Fate Twister

2 WAYNE AT SCHOOL

2 WAYNE AT SCHOOLThe two women of the family knew that the first year of Wayne’s life presented them with an opportunity to learn how to deal with him and his powers, whatever they might be, because, while he played on the floor or in his pen or slept in his cot, there was little chance of anyone upsetting him. The first dangers would come when he started walking and interacting with others.

The whole of the small family learned with Wayne. When he took his first tentative footsteps at ten months of age and fell promptly on his backside, there was a hushed silence, which was a mixture of fear and anticipation. They sensed, as much as saw, Wayne’s frustration at not being able to walk, but nothing happened. There was no retribution, the roof did not fall in and no-one suffered an accident.

They took it as a sign that Wayne would not blame people arbitrarily for events that were just part of everyday life. They breathed a collective sigh of relief because they had been dreading the consequences of such natural disappointments and pains like teething. Wayne underwent such disappointments and pains without causing problems for anyone else, which taught his family a bit more about him. It was a big hurdle to have jumped and it made everyone realise that their lives would be easier than they had feared.

There were no crèche or child-minding facilities for miles around, but Wayne’s family were aware that he needed them more than other children, because he knew the names of more sheep than people, and so Gwynedd went about achieving the qualifications necessary to offer the services of a child-minder. It took her a year because of her other responsibilities, but within a week of opening, she had been entrusted with the care of three other children and her mother helped out wherever she could.

The child-minding service brought in a useful extra income, but the effect that contact with other children had on Wayne was considered much more important, because none of the other babies were only-children. However, Wayne was not a selfish or bossy child by nature. He was happy to share and rarely showed any signs of annoyance when other children were selfish or angry with him.

There were several minor accidents every week, usually involving children falling over or bumping into things producing small injuries and Gwyn and her mother were always ready to admit, at least to themselves, if they thought that Wayne was responsible, but the instances where it was possible were rare and the resulting injuries were of no consequence. They concluded that, if Wayne were capable of punishing people, he was very tolerant of children who either knew no better or were just prone to accidents.

The group of four children got on well together, but one day, a friend asked Gwyn if she could take her boy for the day as a favour. She agreed and the child was dropped off. However, it soon became apparent that he had certain issues, personality disorders and precisely those that Wayne’s family had feared that Wayne would have himself. A situation arose when the new boy knocked down a wall of blocks that another child was building and tried to take the blocks away for his own exclusive use. He hit Sarah, the other child, in the face, when she started to complain and made her cry.

As it happened, Sarah was a special friend of Wayne’s. He only sat there on the floor and stared. Gwynedd tried to distract him while her mother tried to pacify Sarah, but Wayne was not for distracting and Sarah was not for pacifying. The boy stood up with an armful of Sarah’s blocks, toddled a couple of yards, wobbled and fell over, breaking one of his two front teeth and banging his nose, which started to bleed.

He screamed in pain and shock and soon all the children were crying except Wayne, who was just staring at the newcomer as tears flowed down his cheeks and blood gushed out of his nose and into his mouth creating pink bubbles with every howl. Once again, it was difficult to attribute the ‘accident’ to Wayne, but they had seen so many examples since Wayne’s birth that the circumstantial evidence was too compelling to dismiss.

From that time on, Gwyn very carefully screened all the children whose parents wanted them to be looked after there, before allowing them to join the group.

As far as anyone could tell, Wayne thoroughly enjoyed mixing with the other children at the kindergarten. He had found it difficult in the beginning, but he had enjoyed playing with all the extra toys that his mother had bought to equip the ‘school’ and he was happy to share his home, which he could have been forgiven for considering his space, with the other children every day. Gwyn was careful not to mix up Wayne’s personal toys with those from the school, so that there would be far less chance of his becoming jealous or possessive.

It had taken him a month longer than the other children, who all came from larger families, to integrate with the other children, but he had managed it. He had made an especially close friend of the girl of his own age named Sarah. Although Wayne played on his own a lot of the time, he played with Sarah more than any of the others.

It was of great concern to Wayne’s family whether he was aware of his powers and whether he could consciously control them. The incident with Sarah and the bully was the first one that suggested that Wayne knew what was happening and could exercise some control over events. However, such occurrences were rare and as Wayne learned to talk, he never spoke of his special abilities, as if he were totally unaware of them.

