Ampersand Jansen was riding his horse through the pines. “Hit don’t bover me nun,” he said, “the way the winds lash at the leaves. I’d as soon let a breeze hurt me dead than to set in the silence of hollows and wait.” It was dark and it was night and the wind foretold such a violent rain, though Ampersand seemed merry. He bounced on the back of his roan. This was something altogether unpleasant to the horse, this bouncing, and any old day now she would decide to kick sad Ampersand dead. “Hat,” he said, for this was the name he had chosen to give to the horse. “Hat I don’t bleave I ever seent a sky such a color as this night’s here. Makes my mind to wander it does.” He turned his head and spit adroitly. “Hat,” he said. “Hat! What color you reckon you’d call that sky there tonight? Roset? Carnelian? Oxblood?”
Hat thought softly to herself; Caput mortuum, is what she thought. Ampersand cogitated on the sky some more, then chewed at a wad of his long pale lover Aydelflæd’s hair — such soft and winding hair which tasted of fennel and rue. He wished to be united with her, for just some little longer while. “Hit jess don’t strike me as the right shade to-night.”
Ampersand and Hat rode tireless through the dark, assuming that, by morning, their small lives would be once more illumined. Yet they bounced along in a most foolish direction; for in yonder’s cabin lived the maiden fair, and yonder’s way led likewise into coal-black sea, and yonder’s valley was the place where hunger dwelt and where no life could gather, and everything that stayed beyond belonged as well to yonder.
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But by and by they rode. Along the ride the horse envisioned a mighty black dagger of hounds at her feet, barking and snapping most murderously. The horse had to keep up a steady pace, so to keep from becoming a meal. “Hit don’t matter nun what I got in my body,” said Ampersand to himself. “For so soon it all doth purge away into a bliss.” He was speaking of the tumors, of the dozens of trembling tumors that wound their way through his poor pale body and caused the Great Pain. He spoke of the tumors in a silken manner, as though he had accepted what they whispered toward. But this, like so much of Ampersand’s nature, was a show he put on for himself to watch.
And inside the horse’s heart, something else: deep in the loamy red, a spire had begun to form. It was only now the size of a straight pin, a minor stalagmite in the organ’s soft floor. But it would grow larger, much larger, would work its way as best it could toward the inky sky, and would thereon inscribe a wondrous message.
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It was morning. Ampersand Jansen sat by the fire, eating him a egg wrapped in ham. Things were gentle inside, had not yet begun their more tremorous ache. Beside him Hat stood still asleep. In her dreams, magnificent flowers falling down from the sky, swallowing everything. Ampersand had removed his shirt and was sunning himself. The flies buzzed about his feet.
“Aydelflæd,” he said. “Aydelflæd, Aydelflæd, Aydelflæd!” But this was just a name. By now he had little more to grasp than that, a small good air which came and went. He could not even remember the maiden’s surname, or her favorite flavor of soap. He believed one perhaps began with an L. “O how eager time doth wrap its garrote round the soul,” he blubbered. “How steady the piani wires tighten round the mind. How so! How so!” The horse was woken by these consternated yowlings. “Hat!” Ampersand said, overjoyed. “Hat you’re back! I feel a sudden compression of the laffter fits awellin inside me I do.” Hat was terribly annoyed. She thought of the cool cool icicles which hung from the trees where she was born. The glassy blades dropped down through her mind, pierced the soft snow below.
“Hat,” said Ampersand. “I bleave we oughta go off an take us a dip in the wuter. Or we could venture up into the peaks.” He removed his socks from a treebranch and pulled them up over his gnarled yellow feet. “I’m a mighty restless fella this mornin. In truth I don’t spose I know which way I’d rather wander.” As he spoke to the horse, he thought to himself, Aydelflæd Aydelflæd Aydelflæd. This, a song which lost more meaning the more that it was sung.
Hat watched him lace up his boots. She was not certain that Aydelflæd even existed. In all the years they’d been together, she had not once seen a woman even glace at Ampersand’s old dirty tooch of a person. In truth, Hat suspected all this was no more than a poem he told to himself. It was sad, really. She pitied the man. Soon he would be an old churl drooling on his deathbed, still trying to tell funny stories to account for what was lost.
Ampersand removed his jug of wyne from out his pouch and began to guzzle. The stuff was sweet and stale against his lips, and driveled down his beard. He was never without it.
Inside the horse’s heart the spire grew marvelous and heavy. It glistened by an unknown light. It weighed as much as bronze and sprouted through the horse’s throat. Soon it would make its way into the world and ascend.
“I don’t like you,” Ampersand said to his face, which the water’s surface was reflecting back at him. “You’re makin me look bad.”
