Chapter 63
Chapter Sixty-Three
The arrival of Professor East was like a summer rain to a thirsty flower bed, seeping into the cracks and providing instant relief to the soil and roots within.
Students who had been huddled around the tables, still concerned after the minor earthquake, straightened and stepped forward, murmuring excitedly.
“It’s wonderful to see you all,” Professor East said, sweeping his eyes around the field and acknowledging everyone present. “It looks like this has been quite an eventful equinox.”
“Are you going to fight me, East?” Feathergrass asked, drawing everyone’s attention back to himself.
Professor East simply picked up a glass bottle from the nearby table and raised it in the air. The cork was out of it, and empty bottles littered the table. Nearly every botanist in the clearing seemed to have had a glass.
“Not all disagreements need to be settled by violence,” Professor East said loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“I placed a special elixir in each of your glasses after dinner. An elixir of ingredients all grown here on the academy’s grounds.
It will determine whether your intentions toward the academy are in line with the original goals here.
I think we should let the plants decide whether you stay or go. ”
Callan and I exchanged glances. We hadn’t known about that part of the plan, but we should have guessed Professor East would put his legendary harvester affinity to use. I briefly wondered how he had managed to do it unnoticed.
“No such elixir exists,” Feathergrass said.
“Come on, Feathergrass. You don’t think I could have grown some plants with special abilities in all the time I’ve been here?”
Feathergrass stiffened, and Wendy looked between the two men. “Why should we trust your elixir? You could have adjusted it to do any number of things.”
“Ah, that. Well, I guess you’re just going to have to take my word for it. The elixir has an interesting mechanism of action. At midnight, if it deems you disloyal to the academy, you will have fifteen minutes to leave before the roots of the walking palm escort you off the campus grounds.”
Wendy paled.
Professor East looked at his watch. “Any second now.” He poured himself a glass from the open bottle and took a drink, making it clear that he was including himself in the test.
A deep rumbling came from the ground, but it was different from the earthquake-like motion that had occurred when I reset the shield. The leaves at the tree line rustled, then the giant, stilted roots of the three walking palms began to creep forward.
I’d known the interesting trees with above-ground roots existed at Evergreen Academy, but I had never seen them move before.
It must have taken an incredible amount of magic to trigger the trees to move so much.
From the gasps and murmurs coming from the rest of the partygoers, I assumed it was a first-time event for them too.
I glanced at Callan again and saw a gleam in his eye as he nodded at Professor Bowellia. The tree affinity instructor must have helped Professor East set everything up.
The palms moved toward Feathergrass and Wendy, their massive stilt-like roots creeping in mesmerizing motion, until they cut the two board members off from the rest of the group and formed a cage around them.
Feathergrass used his grass affinity powers to make bamboo shoots rapidly sprout from the earth in an attempt to push back the walking palms. But the bamboo was easily broken, and the walking palms trampled the sprouts with their roots in a slow, methodical fashion.
Nearby, the few other members of the board who were visiting stiffened. Primrose Marsh put her hand to her mouth.
“All right,” Wendy said firmly. “That’s enough. We’ll go.”
The walking palms retreated, their roots moving backward, but still stood by.
“Do both of you hereby submit your resignations from the Board of Regents, by reason of deliberate harm to the school in the poisoning of the verdant shield last year?” Professor East asked.
Gasps came from the gathered crowd.
“I’m sure the council members at each of the botanical conservatories will be disappointed to hear this news,” Meadow’s mom said, stepping forward and crossing her arms.
The pair of former board members looked like they didn’t want to agree, but when the walking palms crept closer once more, Wendy gave a stiff nod.
“Excellent,” Professor East said. “Then please see yourselves out.”
Wendy cast one look back at her two sons then straightened her shoulders and began to walk toward the academy’s gates.
As I watched her go, a knot of concern formed in my stomach as I wondered how the two Rhodes brothers were feeling.
Would they always be in opposition to their mother, or would she come around to understanding why they disagreed with her?
And where did their dad stand on all this?
I was glad that Wyatt and Callan seemed to have each other, at least.
