5HC: Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 22 Apr 2002, 16:21 · from urth-v0204.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Subject: RE: (urth) 5HC: Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 09:21:12 -0700
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Tony Ellis responds to me:

> > Possible explanations exfoliate:  It's _fairly_ clear, though,
> > that the Shadow children are the first, French, colonists.

> They can't be. 'A Story' ends with the arrival of the French colonists.

Why, yes; so it does (or seems to -- certainly, it ends with the arrival
of _some_ colonists). But how much of 'A Story' should we take literally?
Even the title is reversed: it isn't really "A Story" by John V. Marsch;
it is a story by "John V. Marsch." All in Part 2 of 5HC is shadows and/or
reflections, and all is told by Victor for some specific purpose. Find
(in part 3) his purpose for telling the story, and learn what to believe.

And, no, I haven't found his purpose yet.

> That leaves us with two possibilities that I can see. Either the Shadow
> Children are indigenous or, as you say there is

> > the somewhat vaguer possibility that the Shadow children are not
> > the French at all but a much earlier round of colonists -- among
> > the names the great WOO remembers for their ancient home are
> > "Atlantis or Mu -- or Gondwanaland, Africa, Poictesme, or the
> > Country of Friends."

> This is the explanation we are set up to believe for most of the
> story. But - and it's a very big but - toward the end the Old Wise
> One does a complete about-face,=20

... the reversal of the reflection of the Shadows ...

> and admits that his race was already here when the first,
> prehistoric Earth colonists came:
> "Now I am half a man, and know that we were always here..."

So why does Victor tell us this? What is -his- reason? What does
he hope to gain?

(We don't even know whether he wrote "A Story" before or after=20
he was arrested!)

> > Another possibility occurs to me -- perhaps the abos are not
> > shapeshifters

> Heh. I've been saying this for years: the abos are -not- shapeshifters.
> There's not a scrap of evidence to suggest that they are,=20

Here I must disagree. The direct evidence is the ability of Victor's
mother to become young or old at will.=20

Actually, I suspect the truth of being more complex than that.=20

(Complexity? In a Wolfe text? Say it ain't so!)=20

Proposal:

Long ago, as in your timeline, Ste-Anne was inhabited by the=20
ancestors of the Shadow children: psionically gifted shapeshifters,
less intelligent than humans as individuals but capable of producing
a group mind (the Wise Old Ones).=20

The early human colonists came. Their arrival was utterly traumatic
for the Shadow children, who chose to distort space so no _more_
colonists could come.=20

Thousands(?) of years pass after the arrival of the "Free People."
Some genetic(?) exchange takes place between them. The Shadow
children become more intelligent and more human-like in many ways.
The "Free People" gain some limited ability to change, not their
shape properly speaking, but their appearance.

Does this work?  I think it does.

--Blattid

--=20

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