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 scribblednon parunder 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 anothernon paron 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 anaffinity 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 aboutthat.
“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 donotbend 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.”
