Page 21 of Branches of the Willow

“You always have, Jess, just as I’ve always been yours.”

“Fucking psycho.” Cough. “Delusional.” Cough, rasp, cough. “Bastard.” My voice was all but gone by the time I got to the end, but I said my peace. My throat burned, and begged for water, but my pride kept me from asking for any.

“Ouch!” Zach mocked. “That hurts, Jess! Sounds like it hurt worse for you to say it. You’ll see though.” He was in front of the cage then, watching me. He saw the way my eyes rolled back. “You’ll see that you’re wrong, love.”

A loud, low rumble issued forth from somewhere in my chest. It would have come out a defiant growl had it not hurt so much. What started out as a growl turned into a fizzled attempt that ended as more of a whimper. My throat was done for.

“Quit tormenting the girl, already. She’s about to go through enough pain and suffering without you adding to it.” Sophia scolded him like the child that he was.

“But she will live!” Zach stated, not so much a question as it was a demand.

“Yes, yes!” Sophia responded. “She will be a fractured shell, something even you can manipulate.” The snide remark did not go unnoticed. It did however go unpunished, which meant that no matter how much he wanted to be, Zach was not in charge here.

“What are you waiting for then? Let’s get the show on the road,” Zach demanded.

“I need the moon, like I’ve told you already. We have a few more days to wait.”

“Don’t make me throw you in a cage with her, Sophia.” Zach threatened.

“Because that worked out so well for you the last time you threw me in a cage?” Sophia laughed at him. “I will get my revenge and you will get whatever is left over in the end.”

“Revenge?” I choked out breathlessly. “What the hell did I ever do to you?” It took me a while to get all the words passed my dried throat and wrecked vocal cords, but the witch was patient and waited to tell me her tale.

9

Legends

“Didyouknow,truewitches are only born about once every 200 years? Special things have to happen to make us, because we are eternal. Not many people know this. Only another of our kind can kill us once we are fully matured, and we regard our own kind with too much love and respect to attempt it, except in special situations.” Sophia completely ignored the question I asked. I wasn’t sure what Witch History 101 was going to tell me about why she wanted revenge on me, but I was a captive audience, literally, so all I could do was sit and listen.

“My mother feared for us, as we were vulnerable to attack by other creatures until we reached the age of maturity. That takes three to four hundred years, depending on the witch. We are a slow, patient people, you see. I was the oldest of seven sisters. Serena, who you know, came 201 years after me, and I was fast approaching maturity when Layla came along 200 years after that. Mother heard whispers that the dark ones wanted to end our line, and she feared losing us. She be-spelled an entire town and all their inhabitants in order to harbor us safely. They would be our family’s watch dogs. Werewolves were the original animal guardians of witches, you see.”

I stared at her, open-mouthed, in disbelief for quite a while before I managed to shut my own dried, cracked lips again. If what she said was true, it had been lost to our own histories, because werewolves had always thought of witches as beneath them. They were always thought of as humans who did a few parlor tricks for entertainment, and not much else. Well, except for the rare witch who possessed enough talents to do things for wolves, like say, un-bind them from a mate they no longer wanted. I waited while Sophia was lost in her thoughts. I wasn’t sure if she was planning to tell me anymore or not. Just as I thought that she looked back over at me with a twinkle in her eye.

“Two sisters, and 400 years after Layla was born, Serena reached her full maturity. She was a romantic, that one. She always had stars in her eyes, mooning over the most absurd things. My mother thought she was a darling. I begged to differ. Being the oldest, my mother was on my case to settle down and find a male with worthy seed to beget my own child. I wasn’t ready, and I let her know in no uncertain terms was I about to bear a child and spend my life in worry over the little brat as she had done. My life was full enough without them. After all, I had enough sisters to keep me tied up with their expectations for years. I was ready to have no one to answer to.

As a result, my mother turned to Serena to beg a grandchild from her. Surely, she wouldn’t let my mother down, being the starry-eyed darling that she was. Our kind only mate with human males. We enchant them, the ones who have a special charisma, wonderful gifts, beyond what other mere mortals have. They are the ones our kind chooses to mate with. We do not keep them. I fear the original “man-eater” myths were born from the witch’s legends, as many females do end up killing the sperm donor after they’re sure they have gotten with child.”

