as a man of extraordinary determination and resource. The Manni-folk were also powerful, in their way, and great travelers between the worlds. He thought that, sooner or later, Ted and his friends probably would get back to America.
He considered telling Susannah that it would happen if ka willed it, then thovight better of it. Ka was not her favorite word just now, and he could hardly blame her for that.
"Now hear me very well and think hard, Susannah. Does the word Dandelo mean anything to you?"
Oy looked up, eyes bright.
She thought about it. "It might have some faint ring," she said, "but I can't do better than that. Why?"
Roland told her what he believed: that as Eddie lay dying, he had been granted some sort of vision about a thing... or a place... or a person. Something named Dandelo. Eddie had passed this on to Jake, Jake had passed it to Oy, and Oy had passed it on to Roland.
Susannah was frowning doubtfully. "It's maybe been handed around too much. There was this game we used to play when we were kids. Whisper, it was called. The first kid would think something up, a word or a phrase, and whisper it to the next kid. You could only hear it once, no repeats allowed. The next kid would pass on what he thought he'd heard, and the next, and the next. By the time it got to the last kid in line, it was something entirely different, and everyone would have a good laugh. But if this is wrong, I don't think we'll be laughing."
"Well," Roland said, "we'll keep a lookout and hope that I got it right. Mayhap it means nothing at all." But he didn't really believe that.
"What are we going to do for clothes, if it gets colder than this?" she asked.
"We'll make what we need. I know how. It's something else we don't need to worry about today. What we do need to worry about is finding something to eat. I suppose if we have to, we can find Nigel's pantry-"
"I don't want to go back under the Dogan until we have to,"
Susannah said. "There's got to be a kitchen near the infirmary; they must have fed those poor kids something."
Roland considered this, then nodded. It was a good idea.
"Let's do it now," she said. "I don't even want to be on the top floor of that place after dark."
FOUR
On Turtleback Lane, in the year of '02, month of August,
Stephen King awakes from a waking dream of Fedic. He types
"I don't even want to be on the top floor of that place after dark. "The words appear on the screen before him. It's the end of what he calls a subchapter, but that doesn't always mean he's done for the day. Being done for the day depends on what he hears. Or, more properly, on what he doesn't. What he listens for is Ves'-Ka Gan, the Song of the Turtle. This time the music, which is faint on some days and so loud on others that it almost deafens him, seems to have ceased. It will return tomorrow. At least, it always has.
He pushes the control-key and the S-key together. The computer gives a little chime, indicating that the material he's written today has been saved. Then he gets up, wincing at the pain in his hip, and walks to the window of his office. It looks out on the driveway slanting up at a steep angle to the road where he now rarely walks. (And on the main road, Route 7,
never.) The hip is very bad this morning, and the big muscles of his thigh are on fire. He rubs the hip absently as he stands looking out.
Roland, you bastard, you gave me back the pain, he thinks. It runs down his right leg like a red-hot rope, can ya not say Gawd, can ya not say Gawd-bomb, and he's the one who got stuck with it in the end. It's been three years since the accident that almost took his life and the pain is still there. It's less now, the human body has an amazing engine of healing inside it (a hot-enj, he thinks, and smiles), but sometimes it's still bad. He doesn't think about it much when he's writing, writing's a sort of benign todash, but it's always stiff after he's spent a couple of hours at his desk.
He thinks of Jake. He's sorry as hell that Jake died, and he guesses