Summary

The novel is narrated in third-person past tense by a third-person narrator. In Chapter One, Princess Marra frantically attempted to work magic with a charnel pit full of bones and a handful of wires. She cut her fingers and was worried about an infection, but she was worried she would not live long enough for that to matter. The charnel pit was full of the bones of deer, cattle, horses, dogs, and humans. Marra collected dog bones and strung them together while singing. Once she had finished the bone dog, the crows started to caw a warning. She crawled into the pit with her bone dog and pulled her nettle cloak around herself so that she could hide from a man. In the blistered land, the people were cursed by the gods because they had eaten the flesh of humans when all their...