Where was Katrin right now? What was she thinking, doing? Did she miss him?
“Skandor?”
It was Dr. Pfeffer. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“Sorry,” said Skandor. “What was the question?”
“He needs sleep,” murmured Mickie.
“No, I’m fine. What did you ask?”
Pfeffer took the crumpled former Band-Aid from Skandor and tossed it in a waste bin under the desk. “Would you be willing to ask Sir Walter to train you?”
“Sir Walter thinks he can’t ripple anymore,” said Mickie. “We confirmed he has Immutin in his system and now he’s got this crazy idea God was giving him a message, saying it was time to start aging and dying or something. So he won’t even try. But maybe—”
Pfeffer finished her thought. “We think the trauma of having seen his son shot and apparently killed might have triggered his own system—”
Mickie finished Pfeffer’s sentence. “And he might be able to ripple again after all. But since he refuses to try….”
She and Pfeffer looked at one another and shrugged at exactly the same time.
“I’m sorry,” said Skandor. “I still don’t understand what you want me to do. Convince him to … try?”
“Oh, no,” said Mickie. “We’ve already tried that. We want you to ask him to train you as a rippler. Like he trained my brother and Sam. And Chrétien and Pfeffer, for that matter.”
“And we think he might … accidentally try to ripple if he’s training you,” said Pfeffer.
Skandor nodded. “He’s a stubborn old guy, huh?”
Mickie rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”
A grin rolled across Skandor’s face. “You should meet my Oma.”
“They are cousins,” Pfeffer said.
Skandor frowned. “Huh. I guess they are.” He shoved his sleeve back down over his arm. The Sierra Nevada foothills had turned cold while he’d been living in San Francisco. He would have to remember to dress for winter, now. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll ask for … lessons or whatever. If you think it will help.”
“We do,” said Mickie and Pfeffer, at the same time.
Skandor saw a twinkle of something in Pfeffer’s eyes that matched one of his grandmother’s expressions perfectly.
“I’m happy to help,” said Skandor.
“Great,” said Mickie. “We think daily lessons would be a good idea.”
Skandor thought daily opportunities to ask Chrétien if he’d “heard” from Katrin sounded like an even better idea.
35
WALKING THROUGH FIRE
Skandor Jan Waldhart Dusselhoff had grown very familiar with the thirty-eight and one-half mile drive that separated Midgard from the former-monastic-cells-turned-residence where Sir Walter lived along with Chrétien, Matteo, and Martina.
Skandor now had favorite cookies at Las ABC (the snickerdoodles, not the chocolate chippers) and a handful of new friends in Las Abuelitas. Gwyn Li had set him up with three girls in the two weeks since he’d given up his position at Geneses Corporation, International. (They’re not really dates, Gwyn had insisted. Just … you need someone, Skandor.)
He needed someone, but Gwyn wasn’t going to be able to find her.
Sir Walter had tried to find Katrin. Chrétien had traveled to Rome looking (or listening, rather) for any sign of Georg or Katrin, but he’d heard nothing. Martina told Skandor not to give up hope, and he was trying not to, really, he was. But as the days rolled past, it began to seem as if Katrin didn’t want to be found.
“She always liked Georg,” said Martina. “I never understood that, but….” Martina shook her head and buckled her seatbelt. It was a cold night, the air crisp with the hint of coming winter. Bridget Li had predicted trick-or-treaters would descend in droves on Las ABC in four days, coming inside to warm up with hot cider and hot chocolate.
“I liked Georg,” said Matteo, buckling his own seatbelt. “When we were kids, anyway.”
“You liked that he would break the rules, so Mutti would be upset with him instead of you,” said Martina.
Matteo grinned, turning around to look at Skandor in the back seat.
“She knows me too well,” Matteo said, in an overly loud whisper.
Skandor’s heart pinched. He wanted that—to be known too well. But he needed to move on. “So whose party is this we’re going to?” he asked.
“Technically, it’s Samantha Ruiz’s birthday,” said Martina.
“But Gwyn Li’s dad is arriving in town tonight, and they’ve never met. Henri DuClos is also Sam’s uncle,” said Matteo.
“Weird, right?” asked Martina.
Skandor laughed. “No weirder than you being my … whatever you are.”
“Cousin,” said Martina. “It’s easier to just say we’re cousins.”
Nodding, Skandor thought again of his strange legacy. Girard Helmann was his great-grandfather, which was actually horrifying, but his grandmother Elke didn’t seem to have inherited anything too horrible from her father. Oma was his new measure of, well, everything. He asked himself, what would Oma do? several times a day, now.
Which was why he was on his way to a birthday party for a girl he didn’t know all that well. Go, Skandor, his Oma had insisted. It does you good, visiting Las Abuelitas. He’d traveled invisibly to Las Abs tonight, as the seven mile drive down to the highway was slick with black ice.
Sir Walter had worked him hard this afternoon, training him to use his cloaking ability as both weapon and protection. Skandor wasn’t convinced he wanted to live in every way as the cloakers—the ripplers—of Las Abs did. The extending of his life by staying invisible sounded enticing at times, but it also sounded lonely. Did he really want to outlive everyone he cared about?
Sighing, he leaned his head against the frigid window and tried not to think about Katrin.
He wasn’t particularly successful.
It was a birthday party unlike any Skandor had attended before.
There were presents.
There was cake, from Las Abuelitas Bakery Café, naturally.
There were even silly party hats, hand-made by Gwyn.
“I made you a Viking helmet,” said Gwyn to Skandor, shoving it on his head as soon as he entered the Ruiz’s house.
