Weird and Wonderful People Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sorrow

Sorrow is 'the girl in the garden', although we do not find out her real name until late in the books. She keeps herself to herself and is shunned by the people in the Sultan's palace because of the strange black markings on her face, but the unnamed prince takes a liking to her, sneaks her food from the palace and begs to hear her stories. Sorrow tells him that when she has finished telling the stories printed on her eyelids, a 'spirit' will come and judge her. When she comes to the end of the stories she can read, she asks the prince to read the remaining ones, the tales written around her eyes, to her. Dinarzad, the prince's older sister, also hears Sorrow telling her stories and becomes fascinated by the story of the Black Papess.

Over the course of the books, we learn more about Sorrow's background and how she came to be. Zmeya, the Snake-Star, was her real mother and gave birth to Sorrow after she died, but was forced to give her up because she was unable to feed her, and Sorrow could not survive in the land of the dead. Before Zmeya says goodbye to Sorrow forever, she touches the baby's eyelids and the stories appear on her face. Aerie reveals to Sorrow that the stories are interconnected and are the story of her life.

Aerie was the midwife who delivered her, and gave her a knife. The tea leaf Immacolata gave Zmeya made her pregnant, Seven paid Idyll, the ferryman, to carry Sorrow across the water, and Scald was born from Sorrow's burning eyes. Solace is her sister and Aerie switched the two at birth, leaving Solace with Lantern. At the end of 'In the Cities of Coin and Spice', Aerie arrives at the garden with Scald, Solace, Sleeve and Lantern, and she and Solace invite Sorrow to join them. She leaves the garden and the prince goes with her.

Answer: Gaselli

Taglio first appears in 'The Book of the Storm'. He is a dancer, juggler and acrobat, and part of a double act with Grotteschi, a manticore and singer. Gaselli are similar to fauns, but have gazelle legs instead of deer legs, wear green clothes and tend sheep. They kidnap and eat the occasional human, but refuse to eat their sheep and find the idea insulting. However, Taglio eats a dead lamb when he is starving, and when Aukai, the Heifer Star appears, he begs her forgiveness and castrates himself (as is the custom for worshippers of Aukai, as a tribute to her castrating her brother Aukon). This gets him exiled from the Gaselli and he goes to work in the Raja's harem, overseeing the girls.

While in the harem, Taglio meets Immacolata, an odalisque, and the two leave the harem together and run into Grotteschi and Hind, the daughter of the Doge of Amberabad, on the way to Ajanabh. Taglio and Immacolata raise money to buy a cart, but both she and Hind later leave the circus; Hind wants to return home and Immacolata wants to find Zmeya. After Immacolata dissolves, Taglio keeps the enchanted leaf from her body in a box with his severed testicles.

Answer: Magyr

Grog appears in 'The Book of the Sea'. She is a magyr, a creature similar to a mermaid, but tougher and with poisonous sacs under her breasts, webbed hands, gills, and scaly arms. She does not like being mistaken for a mermaid, as she sees mermaids as giggly idiots. When she is on land, she is carried around in a tub of briny water by her crewmen, Sheepshank and Turkshead. She is a regular customer of Eyvind's at the Arm and Trout and pays for her drinks with rare coins that were vomited up by the Echeneis.

Grog tells Eyvind how she got the coins: she wanted to visit her sister Hardtack and asked Magadin for passage on the Witch's Kiss. Magadin agrees to take her in return for money, and tells her about how she slaughtered the crew in revenge for them kidnapping her. The Witch's Kiss runs into the Echeneis and it tries to swallow the ship, but Grog coats the blades of its harpoons with her poison, and she and the crew throw them at the monster. Magadin jumps into the water and stabs the Echeneis in the mouth, causing it to vomit up gold coins. Grog and her crewmates take the money and sail into Muireann.

Snow threatens Grog with a knife and orders her to take them on the Witch's kiss to the Echeneis. Grog calls her a 'fanatic', but agrees; however, Sheepshank and Turkshead do not want to go with her because of the ordeal they suffered last time, so Eyvind goes in their place. Grog takes the wheel of the ship, but gives it to Snow when they reach the Echeneis. After the Maidenhead and the Witch's Kiss have escaped the belly of the monster, Grog takes Eyvind north to see his people, as he is miserable about Sigrid/Ulla leaving him and she thinks it will make him feel better.

