The narrator, Sogolon, who will eventually become the Moon Witch, recounts a dream memory of her childhood. She and her three brothers live in the jungle. Her brothers keep her shackled in a termite pit, only bringing her out to plow the fields. They blame Sogolon for the death of their mother, who died while giving birth to her. The two older brothers prepare for the donga (a tournament of stick fighting).

One night, she is pulled from the termite hill by a giant python. As it slithers toward the family hut, a woman bursts forth from its innards. The snake makes love with the middle brother and whispers that the brothers must kill their sister. He says they’ve tried leaving her to die in the jungle, but she came back unscathed, protected, he believes, by “grass fairies.” Their entire village shuns them because they believe Sogolon is a witch.

Over time, Sogolon grows stronger, but she is still confined to the termite pit and forced to labor in the fields. Her brothers sexually abuse her, claiming “no woman would have them in their own village” (9). The youngest brother threatens her with genital mutilation. Sogolon realizes her brothers are liars who have dark secrets: Having impregnated the python woman several times over, the middle brother denies knowing her and smashes her eggs out of shame; the older brother claims to have perpetrated murder and rape, but Sogolon “see[s] that nothing that come out of the mouth of these brothers could ever pass as true” (10).