Summary

Chapter 17: As the narrator goes out in the canoe on her own to search for a cave painting, she considers how religion causes people to relate the experience of death to that of sacrifice. She decides to dive in the lake alone, a dangerous activity, but one she feels she wants to try. She dives three times. The first time, she breaks the surface of the water having seen nothing. The second time, she returns to the surface of the water having seen some sort of a blotch of a figure on a rock surface. The final time, she dives deeply, until the water is so dark that the fish seem to be glowing from phosphorescence, and just as she is marveling at their beauty, she sees some sort of dead human-like figure. She is terrified and starts screaming soundlessly underwater and barely makes it...