Answer: The Maidenhead

Tommy appears in 'The Book of the Sea'. She is a kitsune or fox woman, and captain of the Maidenhead. She and her crew press-gang St Sigrid after hearing about a monster girl living on a barge. Although Tommy looks like a human woman, her reflection in the water shows her true form, a fox. She was taken from her mother by Majo, a fortune teller, who was also a kitsune, and is asked by Rakko, the king of the otters, to go to a mountain and find Itto, the Twin Star, who is hiding there.

Sekka, a loon, takes Tommy to the mountain. Itto's head has been split in two by a shipwright's son; he had been building a ship, but the shipwrights kept taking the wood, and he was left with a raft and buried the remnants when it was destroyed. Tommy kisses him and takes his hands from his head, and receives two drops of his blood. She spills the blood on the ground and it trickles to where the bits of raft are buried, and a tree grows with a fully-formed ship. Tommy christens it the Maidenhead and becomes its captain, with an all-female crew of monsters. St Sigrid takes over from her as captain when she becomes old and retires.

Tommy also gets a mention in 'The Book of the Storm', when Wept the harpy mentions watching over her corpse and preparing a lament for her.

Answer: A spider

Sleeve first appears in 'The Book of the Scald', when she introduces herself to Lantern while he is Kostya's captive in the bell tower in Ajanabh. She was born in a poisoner's workshop and killed him before he could crush her and extract her venom. When she leaves the workshop, she meets a group of sirens (who are birds with women's legs) and helps them with their calligraphy, but worries that they might crush or eat her and runs away. She asks Xide, the Weaver Star, to teach her how to weave and make dresses, and Xide gives Sleeve her name.

Sleeve discovers that the mice living in the church where Xide works want to eat her because they think it will make them 'bright'. She makes clothes for them so that they will leave Xide alone, and uses Lantern's feathers to make a cloak because of their bright colours. However, it turns out that Sleeve is playing a very long game. When the cloak is ready, Kostya puts it on but falls apart, and the mice making up 'his' body collapse and die, with Sleeve killing all those who escape. Sleeve reveals that she imbued every single feather in the cloak with her poison, and in their panic, the mice chewed the feathers and poisoned themselves. She and Lantern then leave the bell tower.

Answer: Sigrid of the Ways

Sigrid appears in her human form in 'The Book of the Sea'. She meets Snow while mending nets down at the Muireann docks. She has taken on the name of Sigrid of the Ways after joining the Tower of St Sigrid, a legendary sailor who has been lost for years; all members must shave their heads and call themselves Sigrid. Ragnhild, the legendary Black Papess, also joins the Tower as punishment for trying to overthrow the Papess of Al-a-Nur. After Sigrid leaves the Tower, she builds a ship and goes to sea, but her ship is wrecked and she ends up in Muireann mending nets for a living. When Grog enters the tavern and tells Magadin's story, Sigrid becomes determined to find the Echeneis, as St Sigrid is believed to be inside it. Grog takes her, Snow and Eyvind onto her ship and they sail into the creature's belly.

We later discover that Sigrid of the Ways was Ulla, the lover of Eyvind, the polar bear who appears in 'The Book of the Steppe' and goes on a quest to avenge Zmeya so that he can take a mate, as polar bear law forbids taking a mate when a Star dies. He becomes a human and works in a tavern where Sigrid is a regular, and believes she is keeping a secret. Sigrid confesses that she is Ulla, and that Laakea told her Eyvind had become human. Ulla sold her bear's pelt to Umayma, a skin peddler, in return for a human skin and became human too. She went to Al-a-Nur to find Eyvind, but joined the Tower of St Sigrid and forgot him.

Sigrid of the Ways also features in a prophecy about St Sigrid that refers to 'the maiden, the bear and the girl in grey'. She is the bear, Snow is the girl in grey, and the Maidenhead is the maiden. The Maidenhead is in the belly of the Echeneis and St Sigrid is its captain. The crew fight their way out of the Echeneis and force it to vomit them up. Eyvind turns back into a bear and asks Sigrid to join him, but she refuses and joins the crew of the Maidenhead, as does Snow. Eyvind is upset, but Grog offers to take him home on the Witch's Kiss and he goes with her.

Answer: Bear

Oubliette describes herself as 'wood and girl and cow', but does not have any bear parts. She looks like a human girl but her back is covered in bark and she has a cow's tail. Seven, the seventh son of a seventh son, meets her in the mint in Marrow. She tells him her story: she is descended from Aukai, the Heifer Star, and her mother gave her a golden ball, which turned out to be a hedgehog called Ciriaco. Ciriaco wants to marry Oubliette and captures her with the help of an army of hedgehogs, who trap her by pinning her hair down with quills and enclosing her body in an earth house. Ciriaco keeps asking Oubliette to marry him, but she refuses. Nevinnost, a unicorn whose horn has been stolen, smells Oubliette's and sets her free by chewing through her hair. Oubliette is then captured by the Pra-Iti. She buys her and Seven's freedom from the mint with a coin made from Seven's arm.

