The Wind Through the Keyhole (Dark Tower) Read online

  Tim felt a stab of excitement. “A beard? Yes, he has a beard!”

  Helmsman next stroked the air above his head, closing his fist as he did so, indicating not just a tall cap but a tall conical cap.

  “That’s him!” Tim actually laughed.

  Helmsman smiled, but Tim thought it a troubled smile. Several of the others jabbered and twittered. Helmsman motioned them quiet, then turned back to Tim. Before he could continue his dumbshow, however, the sore above his nipple burst open in a spray of pus and blood. From it crawled a spider the size of a robin’s egg. Helmsman grabbed it, crushed it, and tossed it aside. Then, as Tim watched with horrified fascination, he used one hand to push the wound wide. When the sides gaped like lips, he used his other hand to reach in and scoop out a slick mass of faintly throbbing eggs. He slatted these casually aside, ridding himself of them as a man might rid himself of a palmful of snot he has blown out of his nose on a cold morning. None of the others paid this any particular attention. They were waiting for the show to continue.

  With his sore attended to, Helmsman dropped to his hands and knees and began to make a series of predatory lunges this way and that, growling as he did so. He stopped and looked up at Tim, who shook his head. He was also struggling with his stomach. These people had just saved his life, and he reckoned it would be very impolite to puke in front of them.

  “I don’t understand that one, sai. Say sorry.”

  Helmsman shrugged and got to his feet. The matted weeds growing from his chest were now beaded with blood. Again he made the beard and the tall conical cap. Again he dropped to the ground, snarling and making lunges. This time all the others joined him. The tribe briefly became a pack of dangerous animals, their laughter and obvious good cheer somewhat spoiling the illusion.

  Tim once more shook his head, feeling quite stupid.

  Helmsman did not look cheerful; he looked worried. He stood for a moment, hands on hips, thinking, then beckoned one of his fellow tribesmen forward. This one was tall, bald, and toothless. The two of them palavered at length. Then the tall man ran off, making great speed even though his legs were so severely bent that he rocked from side to side like a skiff in a swell. Helmsman beckoned two others forward and spoke to them. They also ran off.

  Helmsman then dropped to his hands and knees and recommenced his fierce-animal imitation. When he was done, he looked up at Tim with an expression that was close to pleading.

  “Is it a dog?” Tim ventured.

  At this, the remaining tribesmen laughed heartily.

  Helmsman got up and patted Tim on the shoulder with a six-fingered hand, as if to tell him not to take it to heart.

  “Just tell me one thing,” Tim said. “Maerlyn . . . sai, is he real?”

  Helmsman considered this, then flung his arms skyward in an exaggerated delah gesture. It was body language any Tree villager would have recognized: Who knows?

  The two tribesmen who had run off together came back carrying a basket of woven reeds and a hemp shoulder strap to carry it with. They deposited it at Helmsman’s feet, turned to Tim, saluted him, then stood back, grinning. Helmsman hunkered and motioned for Tim to do the same.

  The boy knew what the basket held even before Helmsman opened it. He could smell fresh-cooked meat and had to wipe his mouth on his sleeve to keep from drooling. The two men (or perhaps their women) had packed the Fagonard equivalent of a woodsman’s lunch. Sliced pork had been layered with rounds of some orange vegetable that looked like squash. These were wrapped in thin green leaves to make breadless popkins. There were also strawberries and blueberries, fruits long gone by for the season in Tree.

  “Thankee-sai!” Tim tapped his throat three times. This made them all laugh and tap their own throats.

  The tall tribesman returned. From one shoulder hung a waterskin. In his hand he carried a small purse of the finest, smoothest leather Tim had ever seen. The purse he gave to Helmsman. The waterskin he held out to the boy.

  Tim wasn’t aware of how thirsty he was until he felt the skin’s weight and pressed his palms against its plump, gently yielding sides. He pulled the plug with his teeth, raised it on his elbow as did the men of his village, and drank deep. He expected it to be brackish (and perhaps buggy), but it was as cool and sweet as that which came from their own spring between the house and the barn.

