Page 13 of Evergreen Academy (Society of Magical Botanists #1)
Chapter Twelve
A fter following Professor Tenella’s directions toward the other side of the academy’s exterior, I spotted another woman in an area of the garden where the plants went from ordered rows to more unwieldly patches, overflowing from barrels and running across the ground in every direction.
“Professor Variegata?”
The woman nodded. “Here for your affinity tests? How did it go with Professor Tenella?”
“I didn’t have any affinity for the florals.”
“ Non par? Well, let’s see how you do with these. I’ll test you for what we call harvesters, which are foods like fruits, vegetables, lentils, grains, etcetera. I’ll also be testing you for an affinity for grasses. Let’s start with the fruits.”
I watched Professor Variegata as she spoke. Her voice was smooth, but her hands were constantly moving. She held a long vine of some sort in her hands, and her fingers traced and twisted it. My eyes widened as she released the vine, and it snaked around her wrist like a bracelet.
She lifted a tray of fruit from atop a barrel and set it in front of me. There were dozens of fruits, including familiar ones, such as apples and oranges, plus others I had never seen or tasted before. “Sort these.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, waiting for her to offer further instruction. “What criteria should I use to sort them?”
She clasped her hands together. “Whatever feels right to you.”
Ohhhkay then. I went for my first instinct and sorted the fruits by color then by size in their color groups. Once finished, I looked at Professor Variegata.
“It looks like no affinity for fruits, but let’s test a few other harvesters. If you had the affinity, you would have sorted these fruits into groups like stone fruits, citrus, melons, etcetera instinctively.”
She led us out of the overflowing rows of flowers and into a cacti garden. I looked around, admiring the variety that spanned from smaller than my hand to nearly as tall as the school building.
We approached one that looked particularly protected by thick spines, and I recognized the prickly pear cactus that my grandmother had made jelly from.
“Reach out and touch it,” Professor Variegata said, the vine moving in her hands once more .
My eyes widened, but I followed her instruction, carefully touching the cactus and pulling back quickly once I felt the sharp spines.
“Most harvesters are unaffected by the spines,” she explained.
I wanted to say that touching the prickly pear hadn’t been necessary, since I’d poked myself on many cacti over the years, but I bit my tongue.
I still wasn’t entirely sure how affinity magic worked and if it was something I would have manifested before coming to the academy and receiving my birthstone jewelry or not.
Professor Variegata took my notebook, flipped to the page for affinities, and scribbled non par under the cacti section.
“Now, the legumes. Are you familiar with them?”
“Um,” I began, not wanting to let on how ignorant I was of plant classification. “Beans are legumes, right?”
“Right. And lentils, peas, some nuts. We grow almost all of them in our gardens here, and they’re staples in our pantries.” She approached a leafy green plant that looked like some sort of pea, and I realized it was the same one that encircled her wrist.
“Snow peas,” she said with a soft smile.
She looked at me expectantly, and I quickly said, “It’s beautiful.” She nodded, seemingly satisfied by my answer. We kept walking and paused again at a small wooden table where brown cloth bags of recently harvested beans sat open.
“Grab a handful.” She pointed at a bag of beans that looked like kidney beans, but they weren’t all the uniform cherry color that I was used to seeing at the store. Instead, some had bits of a whiteish yellow.
As instructed, I reached into the bag and collected a fistful into my palm then held it out flat. I waited, and Professor Variegata watched my hand expectantly. A minute passed, and when nothing happened, she gestured back toward the bag .
“You can put them down. Do you know why you must soak or boil beans before eating them?”
Again, I felt ignorant, as if she were asking questions a fifth-grader should know. My knowledge of preparing beans was limited to opening them with a can opener and popping them into the microwave.
“Many legumes, including beans, have levels of lectin that can be harmful—even toxic—to humans. Boiling or soaking inactivates the lectins. It’s an interesting area of research that some of our second years are engaged in.
Those with an affinity for harvesters—and legumes in particular—will be able to inactivate the lectins just by holding the beans in their hands. ”
My eyes widened. “And you’d be able to see the inactivation?”
“The beans would soften a little and the color would fade slightly, yes.” She was still holding my notebook, and she wrote what I assumed was another non par on its pages. “Grasses are next.”
We continued to walk around the back of the school, where a large field of various grasses stretched to a massive pond.
I spotted a few students in a rowboat, leaning over the edge with jars to collect some of the pond water.
Beyond the pond, there were fields of wheat, oats, corn, and other varieties of grain that I couldn’t identify.
“Walk through the grasses,” she prompted, once again playing with the snow pea vine in her hands.
Stepping forward, I began to walk through the large field. About halfway across, I heard her call me back, and I turned around.
