Great Sky Woman

In this blend of imagination, anthropology, and storytelling magic, Steven Barnes takes us to the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro and into the realm of our own ancestors, who lived, hunted, celebrated, and died side by side with roaming herds of wild animals and great golden clouds of migrating butterflies. A people whose skin was the color and smell of the earth itself, the Ibandi formed a hierarchy based on strength of limb and spirit. In this extraordinary novel, we follow the adventures of two of the Ibandi's chosen ones: T'Cori, an abandoned girl raised by the powerful and mysterious medicine woman Stillshadow, and Frog Hopping, a boy possessing a gift that is also a curse.
Through they live in different encampments, Frog and T'Cori are linked through the revered and powerful Stillshadow, who has sensed in them a destiny apart from others'.
Through the years, and on their separate life paths, T'Cori and Frog's fates entwine as an inevitable disaster approaches from the south - from the very god they worship. For as long as there have been mountain, sky, and savannah, there has been a home from the Ibandi. Now, in the face of an enemy beyond anything spoken of even in legend, they must ask their god face-to-face: Do we remain or do we depart?