  The tribesmen laughed and applauded. Tim saw a sore on the shoulder of Tallman getting ready to give birth, and was relieved when Helmsman tapped him on the shoulder, wanting him to look at something.

  It was the purse. There was some sort of metal seam running across the middle of it. When Helmsman pulled a tab attached to this seam, the purse opened like magic.

  Inside was a brushed metal disc the size of a small plate. There was writing on the top side that Tim couldn’t read. Below the writing were three buttons. Helmsman pushed one of these, and a short stick emerged from the plate with a low whining sound. The tribesmen, who had gathered round in a loose semicircle, laughed and applauded some more. They were clearly having a wonderful time. Tim, with his thirst slaked and his feet on solid (semisolid, at least) ground, decided he was having a pretty good time himself.

  “Is that from the Old People, sai?”

  Helmsman nodded.

  “Such things are held to be dangerous where I come from.”

  Helmsman at first didn’t seem to understand this, and from their puzzled expressions, none of the other plant-fellas did, either. Then he laughed and made a sweeping gesture that took in everything: the sky, the water, the oozing land upon which they stood. As if to say everything was dangerous.

  And in this place, Tim thought, everything probably is.

  Helmsman poked Tim’s chest, then gave an apologetic little shrug: Sorry, but you must pay attention.

  “All right,” Tim said. “I’m watching.” And forked two fingers at his eyes, which made them all chuckle and elbow each other, as if he had gotten off an especially good one.

  Helmsman pushed a second button. The disc beeped, which made the watchers murmur appreciatively. A red light came on below the buttons. Helmsman began to turn in a slow circle, holding the metal device out before him like an offering. Three quarters of the way around the circle, the device beeped again and the red light turned green. Helmsman pointed one overgrown finger in the direction the device was now pointing. As well as Tim could ken from the mostly hidden sun, this was north. Helmsman looked to see if Tim understood. Tim thought he did, but there was a problem.

  “There’s water that way. I can swim, but . . .” He bared his teeth and chomped them together, pointing toward the tussock where he had almost become some scaly thing’s breakfast. They all laughed hard at this, none harder than Helmsman, who actually had to bend and grip his mossy knees to keep from falling over.

  Yar, Tim thought, very funny, I almost got eaten alive.

  When his throe had passed and Helmsman was able to stand up straight again, he pointed at the rickety boat.

  “Oh,” Tim said. “I forgot about that.”

  He was thinking that he made a very stupid gunslinger.

  Helmsman saw Tim onboard, then took his accustomed place beneath the pole where the decaying boar’s head had been. The crew took theirs. The food and water were handed in; the little leather case with the compass (if that was what it was) Tim had stowed in the Widow’s cotton sack. The four-shot went into his belt on his left hip, where it made a rough balance for the hand-ax on his right side.

  There was a good deal of hile-ing back and forth, then Tallman—who Tim believed was probably Headman, although Helmsman had done most of the communicating—approached. He stood on the bank and looked solemnly at Tim in the boat. He forked two fingers at his eyes: Attend me.

  “I see you very well.” And he did, although his eyes were growing heavy. He couldn’t remember when he had last slept. Not last night, certainly.

  Headman shook his head, made the forked-finger gesture again—with more emphasis this time—and deep in
the recesses of Tim’s mind (perhaps even in his soul, that tiny shining splinter of ka), he seemed to hear a whisper. For the first time it occurred to him that it might not be his words that these swampfolk understood.

  “Watch?”

  Headman nodded; the others muttered agreement. There was no laughter or merriment in their faces now; they looked sorrowful and strangely childlike.

  “Watch for what?”

  Headman got down on his hands and knees and began turning in rapid circles. This time instead of growls, he made a series of doglike yipping sounds. Every now and then he stopped and raised his head in the northerly direction the device had pointed out, flaring his green-crusted nostrils, as if scenting the air. At last he rose and looked at Tim questioningly.

  “All right,” Tim said. He didn’t know what Headman was trying to convey—or why all of them now looked so downcast—but he would remember. And he would know what Headman was trying so hard to show him, if he saw it. If he saw it, he might understand it.

