Chapter 8 Summary

For the Christmas holiday, all the young villagers have come home from school, and Mark senses an underlying tension in the village between the young people and the old. The outside school gives the young people the tools to survive in the modern world, but also alienates them from the native culture and their parents. Peter, the carver, expresses the feeling of the older people that eventually the village will be deserted. Mark and Gordon meet in the church where Gordon has discovered a box of books Mark left there. Gordon eagerly reads the books Mark brings and shows Mark a giant dance mask that has been handed down through generations in his family. It is a beautiful museum-quality mask that Mark says they should never sell, unless to share through a museum. At the end of the Christmas season, the young people...