by Stephen King
“When you return to your cottage—a trip that will be much faster than the one you made to get here, and far less risky—you will go to your mother and put the last drops from the bottle in her eyes. Then you must give thy father’s ax to her. Do you understand me? His coin you’ll wear all your life—you’ll be buried with it yet around your neck—but give the ax to thy mother. Do it at once.”
“W-Why?”
The wild tangle of Maerlyn’s brows drew together; his mouth turned down at the corners; suddenly the kindness was gone, replaced by a frightening obduracy. “Not yours to ask, boy. When ka comes, it comes like the wind—like the starkblast. Will you obey?”
“Yes,” Tim said, frightened. “I’ll give it to her as you say.”
“Good.”
The mage turned to the sheet beneath which they had slept and raised his hands over it. The end near the cage flipped up with a brisk ruffling sound, folded over, and was suddenly half the size it had been. It flipped up again and became the size of a tablecloth. Tim thought the women of Tree would much like to have magic like that when beds needed to be made, and wondered if such an idea were blasphemy.
“No, no, I’m sure you’re right,” Maerlyn said absently. “But ’twould go wrong and cause hijinks. Magic’s full of tricks, even for an old fellow like me.”
“Sai . . . is it true you live backwards in time?”
Maerlyn raised his hands in amused irritation; the sleeves of his robe slipped back, revealing arms as thin and white as birch branches. “Everyone thinks so, and if I said different, they’d still think it, wouldn’t they? I live as I live, Tim, and the truth is, I’m mostly retired these days. Have you also heard of my magical house in the woods?”
“Aye!”
“And if I told you I lived in a cave with nothing but a single table and a pallet on the floor, and if you told others that, would they believe you?”
Tim considered this, and shook his head. “No. They wouldn’t. I doubt folk will believe I met you at all.”
“That’s their business. As for yours . . . are you ready to go back?”
“May I ask one more question?”
The mage raised a single finger. “Only one. For I’ve been here many long years in yon cage—which you see keeps its place to the very inch, in spite of how hard the wind blew—and I’m tired of shitting in that hole. Living monk-simple is all very fine, but there’s a limit. Ask your question.”
“How did the Red King catch thee?”
“He can’t catch anyone, Tim—he’s himself caught, pent at the top of the Dark Tower. But he has his powers, and he has his emissaries. The one you met is far from the greatest of them. A man came to my cave. I was fooled into believing he was a wandering peddler, for his magic was strong. Magic lent to him by the King, as you must ken.”
Tim risked another question. “Magic stronger than yours?”
“Nay, but . . .” Maerlyn sighed and looked up at the morning sky. Tim was astounded to realize that the magician was embarrassed. “I was drunk.”
“Oh,” Tim said in a small voice. He could think of nothing else to say.
“Enough palaver,” said the mage. “Sit on the dibbin.”
“The—?”
Maerlyn gestured at what was sometimes a napkin, sometimes a sheet, and was now a tablecloth. “That. And don’t worry about dirtying it with your boots. It’s been used by many far more travel-stained than thee.”
Tim had been worried about exactly that, but he stepped onto the tablecloth and then sat down.
“Now the feather. Take it in your hands. It’s from the tail of Garuda, the eagle who guards the other end of this Beam. Or so I was told, although as a wee one myself—yes, I was once wee, Tim, son of Jack—I was also told that babies were found under cabbages in the garden.”
Tim barely heard this. He took the feather which the tyger had saved from flying away into the wind, and held it.
Maerlyn regarded him from beneath his tall yellow cap. “When thee gets home, what’s the first thing thee’ll do?”
“Put the drops in Mama’s eyes.”
“Good, and the second?”
“Give her my da’s ax.”
“Don’t forget.” The old man leaned forward and kissed Tim’s brow. For a moment the whole world flared as brilliantly in the boy’s eyes as the stars at the height of the starkblast. For a moment it was all there. “Thee’s a brave boy with a stout heart—as others will see and come to call you. Now go with my thanks, and fly away home.”
