The Value of Me
By Rey

Chapter 3: The Long, Long Way Home

10.

10th November 1987

The little no-name boy, who keeps being little and still sadly got no name that sticks on him permanently, curls up on the thick-but-tatty rug in front of the small fireplace with a book. Outside, sleet batters everything under the sky mercilessly; but inside, the little boy is surrounded by his caretakers of more than two years, each of whom is occupied with his or her own book. The occasional crackle of the applewood kindling in the hearth meshes well with the rustles of three turning pages, in his never-spoken opinion. It gently interrupts the companionable silence that blankets everything in the small wooden house, unlike the harsh clacking and clattering of hailstones on the roof's shingles.

It is all a usual sight and a usual feeling by now, but the road leading to this milestone has been a rocky, thorny, slippery, potholed meandering footpath; a road that is unfortunately quite likely to persist for some time yet, in his own never-spoken prediction, despite everything.

The scarred, tired woman from that lifetime ago calls herself Yelena. Her parents, to whom she brought the little boy upon finding him, call her Yishka.

The boy called her Ma'am. He still does, despite her regular offer for him to call her by her name, nickname, Auntie, or even Mama.

He daren't tell her, that that last option is too tempting to consider for long.

Her parents were outraged, when the woman brought the little boy to the selfsame small wooden house and told them about her day, that night. At first, the little boy thought they were outraged at him. It was yet another awesome gift for him when he at last understood that they were outraged for him. And the bonus? Even when he was a freak and so filthy and smelly, even when he could not tell them anything about him, including his own name and age, they took turns kissing the top of his mop of messy, greasy, smelly head in welcome, anyway.

Just like they did to their own daughter.

He went to the back yard for some hosing when the woman's mother – ("Oh, precious, I am Larisa, but free yourself to call me your grandmother.") – mentioned that he needed a bath before dinner. This time, the little family of three went into such a tense, sharp-as-a-knife-point silence that it scared him silly like nothing else to that moment.

He had neither the courage nor the will to object to the use of the bath-tub and the warm water and the fragrant soap, after that. He knew very well that those were just for good boys and non-freaky people, and he was not. However, he wasn't about to contradict any of them, then, because any one of that family was far scarier than the people in his old life combined. It was good – no, scrap it, it was blissful, although he didn't know about that word at first – actually, to be clean and smelling softly of flowers, for once.

Well, he thought it was just for that one time, maybe as a welcome gift of some sort or to lure him into a sense of false security like the three people in his old life had done to him on occasion…. He was shocked, to say the least, that the treatment went on, and on, and on, and on, and on… until today.

And the dinner – oh the dinner! The little boy, otherwise called Freak or simply Boy by the previous family of three, was for once seated at the rough-hewn, sturdy wooden counter on the kitchen, forbidden to cook or fetch things, and given a portion of meal all for himself. The meal wasn't cold, wasn't burnt, wasn't old, wasn't spoiled in any way, and wasn't tasteless or otherwise just marginally edible. It was dished out for him, on his own plate, from the dinner dishes, as though he had been a part of their family – this family – all his life.

He thanked the grown-ups profusely, then hunkered round his plate to shovel as much as he could into his mouth as quickly as possible. Giving him a meal then retracting it abruptly with no reason had been one of the tactics of the people living round his cupboard, after all, and he didn't think he could bear suffering such a thing right then. Protecting his food like a starving dog would might save him from such a thing.

He was half right, at that.

"No no no, child, no," the woman's mother – whom he is still so, so tempted to call Grannie – scolded him softly as she dragged his plate away, when he had only taken a few sloppy spoonfuls. It felt like being suddenly, unexpectedly drenched in icy water, to him, and he let go of his plate with a jerk.

The next split second found him jammed in the cupboard of cleaning solutions beneath the dishwashing sink, shaking madly and trying his best not to cry.

But, unlike Dudley's parents, these grown-ups did not just let him be, mock him further, or scold him for his sloppy eating and general ungratefulness. The same not-so-old woman from earlier came to the cupboard, sat down on the floor in front of it, then told him softly in a tone he did not recognise from the opposite side of the cupboard's door, "We would like you to eat, little one. You can eat as much as you can. But you cannot eat too quick. Eat neat, eat enough, and we will all be happy."

She dragged him out of the cupboard, then, and plopped him at the edge of the sink. She was true to her words, in her own way: She cleaned the spilt food from his cheeks, chin and borrowed shirt's front with brisk dabs of the wetted edge of a rag, then spoonfed him the rest of the food on his plate, until his tummy ached so much.