  “Sai, do you hear my thoughts?”

  Headman nodded. They all nodded.

  “Then thee knows I am no gunslinger. I was but trying to spark my courage.”

  Headman shook his head and smiled, as if this were of no account. He made the attend me gesture again, then clapped his arms around his sore-ridden torso and began an exaggerated shivering. The others—even the seated crewmembers on the boat—copied him. After a little of this, Headman fell over on the ground (which squelched under his weight). The others copied this, too. Tim stared at this litter of bodies, astonished. At last, Headman stood up. Looked into Tim’s eyes. The look asked if Tim understood, and Tim was terribly afraid he did.

  “Are you saying—”

  He found he couldn’t finish, at least not aloud. It was too terrible.

  (Are you saying you’re all going to die)

  Slowly, while looking gravely into his eyes—yet smiling a little, just the same—Headman nodded. Then Tim proved conclusively that he was no gunslinger. He began to cry.

  Helmsman pushed off with a long stick. The oarsmen on the left side turned the boat, and when it had reached open water, Helmsman gestured with both hands for them to row. Tim sat in the back and opened the food hamper. He ate a little because his belly was still hungry, but only a little, because the rest of him now wasn’t. When he offered to pass the basket around, the oarsmen grinned their thanks but declined. The water was smooth, the steady rhythm of the oars lulling, and Tim’s eyes soon closed. He dreamed that his mother was shaking him and telling him it was morning, that if he stayed slugabed, he’d be too late to help his da’ saddle the mollies.

  Is he alive, then? Tim asked, and the question was so absurd that Nell laughed.

  He was shaken awake, that much did happen, but not by his mother. It was Helmsman who was bending over him when he opened his eyes, the man smelling so powerfully of sweat and decaying vegetable matter that Tim had to stifle a sneeze. Nor was it morning. Quite the opposite: the sun had crossed the sky and shone redly through stands of strange, gnarled trees that grew right out of the water. Those trees Tim could not have named, but he knew the ones growing on the slope beyond the place where the swamp boat had come to ground. They were ironwoods, and real giants. Deep drifts of orange and gold flowers grew around their bases. Tim thought his mother would swoon at their beauty, then remembered she would no longer be able to see them.

  They had come to the end of the Fagonard. Ahead were the true forest deeps.

  Helmsman helped Tim over the side of the boat, and two of the oarsmen handed out the basket of food and the waterskin. When his gunna was at Tim’s feet—this time on ground that didn’t ooze or quake—Helmsman motioned for Tim to open the Widow’s cotton sack. When Tim did, Helmsman made a beeping sound that brought an appreciative chuckle from his crew.

  Tim took out the leather case that held the metal disc and tried to hand it over. Helmsman shook his head and pointed at Tim. The meaning was clear enough. Tim pulled the tab that opened the seam and took out the device. It was surprisingly heavy for something so thin, and eerily smooth.

  Mustn’t drop it, he told himself. I’ll come back this way and return it as I’d return any borrowed dish or tool, back in the village. Which is to say, as it was when it was given to me. If I do that, I’ll find them alive and well.

  They were watching to see if he remembered how to use it. Tim pushed the button that brought up the short stick, then the one that made the beep and the red light. There was no laughter or hooting this time; now it was serious business, perhaps even a matter of life and death. Tim began to turn slowly, and when he was facing a rising lane in the trees—what might once have been a path—the red light changed to green and there was a second beep.

  “Still north,” Tim said. “It shows the way even after sundown, does it? And if the trees are too thick to see Old Star and Old Mother?”

  Helmsman nodded, patted Tim on the shoulder . . . then bent and kissed him swiftly and gently on the cheek. He stepped back, looking alarmed at his own temerity.

  “It’s all right,” Tim said. “It’s fine.”

  Helmsman dropped to one knee. The others had gotten out of the boat, and they did the same. They fisted their foreheads and cried Hile!

  Tim felt more tears rise and fought them back. He said: “Rise, bondsmen . . . if that’s what you think you are. Rise in love and thanks.”