“F-F-Fly? How?”
“How does thee walk? Just think of it. Think of home.” A thousand wrinkles flowed from the corners of the old man’s eyes as he broke into a radiant grin. “For, as someone or other famous once said, there’s no place like home. See it! See it very well!”
So Tim thought of the cottage where he had grown up, and the room where he had all his life fallen asleep listening to the wind outside, telling its stories of other places and other lives. He thought of the barn where Misty and Bitsy were stabled, and hoped someone was feeding them. Straw Willem, perhaps. He thought of the spring where he had drawn so many buckets of water. He thought most of all of his mother: her sturdy body with its wide shoulders, her chestnut hair, her eyes when they had been full of laughter instead of worry and woe.
He thought, How I miss you, Mama . . . and when he did, the tablecloth rose from the rocky ground and hovered over its shadow.
Tim gasped. The cloth rocked, then turned. Now he was higher than Maerlyn’s cap, and the magician had to look up at him.
“What if I fall?” Tim cried.
Maerlyn laughed. “Sooner or later, we all do. For now, hold tight to the feather! The dibbin won’t spill thee, so just hold tight to the feather and think of home!”
Tim clutched it before him and thought of Tree: the high street, the smithy with the burial parlor between it and the cemetery, the farms, the sawmill by the river, the Widow’s cottage, and—most of all—his own plot and place. The dibbin rose higher, floated above the Dogan for several moments (as if deciding), then headed south along the track of the starkblast. It moved slowly at first, but when its shadow fell over the tangled, frost-rimed deadfalls that had lately been a million acres of virgin forest, it began to go faster.
A terrible thought came to Tim: what if the starkblast had rolled over Tree, freezing it solid and killing everyone, including Nell Ross? He turned to call his question back to Maerlyn, but Maerlyn was already gone. Tim saw him once more, but when that happened, Tim was an old man himself. And that is a story for another day.
The dibbin rose until the world below was spread out like a map. Yet the magic that had protected Tim and his furry bedmate from the storm still held, and although he could hear the last of the starkblast’s cold breath whooshing all around him, he was perfectly warm. He sat crosslegged on his transport like a young prince of the Mohaine on an elephaunt, the Feather of Garuda held out before him. He felt like Garuda, soaring above a great tract of wildland that looked like a giant dress of a green so dark it was almost black. Yet a gray scar ran through it, as if the dress had been slashed to reveal a dirty underskirt beneath. The starkblast had ruined everything it had touched, although the forest as a whole was very little hurt. The lane of destruction was no more than forty wheels wide.
Yet forty wheels wide had been enough to lay waste to the Fagonard. The black swampwater had become yellowish-white cataracts of ice. The gray, knotted trees that had grown out of that water had all been knocked over. The tussocks were no longer green; now they looked like tangles of milky glass.
Run aground on one of them and lying on its side was the tribe’s boat. Tim thought of Helmsman and Headman and all the others, and burst into bitter tears. If not for them, he would be lying frozen on one of those tussocks five hundred feet below. The people of the swamp had fed him, and they had gifted him with Daria, his good fairy. It was not fair, it was not fair, it was not fair. So cried his child’s heart, and then his chil
d’s heart died a little. For that is also the way of the world.
Before leaving the swamp behind, he saw something else that hurt his heart: a large blackened patch where the ice had been melted. Sooty chunks of ice floated around a vast, plated corse lying on its side like the beached boat. It was the dragon that had spared him. Tim could imagine—aye, all too well—how she must have fought the cold with blasts of her fiery breath, but in the end the starkblast had taken her, as it had everything else in the Fagonard. It was now a place of frozen death.
Above the Ironwood Trail, the dibbin began to descend. Down and down it glided, and when it came to the Cosington-Marchly stub, it touched down. But before the wider sweep of the world was lost, Tim had observed the path of the starkblast, formerly dead south, bending to a course more westerly. And the damage seemed less, as if the storm had been starting to lift off. It gave him hope that the village had been spared.
