Jamal Kunis POV
Was it me, or was Conrad actually just growing beard? I laughed within myself for noticing that little detail amidst all that was happening. I had never taken time to observe his face under certain conditions. The candle that was underneath him in the dark room lit his jaw and obscured the rest of his face from the light.
It was 12 the midnight and we were in a forest just on a clearing the White Witch had made for us. After my guard had left the castle, he came back immediately with telling me that he had met the White Witch on her way here. The White Witch informed him that she needed me at her place this night and that it was concerning the broken staff, the very reason I had sent a guard at her in the first place.
I knew I could not miss an appointment with the White Witch. Not now when I desperately had unanswered questions so once it was dark, I took Conrad along and we both headed over to the White Witch before she led us to this place.
It was a full moon so I was feeling more of a wolf than I normally felt so me and Conrad did a little game on our way to the White Witch’s place where we raced in our wolf form. I won of course but Conrad gave me a run for my money.
“Is it just me or are you just growing beard?” I decided to point out the observation.
“How sharp of you to notice,” Conrad said.
“You’ll look good in a beard, wouldn’t you?”
“Aye. I reckon. Even better looking than you.”
We laughed. “Don’t think you can. You can’t.”
“Even you don’t believe yourself.”
“You should find yourself a mate, handsome.”
“Ah yes. I was considering the White Witch.”
I almost exploded with laughter. It took me pinching myself not to but eventually I did. “You fancy the older ones, don’t you?”
“I reckon they have more experience,” Conrad quipped back.
“You both are making too much noise!” the White Witch scolded us as she appeared from behind the bushes with a large set of wood in hand.
I and Conrad shared a glance of concern and smiled like two children who knew that they had gotten into trouble. How much has she heard, I wondered. I did not dare to ask but Conrad being the bold boy he was asked in the best way he dared to which was a lot.
“Have you been peeking at us from behind the bushes?”
I chuckled, hoping none of them would notice. Why did Conrad’s funny side have to come on now?
“Believe me I take no pleasure in peeping at wolfs in the bushes,” the White Witch replied. “I was gathering fire woods.”
“How much did you hear?” he asked again.
“As little as you might care.”
“Oh.”
The White Witch clicked her fingers and the wood she had gathered lit on fire. She waved her hand and a table appeared a top the fire. She then tilted her head to the side and candles materialized and were then magically lit on fire.
“So what brings us here?” I asked.
“The staff.” The White Witch brushed her hand over the centre of the stable and there it was, shards of the broken staff no more than 20 small pieces. “There are traces of magic still on the staff and I have been going through them for some time now and the things I have found are both intriguing and shocking at the same time. Something I believe is of concern and would interest you.”
She raises her hand high to the sky and a black dust hurl in circles in her hand, materializing into a large book with covers made of skin and leather.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My book,” the White Witch answered plainly. “It gave me some insights on what sort of magic we are dealing with.”
The White Witch wondered off into the forest again, reading.
“Where do you think she is off to now?” Conrad asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. It was getting cold but cold was nothing to wolves especially under the full moon. “What do you think she mean by ‘intriguing and shocking at the same time’?” I asked Conrad.
“I really can’t say. Maybe it had something to do with what you told me earlier.”
“What’s that?”
“The one about you feeling freer. Like being relieved off a load you did not know you were carrying. Maybe that sort of stuff.”
Whatever it was, I just hoped it got resolved soon.
It was not long before the White Witch reappeared from behind the forests. “King Jamal?” she called.
“Yes?” I answered.
“Have you found yourself feeling lighter?”
“What do you mean lighter?”
The White Witch looks at Conrad meaningfully, then turned back at me. “Like you have been lifted free of a load you did not know you carried for a long time?”
I stopped breathing. It was exactly how I felt. I did not need to answer because my looks said it all.
“The Dark Witch might or might not have known it but there was still a lingering connection between you and her through the staff.”
My mouth hung open. “How is that possible?”
“Jamal, you two spent a very long time together. So long we all thought she was your mate. The both of you were intimate a lot of times. There had to be a lasting connection, one that could hardly be broken even if there was a separation. I have the eerie feeling that even with the staff gone there is still a fragment of a chance that that connection still exists and can only be severed forever if one of you were to be killed by the other.”
“So what now?” Conrad asked.
“Luckily, all connections I could trace has been broken. And that is the reason I had brought you here tonight under a full moon.”
“To discover my mate,” I completed the White Witch’s speech.
“Yes.” She smiled. “You have gone too far without a second half and that was not because of a hidden feeling you had for the Dark Witch as she had suggested in the cave, but because of a spell she had once used on you.”
“So I was unable to sense my mate?”
“Yes.”
“You can help me, can’t you?” I asked.
“Of course I can. But you’ll be doing most of the work.”
Conrad and the White Witch set up the candles on the ground and drew ancient runes around them. I stood in the midst of it all. The idea was that the White Witch would attempt to communicate with the Moon Goddess and once that was done, my mate would be revealed to me.
I sat in the centre of all the candles, runes, and diagrams waiting for something to happen. Then the White Witch began her incantation. She was speaking in a language if I was to put a date on it might date back millions of years to before werewolves walked the earth. The words, though they made no meaning to me, drew my ears in to listen as if I was supposed to somehow relate to the rhythm.
The air became still for a second and after a few minutes the wind picked up speed. The wind came on and off and on and off and it began to have a beat that was making sense. Howls sounded from afar but it was not that of wolves but still that of the intense breeze blowing. The candles began to flicker out one by one and it was not until all were out and we were plunged into darkness did I notice Conrad transmute into a wolf and began growling at something far off in the bush.
The whooshes of the wind now became clearer and clearer and was starting to resemble the voice of someone or something otherworldly. Conrad had quieted down. He was still in his wolf form but he had his head bowed in submission. I saw a show whisk past in my peripheral vision. The moon was enough light to figure out that we were not alone. The White Witch was still standing, quiet, with her hands stretched high into the sky.
Then something hit me and I blacked out.