by Stephen King
Then they closed.
5
Rhea looked at the girl who stood asleep on her stoop in the moonlight. As she replaced the medallion within her sleeve (her fingers were old and bunchy, but they moved dextrously enough when it was required, oh, aye), the businesslike expression fell from her face, and was replaced by a look of squint-eyed fury. Kick me into the fire, would you, you trull? Tattle to Thorin? But her threats and impudence weren’t the worst. The worst had been the expression of revulsion on her face when she had pulled back from Rhea’s touch.
Too good for Rhea, she was! And thought herself too good for Thorin as well, no doubt, she with sixteen years’ worth of fine blonde hair hanging down from her head, hair Thorin no doubt dreamed of plunging his hands into even as he plunged and reared and plowed down below.
She couldn’t hurt the girl, much as she wanted to and much as the girl deserved it; if nothing else, Thorin might take the glass ball away from her, and Rhea couldn’t bear that. Not yet, anyway. So she could not hurt the girl, but she could do something that would spoil his pleasure in her, at least for awhile.
Rhea leaned close to the girl, grasped the long braid which lay down her back, and began to slip it through her fist, enjoying its silky smoothness.
“Susan,” she whispered. “Do’ee hear me, Susan, daughter of Patrick?”
“Yes.” The eyes did not open.
“Then listen.” The light of the Kissing Moon fell on Rhea’s face and turned it into a silver skull. “Listen to me well, and remember. Remember in the deep cave where yer waking mind never goes.”
She pulled the braid through her hand again and again. Silky and smooth. Like the little bud between her legs.
“Remember,” the girl in the doorway said.
“Aye. There’s something ye’ll do after he takes yer virginity. Ye’ll do it right away, without even thinking about it. Now listen to me, Susan, daughter of Patrick, and hear me very well.”
Still stroking the girl’s hair, Rhea put her wrinkled lips to the smooth cup of Susan’s ear and whispered in the moonlight.
CHAPTER III
A MEETING ON
THE ROAD
1
She had never in her life had such a strange night, and it was probably not surprising that she didn’t hear the rider approaching from behind until he was almost upon her.
The thing that troubled her most as she made her way back toward town was her new understanding of the compact she had made. It was good to have a reprieve—months yet before she would have to live up to her end of the bargain—but a reprieve didn’t change the basic fact: when the Demon Moon was full, she would lose her virginity to Mayor Thorin, a skinny, twitchy man with fluffy white hair rising like a cloud around the bald spot on top of his head. A man whose wife regarded him with a certain weary sadness that was painful to look at. Hart Thorin was a man who laughed uproariously when a company of players put on an entertainment involving head-knocking or pretend punching or rotten fruit-throwing, but who only looked puzzled at a story which was pathetic or tragical. A knuckle-cracker, a back-slapper, a dinner-table belcher, a man who had a way of looking anxiously toward his Chancellor at almost every other word, as if to make sure he hadn’t offended Rimer in some way.
Susan had observed all these things often; her father had for years been in charge of the Barony’s horse and had gone to Seafront often on business. Many times he had taken his much loved daughter with him. Oh, she had seen a lot of Hart Thorin over the years, and he had seen a lot of her, as well. Too much, mayhap! For what now seemed the most important fact about him was that he was almost fifty years older than the girl who would perhaps bear his son.
She had made the bargain lightly enough—
No, not lightly, that was being unfair to herself . . . but she had lost little sleep over it, that much was true. She had thought, after listening to all Aunt Cord’s arguments: Well, it’s little enough, really, to have the indenture off the lands; to finally own our little piece of the Drop in fact as well as in tradition . . . to actually have papers, one in our house and one in Rimer’s files, saying it’s ours. Aye, and to have horses again. Only three, ’tis true, but that’s three more than we have now. And against that? To lie with him a time or two, and to bear a child, which millions of women have done before me with no harm. ’Tis not, after all, a mutant or a leper I’m being asked to partner with but just an old man with noisy knuckles. ’Tis not forever, and, as Aunt Cord says, I may still marry, if time and ka decree; I should not be the first woman to come to her husband’s bed as a mother. And does it make me a whore to do such? The law says not, but never mind that; my heart’s law is what matters, and my heart says that if I may gain the land that was my da’s and three horses to run on it by being such, then it’s a whore I’ll be.
