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Author's Chapter Notes:

Ok, so this is where you will have to bear with me, as I provide Wanda’s backstory. Somehow she has to get big, somehow she has to wind up in the desert, for some reason, why does she get mean, and there has to be an explanation for few of the other interesting things she can do. This and the next several couple of chapters much of cover that. Sorry, it has to be done. But I promise you will find it was worth it once we pick up from the events in Chapter 1.

It was actually 96 years ago when she was born as Winetta, the daughter of Ivona, a fortune teller among what would commonly be called a band of gypsies, though ”Roma caravan” was the more accurate term. Ivona came from a long line of talented telepaths. Truth be told, the title of “Fortune Teller” was a misnomer; as neither Ivona, Winetta, nor their ancestors could actually see the future. Even in the world of the magically gifted, that was an impossibility as far as anyone knew. But like most with the ability, Ivona could read a person’s thoughts and with the right prompting, know their past. With a few subtle phrases, one could unlock tightly held secrets. Tell a stranger their past and present, and they will believe what you tell them about the future. And they will pay for it, which was key. It works best when the patron is a complete stranger though, hence the Roma caravan lifestyle.

Winetta’s father had a far less esoteric background as the son of a Parisian financier. In his last year of business school, Henri Bertrand, fell in love with the beautiful Ivona, when the caravan came into his school’s town. And when she loved him back, he abandoned his life and left with her. Though not a handsome man, Ivona saw the beauty inside him. They married and it wasn’t long before Henri became the group’s business manager and eventually, just plain manager.

Winetta inherited her father’s shrewd mind. Unfortunately, she also got his looks, which rendered her short, blocky, and plane-faced with curly sandy-colored hair. She did get his striking blue eyes, though. While she didn’t get her mother’s beauty, she did get her gift. Ivona detected this early on and started to train her. It soon became clear that Winetta was quite the prodigy. So Ivona expanded the training to include other aspects of what is commonly referred to as witchcraft.

Magic, like any power, requires energy. Small things like mind reading could be done from a body’s own energy supply. Larger tasks, or reading minds for hours a day required an external energy source, of which there were three known sources:

  • Fire was the most commonly used source, which is why there were always candles in the room where Ivona did her readings, and why so little heat came from them. Ivona took in the energy of that heat into her body where she could store it like a battery. The degree to which a woman (and this ability seemed to be exclusive to women) could effectively store energy was one of the primary determinations of their overall ability. Most had none at all.
  • The sun was another energy source. The tradition of witches wearing black stemmed from the color’s effectiveness in retaining the sun’s heat. Even the traditional pointed hat came from the increased sun-absorbing surface area it provided. Nude sunbathing was even more effective, though obviously only practical in private or secluded settings. Instances of witches spied or caught in such circumstances gave rise to rumors of them as sexually loose and even predatory. This was not entirely unfounded, though sexual aggressiveness was more a function of their sense of empowerment and disconnection with traditional religious constraints than anything to do with the practice of witchcraft itself
  • The third known manner of energy capture was more mystical. It involved capturing the “life force” of a living being after a somewhat quick death. The practice of animal sacrifices traces its origin to this. The power obtained could be significant, with the level based primarily on the strength and energy level of the subject. Little comes from a death due to the long decline of aging. The sudden death of a healthy creature in young adulthood usually provided peak energy. The mental energy of humans made them the biggest energy providers of all, though only the most power-mad witches ever resorted to such lengths. They would, however often put themselves in close proximity to where they knew such deaths would occur. Battles, executions and blood sport tournaments often attracted magical woman who would silently and secretly compete among each other for the energy to be had.


As for the latter, Ivona had no such plans for her daughter. She simply wanted to groom her to be an effective fortune teller, like herself. Winetta was no more than eight when she began exceeding her mother’s abilities, picking up with ease what her mother had to concentrate to obtain. Henri soon had her on an intense education program so she could understand the complex adult thoughts and imagery she was picking up from strangers.

At 10, she was helping her mother in her work. Positioned nearby, she would pick up the customer’s thoughts and send them to her mom with more detail than Ivona could get herself. Her father wanted to present Winetta to the “Guild”, an ancient secret organization of magic practitioners, but Ivona demurred, recalling her own mother’s warning that the Guild elders often treated particularly gifted woman more as threats than assets.

