The Waste Lands (Page 16)

“With Walter,” Susannah said.

“Yes. We held palaver; he and I … long palaver. I fell asleep at some point, and when I woke up, Walter was dead. A hundred years dead at least, and probably more. There was nothing left of him but bones, which was fitting enough, since we were in a place of bones.”

“Yeah, it must have been a pretty long palaver, all right,” Eddie said dryly. Susannah frowned slightly at this, but Roland only nodded. “Long and long,” he said, looking into the fire.

“You came to in the morning and reached the Western Sea that very evening,” Eddie said. “That night the lobstrosities came, right?” Roland nodded again. “Yes. But before I left the place where Walter and I had spoken … or dreamed … or whatever it was we did … I took this from the skull of his skeleton.” He lifted the bone and the orange light again skated off the teeth.

Walter’s jawbone, Eddie thought, and felt a little chill work through him. The jawbone of the man in black. Remember this, Eddie my boy, the next time you get to thinking Roland’s maybe just another one of the guys. He’s been carrying it around with him all this time like some kind of a … a cannibal’s trophy. Jee-sus.

“I remember what I thought when I took it,” Roland said. “I remem-ber very well; it is the only memory I have of that time which hasn’t doubled on me. I thought, ‘It was bad luck to throw away what I found when I found the boy. This will replace it.’ Only then I heard Walter’s laughter—his mean, tittery laughter. I heard his voice, too.”

“What did he say?” Susannah asked.

“‘Too late, gunslinger,’” Roland said. “That’s what he said. ‘Too late—your luck will be bad from now until the end of eternity—that is your ka.’ “

“ALL RIGHT,” EDDIE SAID at last. “I understand the basic paradox. Your, memory is divided—“

“Not divided. Doubled.”

“All right; it’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?” Eddie grasped a twig and made his own little drawing in the sand:

He tapped the line on the left. “This is your memory of the time before you got to the way station—a single track.”

“Yes.”

He tapped the line on the right. “And after you came out on the far side of the mountains in the place of bones . . . the place where Walter was waiting for you. Also a single track.”

“Yes.”

Now Eddie first indicated the middle area and then drew a rough circle around it.

“That’s what you’ve got to do, Roland—close this double track off. Build a stockade around it in your mind and then forget it. Because it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t change anything, it’s gone, it’s done—” “But it isn’t.” Roland held up the bone. “If my memories of the boy Jake are false—and I know they are—how can I have this? I took it to replace the one I threw away . . . but the one I threw away came from the cellar of the way station, and along the track I know is true, / never went down cellar! I never spoke with the demon! I moved on alone, with fresh water and nothing else!” “Roland, listen to me,” Eddie said earnestly. “If that jawbone you’re holding was the one from the way station, that would be one thing. But isn’t it possible that if you hallucinated that whole thing—the way station, the kid, the Speaking Demon—then maybe you took Walter’s jawbone because—” “It was no hallucination,” Roland said. He looked at them both with his faded blue bombardier’s eyes and then did something neither expected . . . something Eddie would have sworn Roland did not know he meant to do himself. He threw the jawbone into the fire.

FOR A MOMENT IT only lay there, a white relic bent in a ghostly half-grin. Then it suddenly blazed red, washing the clearing with dazzling scarlet light. Eddie and Susannah cried out and threw their hands up to shield their eyes from that burning shape.

The bone began to change. Not to melt, but to change. The teeth which leaned out of it like gravestones began to draw together in clumps. The mild curve of the upper arc straightened, then snubbed down at the tip. Eddie’s hands fell into his lap and he stared at the bone which was no longer a bone with gape-jawed wonder. It was now the color of burn-ing steel. The teeth had become three inverted V’s, the middle one larger than those on the ends. And suddenly Eddie saw what it wanted to become, just as he had seen the slingshot in the wood of the stump.

He thought it was a key.

You must remember the shape, he thought feverishly. You must, you must. His eyes traced it desperately—three V’s, the one in the center larger and deeper than the two on the end. Three notches . .. and the one closest the end had a squiggle, the shallow shape of a lower-case s .. . Then the shape in the flames changed again. The bone which had become something like a key drew inward, concentrating itself into bright, overlapping petals and folds as dark and velvety as a moonless summer midnight. For a moment Eddie saw a rose—a triumphant rose that might have bloomed in the dawn of this world’s first day, a thing of depthless, timeless beauty. His eye saw, and his heart was opened. It was as if all love and life had suddenly risen from Roland’s dead artifact; it was there in the fire, burning out in triumph and some wonderful, inchoate defiance, declaring that despair was a mirage and death a dream. The rose! he thought incoherently. First the key, then the rose! Behold! Behold the opening of the way to the Tower!

There was a thick cough from the fire. A fan of sparks twisted outwards. Susannah screamed and rolled away, beating at the orange flecks on her dress as the flames gushed upward toward the starry sky. Eddie didn’t move. He sat transfixed in his vision, held in a cradle of wonder which was both gorgeous and terrible, unmindful of the sparks which danced across his skin. Then the flames sank back.