Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [155]
“No need,” she said, at last taking her hand from beneath her apron, “for I brought it out with me, and here ’tis.”
Four
It was a plate both Detta and Mia would have recognized, a blue plate with a delicate webbed pattern. A forspecial plate. After a moment Roland recognized the webbing for what it was: young oriza, the seedling rice plant. When sai Eisenhart tapped her knuckles on the plate, it gave out a peculiar high ringing. It looked like china, but wasn’t. Glass, then? Some sort of glass?
He held his hand out for it with the solemn, respectful mien of one who knows and respects weapons. She hesitated, biting the corner of her lip. Roland reached into his holster, which he’d strapped back on before the noon meal outside the church, and pulled his revolver. He held it out to her, butt first.
“Nay,” she said, letting the word out on a long breath of sigh. “No need to offer me your shooter as a hostage, Roland. I reckon if Vaughn trusts you at the house, I c’n trust you with my Oriza. But mind how you touch, or you’ll lose another finger, and I think you could ill afford that, for I see you’re already two shy on your right hand.”
A single look at the blue plate—the sai’s Oriza—made it clear how wise that warning was. At the same time, Roland felt a bright spark of excitement and appreciation. It had been long years since he’d seen a new weapon of worth, and never one like this.
The plate was metal, not glass—some light, strong alloy. It was the size of an ordinary dinner-plate, a foot (and a bit more) in diameter. Three quarters of the edge had been sharpened to suicidal keenness.
“There’s never a question of where to grip, even if ye’re in a hurry,” Margaret said. “For, do’ee see—”
“Yes,” Roland said in a tone of deepest admiration. Two of the rice-stalks crossed in what could have been the Great Letter , which by itself means both zi (eternity) and now. At the point where these stalks crossed (only a sharp eye would pick them out of the bigger pattern to begin with), the rim of the plate was not only dull but slightly thicker. Good to grip.
Roland turned the plate over. Beneath, in the center, was a small metal pod. To Jake, it might have looked like the plastic pencil-sharpener he’d taken to school in his pocket as a first-grader. To Roland, who had never seen a pencil-sharpener, it looked a little like the abandoned egg-case of some insect.
“That makes the whistling noise when the plate flies, do ya ken,” she said. She had seen Roland’s honest admiration and was reacting to it, her color high and her eye bright. Roland had heard that tone of eager explanation many times before, but not for a long time now.
“It has no other purpose?”
“None,” she said. “But it must whistle, for it’s part of the story, isn’t it?”
Roland nodded. Of course it was.
The Sisters of Oriza, Margaret Eisenhart said, was a group of women who liked to help others—
“And gossip amongst theirselves,” Eisenhart growled, but he sounded good-humored.
“Aye, that too,” she allowed.
They cooked for funerals and festivals (it was the Sisters who had put on the previous night’s banquet at the Pavilion). They sometimes held sewing circles and quilting bees after a family had lost its belongings to fire or when one of the river-floods came every six or eight years and drowned the smallholders closest to Devar-Tete Whye. It was the Sisters who kept the Pavilion well-tended and the Town Gathering Hall well-swept on the inside and well-kept on the outside. They put on dances for the young people, and chaperoned them. They were sometimes hired by the richer folk (“Such as the Tooks and their kin, do ya,” she said) to cater wedding celebrations, and such affairs were always fine, the talk of the Calla for months afterward, sure. Among themselves they did gossip, aye, she’d not deny it; they also played cards, and Points, and Castles.
“And you throw the plate,” Roland said.
“Aye,” said she,