Everything's Eventual

   Roland grabbed Jenna, who was looking down at the fallen Sister with a kind of frozen fascination.

   'Come on!' he shouted. 'Before it decides it wants a bite of you, too!'

   The dog took no notice of them as Roland pulled Jenna past. It had torn Sister Mary's head mostly off.

   Her flesh seemed to be changing, somehow—decomposing, very likely—but whatever was happening, Roland did not want to see it. He didn't want Jenna to see it, either.

   They half-walked, half-ran to the top of the ridge, and when they got there paused for breath in the moonlight, heads down, hands linked, both of them gasping harshly.

   The growling and snarling below them had faded, but was still faintly audible when Sister Jenna raised her head and asked him, 'What was it? You know—I saw it in your face. And how could it attack her? We all have power over animals, but she has—had—the most.'

   'Not over that one.' Roland found himself recalling the unfortunate boy in the next bed. Norman hadn't known why the medallions kept the Sisters at arm's length—whether it was the gold or the God. Now Roland knew the answer. 'It was a dog. Just a town-dog. I saw it in the square, before the green folk knocked me out and took me to the Sisters. I suppose the other animals that could run away did run away, but not that one. It had nothing to fear from the Little Sisters of Eluria, and somehow it knew it didn't. It bears the sign of the Jesus Man on its chest. Black fur on white. Just an accident of its birth, I imagine. In any case, it's done for her now. I knew it was lurking around. I heard it barking two or three times.'

   'Why?' Jenna whispered. 'Why would it come? Why would it stay? And why would it take on her as it did?'

   Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka. Come on. Let's get as far as we can from this place before we hide up for the day.'

   As far as they could turned out to be eight miles at most . . . and probably, Roland thought as the two of them sank down in a patch of sweet-smelling sage beneath an overhang of rock, a good deal less. Five, perhaps. It was him slowing them down; or rather, it was the residue of the poison in the soup. When it was clear to him that he could not go farther without help, he asked her for one of the reeds. She refused, saying that the stuff in it might combine with the unaccustomed exercise to burst his heart.

   'Besides,' she said as they lay back against the embankment of the little nook they had found, 'they'll not follow. Those that are left— Michela, Louise, Tamra—will be packing up to move on. They know to leave when the time comes; that's why the Sisters have survived as long as they have. As we have. We're strong in some ways, but weak in many more. Sister Mary forgot that. It was her arrogance that did for her as much as the cross-dog, I think.'

   She had cached not just his boots and clothes beyond the top of the ridge, but the smaller of his two purses, as well. When she began to apologize for not bringing his bedroll and the larger purse (she'd tried, she said, but they were simply too heavy), Roland hushed her with a finger to her lips. He thought it a miracle to have as much as he did. And besides (this he did not say, but perhaps she knew it, anyway), the guns were the only things that really mattered. The guns of his father, and his father before him, all the way back to the days of Arthur Eld, when dreams and dragons had still walked the earth.

   'Will you be all right?' he asked her as they settled down. The moon had set, but dawn was still at least three hours away. They were surrounded by the sweet smell of the sage. A purple smell, he thought it then . . . and ever after. Already he could feel it forming a kind of magic carpet under him, which would soon float him away to sleep. He thought he had never been so tired.

   'Roland, I know not.' But even then, he thought she had known. Her mother had brought her back once; no mother would bring her back again. And she had eaten with the others, had taken the communion of the Sisters. Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped.

   But then he was too tired to think much of such things . . . and what good would thinking have done, in any case? As she had said, the bridge was burned. Roland guessed that even if they were to return to the valley, they would find nothing but the cave the Sisters had called Thoughtful House. The surviving Sisters would have packed their tent of bad dreams and moved on, just a sound of bells and singing insects moving down the late night breeze.

   He looked at her, raised a hand (it felt heavy), and touched the curl which once more lay across her forehead.

   Jenna laughed, embarrassed. 'That one always escapes. It's 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 unraveling 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 playacting, 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 bed and took a step back. Then he held his position. As, he saw, the bugs were holding theirs.

   He believed he understood. Some of this understanding came from his memory of how Sister Mary's flesh had