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They rode a long while and then came to a church. Ampersand tied Hat up to a post and went in. Inside the church was flooded with hellebore. Wild white blooms hung from every corner of the space. Hellebores flooded the aisles. They flooded the chancel and flooded the nave and flooded the crossing and flooded each apse. In the foyer they fell to the floor, and across the transept too. Ampersand looked to the ceiling, to the heavenly dome. Flooded.
A humpbacked priest stood at the alter installing more flowers. “Monsignor!” Ampersand said to a priest. “Monsignor I need to do me a confession!” He trundled his way toward the pulpit. “I long to be shrived!” He stopped trundling at the foot of the alter and looked up at the brittle old man. “You busy?”
The priest gazed down at him and sighed. “My child,” he said, “a service is to begin fifteen minutes from now — A funeral.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew away a sniffle. “Might you,” he asked, “not wait until after?”
“Glad to!” Ampersand said. He stepped back a ways and sauntered through the quire, his boots parting the perfectly placed bouquets. At a far back pew he took a seat and bowed his head.
Aydelflæd, he prayed. Aydelflæd Aydelflæd. Please Lord, Aydelflæd. Then the congregation began materializing, and took their seats around him.
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Hat was tied up outside. She had a song stuck in her head. It went Doom dah dah dah, doom doom, Dah doo doom doom doom, dah dee dee dah diddle, dee dah, doom diddle doom. Doom. dah dee, dah, doom, doom doom doom. Dah dee, dah dee dee. Didle dee dah doom doom. But she could not recall the title. A very small child approached her.
“Hello mister horsie!” the child said. “Want a candy?” Brusquely he fed a fat chocolate bar to Hat, which she appreciated greatly, having had not much more than the corn residue Ampersand fed to her all these long years. A wild thrill moved through her and she gave an involuntary whinny. The child giggled. “Want another?” he asked, revealing a chocolate bar just like the last. Hat whinnied again, her legs trembling with pleasure. She felt just like a pony, like something from that wild far off world. The child lifted the candy up toward her. Then, somewhat suddenly, the spire surfaced. It emerged from between Hat’s lips, pierced the candy with its finial, and went swiftly on its way. The boy fell to the ground and watched the spire lift like smoke toward the sky. Hat watched too, her head thrown back, for there was little more that she could do. The spire had grown beyond her capacity. Rapidly it rose into the trees overhead, knocking loose the leaves. The spire was tapered and, while the diameter at its tip was no more than that of a rolling pin, its base’s width was yet to be revealed. Still, Hat felt no discomfort as it rose out of her. Though nor did she feel any particular joy. The spire continued to rise higher, taking the small chocolate bar up with it and casting its shadow across the land. As she watched the thing ascend she thought, Nottamun Town. For that was the song she had had in her head.
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Ampersand was weeping fiercely. The priest had delivered the most moving of speeches about that young lady, that fine young lady whose name he had not caught, and now he was blowing his nose in his sleeve.
“Such fine songs you sang up from the darkness of this life,” he said to the priest. “Such fine and lonesome things wrung out from the rag of misry. Monsignor I bleave I heard the very footsteps of the lord in yer speech.”
“Very good my child,” said the priest. “Very good. Now what do you wish to confess?” Ampersand looked toward the confessional. “Oh,” said the priest, “The shroud will not be needed, for I have seen already the light play off your visage.” This troubled Ampersand, though he knew not why.
“Well sir…” Ampersand began, but he could not quite articulate his sins succinctly. He began again. “I… I was…”
But then the deacon rushed in. “Father!” he said. “Father! The Devil is come down unto us!”
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Ampersand’s dreams had been awful for years. In each of them, the ground collapsed. The trees stayed in place, but the earth around them crumbled away, and he and all the animals plummeted endlessly. He would clutch at the roots of the trees, but they moved like serpents away from him, allowing him to fall. He had had such a dream just last night, and woke with a terrible start.
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By now a sizeable crowd had formed around Hat, who strained bravely under the weight of the spire. The child who had fed the horse the chocolate bar was being questioned now. Though often those that questioned him became distracted by some new stride the spire made. Already it had pierced the clouds.
Ampersand Jansen was not altogether surprised to find his horse in such a state as this. He had often suspected that there was something grand about her, something terribly grand, though he could never say what.
“Git off from my propraty!” he shouted, and rushed to the center of the crowd to be beside his horse. “Hat!” he said. “You okay Hat?”
It was true he had not loved her as best as he could have. All over the world there are men guilty of this, and he was one. Still, a feeling began to work its way through him and there was no name for it he yet could find that fit as well as love. “Oh Hat,” he said. “Dear sweet lovin Hat. The best old roan alive.”
The horse watched the spire grow. It welled out of her like a song. Soon it would break her jaw, crush her weary torso and topple itself, sending debris throughout the small village. For now it went on rising, the people watching patiently.
“To thee do we cry,” the Deacon muttered softly. “To thee do we send up our sighs, our mourning and our weeping in this vale. Turn then thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessèd fruit…”