Micah’s arm burst into flames, and he screamed.

Dailen tackled him to the ground, quickly smothering the flames with a wet blanket he had readied for this possibility. The one-room, half-buried hovel filled with the stench of burning flesh and smoke. Dailen grabbed what looked like a kid’s wooden pinwheel off the wall and began spinning it with his finger. As the momentum of the toy took over, he muttered some words under his breath while raising his hand to the ceiling in a circular motion. The smell and smoke gathered like a dark spirit twisting and swirling, obediently passing through an opening that momentarily appeared in the slatted roof near the stove pipe. As the opening in the ceiling closed with one final gesture from Dailen, he let out a sigh and sat down on the floor near the boy who lay on the floor, whimpering. 

Dailen gently chided him, “How many times do I have to tell you that if you force it, it will destroy you?”

Micah rolled onto his side, instinctively trying to use his injured arm, sending a shock wave of pain through his body. A scream half-drowned in tears tore from his lips. Dailen started, lunging forward, covering the boy’s mouth as gently as he could, “You did this to yourself, don’t get me chased out of the village because you can’t dance with the power. Remember, your sister asked me to help you, and you both promised not to draw attention to the fact that I practice.” He released Micah’s mouth, moving to the edge of a small table that disappeared into a dirt wall, there he rummaged around until he found a salve. 

Returning, Dailen began slowly smoothing the salve over the burns, “You need to understand Micah, magic isn’t fire or electricity or ice. It is something existential, an ebb and flow. It isn’t something with form or shape; it is everything and nothing. While you can sometimes push it to bend to you, it will punish you for trying should you fail. You must find its rhythm, feel its flow, coax it, seduce it to aid you. You have kept trying to demand that it obey you.” Dailen continued to lecture as Micah’s eyes closed.

Dailen watched Micah’s breathing steady as he slipped into unconsciousness. Allowing a deep sigh to escape his lungs to funnel the frustration out of himself as he did the smoke and smell earlier, Dailen rose to sift through his bedding, finally finding a dry blanket to replace the wet one on Micah. Moving to his padded bedding to rest his own mind Dailen pondered the possibility of discovery. Ultimately, he shrugged internally embracing the thought; we are all taken eventually, why should I be any different. As he recounted all those he had known, now lost to the darkness, he too slipped off into a deeper rest.

Dailen awoke to find Micah sitting on the floor of the hovel facing the stove, a flame burning in the palm of his hand. The boy looked up at him, face expressionless except his eyes that always conveyed sadness. Dailen rose from his bed and walked around the boy, watching him closely.

“How did you…?” Then Dailen’s eyes fell on the boy’s arm. Where fresh burn scars should be forming were dark crystalline lines faintly glowing as they traced the cracks of his previously broken skin. Dailen sensed as though from the corner of his eye, he could see a hint of the sigils much like the artwork of their tribe, but when he looked directly, he saw the light of the blue lines softly pulsing. 

Before Dailen could say another word, Micah was speaking, slowly and carefully, “You kept telling me to make trinkets that represented my magic, telling me about the witch who used plants and beast parts to cast her spells. You kept telling me I needed to coax the magic, not bend it to my will. But you were wrong.”

Micah closed his hand and snuffed out the flame. He climbed to his feet and stared at Dailen, who stood shocked and silent. “The difference between you and me Dailen is that you don’t own magic because you use tools, and you beg it to help you. I can’t be like you, part of me wishes I could… but it calls to me is so loud I must control it, or I feel like it will fully consume me.” Micah moved to the door, putting his hand on the ring that acted as the door handle. “I am not like you. It wants my arm and hand, fine, it can take them, but it will serve me.”

Without another word, Micah walked out of the hovel. Dailen stood silently for a moment, thinking of the mark now branded on Micah’s arm and then sighed, “Good luck Micah, you’ll need it.”