She wrote in my notebook again. “When someone has an affinity for grasses, the grasses will bend out of the way for them as they walk. The opposite of what happens with the flowers, which arch toward you.”
I tried to mask my disappointment at having failed so many tests in a row already.
“The last test for harvesters will take place inside. This one is a rarer affinity, and not every harvester has it. I’ll explain more in the Mendel Atrium.”
The damp humidity of the Mendel Atrium hit me as soon as we stepped inside.
The room was stuffed to the brim with palms and other tropical trees with air plants and orchids clinging to their branches.
I recognized the distinctive heads of bird-of-paradise plants lining the walkway, and butterflies flitted overhead. A massive jackfruit protruded nearby.
My entire body relaxed, as if I were experiencing a tropical vacation.
“Now, this test is a little dangerous.”
I turned sharply to Professor Variegata, all feelings of relaxation melting away. She’d asked me to poke myself on a prickly pear cactus and hadn’t felt the need to warn me about that .
“Some harvesters take on the characteristics of plants that can survive the high winds of hurricanes. Like coconut palms, which only lose a few fronds.”
She walked toward a box on the wall I hadn’t noticed, hidden by plant life. “We are able to simulate all kinds of weather in here. Botanists with an affinity for palms are unaffected by storms. The wind and water bend around them. I’ve experienced it myself many times.”
My chest tightened, realizing what she was going to do. “I don’t think it’s necessary to run this test, Professor Variegata. I’ve been in many storms, and I can assure you they do not bend around me.”
“Maybe so, but you didn’t think to look for this power then. It’s possible the powers were weak, and you didn’t notice that you weren’t feeling the effects of the storm as acutely as others.”
Acknowledging that she could be right, but still skeptical, I braced myself. Professor Variegata flicked a few switches in the box then came to stand by my side. Within a few moments, the room darkened, and the plants began to rustle as wind formed.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t get to hurricane levels. There are plenty of plants in here that are more easily disturbed than palms.”
Small comfort , I thought, wondering how strong a storm could get before being classified as a hurricane.
My hair began to swirl around my face, propelled by the wind that was now gusting through the atrium.
I peeked at Professor Variegata out of the corner of my eye and saw that her hair lay perfectly still, and she didn’t seem to be squinting against the wind like I was.
She nodded, as if she’d seen enough, and returned to the control box. Within moments, the wind died down, and the full daylight returned. She signed my notebook once more then extended it back to me. “Well, Briar. It looks like you do not have any harvester affinity.”
I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face, but I felt my shoulders crumple slightly, and my gait was shallow as I followed her out of Mendel’s Atrium.
When we emerged in the central vein, the instructor and I went separate ways.
Yasmin had said I would only be doing tests with Professor Tenella and Variegata today, so I wasn’t sure where I should be headed next.
Should I go home? But then I remembered the library, and I strode purposefully to the stairs.
The library was even more breathtaking than I remembered. A few students lounged in hammocks or papasan chairs, some with books, others with plants. I tried to stroll in casually as I entered the room, hoping none of them found me out of the ordinary.
I turned my attention to the nearest bookcase, scanning the titles.
The entire shelf seemed to be dedicated to plants local to the area.
There were nature guides like you might see in any bookstore, but there were other tomes as well, which looked much older.
I took one off the shelf, carried it to a nearby table, and opened it.
After a few minutes of paging through the book, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Each page contained botanical images and illustrations, but most of the writing was in Latin. There were lists of phrases next to scientific processes, such as Accelerated root growth .
I was getting ready to turn the page when I heard my name and looked up to see Yasmin.
“Hey! How did it go?”
I shook my head. “No affinities yet.”
“Well, that’s nothing to be worried about. A part of me always wished I had an affinity for florals just because they’re so pretty, but I’ve learned they’re really not the coolest plants. Mosses and ferns have way more going for them.”
I perked up a little at that. The idea of sharing an affinity with Yasmin was promising.
“So, tomorrow you’ll do your aquatic plant affinity test with Dr. Lemna first. She can be a little… brisk, so just be prepared. It’s nothing personal.”
I swallowed. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“I’m heading down to dinner. Want to join?”
We both pushed back our chairs from the table and stood.
“Thanks, but I’d better get home.” I wasn’t entirely sure why I turned down her offer. It wasn’t like I had a fancy dinner waiting at home. But the idea of eating the evening meal here, like I belonged, didn’t feel right. I wondered if it ever would.
“No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh, Yasmin, I have a question. Can you tell me what the Latin phrases in this book are for?”
Yasmin smiled. “Those are the phrases we use when we need to get our plants to do something. We call them Floracantus . But you might think of them as spells.”