The Way of the Warrior-Wizard

Duncan set out on an expedition to town with his siblings and their dogs. It had been two weeks since he had begun his teaching duties at the University, and he felt that he needed to take on a few more family responsibilities at home in order to help his parents.

He and his twin brother Caleb, together with the next-oldest set of twin girls, Cara and Fiona, had been put in charge of supervising eleven-year-old Ruari, the nine-year-old twins Charlotte and Cade, and wee Hamish.

Their two older twin brothers, Sage and Glenlachlan, were in the front of the van chatting about which girls they liked at the local high school. Sage was driving the van in his usual calm and detached manner. He drove the group of young siblings down to the shores of Lake Bluestone and dropped them off.

“You and Caleb bring the kids for a walk,” Sage directed them, “while Glenlachlan and I get the groceries and other supplies for Father and Mum.”

Neither Duncan, Caleb, nor any of the other children complained about the order from their older brother, for it was a welcome change from the chores and farm-work. It was rare that the ten of them ever got to go out together without their parents, and so even something as simple as going for a walk felt like a nice dose of freedom.

They clambered out of the van and went running down to the lake as though they had just been let out of prison. Four of the family’s border collies jumped out and ran after them, determined to keep the wandering children organized into one manageable herd.

“We’ll be back in an hour or so!” Sage called, “You be right here to meet us.”

“We’ll be here,” Caleb promised the older boys as he followed the rest of them down to the lake.

There was a wooden boardwalk which ran for miles along the shore here. The kids liked to jump on and off it to go and climb the many large boulders which rested, partly submerged, on the edge of the large lake.

“Birds!” Ruari called out to the sky, “Come and bring us on a magical flight!”

“Ruari,” Duncan admonished the eleven-year-old, “Don’t you be shouting so loudly. People will think you’re daft.”

“Oh, who cares!” Cara, their free-spirited thirteen-year-old sister exclaimed, “Let us feel the magic of the day, you stodgy old Professor Duncan!”

Charlotte and Cade were dancing near the water, and wee Hamish was getting his feet wet trying to imitate them.

“Hamish!” Duncan called out, “Charlotte! Cade! Don’t let the wee one get his feet wet—the water is cold and we don’t want him getting hypothermia.”

Fiona, Cara’s more reserved twin, went over to help the collies shoo Hamish away from the water, but the damage had already been done.

Fortunately, Caleb had an extra change of clothes and boots for Hamish, which he always carried in his knapsack in case of an emergency. He stooped down and took off Hamish’s wet socks and shoes and dried his feet as best he could while the young boy kicked in the air energetically. He then put on a warm pair of red socks and black farm boots.

“No going into the water, Hami,” Caleb reminded the youngster as the dogs and the two older girls herded him towards the boardwalk.

Duncan had not brought his own Security dog, Davy the German Shepherd, on this outing because it had been too crowded in the van with the other four collies. Davy had not been pleased about having been left behind, but Duncan had commanded him to stay nonetheless. He doubted very much whether he would need Davy’s protection today, when he was surrounded by his rather odd family members.

Duncan wished in some ways that he could take a walk on his own—he was feeling a bit weary of the children’s antics and was looking forward to the next day when he had a class to teach. It was not that he minded spending time with the young ones, but today their constant shouting and leaping about was getting to him.

“You seem preoccupied, Duncan,” Caleb said to him as they progressed along their way, “are the Profs giving you a hard time?”

“No,” Duncan replied, “most of them have accustomed themselves to my arrival. It’s just the one man, Jerry Donaldson, who always seems to have something disparaging to say to me. He thinks that I’m an arrogant brat, no matter how polite I try to be.”

“It’s because you’re young,” Fiona interjected, “and your youth and energy no doubt threatens him. Don’t try so hard to please him, because there’s little point if he’s afraid of you.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s afraid of me,” Duncan responded, “Why would he be afraid of a child?”

“Because you’re intruding upon his world,” Caleb concurred with Fiona, “in his mind, a fourteen-year-old just doesn’t belong in his circle.”

“Well,” Duncan conceded, “I don’t, really. I don’t belong anywhere.”

“Oh, stop it, Duncan,” Fiona chided him, “you belong with us, in our family.”

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t,” Duncan replied under his breath, as Fiona took off her red kerchief and smacked him with it.

“Now, then, Duncan, you know you love us,” Caleb teased, “We always challenge your oh-so-rational state of mind.”

As if to demonstrate the world of non-rationality, Fiona began to tell a tale that was straight from her imagination. She stopped part way through and said to Duncan, “Your turn.”

Duncan sighed, and continued the tale about a rooster living amongst a group of hedgehogs. He inserted his part of the narrative, which was that the rooster was overly pedantic and the hedgehogs found him to be tiresome. He then passed the story on to Caleb, who immediately inserted some adventure into the piece. He had a lynx appear upon the scene to threaten the rooster. Cara finished the story by adding a moral to the story: she made the hedgehogs rescue the rooster so that the rooster could realize that talk was not as important as action.

As they walked along the shore together, Duncan began to feel better. Perhaps it was not as bad as all that, being a part of a family of magical tale-weavers. He began to chuckle to himself at the antics of the younger children.

In front of them, a group of young boys coming from the opposite direction appeared. The MacGregor children politely moved to one side of the path to allow them to pass by, but the largest of the five boys stopped suddenly. He reached out and grabbed Duncan by the collar of his shirt.

