Fenna is a grown woman barely three and a half feet tall, with bright green skin, a narrow face, high cheekbones, a firm jaw, and almond-shaped eyes creased by faint laugh lines. Her knowing smirk makes her look as if she has just heard the punchline before everyone else. Her dark hair is twisted into a practical bun with a yellow ribbon. She stands beside her cart's huge wooden wheel, its top well above her head, and looks small against ordinary cottage doors. She moves with a quick, grounded shuffle, then goes perfectly still when listening. Within a minute, most people notice the faint smell of beeswax and damp canvas clinging to her; she knows it and claims it is the scent of honest work.

Fenna is warm with children and suspicious of anyone who calls a crowd simple. She enjoys making a room laugh, yet grows watchful when laughter turns into ridicule. In public she is quick-witted and showy; alone with someone in trouble, she becomes direct and practical. She hates being pitied, but quietly gives away what little she has.

Fenna grew up mending toy figures and cart awnings for her aunt, who traveled between farmsteads with a puppet stage. At eleven, Fenna saw a frightened crowd turn on a goblin peddler after a harvest fire. She improvised a puppet show that made the villagers laugh long enough for the peddler to escape. The episode taught her that a story could open a path where an argument could not, and also that an audience could be steered toward cruelty as easily as kindness. Years later, her aunt died on the road, leaving Fenna the cart and its patched stage. Fenna now travels between the hamlets on the old Ninth Survey route, performing for supper and collecting local stories. She writes regularly to her former apprentice, Tavi, who wants Fenna to settle down and teach. Fenna has been avoiding that request, partly because she is searching for a missing puppet from her aunt's final show and partly because the cart's axle is failing. A local reeve has ordered her to stop performing a piece that mocks his toll collectors.