The Dark Tower IV Wizard and Glass (33 page)

Still, he wouldn’t leave her mind; she knew, even if Aunt Cord didn’t, that there had been an unseen third present at their quarrel this morning.

She knew something else as well, something that would have upset her aunt to no end.

Will Dearborn hadn’t forgotten her, either.

About a week after the welcoming dinner and Dearborn’s disastrous, hurtful remark to her, the retarded slops-fella from the Travellers’ Rest—Sheemie, folks called him—had appeared at the house Susan and her aunt shared. In his hands he held a large bouquet, mostly made up of the wildflowers that grew out on the Drop, but with a scattering of dusky wild roses, as well. They looked like pink punctuation marks. On the boy’s face there had been a wide, sunny grin as he swung the gate open, not waiting for an invitation.

Susan had been sweeping the front walk at the time; Aunt Cord had been out back, in the garden. That was fortunate, but not very surprising; these days the two of them got on best when they kept apart as much as they could.

Susan had watched Sheemie come up the walk, his grin beaming out from behind his upheld freight of flowers, with a mixture of fascination and horror.

“G’day, Susan Delgado, daughter of Pat,” Sheemie said cheerfully. “I come to you on an errand and cry yer pardon at any troubleation I be, oh aye, for I am a problem for folks, and know it same as them. These be for you. Here.”

He thrust them out, and she saw a small, folded envelope tucked amongst them.

“Susan?” Aunt Cord’s voice, from around the side of the house . . . and getting closer. “Susan, did I hear the gate?”

“Yes, Aunt!” she called back. Curse the woman’s sharp ears! Susan nimbly plucked the envelope from its place among the phlox and daisies. Into her dress pocket it went.

“They from my third-best friend,” Sheemie said. “I got three different friends now. This many.” He held up two fingers, frowned, added two more, and then grinned splendidly. “Arthur Heath my first-best friend, Dick Stockworth my second-best friend. My third-best friend—”

“Hush!” Susan said in a low, fierce voice that made Sheemie’s smile fade. “Not a word about your three friends.”

A funny little flush, almost like a pocket fever, raced across her skin—it seemed to run down her neck from her cheeks, then slip all the way to her feet. There had been a lot of talk in Hambry about Sheemie’s new friends during the past week—talk about little else, it seemed. The stories she had heard were outlandish, but if they weren’t true, why did the
versions told by so many different witnesses sound so much alike?

Susan was still trying to get herself back under control when Aunt Cord swept around the corner. Sheemie fell back a step at the sight of her, puzzlement becoming outright dismay. Her aunt was allergic to beestings, and was presently swaddled from the top of her straw
’brera
to the hem of her faded garden dress in gauzy stuff that made her look peculiar in strong light and downright eerie in shade. Adding a final touch to her costume, she carried a pair of dirt-streaked garden shears in one gloved hand.

She saw the bouquet and bore down on it, shears raised. When she reached her niece, she slid the scissors into a loop on her belt (almost reluctantly, it seemed to the niece herself) and parted the veil on her face. “Who sent ye those?”

“I don’t know, Aunt,” Susan said, much more calmly than she felt. “This is the young man from the inn—”

“Inn!” Aunt Cord snorted.

“He doesn’t seem to know who sent him,” Susan carried on. If only she could get him out of here! “He’s, well, I suppose you’d say he’s—”

“He’s a fool, yes, I know that.” Aunt Cord cast Susan a brief, irritated look, then bent her attention on Sheemie. Talking with her gloved hands upon her knees, shouting directly into his face, she asked:
“WHO . . . SENT . . . THESE . . . FLOWERS . . . YOUNG . . . MAN?”

The wings of her face-veil, which had been pushed aside, now fell back into place. Sheemie took another step backward. He looked frightened.

“WAS IT . . . PERHAPS . . . SOMEONE FROM . . . SEAFRONT? . . . FROM . . . MAYOR . . . THORIN? . . . TELL . . . ME . . . AND . . . I’LL . . . GIVE . . . YOU . . . A PENNY.”

Susan’s heart sank, sure he would tell—he’d not have the wit to understand he’d be getting her into trouble. Will, too, likely.

But Sheemie only shook his head. “Don’t ’member. I got a empty head, sai, so I do. Stanley says I a bugwit.”

