The Spear Cuts Through Water

“Death spurned, a life stretched beyond its means. These were the recent dreams, intense and all-consuming, that had of late been haunting the emperor with their otherworldly promises, inspiring His coming Holy Pilgrimage. Imagery and portent that compelled Him to journey to the new lands across the sea to find the key to a door that had up till then remained locked, for all men; even those born of a god. The secret to eternal life.”

The emperor fears death and is determined to do everything in his power to avoid it. Significantly, the empress/Moon goddess is likewise afraid of dying, which is why she chose to fall from the sky and thus instigated the tragedy that unfolded. In mirroring each other, they suggest a universal fear of death, another thematic element of the novel.

“The other dreamers watch you in wonder as you hold the spear up, the blade glinting in the light of the braziers that now line the aisles of this amphitheater, the weapon handed down from parent to child in your family for many generations, going back even before the crossing of the Great and Unending Sea.”

The spear introduced in the first chapter, owned by both the grandchild and Araya, proves central to the plot, particularly Keema’s journey. It is also a crucial symbol of cultural heritage and familial lineage that connects the characters across space and time and supports the theme of Storytelling as a Means of Identity Formation.

“‘But listen well when I tell you that your father, and your granjo, are wrong.’

What were they wrong about? you asked.

She shrugged.

‘This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.’”

In the final lines of the first chapter, Lola assures the grandchild that the story they are hearing is a love story. As with the story of the Moon and the Water, this helps to establish the theme of love. Love in all its forms pervades the novel. The imagery of love as a blade that cuts the story to the bone indicates the complex nature of love as a source of conflict and healing.

“They fought for nothing, which is why you see yourself in them. You remember the time you and your friend Jadi fought. […] You knew he cared about you. But something in you needed to claw his heart out anyway. […] Your lola was dead, outlived by her own father. And you were on fire. And it felt so good to let it burn.”

The grandchild watches as Keema and Jun fight for the first time, both knowing that they could stop at any time but neither willing to do so, for reasons they cannot explain. The grandchild understands how they feel and articulates it as the need to burn. The metaphorical imagery of violence here points toward the literal violence in the frame story and underscores the pain that comes with love.

“[W]e swirled around that pretty little skull of his and we clawed at the walls and we wailed and we said do you remember us, you demon, do you remember spilling our blood at your taloned feet and now here you are DOING IT AGAIN, and he groaned as he clutched at his head, his throbbing eye, and begged them to cease the pain, begged them for their release. ‘I—I’m sorry…’ The hatchet at his feet now long forgotten, the young man now a boy shuddering on the floor.”

Jun breaks into the soldiers’ wagon and comes across the Defect. He moves to kill it but is overcome by the voices in his head. These voices of his previous murder victims are a manifestation of his guilt and shame for his past, signifying his mental anguish and fueling his need for forgiveness and redemption.

“By the end of the day Keema would lose the tablet. […] But the image of the embrace would remain. It would become a thing he could return to in his mind when he pleased, elaborating on the details, giving life to the still image, and in this way it would become his, for this was the fate of all fantasy.”

From the trinket seller, Keema steals an erotic illustrated tablet depicting two men. His response to the image reveals his own latent desires. Crucially, the narrative asserts that he is not ashamed of this, merely inexperienced and shy, adding that while sex between men is not common in his culture, it is also not reviled as it is in the grandchild’s contemporary society.

“In those six months I spent in that fucking hole, the empress unveiled my eyes, and She broke me, and I learned the price of taking a life. Let the messenger on the road be the last who needs to fall on our journey east. Let me be the last nail driven into the wall. I will not have another creature die by my hand. Swear that you will help me bring the tortoise to safety.”

As they near the Rabbit Gate, Jun makes Keema swear to keep the Defect alive, even knowing that it may be impossible and will certainly endanger their primary mission. He explains his reasons for this, including his vow never to kill again. This moment underscores Jun’s feelings of shame and guilt and reveals the empress’s role in breaking him.

“Long and low was the sigh of Luubu Ossa, the Second Terror, and full rich with pleasure, for he had learned that his father was dead, and the news, even a day later, had yet to lose its flavor.”

