gold-ringed eyes, a certain pair of cocked ears, and did. She had forgotten about Oy.
"If Detta asks him, he'll surely stay, for she's never been to his liking. If Susannah asks him... why, then I don't know."
Just like that, Detta was gone. She would be back-Susannah understood now that she would never be entirely free of Detta Walker, and that was all right, because she no longer wanted to be-but for now she was gone.
"Oy?" she said gendy. "Will you come with me, honey? It may be we'll find Jake again. Maybe not quite the same, but still..."
Oy, who had been almost completely silent during their trek across the Badlands and the White Lands of Empathica and the open rangelands, now spoke. "Ake?" he said. But he spoke doubtfully, as one who barely remembers, and her heart broke. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry, and Detta all but guaranteed she wouldn't cry, but now Detta was gone and the tears were here again.
"Jake," she said. 'You remember Jake, honeybunch, I know you do. Jake and Eddie."
"Ake? Ed?" With a little more certainty now. He did remember.
"Come with me," she urged, and Oy started forward as if he would jump up in the cart beside her. Then, with no idea at all why she should say it, she added: "There are other worlds than these."
Oy stopped as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He sat down. Then he got up again, and she felt a moment of hope: perhaps there could still be some little ka-tet, a dan-tete-tet, in some version of New York where folks drove Takuro Spirits and took pictures of each other drinking Nozz-A-La with their Shinnaro cameras.
Instead, Oy trotted back to the gunslinger and sat beside one battered boot. They had walked far, those boots, far. Miles and wheels, wheels and miles. But now their walking was almost done.
"Olan," said Oy, and the finality in his strange little voice rolled a stone against her heart. She turned bitterly to the old man with the big iron on his hip.
"There," she said. 'You have your own glammer, don't you?
Always did. You drew Eddie on to one death, and Jake to a pair of em. Now Patrick, and even the bumbler. Are you happy?"
"No," said he, and she saw he truly was not. She believed she had never seen such sadness and such loneliness on a human face. "Never was I farther from happy, Susannah of New York.
Will you change your mind and stay? Will thee come the last little while with me? That would make me happy."
For a wild moment she thought she would. That she would simply turn the litde electric cart from the door-which was one-sided and made no promises-and go with him to the Dark Tower. Another day would do it; they could camp at midafternoon and thus arrive tomorrow at sunset, as he wanted.
Then she remembered the dream. The singing voices. The young man holding out the cup of hot chocolate-the good kind, mit schlag.
"No," she said softly. "I'll take my chance and go."
For a moment she thought he would make it easy on her, just agree and let her go. Then his anger-no, his despair-broke in a painful burst. "But you can't be sure! Susannah, what if the dream itself is a trick and a glammer? What if the things you see even when the door's open are nothing but tricks and glammers? What if you roll right through and into todash space?"
"Then I'll light the darkness with thoughts of those I love."
"And that might work," said he, speaking in the bitterest voice she had ever heard. "For the first ten years... or twenty... or even a hundred. And then? What about the rest of eternity?
Think of Oy! Do you think he's forgotten Jake? Never! Never!
Never in your life! Never in his! He senses something wrong!
Susannah, don't. I beg you, don't go. I'll get on my knees, if that will help." And to her horror, he began to do exactly that.
"It won't," she said. "And if this is to be my last sight of you-my heart says it is-then don't let it be of you on your knees. You're not a kneeling man, Roland, son of Steven, never were, and I don't want to remember you that way. I want to see you on your feet, as you were in Calla Bryn Sturgis. As you were with your friends at Jericho Hill."
He got up and came to her. For