Page 38 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

My father was tall, like I had figured he would be. Gams and Mom both fit neatly beneath my chin, so I knew I hadn’t inherited my height from them. Maxwell Brenton, meanwhile, was willowy and lean with a mousey hair color that matched mine perfectly.

He was already talking, but I had no idea what he was saying. My brain only registered the sound of his voice, low and even, but with a jovial lilt. The crowd laughed at something he said.

“I don’t get the joke,”

Liam whispered next to me. I hushed him rather than admit I had missed the joke entirely.

Slides about seafloor expansion took up the screen, and I tried to absorb as much information as my poor, overwhelmed brain would allow.

“If you look right here at the center of the screen—”

Maxwell Brenton used a laser pointer to circle a cluster of symbols on his map of the Pacific Ocean.

“—you’ll see the magnetic anomalies that our research focused on. The location being so close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone was a Hugo benefit of what we were trying to do, because—”

He cut off as laughter rippled through the amphitheater, including that of my own.

“Someone better tell him not to quit geology, because his jokes suck,”

Liam whispered.

“I didn’t get that one either.”

“It’s geophysics, not geology,”

I corrected under my breath.

“And the joke is Hugo Benioff. He studied the Ring of Fire. It’s a volcano thing. Now shush.”

“It’s even less funny now that I have context.”

Liam’s white smile glinted at me in the low light, and I elbowed him into silence.

The lecture was dense, combining theories of ocean floor spread and continental drift, but Maxwell Brenton, PhD, was fun to listen to. He cracked jokes, he let a scientist in the third row heckle him about polar wander in an exchange that left the auditorium wheezing with laughter, and the more he spoke, the more I needed him to like me. Not as a daughter necessarily, but as a prospective scientist.

Every laugh he elicited from the crowd made me glow with misplaced pride, and I hung on his every word, even if I didn’t quite understand them all. I’d thought he’d be austere and stern, like he always had been in my imagination. However, he was charming and funny, and suddenly I was feeling very guilty about my admissions essay focusing on what a crappy person he was.

Through the jokes and the tangents, at the core of the lecture, he was painting a picture of how Earth as we knew it was formed by the physical laws that governed our world. Those physical laws had to govern Skalterra as well. They had to have played a role when the Four Magicians shaped the mountains, plains, canyons, and rivers of Skalterra.

The more my father spoke, the more he explained how continents moved and formed, the more certain I became.

He had all the answers to what had formed Keldori. Of course he had to know about Skalterra too. Maybe those anomalies he’d labeled on his screen were relevant somehow. Maybe that was where Ferrin would break through the Rift.

Applause broke through my thoughts, and the lights came up in the auditorium.

“Is it done?”

Liam straightened up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“I think so. Was that already an entire hour?”

“God, it felt longer than that.”

Liam groaned.

The people around us started to file out, but I stayed seated, watching my father where he stood on the stage answering the questions of a couple scientists in the front row.

“Can you wait for me outside?”

I asked, still looking at Dr. Brenton.

“Are you going to talk to him?”

Liam gave me a double take, and I scowled.

“What, are you surprised?”

“A little. You don’t really talk to people.”

“Most people aren’t famous geophysicists.”

Liam stood up and stretched.

“Thank god for that.”

He rubbed his neck.

“Take all the time you need. I’ll go find us a snack.”

“We just had dinner two hours ago!”

I called after him as he joined the exodus towards the doors.

“I’m hungry again!”

I sat back in my seat and tried to calm my breathing. What was I even supposed to say? I rehearsed several greetings in my head while I waited for the students and scientists who surrounded him up front to slowly disperse.

I forced myself to stand when they’d almost all left and the ushers were making their passes through the aisles, looking for discarded programs and other garbage.

My legs were led beneath me, but I forced them to keep walking down the steps of the auditorium towards the stage.

Dr. Brenton was even taller up close.

He’d abandoned us. He wasn’t even on my birth certificate. Mom had never said a single good thing about him, and I had hated him all my life. So now that I was standing in front of him after eighteen years of cursing the name Maxwell Brenton, why was I suddenly so worried about him liking me?

He cut off his conversation with a woman in a pantsuit to give me a sideways glance. She saw me too, offered a quick reassurance that they could catch up later, and let my estranged father turn his attention to me.

He stepped down the stage steps, and despite my inherited height, he still towered a full head taller than me. He raised his eyebrows in polite interest and waited for me to speak first, apparently unaware that he was looking at his daughter for the first time ever.

