Ruth welcomes two young men into the cottage seeking help, planning to drug and kill them.

Eden arrives at the cottage during a snowstorm, claiming a blown tire stranded her on the nearby road.

Ruth snatches back the hemlock-laced tea from Eden at the last moment, deciding to keep her alive instead.

The gamekeeper arrives begging Ruth to take him back, and Margot secretly drugs his ale with hemlock as instructed.

Ruth strips and butchers the gamekeeper in the strays' room while Eden watches adoringly from the doorway.

Margot finds a newspaper clipping about missing hikers inside Eden's car, suggesting Eden came to the cottage deliberately.

Margot finds a gravely injured hiker bleeding in the woods and leads her back to the cottage as a stray.

Ruth and Eden drug, kill, and butcher the injured hiker while Margot watches with conflicted feelings.

Ruth tells Margot that she killed Margot's father and served him as a meal; Margot vomits in the bathroom.

Patrick pins Margot down in the schoolyard and she bites his finger nearly to the bone, drawing blood and outrage.

Ruth receives a school call about Margot's biting and she and Eden agree that Margot must be consumed.

Eden and Ruth discover Margot has scattered the strays' buried belongings and drag her into the locked bedroom.

Margot steadily eats hemlock to poison her flesh, then drops stored hemlock petals into the simmering stew pot.

Ruth and Eden butcher Margot in the strays' room, telling her the killing is an act of love.

Ruth and Eden eat Margot at a candlelit dinner and collapse dead as the hemlock in her flesh poisons them.

Pool 1 follows the most critical events in Margot's story, from the cottage's deadly routine to the arrival of Eden, who transforms the household entirely. It traces the murder of the gamekeeper—the first victim outside Ruth's usual pattern—and Margot's first act of bringing home a stray, before pivoting to the horror of Margot learning her own father was served to her as food. After Margot bites a schoolyard bully, Ruth and Eden decide she has become too dangerous to keep alive. The pool ends with Margot's deliberate self-poisoning and her killers' deaths at the candlelit table, delivering justice through her own sacrifice.

The core story of cannibalism, betrayal, and Margot's fatal sacrifice.

Ruth roasts one of the young men as a birthday meal for Margot, who feels the meat turn tough with guilt.

Ruth tells Margot how she stalked and killed her very first stray, an older woman walking a back lane alone.

The school bus driver invites Margot to sit next to him at the front after noticing she is being bullied.

Abbie slides over to help Margot with math fractions and tells Margot she likes that she is weird.

A desperately hungry Ruth sobs at the dining table and snaps at Margot for admitting she misses her absent father.

Eden tells Margot and Ruth the rabbit-woman story while preparing food, framing cruelty against innocents as natural and inevitable.

Margot buries the gamekeeper's belongings in a woodland plot but secretly keeps his boot laces to remember him by.

Abbie tells Margot her father never came home and fears he may have been taken by the giants under the fells.

Eden teaches Margot to weave a rabbit trap from fishing wire while Ruth discusses scattering more road nails to catch strays.

Margot gives Abbie a hex woven with the gamekeeper's boot laces and Abbie hugs her in gratitude.

Margot gets her first period at school and a kind office worker named Roz helps her with warmth and supplies.

A hiker in the woods tells Margot a gentler version of the rabbit-woman story before Margot frightens her away from danger.

Ruth holds Margot's head underwater in the bathtub and orders her to prove herself by finding another stray for the cottage.

Margot waits in the woods to lure a stray but cannot bring herself to entrap the hiking woman she encounters.

The bus driver breaks into the cottage, discovers the rotting bodies and Margot's remains, and weeps while calling out her name.

Pool 2 captures the secondary but pivotal events that shape Margot's world and moral development across the full arc of the story. It traces her early unease eating the strays Ruth prepares, Ruth's chilling confession about her first kill, and Margot's growing bonds with the kind bus driver and her schoolmate Abbie. The murder of Abbie's father deepens Margot's guilt and sharpens her empathy, while rabbit-trap lessons and failed stray hunts reveal how far Margot has drifted from Ruth's violent creed. The pool closes with the bus driver's heartbreaking discovery of the truth the cottage had long concealed.

The quieter moments that build Margot's conscience and growing resistance.

Ruth explains that she deliberately scatters nails and glass on the road near the cottage to injure or strand passersby.

Ruth tells Margot she was born craving human flesh and calls her a fossil that is hers alone to unearth.

Baby rabbits are found hung by their slit throats in the school coat closet, a deed secretly committed by Margot.

Eden finds the gamekeeper's boots hidden in the hedge and warns that Margot's empathy for victims could make her a target.

Ruth and Eden dance and Ruth lets go of Margot's hands, making Margot realize she must win Eden's favor.

Eden reveals to Margot that she came to the region deliberately after reading about local disappearances and sensing a kindred spirit.

Ruth slaps Margot across the cheek for defending her friendship with Abbie, and Eden comforts Ruth rather than intervening.

Ruth recounts the myth of Saturn eating his child, and Eden confesses she ate her own newborn son to keep him perfect.

During her school suspension, Margot secretly digs up the strays' buried belongings and scatters them around the property as hidden evidence.

Ruth and Eden cable-bind Margot's ankles and force-feed her cake to fatten her before the planned killing.

Two women with a blown tire arrive at the cottage; the younger woman senses something is wrong with Margot but leaves without acting.

Locked in the bedroom, Margot finds a sewing needle in the floorboards and picks the rusted window lock to escape.

Ruth and Eden chase Margot through the dark woods and overpower her before she can reach safety or find help.

Margot tells Ruth directly to her face that she is evil and should never have become a mother.

Margot's ghost watches police investigators sweep the cottage and finds peace knowing her sacrifice made the homestead safe for future strangers.

Pool 3 collects the key turning points and revelations that shift Margot's understanding of her captivity and her own identity. It moves from early signs of manipulation—the scattered nails, Ruth's possessive fossil metaphor, and the rabbit incident Margot secretly caused—through the discovery that Eden is no accidental arrival but a deliberate seeker of violence. The pool records Ruth and Eden's escalating cruelty, including the Saturn myth told as a veiled threat and the revelation of Eden's disturbing past. It traces Margot's failed escape through the bedroom window and her final confrontation with Ruth, closing with Margot's ghost finding peace in knowing her sacrifice ended the cottage's reign of terror.