The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (81 page)

T
IME HAS MOVED ON
(T
HROUGHOUT
)

A way of expressing the changes to Mid-World since the Dark Tower has begun its decline. The Mejis version of this proverb is “Time is a face on the water.”

T
ODANA
(6)

Deathbag. The hazy black aura or shadow around a person that indicates someone has been marked for death. A variant of the word todash.

T
ODASH
(5, 6, 7, M)

Passing between two worlds without using a doorway. The start and end of these trips are heralded by kammen, the todash chimes, which start out sounding beautiful but grow physically and mentally painful. To an observer, the person going todash vanishes, but leaves behind a dull gray glow that approximates their body shape and position as a placeholder. In the other world, the person is free to wander at will, unobserved for the most part, although people generally avoid the todash traveler. The traveler has the ability to pass through solid items in the other world and sometimes sees the vagrant dead. However, the traveler's essence is in the second world. They can return bearing injuries suffered on the other side. Waking a person in a todash state is risky, as is the process of passing from one world to the other, because a person might fall into the space between. Pieces of the Wizard's Rainbow are said to make going todash easier. The Manni, who believe todash is the holiest of rites and most exalted of states, fast and meditate to induce the todash state and use magnets and plumb bobs to determine the best locations.

T
ODASH DARKNESS
(5, 6, 7)

The endless spaces between worlds, where it is always dark. Monsters live in these places like rats in walls. A defective doorway beneath Castle Discordia opens on one. The Crimson King, who hopes to be the lord of the todash darkness, sends his bitterest enemies there.

T
ODASH TAHKEN
(5)

Holes in reality that allow passage from one world to another.

T
OOTER-FISH
(2, 7)

The way Roland pronounces the words “tuna fish.”

T
OUCH
, T
HE
(1, 4, 5, 6, 7)

A kind of psychic ability that some gunslingers, artists and lunatics possess. Alain Johns is strong in the touch, as is Jake. Most members of a
ka-tet
have a little of this, although Cuthbert has absolutely none.

T
RIG
(1, 3, 4.5, 5, 7)

Clever or savvy, cunning or sly.

T
RUM
(5)

The ability to convince others to do things that might seem dangerous or foolhardy.

T
WIM
(6, 7)

The number two or twins.

U
RS
-A-K
A
G
AN
(7)

The Scream of the Bear. A more emphatic version of Urs-Ka Gan, which is the Song of the Bear. Another component of the song Stephen King hears when he writes about the Dark Tower.

V
ES
'-K
A
G
AN
(7)

The Song of the Turtle. The voice that Stephen King hears when the Dark Tower story comes to him. Sometimes he calls it Susannah's Song.

V
URT
(4.5)

Flying creatures from the Endless Forest, sometimes known as bullet-birds. One killed Bern Kells's father by boring a hole right through him.

W
ASEAU
(7)

Bird.

W
ATER-STOOL
(4)

A flush toilet.

W
ENBERRY
(3)

A fruit similar to a strawberry.

W
ERVEL
(4.5)

A poisonous rodent the size of a dog that dwells in the Endless Forest.

W
HEEL
(1, 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 7)

A unit of distance that is approximately 1.1 miles. The subunit is arcs o' the wheel. One yard is roughly two arcs.

W
HORE'S BLOSSOMS
(3)

A disease like syphilis. Also known as mandrus.

w
ORLD HAS MOVED ON
, T
HE
(1, 2, 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 6)

A vague description for the way Mid-World has changed since the fall of Gilead and the decline of the Dark Tower. It indicates that time, distance and direction are no longer stable, but also implies that the halcyon days of Gilead are no more.

W
OT
(4, 4.5, 5)

Reckon or believe.

Y
AR
(1, 3, 4, 4.5, 6, 7)

Yes.

Y
OUNKERS
(3)

Young people.

Z
N
(5)

One of the Great Letters. It means both eternity (zi), now and come, as in come-commala. It appears on the Orizas.

A
t the beginning of the Coda at the end of
The Dark Tower
, King directly addresses his readers. He chastises some for being grim and goal-oriented—that goal being the conclusion of the series. “I hope you came to hear the tale, and not just munch your way through the pages to the ending,” he writes.

Perhaps it didn't start out that way, but the Dark Tower series became a commentary on storytelling. Or maybe it did start out that way. King's ambition in 1970 was to write the longest popular novel in history, and he also wanted to blend the disparate genres of the Western, the epic fantasy and horror. The form of the story would comment on storytelling.

For someone who claims he doesn't talk of himself, as he does when he catches up to Walter at the end of
The Gunslinger
, Roland spends a lot of time talking about himself. When he reaches Brown's cabin, he tells this total stranger the story of his recent adventures in Tull, where he wiped out the town's entire population. Storytelling is a form of confession, though he doesn't seek absolution. He is simply compelled to relate these events.

Once he has a traveling companion—Jake Chambers—he looks back even farther, to his days in Gilead as a boy. As they cross the desert and traverse the mountains, Roland tells of how he and Cuthbert discovered a traitor in Gilead and what happened after they relayed this information to Roland's father. Watching Hax hang was an important moment in his life.

