She stood fiercely and aggressively on the rocky mound, the black veil of her bonnet billowing out behind her, tendrils of her vivid hair whipping about her taut and angry face. Lucy di Castelloni was watching for the first locomotive on the newly constructed railway line to come into sight, wanting to protest by her presence there against the speedy transport that had become more important than people's homes and livelihoods. In a landscape backed by cypress-covered hills and made up of small farms, a trail of destruction had been scythed these many months past to make a right of way for the iron tracks along which the train would pass on its way to Pistoia.