The little girl becomes a little witch, working to subvert the nanny’s efforts to bring her and her younger brother back to regular life. The title refers to a figure known as The Lady and also as Melusa who, through telepathy, has shanghaied the nine-year-old girl in Kilda’s care, Bartare. Similarly, I couldn’t fit all of the weird stuff in Dread Companion into some logic that I could understand. There were times, as Kilda and the other characters were moving through this often-askew place with arcane realities and dangers, that it reminded me of the Book of Revelations in the Bible, a text filled with esoteric images and a logic that has always escaped me. I was not so enamored of the novel, and it was those fantasy aspects that made the book hard for me. Kilda even discovers that her feet suddenly stretch and want to root into the soil.

It involves a journey through a surreal landscape with its own rules and its own terrors, a world where a young boy can become goat-like and where a star scout can be transformed into a grunting, fur-covered animal. How did 62 years pass on Dylan while, for Kilda and the two children in her care, it was just one circuit of seasons?ĭread Companion, considered by some of Norton’s fans as one of her best books, is a mix of science fiction and fantasy.

Following her arrival on the planet, she spent a year in an adventure.Īnd now, although she is not more than twelve months older, the year is 2483. She was 16 when she landed on Dylan as the servant/nanny of a rich family. Andre Norton’s 1970 novel Dread Companion opens with Kilda c’ Rhyn detailing for the reader the mystery at the heart of her story.

Dread companion andre norton