“Are we going to kill her?” Roland thought, and thought hard. At last he looked up, biting his lip. “We should.” “Aye. We should. But are we going to?” “Not unless we have to, I reckon.” Later he would regret this decision—if it was a decision—bitterly, but there never came a time when he did not understand it. He had been a boy not much older than Jake Chambers during that Mejis fall, and the decision to kill does not come easily or naturally to most boys. “Not unless she makes us.”
