Once upon a time, a professor of Alchemy went into the Empty Land, where he seduced and was seduced by the wild Lilith, direct descendant and namesake of the first woman. He brought her back to his land and tried to tame her; they had a daughter and, four years later, a son, the first boy ever born to a wild woman. But Lilith realized the Professor was destroying her powers and escaped to rejoin her own people. As the novel opens, six years have passed; Lilith has communicated with her daughter through dreams and now returns to take the girl with her.