And then, to his blatant disbelief, although the scene was happening right in front of him, Ma'am's mother ate the remaining food that he had not been able to eat, as if she had done that multiple times before, as if she was the freak instead of the boy rightly was, as if he could not give his freaky germs to her in that way.

"Food is never let waste," she told him firmly, and he agreed with her, but he still couldn't – can't – fathom why she would eat his direct leftover, instead of the other way round.

That thought occupied him until, loose-limbed and full-bellied, he was carried by Ma'am to the couch in the living-room, where she proceeded to plop him in her lap to watch cartoons on the telly.

He felt like a child – her child – right then, and it overwhelmed him.

The next thing he knew, he woke up cuddled to Ma'am side under a warm, worn duvet, in an actual bed, a soft one at that.

He bolted into the cupboard under the kitchen sink immediately, because he knew freaks were not allowed on or too close round any worthwhile fourniture of any household.

And the family responded to that, although it was not something he had expected, from his previous dealings with the fat and the skinny adults in his previous life.

By afternoon, when he returned from being dragged here and there by Ma'am to buy things at his size or meant for children of his relative age, the cupboards and cabinets round the cosy little house were… different. They were either locked fast, demolished and repurposed, or stuffed to the brim with things.

In short, he got nowhere to flee or punish himself.

Nowhere on the ground level, anyway.

Deep at night, when everyone else were asleep, with all the doors and windows locked tight, he snuck himself a perch on the bare rafters. He spent all night awake there, staring vacantly at the empty living-room with glowing ambers on the hearth, fingering the soft, warm, fitting footie pyjamas he had been dressed in after the day's bath.

The next day, Ma'am's father – ("I am Sergei. Call me Grandfather.") – did… something, something magical to the rafters, using both his bare hand and a wooden stick that might very well be a wand. A handful of the separate criss-crossing beams were joined together by uneven planks of wood that might have started as detached doorplanks, which he had summoned from the storage shed outside at the back yard. A few battered stools and a dilapidated dining table summoned likewise were straightened and sured up, next, before they were chopped into either further sheeting for the rafters or discrete ladder rungs positioned on one corner of the living-room, behind a curtain of beeds that Ma'am had just dug in from the second storage shed. Then Ma'am's mother, who had been missing all morning, returned with shrunken things that she proceeded to enlarge using the same method as her husband's, and the little boy got to see that what she had brought were a soft mattress, a bunch of fluffy pillows, a pile of soft-coloured, soft-textured sheets, and a duvet much like Ma'am's.

And just like that, the little freak got a bedroom for himself, and it was perfect; not because the new floor was strong and just rugged enough to prevent slipping without making it uncomfortable, not because he got a bed for himself with all its trappings, but because… well… it was perfect. It still is, even now, even when he has grown up a little, height-wise, and got far closer to the family than he was in those days.

From his perch, something that he later got told has been sured up and reinforced for safety and comfort using magic, he can be by himself without removing himself from what he has long considered his home and family. From such vantage point, he can also observe everything inside and outside of the house without being seen or heard, which comforts him a lot.

This last point was in fact a Christmas gift – one of the Christmas gifts – for him from the family, barely a couple of months after he had gotten a bedroom, those couple years ago. It has been his first and best Christmas gift ever, winning even over the name Nikolai – or Nosha – that they collectively bestowed him with, which was the other Christmas gift that year. After all, that day, the rafter network of catwalks and nests got extended to everywhere in the house, and he got to help in achieving that with the powers he had not known he had, and he was not called a freak or an abomination of life for that, and from that day onwards the family sometimes spend time with him up there.

He was glad – he is, still – that he finally got a name for himself, plus a nickname at that, but people could twist and interpret names so easily; Ma'am's father's occasionally calling him "Boy" in either English or Russian or German, case in point, which never sounds nor feels demeaning or hurtful. But this, it's hard to make this gesture as a way to shunt him aside, like the adults in his old life locking him in the cupboard under the stairs in their house, not when these trio of adults join him there.

Here, with this family, in this home, the little boy is not a freak, and his preferences are not freaky, and the powers he has been born with are not an abomination on the proper things in the world, and he does deserve companionship. The family did not tell him this; they showed him, and it has stuck fast with him, because his mind cannot refute what was already apparent and so tangible all round him.

Here, he is also taught many, many things, in addition to helping round the house, the shop, or all about outside the family's little bubble of bright, warm life, which never feel demeaning or like a chor at all each time. In fact, receiving good things with proper gratitude but no fuss, in addition to doing household chores as a way to contribute to keeping up the home instead of earning his keep, was the first thing he consciously learnt from living with this family. He is still wary of strings that might be attached to gifts or acts of good will, even now, but Ma'am's parents have long agreed that he needs to maintain a good, healthy level of wariness so that he will not be trapped or cheated by anybody, anyway, so he considers this a habit to continue and nurture.

