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beds away from the boy and Roland Deschain, the gunslinger saw a third inmate of this queer infirmary. This fellow looked at least four times the age of the lad, twice the age of the gunslinger. He had a long beard, more gray than black, that hung to his upper chest in two straggly forks. The face above it was sun-darkened, heavily lined, and pouched beneath the eyes. Running from his left cheek and across the bridge of his nose was a thick dark mark which Roland took to be a scar. The bearded man was either asleep or unconscious—Roland could hear him snoring—and was suspended three feet above his bed, held up by
a complex series of white belts that glimmered in the dim air. These crisscrossed each other, making a series of figure eights all the way around the man’s body. He looked like a bug in some exotic spider’s web. He wore a gauzy white bed-dress. One of the belts ran beneath his buttocks, elevating his crotch in a way that seemed to offer the bulge of his privates to the gray and dreaming air. Farther down his body, Roland could see the dark shadow-shapes of his legs. They appeared to be twisted like ancient dead trees. Roland didn’t like to think in how many places they must have been broken to look like that. And yet they appeared to be moving. How could they be, if the bearded man was unconscious? It was a trick of the light, perhaps, or of the shadows … perhaps the gauzy singlet the man was wearing was stirring in a light breeze, or …
    Roland looked away, up at the billowy silk panels high above, trying to control the accelerating beat of his heart. What he saw hadn’t been caused by the wind, or a shadow, or anything else. The man’s legs were somehow moving without moving … as Roland had seemed to feel his own back moving without moving. He didn’t know what could cause such a phenomenon, and didn’t want to know, at least not yet.
    “I’m not ready,” he whispered. His lips felt very dry. He closed his eyes again, wanting to sleep, wanting not to think about what the bearded man’s twisted legs might indicate about his own condition. But—
    But you’d better get ready.
    That was the voice that always seemed to come when he tried to slack off, to scamp a job or take the easy way around an obstacle. It was the voice of Cort, his old teacher. The man whose stick they had all feared, as boys. They hadn’t feared his stick as much as his mouth, however. His jeers when they were weak, his contempt when they complained or tried whining about their lot.
    Are you a gunslinger, Roland? If you are, you better get ready .
    Roland opened his eyes again and turned his head to the left again. As he did, he felt something shift against his chest.
    Moving very slowly, he raised his right hand out of the sling that held it. The pain in his back stirred and muttered. He stopped moving until he decided the pain was going to get no worse (if he was careful, at least), then lifted the hand the rest of the way to his chest. It encountered finely woven cloth. Cotton. He lowered his chin to his
breastbone and saw that he was wearing a bed-dress like the one draped on the body of the bearded man.
    Roland reached beneath the neck of the gown and felt a fine chain. A little farther down, his fingers encountered a rectangular metal shape. He thought he knew what it was, but had to be sure. He pulled it out, still moving with great care, trying not to engage any of the muscles in his back. A gold medallion. He dared the pain, lifting it until he could read what was engraved upon it:

    James
Loved of family, Loved of GOD

    He tucked it into the top of the bed-dress again and looked back at the sleeping boy in the next bed— in it, not suspended over it. The sheet was only pulled up to the boy’s rib cage, and the medallion lay on the pristine white breast of his bed-dress. The same medallion Roland now wore. Except …
    Roland thought he understood, and understanding was a relief.
    He looked back at the bearded