“Ay—so we are. So we are. Thank’ee for your kiss, gunslinger. From my heart I thank’ee.”
“Go on, Mercy,” Aunt Talitha said in a gentler voice. “Get your coffee.” Mercy rose to her feet. The old man with the crutch and peg leg guided her hand to the waistband of his pants. She seized it and, with a final salute to Roland and his band, allowed him to lead her away. Eddie wiped at his eyes, which were wet. “Who blinded her?” he asked hoarsely. “Harriers,” Aunt Talitha said. “Did it with a branding-iron, they did. Said it was because she was looking at em pert. Twenty-five years agone, that was. Drink your coffee, now, all of you! It’s nasty when it’s hot, but it ain’t nothin but roadmud once it’s cold.”
Eddie lifted the cup to his mouth and sipped experimentally. He wouldn’t have gone so fur us to call it roadmud, hut it wasn’t exactly Blue Mountain Blend, either.
Susannah tasted hers and looked amazed. “Why, this is chicory!” Talitha glanced at her. “I know it not. Dockey is all I know, and dockey-coffee’s all we’ve had since I had the woman’s curse—and that curse was lifted from me long, long ago.” “How old are you, ma’am?” Jake asked suddenly. Aunt Talitha looked at him, surprised, then cackled. “In truth, lad, I disremember. I recall sitting in this same place and having a party to celebrate my eighty, but there were over fifty people settin out on this lawn that day, and Mercy still had her eyes.” Her own eyes dropped to the humbler lying at Jake’s feet. Oy didn’t remove his muzzle from Jake’s ankle, but he raised his gold-ringed eyes to gaze at her. “A billy-bumbler, by Daisy! It’s been long and long since I’ve seen a humbler in company with people . . . seems they have lost the memory of the days when they walked with men.” One of the albino twins bent down to pat Oy. Oy pulled away from him. “Once they used to herd sheep,” Bill (or perhaps it was Till) said to Jake. “Did ye know that, youngster?”
Jake shook his head.
“Do he talk?” the albino asked. “Some did, in the old days.”
“Yes, he does.” He looked down at the humbler, who had returned his head to Jake’s ankle as soon as the strange hand left his general area. “Say your name, Oy.”
Oy only looked up at him.
“Oy!” Jake urged, but Oy was silent. Jake looked at Aunt Talitha and the twins, mildly chagrined. “Well, he does . . . but I guess he only does it when he wants to.”
“That boy doesn’t look as if he belongs here,” Aunt Talitha said to Roland. “His clothes are strange . . . and his eyes are strange, as well.” “He hasn’t been here long.” Roland smiled at Jake, and Jake smiled uncertainly back. “In a month or two, no one will be able to see his strangeness.” “Ay? I wonder, so I do. And where does he come from?” “Far from here,” the gunslinger said. “Very far.” She nodded. “And when will he go back?” ^ “Never,” Jake said. “This is my home now.” “Gods pity you, then,” she said, “for the sun is going down on the world. It’s going down forever.”
At that Susannah stirred uneasily; one hand went to her belly, as if her stomach was upset.
“Suze?” Eddie asked. “You all right?”
She tried to smile, but it was a weak effort; her normal confidence and self-possession seemed to have temporarily deserted her. “Yes, of course. A goose walked over my grave, that’s all.” Aunt Talitha gave her a long, assessing look that seemed to make Susannah uncomfortable . . . and then smiled. ” ‘A goose on my grave’— ha! I haven’t heard that one in donkey’s years.”
“My dad used to say it all the time.” Susannah smiled at Eddie—a stronger smile this time. “And anyway, whatever it was is gone now. I’m fine.” “What do you know about the city, and the lands between here and there?” Roland asked, picking up his coffee cup and sipping. “Are there harriers? And who are these others? These Grays and Pubes?”