As a child, Natalia watches a tiger seize and chew on a zookeeper's arm at the zoo before dropping him alive.

Natalia learns by phone that her grandfather has died unexpectedly while traveling far from home.

Natalia and Zóra arrive in Brejevina and meet their hosts, the Ivans, who have a family digging in their vineyard.

A tiger escapes the bombed-out city zoo and wanders north into the mountains near the village of Galina.

The young grandfather goes to the well at night and secretly witnesses the tiger inside the butcher's smokehouse with a woman.

Village men attempt to hunt the tiger; the blacksmith's musket misfires and blows off his own head, and he is eaten.

Natalia and Zóra begin examining and vaccinating the sick orphan children at the converted monastery.

On the pretext of buying candy, Natalia drives alone to Zdrevkov to retrieve her grandfather's belongings.

Duré's family gathers to disinter and ritually wash the found bones, fulfilling the ceremony needed to release the dead cousin's spirit.

Natalia offers to bury the symbolic heart at the crossroads in exchange for Duré allowing his family to receive medical treatment.

Natalia waits through the night at the crossroads and follows a shadowy figure who digs up the buried jar.

Citizens form human shields around the zoo and city landmarks during bombing raids to protect them from destruction.

Natalia trails the mysterious figure to a deserted house and discovers it is Barba Ivan, who has been acting as the village mora.

After returning her grandfather's bag to her grandmother, Natalia discovers his treasured copy of The Jungle Book is missing.

Natalia travels to Galina to piece together the story of the tiger's wife that her grandfather never directly told her.

Natalia's journey begins with a childhood memory of the tiger at the zoo and is shattered by news of her grandfather's unexpected death far from home. She travels with her friend Zóra to vaccinate orphans in Brejevina, where she becomes entangled with a grieving family digging for a dead cousin in the vineyard. Woven through her present mission is the story of a tiger who escaped a bombed zoo and wandered into her grandfather's childhood village, setting terrifying events in motion. Natalia retrieves her grandfather's belongings, brokers a deal to bury a symbolic heart at the crossroads, and waits through the night hoping to encounter the mythical mora. She ultimately discovers that the mysterious figure collecting souls from the crossroads is the kind fisherman Barba Ivan, and returns home to find her grandfather's Jungle Book has vanished — a disappearance that sends her to Galina to uncover the story he never told her.

The core events driving Natalia's investigation of her grandfather's death.

A government official questions the family about their backgrounds; the grandfather angrily kicks him out of the apartment.

The grandfather refuses to support the war, is forbidden to practice medicine, and resigns his university teaching position.

An elephant is led through darkened city streets at night, and Natalia and her grandfather watch together, reconciling their distance.

Natalia wakes before dawn in Brejevina, stumbles outside, and falls into one of the excavation holes in the vineyard.

The apothecary gives the young grandfather a worn copy of The Jungle Book, a book he cherishes for the rest of his life.

Someone leaves pieces of meat each night progressively closer to Galina, luring the tiger out of the mountains and into the village.

Fra Antun mentions over lunch that the village of Zdrevkov, where the grandfather died, is only an hour's drive away.

Natalia learns from a fellow medical student that the grandfather once secretly saved Marshall Tito's life during a surgical emergency.

Natalia and Zóra are caught smuggling black market skulls across the Romanian border and the grandfather rescues them wearing his white coat.

Luka the butcher beats his deaf-mute wife after discovering she has been luring the tiger into his smokehouse using his own meat.

After Luka vanishes from Galina, the deaf-mute woman begins appearing in the village smiling, and the villagers start calling her the tiger's wife.

Dariša the Bear, a legendary hunter and taxidermist, arrives in Galina and agrees to hunt the tiger on behalf of the villagers.

The young grandfather draws pictures to explain the locations of Dariša's traps to the tiger's wife so she can dismantle them each night.

Natalia and her grandfather stand vigil together at the zoo on a night when bombing begins over the city.

Natalia returns her grandfather's recovered belongings to her grandmother, completing the errand she promised at the start of her journey.

This pool traces the parallel lives of Natalia and her grandfather through the disruptions of war, professional setbacks, and moments of quiet connection. The grandfather's refusal to support the civil war costs him his career, while a late-night elephant sighting repairs his fractured relationship with his teenage granddaughter. In the grandfather's childhood village, the mysterious nightly luring of the tiger sets the stage for violent conflict, while the apothecary quietly shapes the boy's destiny with a single book. Natalia's own path to medicine involves a cross-border skull-smuggling escapade, and her present mission to Brejevina is quietly complicated when a lunch conversation reveals how close she is to where her grandfather died. The pool closes as Natalia finally fulfills her promise and delivers her grandfather's belongings safely to her grandmother, bringing the practical thread of her journey to a close.

The personal milestones and historical upheavals shaping Natalia and her grandfather.

Watching an elephant pass through the streets, the grandfather tells Natalia to guard her stories carefully, then begins the deathless man tale.

The grandfather and another doctor arrive at a village epidemic and find a man, Davo, sitting up alive in his nailed-shut coffin.

The grandfather tests the deathless man by weighting him and sinking him in a lake; Gavran Gailé walks out alive at dawn.

The grandfather is orphaned young and raised in Galina by his grandmother, and the apothecary's scientific calm inspires him to pursue medicine.

Natalia and her grandfather visit their damaged summer house in Verimovo, and a devastating fire breaks out on the hill above.

During a second encounter, Gavran Gailé explains to the grandfather that he is Death's nephew, cursed with immortality for defying his uncle twice.

Luka the butcher travels to Sarobor, befriends the silk merchant's daughter Amana, and plans to marry her and escape Galina forever.

Amana runs away with Gavran Gailé on the eve of her wedding to Luka, having fallen in love with the deathless man.

Amana's father dresses his younger deaf-mute daughter in wedding clothes and tricks Luka into marrying a stranger he has never met.

As the tiger's wife's pregnancy becomes visible, the frightened villagers increasingly blame her as the devil's wife and begin plotting against her.

The nine-year-old grandfather becomes the tiger's wife's only friend in the village and receives a gift of tiger hairs from her.

Dariša discovers the tiger's wife has been dismantling his traps; he grabs her in the woods and the grandfather accidentally shoots him dead.

The grandfather walks into a deserted Sarobor before its bombing and finds Gavran Gailé waiting in a hotel restaurant.

The apothecary gives the grandfather a potion to bring to the tiger's wife; she drinks it and dies — the potion was poison.

Natalia finds a page torn from The Jungle Book in her grandfather's coat pocket, containing tiger hairs and the single word 'Galina.'

This pool follows the chain of revelations that give both the deathless man story and the tiger's wife story their power. The grandfather's three encounters with Gavran Gailé — at a tuberculosis epidemic, at a miracle pilgrimage site, and in a doomed city before its bombing — each peel back another layer of the deathless man's nature and deepen the grandfather's understanding of how to face death. Meanwhile, the web of deception surrounding Luka and the tiger's wife gradually unravels, revealing that the deathless man himself is the reason she ever came to Galina. The tiger's wife's pregnancy and the villagers' escalating fear converge in a brutal turning point, as the grandfather accidentally kills the hunter Dariša and then unknowingly delivers the poison that ends the tiger's wife's life. The pool closes with Natalia finding the torn page her grandfather left as a final message — the hidden clue that sets her on the path to learning everything she was never told.

The discoveries, reversals, and revelations woven through the novel's two folktales.