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In this bare island by your spell
The Dolphin Cross is an unfinished fragment (about the first third) of the sequel to The Face in the Frost, and shares the two protagonists from that novel, Prospero and Roger Bacon. In this adventure, Prospero is kidnapped and exiled to a lonely island. He escapes and manages to unravel some of the mystery as to who would want to do this and why.... |
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Good? 40 years after The Face in the Frost...nearly 30 years after the story was first written...almost 20 years since Bellairs died...Prospero is back (sort of)...and he’s brought with him a fascinating study into the world of the North and South Kingdoms. What else can we say? Cheers to Ellen Kushner and the fine folks at NESFA!
Oh, yeah – Roger Bacon’s bottle. We want one of those, too.
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Dare we saw the Bishop is one of the most unsettling characters in all of Bellairs’ fiction?
Also, The Dolphin Cross is unfinished...but whaddya goin’ to do?
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He walked on, swinging the lantern. The iron ring creaked, and the lantern cast crazy slashes all over the road. By now Prospero was thoroughly spooked. He kept looking from side to side. How many miles was it? It seemed like twenty tonight. What was that? A white thing under a scabby maple tree. A road marker? Not here. Somebody’s wash? Not this far from town. A horseman.
Out into the middle of the dark road he cantered, covered from head to foot with armor that shone gray like the moon. The same featureless coal scuttle helmet, with a black slit for eyes. The same blank shield. The horseman charged, his lance leveled. This time there were no bushes to hide in; there was no mirror handy with spells. In the few seconds he had, Prospero thought, “This is my death,” and shook himself – somehow – out of his fear-frozen trance. He only had the lantern for a weapon, so he wound up like a Sunday softball pitcher. Three times he whirled the creaking lantern over his head. Three times it made a yellow oval orbit in the pitch-black air. When the knight was almost on top of him he let the lantern go, and when it went out, he did too. |
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| The second story – though never completed – to feature Prospero and Roger Bacon. The story is set mere months following the adventures documented in The Face in the Frost.
Bellairs sent the manuscript to author Ellen Kushner in early 1980. Kushner held the manuscript for close to thirty years, until it was included in the 2009 anthology, Magic Mirrors, published by the New England Science Fiction Association press.
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Author: John Bellairs
Published: 2009
Publishing history
Chapters: 7 | Pages: 73
Awards | Reviews | Annotations |
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None. |
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None. |
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| Dedication |
None.
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Book feed |
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