Abigail awoke, disoriented and afraid. There was a noise in the distance- a mournful shriek, or perhaps a soft shuffle- that made her skin crawl. She lay there for a moment trying to sort through the conflicting information her brain was giving her.
    She looked over at the one small window of her room and saw a hideous, distorted white face peering back at her. It capered obscenely, waggling it's long black tongue and pressing it's face against the flawed glass. She had opened her mouth to scream when the horse shook it's long head, dislodging snow from it's mane. Abigail sat there for a moment, gasping for air and staring at the white horse. She chuckled nervously.
    "You were just dreaming, Abigail," she muttered to herself. "Go back to sleep and dream good things this time." She curled into a ball and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the horrible sight from her mind.
    I wonder how that horse got out, she thought. It was quickly followed by, We don't have any white horses...
    She flew out of her bed and to the window. The horse just stared back calmly, thinking it's horsey thoughts. She tried to peer around the horse and find it's rider, but saw nothing but night and snow. She closed her eyes for a moment, smiling and thinking how silly all of this was when she was hit by a blast of cold air. She looked around, confused.
    The night was perfect and still. The sky above her was black and filled with stars and the bare trees were laden with drifts of snow. Abigail turned in a slow circle, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering violently.
    "You're dreaming, Abby. You're dreaming. Wake up," she whispered desperately. Her white words were throw into her face by the cold breeze. She turned completely around and came face to face with the horse. They looked at each other for a moment, Abigail terrified and the horse placid.
    The horse closed it's sad, black eyes and trotted around the freezing child.
    "Wait!" she called out to the horse, struggling through the shin-deep snow in her bare feet. "Tell me what's going on! Please!" The horse stopped at the crest of a small hill and turned to look at her. She was frozen, literally and figuratively.
    Listen...
    So she listened. There was a strange... sound? But sounds don't make the ground beneath your feet shake, or inspire your heart to stop beating, or make you want to cry until your tears were gone and there was nothing left to cry but blood.
    It sounded (felt?) like the hooves of horses, wailing widows, bleeding feet, shrieking babies, the silence of once-strong men, sickness, loss, and death. Abigail stood there, wide-eyed and shivering, as the horse turned and ran. Then they came.
    The horses appeared around her, stampeding, some of them actually brushing against her as they passed. She stood as still as she could while trembling, feeling things no twelve year old should know the names for- rage, depression, hoplessness- and watched the glowing white horses run past, screaming their sorrow to the night. Finally, after years of standing there, the last horse ran past and over the hill.
    Abigail fell to her knees and began to scream.

    Bride Miller held her shrieking daughter and cried. Her husband and sons stood at the door, completely at a loss for what to do.
    "Henry! Seamus! Get more blankets!" Her two youngest boys scurried off to do as their mother bade. "Your sister is freezing..." she sobbed, rocking the hysterical girl. John and John Junior came into the room, father kneeling next to the bed to pray, son sitting next to his mother and holding Abigail.
    Finally, abruptly, Abigail woke up. She stared blindly at the ceiling for a moment, whimpering.
    "Mama," she gasped, clutching desperately at Bride. "Mama, those poor people... Those poor people..." Her parents were too busy helping her to hear what she was saying. But her brother heard.
    "What people, Gail?" he whipered, pulling her close. Henry and Seamus ran into the room and, one on each side of the blanket, pulled the blanket over their sister. John didn't even notice that he had been covered, too.
    "The dark ones with the pretty hair," she whispered back, staring at him with newly intense eyes. He thought for a moment.
    "Indians?"
    "We stole from them, John-jay. All of it. We're killing them..." Bride leapt from the bed, gasping something about bed warmers and dragging her two younger sons with her. From beneath the blanket, the Miller patriarch prayed.

    The next day, it began. Just before noon, the first of the mounted soldiers could be seen in the distance. Abigail fought tooth and nail, finally knocking her mother and brother to the floor and rushing through the house. She stood on the front porch, watching. After it was determined that she would not be moved, her mother simply put shoes on her daughter's feet and a quilt around her shoulders. John-jay sat on the stairs, whittling, occasionally glancing at his sister, but never at the approaching figures.
    An hour passed and the figures could be clearly seen. There were soldiers of the United States Army riding thier horses and joking amongst themselves. Behind them was the most pitiful sight any of the Millers had ever seen.
    That dreadful march continued on the road past the Miller's farm for hours. There were people shuffling along in shackles, people carried along on make-shift litters, or lacking that, in the arms of one of the few remaining strong men. Children whined their hunger and pain to stoic parents. And, at some point, Abigail joined them. Even her ever-vigilant brother didn't notice. She walked with them and helped where she could. They never noticed her, as if she were only a spirit drifting alongside them.
    She was changed, and she did not know if it was for the better.