A COMPASS ROSE
by Serious Black

Is it just destiny, destiny?
Or is it just a game in my mind, Sharona? --The Knack

I.
Todash, Jake thought before opening his eyes. Chimes were echoing somewhere inside his skull. Gone todash again, oh boy, wonder what's behind Door Number Thirteen tonight.

But Door Number Thirteen, painted to Mick Jagger's lyrical specifications—black as night, black as coal--yielded only the now-familiar dusty shamble of Calvin Tower's sales stacks. Jake's sleeping self had landed back in the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. He blinked, relieved, then craned his neck to read the spines of skinny volumes with titles like Desert Death Song and The Regulators. Westerns section, he laughed silently. Dig it.

He wound his way through Tower's labyrinth of pulp until he faced the proprietor himself, snug behind his counter and oblivious to everything but the leather-bound monster balanced on his knees. Jake waved a tentative hand in front of the man's eyes. Tower raised his own hand to swat absently at the air, as though repelling a gnat, but did not look up. His reaction (or lack of it) confirmed what Jake had already intuited: that he was caught again in the malign eye of the Wizard's Glass, and would remain so until it released him into the waking world...or flung him into the void.

Repressing a shudder at the thought, Jake took stock of his surroundings. Daylight was streaming through the shop's front window. People were streaming by outside of it, too—people in shorts and t-shirts, skirts and halter tops, people walking dogs and carrying children propped on their shoulders. Jake's feet carried him forward and out the open door. There was no conscious decision on his part to do it, only a sudden aching desire to be near the citizens of his own world. The New York world.

Heat rolled over and through him the minute he stepped outside. He took a deep breath, relishing the familiar chaos of scents: car exhaust, pavement, hot dogs from a vendor rolling his stand south down Second Avenue. Eau de Manhattan, circa summer. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. It was a painful smile, the first of its kind since Benny Slightman had exploded out of his life, and Jake's, in the bloodied furrows of Calla Bryn Sturgis.

He glanced around at the blackboard in the Restaurant's window.

TODAY'S SPECIALS

From Missouri! River-Fresh Mark Twain
Hardcovers Market Price
Penguin Classic Paperbacks $1.50 each

From Massachusetts! "Traveling" Jack Kerouac (to go!)
Hardcovers Market Price
Vintage Paperbacks 2 for $5

Special Import du Jour: Shire-Cured J.R.R. Tolkien
Hardcovers 3 for $15
Paperback Boxed Set $7.50

Jake was just about to follow the stream of pedestrians up Second (his heart already pounding a steady cadence of Rose! Rose! Rose!)when he caught himself mid-turn, freezing in place so suddenly that he almost stumbled. Without quite considering why, he walked back into the Restaurant. He'd ridden with Roland long enough to obey his peculiar compulsions without question, when need be; they had saved his life, and the lives of his ka-tet, on more than one occasion. Sometimes the impulses spoke in whispers that seemed to come from an outside source--an otherness—and Roland referred to these as Jake's "Touch". Just as often, though, it was merely his own good instinct at work.

One of these forces (Jake wasn't yet sure which) carried him back to the display table at the front of the shop. A quick scan revealed unfamiliar titles, none of them ominous or relevant-seeming. Something about the display still struck him as off, however. All at once a sort of mental Polaroid of the table as he remembered it developed, and Jake realized what was bothering him: it wasn't what was on the display, but what was missing from it. There were no copies of Charlie the Choo-Choo by Beryl Evans, Claudia y Inez Bachman or otherwise. Ditto the riddle book that had proven useless in their mortal tournament with Blaine-the-Pain.

So what? They weren't exactly Times Bestseller List material, anyway. So what if they're not there this time.

So you know what. Jake chewed his lower lip. If the books aren't there, you—me, Kid 77, whoever—won't be coming in to buy them, will he? Which means...

He looked out the shop window with widening eyes, taking in the light too strong for May, the skimpy summer clothes, the black kids grooving to the backbeat of a rock song he'd never heard. This, Jake thought, is not my When.

An enormous crash rumbled out from behind the shelves.

Jake's hand shot down to the butt of his Ruger even as the rest of his body jumped about a foot. Only hard training kept him from drawing wild. Breathing hard, lowered into a defensive crouch, he stole a hasty glance at Calvin Tower.

No sign that the man had heard a thing. He just went on frowning and reading, reading and frowning at the same infuriating, mechanical pace. Jake fought down an impulse to fire a round the between the fat fellow's loafered feet. Dance, podnah!

