The Spear Cuts Through Water
65 pages • 2-hour read
Simon JimenezThe Spear Cuts Through Water
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Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1: “Before”
Chapter 1, Pages 1-30 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, and ableism.
In second person point-of-view, a grandchild listens to their Lola (grandmother) tell a story about the Old Country and the Inverted Theater. The grandchild often tires of Lola’s stories but listens to this one with rapt attention as their nine brothers sit in a different room, listening to the radio.
Once, the Moon and the Water fell in love. They could interact when the Moon reflected on the Water’s surface, all images inverted in the reflection. In this reflected world, they built the Inverted Theater, maintained by their child and accessed only in dreams.
In a dream, the grandchild enters the Inverted Theater. Many others are there, but they appear as dreaming shades. The grandchild sits in the theater, and a shade asks who they are. The grandchild describes trains, radios, and the war that ravages their country. They are from a merchant family on the Unified Continent, to which the family immigrated from the Old Country generations ago. The shade gestures to the spear in the grandchild’s hands. The grandchild was not aware that they were holding it and now recalls that it is a family heirloom. They do not know where it came from or what it means. The curtains open, and a dancer, called “this moonlit body” (10), steps out.
The grandchild recalls Lola’s story about the child of the Moon and Water, a “creature born of the dance” (11). This moonlit body dances, accompanied by a troupe and a chorus of voices. The dance expresses the words, “This is the tale of your land, And the spear that cut through it” (12). The grandchild suddenly sees warriors riding horses through the mountains of the Old Country. The chorus adds commentary, speaking the thoughts of characters as they appear on the stage. The tale begins.
The Red Peacock brigade, led by Saam Ossa, the “First Terror” and eldest of the emperor’s triplet sons, rides through the countryside preparing for the emperor’s impending Pilgrimage through the country. They threaten, beat, and murder their way through the villages to ensure perfect behavior. Each member of the brigade is known by the red peacock tattoo on their face. Each is a son of the First Terror. Though the First Terror is infamous for his cruelty, he loves his sons, and his favorite is Jun, who is not with them because he has been assigned to stand guard in a cavern beneath the emperor’s palace.
The brigade returns to the palace. The First Terror learns that the emperor is enraged over the loss of a caged bird. Though the First Terror suspects that the emperor lost the bird due to dementia, he appeases him by executing a servant at random. Then, the emperor agrees to speak with his son.
The emperor has planned a five-day journey, beginning in the western mountains called the Spires, where his palace resides, and ending at the Divine City in the east, on the coast of the Unending Sea. There, he will set sail for unknown lands, believing that he will find immortality there. The emperor wishes for the First Terror to join him in the morning, but the First Terror has a meeting planned with his subordinate, Commander Araya, and will join his father later in the week.
Chapter 1, Pages 30-66 Summary
Uhi Araya is the Commander of the Tiger Gate, a military checkpoint along the road that connects the western mountains to the eastern sea. She prepares a powdered poison for her meeting with the First Terror in the morning. Long-made plans to assassinate the royal family come down to her, and she is afraid. Her second-in-command, Raami, interrupts her with news that several of her subordinates are fighting again.
The Sugo twins, Vogo and Mae, torment “the cripple” (34)—Keema of the Daware Tribe, a boy with a missing left arm. The left arm represents a person’s pride; a dishonored warrior is punished with the loss of the left arm, and even those who have lost their left arm by accident are stigmatized as a person of “Poor Fortune” (38). Araya breaks up the fight. Keema does not speak in his own defense, being a poor orphan begging for work, while the Sugo twins are from a noble family. Araya punishes all three. The Sugo twins secretly plan revenge.
Night falls, and Araya orders the gates closed. Travelers who do not make it to a checkpoint gate before nightfall huddle in fear on the road or run back to the nearest village in terror. Centuries before, one of the First Men unstitched the Moon from the tapestry of the sky. With no moon, the night is pitch black and filled with monsters.
In the palace, the emperor visits the cavern beneath his palace with several guards. The cavern contains a small pool and a boy sleeping on a cot in front of an enormous door. The boy is Jun, the First Terror’s favorite son, who made his first kill at eight years old and is infamous among the Red Peacocks as bloodthirsty and merciless. He wears a mask, as all do in the emperor’s presence. The emperor greets him and unlocks the door. As he steps inside, he orders his guard to kill Jun. Jun dives into the pool.
