The Ice is coming. Frost is seen in summer and ice patches form in spite of the hot Australian sun.To the Happy Folk, the town-dwellers, following the progress of the ice is a new game - but Wirrun, whose People have lived in the land since Dreamtime, feels fear in his bones.The Ninya, the green-eyed ice men, are abroad.Ancient foes must fight again. Wirrun goes out to join the battle.Ko-in, hero, brings him to the power held in a crystal of quartz which will protect him as he meets the oldest race of the country:the creatures born of the land itself, sly and secret creatures, the earth spirits.Oldest of them all is the Eldest Nargun, a monster of rock poured molten from the fires in the heart of the land itself and able to summon up the fire of its beginning.The Ninya can never rule unless they defeat it.So they search for the Eldest Nargun, and Wirrun searches too. Here, in a country young only to its latest settlers but in truth ancient, close to the world's beginnings, the spirits of the Dreamtime are locked in battle with the ice - the frail, courageous Mimi, little grey Nyols of the rocks, that terrible, red-eyed beast the Bunyip, the many-shaped Yabon, and the great white bird-spirits, the Yauruks.Through it all the Happy Folk continue their relentless search for happiness.And Wirrun moves towards the country of the Narguns, to the unexpected and stunning climax of an epic struggle.The first book in the Wirrun trilogy.