By 13, Winetta was doing her own readings, with Henri and Ivona doing what they could to make her appear older, and thus more credible to customers.

And so it went for a few years, until 1939, when the caravan found themselves stuck in Poland when Germany invaded. “Gypsies” were second only to “Jews” on the Nazi target list and much easier to identify. After running from town to town, the caravan finally hid deeply in a forest outside Walcz.

Winetta was now key in keeping the group supplied. The plain sixteen-year-old attracted little attention in town, and she was attuned to hostile thoughts among those around her. Also, by now her skills had advanced from merely reading the thoughts of others to inducing them in others. Thus, she could often move shopkeepers into extraordinary bouts of generosity and leave with far more than she actually paid for. It was in spring on one such outing when she was in town alone and an alert came in her head from her mother that the camp had been discovered and raided by German Troops. Everyone was captured except for those who were killed, and Winetta immediately saw images from her mother’s mind of the horror, though that was not her mother’s intention.

Ivona mentally pleaded with her daughter not try to help them and instead escape and flee the country. “Go to America!” she pleaded. Winetta ignored her, determined to find some way to use her skills to free her family. In their constant mental communication, Ivona insisted these Germans were too rigid, and too great in number to be manipulated as the shopkeepers had been. Winetta dismissed the warning and continued to travel to the temporary holding camp. While standing in a cue. With Henri, Ivona became aware of Winetta’s close proximity, and convinced it was the only way to save her daughter, Ivona and Henri suddenly ran for the camp entrance ignoring the guards’ warnings until they were shot dead.

Winetta immediately felt the abrupt end of her mother and father’s consciousness. She had never been without at least her mother somewhere in her head and that emptiness added to the blunt fact that her family had been murdered put her in a paralyzed state of shock for two days.

During her pleadings for Winetta to escape, Ivona had reminded Winetta that the cache of caravan funds was still buried near the camp site. It was her father’s practice of burying the cache whenever they made camp, having on hand only enough for day-to-day expenses. With everyone captured or killed, those funds were now Winetta’s; such as they were. After weeks in the forest with no income, it wasn’t much, but hopefully, it would be enough to catch a ship to America.

Getting to that ship was the challenging part. Winetta was alone, on foot, with just a few items scrounged from the burned camp. Plus, the Germans knew of her existence and were looking for her. Normally she would sense approaching hostilities, and make cover. But sometimes she was found anyway. Thus, in the path behind her were the bodies of would-be thieves, rapists and even a few soldiers. Basically, she would flood their minds with confusion, grab their weapon and use it against them.

Her first two encounters were indeed with German soldiers and fueled by her parent’s fate, Winetta had no hesitation killing them. Killing becomes easier on the psyche after the first time, so thieves and others of malevolent intention who encountered her later fared no better. Always practical, Winetta stripped her victims of anything she could use. Before long, she had a collection of weapons and additional coin.

In the country roads, she encountered these strangers one or two at a time. But after reaching the port in Gdansk, and hoping to board a freighter headed to Oslo, the soldiers at the last Nazi check point were too great in numbers for such tricks. As they stared with skepticism at the fake papers she purchased, she knew she needed to distract them. Too plain to entice them with feminine wiles, she instead simply guided their minds to think fondly of the love of their life and see something from them in her, and thus let her board. Two of the young soldiers thought of girlfriends, another of someone he wished was his girlfriend. The older captain thought of his wife. The square-jawed lieutenant thought not of his wife but a local barmaid, and to her surprise, the sergeant thought of the lieutenant.

That seemed like an opportunity, so she cranked up the sergeant’s feelings to an uncontrollable passion which drove him to taking the lieutenant’s hand and leaning in to kiss him on the back of the neck. That certainly created the commotion she was looking for. The lieutenant whipped around in alarm and harshly shoved the Sergeant back. The latter now horrified and confused at what he and done, started babbling incoherently. The captain had seen the action in the corner of his eye and started yelling both at both of them. When he paused to take a breath, Winetta asked him if she could go, while at the same time pushing “I don’t care about her” thoughts into his head. “Yes, yes, go away!” he said sharply, as he slammed the “Approved” stamp on her papers and turned his attention back to the scandal. Winetta wasted no time disappearing into the ship, and soon grinned at the thought of how effectively she manipulated those of the self-proclaimed “master race”.

