- The Aleuts never return to the island and the otters start to migrate to Tall Rock during the summer.
- Eventually, even the otters stop their migration, which is when Karana knows that there are no otters left that remember the Aleuts.
- That same summer, Karana stops keeping track of time as she normally has by marking a pole beside her house.
- This is also the summer when Rontu dies. He had been going out with Karana less and less and then one night he wanted to go outside of the fence. He doesn't return in the morning.
- Karana follows his tracks and finds him in the back of a cave. She stays with him through the night.
- In the morning, Karana carries Rontu back home. The gulls are out and she puts him down to bark at them. He doesn't. He falls to the ground. Karana feels his heart as it stops beating.
- Karana buries Rontu on the headland with flowers, a stick he liked, and "pebbles of many colors I had gathered on the shore" (25.15).