Summary

In Prologue, for seven weeks, 17-year-old Noria has taken care of her family’s property. She has done so to please her late father Mikoa. Although her friend Sanja assures her “the dead don’t need pleasing,” Mikoa’s presence feels close (1). Afraid of the authorities, Noria has not visited the spring for water in weeks. Noria thinks of Sanja who is now missing, hoping she is already in the place she planned to go.

In Part One, “Watchers of Water,” Chapter 1, on the day Mikoa took Noria to the spring for the first time, he told her water was “the most versatile of all elements” (5). Mikoa explained water’s close companionship with death. While water “has no beginning” or end, death is a beginning and an end (5).

Noria was surprised by the spring, located in a cave, due to...