The chapter opens by tracing how a small household mistake could redirect fate at Casa Ordoño on Calle de Dos Santos. Doña Valentina Ordoño, raised without affection and married to the financially declining Don Marius, lives with persistent dissatisfaction. Don Marius shows her little attention and spends his energy on fantasies of status and horses he cannot afford.

That morning, Doña Valentina goes to the kitchen to catch the cook, Águeda, in another failure; the smell of burning bread promises her a concrete grievance. Finding Águeda absent, Doña Valentina is forced upstairs to answer a knock at the door, then returns with a letter from her father still unread.

Back in the kitchen, Doña Valentina confronts Águeda and the scullion girl, Luzia, only to find the loaf now perfectly baked in the same iron pan she had just seen ruined. Doña Valentina suppresses her shock and frames the moment as a near-miss she expects to recur, refusing to grant the servants the “victory” of her confusion.

Doña Valentina then asserts authority by correcting Águeda about the day’s menu, insisting she had ordered quail rather than pork, though she knows she requested pork. After Valentina leaves, Águeda angrily rearranges the meal plan while Luzia plucks quail and observes that Valentina’s bitterness poisons the atmosphere even when the practical consequences are manageable.

The narration shifts into Luzia’s private reality: she lives harshly in the cellar and carries much of the house’s labor, including water hauling and market errands. Luzia also possesses small, secret magic expressed through softly sung phrases taught by her aunt, which can repair mishaps like burnt bread or increase provisions, though it can backfire (as when she tried to charm coins and produced biting copper spiders). Luzia understands she must hide any hint of Jewishness, and she ends the chapter unaware that Doña Valentina has already witnessed the bread’s impossible transformation—an ignorance that makes the “easy” fix newly dangerous.