The oldest horse at the edge of the field that borders a railroad won’t return to her stall until an old patriarch who rode her for two decades takes the reins himself, speaking to her in soft Romani. Some beasts conceal fear better than others. The last time he fetched this one, he feared she knew somehow he’d tried to sell her. He failed to get the price sought, so returned her to fields where she paws the wildflowers. In the lateness of the day in the makeshift courtyard of an encampment, the old man watches ravens plummet between rows of hickory and oak trees, cawing angrily, as if Elijah refused their bread. As he descends the field now, he fades for a moment into the shadows of trees, holding his hat against the rising wind. The sun inches westward beyond a shoal of storms as his wife emerges from the house. She steadies a chipped decanter that holds fistfuls of daisies picked from the field ravens now halo between the tridents of distant lightning, a sky under which horses, like dark fire, are circling. ***