The Dark Tower

She didn’t know if she wanted to see people or not. Certainly such would complicate things. “Roland, we’ll have to be careful.”

“Yes,” he said, and went back to the tow-band again. Before he picked it up, he paused to readjust his gunbelt, dropping the holster a bit so it lay more comfortably near his left hand.

An hour later they came to the intersection of the lane and the road. It was marked by a snowbank easily eleven feet high, one that had been built by some sort of plow. Susannah could see tread-marks, like those made by a bulldozer, pressed into the packed snow. Rising out of this hardpack was a pole. The street sign on top was no different from those she’d seen in all sorts of towns; at intersections in New York City, for that matter. The one indicating the short road said

ODD’S LANE

It was the other that thrilled her heart, however.

TOWER ROAD,

it read.

THREE

All but one of the cottages clustered around the intersection were deserted, and many lay in half-buried heaps, broken beneath the weight of accumulating snow. One, however—it was about three-quarters of the way down the lefthand arm of Odd’s Lane—was clearly different from the others. The roof had been mostly cleared of its potentially crushing weight of snow, and a path had been shoveled from the lane to the front door. It was from the chimney of this quaint, tree-surrounded cottage that the smoke was issuing, feather-white. One window was lit a wholesome butter-yellow, too, but it was the smoke that captured Susannah’s eye. As far as she was concerned, it was the final touch. The only question in her mind was who would answer the door when they knocked. Would it be Hansel or his sister Gretel? (And were those two twins? Had anyone ever researched the matter?) Perhaps it would be Little Red Riding Hood, or Goldilocks, wearing a guilty goatee of porridge.

“Maybe we should just pass it by,” she said, aware that she had dropped her voice to a near-whisper, even though they were still on the high snowbank created by the plow. “Give it a miss and say thank ya.” She gestured to the sign reading TOWER ROAD. “We’ve got a clear way, Roland—maybe we ought to take it.”

“And if we should, do you think that Mordred will?” Roland asked. “Do you think he’ll simply pass by and leave whoever lives there in peace?”

Here was a question that hadn’t even occurred to her, and of course the answer was no. If Mordred decided he could kill whoever was in the cottage, he’d do it. For food if the inhabitants were edible, but food would only be a secondary consideration. The woods behind them had been teeming with game, and even if Mordred hadn’t been able to catch his own supper (and in his spider form, Susannah was sure he would have been perfectly capable of doing that), they had left the remains of their own meals at a good many camps. No, he would come out of the snowy uplands fed . . . but not happy. Not happy at all. And so woe to whoever happened to be in his path.

On the other hand, she thought . . . only there was no other hand, and all at once it was too late, anyway. The front door of the cottage opened, and an old man came out onto the stoop. He was wearing boots, jeans, and a heavy parka with a fur-lined hood. To Susannah this latter garment looked like something that might have been purchased at the Army-Navy Surplus Store in Greenwich Village.

The old man was rosy-cheeked, the picture of wintry good health, but he limped heavily, depending on the stout stick in his left hand. From behind his quaint little cottage with its fairy-tale plume of smoke came the piercing whinny of a horse.

“Sure, Lippy, I see em!” the old man cried, turning in that direction. “I got a’least one good eye left, ain’t I?” Then he turned back to where Roland stood on the snowbank with Susannah and Oy flanking him. He raised his stick in a salute that seemed both merry and unafraid. Roland raised his own hand in return.

“Looks like we’re in for some palaver whether we want it or not,” said Roland.

“I know,” she replied. Then, to the bumbler: “Oy, mind your manners now, you hear?”

Oy looked at her and then back at the old man without making a sound. On the subject of minding his manners he’d keep his own counsel awhile, it seemed.