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The horse slanted its ears forward and nickered softly al me. It probably had been standing there a long tune and it may have been frightened and I got the feeling that it was glad to see a human being. It wore a saddle and was tied to the fence by a bridle rein.
"Hi, horse," I said. "Howsa fellow?"
It whuffled at me and I walked up and stroked its neck. It swung its head around and tried to nuzzle me.
I stepped back and had a look around and there was no one near. So I untied the reins and got them over the horse's neck and straightened out, then rather awkwardly climbed into the saddle. The horse seemed pleased to be untied and swung obediently as I reined it.
There was a tangle of wagons on the Taneytown Road, but I managed to get through them without anyone hailing me and once clear of the road, I headed the horse southeast and he took off at an easy lope.
We met small groups of men, plodding off somewhere, and had to swing around a battery of guns, but gradually the traffic cleared and the horse finally reached the Baltimore Pike and we went pounding down it, away from Gettysburg.
16
A few miles out of Gettysburg the road came to an end, as I should have known it would, for back there on South Mountain, where Kathy and I had landed in this place, there had been only a cart track and nothing like a road. The Pike and Taneytown Road and all the other roads, perhaps even Gettysburg itself, had been no more than a stage setting for the battle, and once one left the battle area, there was no need of roads.
Once the road gave out, I gave up any attempt to pick a route and let the horse go as it pleased. There was really no point to keeping on at all. There was no place I had in mind to go, but I let the horse keep on. For some reason, it seemed that it might be a good idea to build up a little distance.
Riding under the stars, in soft summer weather, I had the first chance since I'd come into the land to try to do some thinking. I reviewed in my mind all that had happened since I'd turned off the freeway onto the winding road that led to Pilot Knob and I asked a lot of questions about all the things that had happened after that, but there seemed no ready answers. When that became apparent, I realized that I was searching for answers that would serve my human logic and I knew that was a fruitless search. In the face of all I knew, there was no reason to believe that human logic had a thing to do with what was going on. I admitted to myself that the only possible explanation must be based upon the speculation in my old friend's manuscript.
Therefore there was a place, and I was in it, where the force-substance (a very awkward term) of imagination became the basic stuff from which matter, or a semblance of matter, or a new concept of matter, might be formed. I worked for quite a while to work out a statement which would cover the situation, to reduce the maybe's and the if's to a workable proportion, but it was a hopeless job and, finally, for working purposes, I labeled this place that I was in the Land of Imagination and let it go at that. It was a cowardly way to do it, but maybe later on someone could work out a definition for it.
So here was this land, forged of all the fantasy, all the make-believe, all the fairy tales and folk stories, all the fictions and traditions of the race of Man. And in this land stalked and lurked and ran all the creatures and all the situations the ever-busy minds of all the flighty little primates had ever given birth. Here (on any night, or just on Christmas Eve?) Santa Claus went storming through the skies in his reindeer-drawn sleigh. Here, somewhere (on any night, or only of a Halloween?) Ichabod Crane whipped his jaded mount down a rocky road in a desperate effort to reach a magic bridge before the Headless Horseman could hurl the pumpkin that hung at his saddle-horn. Here Daniel Boone stalked Kentucky meadows with his long rifle slung across his arm. Here the Sandman roamed and foul and gri
All of these, all that man could think of or had thought of long enough—all the madness and the wit, all the buffoonery and the viciousness, all the lightness and the sadness which all men, in all ages, from the cave up to the present moment, had fashioned in their minds were in this very place.
It was madness, surely, when viewed in the cold light of human logic, but there it was, all around me. I rode through a landscape" that was not the kind of landscape that one would find on earth, but a fairy landscape frosted by the starlight that came from stars among which was not recognizable a single one of the constellations that one saw on the human earth. A land of the impossible, where silly saws were laws, where there could be no such thing as logic since it all was built of imagination, which knew no kind of logic.
The horse kept on going, taking it at a walk where the going was uncertain, loping along quite smartly when the way was clear. My head ached a little and when I put my hand up to the wound, my fingers still were sticky, but a scab, I could feel, was begi
I expected that at any moment we might meet some of the strange denizens of this fantastic land, but none of them showed up. The horse finally struck a trail somewhat better traveled than the one he had been following and settled down into a lope. The miles went spi
Suddenly the horse came to a jarring stop and it was only by sheer luck that I didn't keep on going, sailing straight above his head. He had been loping along, unconcernedly, like a contented rocking horse, and his halt came without warning, a stiff-legged skidding to a stop.
His ears were slanted forward and his nostrils flared, as if he might be searching for something in the dark ahead.
Then he screamed in terror and leaped sidewise off the path, pivoting on his hind legs and heading at a frenzied gallop straight into the woods. I stayed on his back only by throwing myself upon his neck and grabbing at his mane and it was well I did, for there were occasional low branches that certainly would have brained me if I'd been upright in the saddle.
His senses must have been considerably sharper than mine, for it was not until he was off the path and ru