He blushed with shame at the thought, but had to smother a giggle just the same.

Now the boy swallowed, tightened his grip on the pistol, and took a few steps into the stacks. He heard thumps and some rustling noises, followed by an indistinct little moan. Jake peeked around the corner of a case at his right.

A brownhaired boy was sitting in the middle of a huge, sloppy spill of softcover travel guides. His long legs (encased in the filthiest blue jeans Jake had seen in this or any other world) were crooked under him at improbable angles. Two more Fodor's guides slid off their tipsy rack and thudded onto the boy's head and arm as Jake watched.

"Waugh," the boy said, wincing. He rubbed his forehead and looked around with a dazed expression on his face (his dirty face, Jake amended). A pair of round blue eyes, several shades darker than Jake's own and more than a little panicky, blinked up at the bookshelves, then down at the mess on the floor. "Did I flip?" the kid muttered. "Have I flipped or what?"

"Well," Jake heard himself say, "talking to yourself isn't a good sign."

The kid startled and looked around at Jake. "Aha ha," he replied warily. The long legs unbent themselves as he rose to his feet.

"Sorry if I scared you," Jake continued. "I mean—sorry to--" English your native language, Chambers? "Are you, um. Hurt?...or anything?" he finished lamely.

The boy, who had a good four inches on Jake, stood before him now looking impossibly disheveled. The strap of a careworn green knapsack dangled from his right fist. Jake saw that the long fingers of the kid's left hand were clenching and unclenching against the mudcaked denim on his thigh, and that his gaze still skittered neverously about the shop. "No, I'm okay," he said in a low, urgent voice. "Look, can you tell me where I am?"

"Where? Like, what store, or...?" An objective part of Jake's mind cringed at the halfwitted burble spilling from his mouth, but he couldn't seem to focus. Or to figure out why had he approached this stranger in the first place.

The tall kid was shaking his head impatiently. "No, like—I know this sounds stupid, sorry, but...what city is this? Where we are now?"

"Well..." Jake swallowed. "This is New York. Sort of. But--"

"New York?" All at once the kid's blue eyes locked like lasers into Jake's, even as his mouth fell open. "New York City?" His whole body sagged into the shelf at his side. "No, uh-uh, no way, I can't—this can't be—"he gestured wildly. "That's too far East!"

His face was very open in its distress. At the sight of it, Jake felt his chest constrict in a sudden painful spasm he had never experienced. There was a simulataneous shifting in his brain, however, and this he could name: it was the sudden clarity of understanding and purpose related to his Touch.

The kid, oblivious with panic, continued to mutter. "Shit. Shit! How could this have happened? I don't—unless I drank some of the juice in my sleep?" He paced in a small circle. "But that's just—there's no way—how did I --"

"Shut up." The young gunslinger's voice was calm. The kid stopped babbling and looked at him.
"Just listen for a minute," Jake continued, relieved to have shaken the temporary haze in his mind. He was thinking now, fast and hard. "This is not the real New York, all right? If you can see me and talk to me, then that means you--you must be todash, too."

"To-what?"

"Todash. It's like...being A.W.O.L. from your body. Somewhere you're physically lying there, still asleep, but—"

"This is a dream?" the kid demanded, sounding hopeful.

Jake took in the slight tremor of the boy's hands, the blaze of desperation in those large, dark-lashed eyes, and felt his own chest tighten once again. "More or less." He spoke carefully. "It's a more dangerous kind of dream. But you'll be back where you fell aleep, when it's done." If you're lucky, he added to himself.

The tall boy let out a long, shaky breath. "Okay...okay." He clapped hand over his eyes. When he removed it, most of the panic was gone. He gave the blond a long, assessing look. "This doesn't feel like a dream, though. How come you're—"he broke off, having finally spotted the gun nestled in its holster at Jake's hip.

"Who are you?" he whispered, eyes rising to meet Jake's again.

Jake, staring back, felt the cogs and wheels of Ka revolving into place. "My name is Jake Chambers." Click. Click. Click. He extended his hand. The tall boy immediately took it in his own. Click.

"I'm Jack," the other said. He seemed to struggle with something as they shook, then added, "Jack Sawyer." Click, click. "So, Jake. Why are we here in this dream, you and me?"

Jake said, with absolute certainty: "We're here to meet each other." Click.

And it was so.

TBC.