew back for a moment.
'Would ye kiss me as a man does a woman, Roland? On my
mouth?'
Aye.
And, as he had thought of doing as he lay caught in the silken
infirmary tent, he kissed her lips. She kissed back with the clumsy
sweetness of one who has never kissed before, except perhaps in
dreams. Roland thought to make love to her then - it had been long
and long, and she was beautiful but he fell asleep instead, still
kissing her.
He dreamed of the cross-dog, barking its way across a great open
landscape. He followed, wanting to see the source of its agitation,
and soon he did. At the far edge of that plain stood the Dark
Tower, its smoky stone outlined by the dull orange ball of a setting
sun, its fearful windows rising in a spiral. The dog stopped at the
sight of it and began to howl.
Bells - peculiarly shrill and as terrible as doom - began to ring.
Dark bells, he knew, but their tone was as bright as silver. At their
sound, the dark windows of the Tower glowed with a deadly red
light - the red of poisoned roses. A scream of unbearable pain rose
in the night.
The dream blew away in an instant, but the scream remained, now
unravelling to a moan. That part was real - as real as the Tower,
brooding in its place at the very end of End-World. Roland came
back to the brightness of dawn and the soft purple smell of desert
sage. He had drawn both his guns, and was on his feet before he
had fully realized he was awake.
Jenna was gone. Her boots lay empty beside his purse. A little
distance from them, her jeans lay as flat as discarded snakeskins.
Above them was her shirt. It was, Roland observed with wonder,
still tucked into the pants. Beyond them was her empty wimple,
with its fringe of bells lying on the powdery ground. He thought
for a moment that they were ringing, mistaking the sound he heard
at first.
Not bells but bugs. The doctor-bugs. They sang in the sage,
sounding a bit like crickets, but far sweeter.
'Jenna?'
No answer ... unless the bugs answered. For their singing suddenly
stopped.
'Jenna?'
Nothing. Only the wind and the smell of the sage.
Without thinking about what he was doing (like play-acting,
reasoned thought was not his strong suit), he bent, picked up the
wimple, and shook it. The Dark Bells rang.
For a moment there was nothing. Then a thousand small dark
creatures came scurrying out of the sage, gathering on the broken
earth. Roland thought of the battalion marching down the side of
the freighter's and took a step back. Then he held his position. As,
he saw, the bugs holding theirs.
He believed he understood. Some of this understanding came from
his memory of how Sister Mary's flesh had felt under his hands...
how it had felt various, not one thing but many. Part of it was what
she had Said: I have supped with them. Such as them might never
die but they might change.
The insects trembled, a dark cloud of them blotting out the white
powdery earth.
Roland shook the bells again.
A shiver ran through them in a subtle wave, and then they began
form a shape. They hesitated as if unsure of how to go on,
regrouped, began again. What they eventually made on the
whiteness of the sand there between the blowing fluffs of lilac-
coloured sage was one of Great Letters: the letter C.
Except it wasn't really a letter, the gunslinger saw; it was a curl.
They began to sing, and to Roland it sounded as if they were
singing his name.
The bells fell from his unnerved hand, and when they struck
ground and chimed there, the mass of bugs broke apart, running
every direction. He thought of calling them back - ringing the bell
again might do that - but to what purpose? To what end?
Ask me not, Roland. 'Tis done, the bridge burned.
Yet she had come to him one last time, imposing her will over
thousand various parts that should have lost the ability to think
when the whole lost its cohesion . . . and yet she had thought,
somehow enough to make that shape. How much effort might that
have taken?
They fanned wider and wider, some disappearing into the sage,
some trundling up the sides of rock overhang, pouring into the
cracks where they would, mayhap, wait out the heat of the day.
They were gone. She was gone.
Roland sat down on the ground and put his hands over his face. He
thought he might weep, but in time the urge passed; when he raised
his head again, his eyes were as dry as the desert he would
eventually come to, still following the trail of Walter, the man in
black.
If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing,
not theirs.
He knew a little about damnation himself ... and he had an idea that
the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.
She had brought him the purse with his tobacco in it. He rolled a
cigarette and smoked it hunkered over his knees. He smoked it
down to a glowing roach, looking at her empty clothes the while,
remembering the steady gaze of her dark eyes. Remembering the
scorch-marks on her fingers from the chain of the medallion. Yet
she had picked it up, because she had known he would want it; had
dared that pain, and Roland now wore both around his neck.
