The narrator introduces the first week of August as a peculiar, suspended time and describes the village of Treegap, the wood on its edge, and the hidden spring at the center of the wheel.

Winnie Foster, ten years old, sits in her family's yard and wishes she could run away. The wood looms nearby, fenced off. The narrator establishes the suffocating order of Winnie's life.

A stranger in a yellow suit arrives at the village asking about a family named Tuck. He is described as fastidious, precise, and unsettling.

The morning after deciding she will run away, Winnie actually does — slipping into the wood for the first time. She follows the sound of music deeper in.

Winnie finds Jesse Tuck drinking from the small spring at the ash tree's roots. He is beautiful and alarmed. Mae and Miles arrive before Winnie can run.

Riding toward the Tuck home, Mae tells Winnie the truth: the family drank from the spring eighty-seven years ago and discovered they cannot die. Winnie tries to understand what this means.

Winnie arrives at the Tuck cottage — cluttered, warm, alive with disorder. She meets Angus Tuck and feels, for the first time, entirely at ease.

Before dawn, Tuck rows Winnie out on the pond and explains the wheel of life. The spring, he says, is a terrible accident — not a gift. Being immortal means being excluded from life itself.

The man in the yellow suit visits Winnie's parents. He knows she is with the Tucks. He offers to find her in exchange for the deed to the wood — the wood with the spring.

Jesse tells Winnie about the other possibility: she could wait until she is seventeen and drink from the spring, then join him forever. Winnie doesn't answer.

An interlude: Mae plays her music box on the porch. The music is described as the Tucks' only connection to continuity — a small, repetitive tune that links their past to their present.

The man in the yellow suit arrives at the Tuck home with the constable to retrieve Winnie. He reveals his plan to sell the spring's secret. Mae strikes him with the shotgun butt.

Mae is held in the constable's jail. Winnie is returned home to her family. Jesse slips Winnie a vial of water from the spring. The Tucks face losing Mae to the scaffold — and to exposure.

Winnie decides to help the Tucks. She will take Mae's place in the jail overnight — giving Mae enough time to escape. She presents herself to Miles at the jail window.

The constable discovers Winnie in the cell. She faces no serious consequence — she is ten years old and the constable is confused. The Tucks are gone.

Weeks after the Tucks' departure, Winnie sees the toad on the road being menaced by a dog. She pours the spring water over the toad to protect it — giving immortality to something that never asked for it, and keeping mortality for herself.

Many decades later, Mae and Tuck return to Treegap. The wood is gone, paved over. They find Winnie's grave. She married, had children, and died in 1948 at seventy-eight. Tuck smiles at her grave.