Oubliette and Seven join the travelling circus, with Oubliette working as a dancer. However, she becomes obsessed with finding Zmeya after acting out her story with Grotteschi, and on realising what she intends to do, Taglio gives her the enchanted leaf from Immacolata's body. Oubliette goes to the Isle of the Dead, offering Idyll her tail as a price for ferrying her. She gives Zmeya the leaf and ends up living with her. When Seven comes, she scolds him for abandoning Taglio and Grotteschi. They end up living together in a house on the Isle of the Dead; as both of them ate the food of the dead, they are permanently trapped there.

Answer: Wicker

Maciej appears in 'The Book of the Storm'. He is a lord who suffers from an extreme form of hunger. No matter how many animals he eats, and how big they are, he is still hungry, and Malgorzata, his wife, has to beg local farmers to give him their animals. Maciej even eats the bones and gristle, but will not eat teeth and throws them in a pile on the floor. He is so hungry, he even tries to eat his own house. Malgorzata tries to pacify his hunger by feeding him bits of her body, starting with her hands, and Maciej makes replacement parts from branches.

When Malgorzata's body has been completely eaten and replaced with wicker, Maciej throws her teeth on the pile. The pile of teeth forms into Golod, who eats Maciej; however, he spares Malgorzata as he sees her as a sister. Malgorzata appears again in 'The Book of the Scald', when she meets Rend, a leopard, and Ruin, a leper, in the city of Urim, where she is searching for a cure for her condition.

Answer: Snake

Zmeya first appears in 'The Book of the Steppe'. She is the Snake Star - 'zmeya' is Russian for 'snake' - and the sister of Laakea, the Harpoon Star. Her story is similar to the story of Mélusine; she marries the Raja Indrajit after he and his soldiers, the Varaahasind, attack her handmaidens and cut out their tongues, but forbids him to see her on the third day of each new moon. Indrajit spies on her and sees that she and her fourteen children have turned into snakes. He has Zmeya killed and fed to the Varaahasind, but the pieces of Zmeya get revenge. The Varaahasind begin behaving oddly and acting like snakes, and Omir suggests having them killed. When Indrajit summons the Varaahasind, Zmeya speaks through them and they turn back into boars' teeth. Zmeya's body reforms, and she burns Indrajit to death and leaves with Laakea.

Zmeya appears again in 'The Book of the Storm', when Seven goes to the Isle of the Dead to find Oubliette and finds Zmeya there as well, now heavily pregnant. She has reunited with the Manikarnika and Itto, the Twin Star, who has now been split into two. Oubliette gave her the leaf from Immacolata's body and Zmeya absorbed it into herself, and became pregnant by Itto. Aerie delivers the baby and because Zmeya is dead, the delivery is more painful than usual and she cannot feed the baby. Zmeya is forced to give the baby up, but sees her for one last time - she pays Idyll with her hair - and burns the story of her life into her face.

Answer: Her hair and skin have become bleached over time.

Snow appears in 'The Book of the Sea', where she is referred to as 'the Pale Girl'. She is from Ajanabh, but her family left the city and travelled to Muireann because Ajanabh was in decline. Snow's parents died of the cold and she survives by taking on odd jobs where she can find them, and sleeping in shipwrights' warehouses. Her hair was originally black, but has turned silvery-grey, and her skin has become pale. She meets Sigrid of the Ways while helping her mend nets; Sigrid takes pity on her and gives her an orange, and tells Snow her life story. Snow notes that Sigrid swears by the Stars and not St Sigrid, which foreshadows her true origins.

Sigrid takes Snow to a tavern, the Arm and Trout, where Eyvind is bartender. Grog enters the tavern and pays for her drinks with a rare coin, and tells Sigrid about how she met Magadin. Snow pulls a knife on Grog and orders her to take her and Sigrid to the Echeneis, as the prophecy contains the line 'an orphan will find her' and Snow thinks the 'orphan' might be her. (She is mentioned in the prophecy, but she is the 'girl in grey'.) When the Maidenhead escapes from the Echeneis and Sigrid joins the crew, Snow decides to go with her as she has no reason to stay in Muireann. St Sigrid welcomes her aboard.

