Jeb dreams of the time she was kidnapped from the only shaman school on Lotor, and tossed down a well to drown. When she saves herself, she's taken to prison? Only while dreaming can she still be Jeb and even that is not her real name. Clinking chains in the cell next to hers tell her a spy has been moved in.

He tells her she is the only one who can save the Earth-born, him included, as there are no other shamans remaining. All she knows is that she is only half-trained!

During the night she sees the speck of fast-moving light that she hopes to be the Ark Ship returning to Lotor to pick up its people. In a lucid dreaming state, she recalls the code to make herself known to the Ark Ship, and how to weave it into the totem singing to camouflage it from the Lotor-born.

She sings the Meerkat Totem and is rewarded with the Ark Ship's signal. The guards hustle her into the black cell where the floor consists of one of Lotor's carnivorous sands.

All built infrastructure on Lotor was built by the Earth-born from Lotor's own extruded wastes. Jeb uses these bricks to stand on to get off the carnivorous sand, and eventually escape. She leads her people through the Yellow City and through the Field of Dreams--which is meant by Lotor to be a pleasant way of being eaten--and into the Bone Mountains where the last remaining space shuttle is caught within Lotor's extruded wastes.

There is a storm of meat-eating silver to withstand, the meat-eating sand underfoot, a servant of Lotor to distract, and black creep—all the ways in which Lotor attempts to keep them. There's a leadership challenge and a couple of Lotor's sand-people to contend with. And there is romance, as one of the young men confesses himself a loon for her.

Fortunately, everyone has with their stone-working tools with them and the shuttle is chipped free in time for them to reach the Ark Ship in the set time/space window.