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But then it settles and becomes blue, glowing like the water in the bowl.
It is a symbol I have never seen in the flesh, only ever in books and described by my mother. An intricate pattern of vines and branches unfurls across my skin, weaving together to form a perfect circle.
It burns viciously, and as the heat subsides, I expect the glow to darken too. Only, it does not. It keeps glowing. Shining into the gloom of the basement.
“What is it?” Elodie breathes.
“This will be happening to every elf in the kingdom right now,” I tell her. “Your parents never warned you about it?”
She shakes her head. “My parents died when I was a baby. You know that, Garratt.”
I did know that. But I’d forgotten because I’ve paid so little attention to anything she’s ever said to me. “Well...” I put my hand on her shoulder, trying to offer a sliver of comfort. “Most of us know what it means. It means something bad is coming, and that it’s time to come together. No elf can ignore the call.”
“Come together where?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.
“I’ll show you.”
We gather on the outskirts of the city. It is pitch dark, and the lights of Luminael seem more dim than usual. Even the stars are hiding. Behind the thickening clouds that have been gathering all day.
“They all just came?” Pria gazes in amazement at the crowd in front of her. At least fifty of us, all with glowing tattoos on our forearms.
“They did.” I am shocked, too. I didn’t truly expect them to appear.
Many faces, I know from the tavern. But many, I don’t. And I wonder whether elves throughout the kingdom are, this moment, making their way towards Luminael.
“You made the call?” asks an older elf with curly grey hair.
I nod at him. “I did. Pass the word. Trouble comes. We head to the library. There, I will explain.”
He does not question me, just presses his lips together solemnly and whispers my words into the ear of the elf next to him.
When the truth has circulated, all stand silent. I look at the elf beside me and he holds out his arm. “They are waiting,” he says. “They will follow you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I am no leader. They should follow someone else.”
“Many know the way,” he says. “That is not the issue. The issue is that you summoned us, so you now lead us.”
I glance at Elodie. She smiles encouragingly at me as if I should be pleased. But Pria purses her lips. Elodie might see me as some kind of loveable rogue, but Pria sees me for what I really am; a backstabbing con artist who serves only himself.
She knows I’m doing this to secure my own survival.
And she knows, because of that, I’ll step forward and let them think of me as some kind of saviour.
I raise my arm. My tattoo glows brighter. From the back of the crowd, someone calls, “We follow.”
The others echo, “We follow, we follow.”
Then the man beside me tugs my sleeve. “Here,” he says. “Take this” He offers me what looks like a staff. It’s only when I examine it closely I realise it’s one of two sticks he was using to help him walk.
When I take hold of it, however, my fingers grow warm. The tattoo seems to spread down my arm. Bright blue light swirling on my skin. It flows into the stick, down its ridges, then forms a glowing ball of light on the end of the stick.
I hold it high above my head and look up at it.
Everyone else looks at it, too.
Elodie whispers, “Cool . . . that’s so cool.”
But a sense of dread has settled deep in my stomach. “I am not a leader. I was not meant to do this. Someone else should take charge.”
