


On the first day of the first week of August, Mae Tuck wakes up, excited to go meet her sons in Treegap. Discovering this stream would be a disaster. The narrator insists that this is wise, as if a person were to go into the wood, they'd discover a huge ash tree and a spring coming from its roots.

The wood is a strange place and it makes people want to avoid it. On the outside of this hub, connected by the wood, are the Tuck family, ten-year-old Winnie Foster, and the man in the yellow suit. The world, the narrator suggests, is like a giant wheel, with spokes connected in the center by a hub that, in this case, is a small wood owned by the Foster family. The narrator explains that the first week of August is the highest point of the year's cycle and that during this time, people do things they regret later.