His grin shone out again, a splendid thing full of white, even teeth. Aunt Cord answered it with a grimace. “Oh, foo! Be gone, then. Straight back to town, too—don’t be hanging
around hoping for a goose-feather. For a boy who can’t remember deserves not so much as a penny! And don’t you come back here again, no matter who wants you to carry flowers for the young sai. Do you hear me?”

Sheemie had nodded energetically. Then: “Sai?”

Aunt Cord glowered at him. The vertical line on her forehead had been very prominent that day.

“Why you all wropped up in cobwebbies, sai?”

“Get out of here, ye impudent cull!” Aunt Cord cried. She had a good loud voice when she wanted to use it, and Sheemie jumped back from her in alarm. When she was sure he was headed back down the High Street toward town and had no intention of returning to their gate and hanging about in hopes of a tip, Aunt Cord had turned to Susan.

“Get those in some water before they wilt, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty, and don’t go mooning about, wondering who yer secret admirer might be.”

Then Aunt Cord had smiled. A
real
smile. What hurt Susan the most, confused her the most, was that her aunt was no cradle-story ogre, no witch like Rhea of the Cöos. There was no monster here, only a maiden lady with some few social pretensions, a love of gold and silver, and a fear of being turned out, penniless, into the world.

“For folks such as us, Susie-pie,” she said, speaking with a terrible heavy kindness, “ ’tis best to stick to our housework and leave dreams to them as can afford them.”

She had been sure the flowers were from Will, and she was right. His note was written in a hand which was clear and passing fair.

Dear Susan Delgado,

I spoke out of turn the other night, and cry your pardon. May I see you and speak to you? It must be private.
This is a matter of importance.
If you will see me, get a message to the boy who brings this. He is safe.

Will Dearborn

A matter of importance. Underlined. She felt a strong desire to know what was so important to him, and cautioned
herself against doing anything foolish. Perhaps he was smitten with her . . . and if so, whose fault was that? Who had talked to him, ridden his horse, showed him her legs in a flashy carnival dismount? Who had put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him?

Her cheeks and forehead burned at the thought of that, and another hot ring seemed to go slipping down her body. She wasn’t sure she regretted the kiss, but it had been a mistake, regrets or no regrets. Seeing him again now would be a worse one.

Yet she wanted to see him, and knew in her deepest heart that she was ready to set her anger at him aside. But there was the promise she had made.

The wretched promise.

That night she lay sleepless, tossing about in her bed, first thinking it would be better, more dignified, just to keep her silence, then composing mental notes anyway—some haughty, some cold, some with a lace-edge of flirtation.

When she heard the midnight bell ring, passing the old day out and calling the new one in, she decided enough was enough. She’d thrown herself from her bed, gone to her door, opened it, and thrust her head out into the hall. When she heard Aunt Cord’s flutelike snores, she had closed her door again, crossed to her little desk by the window, and lit her lamp. She took one of her sheets of parchment paper from the top drawer, tore it in half (in Hambry, the only crime greater than wasting paper was wasting threaded stockline), and then wrote quickly, sensing that the slightest hesitation might condemn her to more hours of indecision. With no salutation and no signature, her response took only a breath to write:

I may not see you. ’Twould not be
proper.

She had folded it small, blew out her lamp, and returned to bed with the note safely tucked under her pillow. She was asleep in two minutes. The following day, when the marketing took her to town, she had gone by the Travellers’ Rest, which, at eleven in the morning, had all the charm of something which has died badly at the side of the road.

The saloon’s dooryard was a beaten dirt square bisected by a long hitching rail with a watering trough beneath. Sheemie was trundling a wheelbarrow along the rail, picking up last night’s horse-droppings with a shovel. He was wearing a
comical pink
sombrera
and singing “Golden Slippers.” Susan doubted if many of the Rest’s patrons would wake up feeling as well as Sheemie obviously did this morning . . . so who, when you came right down to it, was more soft-headed?

She looked around to make sure no one was paying heed to her, then went over to Sheemie and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked frightened at first, and Susan didn’t blame him—according to the stories she’d been hearing, Jonas’s friend Depape had almost killed the poor kid for spilling a drink on his boots.

Then Sheemie recognized her. “Hello, Susan Delgado from out there by the edge of town,” he said companionably. “It’s a good day I wish you, sai.”

