For a moment he didn’t think Sheemie would make any reply, leaving him with the job of deciding whether or not to try again, but then the former tavern-boy spoke. He looked at none of them as he did so, but only out of the cave and into the dim of Thunderclap.
“I had a dream last night, so I did,” said Sheemie of Mejis, whose life had once been saved by three young gunslingers from Gilead. “I dreamed I was back at the Travellers’ Rest, only Coral wasn’t there, nor Stanley, nor Pettie, nor Sheb—him that used to play the pianer. There was nobbut me, and I was moppin the floor and singin ‘Careless Love.’ Then the batwings screeked, so they did, they had this funny sound they made…”
Jake saw that Roland was nodding, a trace of a smile on his lips.
“I looked up,” Sheemie resumed, “and in come this boy.” His eyes shifted briefly to Jake, then back to the mouth of the cave. “He looked like you, young sai, so he did, close enough to be twim. But his face were covert wi’ blood and one of his eye’n were put out, spoiling his pretty, and he walked all a-limp. Looked like death, he did, and frighten’t me terrible, and made me sad to see him, too. I just kept moppin, thinkin that if I did that he might not never mind me, or even see me at all, and go away.”
Jake realized he knew this tale. Had he seen it? Had he actually been that bloody boy?
“But he looked right at you…” Roland murmured, still a-hunker, still looking out into the gloom.
“Aye, Will Dearborn that was, right at me, so he did, and said ‘Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and—’”
“ ‘And kept me in better days,’” Eddie murmured. A tear fell from one of his eyes and made a dark spot on the floor of the cave.
“ ‘—and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone.’”
“You cried,” Susannah said, and Jake thought: Of course he did. He was crying himself. So was Ted; so was Dinky Earnshaw. Only Roland was dry-eyed, and the gunslinger was pale, so pale.
“He wept,” said Sheemie (tears were rolling down his cheeks as he told his dream), “and I did, too, for I could see that he had been fair as daylight. He said, ‘If the torture were to stop now, I might still recover—if never my looks, then at least my strength—’”
“ ‘My kes,’” Jake said, and although he’d never heard the word before he pronounced it correctly, almost as if it were kiss.
“ ‘—and my kes. But another week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.’ Then the boy turned and went out. The batwing door made its same sound. Skree-eek.”
He looked at Jake, now, and smiled like one who has just awakened. “I can’t answer your question, sai.” He knocked a fist on his forehead. “Don’t have much in the way of brains up here, me—only cobwebbies. Cordelia Delgado said so, and I reckon she was right.”
Jake made no reply. He was dazed. He had dreamed about the same disfigured boy, but not in any saloon; it had been in Gage Park, the one where they’d seen Charlie the Choo-Choo. Last night. Had to have been. He hadn’t remembered until now, would probably never have remembered if Sheemie hadn’t told his own dream. And had Roland, Eddie, and Susannah also had a version of the same dream? Yes. He could see it on their faces, just as he could see that Ted and Dinky looked moved but otherwise bewildered.
Roland stood up with a wince, clamped his hand briefly to his hip, then said, “Thankee-sai, Sheemie, you’ve helped us greatly.”
Sheemie smiled uncertainly. “How did I do that?”
“Never mind, my dear.” Roland turned his attention to Ted. “My friends and I are going to step outside briefly. We need to speak an-tet.”
“Of course,” Ted said. He shook his head as if to clear it.
“Do my peace of mind a favor and keep it short,” Dinky said. “We’re probably still all right, but I don’t want to push our luck.”
“Will you need him to jump you back inside?” Eddie asked, nodding to Sheemie. This was in the nature of a rhetorical question; how else would the three of them get back?
“Well, yeah, but…” Dinky began.
“Then you’ll be pushing your luck plenty.” That said, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake followed Roland out of the cave. Oy stayed behind, sitting with his new friend, Haylis of Chayven. Something about that troubled Jake. It wasn’t a feeling of jealousy but rather one of dread. As if he were seeing an omen someone wiser than himself—one of the Manni-folk, perhaps—could interpret. But would he want to know?
Perhaps not.
Six
“I didn’t remember my dream until he told his,” Susannah said, “and if he hadn’t told his, I probably never would have remembered.”
“Yeah,” Jake said.
“But I remember it clearly enough now,” she went on. “I was in a subway station and the boy came down the stairs—”
Jake said, “I was in Gage Park—”
“And I was at the Markey Avenue playground, where me and Henry used to play one-on-one,” Eddie said. “In my dream, the kid with the bloody face was wearing a tee-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT—”
“—IN MID-WORLD,” Jake finished, and Eddie gave him a startled look.
Jake barely noticed; his thoughts had turned in another direction. “I wonder if Stephen King ever uses dreams in his writing. You know, as yeast to make the plot rise.”
This was a question none of them could answer.
“Roland?” Eddie asked. “Where were you in your dream?”
“The Travellers’ Rest, where else? Wasn’t I there with Sheemie, once upon a time?” With my friends, now long gone, he could have added, but did not. “I was sitting at the table Eldred Jonas used to favor, playing one-hand Watch Me.”
Susannah said quietly, “The boy in the dream was the Beam, wasn’t he?”
As Roland nodded, Jake realized that Sheemie had told them which task came first, after all. Had told them beyond all doubt.
“Do any of you have a question?” Roland asked.
One by one, his companions shook their heads.
“We are ka-tet,” Roland said, and in unison they answered: “We are one from many.”
Roland tarried a moment longer, looking at them—more than looking, seeming to savor their faces—and then he led them back inside.
“Sheemie,” he said.
“Yes, sai! Yes, Roland, Will Dearborn that was!”
“We’re going to save the boy you told us about. We’re going to make the bad folk stop hurting him.”
Sheemie smiled, but it was a puzzled smile. He didn’t remember the boy in his dream, not anymore. “Good, sai, that’s good!”
Roland turned his attention to Ted. “Once Sheemie gets you back this time, put him to bed. Or, if that would attract the wrong sort of attention, just make sure he takes it easy.”
“We can write him down for the sniffles and keep him out of The Study,” Ted agreed. “There are a lot of colds Thunder-side. But you folks need to understand that there are no guarantees. He could get us back inside this time, and then—” He snapped his fingers in the air.