I screwed up my face in disgust, but that only provoked laughter from Sophia. “Don’t worry, your dear savior, Serena felt the same as you do. And it didn’t matter anyway, because she went and fell in love with one of our family’s dogs.”

She couldn’t possibly mean what I thought she meant. Serena fell in love with a werewolf. I couldn’t even imagine what kind of an uproar that would cause, because it was something that would be frowned upon even now amongst both witches and werewolves. Humans were fair game because they could be turned, but witches could not become werewolves, and vice-versa. Therefore, they never mated.

“Mother had already created the hunters by then, to try to go on the offensive with the dark ones. Her wolves were only a defensive gesture, you see. They wouldn’t leave the damn nest and go hunt. They only stayed and protected. Stupid mutts.” Sophia complained, and then cracked open a bottle of water, guzzling its contents as if it were the most delicious thing on earth. I was certain it would have felt like the best thing ever, considering how dry my throat was. She looked at me then, out of the corner of her eye, while she still had the bottle tipped up, glug-glug-glugging away.

Suddenly, she pulled the bottle away from her face, letting some of the precious water trickle out to the floor as she did. “Oh, how rude of me. I bet you’re thirsty, aren’t you?” She held her bottle out to me. I didn’t bother moving for it. There were only a few tiny drops left, and I’d be damned if I’d drink from the same bottle her lips just touched. She simply shrugged her shoulders. “Suit yourself.”

“Where was I? Oh yes, the hunters. We didn’t really need protection from the pack anymore. Serena and I had already reached maturity, Layla was well on her way, and the hunters had done an exceptional job of killing off enough of the dark ones that the few remaining had gone deep into hiding. By then, the townsfolk had branched off, creating new werewolf packs. Many times, this meant turning humans to use as their workforce. Some of them had watered down abilities and later, they became known as ‘Lesser’. The pure bloods, from the original family lines that were created by my mother, were later known as ‘Ancients.’ I’m sure you know that part already though.” Sophia watched me for a reaction, her smug smile never leaving her face as she did so. I didn’t know what kind of reaction to that she had been expecting, but I had nothing for her.

“Despite my mother’s warnings not to do so, Serena was determined to lie with dogs. She waxed poetic about how he’d be able to live a few hundred happy years with her, at least. As opposed to the human males who withered and died so quickly. Serena and her dog had a baby together. She was no witch child, and never acknowledged by our family, outside of Serena. She was different from all the other wolves though.

Aislynn was pure white in her wolf form. She had no other markings as the rest of the wolves always did. She also held power unlike any of her kind. As she grew into her power, she used it to fix the violent, male dominated, rule of the wolves.” Aislynn’s name wobbled around in my head for a few moments before it dawned on me why it sounded so familiar. She was the first white wolf; the one Mikael and I had spoken to directly in my dream only a few nights ago.

“Mother was furious with Serena for mucking up her creations. She punished Serena by killing her mate. Oh, yes, a wolf and a witch can be true mates. If it is a true bonding, the wolf’s life expectancy is lengthened to match his mate. He is granted a few hundred to possibly thousands of years so long as his mate remains with him.

“Unless of course, another angry witch comes in and changes that for him. My mother killed the fool before he could test the theory. Unfortunately, she had allowed the mutt, her grandchild, to survive as she was intrigued by the notion of a woman ruling all of those alpha beasts. It was only later that we realized her family line would beget another potential white wolf ruler every 200 years or so, unless the last one died younger than expected. When the white wolf had a child of her own, my mother plotted to end the line. She wasn’t certain then if each of the children born of a white wolf would be as their mother was, and she deemed them too powerful to survive.

“When the plot to destroy the white wolf line was found out by my mother’s sister, Agatha, things took a turn for the worse. Agatha slew my mother in cold blood, and the rest of the elder witches forbid anymore mucking about in my mother’s business. There would be no further dabbling in creating new species, and those that were already in existence would be left to their own devices to either thrive or die off naturally. In case you weren’t paying attention, that meant the dark ones, the werewolves, white wolf line, and the hunters were all forbidden to witches. We are held by a decree not to interfere.”

I yawned as all that information rattled around in my brain. If what she was saying was true, she was going against the witch’s rule by holding me and helping those who would see me harm or go against the natural order of things. My eyes stayed fixed on her as I faked another yawn.

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