He studied the dibbin thoughtfully, and then waved his hands over it. “Fold!” he said (feeling a trifle foolish). The dibbin did not, but when he bent to do the job himself, it flipped over once, then twice, then thrice, becoming smaller each time—but no thicker. In a matter of seconds it once more appeared to be nothing but a cotton napkin lying on the path. Not one you’d want to spread on your lap at dinner, though, for it had a bootprint square in the middle of it.
Tim put it in his pocket and began walking. And, when he reached the blossie groves (where most of the trees were still standing), he began to run.
He skirted the town, for he didn’t want to waste even minutes answering questions. Few people would have had time for him, anyway. The starkblast had largely spared Tree, but he saw folk tending to livestock they’d managed to pull from flattened barns, and inspecting their fields for damage. The sawmill had been blown into Tree River. The pieces had floated away downstream, and nothing was left but the stone foundation.
He followed Stape Brook, as he had on the day when he had found the Covenant Man’s magic wand. Their spring, which had been frozen, was already beginning to thaw, and although some of the blossie shingles had been ripped from the roof of the cottage, the building itself stood as firm as ever. It looked as though his mother had been left alone, for there were no wagons or mules out front. Tim understood that people would want to see to their own plots with such a storm as a starkblast coming, but it still made him angry. To leave a woman who was blind and beaten to the whims of a storm . . . that wasn’t right. And it wasn’t the way folk in Tree neighbored.
Someone took her to safety, he told himself. To the Gathering Hall, most likely.
Then he heard a bleat from the barn that didn’t sound like either of their mules. Tim poked his head in, and smiled. The Widow Smack’s little burro, Sunshine, was tethered to a post, munching hay.
Tim reached into his pocket and felt a moment’s panic when he couldn’t find the precious bottle. Then he discovered it hiding under the dibbin, and his heart eased. He climbed to the porch (the familiar creak of the third step making him feel like a boy in a dream), and eased the door open. The cottage was warm, for the Widow had made a good fire in the hearth, which was only now burning down to a thick bed of gray ash and rosy embers. She sat sleeping in his da’s chair with her back to him and her face to the fire. Although he was wild to go to his mother, he paused long enough to slip off his boots. The Widow had come when there was no one else; she had built a fire to keep the cottage warm; even with the prospect of what looked like ruin for the whole village, she had not forgotten how to neighbor. Tim wouldn’t have wakened her for anything.
He tiptoed to the bedroom door, which stood open. There in bed lay his mother, her hands clasped on the counterpane, her eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.
“Mama?” Tim whispered.
For a moment she didn’t stir, and Tim felt a cold shaft of fear. He thought, I’m too late. She’s a-lying there dead.
Then Nell rose on her elbows, her hair cascading in a flood to the down pillow behind her, and looked toward him. Her face was wild with hope. “Tim? Is it you, or am I dreaming?”
“You’re awake,” he said.
And rushed to her.
Her arms enfolded him in a strong grip, and she covered his face with the heartfelt kisses that are only a mother’s to give. “I thought you were killed! Oh, Tim! And when the storm came, I made sure of it, and I wanted to die myself. Where have you been? How could you break my heart so, you bad boy?” And then the kissing began again.
Tim gave himself over to it, smiling and rejoicing in the familiar clean smell of her, but then he remembered what Maerlyn had said: When thee gets home, what’s the first thing thee’ll do?
“Where have you been? Tell me!”
“I’ll tell you everything, Mama, but first lie back and open your eyes wide. As wide as you can.”
“Why?” Her hands kept fluttering over his eyes and nose and mouth, as if to reassure herself that he was really here. The eyes Tim hoped to cure stared at him . . . and through him. They had begun to take on a milky look. “Why, Tim?”
He didn’t want to say, in case the promised cure didn’t work. He didn’t believe Maerlyn would have lied—it was the Covenant Man who made lies his hobby—but he might have been mistaken.
Oh please, don’t let him have been mistaken.
“Never mind. I’ve brought medicine, but there’s only a little, so you must lie very still.”
