"Yes, we're supposed to save the Dark Tower," Jake agreed.
\nd thought he understood some of Roland's lust to see it and snter it, even if it killed him. What lay at the center of the umbrae?
What man (or boy) could but wonder, once the question was thought of, and want to see?
Even if looking drove him mad?
"But in order to do that, we have to do two jobs. One nvolves going back to our world and saving a man. A writer vho's telling our story. The other job is the one we've been talking about. Freeing the Breakers." Honesty made him add:
"Or stopping them, at least. Do you understand?"
But this time Sheemie didn't reply. He was looking where Roland was looking, out into the murk. His face was that of someone who's been hypnotized. Looking at it made Jake uneasy, but he pushed on. He had come to his question, after all, and where else was there to go but on?
"The question is, which job do we do first? It'd seem that saving the writer might be easier because there's no opposition... that we know of, anyway... but there's a chance that... well..." Jake didn't want to say But there's a chance that teleporting us might kill you, and so came to a lame and unsatisfying halt.
For a moment he didn't think Sheemie would make any reply, leaving him with the job of deciding whether or not to try again, but then the former tavern-boy spoke. He looked at none of them as he did so, but only out of the cave and into the dim of Thunderclap.
"I had a dream last night, so I did," said Sheemie of Mejis, whose life had once been saved by three young gunslingers from Gilead. "I dreamed I was back at the Travellers' Rest, only Coral wasn't there, nor Stanley, nor Pettie, nor Sheb-him that used to play the pianer. There was nobbut me, and I was moppin the floor and singin 'Careless Love.' Then the batwings screeked, so they did, they had this funny sound they made..."
Jake saw that Roland was nodding, a trace of a smile on his lips.
"I looked up," Sheemie resumed, "and in come this boy."
His eyes shifted briefly to Jake, then back to the mouth of the cave. "He looked like you, young sai, so he did, close enough to be twim. But his face were covert wi' blood and one of his eye'n were put out, spoiling his pretty, and he walked all a-limp.
Looked like death, he did, and frighten't me terrible, and made me sad to see him, too. I just kept moppin, thinkin that if I did that he might not never mind me, or even see me at all, and go away."
Jake realized he knew this tale. Had he seen it? Had he actually been that bloody boy?
"But he looked right at you... "Roland murmured, still a-hunker, still looking out into the gloom.
"Aye, Will Dearborn that was, right at me, so he did, and said
"Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and-'"
"'And kept me in better days,'" Eddie murmured. A tear fell from one of his eyes and made a dark spot on the floor of the cave.
"'-and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts.
Around me the can-toi gather and there's no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone.'"
"You cried," Susannah said, and Jake thought: Of course he did. He was crying himself. So was Ted; so was Dinky Earnshaw.
Only Roland was dry-eyed, and the gunslinger was pale, so pale.
"He wept," said Sheemie (tears were rolling down his cheeks as he told his dream), "and I did, too, for I could see that he had been fair as daylight. He said, 'If the torture were to stop now, I might still recover-if never my looks, then at least my strength-'"
""My kes,'" Jake said, and although he'd never heard the word before he pronounced it correcdy, almost as if it were kiss.
"-and my kes. But another week... or maybe five days... or even three... and it will be too late. Even if die torture stops, I'll die. And you'll die too, for when love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask." Then the boy turned and went out.
The batwing door made its same sound. Skree-eek."
He looked at Jake, now, and smiled like one who has just awakened. "I can't answer your question, sai." He knocked a fist on his forehead. "Don't have much in the way of brains up here, me-only cobwebbies. Cordelia Delgado said so, and I reckon she was right."