The gunslinger staggered, his feet dragging in the endless sands as he trudged through the desert. Swimming in front of his tanned and weather-beaten face were images of lost loved ones- first Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns, then Susan Delgado and poor Sheemie, and then Pere Callahan, and finally Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Oy, and, last, always last, Jake Chambers, most beloved of them all. His legs burned with exhaustion and the swirling sands were clotting in his throat, choking him as he struggled to push on.
He had to follow the man in black, had to catch Walter O'Dim…
Before his eyes, he saw them all leaving again, Eddie with a hole in his head, whispering goodbyes to each of the Ka-Tet in turn, then Cuthbert with an arrow through his eye, then Susan burning alive in Mejis as Rhea of the Coos laughed in the background. Next, he saw Oy lying sprawled in the branches of a tree, impaled, and then it was Susannah, leaving through a magical door to a world in which Jake and Eddie were waiting…
He could see snow swirling through that door, and Eddie and Jake holding cups of steaming, hot liquid that smelled delicious. Eddie and Jake were very much alive, and he could see Oy, his crazy corkscrew tail wagging, bounding into the doorway, crying "Oland, Oland!" Susan was turning around on her strong, dark legs- her new legs- and Jake was holding his hands out, calling "Hile, Father!" They could all be together again, their lost Ka-Tet, never to be separated again… But then a monstrous, seven-legged spider with blue bombardier's eyes was crawling out of the sand, reaching up with one of its grotesque legs and slamming the door shut. The gunslinger opened his mouth, letting out a cry of anguish.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHRRRRRGHHHH!"
………
"AAAAAAAAHHHHRRRRRGHHHH!"
In a tiny house near the outskirts of Mid-World, Roland Deschain cried out in his feverish sleep. A gentle hand sponged his forehead with a damp rag. A young woman was seated next to the bed where the tall man lay, a basin of cool water in her lap. He thrashed once to the left, then to the right, then lay still. The woman dipped the rag into her chipped stone basin again, wringing the cloth out with her free hand, and then applied it to his neck and bare chest, which heaved as though he had just finished a long run. Laying aside the basin, then, she took a tin cup from the low table next to the bed. It, too, was full of cool water, and she held it to the man's lips, propping his head up gently with her other arm. His lips parted almost automatically, and he drained the small cup.
His fever had come and gone, and the woman had been afraid that the man would slip into a quiet coma and then cross over to the Clearing at the End of the Path. Strangely, though, the man had held on through days of this sickness, and whenever she held a cup of water to his lips, the man would drink thirstily. Somewhere, deep beneath his haze, the man inside still wanted to carry on.
Some part of him knew that there was still something left to live for.
