The wind through the keyhole adt-8
Page 28
“Don’t call me that. You know I hate it.”
“Okay, buckaroo.”
Jake gave him the finger. Eddie smiled and closed his eyes.
The boy gathered his blanket around him. My shaddie, he thought, and smiled. Beyond the walls, the wind still moaned-a voice without a body. Jake thought, It’s on the other side of the keyhole. And over there, where the wind comes from? All of eternity. And the Dark Tower.
He thought of the boy Roland Deschain had been an unknown number of years ago, lying in a circular bedroom at the top of a stone tower. Tucked up cozy and listening to his mother read the old tales while the wind blew across the dark land. As he drifted, Jake saw the woman’s face and thought it kind as well as beautiful. His own mother had never read him stories. In his plot and place, that had been the housekeeper’s job.
He closed his eyes and saw billy-bumblers on their hind legs, dancing in the moonlight.
He slept.
2
When Roland woke in the early afternoon, the wind was down to a whisper and the room was much brighter. Eddie and Jake were still deeply asleep, but Susannah had awakened, boosted herself into her wheelchair, and removed the boards blocking one of the windows. Now she sat there with her chin propped on her hand, looking out. Roland went to her and put his own hand on her shoulder. Susannah reached up and patted it without turning around.
“Storm’s over, sugar.”
“Yes. Let’s hope we never see another like it.”
“And if we do, let’s hope there’s a shelter as good as this one close by. As for the rest of Gook village…” She shook her head.
Roland bent a little to look out. What he saw didn’t surprise him, but it was what Eddie would have called awesome. The high street was still there, but it was full of branches and shattered trees. The buildings that had lined it were gone. Only the stone meeting hall remained.
“We were lucky, weren’t we?”
“Luck’s the word those with poor hearts use for ka, Susannah of New York.”
She considered this without speaking. The last breezes of the dying starkblast came through the hole where the window had been and stirred the tight cap of her hair, as if some invisible hand were stroking it. Then she turned to him. “She left Serenity and went back to Gilead-your lady-mother.”
“Yes.”
“Even though the sonofabitch told her she’d die at her own son’s hand?”
“I doubt if he put it just that way, but… yes.”
“It’s no wonder she was half-crazy when she wrote that letter.”
Roland was silent, looking out the window at the destruction the storm had brought. Yet they had found shelter. Good shelter from the storm.
She took his three-fingered right hand in both of hers. “What did she say at the end? What were the words you traced over and over until her letter fell apart? Can you tell me?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. Just when she was sure he wouldn’t, he did. In his voice-almost undetectable, but most certainly there-was a tremor Susannah had never heard before. “She wrote in the low speech until the last line. That she wrote in the High, each character beautifully drawn: I forgive you everything. And: Can you forgive me? ”
Susannah felt a single tear, warm and perfectly human, run down her cheek. “And could you, Roland? Did you?”
Still looking out the window, Roland of Gilead-son of Steven and Gabrielle, she of Arten that was-smiled. It broke upon his face like the first glow of sunrise on a rocky landscape. He spoke a single world before going back to his gunna to build them an afternoon breakfast.
The word was yes.
3
They spent one more night in the meeting hall. There was fellowship and palaver, but no stories. The following morning they gathered their gunna and continued along the Path of the Beam-to Calla Bryn Sturgis, and the borderlands, and Thunderclap, and the Dark Tower beyond. These are things that happened, once upon a bye.
AFTERWORD
In the High Speech, Gabrielle Deschain’s final message to her son looks like this:
The two most beautiful words in any language are: I forgive.
We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-ac94fa-dd5b-d246-8db3-caf0-4bc4-acee7d
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 26.04.2012
Created using: Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.3 software
Document authors :
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/