Chapter 2 Summary

A Clan of twenty travelers, who are left homeless with six fewer Clan members after the earthquake, are looking for a new cave. The men leading the group stop to examine something small that is lying on the ground in front of them. The leader of the women thinks to herself that it must be a meat-eater for the men to leave it and continue walking. The Clan rarely ate carnivorous animals. She is shocked to find that it is a strange, gaunt child. The woman is Iza, the Clan's medicine woman. Instinctively, she begins to tend to the child. Brun, Iza's brother and the Clan's leader, comes back to her and tells her to come away from the child. She is not Clan, he signals. She'll die if we leave her, Iza signals in response. Brun pauses, carefully considering the implications to...