(no subject)

[lastgunslinger]

Argument:

“No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves, don't we?" So spoke Roland Deschain, on the edge of the Borderlands, in the book called Wolves of the Calla. But we’ve got to have endings, don’t we? It is the custom of the country. And so, almost against his will, Stephen King brought the tale of the Dark Tower to an end; to the only end it could have, the only right one—two ends, one a happily ever after, or as near as we get in this world, and the other a nightmare.

He warned us not to look, so he did, but we can’t not look. There has to be an ending, good, bad or ugly. So Roland Deschain came to the Tower he had killed, betrayed and fought for for time out of mind, and he breached it, and he entered—and then… oh then…

O, Discordia.

He came without the Horn of Gilead he should have blown there, for he’d left it in the dust, not worth the time to save, left in the dust with all his friends—and if Henry Dean, brother of Eddie Dean of Roland’s ka-tet (and another dead friend, O Discordia), taught anyone anything it was this: if you kill what you love you’re damned. Even the damned love, but love is not always enough.

Roland came to the Tower, and found there his life recapitulated. And when he reached the top, was drawn back in time, to the beginning. To do it again. Because hell is repetition. And if you kill what you love you’re damned.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Again. And again. And again.

Sometimes love isn’t enough.

But sometimes it is. Sometimes there are second chances. At Milliways, practically every day. In the Book, when Roland was sent back to begin again—for the tenth or ten thousandth time—he was given the Horn of Gilead, that he might have a chance. If he stood. If he was true. But at Milliways, before all that, Roland met Joe Manco, he of Arizona, who never played fair if he could help it. They were well-met, and stood together when Roland’s enemy Walter came also, and both were true, say thankya. Walter left a cunning trap for Joe, who reminded him all too much of the gunslinger, but he broke free and brought the Horn of Gilead from Jericho Hill to Milliways. To Roland.

But the gunslinger had to earn it, and this is where a girl named River Tam entered Roland's life. In befriending River, Roland discovered that in those other worlds than these (delah) there were those who cut on the brains of born gunslingers, mutilating them, profaning them -- all as part of the attempt to bring down the Dark Tower. And so Roland Deschain summoned his friends. And they went to war.

From there Roland passed back into canon and passed it much the same—the deaths of Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers and even little Oy, the departure of Susannah, the rescue of the talented Patrick Danville and the death of the loathsome Dandelo. He broke the Breakers and saved the Beams and Stephen King and his world. All worlds. And at last he came to End-World. To Can’-Ka No Rey, where the Tower stands…

Come with me, I beg. He’s an old friend and I’d say goodbye. And more, I’d deny Discordia. I’ll repudiate it. For Roland Deschain has come to the Tower with his Horn by the grace of the love of one last dead friend, and I’d show you what he finds there.





19

…neither pride nor hope rekindling at the end descried, so much as gladness that some end might be.

–Robert 'Butch' Browning, 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came', Stanza III, lines 3-6

I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her "What do you want?" She answered, "I want to die."

– T.S. 'Sundance' Eliot, 'The Waste Land', Epigraph.

Repudiation

Roland Deschain, he of Gilead, crosses Can'-Ka No Rey at sunset, chanting the names of the dead and lost. His own last of all, the most lost and the deathless.

But as he draws to the close something unrolls in his mind, memories put away and faded, grey as a tale or a dream, but springing to new life. He has not thought of Milliways in a long time—Jake’s death was nearly the last time, the knee Jake had hurt to win his guns betraying them both, spilling him in the street to watch his son die as Roland had been warned he would, and he had known ka for the wheel it was. There was River Tam's message as well -- something that had both heightened his grief and ameliorated it. Other than that there had been only a spark of understanding when Oy died, of completion. Oy had been at Milliways. The circle was closed. There was nothing left he could do to change his fate, to defy ka with the knowledge Joe had pushed on him.

(By then the horn at his side was so much a part of him that it did not strike him that without Milliways he would have come to the Tower with it unfound.)

(But in another where in a garden He looks up from the big book Roland would call ka and asks His sister, “What did you do?”

And She of the the kohl’d eyes and mysterious smile only smiles it and says, “Milliways, my brother, and not I. One taste of the old time sets all to rights.”)