Answer: She is his mother.

Knife appears in 'The Book of the Steppe'. She is an ugly woman with a heavily scarred face, a member of a warrior tribe who live on the steppe, and also a witch. Leander accidentally kills her daughter Aerie, who is in her goose form, and she sends him on a quest to get the Leucrotta's skin to bring Aerie back to life. The Leucrotta, a man-eating red horned beast, gives Leander his skin as Knife is an old friend of his.

Knife tells Leander her story: her grandmother Bent-Bow passed her power down to Knife after being given Star blood by Liulfr, the Wolf Star. King Ismail has members of the tribe kidnapped, and Knife's husband killed. Knife slashes her face to make herself ugly. While Knife is imprisoned in the palace dungeon, she gives birth to Aerie, but is forced to give her up for her safety. Omir turns Knife into a beautiful woman to make her marriageable for Ismail, and gives her the new name of Helia, but Knife is unhappy because she sees her new body as weak. She spends the nights with Ismail and the days being bled by Omir, as he wants her star blood, although Knife's blood does not run silver. She becomes pregnant with a son, who is revealed to be Leander.

On the first anniversary of Leander's birth, Knife escapes into the dungeons and gives her blood to the surviving members of her tribe imprisoned there, turning them into geese. Leander is taken away from Knife and she is burned at the stake, but although Leander thought his mother dead, she reveals that she survived the burning because the geese set her free and carried her away. When Leander wraps Aerie in the Leucrotta's skin, Knife kills herself and bleeds onto the skin, and the geese die with her.

Answer: False

It was Magadin's stepsisters who were the evil ones, not her stepmother! Magadin first appears in 'The Book of the Steppe'. She has a human head but her body is made up of various animals; a frog's feet, legs covered in fish scales, a deer's haunches, a wolf's tail, bird wings, a bear's arms, a tiger's breasts, and dragonfly wings on her head. (The Leucrotta, who has unusual taste in women, considers her to be a 'butterface'.) Her stepmother Iolanthe is a witch and saw potential for her, and taught her magic, which made her stepsisters jealous. Omir is seeking a female apprentice and Iolanthe's daughters sell Magadin out to him. He locks her in a tower and forces potions and ointments on her which turn her into an animal hybrid. Knife heals her wounds, and she and the Leucrotta get Magadin out of the tower.

Magadin returns in 'The Book of the Sea', where it is revealed that the Leucrotta took her to the port city of Muireann. She is kidnapped and enslaved by pirates, but when they try to cut her hair, it bleeds, and she attacks and kills them all, ending with the captain. Grog takes her on board her ship, but they encounter the Echeneis, a giant sea monster, and Magadin jumps overboard and attacks it, swimming into its mouth. She later joins the crew of the Maidenhead when they find her inside the monster.

Answer: Kashkash

Omir first appears in 'The Book of the Steppe'. He is a sorcerer and King Ismail's chancellor; he controls the weather, poisons Ismail's enemies and conducts experiments on people. He was born with a condition that made his skin itch constantly, and becomes obsessed with 'finding Death'; he travels the world until he meets an old man who turns out to be a wizard and teaches him magic. Indrajit takes him on as a court wizard. When Zmeya kills Indrajit, Omir then goes to work for Sorrel, the Centaur King, after helping him win a race by killing his rival; however, in return, he is allowed to experiment on Sorrel, and when Ismail kills the centaur, Omir goes with him.

Omir captures Knife and her grandmother Bent-Bow because of their magical powers and experiments on Knife, turning her into a beautiful woman so that King Ismail can marry her. He also sells Lantern to a man made of mice, and experiments on Magadin after kidnapping her from her stepmother as an 'apprentice'; the tower where he imprisons her has the heads of his previous 'apprentices' mounted on the wall.

Late in 'The Book of the Steppe', Leander and Aerie break into the King's castle and Aerie stabs Omir in revenge for their mother. (Kashkash is the king of the djinns.)

Answer: The Book of the Steppe and the Book of the Scald

Lantern first appears in 'The Book of the Steppe', when Aerie meets him. He tells her about how he met Ravhija, a gardener who is part tree, when trying to steal cherries from her; she takes one of his feathers, which gives her the power to command him, and asks him to get her some fruit from the Ixora tree, as Omir had threatened to burn her if she could not give it to him. Lantern flies to the Ixora forest where the firebirds live, only to find that the Ixora are gone, as Laakea stole the seeds for his sisters. He has to wait for a new Ixora to grow. When he flies back with the seeds, it is too late; Ravhija and her garden have been burned, and Omir has stolen the feather Lantern gave her. However, a child, Ravhi, has been born from the seeds Ravhija dropped.

