Tiyana has seen death too often: all her relatives and loved ones have been dying one after another, and now she has only grandmother Yovana left—but even she is on the brink of death. After receiving the grim news, Tiyana goes to Serbia, to the mud-bath resort “Ajdai’s Bowl,” which is run by her grandmother. Patients of the resort and residents of the nearby village consider owner Yovana a benefactor; some even call her a saint. But then who desecrated her “chidulya” in the day of her funeral, writing on them “filthy witch”? And why, at the moment of the burial, was there a call to pierce the dead woman with a hawthorn stake?
The path to answers leads Tiyana deep into the distant past, to ancient legends—until it soon becomes clear that the heroes of those legends are alive to this day.