Ella is an 11-year-old African American girl living with her family in New Orleans. She comes from a magical community called Conjurors—people adept at working with nature to create spells. Conjurors also cross the threshold into the Underworld and can slip in and out of the lower depths to communicate with the dead. As the novel begins, Ella has been accepted as the first Conjuror student at the Marveller Arcanum Training Institute in the sky.

As the first of her kind to attend the Marveller school, Ella experiences prejudice and hostility from the other students, leaving her plagued by doubts about her abilities and her right to be at the Marveller school at all and highlighting the novel’s thematic interest in The Challenges of Integration. The resourcefulness and magical power Ella demonstrates over the course of the novel convince her that she is worthy of being numbered among the Marvellers.

Brigit is Ella’s surly, blond roommate at the Arcanum. Unlike the other students, she was raised without any knowledge of her magical heritage, pointing to one of the novel’s central themes: Questions of Identity. Her classmates dislike her, finding her standoffish and unfriendly. As the story opens, Brigit is hostile and rebellious, desperate to escape the school where she was brought against her will.