This chapter, which contains the climax of the novel’s plot, is shorter than those that precede it. By portraying the battle of the noble families’ rebellion, the confrontation with the Third Terror, and the arrival of the tidal wave at a rapid pace, the novel intensifies the action, underscores the chaotic nature of combat, and highlights the abruptness of death.

The subtitle of the chapter, “In Which We Offer Our Finest Dance,” refers explicitly to the dance that Keema and Jun perform to call the Water and end the tidal wave. The name of the dance also provides the title of the novel, confirming the dance’s significance to the overall plot and to the central theme of Storytelling as a Means of Identity Formation. The spear—which exists physically in both the grandchild’s world and that of Keema and Jun—symbolizes the power of stories to maintain continuity across history and geography. This subtitle also suggests that the dance performed in the Inverted Theater, which tells this story, is also a kind of offering. Additionally, as the novel has shown several times, fighting and dancing are inextricably linked in the culture of the Old Country, thus implying that the entire climactic battle sequence in the chapter is also a dance offered up to the world, to the gods, or to the audience.

In an unusual move, this penultimate chapter introduces two more major characters in the final stages of the plot: Shan and the Third Terror. However, both characters have been referenced and foreshadowed in previous chapters, which gives their arrival a sense of expectation and inevitability. Both contribute something crucial to the novel despite their brief appearances. Shan, the person to whom Keema is meant to deliver Araya’s sword, is revealed to be Araya’s daughter. Thus, Keema’s oath and plot thread within the woven narrative would not be complete if she did not appear. Her personal mission to save her father from Joyrock has little impact on the primary plot—little would change if Keema and Jun had found her among the rebel soldiers rather than trying to break into Joyrock—but her backstory contributes significantly to the theme of Love as a Source of Conflict and Healing. Moreover, her survival is crucial in that she is the start of the family line that gives rise to the entire audience in the Inverted Theater, including the grandchild.

The other new major character is the Third Terror, revealed to be the purple bird that Keema rescued in Chapter 2. The bird has appeared off and on throughout the novel, assisting Keema and Jun where it could. Now, the novel finally reveals why. The Third Terror’s backstory is one of the most horrific and tragic in the long list of tragic stories nested within the novel, revealing the depths of neglect and cruelty that his own father subjected him to. The Third Terror is the final obstacle to the success of Keema and Jun’s mission, making the fight between them inevitable. Additionally, as with Shan, his story contributes to the theme of love as a source of conflict and healing in several ways. Like his brothers, beneath all his violence is an indescribable yearning for his mother, the Moon goddess. The old woman who monitors the entrance to Joyrock is motivated by love to release him, despite the danger he poses. Lastly, he is motivated by love—misguided and monstrously expressed though it is—to help (and then attack) Keema.

Even the Water, bent on destroying the Old Country with an enormous tidal wave, is motivated by love, desperate to recover the Moon goddess’s bones. It is thus appropriate that a dance, which the Water taught to humans to entertain the Moon in the sky, should be the thing that convinces it to halt its advance. The dance that Keema and Jun perform allows them to speak directly with the Water, but it also allows them to express their feelings for each other. The boys have longed to dance together, to touch each other with care and tenderness rather than competition and violence, and they finally permit themselves to do so. Love, then, becomes the spear that cuts through the tidal wave and ends the crisis.