Woman-shy after his wife's desertion, amiable photographer and amateur banjo-picker Hugh Reynir is relentlessly pursued by a mysterious Spanish woman in Key West, Florida. Her motives seem obvious: she wants him to help her improve her English, and she's infatuated with him. For Hugh, the mystery is simply, "How do I get rid of her?" But even In this deceptively uncomplicated Prelude to the mythological fantasy series, nothing is simple, and nothing is what it seems to be.