Текст книги "The Wind Through the Keyhole"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

STORM’S OVER

1

“That night,” Roland said, “there were lights and music and dancing; many good things to eat and plenty of liquor to wash it down with.”

“Booze,” Eddie said, and heaved a seriocomic sigh. “I remember it well.”

It was the first thing any of them had said in a very long time, and it broke the spell that had held them through that long and windy night. They stirred like people awaking from a deep dream. All except Oy, who still lay on his back in front of the fireplace with his short paws splayed and the tip of his tongue lolling comically from the side of his mouth.

Roland nodded. “There were women, too, and that night Silent Jamie left his virginity behind him. The next morning we reboarded Sma’ Toot, and made our way back to Gilead. And so it happened, once upon a bye.”

“Long before my grandfather’s grandfather was born,” Jake said in a low voice.

“Of that I can’t say,” Roland said with a slight smile, and then took a long drink of water. His throat was very dry.

For a moment there was silence among them. Then Eddie said, “Thank you, Roland. That was boss.”

The gunslinger raised an eyebrow.

“He means it was wonderful,” Jake said. “It was, too.”

“I see light around the boards we put over the windows,” Susannah said. “Just a little, but it’s there. You talked down the dark, Roland. I guess you’re not the strong silent Gary Cooper type after all, are you?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

She took his hand and gave it a brief hard squeeze. “Ne’mine, sugar.”

“Wind’s dropped, but it’s still blowing pretty hard,” Jake observed.

“We’ll build up the fire, then sleep,” the gunslinger said. “This afternoon it should be warm enough for us to go out and gather more wood. And tomorrowday . . .”

“Back on the road,” Eddie finished.

“As you say, Eddie.”

Roland put the last of their fuel on the guttering fire, watched as it sprang up again, then lay down and closed his eyes. Seconds later, he was asleep.

Eddie gathered Susannah into his arms, then looked over her shoulder at Jake, who was sitting cross-legged and looking into the fire. “Time to catch forty winks, little trailhand.”

“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.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Scribner and Simon & Schuster.

 

or visit us online to sign up at

eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com