The gruesome image of the father
At the beginning of the story, when a child is to be taken away from the mother as a sacrifice to the witch, the narrator paints a gruesome image of the husband, who has apparently been hurt by his furious wife: “When they arrived at the family’s house, an astonishing sight met the Council of Elders. A man with a scratched-up face and a swollen lower lip and bloody bald spots across his skull where his hair had been torn out in clumps met them at the door. He tried to smile, but his tongue went instinctively to the gap where a tooth had just recently been. He sucked in his lips and attempted to bow instead.”
The furious mother
The mother of the child who is supposed to be sacrificed is portrayed as a furious animal who is so desperate and aggressive that she has lost all human traits. It is, therefore, impossible to reason with her: “From the rafters above them, a woman screeched and howled as the Elders entered the house. Her shiny black hair flew about her head like a nest of long, writhing snakes. She hissed and spat like a cornered animal. She clung to the ceiling beams with one arm and one leg, while holding a baby tightly against her breast with the other arm.”
The swamp
Using long sentences to describe the swamp, the narrator gradually introduces the area where the witch lives, similar to an establishing shot in a film. By appealing to a range of senses, it becomes clear that this is not a place where humans come by, as it seems to be uninhabitable based on the color and smell: “At the center of the forest was a small swamp—bubbly, sulfury, and noxious, fed and warmed by an underground, restlessly sleeping volcano and covered with a slick of slime whose color ranged from poison green to lightning blue to blood red, depending on the time of year. On this day—so close to the Day of Sacrifice in the Protectorate, or Star Child Day everywhere else—the green was just beginning to inch its way toward blue.”
The witch
The witch is described as a hybrid with human and flowery elements. Similar to the stereotypical image of a warm-hearted grandmother, she is described as being one with nature: “At the edge of the swamp, standing right on the fringe of flowering reeds growing out of the muck, a very old woman leaned on a gnarled staff. She was short and squat and a bit bulbous about the belly. Her crinkly gray hair had been pulled back into a thick, braided knot, with leaves and flowers growing out of the thin gaps between the twisted plaits. Her face, despite its cloud of annoyance, maintained a brightness in those aged eyes and a hint of a smile in that flat, wide mouth. From certain angles, she looked a bit like a large, good-tempered toad.”
