Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of death. 

The book begins in a room above a tailor shop, where an old man named Spelhorst lives alone. He has “no wife, no children, no family” and spends the days when he feels sick in bed and the days when he feels well walking around the city (7). On one of the days when he is feeling well, Spelhorst sees a group of puppets hanging in a toy store window: “a king and a wolf and a girl and a boy and an owl” (9). He is captivated by the girl puppet, who reminds him of someone he used to love.

Spelhorst asks if he can buy the girl puppet, but the vendor tells him the puppets must remain together since they are in the same story. Spelhorst is confused by the comment but ultimately agrees. That night, he sits the girl on his desk and looks at her while putting the other puppets in a trunk with his name on it. As he looks at the girl puppet, he begins to cry and apologizes to her, calling her Annalise.