He learnt Russian and German by dint of everyday exposure, at first, because the family often forgot to speak in English between themselves or to him, especially when they were in a hurry. In fact, his first Christmas gift to them was a brief, stilted, stumbling conversation in a jumbled mix of Russian and German that he studied just by quiet observation. The rest was history, so to say, including learning to read and write in both languages and English. Since then he has also acquired some French, Spanish and Italian from the places the family keep bringing him, singly or as one, whether for work – acquiring more fourniture and others to repair and resell – or pleasure – usually to museums, parks, natural reserves, or just small restaurants with cuisines from round the globe. This exposure to the outside world also made him – and the family who had taken him in, in turn – aware of visiting zoos as a small no-no.

He can never bear looking at cages, especially small cages compared to their inhabitants. They remind him too much and too strongly of himself and his old cupboard.

Magic-wise, his studies have been progressing alongside reading, writing, math and other formal-schooling subjects that the family are relatively competent in, such as geography, basic chemistry and more general natural sciences. He has been learning a few sets of ancient runes alongside Latin and Cyrillic lettering, the study of which has long passed the latter sets given their intricacies and sheer number. Chemistry goes well alongside potions and cooking, and this has always been made fun by Ma'am's father by inserting occasional little explosions or bright arrangement of colours into a mixture. Arithmancy, likewise, goes well with mundane maths, although there are variations and differences between the two that sometimes create confusion, hence difficulties.

But his love of all times is spellwork and enchantments, ever since the family have shown him magic for the first time by repurposing the rafters to be his nest, two years ago. This love has been further encouraged by Ma'am whenever she makes her wooden dolls – whittled by her father and clad in doll clothes knitted by her mother – dance on the makeshift stage, which doubles as the kitchen counter and the dining table. She uses delicate movements of her fingers or even her wrists to manipulate the dolls and props without touching them, and it is enchanting, in both senses of the word that he knows. Watching Ma'am's large fingers and sturdy-looking broad hands do such graceful, delicate motions is a treat on its own, and he has often caught himself watching her hands instead of the play she is enacting on the little stage. Ma'am is often self-conscious about her "man-like" hands and arms and shoulders, and has once confessed that she was ever laughed out of an audition for ballet classes because of that; the boy wishes she could see for herself how lightly and beautifully those mocked appendages dance. The people who laughed at her were idiots.

Well, it is not like he is not or has never been an idiot, himself, per se. He got incited into fights so easily by the local bullies, and by other bullies in the places where Ma'am or the whole family bring him, too, usually by mocking Ma'am's physique or Russian speech. He got into trouble with the local authorities and the family because of that, while the bullies mostly got off scot-free, to the point that, fed up with his hot-headed ideas of righteous and chivalrous defence, Ma'am taught him how to act aloof and stride away with dignity. – ("Besides, dear, if you get angry at every bad thing, you will spend your life being angry. Being angry is tiring and makes you older faster. You will never have friends, too, this way.")

Knowing that the boy got into trouble mostly to defend his daughter, Ma'am's father also taught him how to pay the bullies back discretely. – ("The enemy you do not know and cannot see is the enemy you cannot harm.")

Better yet, Ma'am's mother enrolled him into karate classes, as an "on-going Christmas gift" since last year, with the proviso that he never use the acquired skills to bully people. – ("You would not like the consequences if you do, Noshha.")

And for it all, he insisted he die his hair red to match Ma'am and her father, since last Christmas, and learn sewing and knitting much as he can to please her mother. They insisted he be called Feliks, after that, arguing – perhaps ridiculously, but all the warmer and more intimate for that – that now he looks and behaves like a Feliks. Nikolai and Feliks – he is getting richer each Christmas!

The troubles also taught the little boy that discipline is different from punishment, that withholding whole meals for the day from a growing child is never an acceptable consequence of making or being in trouble, that locking a child in a small space for days on end for that purpose is also abhorrent. Ma'am and her parents are certainly strict to him, and he always hates the disciplinary actions they sick on him, such as withholding his pleasure reads and his access to their toolbox of rune grafters, but they never beat him or lock him away or starve him for days on end.

Well, he got rapped on the fingers with whatever kitchen or baking utensil in use at that time, whenever he got caught trying to steal the finished product before it is dished out at the table, but that is totally worth the pain!

