Zotos and Havai, with their tumultuous romantic relationship, an enigmatic boatman, a spider-woman seeking a room for a night and a man for a lifetime, the diabolical quack doctor Margazis, and the adventurer Father-Leras, who boasts of stripping women of sins and underwear, are entangled in the dance that rises as a vile or blessed explosion of spite triggered by a murder, a suicide, the fear of revenge, societal contempt, wealth, poverty, jealousy, desire, some unconfessed crimes, national identity, and the devil or angel hidden within each person. Their lives flow sometimes like a raging river and sometimes like the sweetness of spring. Main and secondary characters journey through the years of the Italian occupation of Ioannina in 1917; the first attempt to create a Vlach principality in Pindos; the oil extraction in Dragopsa; the campaign in Asia Minor; the refugee crisis of Asia Minor Greeks and Pontians, as well as that of the Turco-Ioannites; the division between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists and the scourge of banditry in Epirus. At the same time, they follow the footsteps of Jews, Vlachs, Albanians, and Sarakatsans, and generally the turbulent era before 1922 and during the first decade of the Interwar period. In the same homeland, different worlds, groups, and individuals coexist or clash; dreams unite or separate, and blood, religions, and languages mix; and everything happens in Ioannina, the city of legends and mystical allure.