Oy gave his shrill, whistling bark. Jake turned and saw more people coming up the street—five or six in all. Like Si and Mercy, they were all old, and one of them, a woman hobbling over a cane like a witch in a fairy-tale, looked positively ancient. As they neared, Jake realized that two of the men were identical twins. Long white hair spilled over the shoulders of their patched homespun shirts. Their skin was as white as fine linen, and their eyes were pink. Albinos, he thought.
The crone appeared to be their leader. She hobbled toward Roland’s party on her cane, staring at them with gimlet eyes as green as emeralds. Her toothless mouth was tucked deeply into itself. The hem of the old shawl she wore fluttered in the prairie breeze. Her eyes settled upon Roland. “Hail, gunslinger! Well met!” She spoke the High Speech herself, and, like Eddie and Susannah, Jake understood the words perfectly, although he guessed they would have been gibberish to him in his own world. “Welcome to River Crossing!” The gunslinger had removed his own hat, and now he bowed to her, tapping his throat three times, rapidly, with his diminished right hand. “Thankee-sai, Old Mother.”
She cackled freely at this and Eddie suddenly realized Roland had at the same time made a joke and paid a compliment. The thought which had already occurred to Susannah now came to him: This is how he was . . . and this is what he did. Part of it, anyway.
“Gunslinger ye may be, but below your clothes you’re but another foolish man,” she said, lapsing into low speech.
Roland bowed again. “Beauty has always made me foolish, mother.” This time she positively cawed laughter. Oy shrank against Jake’s leg. One of the albino twins rushed forward to catch the ancient as she rocked backward within her dusty cracked shoes. She caught her balance on her own, however, and made an imperious shooing gesture with one hand. The albino retreated. “Be ye on a quest, gunslinger?” Her green eyes gleamed shrewdly at him; the puckered pocket of her mouth worked in and out. “Ay,” Roland said. “We go in search of the Dark Tower.” The others only looked puzzled, but the old woman recoiled and forked the sign of the evil eye—not at them, Jake realized, but to the southeast, along the path of the Beam.
“I’m sorry to hear it!” she cried. “For no one who ever went in search of that black dog ever came back! So said my grandfather, and his grandfather before him! Not ary one!”
“Ka,” the gunslinger said patiently, as if this explained everything . . . and, Jake was coming to realize, to Roland it did. “Ay,” she agreed, “black dog ka! Well-a-well; ye’ll do as ye’re called, and live along your path, and die when it comes to the clearing in the trees. Will ye break bread with us before you push on, gunslinger? You and your band of knights?”
Roland bowed again. “It has been long and long since we have broken bread in company other than our own, Old Mother. We cannot stay long, but yes—we’ll eat your food with thanks and pleasure.”
The old woman turned to the others. She spoke in a cracked and ringing voice—yet it was the words she spoke and not the tone in which they were spoken that sent chills racing down Jake’s back: “Behold ye, the return of the White! After evil ways and evil days, the White comes again! Be of good heart and hold up your heads, for ye have lived to see the wheel of ka begin to turn once more!”
THE OLD WOMAN, WHOSE name was Aunt Talitha, led them through the town square and to the church with the leaning spire—it was The Church of the Blood Everlasting, according to the faded board on the run-to-riot lawn. Written over the words, in green paint that had faded to a ghost, was another message: DEATH TO GRAYS. She led them through the ruined church, hobbling rapidly along the center aisle past the splintered and overturned pews, down a short flight of stairs, and into a kitchen so different from the ruin above that Susan-nah blinked in surprise. Here everything was neat as a pin. The wooden floor was very old, but it had been faithfully oiled and glowed with its own serene inner light. The black cookstove took up one whole corner. It was immaculate, and the wood stacked in the brick alcove next to it looked both well-chosen and well-seasoned.
Their party had been joined by three more senior citizens, two women and a man who limped along on a crutch and a wooden leg. Two of the women went to the cupboards and began to make themselves busy; a third opened the belly of the stove and struck a long sulphur match to the wood already laid neatly within; a fourth opened another door and went down a short set of narrow steps into what looked like a cold-pantry. Aunt Talitha, meanwhile, led the rest of them into a spacious entry at the rear of the church building. She waved her cane at two trestle tables which had been stored there under a clean but ragged dropcoth, and the two elderly albinos immediately went over and began to wrestle with one of them.
“Come on, Jake,” Eddie said. “Let’s lend a hand.” “Nawp!” Aunt Talitha said briskly. “We may be old, but we don’t need comp’ny to lend a hand! Not yet, youngster!”
“Leave them be,” Roland said.
“Old fools’ll rupture themselves,” Eddie muttered, but he followed the others, leaving the old men to their chosen table. Susannah gasped as Eddie lifted her from her chair and carried her through the back door. This wasn’t a lawn but a showplace, with beds of flowers blazing like torches in the soft green grass. She saw some she recognized—marigolds and zinnias and phlox—but many others were strange to her. As she watched, a horsefly landed on a bright blue petal . . . which at once folded over it and rolled up tight.