When the sun was fully up, the gunslinger moved on west. He
would find another horse eventually, or a mule, but for now he was
content to walk. All that day he was haunted by a ringing, singing
sound in his ears, like bells. Several times he stopped and looked
around, sure he would see a dark following shape flowing over the
ground, chasing after as the shadows of our best and worst
memories chase after, but no shape was ever there. He was alone in
the low hill country west of Eluria.
Quite alone.
The Night
of The Tiger
STEPHEN KING
From
Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1978
I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville,
but I'd only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been
making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one mu
ch wanted to
talk about Mr. Legere, not even that last night when it seemed that
the world was coming to an end -- the night that Mr. Indrasil
disappeared.
But if I'm going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start
by saying that I'm Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in
Sauk City. Went to school there, had my first girl there, and
worked in Mr. Lillie's five-and-dime there for a while after I
graduated from high school. That was a few years back... more
than I like to count, sometimes. Not that Sauk City's such a bad
place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch is all right
for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like sitting in the
same chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined Farnum
& Williams' All-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did it
in a moment of giddiness when the calliope music kind of fogged
my judgment, I guess.
So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them
down, spreading sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling
cotton candy when the regular salesman had to go away and bark
for Chips Baily, who had malaria and sometimes had to go
someplace far away, and holler. Mostly things that kids do for free
passes -- things I used to do when I was a kid. But times change.
They don't seem to come around like they used to.
We swung through Illinois and Indiana that hot summer, and the
crowds were good and everyone was happy. Everyone except Mr.
Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion tamer, and
he looked like old pictures I've seen of Rudolph Valentine. He was
tall, with handsome, arrogant features and a shock of wild black
hair. And strange, mad eyes -- the maddest eyes I've ever seen. He
was silent most of the time; two syllables from Mr. Indrasil was a
sermon. All the circus people kept a mental as well as a physical
distance, because his rages were legend. There was a whispered
story about coffee spilled on his hands after a particularly difficult
performance and a murder that was almost done to a young
roustabout before Mr. Indrasil could be hauled off him. I don't
know about that. I do know that I grew to fear him worse than I
had cold-eyed Mr. Edmont, my high school principal, Mr. Lillie, or
even my father, who was capable of cold dressing-downs that
would leave the recipient quivering with shame and dismay.
When I cleaned the big cats' cages, they were always spotless. The
memory of the few times I had the vituperative wrath of Mr.
Indrasil called down on me still have the power to turn my knees
watery in retrospect.
Mostly it was his eyes - large and dark and totally blank. The eyes,
and the feeling that a man capable of controlling seven watchful
cats in a small cage must be part savage himself.
And the only two things he was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the
circus's one tiger, a huge beast called Green Terror.
As I said, I first saw Mr. Legere in Steubenville, and he was staring
into Green Terror's cage as if the tiger knew all the secrets of life
and death.
He was lean, dark, quiet. His deep, recessed eyes held an
expression of pain and brooding violence in their green-flecked
depths, and his hands were always crossed behind his back as he
stared moodily in at the tiger.
Green Terror was a beast to be stared at. He was a huge, beautiful
specimen with a flawless striped coat, emerald eyes, and heavy
fangs like ivory spikes. His roars usually filled the circus grounds -
fierce, angry, and utterly savage. He seemed to scream defiance
and frustration at the whole world.
Chips Baily, who had been with Farnum &Williams since Lord
knew when, told me that Mr. Indrasil used to use Green Terror in
his act, until one night when the tiger leaped suddenly from its
perch and almost ripped his head from his shoulders before he
could get out of' the cage. I noticed that Mr. Indrasil always wore,
his hair long down the back of his neck.
I can still remember the tableau that day in Steubenville. It was
hot, sweatingly hot, and we had a shirtsleeve crowd. That was why
Mr. Legere and Mr. Indrasil stood out. Mr. Legere, standing
silently by the tiger cage, was fully dressed in a suit and vest, his
face unmarked by perspiration. And Mr. Indrasil, clad in one of his
beautiful silk shirts and white whipcord breeches, was staring at
them both, his face dead-white, his eyes bulging in lunatic anger,
hate, and fear. He was carrying a currycomb and brush, and his
hands were trembling as they clenched on them spasmodically.