“I don’t understand.”
In her darkness, Nell thought what he said next might have come from the dead father rather than the living son. “Just know I’ve been far and dared much for what I hold. Now lie still!”
She did as he bade, looking up at him with her blind eyes. Her lips were trembling.
Tim’s hands were, too. He commanded them to grow still, and for a wonder, they did. He took a deep breath, held it, and unscrewed the top of the precious bottle. He drew all there was into the dropper, which was little enough. The liquid didn’t even fill half of the short, thin tube. He leaned over Nell.
“Still, Mama! Promise me, for it may burn.”
“Still as can be,” she whispered.
One drop in the left eye. “Does it?” he asked. “Does it burn?”
“No,” said she. “Cool as a blessing. Put some in the other, will ya please.”
Tim put a drop into the right eye, then sat back, biting his lip. Was the milkiness a little less, or was that only wishing?
“Can you see anything, Mama?”
“No, but . . .” Her breath caught. “There’s light! Tim, there’s light!”
She started to rise up on her elbows again, but Tim pressed her back. He put another drop in each eye. It would have to be enough, for the dropper was empty. A good thing, too, for when Nell shrieked, Tim dropped it on the floor.
“Mama? Mama! What is it?”
“I see thy face!” she cried, and put her hands on his cheeks. Now her eyes were filling with tears, but that did Tim very well, because now they were looking at him instead of through him. And they were as bright as they ever had been. “Oh, Tim, oh my dear, I see thy face, I see it very well !”
Next came a bit of time which needs no telling—a good thing, too, for some moments of joy are beyond description.
You must give thy father’s ax to her.
Tim fumbled in his belt, brought the hand-ax from it, and placed it beside her on the bed. She looked at it—and saw it, a thing still marvelous to both of them—then touched the handle, which had been worn smooth by long years and much use. She raised her face to him questioningly.
Tim could only shake his head, smiling. “The man who gave me the drops told me to give it to you. That’s all I know.”
“Who, Tim? What man?”
“That’s a long story, and one that would go better with some breakfast.”
“Eggs!” she said, starting to rise. “At least a dozen! And the pork side from the cold pantry!”
Still smiling, Tim gripped her shoulders
and pushed her gently back to the pillow. “I can scramble eggs and fry meat. I’ll even bring it to you.” A thought occurred to him. “Sai Smack can eat with us. It’s a wonder all the shouting didn’t wake her.”
“She came when the wind began to blow, and was up all through the storm, feeding the fire,” Nell said. “We thought the house would blow over, but it stood. She must be so tired. Wake her, Tim, but be gentle about it.”
Tim kissed his mother’s cheek again and left the room. The Widow slept on in the dead man’s chair by the fire, her chin upon her breast, too tired even to snore. Tim shook her gently by the shoulder. Her head jiggled and rolled, then fell back to its original position.
Filled with a horrid certainty, Tim went around to the front of the chair. What he saw stole the strength from his legs and he collapsed to his knees. Her veil had been torn away. The ruin of a face once beautiful hung slack and dead. Her one remaining eye stared blankly at Tim. The bosom of her black dress was rusty with dried blood, for her throat had been cut from ear to ear.
He drew in breath to scream, but was unable to let it out, for strong hands had closed around his throat.
Bern Kells had stolen into the main room from the mudroom, where he had been sitting on his trunk and trying to remember why he had killed the old woman. He thought it was the fire. He had spent two nights shivering under a pile of hay in Deaf Rincon’s barn, and this old kitty, she who had put all sorts of useless learning into his stepson’s head, had been warm as toast the whole time. ’Twasn’t right.
He had watched the boy go into his mother’s room. He had heard Nell’s cries of joy, and each one was like a nail in his vitals. She had no right to cry out with anything but pain. She was the author of all his misery; had bewitched him with her high breasts, slim waist, long hair, and laughing eyes. He had believed her hold on his mind would lessen over the years, but it never had. Finally he simply had to have her. Why else would he have murdered his best and oldest friend?
