For this week’s “beginning,” I’m going back to one of the great journey tales by Stephen King, his second book in The Dark Tower series: The Drawing of the Three. Here’s how it begins, after this image of the book’s cover:
The gunslinger came awake from a confused dream which seemed to consist of a single image: that of the Sailor in the Tarot deck from which the man in black had dealt (or purported to deal) the gunslinger’s own moaning future.
He drowns, gunslinger, the man in black was saying, and no one throws out the line. The boy Jake.
But this was no nightmare. It was a good dream. It was good because he was the one drowning, and that meant he was not Roland at all but Jake, and he found this a relief because it would be far better to drown as Jake than to live as himself, a man who had, for a cold dream, betrayed a child who had trusted him.
I’m a huge fan of The Dark Tower series, so I would read this book regardless of the beginning. That said, I think it’s a powerful opening, especially for those who read The Gunslinger, the first book in the series. But that’s just me – let me know what you think about the beginning of The Drawing of the Three.