"The Red Death?" Susannah asked, startled (also frightened in spite of herself). "Poe'sRed Death? Like in the story?" And why not? Hadn't they already wandered into - and then back out of - L. Frank Baum's Oz? What came next? The White Rabbit and the Red Queen?
"Lady, I know not. All I can tell you is that beyond the deserted village is the outer wall, and beyond the outer wall is a great crack in the earth filled with monsters that cozen, diddle, increase, and plot to escape. Once there was a bridge across, but it fell long ago. 'In the time before counting,' as 'tis said. They're horrors that might drive an ordinary man or woman mad at a glance."
She favored Susannah with a glance of her own. A decidedly satiric one.
"But not agunslinger. Surely not one such asthee. "
"Why do you mock me?" Susannah asked quietly.
Mia looked startled, then grim. "Was it my idea to come here? To stand in this miserable cold where the King's Eye dirties the horizon and sullies the very cheek of the moon with its filthy light? Nay, lady! 'Twas you, so harry me not with your tongue!"
Susannah could have responded that it hadn't been her idea to catch preg with a demon's baby in the first place, but this would be a terrible time to get into one of those yes-you-did, no-I-didn't squabbles.
"I wasn't scolding," Susannah said, "only asking."
Mia made an impatient shooing gesture with her hand as if to sayDon't split hairs, and half-turned away. Under her breath she said, "I didn't go to Morehouse orno house. And in any case I'll bear my chap, do you hear? Whichever way the cards fall. Bear him and feed him!"
All at once Susannah understood a great deal. Mia mocked because she was afraid. In spite of all she knew, so much of herwas Susannah.
I didn't go to Morehouse or no house,for instance; that was fromInvisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. When Mia had bought into Susannah, she had purchased at least two personalities for the price of one. It was Mia, after all, who'd brought Detta out of retirement (or perhaps deep hibernation), and it was Detta who was particularly fond of that line, which expressed so much of the Negro's deep-held disdain for and suspicion of what was sometimes called "the finer post-war Negro education." Not to Morehouse orno house; I know what I know, in other words, I heard it through the grapevine, I got it on the earie, dearie, I picked it up on the jungle telegraph.
"Mia," she said now. "Whose chap is it besides yours? What demon was his father, do you know?"
Mia grinned. It wasn't a grin Susannah liked. There was too much Detta in it; too much laughing, bitter knowledge. "Aye, lady, I know. And you're right. It was a demon got him on you, a very great demon indeed, say true! A human one! It had to have been so, for know you that true demons, those left on the shore of these worlds which spin around the Tower when thePrim receded, are sterile. And for a very good reason."
"Then how - "
"Your dinh is the father of my chap," Mia said. "Roland of Gilead, aye, he. Steven Deschain finally has his grandson, although he lies rotten in his grave and knows it not."
Susannah was goggling at her, unmindful of the cold wind rushing out of the Discordia wilderness. "Roland...?It can't be! He was beside me when the demon wasin me, he was pulling Jake through from the house on Dutch Hill and f**king was thelast thing on his mind..." She trailed off, thinking of the baby she'd seen in the Dogan. Thinking of those eyes. Those blue bombardier's eyes.No. No, I refuse to believe it.
"All the same, Roland is his father," Mia insisted. "And when the chap comes, I shall name him from your own mind, Susannah of New York; from what you learned at the same time you learned of merlons and courtyards and tre-bouchets and barbicans. Why not? 'Tis a good name, and fair."
Professor Murray's Introduction to Medieval History, that's what she's talking about.
"I will name him Mordred," said she. "He'll grow quickly, my darling boy, quicker than human, after his demon nature. He'll grow strong. The avatar of every gunslinger that ever was. And so, like the Mordred of your tale, will he slay his father."
And with that, Mia, daughter of none, raised her arms to the star-shot sky and screamed, although whether in sorrow, terror, or joy, Susannah could not tell.
Two
"Hunker," Mia said. "I have this."
From beneath her serape she produced a bundle of grapes and a paper sack filled with orange pokeberries as swollen as her belly. Where, Susannah wondered, had the fruit come from? Was their shared body sleepwalking back in the Plaza - Park Hotel? Had there perhaps been a fruit basket she hadn't noticed? Or were these the fruits of pure imagination?
Not that it mattered. Any appetite she might have had was gone, robbed by Mia's claim. The fact that it was impossible somehow only added to the monstrosity of the idea. And she couldn't stop thinking of the baby she'd seenin utero on one of those TV screens. Those blue eyes.
No. It can't be, do you hear? Itcannot be!
The wind coming through the notches between the merlons was chilling her to the bone. She swung off the seat of the cart and settled herself against the allure wall beside Mia, listening to the wind's constant whine and looking up at the alien stars.
Mia was cramming her mouth with grapes. Juice ran from one corner of her mouth while she spat seeds from the other corner with the rapidity of machine-gun bullets. She swallowed, wiped her chin, and said: "It can. It can be. And more: it is. Are you still glad you came, Susannah of New York, or do you wish you'd left your curiosity unsatisfied?"
"If I'm gonna have a baby I didn't hump for, I'm gonna know everything about that baby that I can. Do you understand that?"