Inside the door lies a small island of stone surrounded by a moat. The emperor calls for “Mother.” He notices that a net hanging from the ceiling has been cut and realizes that she is free. An explosion kills the emperor. A shiver runs throughout the country, with every single person feeling a shift in the land, though only a handful understand what it means.
The soldiers at Tiger Gate, including Keema, feel the shiver and wake filled with strange energy. Outside in the courtyard, sparring matches break out. These duels are like dances, a kind of expression popular for posturing, ritual, and even courtship. Keema tries to join in but is rejected because of his status. Araya invites Keema to have tea with her. Though he fears that she pities him, she respects him and gives him an important task.
She asks him to take an object, which she will give him in the morning, and deliver it to a person named Shan, who will be waiting in an encampment outside the Divine City on the east coast. Keema swears to do so. Among the Daware tribe, such an oath is sacred. He must die if he breaks it. Araya asks Keema why he came here for work, and he confides that a fortune teller told him that he would find what he was looking for at the Tiger Gate.
Chapter 1, Pages 67-94 Summary
A wagon leaves the palace, heading for the Tiger Gate. Meanwhile, the Sugo twins prepare their revenge, cutting the rope of one of the checkpoint’s two gates—intending a harmless prank to humiliate Araya when the First Terror arrives in the morning.
At the western gate, the masked driver states that he is taking the body of a noblewoman to her family for proper burial. Startled by this news, Araya demands an explanation from the messenger tortoise of the checkpoint. The tortoises are intelligent and possess a special power to speak to each other through a mental network. The government installs them at checkpoints to send news and orders across the country. This tortoise swears that no news has reached them from the palace. Then, the driver speaks to Araya alone, informing her that the emperor is dead.
In the courtyard, Raami orders Keema to inspect the wagon. He climbs in and sees the dead old woman. The body is positioned sitting up, with her legs crossed and her eyes closed. The woman is clearly dead, yet he can sense her presence. Unsettled, he tells Araya, but she is unconcerned.
They hear the Red Peacock Brigade arriving. The First Terror demands entrance, but Araya refuses. The First Terror explains that the wagon carries his mother’s body, which was stolen by a man who murdered his son Jun. He wants the perpetrator handed over. Wielding a power to control the wind, he smashes at the gate, shaking the entire compound.
Araya orders the east gate open so that the people inside can flee. However, because of the Sugo twins’ prank, the gate will not open. The First Terror continues to hit the west gate, which begins to splinter. Araya gives her prized spear to Keema and orders him to take it to Shan in the Divine City. (In the Inverted Theater, the audience turns to stare at the grandchild holding the very same spear.) Araya tells Keema that the emperor is dead and that he should leave with the wagon, which is, at that moment, attempting to escape. He leaps aboard the wagon as it barrels toward the closed east gate.
Just as the west gate falls, the dead woman in the wagon twitches a finger, and the east gate blows apart. The wagon rushes through while the Red Peacocks and Araya’s men fight. Araya tries to stop the First Terror while the Peacocks chase the wagon. The wagon crosses a bridge. The dead woman’s eyes open, and she reaches out a hand. The bridge collapses, taking several Peacocks with it, allowing the wagon to escape without being followed.
The grandchild in the theater recalls hearing this story before, as competing versions of it were told by their father and Lola. Their father called it a story of battle and death, about a revolution and the camaraderie between men. Lola assures the grandchild that their father is wrong: “[T]his is a love story to its blade-dented bone” (94).
Chapter 1 Analysis
From the first line, the novel’s metafictional nature is apparent. Using the second-person point of view, the narrator speaks directly to “you”—functionally, the reader, who is placed in the role of a character within the novel, the grandchild. It is highly unusual to write a novel from the second-person point of view. As Jake Casella Brookins states, “Writing a significant portion of a fantasy novel in the second person is already something of a trick” (Casella Brookins, Jake. “Fantastic Textures in ‘The Spear Cuts Through Water.’” Chicago Review of Books, 30 Aug. 2022). There are, however, a few examples of the technique done successfully, such as N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy and Harrow the Ninth, the second novel in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series. However, unlike both Harrow the Ninth and the Broken Earth trilogy, the second-person narration in The Spear Cuts Through Water is merely one layer within a complex, multivocal novel.
