sounding a bit like crickets, but far sweeter.
'Jenna?'
No answer ... unless the bugs answered. For their singing suddenly
stopped.
'Jenna?'
Nothing. Only the wind and the smell of the sage.
Without thinking about what he was doing (like play-acting,
reasoned thought was not his strong suit), he bent, picked up the
wimple, and shook it. The Dark Bells rang.
For a moment there was nothing. Then a thousand small dark
creatures came scurrying out of the sage, gathering on the broken
earth. Roland thought of the battalion marching down the side of
the freighter's and took a step back. Then he held his position. As,
he saw, the bugs holding theirs.
He believed he understood. Some of this understanding came from
his memory of how Sister Mary's flesh had felt under his hands...
how it had felt various, not one thing but many. Part of it was what
she had Said: I have supped with them. Such as them might never
die but they might change.
The insects trembled, a dark cloud of them blotting out the white
powdery earth.
Roland shook the bells again.
A shiver ran through them in a subtle wave, and then they began
form a shape. They hesitated as if unsure of how to go on,
regrouped, began again. What they eventually made on the
whiteness of the sand there between the blowing fluffs of lilac-
coloured sage was one of Great Letters: the letter C.
Except it wasn't really a letter, the gunslinger saw; it was a curl.
They began to sing, and to Roland it sounded as if they were
singing his name.
The bells fell from his unnerved hand, and when they struck
ground and chimed there, the mass of bugs broke apart, running
every direction. He thought of calling them back - ringing the bell
again might do that - but to what purpose? To what end?
Ask me not, Roland. 'Tis done, the bridge burned.
Yet she had come to him one last time, imposing her will over
thousand various parts that should have lost the ability to think
when the whole lost its cohesion . . . and yet she had thought,
somehow enough to make that shape. How much effort might that
have taken?
They fanned wider and wider, some disappearing into the sage,
some trundling up the sides of rock overhang, pouring into the
cracks where they would, mayhap, wait out the heat of the day.
They were gone. She was gone.
Roland sat down on the ground and put his hands over his face. He
thought he might weep, but in time the urge passed; when he raised
his head again, his eyes were as dry as the desert he would
eventually come to, still following the trail of Walter, the man in
black.
If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing,
not theirs.
He knew a little about damnation himself ... and he had an idea that
the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.
She had brought him the purse with his tobacco in it. He rolled a
cigarette and smoked it hunkered over his knees. He smoked it
down to a glowing roach, looking at her empty clothes the while,
remembering the steady gaze of her dark eyes. Remembering the
scorch-marks on her fingers from the chain of the medallion. Yet
she had picked it up, because she had known he would want it; had
dared that pain, and Roland now wore both around his neck.
When the sun was fully up, the gunslinger moved on west. He
would find another horse eventually, or a mule, but for now he was
content to walk. All that day he was haunted by a ringing, singing
sound in his ears, like bells. Several times he stopped and looked
around, sure he would see a dark following shape flowing over the
ground, chasing after as the shadows of our best and worst
memories chase after, but no shape was ever there. He was alone in
the low hill country west of Eluria.
Quite alone.
The Night
of The Tiger
STEPHEN KING
From
Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1978
I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville,
but I'd only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been
making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to
talk about Mr. Legere, not even that last night when it seemed that
the world was coming to an end -- the night that Mr. Indrasil
disappeared.
But if I'm going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start
by saying that I'm Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in
Sauk City. Went to school there, had my first girl there, and
worked in Mr. Lillie's five-and-dime there for a while after I
graduated from high school. That was a few years back... more
than I like to count, sometimes. Not that Sauk City's such a bad
place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch is all right
for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like sitting in the
same chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined Farnum
& Williams' All-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did it
in a moment of giddiness when the calliope music kind of fogged
my judgment, I guess.
So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them
down, spreading sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling
cotton candy when the regular salesman had to go away and bark
for Chips Baily, who had malaria and sometimes had to go
someplace far away, and holler. Mostly things that kids do for free
passes -- things I used to do when I was a kid. But times change.
They don't seem to come around like they used to.
We swung through Illinois and Indiana that hot summer, and the
crowds were good and everyone was happy. Everyone except Mr.
Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion tamer, and
he looked like old pictures I've seen of Rudolph Valentine. He was
tall, with handsome, arrogant features and a shock of wild black
hair. And strange, mad eyes -- the maddest eyes I've ever seen. He
was silent most of the time; two syllables from Mr. Indrasil was a
sermon. All the circus people kept a mental as well as a physical
distance, because his rages were legend. There was a whispered
story about coffee spilled on his hands after a particularly difficult
performance and a murder that was almost done to a young
roustabout before Mr. Indrasil could be hauled off him. I don't
know about that. I do know that I grew to fear him worse than I
had cold-eyed Mr. Edmont, my high school principal, Mr. Lillie, or
even my father, who was capable of cold dressing-downs that
would leave the recipient quivering with shame and dismay.
When I cleaned the big cats' cages, they were always spotless. The
memory of the few times I had the vituperative wrath of Mr.
Indrasil called down on me still have the power to turn my knees
watery in retrospect.
Mostly it was his eyes - large and dark and totally blank. The eyes,
and the feeling that a man capable of controlling seven watchful
cats in a small cage must be part savage himself.
And the only two things he was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the
circus's one tiger, a huge beast called Green Terror.
As I said, I first saw Mr. Legere in Steubenville, and he was staring
into Green Terror's cage as if the tiger knew all the secrets of life
and death.
He was lean, dark, quiet. His deep, recessed eyes held an
expression of pain and brooding violence in their green-flecked
depths, and his hands were always crossed behind his back as he
stared moodily in at the tiger.
Green Terror was a beast to be stared at. He was a huge, beautiful
specimen with a flawless striped coat, emerald eyes, and heavy