There was something else: Aunt Cord had capitalized—rather ruthlessly, Susan now saw—on a child’s innocence. It was the baby Aunt Cord had harped on, the cunning little baby she would have. Aunt Cord had known that Susan, the dolls of her childhood put aside not all that long ago, would love the idea of her own baby, a little living doll to dress and feed and sleep with in the heat of the afternoon.
What Cordelia had ignored (perhaps she’s too innocent even to have considered it, Susan thought, but didn’t quite believe) was what the hag-woman had made brutally clear to her this evening: Thorin wanted more than a child.
He wants tits and arse that don’t squish in his hands and a box that’ll grip what he pushes.
Just thinking of those words made her face throb as she walked through the post-moonset dark toward town (no high-spirited running this time; no singing, either). She had agreed with vague thoughts of how managed livestock mated—they were allowed to go at it “until the seed took,” then separated again. But now she knew that Thorin might want her again and again, probably would want her again and again, and common law going back like iron for two hundred generations said that he could continue to lie with her until she who had proved the consort honest should prove her honestly with child as well, and that child honest in and of itself . . . not, that was, a mutant aberration. Susan had made discreet enquiries and knew that this second proving usually came around the fourth month of pregnancy . . . around the time she would begin to show, even with her clothes on. It would be up to Rhea to make the judgment . . . and Rhea didn’t like her.
Now that it was too late—now that she had accepted the compact formally tendered by the Chancellor, now that she had been proved honest by yon strange bitch—she rued the bargain. Mostly what she thought of was how Thorin would look with his pants off, his legs white and skinny, like the legs of a stork, and how, as they lay together, she would hear his long bones crackling: knees and back and elbows and neck.
And knuckles. Don’t forget his knuckles.
Yes. Big old man’s knuckles with hair growing out of them. Susan chuckled at the thought, it was that comical, but at the same time a warm tear ran unnoticed from the corner of one eye and tracked down her cheek. She wiped it away without knowing it, any more than she heard the clip-clip of approaching hoofs in the soft road-dust. Her mind was still far away, returning to the odd thing she had seen through the old woman’s bedroom window—the soft but somehow unpleasant light coming from the pink globe, the hypnotized way the hag had been looking down at it . . .
When Susan at last heard the approaching horse, her first alarmed thought was that she must get into the copse of trees she was currently passing and hide. The chances of anyone aboveboard being on the road this late seemed small to her, especially now that such bad times had come to Mid-World—but it was too late for that.
The ditch, then, and sprawled flat. With the moon down, there was at least a chance that whoever it was would pass without—
But before she could even begin in that direction, the rider who had sneaked up behind her while she was thinking her long and rueful thoughts had hailed her. “Goodeven, lady, and may your days be long upon the earth.
”
She turned, thinking: What if it’s one of the new men always lounging about Mayor’s House or in the Travellers’ Rest? Not the oldest one, the voice isn’t wavery like his, but maybe one of the others . . . it could be the one they call Depape . . .
“Goodeven,” she heard herself saying to the manshape on the tall horse. “May yours be long also.”
Her voice didn’t tremble, not that she could hear. She didn’t think it was Depape, or the one named Reynolds, either. The only thing she could tell about the fellow for sure was that he wore a flat-brimmed hat, the sort she associated with men of the Inner Baronies, back when travel between east and west had been more common than it was now. Back before John Farson came—the Good Man—and the blood-letting began.
As the stranger came up beside her, she forgave herself a little for not hearing him approach—there was no buckle or bell on his gear that she could see, and everything was tied down so as not to snap or flap. It was almost the rig of an outlaw or a harrier (she had the idea that Jonas, he of the wavery voice, and his two friends might have been both, in other times and other climes) or even a gunslinger. But this man bore no guns, unless they were hidden. A bow on the pommel of his saddle and what looked like a lance in a scabbard, that was all. And there had never, she reckoned, been a gunslinger as young as this.