The second-person narrative is a frame story that establishes the character of the grandchild (“you”) listening to their grandmother, Lola, tell stories. Within this story, the grandchild lives in a vaguely modern “Unified Continent”—a name suggestive of the United States—and faces painful but mundane challenges such as a neglectful father and a war they know little about. Frame stories were common in 19th-century literature and have become less so in recent decades, but they remain a common technique in the high-fantasy genre, as they bridge the gap between the “real world” setting of the reader and the fantasy world of the novel. Traditionally, the frame story recedes into the background, appearing only at the opening and closing of the novel to keep the primary focus on the nested story.
In this case, however, the metafictional novel intentionally draws attention to its own construction, highlighting the various layers of storytelling, of which the grandchild’s frame story is but one of many threads woven together into a whole. These layers include Lola’s stories, the grandchild’s dream of the Inverted Theater, and the story told on the stage, among others. The novel shifts between these vocal registers constantly. For brevity and clarity, this summary depicts these shifts only when it is explicitly necessary to relay a significant world-building or plot element. However, the narrative weaves in and out of these layers often, sometimes within the same paragraph or even sentence. The motif of stories forms the foundation of a major theme: Storytelling as a Means of Identity Formation. This theme is initially revealed through the sense of cultural identity that Lola derives from her stories, but it soon becomes clear that storytelling is vital to the identity of all major characters. Just as Jun and Keema build their identities through the story they are living, the grandchild comes to understand their own identity through the story unfolding in the Inverted Theater.
With the stage figuratively and literally set within the Inverted Theater, the novel’s primary focus shifts to the central story. This story, of Keema and Jun, adheres more closely to high-fantasy genre expectations, containing magic, heroes, gods, and bloody battles. It is also told in the traditional third-person narration. Yet, even here, metafictional elements emerge, such as the first-person interjections that appear in italics. These moments, presented like a Greek chorus commenting on the story, allow minor characters to speak for themselves.
In this central story, the major characters begin to appear, including the First Terror, his son Jun, Keema of the Daware Tribe, Commander Araya, and the empress/Moon goddess. Each character, except the empress, is introduced separately, with extensive space given to their inner thoughts and feelings just before they collide and the primary action kicks off. The most significant of these is Jun, raised by his father, the First Terror, to be a ruthless murderer. The Red Peacocks call him “Jun the Beautiful Knife, who slit his first throat at eight years of age” (16). Yet, when the narrative first reveals Jun in person, he is just a boy—young, thin, and haunted. Unlike the others, the empress is viewed primarily through the eyes of the other characters until Chapter 4.
In addition to the primary characters, the first chapter also provides extensive exposition and sensory detail. Much of the narrative is, in fact, devoted to descriptive language that creates a rich, intricate image of the Old Country. This includes descriptions of the Inverted Theater, a “towering pagoda on a still lake at night, its reflection in the water perfect […] Lanterns hang off its curved eaves like earrings, lighting up its ornate facade against the darkness of the black-carpet sky” (6-7). Likewise, the checkpoint gates are described with careful detail, as “massive gate[s] of ironwood timber and flexioned rope pulleys to collect the toll and inspect your papers; these fortresses overseen by watchtower tortoises, the eyes of the emperor” (35). Some details, like those of the theater, add texture and color to the narrative. Others, like those of the checkpoint gates, are vital information to understand the movements and actions of various characters.
The symbol of the spear, carried by the grandchild into the Inverted Theater and also owned by Araya in the nested story itself, establishes the continuity between the world of the nested story and the world of its frame. The spear becomes increasingly significant as the narrative progresses, symbolizing the connection of characters across time and space. The final line of the first chapter also hints at the second major theme of the novel. In the final line, Lola assures the grandchild that this story—that which is being told on the stage—“is a love story to its blade-dented bone” (94). The word “love” echoes throughout the story in a variety of modes and registers, providing the theme of Love as a Source of Conflict and Healing. In the first chapters, the First Terror’s love for his son Jun drives him to commit atrocities. However, that same love will lead to his eventual redemption.
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