Wolves of the Calla

right. Everything here is all right .

That was what all five of them felt most strongly (for Oy felt it, too): the sense of something mat was wonderfully and beautifully all right.

Roland and Eddie grasped Susannah by the elbows without so much as an exchanged glance. They lifted her bare feet off the sidewalk and carried her. At Second and Forty-seventh the traffic was against them, but Roland threw up a hand at the oncoming headlights and cried, 'Hile! Stop in the name of Gilead !'

And they did. There was a scream of brakes, a crump of a front fender meeting a rear one, and the tinkle of falling glass, but they stopped. Roland and Eddie crossed in a spotlight glare of headlights and a cacophony of horns, Susannah between them with her restored (and already very dirty) feet three inches off the ground. Their sense of happiness and tightness grew stronger as they approached the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. Roland felt the hum of the rose racing deliriously in his blood.

Yes , Roland thought. By all the gods, yes. This is it. Perhaps not just a doorway to the Dark Tower, but the Tower itself. Gods, the strength of it! the pull of it! Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie —if only you were here!

Jake stood on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, looking at a board fence about five feet high. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. From the darkness beyond the fence came a strong harmonic humming. The sound of many voices, all singing together. Singing one vast open note. Here is yes , the voices said. Here is you may. Here is the good turn, the fortunate meeting, the fever that broke just before dawn and left your blood calm. Here is the wish that came true and the understanding eye. Here is the kindness you were given and thus learned to pass on. Here is the sanity and clarity you thought were lost. Here, everything is all right .

Jake turned to them. 'Do you feel it?' he asked. 'Do you?'

Roland nodded. So did Eddie.

'Suze?' the boy asked.

'It's almost the loveliest thing in the world, isn't it?' she said. Almost , Roland thought. She said almost . Nor did he miss the fact that her hand went to her belly and stroked as she said it.

TEN

The posters Jake remembered were there—Olivia Newton-John at Radio City Music Hall, G. Gordon Liddy and the Grots at a place called the Mercury Lounge, a horror movie called War of the Zombies , no trespassing. But—

'That's not the same,' he said, pointing at a graffito in dusky pink. 'It's the same color, and the printing looks like the same person did it, but when I was here before, it was a poem about the Turtle. 'See the TURTLE of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth.' And then something about following the Beam.'

Eddie stepped closer and read this: 'Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG in the DIXIE PIG, in the year of '99.' He looked at Susannah. 'What in the hell does that mean? Any idea, Suze?'

She shook her head. Her eyes were very large. Frightened eyes, Roland thought. But which woman was frightened? He couldn't tell. He only knew that Odetta Susannah Holmes had been divided from the beginning, and that 'mio' was very close to Mia. The hum coming from the darkness behind the fence made it hard to think of these things. He wanted to go to the source of the hum right now. Needed to, as a man dying of thirst needs to go to water.

'Come on,' Jake said. 'We can climb right over. It's easy.'

Susannah looked down at her bare, dirty feet, and took a step backward. 'Not me,' she said. 'I can't. Not without shoes.'

Which made perfect sense, but Roland thought there was more to it than that. Mia didn't want to go in there. Mia understood something dreadful might happen if she did. To her, and to her baby. For a moment he was on the verge of forcing the issue, of letting the rose take care of both the thing growing inside her and her troublesome new personality, one so strong that Susannah had shown up here with Mia's legs.

No, Roland . That was Alain's voice. Alain, who had always been strongest in the touch. Wrong time, wrong place .

'I'll stay with her,' Jake said. He spoke with enormous regret but no hesitation, and Roland was swept by his love for the boy he had once allowed to die. That vast voice from the darkness beyond the fence sang of that love; he heard it. And of simple forgiveness rather than the difficult forced march of atonement? He thought it was.

'No,' she said. 'You go on, honeybunch. I'll be fine.' She smiled at them. 'This is my city too, you know. I can look out for myself. And besides—' She lowered her voice as if confiding a great secret. 'I think we're kind of invisible.'

Eddie was once again looking at her in that searching way, as if to ask her how she could not go with them, bare feet or no bare feet, but this time Roland wasn't worried. Mia's secret was safe, at least for the time being; the call of the rose was too strong for Eddie to be able to think of much else. He was wild to get going.

'We should stay together,' Eddie said reluctantly. 'So we don't get lost going back. You said so yourself, Roland.'

'How far is it from here to the rose, Jake?' Roland asked. It was hard to talk with that hum singing in his ears like a wind. Hard to think.

'It's pretty much in the middle of the lot. Maybe thirty yards, but probably less.'

'The second we hear the chimes,' Roland said, 'we run for the fence and Susannah. All three of us. Agreed?'

'Agreed,' Eddie said.

'All three of us and Oy,'Jake said.

'No, Oy stays with Susannah.'

Jake frowned, clearly not liking this. Roland hadn't expected him to. 'Jake, Oy also has bare feet… and didn't you say there was broken glass in there?'

'Ye-eahh…' Drawn-out. Reluctant. Then Jake dropped to one knee and looked into Oy's gold-ringed eyes. 'Stay with Susannah, Oy.'

'Oy! Ay!' Oy stay . It was good enough for Jake. He stood up, turned to Roland, and nodded.

'Suze?' Eddie asked. 'Are you sure?'

'Yes.' Emphatic. No hesitation. Roland was now almost sure it was Mia in control, pulling the levers and turning the dials. Almost . Even now he wasn't positive. The hum of the rose made it impossible to be positive of anything except that everything—everything —could be all right.

Eddie nodded, kissed the corner of her mouth, then stepped to the board fence with its odd poem: Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine. He laced his fingers together into a step. Jake was into it, up, and gone like a breath of breeze.

'Ake!' Oy cried, and then was silent, sitting beside one of Susannah's bare feet.

'You next, Eddie,' Roland said. He laced his remaining fingers together, meaning to give Eddie the same step Eddie had given Jake, but Eddie simply grabbed the top of the fence and vaulted over. The junkie Roland had first met in a jet plane coming into Kennedy Airport could never have done that.

Roland said, 'Stay where you are. Both of you.' He could have meant the woman and the billy-bumbler,