Then they found that the finger of sand reaching out into the river had saved them.

Everywhere in that triangle between the two rivers the world had turned black, and was hot underfoot.
The smoke cleared away.

The wind changed again, and swung down cool and fresh from the west and north.

The fisher-cat was the first to move cautiously back to the forests that had been, but the porcupines were still rolled into balls when Gray Wolf and Kazan left the sand-bar.

They began to travel up-stream, and before night came, their feet were sore from hot ash and burning embers.
The moon was strange and foreboding that night, like a spatter of blood in the sky, and through the long silent hours there was not even the hoot of an owl to give a sign that life still existed where yesterday had been a paradise of wild things.