“Hi, um, professor? Sorry. Doctor,”

I corrected myself. My heart felt like someone had shoved an angry hummingbird inside my chest. It fluttered painfully against my sternum, and I stood with my hands behind me so I could take secret comfort in pulling at the skin around my thumb nails.

“Max is fine.”

His grin was kind behind his neat brown-and-gray beard. Despite the facial hair, I could see me in his bone structure. His cheekbones, the shape of his ears, the exact shade of brown in his hair— he’d given it all to me. The hummingbird behind my sternum kicked its fluttering up a gear.

“I hope you aren’t here to complain about my lecture.”

“No!”

I said, too aggressively.

“It was fascinating, what I understood at least. I want to study volcanology, not paleomagnetism, though I’m sure I’ll have to learn it anyway.”

“You want to study?”

he repeated. His grin turned curious, and he crossed his arms as he surveyed me.

“You aren’t a student yet?”

“I’ll be a freshman here if I get off the waitlist.”

“And you’re sure about volcanoes? Paleomagnetists are the real rockstars of the geophysics world.”

“That’s a pun!”

I blurted. His grin faltered, and I fumbled onwards, trying to redeem myself.

“Because rockstars. Rocks. Get it? Although, it would probably be a better joke if you were a geologist.”

His polite smile broke into a laugh that carried through the emptying auditorium.

“Oh, that is funny!”

My chest loosened, and I laughed too. He’d been so funny on stage, but now he thought I was funny.

My dad thought I was funny.

“It was technically your joke.”

I shrugged. He pointed a firm but good-natured finger at me.

“No, no, no. If you want to be a geophysicist, consider this your first lesson. Never, and I mean never, give anyone else credit for something you did.”

I nodded, absorbing his words. I’d never received fatherly advice before. Or advice from a world-renowned geophysicist. It was hard to say which was more thrilling.

“Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It was very clever.”

“Thank you, uh, sir.”

I wasn’t sure what to call him.

“Professor” an.

“doctor” had felt wrong.

“Sir” wasn’t quite cutting it either, bu.

“Max” was too informal. And I definitely couldn’t call him “Dad”.

But he was kind, charming, and good-humored— everything Mom had said he wasn’t. So why had she been so dead-set on never letting me meet him?

“You’re on the waitlist, you say?”

A mischievous glint reached his eye, and he looked around conspiratorially.

“Tell you what. You seem more serious than most of the incoming geophysics students I see, especially if you’re here to listen to me rattle on for an hour about a field you don’t care much for. Give me your name, and maybe I’ll put in a good word with the dean.”

“Oh, that’s not—”

“It’s really no trouble. Let me see if I’ve got pen and paper, so I can write it down.”

He patted at his pockets, and I steadied myself.

“I think you’ll remember it.”

“Oh?”

He poked at his blazer, still searching for a pen.

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s Wren Warrender.”

He froze with his hands over his blazer pockets and slowly raised his eyes to mine. He held my gaze, all signs of his previous mirth evaporated. His eyes roved over me a second time, and the lines around his eyes and mouth grew tighter as his frown deepened.

He took in a sharp breath, as if to say something, but then held onto the air, apparently at a loss for words.

“I’m sorry.”

I could salvage this. I could get us back on track.

“I didn’t mean to make it weird, but I’m here for an admissions interview, so I thought—”

“Does Eliza know you’re here?”

I flinched at Mom’s name.

“Technically? Yes. She just doesn’t know you’re here too.”

“Okay.”

He nodded curtly, licked his lips as he glanced around for an escape, and then looked back at me with new determination.

“So what is it you want from me? A recommendation to the dean?”

“No, I—”

“Money, then? Tuition?”

There was a simmering anger beneath his panic, and I took a half-step back.

For a brief, shining moment, I’d almost had a dad. Kind of. Not really, but he’d been nice, at least.

As soon as I’d told him who I was, that version of him had crumbled.

“I don’t want your money.”

“Then why are you here?”

A poorly contained snarl stained his tone.

“I’ve told Eliza so many times—”

He cut off and shook his head.

“I have questions for you.”

My voice broke. I hated how meek and small I sounded. I hated how much I still wanted to turn this around, to convince him I was a worthwhile daughter.

“About the lecture? How about you wait and see if you get into the program first. There’s no use in wasting both our time.”

“Questions about Skalterra.”