She kept a low profile all the way to Oslo, where she subsequently booked a space with the last of her money on a passenger ship to New York City. During the journey, she sought out and hung close to English speakers. Telepathy is great for picking up language and by the time she reached, Ellis Island, she could speak conversational English, and upon leaving, Winetta immediately sought out her own kind in the form of fortune tellers who had set up shop in the big city. Her eagerness to show off her skills got her thrown out by several charlatan practitioners, who felt threatened when confronted with the real thing.

She finally found a woman sympathetic to her history and impressed by her skills who took her in. Winetta found herself returned to the role of feeding information to the supposed fortune teller for which she received a small percentage. Too small in Winetta’s opinion, leading her to start a side business: extortion. Upon finding a customer’s embarrassing secret in their head, she would seek them out incognito and threaten to expose them until some fee was paid. It was sordid business but her purse started to fill.

Continuing to expand her paranormal abilities, a breakthrough came when she achieved “Remote Viewing”, the ability to have her conscience leave and view the world outside her body. Not only was it immense fun to float freely about the city, she found it to be of great help in her blackmail business. She could now follow some philandering husband to his extracurricular activities and report to him what she knew in specific detail. They didn’t have to be customers anymore either. Upscale bars and brothels were full of wealthy men creating secrets. It wasn’t perfect, as she could present no incriminating photos, or other hard evidence. Consequently, some men dismissed her threats, but enough paid to make it worth the effort.

One man in the finance trade offered her an inside stock tip instead of cash. She rejected the offer, but it piqued her interest. Before long, her mind would sneak off and attend company board meetings and she soon learned the art of insider trading. Before long, she earned enough to enroll in collage. She started with a focus in finance for obvious reasons, but a Gen Ed science class requirement also gave her an interest in physics. While seemingly a contradiction to her paranormal skills, Winetta instead saw parallels and synergy. She was starting to think of her abilities in terms accessing and harnessing energy. That is all thought was after all. She simply had the ability to tap into it.

The physics classes began turning her attention to other forms of energy conversion. She saw how energy-to-matter may be possible and even gravity might be manipulated in a way that currently eluded the physics discipline.

She was in her third year when she “met” Horace. Her conscious was making the rounds in one of her more lucrative upscale clubs when she found him. A little probing revealed no secrets to exploit, just profound grief and loneliness from his wife having died of illness a year earlier. Today was the 30th anniversary of the day he proposed to her. His memories of her displayed activities that came not only from heart-felt love, but more interestingly, robust wealth. Indeed, it turned out he had inherited his family’s steel and alloy business. That was a good business to be in during the war and Horace had done well with it ever since. In a place where she mostly found debauchery, Winetta was touched by the man’s sincere lost love. But there is no denying she also saw opportunity.

It isn’t hard to get a kind, grief-stricken man in his fifties to fall in love with a young woman in her 20s when she can read his every thought and anticipate his every desire. And so, it was 14 months later when Horace Barrington married recent college graduate Winetta Bertrand in a small ceremony.

Thoroughly perplexed and unhappy with this event, were Horace’s children, Davis, Candice and Caitlin were all close to Winetta in age and none of them trusted or felt comfortable with her. Of course, she knew how they felt about her in precise detail.

To them, this “nobody” refuge with literally no family and a sketchy background would barely qualify for employment as a servant in the Barrington household, much less pretending to be its matriarch. Winetta’s age may have fit the trophy wife mold, but her appearance did not. Nor did she behave like one. She discouraged Horace from lavishing her with extravagance. Indeed, she seemed more interested in the business than its rewards and Horace was all too happy to share it with her. His first wife had quite properly showed little interest in business, spending her time instead in the New York City social scene as was expected of women of her standing in the preceding decades.

