The Spear Cuts Through Water
65 pages • 2-hour read
Simon JimenezThe Spear Cuts Through Water
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Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2, Pages 95-133 Summary
The Spires are enormous and sheer, and a fall from their cliffs means death. The First Terror knows this as he watches his sons fall from the broken bridge and into the chasm below. He screams and cries.
The horses pulling the wagon collapse and die. The driver mourns their loss and then enters the back of the wagon to retrieve the old woman, startling Keema. Keema and the driver fight while a group of apes watches from the trees. The oldest ape is impressed with their skill but knows that they are too evenly matched and that there will be no winner.
Suddenly, the back of the wagon explodes. The driver turns to the dead woman, drops to his knees, and apologizes. Keema is confused. He can hear nothing, but the driver responds as if the woman speaks to him. Keema suddenly understands that this woman is the empress, the Moon goddess who fell from the sky centuries ago. Overhead, the apes in the trees also recognize her.
The driver places the woman’s seated body on a cushion and lifts her over his head. He then asks the apes for help on her behalf, saying, “The empress recognizes the Green Hill Tribe” (106). The oldest ape speaks, greeting the Moon. Though the apes do not like men, they see that the Moon is weak in her human body and cannot protect them. They do not want to become involved, but they offer one piece of advice. Farther down the road, near the rice-farming villages, there is an abandoned wagon that they might use. The empress thanks them, and then the driver, carrying the empress, walks down the road.
Keema follows, explaining his oath to take Araya’s spear to the Divine City. The driver informs Keema that Commander Araya was a traitor planning to assassinate the royal family and therefore that his oath to her is meaningless, but Keema insists that he must keep his promise.
They reach the rice villages. The driver tells Keema to raid a nearby storehouse for supplies and then meet them at the abandoned wagon that the apes mentioned. A village girl and a soldier catch Keema while he is raiding the storehouse. The girl pretends to know him, claiming that he is a local farmer’s helper. The soldier surprises Keema by offering to help him carry the supplies. Most are cruel to him because he is disabled.
Meanwhile, the driver finds the wagon, but it is not abandoned. Imperial soldiers loiter about it, sleeping off a night of drinking. He sneaks into the wagon, where he finds a tortoise smaller than others of its kind, with a cracked shell, malformed legs, and the stink of deathly infection. Fearing that the tortoise will reveal his presence, the driver lifts an axe to kill it but freezes at the last moment, unable to make the killing blow. Voices in his head remind him of the many people he has murdered, showing him the blood on his hands. He cries and drops the axe, begging for forgiveness.
The tortoise begs to live. The soldiers are taking it to the Rabbit Gate, another military checkpoint, to be the new messenger there, but it is a Defect since its connection to the tortoise network is imperfect. It wants to be free, not locked in a watchtower. The driver agrees to take the Defect with them.
Keema and the soldier arrive at the wagon. Keema notices the driver in the back of the wagon. He distracts the other soldiers and leaps in. The empress opens a hole in the ground, swallowing the soldiers and allowing the wagon to escape. The nearby villagers, recently raided and harassed by the soldiers, watch without intervening.
Finally, the driver introduces himself as Jun. While Jun drives, Keema sits in the wagon with the empress and the Defect. He finds a secret compartment beneath the wooden floor, and inside is a purple bird. Keema releases it, and it flies away.
Chapter 2, Pages 133-157 Summary
The bird flies high overhead. For reasons it does not understand, it wants to repay Keema’s kindness. It flies toward the Monkey Gate in the north and sees the First Terror and the Red Peacocks.
In the wagon, Jun tells Keema about the First Terror, eldest of the emperor’s triplet sons, who can control wind and water. Jun has no hope of escaping the First Terror unless they can reach the river beyond the Rabbit Gate and lose him in the Thousand Rivers.
Jun warns Keema of his dangerous mission and urges him to find his own way to the east, but Keema does not want to part ways. The fortune teller promised that Keema would find the purpose he is looking for at Tiger Gate, and he believes this is it.
Other travelers congregate around them on the road. Riding beside them, a trinket seller offers them his wares, including small tablets illustrated with erotic images. Jun buys a fox mask to replace his demon one. While the trinket seller distracts them, someone comes up behind the wagon and sets it on fire. Keema and Jun stop to put the fire out, and the trinket seller rides away, mischief complete. Keema steals one of the illustrated tablets, decorated with the image of two men entwined. Later, alone in the back of the wagon, he stares at the image. He once worked as a bodyguard on a pleasure vessel, protecting the sex workers from violent men. Sex does not alarm him, but he has never seen two men like this and finds it arousing. He loses the tablet by the end of the day. Jun finds it and secretly keeps it.
The First Terror reaches the Monkey Gate, where he speaks with their tortoise. He orders the tortoise to search for a driver wearing a demon mask and riding a wagon. The tortoise cannot find the demon mask but sees the fox mask. The First Terror suspects that the driver changed masks and sends a messenger ahead to close the Rabbit Gate, knowing that the wagon will head in that direction.
On the road, a man on a horse rides by the wagon. The Defect senses that he is the messenger sent by the First Terror. The empress orders Jun to kill the messenger, but Jun refuses. Instead, Keema chases after the rider. From nowhere, the purple bird flies down and strikes the messenger, knocking him off his horse and allowing Keema to kill him. On his body, they find the message ordering the Rabbit Gate closed.
The grandchild briefly remembers their father. A war has ravaged the Unified Continent for years. Soldiers return, lamenting the death and destruction, but the grandchild’s father has always assured them that it is “for the greater good” (155). When one of the grandchild’s nine brothers ran away rather than joining the fighting, the father said that he was dead. Similarly, the First Terror believes that his favorite son is dead: When he found the emperor’s body in the cavern, he also found Jun’s peacock mask and thought that his son was murdered.