Lantern reappears in 'The Book of the Scald'. Omir sells him to Kostya, a man made out of mice, who keeps him in a cage and plucks his feathers to make a coat. Lantern is in constant pain and gradually loses the will to live. When Sleeve gets her revenge on Kostya and kills him, she gives Lantern the key to his cage and he escapes, and burns the poison out of the cloak. After he grows back his feathers, he learns to dance in the carnival. He is roosting in the bell tower when Aerie brings him a baby and asks him to raise her, as he always wanted chicks. She makes the baby a cradle and Lantern wraps her in the cloak. Lantern gives Aerie one of his feathers so she can keep in touch, and names the baby Solace.

Solace grows up in the bell tower with Lantern and Sleeve worries that she is growing wild, and makes enquiries about what Solace should be doing with her life. Solace wants to learn to dance, so Sleeve takes her to a Dancing Master, a pair of sentient shoes, who teach her to dance but hurt her feet until she breaks them. Solace becomes a fire dancer and forms a double act with Lantern.

Answer: She buys his skin from a skin peddler, and he wants the skin. back.

Shroud appears in 'The Book of the Sea'. He is a selkie, a seal who becomes a man when he removes his skin. Eshkol, a female satyr and one of the crew of the Maidenhead, buys his skin from Ghassan, a skin peddler. Shroud comes to Eshkol and asks for his skin, but Eshkol is reluctant to give it up as she paid for it with a strip of her tree grandfather's bark. Shroud has been following Ghassan around as Ghassan stole his skin and he is desperate to get his skin back, and Ghassan has sold it to get rid of him. Eshkol falls in love with Shroud, and the two live together for seven years.

However, Shroud begins to feel a pull and begs Eshkol for his skin back, so he can return to the sea. Eshkol has been wearing the skin and gives it back to Shroud, and he leaves her. He appears again in 'The Book of the Scald', when he rescues a drowning sailor who has heard the sirens' song and jumped into the sea, and asks if the sailor has seen the Maidenhead. He is looking for Eshkol and regrets running away from her. It is implied much later that Shroud and Eshkol are eventually reunited, and they live in a cottage on a shore so that Shroud can be near the sea and with Eshkol at the same time.

Answer: Tea leaves and a shoe

Immacolata is an odalisque in the Raja's harem and the daughter of Saffiya, a shoemaker, and Elpidios, a tea merchant. Saffiya and Elpidios want to have children and Elpidios comes up with the idea of making a child out of tea, putting it in a shoe and leaving it under the light of the Stars. Saffiya makes a green shoe with a pattern of tea berries and Elpidios makes a baby out of tea leaves, including a leaf from a bush touched by a Star. This baby is Immacolata, and the enchanted leaf is her heart.

Immacolata learns to make tea and shoes, and after her parents die, she is taken by the Raja's soldiers to be a maid in his harem, where she meets Taglio. She serves her father's signature tea of violets, white leaves and a single red leaf. She meets Zmeya in the harem and becomes obsessed with her, as Zmeya recognises the star blood in her. Immacolata and Taglio leave the harem and join up with Grotteschi and Hind, but Immacolata later leaves the travelling circus because she feels she needs to repay Zmeya. Before she leaves, she lets Taglio jump through her body and he regains his green clothes. She then gives him the enchanted leaf, tells him to take it to the Isle of the Dead, and dissolves in a stream.

It is later revealed that Immacolata is now in the Isle of the Dead, in a pool; when Zmeya touches the water, tea leaves appear and form her face. Oubliette and Seven tell her about their time with the circus.

Answer: Shadukiam

Vhummim appears in 'The Book of the Storm'. She is a foreman at the Mint in Marrow, a city which used to be called Shadukiam. She used to be human but, like everyone else in the city, was turned into a Pra-Ita by Golod, aka He Who Swallows, a beast made of teeth that consumes everything in its wake. Pra-Ita have long necks and distended diamond stomachs, and can run very fast.

