“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, good-heart.”
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 nipped 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 Pusher’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 lie wanted from her. She was perfectly cooperative (some sleep eager, fort 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 voice about the old woman’s examination, and the way Rhea had tried to “fiddle her up.” (At this Poland’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…
All other considerations aside, it was getting late. It wouldn’t be prudent to stay here much longer.
“Susan, do you hear me?”
“Aye, Roland, I hear you very well.”
“Good. I’m going to say a rhyme. You’ll wake up as I say it. When I’m done, you’ll be wide awake and remember everything we’ve said. Do you understand?”
“Aye.”
“Listen: Bird and bear and hare and fish, Give my love her fondest wish.”
Her smile as she rose to consciousness was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. She stretched, then put her arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses. “You, you, you, you,” she said. “You’re my fondest wish, Roland. You’re my only wish. You and you, forever and ever.”
They made love again there on the bank, beside the babbling stream, holding each other as tightly as they could, breathing into each other’s mouths and living on each other’s breath. You, you, you, you.
13
Twenty minutes later, he boosted her onto Felicia’s back. Susan leaned down, took his face in her hands, and kissed him soundly.
“When will I see ye again?” she asked.
“Soon. But we must be careful.”
“Aye. Careful as two lovers ever were, I think. Thank God thee’s clever.”
“We can use Sheemie, if we don’t use him too often.”
“Aye. And, Roland-do ye know the pavilion in Green Heart? Close to where they serve tea and cakes and things when the weather’s fair?”
Roland did. Fifty yards or so up Hill Street from the jail and the Town Gathering Hall, Green Heart was one of the most pleasant places in town, with its quaint paths, umbrella-shaded tables, grassy dancing pavilion, and menagerie.
“There’s a rock wall at the back,” she said. “Between the pavilion and the menagerie. If you need me badly-”
“I’ll always need you badly,” he said.
She smiled at his gravity. “There’s a stone on one of the lower courses-a reddish one. You’ll see it. My friend Amy and I used to leave messages there for each other when we were little girls. I’ll look there when I can. Ye do the same.”
“Aye.” Sheemie would work for awhile, if they were careful. The red rock might also work for awhile, if they were careful. But no matter how careful they were, they would slip eventually, because the Big Coffin Hunters now probably knew more about Roland and his friends than Roland ever would have wished. But he had to see her, no matter what the risks. If he didn’t, he felt he might die. And he only had to look at her to know she felt the same.
“Watch special for Jonas and the other two,” he said.
“I will. Another kiss, if ye favor?”
He kissed her gladly, and would just as gladly have pulled her off the mare’s back for a fourth go-round… but it was time to stop being delirious and start being careful.
“Fare you well, Susan. I love y-” He paused, then smiled. “I love thee.”
