The narrator begins the novel by describing the setting in England as “miles of desolate, uncultivated land” and “rough hewn paths over craggy hills or bleak moorland” (3). There are the remains of Roman roads and settlements strewn about, and life is hard for the people living there. There’s a sickness that spreads, and ogres that roam the countryside, carrying off children occasionally.

Beatrice and Axl, the novel’s two main protagonists, are an elderly couple who live “an isolated life” in a sprawling warren carved into a hill, like many of the settlements in the region (4). 

One morning, Axl wakes up early and sits outside, thinking.He feels sure that there is some big decision that he will make today with his wife, Beatrice, who is sleeping inside. He wonders about the mysterious mist that seems to have engulfed the landscape and seeps even into their chamber. Memories are a struggle to recall, and he has no sense of the past, just that he had a child once. The same loss of memory seems to have afflicted the whole village.

Axl recalls a time when a red-haired woman, who was a village healer, had visited their dwelling.