THIRTEEN
It was her turn to watch early on the third night, and she was looking back behind them, northwest along the Tower Road, when a hand grasped her shoulder. Terror sprang up in her mind like a jack-in-the-box and she whirled
(he's behind me oh dear God Mordred 's got around behind me and it's the spider!)
with her hand going to the gun in her belt and yanking it free.
Patrick recoiled from her, his own face long with terror, raising his hands in front of him. If he'd cried out he would surely have awakened Roland, and then everything might have been different. But he was too frightened to cry out. He made a low sound in his throat and that was all.
She put the gun back, showed him her empty hands, then pulled him to her and hugged him. At first he was stiff against her-still afraid-but after a little he relaxed.
"What is it, darling?" she asked him, sotto voce. Then, using Roland's phrase without even realizing it: "What fashes thee?"
He pulled away from her and pointed dead north. For a moment she still didn't understand, and then she saw the orange lights dancing and darting. She judged they were at least five miles away, and she could hardly believe she hadn't seen them before.
Still speaking low, so as not to wake Roland, she said: "They're nothing but foo-lights, sugar-they can't hurt you. Roland calls em hobs. They're like St. Elmo's fire, or something."
But he had no idea of what St. Elmo's fire was; she could see that in his uncertain gaze. She setded again for telling him they couldn't hurt him, and indeed, this was the closest the hobs had ever come. Even as she looked back at them, they began to dance away, and soon most of them were gone. Perhaps she had thought them away. Once she would have scoffed at such an idea, but no longer.
Patrick began to relax.
"Why don't you go back to sleep, honey? You need to take your rest." And she needed to take hers, but she dreaded it.
Soon she would wake Roland, and sleep, and the dream would come. The ghosts of Jake and Eddie would look at her, more frantic than ever. Wanting her to know something she didn't, couldn't know.
Patrick shook his head.
"Not sleepy yet?" -
He shook his head again.
"Well then, why don't you draw awhile?" Drawing always relaxed him.
Patrick smiled and nodded and went at once to Ho Fat for his current pad, walking in big exaggerated sneak-steps so as not to wake Roland. It made her smile. Patrick was always willing to draw; she guessed that one of the things that kept him alive in the basement of Dandelo's hut had been knowing that every now and then the rotten old f**k would give him a pad and one of the pencils. He was as much an addict as Eddie had been at his worst, she reflected, only Patrick's dope was a narrow line of graphite.
He sat down and began to draw. Susannah resumed her watch, but soon felt a queer tingling all over her body, as if she were the one being watched. She thought of Mordred again, and then smiled (which hurt; with the sore growing fat again, it always did now). Not Mordred; Patrick. Patrick was watching her.
Patrick was drawing her.
She sat still for nearly twenty minutes, and then curiosity overcame her. For Patrick, twenty minutes would be long enough to do the Mona Lisa, and maybe St. Paul's Basilica in the background for good measure. That tingling sense was so queer, almost not a mental thing at all but something physical.
She went to him, but Patrick at first held the pad against his chest with unaccustomed shyness. But he wanted her to look; that was in his eyes. It was almost a love-look, but she thought it was the drawn Susannah he'd fallen in love with.
"Come on, honeybunch," she said, and put a hand on the pad. But she would not tug it away from him, not even if he wanted her to. He was the artist; let it be wholly his decision whether or not to show his work. "Please?"
He held the pad against him a moment longer. Then-shyly, not looking at her-he held it out. She took it, and looked down at herself. For a moment she could hardly breathe, it was that good. The wide eyes. The high cheekbones, which her father had called "those jewels of Ethiopia." The full lips, which Eddie had so loved to kiss. It was her, it was her to the very life... but it was also more than her. She would never have thought love could shine with such perfect nakedness from the lines made with a pencil, but here that love was, oh say true, say so true; love of the boy for the woman who had saved him, who had pulled him from the dark hole where he otherwise would surely have died. Love for her as a mother, love for her as a woman.