Here are the beam pairs from the book: Bear and Turtle, Fish and Rat, Horse and Dog, Elephant and Wolf, Eagle and Lion, Hare and Rat. Roland's understanding of his world was based on "lore" that he learned from Vannay many (many, many) years earlier, and he has forgotten much of what he knew. A lot of it he took to be mere legend, not truth, until he was confronted with the reality of it.
In the graphic novel, you'll notice that Jake questions Roland about the animals and Roland says "Forget the animals." He has no interest in them or their order -- he only cares for what lies at the nexus of the beams: the Tower. Given that Robin Furth, the author of The Dark Tower Concordance, scripted the Marvel books and knows the order of the beams perhaps even better than Steve does, I suspect she allowed this scattershot menagerie to demonstrate Roland's disinterest in the details at the periphery.
Quite frankly, though, the geography of Mid-World as explained by King is impossible. We know that there is a north/south beam from The Wind Through the Keyhole, and that Gilead is on the north beam (the lion beam, Guardian: Aslan, with the eagle Garuda at the other end). However, Roland has been traveling southeast along the bear/turtle beam. If the beams are arranged like the hours on clock, this isn't possible -- southeast would correspond to a mark halfway between the 4 and 5. There is a beam that runs ESE and one that runs SSE, but SE isn't possible.
When I drew my map of the known region of Roland's world for The Dark Tower Companion (of which I am quite proud, by the way!) I chose the NNW - SSE diagonal for the bear/turtle beam, as it was most consistent with all the details I used to construct the chart.
In the graphic novel, you'll notice that Jake questions Roland about the animals and Roland says "Forget the animals." He has no interest in them or their order -- he only cares for what lies at the nexus of the beams: the Tower. Given that Robin Furth, the author of The Dark Tower Concordance, scripted the Marvel books and knows the order of the beams perhaps even better than Steve does, I suspect she allowed this scattershot menagerie to demonstrate Roland's disinterest in the details at the periphery.
Quite frankly, though, the geography of Mid-World as explained by King is impossible. We know that there is a north/south beam from The Wind Through the Keyhole, and that Gilead is on the north beam (the lion beam, Guardian: Aslan, with the eagle Garuda at the other end). However, Roland has been traveling southeast along the bear/turtle beam. If the beams are arranged like the hours on clock, this isn't possible -- southeast would correspond to a mark halfway between the 4 and 5. There is a beam that runs ESE and one that runs SSE, but SE isn't possible.
When I drew my map of the known region of Roland's world for The Dark Tower Companion (of which I am quite proud, by the way!) I chose the NNW - SSE diagonal for the bear/turtle beam, as it was most consistent with all the details I used to construct the chart.
