SHADOW-BELOW
by Robert Reed
This reads a bit like a lost (and admittedly futuristic) chapter from Larry McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives. It's got the same feelings of little people struggling under an inconceivably vast sky; of tremendous, uncaring vistas, and of invisible, implacable forces - perhaps spiritual, perhaps manmade, perhaps a little of both - at work, just beyond the range of vision. I kept thinking we'd run into Sin Killer out there on those winter-browned prairies, dressed in mountain fringe, leading the hunting party's wagon train. Maybe he and Shadow-Below could join forces. After all, Shadow-Below's gonna need all the help he can muster in the days to come, right?
Raven reminded me a bit of the feral boomerang boy in The Road Warrior, the one who went on the lead the Great Northern Tribe. Filthy but noble. Loosely linked to a very reluctant teacher-hero. Also, a touch of Whale Rider - with the failed One grudingly stepping in to guide the true One, under the stern (but distant) gaze of the waning Elder. Really, when you think about it, Cliff Curtis would be damn good Shadow-Below if this thing ever got filmed.
Joining a long running short story series midway through, which is where this story must be, is always daunting. This actually seems like a novel - being written in two year increments. Here, the challenge is doubled: first, I don't know the Bounty backstory, and second, I'm not exactly sure of the significance of certain key developments in the story itself.
But - despite all that - this is one damn cool story.
Reed's got the instincts of a Victorian parlor magician. He never actually pulls the rabbit from the hat. We know the rabbit is in the hat. The rabbit must be in the hat. We even glimpse its ears. Or we think we do. We are focused on the rabbit. The rabbit. But, at the end of Reed's flourish, we see to our shock, that it is a dove, released from his sleeve, winging across the stage and out of sight. The hat is empty. Has always been empty. When we go back and examine the facts, we find that, incredibly, the hat had to be empty.