This pleased his family because it meant that he could not be held responsible for what happened around him, and he would be less likely to talk about it, which would attract less attention to him, for it was a concern of some of the family that a government agency might try to acquire him for experimental purposes.

Wayne’s parents introduced him to yoga and meditation at an early age in an attempt to increase his control over himself. They tried to impress upon Wayne to always keep a low profile, without telling him why it was necessary. Wayne, being a shy and somewhat introverted boy anyway, was happy to comply. As he got older and started junior school, his father taught him chess, and various games of patience that could be played with a deck of cards. Wayne started ordering books from the library on chess problems and analysing games of the old Grand Masters from the Nineteen and Twentieth Centuries like Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine well before he went to the senior school at eleven years of age.

This further served to distance him from his contempories and school mates. He took up collecting stamps and surfing the Internet to fill in his spare time when other boys would be out playing football with their friends. His hobbies compensated for his lack of real friends, even though the Internet signal was pretty weak on his side of the mountain. All in all, Wayne’s favourite pastime was walking alone in the hills near his father’s sheep and thinking.

It was fair to say that the young Wayne was a solitary, self-contained, introspective child.

However, when he was in the pre-school and junior school, he got on well with most children of both sexes. He played with both boys and girls with equal ease. There were very few instances that even his own family could attribute to him. When he had to move on to Secondary Education after the age of eleven, boys and girls were segregated and that’s when Wayne’s problems seemed to start. He didn’t know it and so would never have said it, but he missed having girls in his company.

He had bright, intelligent, hazel-coloured eyes, rugged, good looks and a thick shock of light-brown, almost blonde hair. By the age of eleven, he was a foot taller and a stone heavier than anyone else in his year. However, he was also all in proportion without an ounce of fat on him and helping out on the farm ensured that he was extraordinarily strong as well. There were other farmers’ sons in his class, but he was still bigger and stronger than any of them by far.

He was also quiet by nature and enjoyed his own company more than any of the other boys he knew. This gave Wayne an image that some boys found it impossible to resist picking on. Wayne could easily handle any two or three others of his own age in a fight, but sometimes gangs including older boys would attack him. Many youths knew that they stood no chance of beating him in a fair fight, so they stooped to calling him names from a distance or spreading rumours about him behind his back.

This had the effect of forcing Wayne even further out on the limb of solitude and loneliness.

Despite these problems, Wayne liked school. He could put up with the taunts and the occasional fight, which happened less and less often as he got older, but his life was not straightforward. There was the time that he was picked on by a group of six boys and he hit one of them so hard that he cracked his head open on a wall eight feet behind him. That had been bad enough, but there had been witnesses that they had provoked Wayne. This would have worked in the favour of most victims of bullying, but not in Wayne’s case, because of his growing reputation in the community.

A few weeks later, he heard that the boy’s mother had wished a serious accident upon him for putting her son in hospital and the following day, she had tripped over the curb while crossing the road, which landed her hospital as well. When his family had heard the whole story, there was no doubt in their minds that Wayne had influenced events, even if he was unaware of it.

There were other cases too. One concerned an athletics teacher who was unhappy with the way that Wayne was throwing the javelin. In exasperation, he meant to stab the point into the ground but just caught Wayne’s foot. Two hours later, while Wayne was still getting treatment and the instructor was teaching another class, a child had thrown his javelin further than expected and caught the teacher off guard. It had transfixed his leg, causing him hospitalisation for a month and a permanent limp.

There were far more minor instances than major ones, but it was always impossible to prove that Wayne was involved. Nevertheless, the family and a few close friends were convinced of Wayne’s ability and more distant family and friends spread the rumour. By the time that he was fifteen years of age, there was no-one in the village or on the mountains nearby who did not believe that messing with Wayne was a dangerous business.

Wayne would have liked to have gone to agricultural college or even university, but his family was too frightened to let him out of their sight for so long as a term at a time. Wayne left school at sixteen since his family felt that there was no point staying on, if he was not going to continue into higher education. Both the teachers and the pupils at his school were pleased that he was leaving early.

It was agreed, as a compromise, that Wayne should leave full-time schooling at sixteen and join the nearest technical college on a part-time basis. None of the teachers there had heard of him, but some of the students had, so it did not take long for Wayne’s reputation to catch up with him.