Luubu’s introduction reveals the character’s sadistic and depraved nature in careful detail. The fact that he savors the news of his father’s death is the first of several clues as to Luubu’s ambition and resentment toward his entire family. Of the three brothers, Luubu is the least physically powerful but the most sadistic and power hungry.

“‘Nature would see me drawn and quartered.’ Jun’s voice had taken on a flatter tone as he said this. Neutral. Matter-of-fact. Certain. ‘Nature would have me gutted. Nothing in this world will ever meet me and not want to slit my throat, because I wear the mark of death on my face. Because I had served death proudly.’”

Keema wants to follow the purple bird’s directions, believing it to be a sign from nature. Jun’s response highlights the depths of his guilt and self-hatred. He believes that his sins are so great that nature itself must want revenge against him. In an ironic twist, one of the embodiments of nature, the Water, saves his life in the end.

“He wanted to show Jun this side of him. He wanted to stand up and reach out and offer Jun his hand and ask him if he would like to dance. But he was afraid, and in fear he could find no words to pull out of his parched throat.

And so he tackled him.”

Dance is an important motif that represents storytelling, self-expression, and courtship. This moment demonstrates Keema’s growing romantic feelings for Jun. However, he is too afraid to express those feelings. Instead, he challenges Jun to another duel because such ritualized fighting allows him the physical intimacy he craves without the emotional risk.

“Yet for me this crater was not a gift of the five heavens but an embarrassment, a shame, deep in my bones. When I looked upon this crater, what I saw was a deep scarring of the earth. I saw the rivers of fault and blame, spreading out from my hands. I saw my body falling.”

The empress reflects on the region called the Bowl of Heaven, which she sees as a symbol of her guilt because it is the place where she landed when she fell from the sky, leading to the tragedies that followed. This moment reveals the empress’s quest for redemption that mirrors Jun’s.

“If only there were a way to prolong the inevitable. If only there were a way to hold a moment in your hands and keep it alive forever. But nothing, and no one, lives forever.

Not even gods. We are mighty, but we are not invulnerable. Death simply must work harder to catch us.”

The empress confesses her fear of death, which motivated her to make a deal with the man who became the first emperor. Just as the empress mirrors the emperor when she takes up the pilgrimage to the eastern shore, she also mirrors him in her quest to avoid dying.

“Luubu gazed at me with a love so infinite it presented as a mad and indecipherable pattern. It was overwhelming and violent in its hunger. And even now it remains hard for me to determine how I feel about the men who had sprung from me—what to do with my deep hatred, and my bottomless love, for them.”

Often, in the novel’s world, love becomes twisted up with anger and resentment, turning deadly. Luubu wants to own his mother out of a twisted sense of love and therefore tries to consume her as a literal expression of that love. Similarly, the empress’s love for her children is twisted with hatred and revulsion for the cruelty and violence they enact on the world. This ambivalence underscores the theme of love as a source of conflict and healing.

“The stories are everywhere, you cannot avoid them. Every day you tell a story to yourself; the details of your day become part of your myth. It is reordered. It is made sense of. […] They are private stories told on stages behind thick curtains, seen only by the teller, and no one else.”

The motif of stories appears everywhere, from the unique narrative structure, to the stories that characters share, to the stories that each person tells themselves in the privacy of their own thoughts. Every story contributes to the theme of storytelling as a means of identity formation. This is especially true of these inner stories, which make up a person’s sense of self.

“Both of them too caught in the movement to realize that the fight had instead become a dance as they leapt and grabbed at and pulled under and over. A strange dance, out of time, from another place entirely, pirouettes and side slides, alien to anyone who might’ve witnessed it…”

Again, Keema resorts to wrestling and dueling as a way to fulfill his desire for physical intimacy. This time, however, the narrative makes the connection between fighting and dancing more explicit and thus indicates that both boys are closer to accepting their feelings for each other.

“This place, which lies between your world and the next, is the theater where stories like yours are told. […] The tales of old. The tales of heroes, Keema, of brave deeds and grim tragedies. The audience you see before you, they’ve followed you since the First Day of your long journey, and in time, they will see what comes to pass at the end of it.”