He clucked sidemouth at the horse just as her da had always done (and she herself, of course), and it stopped at once. As he swung one leg over his saddle, lifting it high and with unconscious grace, Susan said: “Nay, nay, don’t trouble yerself, stranger, but go as ye would!”
If he heard the alarm in her voice, he paid no heed to it. He slipped off the horse, not bothering with the tied-down stirrup, and landed neatly in front of her, the dust of the road puffing about his square-toed boots. By starlight she saw that he was young indeed, close to her own age on one side or the other. His clothes were those of a working cowboy, although new.
“Will Dearborn, at your service,” he said, then doffed his hat, extended a foot on one bootheel, and bowed as they did in the Inner Baronies.
Such absurd courtliness out here in the middle of nowhere, with the acrid smell of the oilpatch on the edge of town already in her nostrils, startled her out of her fear and into a laugh. She thought it would likely offend him, but he smiled instead. A good smile, honest and artless, its inner part lined with even teeth.
She dropped him a little curtsey, holding out one side of her dress. “Susan Delgado, at yours.”
He tapped his throat thrice with his right hand. “Thankee-sai, Susan Delgado. We’re well met, I hope. I didn’t mean to startle you—”
“Ye did, a little.”
“Yes, I thought I had. I’m sorry.”
Yes. Not aye but yes. A young man, from the Inner Baronies, by the sound. She looked at him with new interest.
“Nay, ye need not apologize, for I was deep in my own thoughts,” she said. “I’d been to see a . . . friend . . . and hadn’t realized how much time had passed until I saw the moon was down. If ye stopped out of concern, I thankee, stranger, but ye may be on yer way as I would be on mine. It’s only to the edge of the village I go—Hambry. It’s close, now.”
“Pretty speech and lovely sentiments,” he answered with a grin, “but it’s late, you’re alone, and I think we may as well pass on together. Do you ride, sai?”
“Yes, but really—”
“Step over and meet my friend Rusher, then. He shall carry you the last two miles. He’s gelded, sai, and gentle.”
She looked at Will Dearborn with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The thought which crossed her mind was If he calls me sai again, as though I were a schoolteacher or his doddery old great aunt, I’m going to take off this stupid apron and swat him with it. “I never minded a bit of temper in a horse docile enough to wear a saddle. Until his death, my father managed the Mayor’s horses . . . and the Mayor in these parts is also Guard o’ Barony. I’ve ridden my whole life.”
She thought he might apologize, perhaps even stutter, but he only nodded with a calm thoughtfulness that she rather liked. “Then step to the stirrup, my lady. I’ll walk beside and trouble you with no conversation, if you’d rather not have it. It’s late, and talk palls after moonset, some say.”
She shook her head, softening her refusal with a smile. “Nay. I thank ye for yer kindness, but it would not be well, mayhap, for me to be seen riding a strange young man’s horse at eleven o’ the clock. Lemon-juice won’t take the stain out of a lady’s reputation the way it will out of a shirtwaist, you know.”
“There’s no one out here to see you,” the young man said in a maddeningly reasonable voice. “And that you’re tired, I can tell. Come, sai—”
“Please don’t call me that. It makes me feel as ancient as a . . .” She hesitated for a brief moment, rethinking the word
(witch)
that first came to her mind. “. . . as an old woman.”
“Miss Delgado, then. Are you sure you won’t ride?”
“Sure as can be. I’d not ride cross-saddle in a dress in any case, Mr. Dearborn—not even if you were my own brother. ’Twouldn’t be proper.”
He stood in the stirrup himself, reached over to the far side of his saddle (Rusher stood docilely enough at this, only flicking his ears, which Susan would have been happy to flick herself had she been Rusher—they were that beautiful), and stepped back down with a rolled garment in his hands. It was tied with a rawhide hank. She thought it was a poncho.
