Antonina Rossi (the Antidote)

Antonina Rossi, known in Uz as the Antidote, is the novel's central figure, a prairie witch who stores other people's memories so they can live without the weight of them. She runs her practice like a private bank, using numbered slips, appointments, and an earhorn to take deposits, yet the service is intimate and bodily, because she must absorb what others refuse to carry. Antonina presents herself as wary, sharp-tongued, and fiercely protective of her boundaries, but her caution masks a deep hunger to be believed and a complicated impulse to protect the vulnerable. Her relationships define the story's emotional core: she becomes an uneasy mentor to Asphodel Dell Oletsky, clashes with Sheriff Victor Iscoe when he tries to weaponize her gift, and forms a fragile alliance with photographer Cleo Allfrey as evidence and memory begin to overlap.

Antonina's past at the Milford Industrial Home...