A look at Paton's past and how his life has been affected by his endowment
Look, Mummy!" The small six-year old boy eagerly held out a piece of paper to the beautiful woman in front of him, who took it from him and quickly scanned the badly-coloured picture on the page. She couldn't exactly tell what it was, but that didn't matter to her. She loved every line, adored every curve, treasured every stroke, because it was her son who had drawn it.
"Oh, Paton, it's wonderful! I'm so proud of you!" she exclaimed, hugging him. Paton's sister, Venetia, a surly teenager if there ever was one, walked behind her mother, peered at the picture and snorted.
"I could do better than that when I was two with my hand tied behind my back!"
"Venetia! Don't be so mean!" her mother scolded her, then looked kindly into Paton's eyes (from which tears had begun to drip) and put her arm round him, saying gently
"Don't listen to what she says. You'll always be my clever little boy"
"Whatever" Venetia sneered unkindly, trailing out of the room. Paton stared hard at the white flowery tablecloth, his brow furrowed in that typical about-to-explode-from-concentration way that little children seem to have to undertake when considering something.
"Mummy, would Venny and the others like me better if I was special like her?" Paton stared up at her with wide, innocent eyes. She laughed.
"Oh, Paton darling, you're so special already! You don't need to change a thing! Don't pay attention to what any of your sisters say!"
At the last part, Solange's heart dropped a notch, though as usual it didn't taint the contented smile that she was never seen without. She loved her daughters, she really did, but she couldn't stand the way they acted so cruel to others. Her father had informed her of the fact that, like all ascendants of the Red King, their family were cursed with ever-changing standards of morals, but she still blamed herself. She was convinced that somehow she must have got something wrong, although she wasn't sure how.
Anyhow, she was so glad that Paton seemed to have turned out so normally, that she almost wished that he wasn't endowed just so that he could hopefully escape the strange world in which her daughters thrived in. She also hoped he would be unendowed because that way he would avoid having to go to that awful Bloor's Academy. It was a good school, certainly, but she didn't think much of the people who ran it. Indeed, as much as they didn't think highly of the 'good' children like Paton: a fact which she was very much aware and afraid of.
She drifted back to reality to see her son too deep in thought, as he often was. His scruffy black hair had fallen over one of his dark eyes, and the one that was still visible stared into thin air ponderingly as if he were gazing at a particularly difficult puzzle, which in his mind he probably was. Finally, he nodded and said
"OK, mummy…I love you". She smiled widely.
"I love you too, darling"
Paton beamed. His mother's approval was all that mattered to him at that moment. It was exactly why he had spent a long and arduous time perfecting his picture of a spectacular red tree in the midst of a comparatively dull green forest.
He had no idea why the image had come into his mind. He had just been sitting in front of the piece of paper, pencil at the ready, considering what to draw, when the image had suddenly thrust itself into his thoughts. Upon completion, he had also got the urge to draw a red cat peeping out protectively from behind the tree, of which he obliged to, although he had never been good at drawing cats, or anything else, for that matter: not that anyone but his sisters had the cold-heartedness to tell him that. And although everyone else told him not to listen to their criticisms, he couldn't help but begin to believe them.
This was why he constantly wondered whether his parents would be prouder of him if he had a talent like his two older sisters, not having much to brag about himself except his exceptional knowledge, but that and his eagerness for more only gave the other children ammunition for their infantile, jealousy fuelled teasing.
So this explained why, at his seventh birthday, little Paton was ecstatic to find that he had a talent after all. He was disappointed to not have the desirable, useful talents he had heard about like shape shifting and hypnotism, but he was always one to make the best of every situation, and so he did.
He had great fun getting back at the boys who teased him for his 'geekiness' at school by sprinkling their carefully gelled hairstyles with glass, and sniggering as they chose to avoid standing under lights from that point on. Of course, this type of behaviour did not do well for his social life, and he soon found that had he lost the few friends that he had, except for Melinda.
Melinda was a small, pretty girl who both shared his profound interest in history and who, unlike the other children, found his talent fascinating.
In fact later on in their lives when they had left for different high schools – him for Bloor's and her for an equally expensive private school with a uniform that's colour scheme always brought a grin to Paton's pale face – she had introduced him to her friend and his very first love, Emily. Melinda had not informed Emily of his talent, because she felt that a practical demonstration would make it more believable. Unfortunately for poor, heartbroken Paton, the demonstration which he had thought would be incredibly romantic on their two year anniversary proved all too believable for conventional Emily, who was so shaken at her first love's secret that she ran away and never wanted to speak to him again.
The ghosts of this memory slipped slowly and mournfully into Paton's mind thirty long years later, awakened by the ever-curious voice of his great-nephew, Charlie Bone, asking if he had ever done his little trick with lots of lights. He had always prided in how observant the young boy was, but for once he was glad there was something that night that Charlie did not notice. For hidden under the safe, familiar shadow of his fedora and tinted by the reflected light of millions of fragments of glass, a teardrop welled in Paton Yewbeam's eye for his loss; his curse; and the life he never had.
