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let us have tea, and that’s the same thing.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t. Coffee will stunt your growth. Tea is healthy, full of antioxidants.”
    â€œBut I always drink coffee at home.” It was true. His parents hardly paid attention to anything he did, and the revolving staff of maids and nannies charged with his upbringing would yield to almost any demand to keep him quiet. All things considered, it was surprising Finn hadn’t turned out even worse.
    Meg put her stone in the center of the table, where it was promptly grabbed by Silly, then Rowan, and almost dropped in the struggle. This morning the stone was sapphire blue with milky swirls.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œWhere’d you get it?”
    â€œMay I see it?” This last was from Dickie, who was too polite to snatch the stone himself. Lysander plucked it out of Rowan’s hands, examined it through his half spectacles, and handed it to Dickie.
    â€œDo you know what it is?” Meg asked her great-great-uncle.
    â€œI know precisely what it is,” he said, looking very wise. They waited, on tenterhooks. “It is a rock. A pretty one at that.”
    They groaned and growled, then a sinuous form uncoiled itself from Dickie’s shoulder and hissed inquisitively.
    â€œI have seen such a stone before,” the Wyrm said. “But not for many years. It was in my travels to the colonies.”
    â€œThe colonies?” Meg asked.
    â€œYour homeland. I believe it became known as Amerigo, or something of the sort.” He scratched his head with the tip of his scaly tail, much as an old professor might scratch his skull in bafflement. “Dear me, I seem to remember nothing of the recent history of Amerigo. All forgotten, all gone. How delightful!” The Wyrm had spent a lifetime learning everything there was to know, then, bored, set about forgetting it. He could tell you all about the Etruscans, but every detail of the exotic lives of Cyprians had escaped him. He could speak sparrow, but not wren. He could teach you how to make a Napoleon pastry, but hadn’t a clue what happened at Waterloo.
    â€œThis is a weatherstone. An interesting oddity, though not particularly useful. It tells you what the weather is.”
    â€œLike a forecast?” Rowan asked.
    â€œNo, nothing so practical. More like looking out the window. Today it is sunny, so the stone is clear blue like the sky, with a few high clouds. I imagine last night it was murky and full of lightning sparks. If a tornado came by, you would see it, in miniature, in the weatherstone. So you see, more a conversation piece than anything truly handy. Now, the Phoenicians had a stone that told you what the weather would be like tomorrow—very practical for a seafaring race.”
    â€œWhere did you get it?” Phyllida asked.
    Meg told them about her excursion the night before. She didn’t mention Gwidion—she had no memory of him.
    â€œWhat was it the thing called itself?”
    â€œAni something-or-other,” Meg said.
    Phyllida and Lysander exchanged puzzled looks. “Haven’t heard of it either,” Lysander said. “Ani? Well, there’s Black Annis, but she’s ferocious, so if it didn’t try to eat you, it wasn’t her. I’ll ask Bran, but I thought between the two of us we knew every fairy in these parts. Some kind of lightning fairy?”
    â€œAni Yuntikwalaski,” Dickie said.
    â€œThat’s it, that’s what it called itself,” Meg said. “What is it?”
    â€œA Cherokee spirit of lightning and thunder. I read about them last summer when I was at camp in North Carolina.” He spoke as though excusing himself. He was always a little ashamed of his knowledge—the more obscure and esoteric it was, the more abashed he felt. He also didn’t mention that his father sent him to camp to try to “make a man out of him” (which he had overheard quite accidentally).