“You’re the Professor-kid, aren’t you?” he growled menacingly. His friends sneered at Duncan and his siblings.

“Yes, I am,” Duncan replied calmly, “now if you’ll kindly remove your hand from my shirt, we will allow you gentlemen to go along your merry way.”

“Listen to this!” the boy jeered, “You gentlemen, he says! What kind of a freak are you, with your fancy manners and your weird family?”

“That’ll be enough, Josh,” Caleb warned the boy.

“You know him?” Duncan asked his brother incredulously.

“Yeah, from school,” Caleb replied, “He’s always bothering Cara, Fiona, and I.”

“You’re all a bunch of freaks,” Josh persisted in his bullying, “I’ve heard people say that you’re witches and that you’ve got ghosts in your house.”

“Yes, we do,” Caleb replied nonchalantly, “we have a bogle who followed us over from Scotland. He follows us everywhere we go.”

“What the frig is a ‘bogle’?” Josh asked heatedly.

“It’s a house-ghost, you ninny!” Cara interjected, wrinkling her nose at him.

Josh looked at Cara uncertainly, as if unsure whether to tease her or flirt with her.

He finally settled upon saying, “You’re a witch, Cara.”

“Yeah, what was your first clue, Sherlock Holmes?” Cara shot back saucily, “I should mention that we also have some Faeries and Elves in the family. Our father says that he may have been a changeling—a Faerie-Queen left him in our grandmother’s cradle and stole the Human bairn so that it could take Father’s place in the Otherworld—our Father has told us that he’s actually the King of the Faeries, in addition to being a Warlock, that is.”

“You people are totally insane,” Josh replied, rolling his eyes, “I’ve never heard of such an idiotic story. Do you really expect us to believe that crap?”

“I think we need to fight ‘em, Josh,” one of the other boys suggested, “These freaks are too weird to let them wander around loose like this.”

“You stay away from our sisters and the younger children,” Duncan warned them.

“We won’t touch ‘em,” Josh gloated, “but you and Caley, on the other hand...I think you need to learn your place in the world rather than lording it over us with stupid stories about being flitting fairies and wizards...sorry, Merlin and Gandalf, but it’s time you came out of the clouds and back down to Earth.”

Josh hurled Duncan down on the ground without warning, and it knocked the breath out of him. He felt a pain in his stomach, and he felt like he was going to be sick. He absolutely hated fighting, but he could not just sit there and let Josh and his pals push them around.

Caleb had thrown himself at Josh, and the two husky boys pelted each other with their fists. Josh’s four companions cheered on their champion, urging the bully to “kill him”.

“You leave my brother alone!” Caleb warned them all as he socked Josh in the mouth.

Duncan knew that he could not let Caleb fight Josh by himself and so he charged at the larger boy, attempting to knock him down. Another boy grabbed Duncan and began to pummel him, ripping his shirt in the process. Cara and Fiona had picked up some old driftwood and began to use them as clubs, hitting the attackers from the side.

The collies had encircled the younger children protectively while they were watching the unfolding drama. Ruari was speaking in Gaelic, calling upon the nature spirits to intervene and come to their aid. One of Josh’s smaller friends ran over and attempted to push Ruari, but the willowy blonde boy hopped neatly out of his way as one of the border collies, named Shep, growled menacingly at the would-be attacker. Young Charlotte charged at the offender, screaming bloody murder as her brothers Cade and Hami hurled pieces of wood at him.

“What’s this?!” a voice boomed, and a man wearing a grey overcoat strode over to the battling group.

Duncan stood up, his eye bruised, his nose bloody, and his shirt in tatters. When he saw the identity of the man, he swore softly to himself. It was Professor Jerry Donaldson!

“Is this how the grand Professor Duncan MacGregor spends his free time?” Donaldson asked, “Engaging in childish fights?”

“I...” Duncan stammered, humiliated.

Of all the people who had to come to their rescue, why did it have to be his nemesis, Professor Donaldson?

“It wasn’t Duncan’s fault, Sir,” Fiona explained, dropping her driftwood club, “we were all minding our own business when these boys assaulted us.”

Donaldson peered at Fiona suspiciously, as if he did not believe a word of what she was telling him.

“It looks more like you’ve all been beating up on these poor fellows,” Donaldson replied tersely, “Duncan, I am certainly disappointed in you; and you should be ashamed of yourself as well. I would have thought you were too mature to bully other kids. What kind of example are you setting for your younger siblings? I will be contacting the Dean as well as your Father in order to discuss this behaviour in more detail. Do you honestly think that you should be left in charge of teaching kids older than yourself when you can’t even get along with kids your own age?”

“Yeah,” Josh added, changing his tone of voice to make it sound as though he was the beleaguered one, “We were walking along, and they just attacked us out of nowhere. Duncan said he was better than us because he taught at University, and the others said that they owned the Universe because they were wizards and witches.”

“I want both groups of kids to walk in the opposite direction of one another,” Donaldson ordered them, “If I see you warring with each other again, I’ll phone the police...and it won’t be pretty.”

“Yes, Sir, of course,” Josh replied, now the essence of good manners.

He and his gang then turned and ran away, leaving Duncan and his siblings to deal with the consequences of the melee.