“Now, give it a little water.” Professor Tenella held out a clay pitcher, and I took it and poured a small amount into the pot. I stood and looked at the professor, wondering what she was watching for. Her eyes studied the flower for a full minute before she finally spoke.
“Well, Briar, you don’t have an affinity for florals. They’re a huge group, so we usually need to do some more detailed testing to get specific affinities, but these first two tests determineif there’s any affinity at all. If you had an affinity, we would have seen the flower you planted grow and bloom in seconds.”
Professor Tenella went through the motions I just had with another plant, and I watched in amazement as a small green sprout stretched and opened into a vibrant pink snapdragon within moments. It tilted slightly toward Professor Tenella.
My shoulders fell, and she smiled kindly. “Don’t worry about it, dear. This is the first test of many.” She reached out a hand toward my journal, and I released it to her.
I watched as she flipped to the affinity pages. The first page had a list of each of the affinities. She went to the one for the category of florals, posed her pen below it, and scrawlednon parin a looping script.
Was that Latin again? I was beginning to understand why Latin was listed on all three trimesters of my first year. I needed to start learning it—and quickly.
“Sonon parmeans…”
“No affinity match. But as I said, don’t worry about it. You’ll be with Professor Variegata next for a few other tests. I saw her a few minutes ago. She should be around the other side of the building somewhere.” Professor Tenella pointed at a path that led through the flowers along the building, and I nodded.
“Thanks, Professor Tenella. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Briar.” There was a slight twinkle in Professor Tenella’s eyes, and I found myself smiling as I left the cantina.
I glanced down at the flowers with renewed interest as I walked to the other side of the building. It was hard to imaginethe mass of blooms bending toward botanists who had a floral affinity, as if the person were a ray of sunlight.
But a moment later, two students emerged from the glass building, and the nearby flowers strained toward them.
A little spark of excitement ran through my veins at this dramatic display of magic, and I headed to my next affinity test with a renewed sense of anticipation.
Chapter Twelve
After 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 andtwisted 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.”
Ohhhkaythen. 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.
