Set in a fictional city of Kinrare, this is a magic realist adaptation of Emile Zola's Nana, with some little mermaid elements chucked in. After being brutally raped and thrown into the river for dead, a fiercely independent orphan girl is rescued by Mama Wata, a river mermaid and told she can live, but only once she completes a blood pact; she must named a person and kill them, a pact she readily accepts, only to discover that killing is harder than she envisioned.