Shadukiam was a hyper-capitalist city where the people were greedy and obsessed with money and eating rare delicacies, including jewels. The city was covered by a dome decorated with magical roses grown by kappas, and when Idyll - the Hsien ferryman - brought the people the roses, they repaid him by impaling him. When Vhummim was human, she worked in the Asaad, the Shadukiam market, selling meat and apples. She heard that the Rhukmini, the fishmongers' quarter, has disappeared and went to investigate. She got lost and met Golod, and he explained how he was born from Maciej's hunger. He consumed Vhummim and turned her into a Pra-Ita, and worked his way through the city until it was laid to ruin.

Vhummim and her fellow Pra-Ita continue to feed the city's mint and produce coins from the bodies of kidnapped children. Seven years later, Seven makes coins from his arm and he and Oubliette buy their way out of the mint. Vhummim agrees to let them go, as long as they leave at night.

(Pentexore and Palimpsest are cities that appear in other Valente books: Pentexore in 'Dirge for Prester John' and 'Palimpsest' in the book of the same name.)

Answer: The Book of the Steppe

Aerie first appears as a goose in 'The Book of the Steppe' and Leander kills her by breaking her neck. Knife is furious and orders him to go on a redemption quest to bring her daughter - who is also his sister - back to life. She was born in the palace dungeons, but turned into a goose by her great-grandmother Bent-Bow so that King Ismail would not kill her. When she is wrapped in the Leucrotta's skin, which is drenched in Knife's blood, she comes back to life. She and Leander go to the palace together to get revenge for their mother. Leander kills his father, becomes the new king and eventually joins the Tower of the Patricides in Al-a-Nur. Aerie kills Omir and leaves Leander behind in the palace.

Aerie returns in 'The Book of the Storm', where she is much older and has goose wings. She goes to the place where her grandmother did her initiation ceremony, but it is closed up and the Stars are gone, and an angry Laakea tells her to go away because the magic is all used up. However, he is willing to give her Star blood if she finds Zmeya and tells her that Laakea misses her. He stabs Aerie with his harpoon and fills her with Star blood. She wears the Leucrotta's skin round her waist and when she takes the sash off, she dies and turns into a woman/goose hybrid. Laakea agrees to give her the skin back when she reports back from the Isle of the Dead.

Aerie delivers Zmeya's baby, but has to find a new home for her as she cannot live on the Isle of the Dead. She switches her with Solace; she gives Solace to Lantern to raise and places Sorrow with Solace's adoptive family. She also gives Sorrow the knife she used to kill Omir. When she, Solace, Sleeve, Scald and Lantern come to get Sorrow, she tells Sorrow the truth about who she is.

Answer: The Ember Queen

Scald appears in 'The Book of the Scald'. She is an ageing djinn, made out of fire, and she has long hair that she carries in two baskets. Rend and Ruin find her in a cage in a desert. She was crowned Ember Queen of Kashkash, the city of the Djinns, when she was ten and told the history of her people. Kohinoor, the Ash Queen, orders an invasion of Ajanabh as there is a carnelian box there that she wants. Scald goes to Ajanabh, where she meets Lantern and Solace, and finds the box, which contains a tiny woman made of grass. This is Li, a Grass Star who was shrunk down and locked in a box by her husband. Scald releases her, as she does not want the other Kings and Queens getting their hands on her, and she does not want to wage war on Ajanabh.

Kohinoor is angry when Scald gives her the empty box, as she is Li's daughter; djinn were born from her footsteps by accident when she fell to earth. Scald makes a wish to have a wife; she is given multiple wives made of stone, who will protect Ajanabh from Kohinoor. The Khaighal, a council of djinn priests, imprison Scald in a cage as punishment for dereliction of duty. Ruin frees Scald by turning the bars of her cage to bone, and Scald burns her way out. She heals Ruin's leprosy by breathing fire on her. She is part of the group who lead Sorrow and the prince away from the garden at the end, and it is revealed that she was born from Sorrow's burned flesh when Zmeya touched her face.

Answer: Hoopoe

Wept first appears in 'The Book of the Storm'. Oubliette meets her on the way to the Isle of the Dead. She is a woman who wears a hoopoe mask and acts as a professional mourner, writing and performing laments for the dead; she has also become one with the ground. In order to get a hoopoe's beak, a harpy has to sing a lament for it when it dies; Wept gets hers from a hoopoe called Orange as the Sun. In passing, she mentions that she is writing a lament for Captain Tommy; the pirates gave Wept Tommy's body and when she rots away, her skeleton has the head of a fox.

To pass Wept, Oubliette has to give her some of her blood, and she cuts her back and sap pours out. When Oubliette is telling Seven about her encounter with the harpy, Seven reveals he met her too, although she did not tell him any stories.