Sasha teaches Annis how to fight with a spear in the Carolina woods under cover of night.

Sasha intervenes when her enslaver pursues Annis and is sold away as punishment for her defiance.

Before being taken away, Sasha tucks the elephant-tusk awl into Annis's hair and says goodbye forever.

Annis and Safi are both sold and forced to begin a grueling march toward New Orleans.

Safi is sexually assaulted by one of the march's overseers and then escapes alone into the night.

A spirit appears during the march and tells Annis to call her Aza.

The marchers arrive in New Orleans, and Annis sees free women in bright headdresses moving through the streets.

A doctor examines Annis at the enslaved people's market and declares she would sell best as a fancy girl.

Annis contradicts the seller and insists she is a housemaid, refusing the role of sexual servant.

A small woman purchases Annis and takes her to a sugar plantation in rural Louisiana.

The plantation's male enslaver attempts to assault Annis, and his wife punishes Annis by sending her to the hole.

The plantation's male enslaver dies of yellow fever during the night.

The female enslaver attacks Annis with a heated fire iron over raccoon meat and sends her back into the hole.

Trapped in the hole, Annis uses the elephant-tusk awl to pick the lock and frees herself.

Annis escapes downriver on a raft and reaches a clearing at the edge of a vast lake.

These events follow the backbone of Annis's story, from her earliest combat training in the Carolina woods to her escape from a Louisiana sugar plantation and her arrival at a place she can finally call her own. The narrative begins with Sasha teaching Annis how to fight with a spear, a gift of both skill and cultural heritage, and quickly escalates when Sasha is sold away for daring to protect her daughter from assault. Annis is sold alongside Safi and endures a brutal march to New Orleans, where the spirit Aza becomes her guide and she must fight to define her own identity at the slave market. On the Louisiana plantation, she navigates the cruelty of two merciless enslavers, fends off assault, and endures brutal punishment in the underground chamber known as the hole. It is the elephant-tusk awl — her grandmother's final gift, passed down through her mother — that provides both the means and the symbol of her escape. The pool closes with Annis free, floating downriver toward a clearing at the edge of a vast lake that she will make her own.

Annis's journey from enslavement to freedom.

Annis eavesdrops on her half-siblings' tutor and learns a lesson comparing the labor of bees to plantation work.

During a sparring session, Sasha tells Annis about Mama Aza being sold by the Fon king as punishment for an affair.

Safi asks to stay at Annis's cabin, and the two young women share their first kiss.

Annis brings Safi to the nighttime clearing, where bees hum with unusual activity and a pale, white-clad figure appears in the trees.

Annis's sire walks in on Annis and Safi kissing.

A scarred, frightened woman named Phyllis takes Safi's vacant spot in the line of marching enslaved people.

A man unable to swim drowns at a river crossing, and the overseers cut his body loose to float away.

Phyllis tells Annis about the Great Dismal Swamp, a vast wetland sheltering communities of escaped enslaved people.

Aza tells Annis that her mother Sasha was sold north and inland and that she followed Sasha until Sasha stopped calling.

Annis finds what she believes is a spear carving on the market wall and uses her awl to carve a small bee beside it.

An enslaved man named Emil resists punishment from a white overseer and is locked underground in the hole.

Esther warns Annis about the male enslaver's habit of assault and reveals he keeps a plaçage woman in New Orleans.

Esther's escaped brother Bastian emerges from the woods during Annis's mushroom hunt and gives her rabbit meat to bring to Esther.

Esther and Mary fall into the river while gathering wood for the cane refinery and are swept away by the current.

The spirit of Mama Aza appears to Annis on the escape raft and describes her fierce will to survive the Middle Passage.

These events illuminate the key relationships, discoveries, and encounters that give texture and depth to Annis's journey without constituting its central plot milestones. They begin with the lessons Annis absorbs on the Carolina plantation — about bees, about her grandmother Mama Aza's warrior past, and about the love she discovers with Safi — and continue through the small but consequential moments of the forced march south. In New Orleans, Annis finds a hidden marking on the market wall and learns what she can of her mother's fate, while on the Louisiana plantation she is warned by Esther, meets the free man Bastian, and witnesses the courage of the women around her. The pool captures moments of community and quiet resistance: Emil sent to the hole, Esther's warning about the enslaver, Bastian bringing food from the woods, and the sight of Esther and Mary tumbling into the river in a bid for freedom. The pool closes with one of the narrative's most powerful revelations — the appearance of Mama Aza's spirit, who tells Annis the story of surviving the Middle Passage and choosing, fiercely, to live.

The people and places that shaped Annis's path.

Annis overhears the tutor reading from Dante's Inferno, and the declaration 'let us descend' becomes a lasting metaphor for her life under enslavement.

After Safi vanishes into the night, a disembodied voice calls Annis by her true name, Arese, and she cannot identify its source.

At a river crossing, Annis begins to sink and briefly contemplates drowning, but chooses to fight toward the surface.

Aza visits Annis at night on the march and reveals that she walked with Annis's mother and grandmother before her.

Aza admits to Annis that she left Sasha to die after Sasha stopped calling on her following Mama Aza's death.

Aza commands Annis to allow herself to be sold to a specific small woman; Annis distrusts Aza but eventually agrees.

After being released from the hole for the first time, Annis cuts off all her hair and burns it as an offering.

Working in the cane fields, Annis recalls a buried memory of being recaptured alongside Sasha while fleeing toward the Great Dismal Swamp.

Annis confronts Aza at night and demands to know why the spirit failed to help her and her mother escape to the swamp.

Sent to gather herbs while the enslaver is ill, Annis collects both healing and poisonous mushrooms and considers using the deadly ones on him.

Bastian appears at the edge of the cane field, kisses Annis, and asks her to run away with him.

During her escape on the river, Annis hears Sasha's voice reminding her that she herself is the weapon she needs.

Aza asks Annis to remain in New Orleans and become her priestess, but Annis firmly refuses and presses onward.

Aza storms away in fury after Annis refuses to stay, leaving Annis completely alone in her clearing.

Annis discovers she is pregnant and vows to raise her child with warrior knowledge and the full story of their family's history.

These events capture the internal turning points, spiritual confrontations, and quiet revelations that determine who Annis becomes over the course of the narrative. They trace her growing awareness — from the day she first hears the phrase 'let us descend' and recognizes her own hellish descent, to the night she hears her true name called in the dark and begins to understand that her identity cannot be taken from her. Her tempestuous relationship with the spirit Aza is at the heart of this pool, as Annis questions the spirit's motives, demands answers about her mother's abandonment, and ultimately rejects Aza's offer of a future on Aza's terms. Acts of defiance and grief — contemplating drowning but choosing survival, burning her hair as an offering, confronting Aza in fury, kissing Bastian at the edge of the cane field — show how Annis slowly and painfully reclaims her own agency. The pool ends with two final acts of self-determination: Annis silencing Aza's demands once and for all, and discovering she is pregnant, resolving to raise her child the way her mother raised her.