50 pages • 1 hour read
A. F. SteadmanSkandar and the Unicorn Thief
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Stampede”
In his haste to flee the Prison, Skandar loses the Book of Spirit that Agatha passed to him before he left. He chooses to escape with his friends, whom he considers more important than going back for the book. Suddenly, they encounter the Weaver, who has a newly forged bond with New-Age Frost, Aspen McGrath’s unicorn. To escape the incident, Scoundrel’s Luck and the other unicorns fly for the first time ever, even before their instructors teach them how to do so. When they return to the Eyrie, Mitch’s father meets them and informs Mitch that the Weaver has taken his cousin. Instead of ruminating on that, the group begins to make a plan for finding the spirit den—the one place in the Eyrie that is safe for spirit wielders. Before they turn in for the night, Mitch apologizes for how poorly he treated Skandar and explains that he did so because his father hates spirit wielders and always treated his son poorly. As a result, Mitch felt compelled to hate spirit wielders as well in order to gain a sense of worth in his father’s eyes. Now, though, Mitch understands that he can hold different opinions from his father.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Sky Battles”
The Silver Circle places more sentinels at the Eyrie to protect the unicorns and the riders from the Weaver’s attacks. Skandar’s quartet starts asking around about the locations of the four permitted spirit dens, but none of the upperclassmen will say anything—they will have to wait until next year. During the search, Skandar receives a letter from Kenna telling him that she’s joined an online support group for individuals who missed the opportunity to become riders, and who would do anything to have that chance again. Skandar feels bad but momentarily forgets about his sister’s issues when Jamie presents him and Scoundrel with their element-resistant armor. Jamie also recommends that Skandar take off his mother’s scarf since the armor wasn’t made with it in mind. He then makes a passing comment that the scarf looks Islander-made.
The sky battles begin. Each Hatchling will face off against a single opponent; all magic is permitted, and the goal is to cross the finish line first. Skandar and Amber are paired against each other. Skandar wins the fight, but only because he uses the spirit element to cut off Amber’s ability to use magic at all. Bobby asks him about it, and he promises to explain later while hoping that nobody else noticed what he did. Unfortunately, Joby does, and he once again reprimands Skandar for being reckless, insisting that he must never use the spirit element. Skandar fights back, saying that he has gained more control by allowing his unicorn limited use of the element. The two end the conversation in a stand-off; Skandar stays determined to follow his current path, and Joby gains a new determination to join the Weaver.
Chapter 17 Summary: “The Spirit Den”
On the day of the Chaos Cup Qualifiers, Skandar and his friend go to the center of the Eyrie—where the fault lines are—and search for the spirit den. When they find the entrance, they go underground and find only an empty chamber; whoever last knew about the den cleared it out. However, there are markings on the wall that explain the Weaver’s plan: She intends to take non-riders and weave a new bond between them and wild unicorns, giving everyone the opportunity to become a rider. The Weaver is building an army of unicorn riders to attack the Mainland.
The group goes to Joby’s treehouse to find him gone. A white striped symbol has been placed on the outside of his home. They find an advertisement for a group willing to help those who never had a unicorn and those whose unicorns have died. Seeing this, they deduce that Joby followed through and joined the Weaver. This poses a problem for the Islanders, for Joby can now provide the Weaver with all of his knowledge about the Mainland. Time is running out, and Skandar still has no plan and no ideas about how to stop the Weaver.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Triumph Tree”
The Hatchlings spend the next few weeks training and preparing for the Training Trial, which will determine whether they will continue on as riders or become nomads. The day before the trial, Instructor Saylor takes the trainees to the Triumph Tree, which is the record of all prior Training Trial victors. However, there are names missing—specifically, all the prior winners who were spirit wielders. Skandar asks about one particular gap, and Flo and Mitch realize that this gap fits with the timing for Erika Everhart’s victory. This starts a conversation in which Skandar remembers seeing Everhart’s name in the Tunnel of the Living. The Islander half of the quartet believes that to be impossible because the tunnel only records the names of riders who are alive. To determine who is “right,” they decide to go to the graveyard that night to visit Erika Everhart’s grave.
Chapters 15-18 Analysis
Chapter 16 allows Skandar’s character to grow in accordance with the patterns of a typical bildungsroman novel, for he gains a new sense of purpose and independence and begins to break free from the societal rules that have been holding him back. Up until this point, he has resisted the urge to use spirit magic simply because Joby told him to. Now, however, he no longer fears the power of spirit magic and allows himself to use it in limited quantities to prevent his unicorn from causing meltdowns, such as the disastrous training exercises that led Instructor O’Sullivan to threaten Skandar with the prospect of becoming a nomad. By this point in the novel, Skandar has become much more assertive and confident in his position in the world. He no longer allows Joby to control his actions and begins making decisions for himself. Similarly, he no longer allows bullies like Amber to have power over him; instead, he asserts his power over her. In a literal sense, he becomes more powerful than she is when “a ball of bright something left his palm and surrounded the cord coming from Amber’s heart. Her palm stopped glowing green, and the earth missiles dropped from the sky” (317). In this moment, his use of the spirit element to weaken Amber has significant symbolic meaning. Ever since Amber first learned his secret, he has feared that she will use his status as a spirit wielder against him. Now, the tables turn, and he uses his status as a spirit wielder against her to his own benefit. Nobody believes Amber when she claims that he played unfairly. After this encounter, Skandar no longer lives in the shadows of his bullies and starts to develop a separate identity independent of the influence of his friends, his family, and the people to whom he believed himself to be subordinate.
Prior moments of foreshadowing begin to come to fruition in this set of chapters. For example, Chapter 17 utilizes previous hints and lays new foundations for future potential conflicts, both internal and interpersonal. Skandar now knows about the group of people, led by the Weaver, that is working to bind non-riders to wild unicorns. At this point in the story, most of the characters currently believe that the Weaver kidnaps such people, but Joby’s defection reveals the truth: that such people go with the Weaver willingly. Those who join do so either because they will do anything to have a unicorn of their own or because they wish to gain a new bond with a unicorn in order to heal from the death of the unicorn they lost. This emotional impetus to join the enemy creates tension in the narrative, because the author’s foreshadowing has already made it clear that Kenna wants nothing more than to become a rider and has expressed a desire to do anything necessary to gain that opportunity. Although Kenna’s personality and moral code are similar to Skandar’s, she also possesses much more assertiveness, and Steadman deliberately creates doubt as to whether Kenna will be willing to answer the Weaver’s call if it means having a unicorn of her own. This development also creates tension because it foreshadows a potential interpersonal conflict in which Skandar must battle his own sister as they stand on opposing sides of good and evil.
In Chapter 18, another important aspect of foreshadowing is revisited when Skandar discovers that Erika Everhart is believed to be dead despite her name being prominently displayed in the Tunnel of the Living. Not only is Erika Everhart alive, but the threads of her plan begin to reveal themselves. She faked her own death so nobody would look for her; she hid in the wilderness—a place beyond the boundaries of typical unicorn riders—to follow a path through life that no typical unicorn rider would follow. However, the revelation that Erika Everhart faked her death on Mirror Cliffs continues to foreshadow a new dimension to the theme of The Weight of Keeping Secrets. Everhart’s secrets will not weigh on her, but they will weigh on Skandar and will play a significant role in his character development and his transition from a young boy to a young man.
