Ella is the first rider. Margaret is the last. The night is as black as a miner. Stars are spun like glass. Elephants and birds, tattooed beneath her shirt. Relics from her time in Asia Minor. Ella is the first rider, cold and pale as chalk. The bones of her face are aligning underneath the oaks. She sees men as skin and bones, with hearts in the shape of stones, perpetrators of some terrible vision. Ella is the first rider. Her mouth is so severe. The fierce little jaws of a lizard are dangling from her ear. And her every freezing breath is drawn from the mouth of death. And her every little whisper is a murder.