At Jake's insistence, he also tells about his coming of age, a tale that requires him to remember how his mother betrayed his father and Gilead by having an affair with Marten Broadcloak, Steven Deschain's adviser and the court magician. He explains how he allowed Marten to goad him into taking his challenge to become a gunslinger sooner than anyone had ever done before, and how his inspired choice of a weapon—his hawk, David—allowed
him to prevail when, by all rights, he should have been beaten, perhaps maimed, and exiled from his homeland.

When Roland plucks Eddie Dean from the clutches of mobsters and drags him into Mid-World, the young junkie also has a story to tell—the story of life with his older brother, Henry. Roland lets him ramble—the story passes the time as they make their way up the beach—but he also thinks Eddie needs to hear his own story now that he's off drugs for the first time in a long time. In return, while suffering from infection, Roland tells Eddie about his trek across the desert. Later, he tells Eddie and Susannah both versions of that story: the one where Jake shows up at the Way Station and the one where he doesn't.

Two books in the series consist primarily of Roland telling stories about his past. In
Wizard and Glass
, he picks up the tale the day after his coming of age and continues through the following months after he is sent to Mejis for his own safety, where he meets the love of his life. In
The Wind Through the Keyhole
, while the
ka-tet
rides out a killing storm, Roland relates an adventure that took place less than six months after his return from Mejis. “There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world,” he says. In that story, his younger self tells yet another story, this one a fairy tale that his mother used to read to him. The story is meant to occupy the mind of a scared and bored boy who has just lost his father and to teach him about courage. Stories pass the time and take a person away from his troubles. The stories we hear as children are the ones we remember all our lives, King writes, and Roland tells Young Bill that a person is never too old for stories—we live for them.

Roland tells the legends of his world, too—the story of Old Mother and Old Star, for example. His homeland is almost mythic to everyone else he meets in Mid-World. Gilead and Arthur Eld exist so far in the past that many people doubt they ever existed. Overholser of Calla Bryn Sturgis calls Roland's claim to be from Gilead “a children's good-night story.” It would be the same thing for us if someone claimed to be from Atlantis.

Paper in Mid-World is scarce and valuable, so there aren't many books, which means there's no written record. People have to rely on their memories. Even Roland isn't sure which parts of what he's been told about Mid-World are real and which are made up, and he's forgotten a lot of what he knew at one time. He is frequently astonished to come face-to-face with something he had written off as legend, such as Shardik, the Guardian of the Beam who was part of a story he heard as a child.

He tells his
ka-tet
other stories of his wandering years, including his misadventures in Eluria. When he isn't telling stories, he's asking them to tell him stories. He's a glutton for stories, especially those that lead off with “Once upon a time when everyone lived in the forest” or “Once upon a bye, before your grandfather's grandfather was born,” though he usually listens to them like an anthropologist trying to figure out some strange culture by their myths and legends. He asks Eddie and Susannah to tell him
The Wizard of Oz
and “Hansel and Gretel,” both of which bear on their quest, but it's clear that the gunslinger simply likes a good story.

Margaret Eisenhart tells the story of Gray Dick. Father Callahan recounts the story of his life after 'Salem's Lot, and Ted Brautigan records his own life story on a tape recorder for the
ka-tet
to hear while they're preparing to attack Algul Siento. Again, these stories have some relevance to the matters at hand, but they are also self-contained adventures.

Along the way, Eddie starts noticing how fictions from their reality intrude on their adventures. Everything that happens reminds him of a book or a film. The Red Death of Fedic and Poe's story.
Alice in Wonderland
. The Green Palace outside Topeka and
The Wizard of Oz
. The plight of the people in Calla Bryn Sturgis and the plot of
The Magnificent Seven
, directed by John Sturges. The Wolves wear masks that resemble comic book characters and their weapons are straight out of
Star Wars
and Harry Potter.

Matters take a strange turn when Father Callahan is handed a copy of a novel in which he is a character. Naturally, this causes some confusion in the former priest. He knows he's real, but the book contains details of his life that only he knows, and everything written about him is as real as his memories. Disoriented, he starts thinking of other people as being in a story with him.

Then Roland and Eddie discover that Stephen King lives near the place where Calvin Tower (a collector of rare books, such as the valuable edition of
'Salem's Lot
that Father Callahan perused) and his friend Aaron Deepneau are hiding. When they visit the author in 1977, they learn that they, too, are Stephen King's creations, even though he hasn't yet consciously thought up Eddie or the others. Realizing that he's a character in someone else's fiction, and that this author's mistakes affect his reality, is nearly enough to drive Eddie crazy. People don't really die—they leave the story.

Stephen King complains about being Roland's personal secretary. He believes he isn't making conscious decisions about Roland's story but is transcribing what comes to him. Writing is a kind of todash journey in which his consciousness enters and interacts with another world. He didn't make
Roland leave Jake to die under the mountains. That was all Roland's doing, he tells Roland and Eddie. He's not sure he even likes his supposed hero anymore.

Roland isn't terribly fond of his creator, either, thinking that he's lazy, seeking easier tales to work on instead of doing the hard but important work of telling his story. His general assessment of people who make up stories is harsh. He thinks they tell tales because they're afraid of life. Of course, this is coming from a man who has been told all his life that he has no imagination. Even so, while Roland is chiding King to pick up the story again, King is telling Roland to finish his job. The creation of his story works both ways.