The first pair of eyes
The novel opens with Ebbe trying to take cattle down to the marsh. They refuse to go. Beyond them, the low tide has exposed the drowned forest she has known since childhood.
Her knowledge is close and particular: the stumps have shapes, positions and familiar names. That everyday attention gives the opening its point of view. She can recognise a change because she knows what ought to be there.
At the marsh edge
Ebbe belongs to the English community of the rise and the marsh. Acha is her mother; Eoppa is her brother. The work of the farm continues around the question she has begun to ask.
A question to carry
Whose knowledge do we trust when the first sign of danger looks like an ordinary detail?