Chapter 1: Summary, Analysis, and Key Themes

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

(Note: This page is for Chapter 1, so there is no previous chapter.)

Now, let's dive in.

Summary

Marra sits beside a charnel pit in a blighted, fog-laden forest, her hands cut and infected from binding dog bones together with wire. The pit's layers reveal a grim history: the starving inhabitants ate deer, cattle, horses, dogs, and finally each other. She selects a broad skull with powerful jaws and builds the skeleton from the skull downward, discarding bones that don't fit her vision. She sings a folk song about a harper who made a harp from a dead woman's bones, and she muses on the nature of souls, deciding that the skull, not the heart, is where the soul resides.

When the crows call a warning, Marra pulls her cloak of owlcloth tatters and spun-nettle cord over her head and slides into the pit, cradling the half-built dog. A man passes, muttering, but the cloak's magic breaks up her outline, and he dismisses her as a trick of the light. She recalls two people she met at a fire a few nights ago—a woman and a man who were cursed by the spirits for eating the wrong flesh. They warned her about dangerous cannibals in the land, people who were