The Collective

with a kind of frozen fascination.

'Come on!' he shouted. 'Before it decides it wants a bite of you,

too!'

The dog took no notice of them as Roland pulled Jenna past. It had

torn

Sister Mary's head mostly off. Her flesh seemed to be changing,

somehow - decomposing, very likely - but whatever was

happening, Roland did not want to see it. He didn't want Jenna to

see it, either.

They half-walked, half-ran to the top of the ridge, and when they

got there paused for breath in the moonlight, heads down, hands

linked, both of them gasping harshly.

The growling and snarling below them had faded, but was still

faintly audible when Sister Jenna raised her head and asked him,

'What was it? you know - I saw it in your face. And how could it

attack her? We all have power over animals, but she has - had - the

most.'

'Not over that one.' Roland found himself recalling the unfortunate

boy in the next bed. Norman hadn't known why the medallions

kept the Sisters at arm's length - whether it was the gold or the

God. Now Roland knew the answer. 'It was a dog. Just a town-dog.

I saw it in the square, before the green folk knocked me out and

took me to the Sisters. I suppose the other animals that could run

away did run away, but not that one. it had nothing to fear from the

Little Sisters of Eluria, and somehow it knew it didn't. It bears the

sign of the Jesus-man on its chest. Black fur on white. just an

accident of its birth, I imagine. In any case, it's done for her now. I

knew it was lurking around. I heard it barking two or three times.'

'Why?' Jenna whispered. 'Why would it come? Why would it stay?

And why would it take on her as it did?'

Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when

such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka. Come on.

Let's get as far as we can from this place before we hide up for the

day.'

As far as they could turned out to be eight miles at most ... and

probably, Roland thought as the two of them sank down in a patch

of sweet-smelling sage beneath an overhang of rock, a good deal

less. Five, perhaps. It was him slowing them down; or rather, it

was the residue of the poison in the soup. When it was clear to him

that he could not go farther without help, he asked her for one of

the reeds. She refused, saying that the stuff in it might combine

with the unaccustomed exercise to burst his heart.

'Besides,' she said as they lay back against the embankment of the

little nook they had found, 'they'll not follow. Those that are left -

Michela, Louise, Tamra - will be packing up to move on. They

know to leave when the time comes; that's why the Sisters have

survived as long as they have. As We have. We're strong in some

ways, but weak in many more. Sister

Mary forgot that. It was her arrogance that did for her as much as

the cross-dog, I think.'

She had cached not just his boots and clothes beyond the top of the

ridge, but the smaller of his two purses, as well. When she tried

apologize for not bringing his bedroll and the larger purse (she'd

tried she said, but they were simply too heavy), Roland hushed her

with a finger to her lips. He thought it a miracle to have as much as

he did. And besides (this he did not say, but perhaps she knew it,

anyway), the guns were the only things which really mattered. The

guns of his father, and his father before him, all the way back to

the days of Arthur Eld when dreams about dragons had still walked

the earth.

'Will you be all right?' he asked her as they settled down. The

moon had set, but dawn was still at least three hours away. They

were surrounded the sweet smell of the sage. A purple smell, he

thought it then ... and ever after. Already he could feel it forming a

kind of magic carpet under him, which would soon float him away

to sleep. He thought he had never been so tired.

'Roland, I know not.' But even then, he thought she had known.

Her mother had brought her back once; no mother would bring her

back again. And she had eaten with the others, had taken the

communion of the Sisters. Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from

which none ever escaped.

But then he was too tired to think much of such things ... and what

good would thinking have done, in any case? As she had said, the

bridge was burned. Even if they were to return to the valley,

Roland guess they would find nothing but the cave the Sisters had

called Thoughtful House. The surviving Sisters would have packed

their tent of bad dreams and moved on, just a sound of bells and

singing insects moving down the late night breeze.

He looked at her raised a hand (it felt heavy), and touched the curl

which once more lay across her forehead.

Jenna laughed, embarrassed. 'That one always escapes. It's

wayward Like its mistress.'

She raised her hand to poke it back in, but Roland took her fingers

before she could. 'It's beautiful,' he said. 'Black as night and as

beautiful as forever.'

He sat up - it took an effort; weariness dragged at his body like soft

hands. He kissed the curl. She closed her eyes and sighed. He felt

her trembling beneath his lips. The skin of her brow was very cool;

the dark curve of the wayward curl like silk.

'Push back your wimple, as you did before,' he said.

She did it without speaking. For a moment he only looked at her.

Jenna looked back gravely, her eyes never leaving his. He ran his

hands through her hair, feeling its smooth weight (like rain, he

thought, rain with weight), then took her shoulders and kissed each

of her cheeks. He drew back for a moment.

'Would ye kiss me as a man does a woman, Roland? On my

mouth?'

Aye.

And, as he had thought of doing as he lay caught in the silken

infirmary tent, he kissed her lips. She kissed back with the clumsy

sweetness of one who has never kissed before, except perhaps in

dreams. Roland thought to make love to her then - it had been long

and long, and she was beautiful but he fell asleep instead, still

kissing her.

He dreamed of the cross-dog, barking its way across a great open

landscape. He followed, wanting to see the source of its agitation,

and soon he did. At the far edge of that plain stood the Dark

Tower, its smoky stone outlined by the dull orange ball of a setting

sun, its fearful windows rising in a spiral. The dog stopped at the

sight of it and began to howl.

Bells - peculiarly shrill and as terrible as doom - began to ring.

Dark bells, he knew, but their tone was as bright as silver. At their

sound, the dark windows of the Tower glowed with a deadly red

light - the red of poisoned roses. A scream of unbearable pain rose

in the night.

The dream blew away in an instant, but the scream remained, now

unravelling to a moan. That part was real - as real as the Tower,

brooding in its place at the very end of End-World. Roland came

back to the brightness of dawn and the soft purple smell of desert

sage. He had drawn both his guns, and was on his feet before he

had fully realized he was awake.

Jenna was gone. Her boots lay empty beside his purse. A little

distance from them, her jeans lay as flat as discarded snakeskins.

Above them was her shirt. It was, Roland observed with wonder,

still tucked into the pants. Beyond them was her empty wimple,

with its fringe of bells lying on the powdery ground. He thought

for a moment that they were ringing, mistaking the sound he heard

at first.

Not bells but bugs. The doctor-bugs. They sang in the sage,