The Wind Through the Keyhole

How it opens

Following the Path of the Beam after the Green Palace, Roland's ka-tet comes to the River Whye, where an old ferryman named Bix takes them across. Oy keeps scenting the air, and Bix and Roland agree that it means a starkblast is coming, a storm whose cold, Roland says, can plunge forty limbits below freezing within the hour. They shelter in the stone meeting hall of a deserted village called Gook, and Jake runs back out to fetch Oy just as the storm arrives. Through the night Roland tells a story of his youth. Not long after his mother's death, his father sends him and Jamie DeCurry to the town of Debaria, where reports say a skin-man has torn twenty-three people to pieces. At the Jefferson Ranch the young gunslingers find the bunkhouse full of the dead and, hidden under a heap of old tack in a shed, one survivor, Bill Streeter, whose father was the ranch cook. In a trance Roland puts him in, the boy recalls a blue ring tattooed around the ankle of the man the beast became.

Who you meet early

• Roland DeschainRoland Deschain leads his ka-tet along the Path of the Beam toward the Dark Tower. Sheltering from the starkblast at Gook, he tells them a story from his own youth, his trip to Debaria with Jamie DeCurry not long after his mother's death.
• Eddie DeanEddie Dean travels the Path of the Beam with Roland, Jake, Oy and his wife Susannah, pushing her wheelchair. He waits out the starkblast with them in the Gook meeting hall and listens to Roland's story through the night.
• Susannah DeanSusannah Dean travels with Roland's ka-tet in her wheelchair, beside her husband Eddie. As the starkblast bears down on Gook, she crawls into the meeting hall and gets the fire going while the others haul wood.
• Jake ChambersJake Chambers ranges ahead of the others with Oy and his father's gun. When the starkblast reaches Gook, he runs back out for Oy, and Roland hauls them both through the door.
• OyOy, Jake's billy-bumbler, keeps facing back along the road and scenting the air, then turns in tight circles. Bix says the throcken are never wrong about a starkblast.
• Steven DeschainSteven Deschain, Roland's father and his dinh, appears in the story Roland tells of his youth. Soon after Gabrielle's death he sends Roland and Jamie DeCurry to Debaria, though he has his doubts about the skin-man.
• Jamie De CurryJamie DeCurry, called Jamie Red-Hand, travels to Debaria with the young Roland in the story Roland tells. He reads the skin-man's tracks at the Jefferson Ranch, and Roland sends him up to the salt-miners with Sheriff Peavy.
• Bill StreeterBill Streeter, called Young Bill, is the son of the Jefferson Ranch's cook in the story Roland tells. The skin-man kills the men in the bunkhouse, his father among them, and Bill survives by hiding under a pile of tack in an old hostelry. Roland locks him in a cell in the Debaria jail for safety and begins to tell him a story.