I. Overview:
 Able, Rima and Nuflo have been traveling 18 days now.  As the three wearied travelers reach the sacred place of Nuflo’s encounter, Rima faces utter disappointment; her people are no longer around.  Rima has a hard time accepting this and soon faints into Abel’s arms.  Rima swoons and Nuflo prays to her to remember him and his good deeds as she is up in heaven.  After Nuflo’s selfish appeal Abel notices that Rima is indeed alive and has regained consciousness.  Abel sees that his chance is finally at hand and in an all too tender moment he goes for it and kisses Rima’s lips until she awakens.  Once Rima has awakened she and Abel discuss the differences between her life and language and his.  Rima receals that her mother, like Rima and Abel, had a love that was all too soon lost to her.  After this enlightening moment, Rima tells Abel that she has unfinished business and must forge for home, alone.  Abel and Nuflo set out for home and the return journey takes a little longer than expected; they arrive home in 23 days.  Once they get to the familiar woods Abel notices a quiet that seems to follow them.  Abel and Nuflo find the ashes of their home, which had been burned to the ground by Runi’s tribe.  Abel immediately feels a sense of doom and goes in search of his beloved, Rima.  Instead of meeting Rima he comes face o face with Piake, Kua-ko’s older brother.  Piake escorts Abel back to the village where Runi interrogates Abel and sends him on a “mission” wtih Kua-ko.  On this mission Abel probes for information regarding the daughter of the Didi.  As Abel hears that his love has perished at the hands of the Indians he is sickened and as soon as his Indian companions have fallen asleep he heads off to Managa’s village.  Kua-ko follows him only to be slain by Abel, who picks up his own cloak, which Kua-ko had, and he conitnues to Managa’s village.

II. Analysis: The barrier of language
 Hudson takes the idea language as a barrier to a whole new meaning.  His text is written in English yet the three main classifications of people speak languages other than this.  Abel, who is from Venenzuela, speaks Spanish and later becomes fluent in the “long, monotonous sing-song” (167)  Indian language.  When Abel meets Rima he is agian faced with a language barrier, yet her sweet bird like language is a one that Abel can not conquer.  Hudson uses these three seemingly different languages to provoke the reader into a higher understanding of the underlying plot of Abel and Rima’s relationship.
 But, Is language a big enough reason to give up on love?  To Rima it is, she holds out the naive hope that one day Abel will understand her melodious notes.  When she tries to relate, once again, the reasoning behind her mothers sadness she looks at Abel and hopes that he “can understand-now-at last” (154).  Once she realizes that he still can not understand she says she does love him, but if she is to take on his customs should not her take hers.  She pleads with him saying “If yours is mine, mine must be yours” (155).  Abel, being the clear-headed man that he is, states that he “can never hope to understand [her] sweet speech, much less to speak it” (155).  Rima is crushed and says she will not speak Spanish because Spanish “is not speaking” (155), and until she can truly communicate with Abel “there [will] not be that perfect union of soul she so passionately [desires]” (155).  Abel begs her to love him and trust in this feeling of love to overcome this obstacle but she will not concede, knowing that her mother also suffered because the on she loved was also different from her.  In the end, this barrier along with Rima’s innermost desire to find one’s like herself would keep them apart.

III. Questions:
1. How does Hudson rely on this ‘barrier of language’ in this novel?
2. What impression does Hudson leave the reader with in regard to the Indians?