Keema and Jun enter the Inverted Theater. The dancer explains how and why they are there, describing their story as one of heroic deeds and tragic sacrifice. This moment reinforces the metafictional nature of the novel, exposing the narrative structures not only to the reader but also to the characters themselves.

“I started this journey with the expectation that I would not see the end of it. […] The empress was always clear on that matter from the beginning. She didn’t intend for either of us to make it, and I was fine with that. She told me there would never come a day when I’ve balanced the scales of my life, that the things I’ve done to others will remain as scars on this world, forever, and that the same went for Her. Redemption was out of our reach, but we could at least step toward it, and if we died on that long road, then all the better, for everyone.”

Jun accepts the suicide mission to stop the tidal wave without hesitation because he always intended to die. This moment again highlights his quest for redemption and his simultaneous belief that redemption is impossible and that the best he can hope for is an honorable death. He believes that his death is the only possible answer. The ending of the novel, however, argues otherwise.

“She never told him of her dreams of the father she had that were as desperate and real as her longing for her mother. She never told him of their plan to one day free Radle Araya from the pit of Joyrock, if even he yet lived—that from the start, their motivations had not been to the Family but to the stubborn fruit of love.”

The novel introduces Shan Araya and tells her life story, including the tragic romance between her mother and father. Shan and Araya share an obsessive quest to save her father from Joyrock. This is one of the few times when the novel explicitly remarks upon love as the primary motivation for a character’s actions.

“Your father looks at you, with apology. ‘The story of the shunned, misbegotten child remains unchanging through the years. It is the same now as it was then. You know the arc, and the characters. The patriarch who despised him. The brothers who pretended he did not exist, in fear that to do so would earn the wrath of the father.’”

Lola and the father share the storytelling role to explain the Third Terror’s tragic backstory. As the grandchild’s father remarks on this well-worn narrative of a neglected child, the look of apology is particularly significant. It suggests that the father recognizes himself as a similarly neglectful father.

“Jun looked over at Keema, and Keema looked over at Jun.

‘I would’ve won,’ Keema said. ‘If we had ever had a proper duel. Fully rested. I would’ve won.’

Jun smiled.

‘Fuck off,’ He said, which, to Keema’s ears, had the same melody as I love you.”

Just before they fall off the cliff in their fight against the Third Terror, this exchange between Keema and Jun portrays a brief moment of connection. They both seem aware of the emotional meaning beneath their several duels, though neither is willing to say it. Keema, at least, seems to understand that their fights are expressions of love.

“And I asked him if he would dance with me.

When Jun took his hand, Keema wanted to laugh, because for his whole life he wished he was brave enough to ask this question, and in the end it was so easy. The meeting of their hands seeming almost inevitable.”

In the face of death, Keema finds the courage to ask for the dance he has been yearning for. Now, they can no longer hide their emotional intimacy beneath the ritual of fighting. In expressing the love between them, they also communicate with the Water through their dance and save the country from the tidal wave.

“The family spear you had given away now less a spear than a sewing needle, stitching two distant points of time together in one unending embrace. You wondered, as you gave the spear to Keema, why it was you who was chosen to be representative of all the descendants; why you, whose connection to the Old Country was tenuous and variable at best.”

The grandchild explicitly reflects on the symbolism of the spear as an object that stretches across time and space to connect the descendants of Araya. The grandchild comes to accept and even respect the cultural identity they have resisted, highlighting the identity-making aspects of storytelling.

“You say it like an apology. Like it is a thing to be apologized for. A runaway child, charging through the porcelain shelves: I thought this was a love story. I had hoped this was a love story. You say it with shame, embarrassed at having said it, wishing you could take it back. You say it, worried that you have betrayed some secret part of yourself that does not wish to be exposed—an old gremlin in you, sick and yearning.”

Echoing back to Lola’s assurance in the first chapter, the grandchild asks the dancer if this story is truly a love story. The question comes from a place of longing, underscoring the grandchild’s own yearning for love that echoes Keema’s and Jun’s desires and ultimately confirming the importance and power of love in their lives.