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The people knew of the Ruin only from the Song that was presented at the yearly Gathering.
Though this quote from the beginning of Chapter 3 is short and straightforward, it conveys a great deal of information about the role of storytelling in Kira’s community and about the power that stories wield. The Ruin is important enough to bring the entire village together each year to listen to its story narrated in the Song, but the only information available about it is exactly what is presented during that Gathering. This shows not only how limited official sources of information are for the villagers at large, but also how central stories are to their lives. The villagers rely on oral tradition to teach them history, but the Council of Guardians encourages them to put their faith and trust in a single, standardized story, rather than allowing knowledge and education to circulate freely. The story the Singer tells is thereby essential to the Council’s control of the villagers.
But it made her smile, to see it, to see how the pen formed the shapes and the shapes told the story of a name.
In this quote, which comes from Chapter 9 when Thomas is transcribing Kira’s memories of Annabella’s dyeing lessons, Kira finds illicit joy in watching Thomas write the names of different plants. Girls are not allowed to learn how to read in Kira’s village, but she secretly longs to know how, and she quickly becomes fascinated with Thomas’s writing. Here, she likens the shapes of letters to stories encapsulated in a single word, suggesting that she understands storytelling as both powerful and dangerous. As she looks at what she is forbidden from comprehending, she intuitively grasps that other stories might be accessible to her if she could read—in this case, the “story of a name.” The implication is that the Council of Guardians puts limits on which people are allowed to read in order to guard access to a wider range of stories, because they understand that stories are powerful enough to threaten their control over the village.
“Then it be human, playing at beast," Annabella told her in a firm and certain voice. "Meaning to keep you scairt of the woods. There be no beasts."
Annabella says the words that irreversibly alter Kira’s worldview, “There be no beasts,” in Chapter 11 after Kira explains to her why she was so scared during her walk to the dyeing hut that day. Though Kira is certain that she heard a beast following her, growling, through the woods, Annabella is just as certain that the sounds were only a human pretending to be a beast. Annabella lives deep in the woods rather than in the village proper, and thanks to the wisdom that comes from age and her outsider status, she knows that the beasts are only a story told to inspire fear. Annabella’s straightforward explanation of the beasts’ purpose conveys how powerful a story can be, but also takes away some of the story’s power by exposing the mundane truth about the so-called beasts.
