Professor Dano toddled over to one case and pulled out a book, then another, and another. He stacked them on his desk. “Read these. Don’t remove them from this room. Shut the door when you leave—​it will lock behind you.”

She dared one question. “Flying lessons?”

He halted on his way to the door but did not turn around.

She waited.

He sighed. “Yes.”

Mina smiled.

Chapter
Nine

Curled up in Professor Dano’s chair, Mina read for the entire day. She didn’t mean to—​she knew Pixit was waiting for her, she knew she was missing dinner, and she knew she’d have flying lessons tomorrow—​but once she began, she couldn’t stop. These weren’t sunny, incomplete textbooks; these were journals, written by the very first storm guardians.

I am afraid, one long-ago guardian wrote.

The storms, she read, they come faster now. It seems the more we try to fix the world, the more we break it.

Although the early Alorrians had their storm beasts, they didn’t know how to use them—​they were just kids trying to make their world better, with no teachers yet to guide them. They’d create rain over a field—​and cause a tornado in a nearby town. They’d use a sun beast to heat a field, and a pond elsewhere would freeze in the middle of summer, killing all the fish.

It took several decades before they were able to stabilize the weather in Alorria. Mina found one book, bound in red leather, that detailed with charts, tables, and maps exactly how the weather in each region changed day by day, with a list of how many storm beasts of which kinds were active by the hour.

There were setbacks. Devastating ones, in which entire harvests were destroyed. She found herself crying as she read lists of names of people who had starved in those winters, before winter itself was banished. She had to wipe her tears quickly so they wouldn’t fall on the brittle pages and destroy them.

She wondered how many students had ever seen these books and felt like she’d been given a gift, not a punishment. Here was the terrible, painful past they’d moved beyond. Scientists had figured out that if the beasts worked together, under the guidance of the guardians, they could tame the weather across all of Alorria, which allowed for all the wonderful things that Alorrians now took for granted: food for everyone, a safe sea, no killer winters. Their combined efforts ushered in a grand era of art and architecture, where wants were met and needs were eliminated. She skipped through those pages and went back to the first journal.