After the end-summer storms, Liff travels with Heorest Holt, Gembel, Halena Garm, and Esi to the barren coast where the river meets the sea. Gembel releases experimental tracked catfish into the ocean, explaining that the engineered plankton should support them and imagining future fishing expeditions for giant fish. The outing feels celebratory, with talk of Imir’s future and of the home the Founders left behind.

Late that night, Holt wakes Liff and apologizes for not making a better world for her. Holt insists life on Imir must become better, not merely survivable, and hints that something or someone lies beyond the known colony. Liff senses that Holt is speaking of one of the adults’ forbidden subjects, connected to guilt, anxiety, and the hidden costs of Landfall’s survival.

In winter, Liff reflects on the colony’s future: decaying Enkidu technology, Olf’s rougher local manufacturing, renewable power, paper, biofuels, and the possibility that later generations will live simpler lives. Holt is dissatisfied with this slow, rustic progress. After heated arguments with Esi, Holt arrives at Liff’s family’s new farm with Garm and prepares to leave without explaining his destination.

That night, Holt tells Liff a story-like version of his obsession. Before landing on Imir, the colonists heard a voice, and Holt believes the source is still somewhere in the hills. Liff turns this unknown presence into the figure of a Witch, while Holt admits he hopes the being or force may hold knowledge or power that could transform the colony, perhaps even restore access to the stars. The next morning, Liff watches Holt and Garm drive into the hills.

Afterward, Holt is gone, and Liff holds two explanations in her mind: the ordinary story of an old man dying from age and frailty, and the magical story of the Witch taking him. Grief makes Liff withdraw from school, friends, and chores until Miranda visits the farm out of concern. Surrounded by consoling adults and sitting with widowed Esi, Liff rejects their platitudes and privately imagines rescuing Holt from the Witch, though Liff knows the world does not work that way.

One night, Liff answers a knock and finds the Witch at the door: a severe, unfamiliar woman with two great black birds. The woman denies being a witch and says she is looking for her friends; Liff demands Holt back, but the woman dismisses the idea. Inside the farmhouse, the woman explains that she needs Liff to bring certain strangers in town to her so she can find her friends and summon a ghost. Later, Liff questions whether the encounter was real, but Gembel’s angry reaction to the idea of birds confirms that birds on Imir would mean something has gone seriously wrong.