Girl slips through the Jamestown palisade in the dark, wearing stolen boots and a stolen cloak, and runs into the forest.

Girl reaches a frozen river and discovers a fish trapped in the ice, prying it free with her hatchet for food.

Girl crosses the first river by sprinting across cracking ice at night, reaching the far bank just before it breaks apart.

A soldier dispatched from the fort to capture the girl is discovered and killed by Powhatan people at the river.

Girl lights a fire inside a rock crevasse and sleeps deeply warm for the first time in months.

A Jesuit hermit living alone in the forest spots the girl at her fire and decides she is a devil he must stone to death.

Jesuit priest hurls a stone that knocks the girl unconscious, and she floats away downriver in his carved wooden boat.

Girl wakes on the drifting boat, paddles herself to shore, cooks oysters she finds, and discovers pearls inside them.

Girl passes Powhatan children playing on a riverbank; they briefly notice her and then forget about her entirely.

Girl's fever worsens and her boat finally sinks, forcing her to continue on foot using her oar as a walking staff.

Girl hides behind a waterfall while two Piscataway hunters pass nearby, remaining perfectly still until she is certain they have gone.

Girl realizes she has contracted smallpox and laughs in despair at what this means for her chances of survival.

Hoping to be killed, girl walks toward a mother bear and her cubs, but the bear simply collects her cubs and moves away.

Dying of smallpox, girl envisions an alternate version of herself who survives alone in the wilderness for many years.

Girl dies of smallpox beside a river; her scattered bones nourish the soil and an oak tree grows through her ribcage.

Pool 1 follows the central arc of the girl's journey, from her nighttime escape through the Jamestown palisade to her death from smallpox in the wilderness. She survives early obstacles through resourcefulness and faith, finding food and crossing dangerous rivers, while the soldier sent to retrieve her is killed by Powhatan people at the riverbank. Her journey is violently interrupted when a Jesuit hermit attacks her and she drifts unconscious downriver, and later she is forced to continue on foot after fever and the river claim her boat. Her faith sustains her until smallpox strips it away, and she confronts death directly by walking toward a mother bear that refuses to kill her. In her final days she envisions an alternate self surviving alone for years, but ultimately accepts her death with calm, returning to the natural world that briefly sustained her.

The girl's desperate flight from Jamestown to her death in the wilderness.

Dutch sailor on the voyage to the colony shares an orange with the girl and they dream of a shared future together.

A hurricane strikes the convoy of ships; girl ties herself and Bess to the ship's netting to keep them both from being swept away.

Dutch sailor is swept overboard during the hurricane while searching for the girl, and the whole company mourns his loss.

Girl finds a squirrel's nest in the forest, kills the baby squirrels, and takes their stored cache of nuts for food.

Girl kills a female duck sleeping on her nest and steals her eggs, imagining the grief of the mallard when he wakes.

Mistress takes the four-year-old girl from the poorhouse as a replacement for her recently deceased pet monkey.

Girl repairs the Jesuit hermit's wooden boat with pitch and uses it to travel swiftly downriver through the forest.

A hailstorm traps the girl inside the hollow roots of a dead elm, where she discovers grubs living inside the wood to eat.

A red bird creeps into the girl's shelter during the storm and asks whether she is ready to give up her immortal soul and die.

Mistress's son Kit and his university friends corner the girl and sexually assault her; the mistress dismisses it as the common lot of women.

Girl catches fish swimming upriver to spawn and smokes them over a fire to carry as provisions for her journey.

Feverish, the girl stumbles off what she believes is a cliff but is only a slight incline, and wakes to find her side badly hurt.

Girl loses faith in God entirely and feels a vast emptiness consume the space inside her where her belief once resided.

Bess refuses to eat the food the girl prepares and slowly dies of despair inside the failing Jamestown colony.

A vulture lands near the girl as she lies dying, and she feels glad because its presence means her death is close.

Pool 2 illuminates the backstory and secondary events that give the girl's journey its emotional weight, beginning with the brief romance and devastating loss of the Dutch sailor on the voyage to the colony. Her early life as a dehumanized servant is revealed when the reader learns she was taken from a poorhouse as a small child to replace a dead pet monkey, and the violence of her servitude is confirmed when the mistress's son and his friends assault her without consequence. The journey itself is marked by desperate acts of survival—killing squirrels and ducks, eating grubs from a dead tree, and repairing a stolen boat to travel swiftly downriver. Her faith collapses entirely as her body fails, and a vulture's arrival signals the end she has been both fighting and accepting throughout her ordeal. The full horror driving her from the fort is finally disclosed when the reader learns that the dying Bess was cannibalized by the people who should have protected her.

The backstory, journey hardships, and the truth behind the girl's escape.

Girl steals the dead master's boots and her mistress's fur-trimmed cloak to equip herself for the wilderness escape.

Girl sneaks outside the fort to find edible roots, cooking them in a stolen kettle as a last attempt to feed the dying Bess.

Minister strikes the girl in the face when she drinks the hot broth she made for Bess rather than surrendering it to him.

A Powhatan princess arrives at the fort bearing gifts of food, and the girl watches the well-fed visitors with quiet curiosity.

Girl passes close to an Indigenous village in the darkness but steers deliberately away, driven entirely by fear of the unknown.

A bear enters the girl's cave shelter at night; she holds herself completely still until it leaves, then flees without her gloves.

Girl wakes in a spring meadow and feels completely at home in the world and at peace with God for the first time.

Girl walks through a strikingly clear and beautiful forest and marvels at it, not realizing the Powhatan people have carefully cultivated it.

Girl begins naming every tree and plant she passes and realizes the immense power that the act of naming gives a person over the world.

Girl watches a bear stare in silent wonder at a waterfall and questions whether such wonder means the animal must have a soul.

Girl is locked inside a room with her mistress's plague-stricken first husband by the other servants and remains there until he dies.

Girl steals honey from an active beehive and escapes the pursuing bees by submerging herself in the hot spring pool nearby.

A wolf knocks the girl's makeshift tent into her campfire in the night, and one of her two precious blankets burns.

Minister catches the girl at the palisade wall and tries to strangle her to death; she stabs him and runs out into the forest.

Girl's last conscious thought is of an ant crawling across her forehead; she hopes it will rejoice in its brief and beautiful life.

Pool 3 traces the key decisions and revelations that define the girl's internal transformation, beginning with her theft of supplies and the hidden events that finally drove her to flee—including the minister's violence and the colony's slow abandonment of the dying Bess. Her fear of others, shaped by colonial prejudice, is shown through her deliberate avoidance of Indigenous villages even as she recognizes signs of their presence. Pivotal encounters with nature—a bear entering her shelter, a meadow at peace, a bear staring in wonder at a waterfall—challenge her received beliefs about God and the soul in ways no human encounter could. The backstory of her dehumanizing servitude is crystallized when the reader learns she was locked as a child in a room with a dying man, and the full circumstances of her escape are revealed when the minister's attempted murder finally comes to light. Her final thought—a wish for an ant's happiness—encapsulates how completely she has shed her colonial self and joined the natural world she once feared.

The turning points, revelations, and philosophical discoveries that transform the girl.