Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of the deaths of parents.

A queue of people waits to take the bus out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, including an 18-year-old in a brown suit named Mason Burgess. Mason is on his way to Poughkeepsie, New York. He watches a girl use her Talent for jacks to hustle a boy at a game and recalls his late mother’s advice, “A Talent is only rewarding if you wield it well” (2). Mason’s powder blue St. Anthony’s suitcase contains “a single slip of paper that constituted the bulk of the young man’s inheritance” (3). A traveling salesman with a Talent for tying knots mentions that he dreams of owning a hot air balloon, advises Mason to keep a close eye on the suitcase, and disappears. To Mason’s alarm, the driver insists that he place the suitcase in the baggage compartment. When the bus arrives in Philadelphia, Mason’s suitcase is gone. After the Prologue, there is a recipe for Miss Mallory’s Peach Cake, which is described as sweet and simple.

Fifty-three years after the events of the Prologue, 11-year-old Cady lives at Miss Mallory’s Home for Lost Girls in Poughkeepsie, New York.