Chapters 21-24 Summary and Analysis

In the twenty-first chapter, the group gathers around fires to settle in for the night, and the man in blue tells about the deception and death of the lizard. Bruce records the story of the lizard and his fair-skinned wife traveling to another part of the country, and a man from that southern region seduces and steals the lizard's wife, sending him home with a disguised replacement. Arkady explains that the melodies of songs like this one are uniform according to region, even if they are sung in different languages from tribe to tribe, because the melodies are determined by the geography of the land. Even tribes that have never met sing the same melodies to describe the same areas of land. Bruce closes the chapter remembering another story he had heard that was acted out with the same...