A grown goblin woman barely three and a half feet tall, with a narrow angular face, sharp cheekbones, firm chin, and steady, narrow eyes. Her long limbs give her a quick, jointed look as she moves, but she plants her feet with a puppeteer's practiced certainty. Her green skin has a matte, fine-grained texture, like painted wood worn smooth at the edges. She wears a closed-mouth smirk that suggests she is always waiting for the audience to catch up. Unexpectedly, she keeps a tiny, meticulously folded paper map tucked into her hair bun, where it peeks out like a pale feather. Beside her, a tall puppet booth makes her look even smaller; she can raise a knight puppet with a bee shield above her head.

Fenna is bold when she can shape the scene, but wary when another person controls it. She loves laughter and will risk a joke at the wrong moment, yet treats real fear with a sober, almost startling tenderness. With an audience she is quick and theatrical; alone with a frightened person she becomes patient and plainspoken. Praise makes her suspicious, while honest criticism earns her attention.

Fenna learned puppetry from her aunt, who traveled between villages with a booth made from patched sailcloth and a trunk of wooden players. At fourteen, Fenna performed during a market riot: the crowd had gathered to watch her comic king, while a real magistrate's guards dragged away a family accused of stealing grain. She stopped the show and turned the king puppet toward the guards, making the audience laugh at them until the family escaped. Her aunt scolded her for risking the troupe, then secretly taught her how to hide messages in the puppet's hollow body. Fenna now travels alone, carrying on the act and quietly helping people in danger pass notes or slip away. She still writes to her aunt, who has settled with a bad cough in a riverside hamlet, and sends most of her earnings home. Her current problem is that a local bailiff has recognized the bee-shielded knight puppet from a show that mocked his family. He is asking questions at every village ahead of her.