Coralis cupped his chin in his hand, deep in thought. The silence droned on. No one wanted to be the first to break it. Even Brianna kept her sassy comments to herself. “This is serious, but I urge you two not to worry about your mother. She has a fine lineage and I’m sure was properly trained to deal with adversity. But as for you … I must say, young man, usually it takes years of apprenticeship to make a mistake of this magnitude. That you were able to accomplish it on your first try says quite a deal about your abilities. Even though you got it all wrong.”

“It was an accident!” pleaded Henry. “Nothing should have happened!”

“Then why am I stuck like this, Henry? Undo it, please!” Brianna sobbed a marathon of squeaks and squeals.

Molly cradled her. “There, there, little lass. Coralis will see to it now.”

“I’ll see to nothing if I can’t get to the bottom of it!” he boomed. “Henry, stay on course. What else did you bring with you?”

“Nothing. The books are too big and heavy. I might have carried one, but not all of them. And … ” He wasn’t sure how to continue.

“Keep going, Henry,” Molly urged.

“And I was afraid to touch the gold stone. The way it glowed, I thought for sure it would burn me.”

A sudden realization struck Coralis. The ashen look on his face said it all. “Oh my.” He slumped in his seat.

“Coralis.” Molly rushed to his side. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Henry, did this nugget of gold pulse? Did it seem to drink the light the way you might drink a glass of water?”

Henry recalled the event all too vividly. “Yes. That’s exactly how it looked.”

Coralis’s eyes, fraught with worry and concern, roamed across the dark ceiling. When he finally spoke, it was with the weight of time pressing down on him. “In 1906, a terrible earthquake shook and nearly destroyed the city of San Francisco. The cause of that earthquake was not what you believe. Yes, tectonic plates shifted. But the reason they shifted was due to a great battle that was fought between a brave conclave of Wandbearers led by Henry and Brianna’s great-great-grandfather and an evil Wand Master named Dai She.”

“The evil snake.” Molly shivered. “I know of the legend.”

“A legend based in fact.” Coralis nodded. “Dai She’s incredible power should have sent the entire city plummeting into the water, but your great-great-grandfather got lucky. The city was home to a federal mint that housed some of the purest gold on Earth. When the conclave managed to repel Dai She’s energy, the gold attracted that energy.