Boros has weather-browned skin with pale bands where his sleeves usually cover his wrists, and a faint dusting of chalk along his cuffs that never quite washes away. His quick eyes travel to thresholds, muddy hems, and the space beneath benches before they settle on a face. He walks with a forward lean, as if the ground might write something important before he reaches it. His unexpected detail: a tiny, carefully folded paper crane is always tucked behind one ear, made from whatever scrap he can find.

Boros is curious enough to question a teacher and cautious enough to record the teacher's answer before challenging it. In a calm classroom he can be stubbornly exact; outside, faced with an unfamiliar track, he becomes animated and forgets to be shy. When someone is hurt, his curiosity gives way to practical concern. He wants recognition, but blushes when praised in front of the class.

Boros grew up at the edge of Baldsville, where his mother, Nela, mends boots and his father, Dato, keeps the schoolhouse stove and grounds in repair. He was an ordinary pupil until a hard spring flood cut through the lower pasture and left an unfamiliar set of prints in the silt: narrow, three-toed marks that ended abruptly beside a toppled fence. When adults dismissed them as a fox's tracks, Boros began keeping notes and checking the paths himself. His careful observations eventually helped find a lost lamb before nightfall, and the school's headmistress, Tavi, invited him to study natural history with the older pupils. Now he spends lessons asking questions that make even patient teachers pause. He is close to his classmate Pella, who helps him draw maps, but they have argued over whether to show his newest findings to the town reeve. The prints have appeared again near the school orchard, and Boros is trying to learn what made them before anyone decides to hunt it.