The Spear Cuts Through Water

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of suicidal ideation and sexual content.

In the Inverted Theater, the dancers leave the stage, and the curtain closes. A shade announces the intermission. The grandchild wanders out to the lobby. A woman asks the grandchild if the spear they carry is the same as Araya’s. The grandchild suspects so. The woman inspects the spear and remarks on the strange carvings along the haft, explaining that it is an ancient form for describing dance movements. Eventually, the audience returns to their seats, and the dance begins again.

Keema and Jun spend the night doing as the empress instructed, eating her body and cleaning the bones in the river to take to the sea. They fall asleep as the “chemistry of bequeathment and inheritance” begins in their stomachs (338). Keema dreams of the Last Road, a road along the border between life and death. There, he meets Araya. She does not know who she is but feels that she is not ready to accept death but must wander in search of something she has not yet finished. Keema says that he lost her spear and broke his oath.