But now it rushes back, the trial of manhood and the faceoff with Walter and the long vigil and vengeance and memory and the drawing of the Hanged Man and everything else, and the names rise on his tongue. First the three from the Tet Consortium, from their first palaver. Then the name of Earth-that-Was, in memory of Crowley. And then:

“Bernard Wrangle, he of Milliways!”

“Meg Giry, she of Paris!”

“Fleur Delacour, she of France!”

“Moiraine Sedai, she of Cairhien and the White Tower!”

“River Tam, she of Serenity!”

“Joe Manco, he of Arizona!”

“Death, she of the Endless!”

Seven names.

By now he stands without the door, and for the last time he draws his ancient gun, and the door gives before him, and he lays it by the foot of the tower with the cross of Aunt Talitha and a St Christopher’s medal that has seen more worlds than its maker could have imagined. Then he stands again and raises the Horn of Gilead to his lips, and it is like a kiss from a (kohl-eyed) girl of ageless beauty, and when he blows it, the call echoes from the mouths of the roses till the whole world shakes with it and he thinks the stones of the Tower itself must shake with—

—the call of the White. The voice of Yes. Of doors found and the riders on the hill and the world remade. Of Dark cast out and Shadow purged and love unbroken and redemption. Always redemption. And his heart broke with it, and Roland of Gilead came at last through the gate of the Dark Tower backwards, falling at last in death and in triumph.

She waits for him in this firstlast room, and She comes to him with that mysterious smile, and he understands it at last. And She takes him up—it should be ridiculous, the tall, broad man in the arms of the pale maiden, but She carries us all, you know, and we all say thankya. We are ever in her arms. In the midst of Life we are in Death, and none know it better than Roland of Gilead that was.

Together they mount the stairs of the Dark Tower, and she brings him to the top, to the clearing at the end of his path.

“Is this what has waited here, my lady?”

“For you. This time. Oh, Roland, my dear one, I have been waiting. I have been with you on all your long road, but always just a step behind.” There in the clearing, she places her hands on his shoulders and looks up into his faded weary shooter’s eyes.

“Death, but not for me. Yes.” He bows his head, and looks down into her face. Does he remember the long turnings of that wheel, and his unimaginable weariness? I don’t know, only that he weeps in the clearing, and she holds him, and he tells her, “I have ever loved you.”

“For you, gunslinger. This time for you. Lay down your guns and come to me.” Her siren call—did he not hear it, in the desert, when wounded, a thousand times, Morphia, daughter of Night, calling for him so sweetly?

He hesitates still, for they have a history, in another where and when—“There was another with claim on your heart.”

“There was and still is. And you will find loves lost here in the clearing. But now is yours and ours, and I have been waiting a very long time for you.” She kisses him, and it should numb his lips, but he has gone beyond the world where such things matter. “If you love me, Roland, then love me.”

There is redemption, say thankya, and renewal, and the wind of ka blows through the roses of Can’Ka No Rey as the Beams heal themselves and the lost ones are spun out again from the nexus of time and the nexus of size, and the last gun of Gilead grows cold in its shadow—but the last son of Gilead and Eld is not there, for he has broken free of the trap he laid for himself and come at last to the Dark Tower and the clearing at the end of the path.

And we all say thankya.


99
Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer.
Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.
Death is speechless, so hear my speech.
This is Roland, who served his ka and his tet. Say true.
May the forgiving glance of S’mana heal his heart. Say please.
May the arms of Gan raise him from the darkness of the earth. Say please.
Surround him, Gan, with light.
Fill him, Chloe, with strength.
If he is thirsty, give him water in the clearing.
If he is hungry, give him food in the clearing.
May his life on this earth and the pain of his passing become as a dream to his waking soul, and let his eyes fall upon every lovely sight; let him find the friends who were lost to him, and let every one whose name he calls call his in return.
This is Roland, who lived well, loved his own, and died despite how ka would have it.
Every man owes a death. He has earned one. This is Roland. Give him peace.

Rest

John Altum
Middlebury VT, 3/9/2005
I tell God thankya.

Sweeney Agonistes
Decatur GA, 15 August 2005
We tell God thankya.