Summary

In “Third Chamber,” the prologue to the third and last part of the book, MacFarlane narrates a journey into a labyrinth through an old ash tree. The reader emerges in a pool with black, cold water and then travels into underground chambers with stalactites. A woman is prepared for burial in the fourth century B.C. in Thessaly with a coin bearing the head of a gorgon on her lips to pay the ferryman who will carry her across the river of the dead. After this, the images switch to mining and pollution, including a pit in Turkmenistan that is still on fire from mining activities in the 70s and a lake of toxic mud in Java, Indonesia. He also mentions the flock of snow geese that landed on a tailings pit in Butte, Montana and died.

In Chapter 8 “Red Dancer...