Suddenly he saw me, and his anger found vent. "You!" He
shouted. "Johnston!"
"Yes sir?" I felt a crawling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I was
about to have the wrath of Indrasil vented on me, and the thought
turned me weak with fear. I like to think I'm as brave as the next,
and if it had been anyone else, I think I would have been fully
determined to stand up for myself. But it wasn't anyone else. It was
Mr. Indrasil, and his eyes were mad.
"These cages, Johnston. Are they supposed to be clean?" He
pointed a finger, and I followed it. I saw four errant wisps of straw
and an incriminating puddle of hose water in the far corner of one.
"Y-yes, sir," I said, and what was intended to be firmness became
palsied bravado.
Silence, like the electric pause before a downpour. People were
beginning to look, and I was dimly aware that Mr. Legere was
staring at us with his bottomless eyes.
"Yes, sir?" Mr. Indrasil thundered suddenly. "Yes, sir? Yes, sir?
Don't insult my intelligence, boy! Don't you think I can see?
Smell? Did you use the disinfectant?''
"I used disinfectant yes----"
"Don't answer me back!" He screeched, and then the sudden drop
in his voice made my skin crawl. "Don't you dare answer me
back." Everyone was staring now. I wanted to retch, to die. "Now
you get the hell into that tool shed, and you get that disinfectant
and swab out those cages," he whispered, measuring every word.
One hand suddenly shot out, grasping my shoulder. "And don't you
ever, ever, speak back to me again."
I don't know where the words came from, but they were suddenly
there, spilling off my lips. "I didn't speak back to you, Mr. Indrasil,
and I don't like you saying I did. I-- resent it. Now let me go."
His face went suddenly red, then white, then almost saffron with
rage. His eyes were blazing doorways to hell.
Right then I thought I was going to die.
He made an inarticulate gagging sound, and the grip on my
shoulder became excruciating. His right hand went up...up...up,
and then descended with unbelievable speed.
If that hand had connected with my face, it would have knocked
me senseless at best. At worst, it would have broken my neck.
It did not connect.
Another hand materialized magically out of space, right in front of
me. The two straining limbs came together with a flat Smacking
sou
nd. It was Mr. Legere.
"Leave the boy alone," he said emotionlessly.
Mr. Indrasil stared at him for a long second, and I think there was
nothing so unpleasant in the whole business as watching the fear of
Mr. Legere and the mad lust to hurt (or to kill!) mix in those
terrible eyes.
Then he turned and stalked away.
I turned to look at Mr. Legere. "Thank you," I said.
"Don't thank me." And it wasn't a "don't thank me," but a "don't
thank me.'' Not a gesture of modesty but a literal command. In a
sudden flash of intuition empathy if you will I understood
exactly what he meant by that comment. I was a pawn in what
must have been a long combat between the two of them. I had been
captured by Mr. Legere rather than Mr. Indrasil. He had stopped
the lion tamer not because he felt for me, but because it gained him
an advantage, however slight, in their private war.
"What's your name?" I asked, not at all offended by what I had
inferred. He had, after all, been honest with me.
"Legere," he said briefly. He turned to go.
"Are you with a circus?" I asked, not wanting to let him go so
easily. "You seemed to know --- him."
A faint smile touched his thin lips, and warmth kindled in his eyes
for a moment; "No. You might call me a-policeman." And before I
could reply, he had disappeared into the surging throng passing by.
The next day we picked up stakes and moved on.
I saw Mr. Legere again in Danville and, two weeks later, in
Chicago. In the time between I tried to avoid Mr. Indrasil as much
as possible and kept the cat cages spotlessly clean. On the day
before we pulled out for St. Louis, I asked Chips Baily and Sally
O'Hara, the red-headed wire walker, if Mr. Legere and Mr. Indrasil
knew each other. I was pretty sure they did, because Mr. Legere
was hardly following the circus to eat our fabulous lime ice.
Sally and Chips looked at each other over their coffee cups. "No
one knows much about what's between those, two," she said. "But
it's been going on for a long time maybe twenty years. Ever since
Mr. Indrasil came over from Ringling Brothers, and maybe before
that."
Chips nodded. "This Legere guy picks up the circus almost every
year when we swing through the Midwest and stays with us until
we catch the train for Florida in Little Rock. Makes old Leopard
Man touchy as one of his cats."
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