At first, no-one believed the rumours, who would? However, when things started to happen, they were immediately attributed to Wayne, which was more quickly than they had been at his previous schools.

Wayne still got on better with girls than boys in general, so he was happy that his new school was co-educational. His classes were dominated by boys, but still, about a third of the classes was female. The company of girls seemed to help keep him calmer that that of boys, who at his age were boisterous and competitive.

He did not make friends easily, so he spent most of his first year at college on the periphery of groups of students in his year, although he did join the chess club. However, that met in the dinner breaks three times a week, so he could not attend as often as he would have liked. It was in the second year that the problems really started up again, when his fellow girl students felt more comfortable in his presence and he was more confident with them as well.

One day he was chatting with one of his female classmates about homework and her boyfriend decided to make an issue of it, although it was not clear whom he was trying to teach a lesson. Wayne later thought that he was trying to show his girlfriend that he didn’t like her talking to other boys and that he was prepared to fight for her, neither of which had seemed to impress her, which may have been why he was so jealous.

He had called Wayne out for a fight, which was brave because he was at least a foot shorter, but Wayne refused to go, giving the reason that there was nothing going on between them, which was true. When that tactic hadn’t worked he had tried casting insults, calling Wayne a big coward, but Wayne could handle that easily. Finally, in a fit of rage, he had dragged his girlfriend away, and that had been too much for Wayne, he went to her rescue and forced him to unhand her. She ran away crying and her boyfriend ran after her swearing revenge on Wayne.

Nothing had happened to Wayne, but within a few days, the girl had dumped her jealous boyfriend and was with someone new. The boy later hanged himself from a tree near the girl’s bedroom on their farm. People who had known Wayne from years back attributed all the couple’s problems to him, which seemed very unfair.

Wayne’s reputation moved up to a new level

It was still a mystery to him why those things happened around him and, although he had heard the rumours from schoolmates that he was to blame, he did not believe that he had anything to do with the events. He felt as responsible for what happened to others as he did for what happened to fish swimming in the stream. However, his parents were gearing up to have a talk with him about what they called ‘his powers’ or ‘his special abilities’, but they were unsure how to broach the subject.

One day, they received a letter, another letter, from school, another school, in which the headmaster asserted that he had received complaints from pupils and their parents about Wayne’s ‘attitude’ or his ‘aggressive behaviour’. Gwyn, Sam and Rhiannon had heard it all before and had even contested the allegations in the past, but, although no-one had any firm evidence that Wayne was to blame for anything, they persisted.

The threat in the letter was obvious, either they remove him from school voluntarily or he would be expelled for his ‘aggressive behaviour, which was disrupting the other students’. There was clearly no time to lose, the talk with Wayne could be put off no longer and so the family of four went on a picnic one Sunday to Wayne’s favourite spot. They decided that it was better not to give him advance warning about the reason for the outing.

They drove as close as they could to the place and then carried the picnic hamper and things five hundred yards to a large flat rock that overlooked a number of their sheep and the valley below. After lunch, Gwynedd started the discussion, which the adults in the group had partly rehearsed.

“Wayne, I’ve always thought of you as a happy child… Are you happy?”

“Yes, Mum, of course I am. Why are you asking such a strange question?”

“It is not such a strange question, love, we are just concerned about you. You seem happy to us, but, well, sometimes those closest are the last to know that there is a problem. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, Mum, but you have no need to worry. I am the happiest person I know. All the kids at school moan about their parents, their lives, their boyfriends or girlfriends, homework, or school in general all the time, but I haven’t got anything to complain about at all”.

“I’m glad to hear it, son. How do you get on with the other kids in your class? You have never brought any of them home to play or for tea”.

“I can take them or leave them… Most of them complain too much or want to beat me at something like arm-wrestling or running, and I am just not interested, I don’t care who wins. I was born tall, strong and fast, and that’s that. I didn’t earn those characteristics, it was just my Fate, my Karma… and theirs is to be smaller than me, but so what? They probably have other advantages that I don’t have. Who knows and who cares? I don’t for one. Do you think that that is wrong, Mum?

“Anyway, we live a bit far out, don’t we? Someone would have to bring them here and then take them home… It’s all too much fuss”.

“No, I don’t think that it’s wrong, darling”.

“No, your mother is not saying that, son. I think you have a good attitude to life, but most boys of your age are competitive, that’s all. You are not, and that’s all right too. In your case, you are so big that you know you can beat most of them anyway, but that makes some boys want to prove that they can beat you. That’s their problem, not yours, unless you choose to make it so.