But the best part of the evening was after the group dispersed out of doors. To one side of the property, an absolutely huge pile of brush had been gathered for the sole purpose of lighting it on fire. Skandor thought he knew a thing or two about fires, what with the walk-in fireplace in the camp lodge and the nightly campfires all summer. But this one put those other campfires to shame.
The manzanita burned white-hot in the center while pinecones sizzled and popped at the edges. A few of the guests held fire extinguishers at the ready in case things got out of hand.
“What do you think?” asked one of Skandor’s new friends—Will Baker.
“I love it,” replied Skandor.
“We could walk through it, if you want,” suggested Will. “If we rippled first, I mean.”
Skandor nodded. It sounded … interesting. He’d never walked through fire before.
But then a long, mournful note sounded from an instrument Skandor couldn’t quite place.
“Cool!” said Will. “Sounds like Oncle Henri’s breaking out the accordion.”
The song was slow and sad and although Skandor didn’t know any French (much less Cajun French) he had a pretty good idea that it was a song about love and loss and a death that came too soon. By the time Henri finished singing and playing, Bridget Li was a mess, crying her eyes out.
“Okay, okay,” said Gwyn, clapping her hands together three times. “Enough with the doom and despair. This is a birthday party, mon père, and I expect … birthday music. Preferably something in ¾ time. Chrétien is going to teach us all an old-world dance.”
Henri obliged with a piece that set toes tapping and soon Skandor was trying to keep up with a whirling, stomping dance centered
around the bonfire. Within twenty minutes, Gwyn and Chrétien were the only ones still able to dance.
“I am badly out of shape,” announced Martina, collapsing into a rickety chair beside Skandor.
Skandor nodded, still trying to catch his own breath. He wondered if Katrin would have liked the party. Wondered if she would have danced with him, his hand on her waist as they pulled one another around, around, around the center blaze.
“She was thinking about you,” said Martina. “Katrin.”
“Katrin? When?” Skandor looked around, hoping, hoping.
“No, I’m sorry. Not now. But back at Geneses. The day Uncle Fritz bought the farm. I heard Katrin for a handful of minutes. I couldn’t hear her well, and then when I came solid at Geneses, I couldn’t hear her at all. But what I did hear included your name.”
“My name?” asked Skandor.
“Yeah. I had no idea what a ‘scan-door’ was, at the time, obviously,” replied Martina. “But I thought you’d want to know.”
Skandor nodded, blinking rapidly.
“Oh, there’s Matteo wanting to leave early,” said Martina, rising. “You okay getting … wherever you need to go on your own?”
Skandor nodded and Martina took off running.
On his own….
Leaning his head back on the lawn chair, Skandor stared up at the sky. Amid the bright blaze of white stars, occasional flickers of orange spun off from the bonfire.
You okay? Getting wherever you need to go on your own?
He thought about it. He watched two sparks collide and extinguish against the backdrop of the cold, bright heavens.
Yes. He was okay. He was going where he needed to go. And he could do that on his own. He was okay.
He tipped his gaze back to the bonfire. It had died back quite a bit. Soon it would be too late to find out what it felt like, walking through fire. Well, this was an opportunity neither Oma nor Loki would pass up, now was it?
Smiling, Skandor cloaked himself and stepped forward into the zing and tingle of the fire, into the unknown, into the future.
THE END
Continue the adventure in other Cidney Swanson titles:
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Also by Cidney Swanson
The Ripple Series
RIPPLER
CHAMELEON
UNFURL
VISIBLE
IMMUTABLE
KNAVERY
The Saving Mars Series
SAVING MARS
DEFYING MARS
LOSING MARS
MARS BURNING
STRIKING MARS
MARS RISING
Acknowledgements
I’m so grateful for the wonderfully illustrated books by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire. I fell under the spell of the D’Aulaires when I was very young. I don’t even know if I read all the words, but those brightly evocative pictures have a way of sticking with you decades later. In the D’Aulaire’s Norse Myths, Loki is more mischievous than downright evil, and I’ve assumed Skandor’s Oma would have read to him from these books long before the (fabulous!) Marvel films came out.
In addition, I have to thank Nathalia, Toby, and Chris for making my book look good inside and out. A huge shout of thanks to my writer tribes in Indie-land and SCBWI-land. But most of all, I’m indebted to my readers, who allow me to spend all day in imaginary worlds. All the hugs and good wishes and gratitude, guys.
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Table of Contents
KNAVERY
MIDGARD ADVENTURE! CAMP
I’VE ALWAYS WANTED A SISTER!
A COOL MIND ALWAYS TRIUMPHS
VALHALLA WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY
THE PRESENCE OF WARM BODIES
MUD-SLINGING
SVEGLIATI
WHAT DO YOU HAVE OF VALUE?
ATTACK BY SLURPEE CANNON
WHAT HE’D COME FOR
GOLDEN-HAIRED SIF
COFFEE SNOB
SHE WAS GLORIOUS
SIGUNN TO HIS LOKI
TRANSDERMAL ROUTES OF ADMINISTRATION
TO THE VICTOR
THE ART OF THE SARCASTIC REPLY
JUMPING ON LEAF PILES
KATRIN LIVES
THAT WASN’T A KISS
COMPLEX SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS
HE ALWAYS LANDS ON HIS FEET
WHAT HE KEEPS IN HIS CUPBOARDS
CONCEALED CAMÉLEONS
THAT WAS A REAL KISS
HELISABA ES MORTA
ANTIDOTE
ANGRY ENOUGH TO KILL
A WISE DECISION
CAME CRASHING DOWN
LOKI DESCENDING
IT’S OVER, COUSIN
BROKEN IN TWO HALVES
A STUBBORN OLD GUY
WALKING THROUGH FIRE
Knavery: A Ripple Novel (Ripple Series Book 6) Page 22