He bowed—an amusing imitation of the Inner Baronies bow favored by his three new friends. Smiling, she dropped him a bit of curtsey (wearing jeans, she had to pretend at the skirt-holding part, but women in Mejis got used to curtseying in pretend skirts).

“See my flowers, sai?” he asked, and pointed toward the unpainted side of the Rest. What she saw touched her deeply: a line of mixed blue and white silkflowers growing along the base of the building. They looked both brave and pathetic, flurrying there in the faint morning breeze with the bald, turd-littered yard before them and the splintery public house behind them.

“Did you grow those, Sheemie?”

“Aye, so I did. And Mr. Arthur Heath of Gilead has promised me yellow ones.”

“I’ve never seen yellow silkflowers.”

“Noey-no, me neither, but Mr. Arthur Heath says they have them in Gilead.” He looked at Susan solemnly, the shovel held in his hands as a soldier would hold a gun or spear at port arms. “Mr. Arthur Heath saved my life. I’d do anything for him.”

“Would you, Sheemie?” she asked, touched.

“Also, he has a lookout! It’s a bird’s head! And when he talks to it, tendy-pretend, do I laugh? Aye, fit to split!”

She looked around again to make sure no one was watching (save for the carved totems across the street), then removed her note, folded small, from her jeans pocket.

“Would you give this to Mr. Dearborn for me? He’s also your friend, is he not?”

“Will? Aye!” He took the note and put it carefully into his own pocket.

“And tell no one.”

“Shhhhh!” he agreed, and put a finger to his lips. His eyes had been amusingly round beneath the ridiculous pink lady’s straw he wore. “Like when I brought you the flowers. Hushaboo!”

“That’s right, hushaboo. Fare ye well, Sheemie.”

“And you, Susan Delgado.”

He went back to his cleanup operations. Susan had stood watching him for a moment, feeling uneasy and out of sorts with herself. Now that the note was successfully passed, she felt an urge to ask Sheemie to give it back, to scratch out what she had written, and promise to meet him. If only to see his steady blue eyes again, looking into her face.

Then Jonas’s other friend, the one with the cloak, came sauntering out of the mercantile. She was sure he didn’t see her—his head was down and he was rolling a cigarette—but she had no intention of pressing her luck. Reynolds talked to Jonas, and Jonas talked—all too much!—to Aunt Cord. If Aunt Cord heard she had been passing the time of day with the boy who had brought her the flowers, there were apt to be questions. Ones she didn’t want to answer.

All that’s history now, Susan—water under the bridge. Best to get your thoughts out of the past.

She brought Pylon to a stop and looked down the length of the Drop at the horses that moved and grazed there. Quite a surprising number of them this morning.

It wasn’t working. Her mind kept turning back to Will Dearborn.

What bad luck meeting him had been! If not for that chance encounter on her way back down from the Cöos, she might well have made peace with her situation by now—she was a practical girl, after all, and a promise was a promise. She certainly never would have expected herself to get all goosy-gushy over losing her maidenhead, and the prospect of carrying and bearing a child actually excited her.

But Will Dearborn had changed things; had gotten into her head and now lodged there, a tenant who defied eviction. His
remark to her as they danced stayed with her like a song you can’t stop humming, even though you hate it. It had been cruel and stupidly self-righteous, that remark . . . but was there not also a grain of truth in it? Rhea had been right about Hart Thorin, of that much Susan no longer had any doubt. She supposed that witches were right about men’s lusts even when they were wrong about everything else. Not a happy thought, but likely a true one.

It was Will Be Damned to You Dearborn who had made it difficult for her to accept what needed accepting, who had goaded her into arguments in which she could hardly recognize her own shrill and desperate voice, who came to her in her dreams—dreams where he put his arms around her waist and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her.

She dismounted and walked downhill a little way with the reins looped in her fist. Pylon followed willingly enough, and when she stopped to look off into the blue haze to the southwest, he lowered his head and began to crop again.

She thought she needed to see Will Dearborn once more, if only to give her innate practicality a chance to reassert itself. She needed to see him at his right size, instead of the one her mind had created for him in her warm thoughts and warmer dreams. Once that was done, she could get on with her life and do what needed doing. Perhaps that was why she had taken this path—the same one she’d ridden yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that. He rode this part of the Drop; that much she had heard in the lower market.