Chapter 2, Pages 157-186 Summary
In the wagon, the empress berates Jun. Jun apologizes for disappointing her but insists that he will never kill again. Jun speaks with Keema, explaining that the Five Families, the nobility who own most of the land in the country, are plotting a coup. They are currently gathering at the Divine City, where the emperor was supposed to make his final pilgrimage stop. That is where he and the empress are headed.
On the road, the crowd of travelers suddenly halts. Ahead, a stone statue of an old man blocks the way. It is a Daido, a mystical totem that warns of dangers on the road ahead. The travelers know better than to walk past it. Instead, they slowly cut through trees to make a detour, some leaving gifts and tokens of thanks by the Daido as they pass.
Jun sends Keema inside the wagon to speak with the empress. She enters Keema’s mind. He sees her memories of living in the sky, of tearing free and taking on a human shape. He sees her life trapped in the cavern beneath the palace and giving birth to generations of emperors and their sons, including the Three Terrors. She knows that they will eat her body and gain her power, becoming unstoppable. She plans to find the rebellion and allow them to eat her instead so that they will be strong enough to destroy the royal family.
Night falls, and Jun asks Keema again about the Daware custom of keeping oaths. Keema lies and says that if he fails, he must take his own life. Jun confesses that he does not believe he will survive the journey. He demands that Keema swear to take the empress to join the rebellion. He adds that the Defect is expected to stay at the Rabbit Gate when they arrive, but he promised to take the tortoise to freedom. He demands that Keema help him find a way to escape with the Defect, and Keema promises.
They arrive at the Rabbit Gate, and Keema comes up with a plan. Due to the tortoise’s disabilities and stink, he convinces the soldiers that the Defect was sick and died on the way. He and Jun offer to dump the body in the river on the far side of the gate. The soldiers agree and let them through.
They steal a boat they find on the riverbank. Then, the Red Peacock brigade appears and attacks. The First Terror leaps into the boat as Keema and Jun try to steer away. In the fight, Jun’s mask falls, and the First Terror sees with horror that his own son has betrayed him. While the First Terror is distracted, Keema cuts off his head, kicking the body into the river while the brigade watches on the riverbank. The First Terror’s head still speaks, however, and Jun shoves it into a rice jar. Beside them, the empress weeps.
Chapter 2 Analysis
The final scenes of Chapter 1, in which the First Terror attacks the Tiger Gate, signal the start of the action. From this point, each chapter depicts the events of a single day, corresponding to the days of the emperor’s planned pilgrimage from the Spires in the west to the Unending Sea in the east. With the emperor dead, the empress—under Jun and Keema’s protection—now makes that pilgrimage on her own, ironically mirroring his journey in search of eternal life with the intention of ending her own. The empress’s belief that she must die to redeem herself reflects the difficulty of Ending the Generational Cycle of Violence. She believes that only through death can she atone for the violence she has brought into the world, and she has instilled this same belief in Jun.
Each chapter includes a subtitle that corresponds to some element of that day, primarily indicating either the region that the characters enter or something they lose along the way. For instance, the First Day’s subtitle, “In Which We Offer Our Finest Harvest,” refers to the farming region that Jun and Keema travel through on the first day. This technique enhances the novel’s world building and highlights an irony at the center of the narrative: As part of the emperor’s pilgrimage, his citizens were expected to prepare gifts and offerings for his journey to each stop. Now that the emperor is dead, the farmers’ gifts of their harvest and supplies go instead to the empress, Jun, and Keema when they raid the storehouses. In another twist of irony, the harvest also refers obliquely to the First Terror’s severed head, which Keema cuts with his spear as a scythe cuts grain.
Chapter 2 also introduces another significant character, the Defect. The Defect is important for several reasons. First, its arrival allows the narrator to explain in more detail why and how the tortoises work as messengers for the emperor, which is an important plot device. Second, Jun’s first encounter with the Defect thrusts him into a fit of guilt and despair, revealing the depth of his shame over his past sins, manifested as the voices of his victims screaming in his head. Third, its arrival adds a new dimension to the backstory and character of the empress, who feels that she owes the tortoise clan a debt, though she does not elaborate on this until the third chapter. Lastly, the Defect plays a crucial role in the movement of the plot, though this is likewise not revealed until Chapter 3.
Jun’s guilt and shame form a core emotional and thematic element of the novel. Through the voices in his head, the narrative reveals many of his violent acts, from burning down villages to murdering children. This is important context to understand the depth of Jun’s shame after the empress changes him and his determination to pay recompense. Though he believes himself beyond forgiveness, he continually strives to change and earn redemption, including his vow to never kill again. Jun’s guilt—initially planted in his mind by the empress—forms the cornerstone of her plan for ending the generational cycle of violence, but it also initiates his character arc, as he develops from the ruthless “beautiful knife” that his father wanted him to be into a person capable of empathy and love. His developing love for Keema further spurs this transformation, illustrating the power of Love as a Source of Conflict and Healing.
Love functions in this way throughout this chapter. As another example, the First Terror’s genuine love for his sons is his single redeeming quality. Despite his cruel and violent nature, he constantly demonstrates his love for his children, particularly Jun. He is driven to rage as he chases the wagon, believing that these perpetrators killed his son. Similarly, the empress loves her children and grieves the First Terror’s death when Keema cuts off his head. In the face of the horrific acts that the Three Terrors commit, the empress is motivated by a confused mix of love and terror to stop them before they wreak havoc on the country.
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