it was like casting for an old trail after many days of rain.
"No wonder the old man cut off his erasers," he said, giving the picture back to her.
"That's what I thought."
From there she skipped ahead to her single true intuitive leap: that if Patrick could (in this world, at least) un-create by erasing, he might be able to create by drawing. When she mentioned the herd of bannock that had seemed mysteriously closer, Roland rubbed his forehead like a man who has a nasty headache.
"I should have seen that. Should have realized what it meant, too. Susannah, I'm getting old."
She ignored that-she'd heard it before-and told him about the dreams of Eddie and Jake, being sure to mention the product-names on the sweatshirts, the choral voices, the offer of hot chocolate, and the growing panic in their eyes as the nights passed and still she did not see what the dream had been sent to show her.
"Why didn't you tell me this dream before now?" Roland asked. "Why didn't you ask for help in interpreting it?"
She looked at him steadily, thinking she had been right not to ask for his help. Yes-no matter how much that might hurt him. "You've lost two. How eager would you have been to lose me, as well?"
He flushed. Even in the firelight she could see it. "Thee speaks ill of me, Susannah, and have thought worse."
"Perhaps I have," she said. "If so, I say sorry. I wasn't sure of what I wanted myself. Part of me wants to see the Tower, you know. Part of me wants that very badly. And even if Patrick can draw the Unfound Door into existence and I can open it, it's not the real world it opens on. That's what the names on the shirts mean, I'm sure of it."
"You mustn't think that," Roland said. "Reality is seldom a thing of black and white, I think, of is and isn't, be and not be."
Patrick made a hooting sound and they both looked. He was holding his pad up, turned toward them so they could see what he had drawn. It was a perfect representation of the Unfound Door, she thought. THE ARTIST wasn't printed on it, and the doorknob was plain shiny metal-no crossed pencils adorned it-but that was all right. She hadn't bothered to tell him about those things, which had been for her benefit and understanding.
They did everything but draw me a map, she thought. She wondered why everything had to be so damn hard, so damn
(riddk-de-dum)
mysterious, and knew that was a question to which she would never find a satisfactory answer... except it was the human condition, wasn't it? The answers that mattered never came easily.
Patrick made another of those hooting noises. This time it had an interrogative quality. She suddenly realized that the poor kid was practically dying of anxiety, and why not? He had just executed his first commission, and wanted to know what his patrono d'arte thought of it.
"It's great, Patrick-terrific."
"Yes," Roland agreed, taking the pad. The door looked to him exactly like those he'd found as he staggered along the beach of the Western Sea, delirious and dying of the lobstrosity's poisoned bite. It was as if the poor tongueless creature had looked into his head and seen an actual picture of that door-a fottergraff.
Susannah, meanwhile, was looking around desperately.
And when she began to swing along on her hands toward the edge of the firelight, Roland had to call her back sharply, reminding her that Mordred might be out there anywhere, and the darkness was Mordred's friend.
Impatient as she was, she retreated from the edge of the light, remembering all too well what had happened to Mordred's body-mother, and how quickly it had happened. Yet it hurt to pull back, almost physically. Roland had told her that he expected to catch his first glimpse of the Dark Tower toward the end of the coming day. If she was still with him, if she saw it with him, she thought its power might prove too strong for her.
Its glammer. Now, given a choice between the door and the Tower, she knew she could still choose the door. But as they drew closer and the power of the Tower grew stronger, its pulse deeper and more compelling in her mind, the singing voices ever sweeter, choosing the door would be harder to do.
"I don't see it," she said despairingly. "Maybe I was wrong.