“Do you ever make it your problem, Wayne?”

“No, I don’t think so, Dad. It does cheese me off sometimes though, but I use some of those Yoga breathing exercises you taught me from the book and I’m usually all right again and if I’m not, I just try to walk away, if they’ll let me”.

“And if you can’t control yourself or you can’t walk away, what then?”

“I have had fights, Dad, I won’t lie to you, but they don’t happen often and when I walk away, I often have to calm myself down because I am fuming with rage inside, but I am getting better at controlling that as well”.

“That’s good to hear, son. It takes most people all their lives to learn how to control their anger. The prisons are full of people who couldn’t manage it before it got too late”.

Rhiannon spoke up. “You are well on your way to becoming a real man, Wayne and I am proud of you and so are your parents. I know they are.

“Do you ever want revenge on the people who upset you?”

“Yes, sometimes, Nain, but I never do anything about it, unless they force me to fight and then I usually win, unless there are more than three of them”.

“Wayne, have you ever heard any rumours about your mother and grandmother?”

“Yes,” he answered with a deep blush, “some of the kids say that they are witches”.

“What do you think about that, son?”

He giggled, “Well, they are too pretty to be witches, aren’t they? I mean, they don’t have hooked noses and warts, like, do they? And they don’t fly about on broomsticks… That’s what witches do, isn’t it?”

“Thanks for thinking that your grandmother and I are not ugly enough to be witches, Wayne, but the fact is that there are witches and some are very pretty, beautiful even, and they don’t all go about abducting children to eat or making magic potions from bits of animals.

“Some of us are ‘quite ordinary’ and most of us are fairly nice people”.

“You mean that you and Nain are witches? Wow!”

“Your Nain and I are White Witches, which means that we try to do only good, as opposed to the common stereotype of the Black Witch, that you just gave us – the one that is common in Fairy Tales and children’s programmes on TV”.

“Wow, cool! Did you know anything about this, Dad?”

“Yes, son. I have known for quite some time… certainly since before you were born, but I didn’t want to believe it back then. What do you think about it?”

“Mmm, I’ve known Mum and Nain all my life, haven’t I, so I don’t know any different? They both just seem normal to me, but then, I haven’t seen them do any magic either… At least, I don’t think I have. Maybe it’ll take a while to sink in.

“How about you, Dad, are you a witch as well? What do they call them… a warlock, as well?”

“No, not in the same way. Leastwise, I wouldn’t describe myself as one, but I have learned over the years that everyone has some power. It just depends how much, whether you know you have it and whether you chose to develop it. Some people, like your Mum and Nain are naturals though”.

“Your father is right, Wayne, but there is a strong line of witchcraft in our family. It stretches back hundreds of years… and we think that you follow in that tradition.

“Often people are unaware of what they can do until it is pointed out to them. The snag is that most people don’t have anyone who can do that for them… point it out, I mean. You have your mother and me… You are lucky”.

“I don’t understand… So, you think that I can cast spells and things like that, do you?”

“Perhaps, anyone can do that, but being a witch is not only about casting spells. In fact, your mother and I do very little spell-casting these days.

“You see, some adepts need to use props in the early days to help them focus their attention, but as they progress, these things, like Tarot cards, crystal balls, cauldrons and the like are less needed, unless it is to convince someone new or a sceptic.

“Permit me to allow you into a secret. It has never been toads’ warts or newts’ eyes that have spun the magic, it has always been the power of thought, concentration… concentrated, focussed thought. You might call it prayer, or meditation… It is all the same sort of thing. It all depends on the ability to hold a thought and to concentrate power into it”.

“This is how a witch really makes a difference and it is also why there are more witches than warlocks. Most men can’t concentrate on a subject for long periods of time, especially where it affects their personal lives. Oh, they can work all day and do their jobs well, but if there is a personal problem, they either fight over it, get drunk or forget about it, whereas women brood on the problem and think about it until we get ourselves into such a state that we can make things happen. Some men can do it too, naturally, I mean, but everyone can do it with training.

“Perhaps, you are one of those naturals, Wayne. Would you like to find out? We can work with you to see whether you have the natural ability, if you like, but you must keep it a secret. You cannot tell anyone anything”.