Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide describe scenes that deal with enslavement and racism.

In two sentences, the prologue explains that the opening line of a different book was “The first arrow hit a child” (1).

Livira is a young girl living in a barren, harsh land called the Dust. She gets into a fight with a bigger boy named Acmar, and the other children cheer her on. Her Aunt Teela intervenes and sends Livira to fetch water. On the way to the well, she encounters a woman named Ella, who gives her a ball of twisted wind-weed that contains the image of a young boy.

As Livira gets water, a girl named Katrin asks why she got into the fight. Livira claims that Acmar insulted her, but in reality, she wanted to stop him from taking a scrap of paper that she found. While she cannot read the writing on it, she is curious about it, but the others in the village rebuff her questions. Livira wants to go to the city, Crath, but Katrin says that its residents won’t let her in. Their argument is interrupted when a stranger appears in the distance.