The novel opens with a girl named Ania talking about her childhood. She lives in a cottage on the edge of a small village with her father, the village baker. Every morning, Ania’s father bakes her a special bread roll shaped like a crown and flavored with cinnamon and chocolate. Ania and her father have a running joke about his death which involves him describing the elaborate funeral proceedings she is to organize after his passing.

On Ania’s eighteenth birthday, livestock in the village begin turning up dead, slaughtered by a mysterious creature. The creature’s presence scares away customers, and soon Ania and her father are visited by Baruch Beiler, the local tax collector, who gives them until the end of the week to pay off their debts. Ania reflects that her father “trusted [her] with the details of his death,” (3) but in the end she was too late.