“I’ve been excited to come here for as long as I can remember,” Yasmin said. “My sisters are quite a bit older than me, so I watched them come here when I was in elementary and then middle school. They had nothing but great things to say about it. It’s the only time in our lives when we’ll be fully immersed in a community of magical botanists our own age like this.”
I wondered what it would have been like to grow up knowing that magical botany existed and to look forward to one day attending school here. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel so out of place.
We looped the pond once—witnessing Dr. Lemna’s aquatics students already at work at the pond’s edge—then we met Professor Sato, Coral, Aurielle, and the others with fern affinities in an area of the forest that was covered with ground ferns.
“Welcome back, Briar,” Professor Sato greeted me, and the few students that I didn’t know yet turned toward me. “Everyone,you are welcome to get started on your affinity studies. Briar will be completing her affinity test for ferns today.”
Yasmin gave me a subtle thumbs-up then walked away to join the other fern affinity students. It was time. I had a fifty percent chance of passing this test, which was higher than any I’d taken so far.
“Do you know anything about the life cycle of a fern?” Professor Sato asked.
I shook my head.
“They’re unique in that they don’t reproduce with seeds or flowers but with spores. And they have two separate plants through the process of growing—a gametophyte and a sporophyte. What you see here”—she ran her finger over a tall green stalk that was tightly coiled at the end and reminded me of a seahorse’s tail—“is an adult sporophyte. It’s getting ready to unfurl and become the ferns that you see all around us.”
As soon as she removed her finger, the coil unwound, and a beautiful fan of fern emerged. “When someone has a fern affinity, the simple act of touching the sporophyte will cause it to rapidly mature and open.”
She nodded toward another of the coiled plants, and I touched it delicately with my finger. I pulled my hand away, as she had done, and waited expectantly. But nothing happened.
“What affinities have you tested positive for so far, Briar?”
I felt my palms begin to sweat. This did not bode well. “None.”
Her eyebrows knitted together, barely distinguishable under her broad sun hat. “And you’re doing the tests in order? Which are remaining?”
“Yes. After this one, just the defensive plants test.”
“Hmm. Perhaps we should try another test. That one isn’t always conclusive. We’d better be sure.” I followed her lead deeper into the forest, where the ferns were slightly more spread out on the forest floor.
“Ferns have a surprisingly large genome. Some of the largest, in fact, of any species, humans included. A lot of this extra DNA comes from repetitive DNA and something called transposable elements. These are often referred to asjumping genes.”
“Jumping genes?” I knew what a gene was from high school biology. I envisioned a picture of a chromosome, with the genes lined up to compose the shape. But I’d never heard of a jumping gene.
“So named because they move around in the chromosomes.”
My eyes widened. “Is that… normal? Or is it caused by magic?”
“Normal, amazingly. But non-magical scientists don’t have a good handle on these genes yet. We do.” She pulled out her lighter and held it near the edge of a fern frond but didn’t touch it.
“Do you… feel anything?”
I stepped closer, desperate to be able to say yes, but the only sensations I experienced were a slight breeze, the chirping of birds, and the voices of the fern affinity students beginning their research in the distance. “I don’t think so.”
She sighed and turned off the lighter. “I can feel the transposable genes jumping around in that fern like popcorn kernels in response to the increased heat.”
Disappointment was creeping through my veins.
“May I have your notebook?”
I pulled it from my bag and cast my eyes toward Yasmin. How disappointed would she be that I hadn’t passed the fern affinity test? And now, the only thing left was the defensive plants test.
After Professor Sato was finished writingnon parunder the ferns in my notebook, she passed it back to me. “Don’t be a stranger. There’s a lot to learn from the ferns.”
I nodded and forced a smile, trying not to let my discouragement show. Yasmin jogged over to me while Professor Sato went to join her students.
“So, how did it go?”
I shook my head, swallowing hard.
