Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

Lourdes learns about her children’s kidnapping and is overwhelmed with guilt. She wonders if she could have been prevented it if she hadn’t left for the Matacão to find Kazumasa and stayed to work for Radio Chico. Hiroshi consoles Lourdes and recognizes she doesn’t love him; Hiroshi accepts they weren’t meant to be together. He observes how much Lourdes cares about her children and Kazumasa and regrets his own greed and obsession with wealth. He refocuses his energy, away from business and toward finding his cousin.

Elsewhere, obsessed feather cultists believe that through meditation they can fly, aided by the spirit of birds. People leap from buildings, clutching bird feathers in their fists, and die. Cultists rationalize that the failed flights are a sign the earth is upset about the treatment of the birds of the world: “It was a clear sign of revenge, a message to the human animal that the destruction of so many beautiful birds without proper ritual and payment to their spirits would no longer be tolerated” (158-159).

Mané mourns the dead, heartbroken that people are using feathers in such a dangerous way. Making matters worse, a terrible epidemic of typhus breaks out across the Matacão.