  They rose and scrambled back into their boat.

  Tim raised the metal disc with the writing on it. “I’ll bring this back! Good as I found it! I will!”

  Slowly—but still smiling, and that was somehow terrible—Helmsman shook his head. He gave the boy a last fond and lingering look, then poled the ramshackle boat away from solid ground and into the unsteady part of the world that was their home. Tim stood watching it make its slow and stately turn south. When the crew raised their dripping paddles in salute, he waved. He watched them go until the boat was nothing but a phantom waver on the belt of fire laid down by the setting sun. He dashed warm tears from his eyes and restrained (barely) an urge to call them back.

  When the boat was gone, he slung his gunna about his slender body, turned in the direction the device had indicated, and began to walk deeper into the forest.

  Dark came. At first there was a moon, but its glow was only an untrustworthy glimmer by the time it reached the ground . . . and then that too was gone. There was a path, he was sure of it, but it was easy to wander to one side or the other. The first two times this happened he managed to avoid running into a tree, but not the third. He was thinking of Maerlyn, and how likely it was there was no such person, and smacked chest-first into the bole of an ironwood. He held onto the silver disc, but the basket of food tumbled to the ground and spilled.

  Now I’ll have to grope around on my hands and knees, and unless I stay here until morning, I’ll still probably miss some of the—

  “Would you like a light, traveler?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Tim would later tell himself he shouted in surprise—for don’t we all have a tendency to massage our memories so they reflect our better selves?—but the truth was a little balder: he screamed in terror, dropped the disc, bolted to his feet, and was on the verge of taking to his heels (and never mind the trees he might crash into) when the part of him dedicated to survival intervened. If he ran, he would likely never be able to find the food scattered at the edge of the path. Or the disc, which he had promised to protect and bring back undamaged.

  It was the disc that spoke.

  A ridiculous idea, even a fairy the size of Armaneeta couldn’t fit inside that thin plate of metal . . . but was it any more ridiculous than a boy on his own in the Endless Forest, searching for a mage who had to be long centuries dead? Who, even if alive, was likely thousands of wheels north of here, in that part of the world where the snow never melted?

  He looked for the greenglow and didn’t see it. With his heart still hammering in his chest, Tim got down on his kne
es and felt around, touching a litter of leaf-wrapped pork popkins, discovering a small basket of berries (most spilled on the ground), discovering the hamper itself . . . but no silver disc.

  In despair, he cried: “Where in Nis are you?”

  “Here, traveler,” the woman’s voice said. Perfectly composed. Coming from his left. Still on his hands and knees, he turned in that direction.

  “Where?”

  “Here, traveler.”

  “Keep talking, will ya do.”

  The voice was obliging. “Here, traveler. Here, traveler, here, traveler.”

  He reached toward the voice; his hand closed on the precious artifact. When he turned it over in his hand, he saw the green light. He cradled it to his chest, sweating. He thought he had never been so terrified, not even when he realized he was standing on the head of a dragon, nor so relieved.

  “Here, traveler. Here, traveler. Here—”

  “I’ve got you,” Tim said, feeling simultaneously foolish and not foolish at all. “You can, um, be quiet now.”

  Silence from the silver disc. Tim sat still for perhaps five minutes, listening to the night-noises of the forest—not so threatening as those in the swamp, at least so far—and getting himself under control. Then he said, “Yes, sai, I’d like a light.”

  The disc commenced the same low whining noise it made when it brought forth the stick, and suddenly a white light, so brilliant it made Tim temporarily blind, shone out. The trees leaped into being all around him, and some creature that had crept close without making a sound leaped back with a startled yark sound. Tim’s eyes were still too dazzled for him to get a good look, but he had an impression of a smooth-furred body and—perhaps—a squiggle of tail.

  A second stick had emerged from the plate. At the top, a small hooded bulge was producing that furious glare. It was like burning phosphorous, but unlike phosphorous, it did not burn out. Tim had no idea how sticks and lights could hide in a metal plate so thin, and didn’t care. One thing he did care about.

  “How long will it last, my lady?”