He froze at the name, and the knot in his brow loosened enough to let his eyebrows rise a fraction of an inch.

My heart hitched. Other than my run-in with Stanley earlier in the week, I’d never breathed a word about Skalterra to anyone, but the name alone had been enough to give Maxwell Brenton, PhD, pause. This conversation had gone south fast, but I could save it if it meant discovering my connection to Skalterra.

“I know about it,”

I offered, gaining confidence. He had answers. I could tell. I was going to learn why I was lucid as a Nightmare, and maybe even learn how to get back without Galahad.

“I’ve been there.”

“Skalterra?”

he repeated.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

His eyebrows fell back into a scowl.

“Yes, you do,”

I insisted. He was lying. He had to be.

“It’s the reality that runs parallel to this one, where all the Magicians were banished four hundred years ago. Maybe you don’t know it by its name, but—”

He put up a hand to stop me.

“I haven’t read your mother’s books.”

His words oozed disdain, as if the idea of picking up something written by Mom was making him physically ill.

“It’s not—”

“I told Eliza almost two decades ago,”

he said, cutting me off.

“and I’ve told her over and over again.”

“Told her what?”

Something inside me broke, and I felt like I was floating above the conversation, watching it happen to someone else. A numb buzz crept at the back of my head.

“I don’t want this.”

He moved his hand in a circle in the air, palm facing me.

“It’s not fair. She made her choice, and I made mine. I respected her decision, so why does this keep coming up? When she called in June—”

“June?”

I wasn’t floating above the conversation anymore. I was watching from the base of a tree, curled up in the dark, alone and lost after being tricked by Linsey, wondering when the night would pass.

“She told me you were graduating and wanted to know if I would come.”

He looked so much like me. I’d never hated myself more.

“You seem like a smart kid, and I’m sure you’re great. Eliza says so anyways, when she reaches out. But this, this isn’t for me, and quite frankly, I don’t owe you anything. You’re not mine. I mean, you are, but— well. You know.”

“I know.”

My constricted throat made my voice hoarse, and I had to force the words out.

“Don’t do that. That’s not fair. Don’t—”

He took a steadying breath and looked around again.

“Look, I’ll talk to the dean and see what I can do. Okay? Just don’t look at me like that.”

I dropped my eyes to his tie clip, unable to continue looking him in the face.

“I wrote my admissions essay about you.”

The clip swam in my vision, and swallowing the lump in my throat felt like gargling glass.

“You shouldn’t have done that,”

he sighed.

“I’m not as great as my research would have you think.”

“No, I know.”

I wanted nothing more than to raise my gaze to his, to tell him to keep his recommendation, that I didn’t need shit from him. But I couldn’t look away from his tie clip.

“This isn’t my fault,”

he said.

“Okay? I- I have people waiting for me, alright? I can’t do this right now.”

My jaw was clenched too tight to say anything more. I couldn’t even raise my eyes to his before he walked away. I didn’t want to see myself staring back.

His footsteps receded up the auditorium steps behind me, and I continued to stare at the spot in space where his tie clip had been.

He was a dead end for information on Skalterra, but worse than that, he didn’t want me.

Not in any capacity. Not as a daughter, obviously. I’d always known that. But he couldn’t even stand to talk to me.

I knew he’d abandoned me before I’d been born, but to learn that Mom had reached out over and over as I grew up, as recently as a month ago, and he had turned me down every time?

We weren’t allowed to talk about him at home, not because she hated him, but because he hated me.

“I just passed the professor guy at the door. What’re you still doing in here?”

Liam came up behind me, and I kept my eyes forward. If I looked directly at him, he’d see the tears swimming in my vision. He came around to face me, and his shoulders fell, and his eyes widened.

“Wren, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head. If I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure I could hold back the sobs burning in my throat.

“Did he talk to you? What did he say?”

“He doesn’t want me.”

The words were a soft, painful croak.

“Oh. That’s okay, though. He’s not the admissions officer. It’s not his decision.”

“No. He doesn’t want me.”

Liam’s mouth dropped open, and I wondered if he’d put the pieces together yet.

“Wren, please tell me that wasn’t your father.”

I’d told him about my geophysicist father the day we’d paddled to the cove. There were a lot of geophysicists, though. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t made the connection until now.

His take-out bag hit the ground with a soft thud, and then his arms were around me. I disappeared into the blue fabric and sandalwood smell of his Von Leer hoodie and cried.