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 19-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Graveyard
The quartet sneaks into the graveyard, which is adorned with trees that mark the graves of unicorns who have died. The leaves on the trees match the various colors associated with the elements; each tree therefore reflects the elemental affinity of the unicorn buried beneath it. When a unicorn dies, a tree grows where it is buried as a way of giving back to nature. The trees have names carved into them; usually after a year, family and loved ones will carve the names of both rider and unicorn into the matching tree. Flo and Mitch hope that Everhart did something similar and left a clue. She did, but it was not the type of clue for which they were hoping. When they find Everhart’s tree, they discover that the names Skandar, Kenna, and Bertie have been carved onto it. The only person who knew all three of those names was Skandar’s mother. Thus, the group realizes that Everhart faked her death twice—once as Erika Everhart, and again as Skandar’s mother.
Flo, Bobby, and Mitch believe that Erika Everhart is the Weaver, but Skandar refuses to consider this possibility. He becomes angry with his friends as they push him to consider the evidence, but he wants to believe that his mother was and is a good person. He flies back to the Eyrie on his own, though Bobby follows him. She assures him that she’ll go with him to find Everhart after the next day’s Training Trial.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Training Trial”
Skandar wakes up in the stables after spending the night there with Scoundrel. He tries to depart immediately to find Everhart, but Jamie stops him and reminds him that he has to participate in the Training Trial. He gives Skandar a pep talk, asserting that nothing else matters except his performance during the next 30 minutes. He asks Skandar to give the trial his best efforts.
When the whistle sounds, all the Hatchlings take off and race toward the finish line. Skandar maintains a decent pace but quickly falls behind when he cannot use any elemental magic without Scoundrel pushing more spirit magic into the casting. Because Skandar won’t risk someone seeing him cut off another rider’s magic like he did with Amber, he plays evasive instead. Mitch, who is near the front, comes back and protects Skandar while they both dash for the finish line. They cross the line and land, but they have no time to celebrate their success because Flo, who finished just ahead of them, is screaming and crying. The Weaver has stolen her unicorn, Silver Blade.
With limited time before he loses the trail, Skandar guides his friends along the bond between Flo and Silver Blade. The path leads them out into the wilderness. When they finally find Silver Blade, he is trapped in the Weaver’s hands. The Weaver greets Skandar specifically, naming him spirit wielder.
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Weaver”
The Weaver knows about Skandar because she can see his bond and because Joby has already told her about him, although he did not tell her Skandar’s name. Now, Skandar pleads with the Weaver to be better, offering her his name and his identity as her son. At first, she cannot believe that he is on the Island, but she quickly realizes that Agatha—her little sister and Skandar’s aunt—brought him to the Island and the Hatchery to place someone against her as the Weaver. Everhart tries evoking the bond of familial blood to convince Skandar to join her side, but he refuses because he wants to prove that spirit wielders are better than the monsters that the Weaver portrays them to be.
While he and Everhart talk, Skandar quietly unweaves the bonds that Everhart made—the bonds that weave a non-rider’s soul to a unicorn while simultaneously weaving the person’s soul to her own. Through this process, she creates an army that cannot disobey her. Now, Skandar frees them all and breaks the bond between Everhart and New-Age Frost. Before Everhart can attack further, Aspen McGrath and the Silver Circle arrive to recover New-Age Frost and stop the Weaver. While the Circle chases the Weaver, Aspen stays with her unicorn, feeling the lost bond between them. Skandar offers to remake the bond on two conditions: 1) that he be allowed to train openly as a spirit wielder, and 2) that all other spirit wielders be set free. Aspen agrees but acknowledges that she cannot free Agatha. Skandar accepts this and reweaves the bond between Aspen and her unicorn.
Chapter 22 Summary:” Home”
Everyone returns to the Eyrie where the trainees all learn their placements in the Training Trial. Mitchell and Skandar are in 12th and 13th place, respectively, securing their places in the second year of training. Skandar gets to spend the day with his father and sister, whom he shows around the Island and the Eyrie. As she leaves, Kenna admits she would do anything to have her own unicorn and asks that Skandar continue doing the best he can. After Skandar’s family of origin leaves, Bobby walks back to the Eyrie—to their home—with him.
Chapters 19-22 Analysis
The narrative arc’s climax and resolution occur in the last four chapters of the book. The story climaxes as Skandar and his friends chase after the Weaver and enter the final confrontation with her—at least for this first novel in the series. Not only is this the moment in which Skandar must confront his mother, but it also serves as the moment in which he must prove that he is no longer the child he was when he first came to the Island. Before, he was timid and easily intimidated into silence, and he existed only in the shadow of others. In this moment, his mother offers him everything that he has ever wanted, and it is up to him to decide if these desires still hold true. As the narrative states:
The shimmering idea took hold: of belonging with his mum; of giving Kenna the unicorn she so desperately wanted; of finding out finally who he was; of slotting the piece of missing jigsaw back into his heart; of weaving their family together so it could be whole again (401-02).
Everhart plays on this desire of her son’s, offering him power, revelation, and belonging intertwined. However, he realizes that this kind of power is not the power he wants, for as he envisions having “all the power in the world, […] it [makes] him shudder” (402). In this moment, he realizes that he is no longer the frightened child who desperately wants to have his broken family be whole again. Instead, he has forged a new family who cares about him—Kenna and his father, yes, but also Flo, Bobby, and Mitch. He has found a place in which he belongs: one in which people accept him for who he is. Most importantly, he realizes that to live happily, he must cast off the weight of carrying secrets and work to dismantle the ingrained biases that the Islanders hold against spirit wielders. Therefore, rather than accepting the Weaver’s offer to have unlimited power in her shadow, Skandar chooses to assert his own power. He breaks Everhart’s bond with New-Age Frost and the other wild unicorns, and this is a symbolic moment in which Skandar overcomes the Weaver’s power and weakens her, foreshadowing the strength of his own innate abilities. As the novel concludes, she no longer holds sway over him and no longer tempts him with the image of family. Instead, he clings to his own chosen family.
The end of Chapter 21 provides a starting place for Skandar to work on Overcoming Ingrained Biases surrounding the nature of spirit wielders; his long-term goal is clearly to revolutionize the structure of the Island’s society and unspoken rules. In this moment, it is clear how much his status in this place has risen, for although Aspen fears him, she is nonetheless grateful when he repairs the bond between her and New-Age Frost, which is “frayed, damaged, but fundamentally intact” (417). Unlike the forced bonds that the Weaver creates, Skandar works with connections that already exist, seeking to build relationships from a place of trust, not a place of force.
Steadman uses a reflective tone in these final chapters. While her characters are still learning and growing, the goal at the end of the novel is to demonstrate what the characters have learned thus far, while setting the stage for future developments and plot twists to take place in subsequent installments in the series. The denouement or conclusion of the novel therefore brings the current arc to a close while leaving an opening for sequels. However, Steadman closes the present story by resolving the storylines that she began. Skandar no longer needs to hide behind his secrets, he has a family that accepts him, and he has made progress in overcoming the biases that the people of the Island hold against spirit wielders. Though there will be more work for the protagonist to do in future installments, all plot threads that Steadman wove into this first novel are tied up with the exception of the overarching villain of the series.
