A boy named Jack Dory runs from the dark woods to the closest village, where he tells an old woman about the robbers who killed his parents in the woods. Though the woman is weary of the world’s evils, she finds herself sympathetic to Jack’s tale. She makes him repeat his name until he understands that “his parents were gone, dead, but that he himself still lived” (58).

Four years later, when Jack is 12, the old woman dies. In those four years, Jack has made a name for himself in the village as someone with a profound memory and a gift for performance. Because of this, he “belonged to no one and was loved by all” (60), but despite this, he has frequent nightmares of the robber who killed his parents, on whom he wants to take revenge.

In Jack’s village, one of the king’s soldiers lies, feverish, at the inn. An angel of death visits him, and when the soldier begs for death, the angel refuses, saying the soldier has a chance for forgiveness if this chance is written down. The innkeeper’s wife sends for Jack to take a message to the monastery. The soldier tells Jack about the angel and how she promised forgiveness, to which Jack replies, “That’s a nice promise” (64).