The only contact with the foreign Trailmen is through trade conducted once a year in silence and by sign language, since the isolated tribes are thought to have nocommonlanguage.
This novel, Emmanuel Darley's second, is the story of an exclusive love that turns into a nightmare, perhaps because the protagonists have nocommonlanguage: the boy is enclosed in the simplicity of his own world, the little girl only laughs or cries, and the police speak only the language of the law.