Six-year-old Ana is a shy girl who lives in the manor house in an isolated Spanish village on the Castile (historical region) with her parents Fernando and Teresa and her older sister, Isabel. The year is 1940, and the civil war has just ended with the Francoist victory over the Second Spanish Republic. Her aging father spends most of his time absorbed in tending to and writing about his beehives; her much younger mother is caught up in daydreams about a distant lover, to whom she writes letters. Ana's closest companion is Isabel, who loves her but cannot resist playing on her little sister's gullibility.