“You may spread this over your lap and legs like a duster,” he said. “There’s quite enough of it for decorum’s sake—it was my father’s, and he’s taller than me.” He looked off toward the western hills for a moment, and she saw he was handsome, in a hard sort of way that jagged against his youth. She felt a little shiver inside her, and wished for the thousandth time that the foul old woman had kept her hands strictly on her business, as unpleasant as that business had been. Susan didn’t want to look at this handsome stranger and remember Rhea’s touch.
“Nay,” she said gently. “Thankee again, I recognize yer kindness, but I must refuse.”
“Then I’ll walk along beside, and Rusher’ll be our chaperone,” he said cheerfully. “As far as the edge of town, at least, there’ll be no eyes to see and think ill of a perfectly proper young woman and a more-or-less proper young man. And once there, I’ll tip my hat and wish you a very good night.”
“I wish ye wouldn’t. Really.” She brushed a hand across her forehead. “Easy for you to say there are no eyes to see, but sometimes there are eyes even where there shouldn’t be. And my position is . . . a little delicate just now.”
“I’ll walk with you, however,” he repeated, and now his face was somber. “These are not good times, Miss Delgado. Here in Mejis you are far from the worst of the troubles, but sometimes trouble reaches out.”
She opened her mouth—to protest again, she supposed, perhaps to tell him that Pat Delgado’s daughter could take care of herself—and then she thought of the Mayor’s new men, and the cold way they had run their eyes over her when Thorin’s attention had been elsewhere. She had seen those three this very night as she left on her way to the witch’s hut. Them she had heard approaching, and in plenty of time for her to leave the road and rest behind a handy piñon tree (she refused to think of it as hiding, exactly). Back toward town they had gone, and she supposed they were drinking at the Travellers’ Rest right now—and would continue to until Stanley Ruiz closed the bar—but she had no way of knowing that for sure. They could come back.
“If I can’t dissuade ye, very well,” she said, sighing with a vexed resignation she didn’t really feel. “But only to the first mailbox—Mrs. Beech’s. That marks the edge of town.”
He tapped his throat again, and made another of those absurd, enchanting bows—foot stuck out as if he would trip someone, heel planted in the dirt. “Thankee, Miss Delgado!”
At least he didn’t call me sai, she thought. That
’s a start.
2
She thought he’d chatter away like a magpie in spite of his promise to be silent, because that was what boys did around her—she was not vain of her looks, but she thought she was good-looking, if only because the boys could not shut up or stop shuffling their feet when they were around her. And this one would be full of questions the town boys didn’t need to ask—how old was she, had she always lived in Hambry, were her parents alive, half a hundred others just as boring—but they would all circle in on the same one: did she have a steady fellow?
But Will Dearborn of the Inner Baronies didn’t ask her about her schooling or family or friends (the most common way of approaching any romantic rivals, she had found). Will Dearborn simply walked along beside her, one hand wrapped around Rusher’s bridle, looking off east toward the Clean Sea. They were close enough to it now so that the teary smell of salt mingled with the tarry stench of oil, even though the wind was from the south.
They were passing Citgo now, and she was glad for Will Dearborn’s presence, even if his silence was a little irritating. She had always found the oilpatch, with its skeletal forest of gantries, a little spooky. Most of those steel towers had stopped pumping long since, and there was neither the parts, the need, nor the understanding to repair them. And those which did still labor along—nineteen out of about two hundred—could not be stopped. They just pumped and pumped, the supplies of oil beneath them seemingly inexhaustible. A little was still used, but a very little—most simply ran back down into the wells beneath the dead pumping stations. The world had moved on, and this place reminded her of a strange mechanical graveyard where some of the corpses hadn’t quite—
Something cold and smooth nuzzled the small of her back, and she wasn’t quite able to stifle a little shriek. Will Dearborn wheeled toward her, his hands dropping toward his belt. Then he relaxed and smiled.
“Rusher’s way of saying he feels ignored. I’m sorry, Miss Delgado.”
