"Okay."
Vivi nodded. She wanted to see it for herself; the power the wand carried after the transformation.
She lifted it and chanted.
"Balala Energy, Wula Wula, Whirlwind!"
The desert exploded. A whirlwind tore out from the tip of the wand and ripped across the sand ahead of her, dragging yellow columns of it up into the sky in a screaming spiral. The tornado carved its path with a violence that made even the air feel smaller.
"So strong!"
Vivi pressed her hand to her mouth. One wave. That was all she had done.
Amon watched the funnel dissipate. "Good."
The spell had real teeth, and Vivi was still barely getting started. Whatever the wand's ceiling was, it hadn't shown itself yet.
The Sand-Sand Clan children stood frozen. They had looked at Vivi and seen someone harmless, soft-featured, pretty in her transformed state. They had not expected that.
Karoo hadn't either. He stared at her with the particular bewilderment of a creature reconsidering everything it thought it knew about its owner.
"There's more, there's more!"
Amon's praise had lit something up in her. She was practically bouncing.
"Balala Energy, Wutela, Magic Shoes!"
Another swing. Light gathered around her feet and solidified into a pair of vivid, colorful shoes that had no business existing. Then Vivi stepped forward and did not fall.
She was walking through the air.
Karoo's wings beat uselessly at his sides.
"Look, Mr. Amon! Vivi can fly!"
She moved through the sky with the giddy, uncertain steps of someone who hadn't yet decided whether to believe it was happening. Her face was pure light. She had never once imagined herself up here.
Amon tilted his head. "Reminds me of Moonwalk." Different mechanics, same result. Energy pooled beneath the feet, lifting and carrying the body wherever it wanted to go.
She cycled through a few more spells after that, a shield, a handful of simpler things, while the children onlookers practically chewed through their own envy. But the magic dried up eventually. Her reserves were still shallow, and the wand could only draw on what was there.
She didn't care. She was beaming.
"Mr. Amon, thank you so much. This wand is incredible!"
"That's because you were lucky," he said, smiling. "And the second item is something you'll like even more."
He held out the Disc of Yoruba.
Vivi took it in both hands and turned it over, uncertain. "What is this?"
"Yoruba's record. Simple enough in what it does. Play it, and rainfall begins across a wide area."
She went still.
Then understanding hit her all at once and her eyes went wide.
"Wide-area rainfall? Mr. Amon, you mean this can make it rain across the whole country?" Her voice cracked with it. "Father has been looking for something like this for so long. He'll be so happy. Everyone will be so happy!"
She clutched it to her chest and spun around, grabbing Karoo by the wings and pulling him into something between a dance and a tackle.
The drought had been grinding Cobra down for years. He had been quietly carrying it, turning it over in his hands with no answer in sight. And now Amon had just placed the answer in his daughter's arms.
"Mr. Amon, come on, let's go tell Father right now!" She was already clambering onto Karoo's back. "He has to see this!"
After everything the Jar had already done, she had no reason to doubt him. She settled onto Karoo and gathered the reins, then twisted back one last time.
"I'm just showing him first, and then I'm coming straight back. Don't leave, okay? I still want to come back and play with you!"
"All right."
He had only soldtwo Jars so far. Three more to go, no reason to go anywhere. And once Vivi brought that record back to the palace, the king would come himself.
…
In the royal palace at Alubarna, Cobra was doing what he had been doing for weeks: sitting with the weight of the drought and finding no good answers.
The refugee numbers had climbed again. The capital was beginning to strain under the pressure.
"Your Majesty." Pell stood with his hands behind his back, his voice careful. "The number of refugees entering the city has grown beyond what we can manage. More are arriving each day, and the security situation is deteriorating. I would recommend an order restricting further entry."
Igaram nodded from across the table. "I have to agree. If it continues at this rate, we're looking at serious civil unrest."
Cobra's expression went flat.
"No."
A pause.
"These people have already lost everything. They left their homes because they had no other choice. And you want me to shut the gates on them for the sake of our own convenience."
He looked at neither of them.
"Open the royal stores. See to it that they're settled properly."
Pell shifted. "Your Majesty, the stores are nearly exhausted. With the harvest failures and the shortage of rain, we can't keep drawing from them at this rate without..."
"I said no. There are no refugees in this kingdom. There are only my people. I will not watch them starve in the street while I sit behind walls."
He cut the conversation off with a gesture.
Silence settled over the room. After a moment he exhaled, and some of the stiffness left his shoulders.
"It always comes back to the drought." He rubbed his forehead. "One good rainfall. That's all we need. One proper rainfall and half of this stops being a problem."
Nobody answered that. There was nothing to answer.
"Where is Vivi? I haven't seen her since this morning."
The mention of his daughter did what nothing else in the room had managed. His face changed completely.
"She went out with the Sand-Sand Clan children," Igaram said. "She should be..."
"Father! Father!"
The voice rang through the hall before he could finish. Seconds later Vivi came bursting through the doors on Karoo's back, her clothes dusty from the road, her face shining.
Cobra was already on his feet.
He looked, in that moment, exactly like what he was beneath the crown: a father who had been waiting all day for his daughter to come home.