At Wendy’s departure, the group emitted a collective exhalation. My shoulders relaxed, hopeful this might end quickly.
But Feathergrass didn’t move.
“Your interests are not in line with those of the students and the academy, Frederick,” Professor East said. He nodded toward Wendy’s retreating figure, the instruction clear.
“You’re going to let students dictate how you run this place?” Feathergrass scoffed. “I thought you had more cactus spine than that.”
“My students happen to be right. But even if they weren’t, dramatic changes to the school or to the society shouldn’t be implemented on the whims of a handful of people.
Founders’ descendants don’t define our students here at the school, and affinity powers don’t define botanists in the wider community.
We are all magical botanists, and we all have a purpose in this world. ”
“Then why don’t we settle this right now with a battle of the plants. The strongest botanist will be the director of Evergreen Academy,” Feathergrass said. One of the walking palms edged closer to him, but he sidestepped it.
“Strength is only one aspect of leadership, Frederick,” Professor East said. “We do not teach our students to fight at this school. That is not the purpose of our relationship with plants.”
“And that is precisely the problem. Our botanists need to be more aggressive if we want to have the upper hand against humans,” Feathergrass said.
A few gasps came from the assembled students. We had known those were his intentions, but he had never said it so bluntly.
When Professor East didn’t respond, Feathergrass put up his hands and said a Floracantus, and sandhill rosemary sprang from the ground around him.
Immediately, the enhanced allelopathy from the grasses began to choke out other plants in a circle around him, spreading outward.
The roots of any plants the rosemary met shriveled and died on the spot.
Feathergrass was clearing a path. I remembered Ravenna saying he was famous for that move.
Well, I wasn’t famous for it. I had never interacted with sandhill rosemary, but there was a first time for everything. Everyone kept telling me how powerful I was, and I was going to put that to the test.
I reached out and connected with the grasses, tugging on their tissues. At my whispered words, their progression slowed. Soon, they were reversing course, shrinking inward until they surrounded Feathergrass.
His eyes wide, he cast his gaze around the group until it landed on me. “You don’t want to cross me, Briar. You could be a powerful ally to the grasses.”
“I might be a powerful ally to the grasses.” I nodded toward where some of the grass affinity students were gathered, watching what Feathergrass was doing in obvious shock. “But I will never be an ally to you.”
I pushed the sandhill rosemary closer around his ankles, and frustration flickered across his face as he struggled to combat my magic.
His eyes narrowed, and he raised a hand.
Before I could react, vines snaked from the forest and wrapped around Feathergrass’s hands, twisting them behind his back in living handcuffs. I recognized that move and cast a glance at Callan, who was concentrating on the former board member.
“That was a quick reaction,” I whispered.
“I could sense what Floracantus he was about to use, and it wasn’t a nice one.”
Right. His power-sensing abilities, the ones theorized to be connected to his wind-manipulating powers.
Feathergrass turned to Callan, obviously realizing where the vines had come from. “Not siding with your own mother? What a disappointment you must be.”
Anger welled up inside me then, and my fingers dug into my palms. I rarely experienced the face-flushing emotion that was coursing through me.
“The only disappointment is you, Feathergrass,” I called. “Claiming to be a leader in our society while simultaneously undermining everything we stand for.” As I said the words, the soil around Feathergrass began to loosen, dropping him lower into the ground centimeter by centimeter.
He tried to free himself from his handcuffs, but Callan’s spell was strong, and I was fast. I connected with the vines that Callan had already moved into place and slid them around the rest of his body, wrapping Feathergrass up like a cocooned butterfly.
I stopped the vines just below his neck. “Looks like you’re out of your depth.”
Feathergrass grimaced, looking at the crowd, clearly embarrassed that there was an audience for what was happening to him. Twisting within the vines, he turned to Professor East once more. “Letting the students do the dirty work for you? I expected better.”
“Weren’t you the one advocating for more powerful use of force from botanists just a few moments ago?
” Professor East asked, his voice calm, as if he were giving a lecture on pollinator and plant relationships.
“Since you insist on not leaving peacefully, I feel compelled to warn you that you are surrounded by botanists with extra-affinity powers.”