With her science degree, one would expect the young wife to focus on the firm’s research department, but Winetta seemed far more interested in landing major accounts as well as mergers and acquisitions. That this Winetta woman seemed intent on co-running the business did not sit well at all with heir-apparent Davis, who had long been preparing himself for the lead role. Davis was currently paying his dues as second in command of an alloy development division on the West Coast. Another mixed blessing from Davis’ view is that many of Winetta’s suggested courses of action paid off. In acquisitions in particular, she showed uncanny perception, resulting in some bargain deals with notable payoffs

For eleven years, the business grew and thrived and each subsequent year, Horace became more dependent on Winetta’s decision making. And during that time, she always found divisions and departments for Davis to run that were away from the central seat of power. Meanwhile, both daughters married into other wealthy families and even those events had Winetta’s fingerprints on them.

It was when Horace visited Candace’s new home for her birthday, that he had his fatal stroke. After the funeral, the status of the estate was on everybody’s mind until they found out that Horace had nullified his pre-nuptial agreement seven years prior, and simply willed all company assets to Winetta. Naturally, the children contested the will, and hired a good enough law firm to give their case some traction.

As things heated up, a conference call was arranged. Winetta sat in in the company’s executive conference room with Candace, Caitlin and the company’s lead lawyer, who was working on behalf of Winetta. Davis and the lead attorney for all three children were calling in from LA. After about 20 minutes of increasingly heated debate, Davis threw a personal insult at Winetta. She responded authoritatively that he needed to be respectful, which just inflamed him further. Davis got about five words into his angry reply when he suddenly went silent, but for a few quiet gasping sounds. After a few seconds, they heard his lawyer: “Davis? What...Oh My God! Call a Doctor! As both daughters yelled into the conference speaker for their brother to respond, Winetta appeared calmly concerned but both girls distinctly felt the words “You don’t want to be next!” in their head when they randomly glanced at her.

The autopsy showed that possibly due to acute stress, and some unknown malady, Davis’ diaphragm had simply stopped working and he died of oxygen deprivation.

The lawsuit over the will was dropped before the second family funeral. Candace and Caitlin were given reasonable cash settlements, and both women essentially disappeared from Winetta’s life.

The two freak deaths left Winetta as owner and operator a large, diversified, privately-held organization specializing in not just metals anymore, but other materials such as polymers, ceramics and glass. Though not a household name, the company was increasingly prominent in its industry. Winetta Barrington was not interested in becoming prominent with it, so she hired people to become the faces of the company and cover the day-to-day operations while she ran things from the background, focusing mostly on “strategy” for acquisitions and large contracts. Her officers never understood where she got her information and insights, but learned not to question them.

Once she got the business to a size of her liking, the middle-aged Winetta took more of a back seat and started to enjoy the riches. She moved to Malibu, CA because she liked it, and spent more time expanding her “special” abilities.

She had quietly connected to the European guild, but was disappointed to find them entrenched in old thinking. Some had impressive skills, but seemed to be wrapped up in the mysticism of it all. While ancient languages and spells were useful in focusing the mind, she found most of the rituals and artifacts to be superficial and no match for an in-depth knowledge of the natural sciences. To her, it all boiled down to using the power of the mind to extract, control, and covert energy which would then be used in conjunction with conventional science. When you keep it that simple, you progress faster.

The Guild’s leaders were unsurprisingly, incredibly arrogant, and it was all unfounded as far as Winetta was concerned. She didn’t let on, but she was beyond them and returned disappointed there was so little to be learned from them.

Curious as to how much of her abilities were unique and how much could be learned, Winetta starting inviting woman to “Woman Empowerment” workshops at her home. She found no other prodigies, but did have some success with woman picking up on other’s thoughts. She gave it a new age gloss to cover the fact that these were essentially covens in which the woman met primarily to get the upper hand with the men in their lives. She had several of these over the years.

In the early 80s, one of her students nick-named her “Wicked Wanda” after Wanda Von Kreesus, the protagonist of a comic strip that was running in the men’s magazine Penthouse at the time. Looking nothing like Winetta, the character was a tall, beautiful, fabulously wealthy man-taunting Swiss lesbian who lived in a castle and led a “dyke” paramilitary army called the “Puss Force”. It was overtly silly and mostly an excuse to illustrate undressed women of a shape even the magazine’s models couldn’t hope to match, but Winetta enjoyed the moniker and its association.

 

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