And back to today…. He loves days like this. Not because it is a bad-weather day; oh no, not at all. He shivers just by imagining still being a street child under such weather, and he desperately hopes that all the street children who have not been as lucky as he was got into shelter in time. He just… Well, the sleet and rain and more sleet that were predicted for today, that sadly have come true, force everyone to take shelter, including the family and himself. They do not get many days like this, since Ma'am's parents and Ma'am herself need all the money that they can get, both to keep the family surviving from day to day and to save up for just in case. It must have been harder when he was added into the mix, although the family are always upset and angry with him whenever he slips up and claims that he is a burden to them. Therefore, sitting here, leisurely, just the four of them, is priceless and cosy beyond belief.

He shall never exchange this for anything in the world.

11.

11th December 1987

Yelena stands at the door, watching and listening to the scene unfolding in the kitchen with quiet awe and deep satisfaction. She was out picking the last batch of this year's parsnips and potatoes for today's meals from her family's little greenhouse, and now she finds… this.

The little boy that she found in a rubbish bin two years and two months ago, whom she dubs Doshka for the name Fiodor in her mind for its closeness to her grandfather's name, is singing, by himself, and thus without prompting. Oh he sang along with her or any of her parents at times, quietly and at first hesitantly, but he never did it alone, and never began it by himself either.

It is possible that he simply does not realise that he is singing, since he seems preoccupied with trying to figure out where she has hidden the jar of saltine crackers that she baked with him yesterday. But still, it shows how far he has come, from that tiny pile of bones and palid skin who was afraid of everything to… this: still thin, still tiny, still mostly quiet and hesitant, still overly fond of his overhead roost, but no longer so skinny and skittish, no longer seeking the nearest small, dark space to punish himself for real or imagined mistake or trouble.

The Doshka from two years ago barely spoke, knew nothing about the world at large, could not read and write and count in his own language. `Now see him,` she thinks, with a huge bubble of warm achievement stuffing her up inside. `He is singing, In Russian!`

Not to mention, the Doshka from two years ago would never dream of trying to steal something that an authority figure had expressly forbidden him to have.

"Are you looking for the crackers, little one?" she interrupts gently from her vantage point.

The little boy, having just finished the song he has been singing, squeaks and whirled round. He looks guilty and sheepish, but mostly unafraid; yet another huge difference from that timid little waif from the rubbish bin those years ago.

She grins, and winks at him. "My bedroom, my love. You can be so predictable, sometimes. You may have two pieces, but do not drop crums on my bed! And give me a hug first for my troubles, eh?"

His almond-shaped green eyes, now so lively and bright, almost like a normal child's, sparkle in delight. "Thank you, Ma'am!" he chirps, returning her grin. He gives her his best bearhug round her middle, as per requirement, then dashes past her, allowing her just enough time to ruffle his red-died – ("So I'll look a little bit like you, Ma'am! If you don't mind?") – hair with her free hand.

She stares wistfully at the empty living-room, across which the little boy – her little boy – has just streaked past on a beeline to her bedroom on the opposite side of the small house, humming the same song he sang before all the while.

It is time, it seems, or soon will be. She wishes that she did not have to do this, that he would remain fully just hers, that he would be like a new person as if born to her womb. But it would not be fair for him, would it? He deserves to know, after what his previous excuses for guardians have done to him. He needs to know, so that he can keep his head down and keep away from the unwanted attention of the world which chucked him away six years ago.

After all, even when he was a bare-chested, bare-footed pile of bones and palid skin that she fished from a rubbish bin, she almost immediately noticed his messy black hair, his vivid green eyes, and the lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. She has never been close to or well informed about the magical side of the world, but even a semi-total outcast like she is has heard the rumoured details pertaining to Harry James Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, British magical community's saviour.

The boy had been dubbed a world hero, then left behind in a dump of the arguably worst kind, before he ended up in a rubbish bin in reality.

Well, if she looks at it this way, the information about the poor little one's past will be all the mor crucial for the said little one himself to know, if only so that he will never be used like a tool and then discarded until the next occasion comes by. She has talked extensively about this with her parents, and they support her decision.

But still.

She can only sigh, and hope that this bombshell will not make an absolutely terrible Christmas gift, in the third Christmas that she will spend with the precious boy – her precious boy. She has the name – this name, Doshka – that she has decided to bestow on him as the other gift, but if he got so upset that he ran away….

She shakes her head, strides into the kitchen, and dumps the basketful of parsnips and potatoes with unnecessary vigor on the wooden table on the middle of it.

What will be, will be. At least, if he decides to flee her presence by Christmas this year, he will be a little bit wiser about the world, and has many more tools to use to survive in it than when he began more than two years ago.

It is always a mother's hope, is it not?