Once upon a time, there was a mother duck who lived on a farm. She sat on her eggs in her nest all day long. It was lonely, but she must keep her eggs warm until they hatch.

Many days later, one yellow duckling finally hatched out! Then another yellow duckling, and then another one again. One by one, all the eggs began to crack. Soon, the mother duck was surrounded by fluffy yellow ducklings. She quacked with joy. Finally, all her babies were here!

She counted them before their first swim — one, two, three, four, five, six…

Oh no! One large egg was still in the nest. It needed more time and care. So the mother duck sat back down in her nest to keep it warm and safe.

8 January 2007
Winnipeg, Canada

A dark night. A loud night. The landline phone rang and Elmira Golubev picked it up.

“Hello? How can I help you?”

“Эльмира. Эльмира!”

Ingush. She complied with no hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

“The children. Please. Please take care of them.”

“Slow down. What’s wrong?”

“They’re coming. I can’t explain now. Please, Elmira. My children. They’re all I have left in life.”

“Okay, okay,” Elmira stood. She knew the man was not one to talk, and never one to call. “Address?”

The man gutted it out. Elmira plucked a pen from a cup and scrawled his words onto paper.

“I’m going there now,” she said. “Are you—”

Click

—

The next day, the large egg started to crack. Out stepped a duckling much, much larger than all the other ducklings. He was not yellow, but dark-grey instead. His beak was black and he walked with a funny wobble. The yellow ducklings pointed and quacked at him. What is that? He cannot be one of us! I have never seen such an ugly duckling!

The mother duck scolded the yellow ducklings. Be nice to your brother! So the other ducklings stopped. But when she was gone, they continued pointing and quacking at the Ugly Duckling. You are ugly! You cannot play with us. You walk weird! You cannot keep up with us.

One day, one of the yellow ducklings yelled at the Ugly Duckling. You are hideous to look at! Go away! We don’t like you! The yellow ducklings chased the Ugly Duckling, and the Ugly Duckling ran far, far away.

25 February 2010

No one knew if Gavrill Vorobyev was guilty or innocent of “The Walmart Incident”. Not the attorneys with irrefutable evidence that he was in two places at once, not the witnesses called to share their contradictory testimonies, and not the press who fed the public with conspiracies. So, Gavrill’s trial ended inconclusively. The judge ruled that the police were to continue their investigation. And for as long as their investigation was unsolved, Gavrill was to be imprisoned over a thousand kilometers away, in Edmonton Institution.

That was three years ago. Elmira had since kept his children under her care in Children’s Hope Foundation, the local orphanage she worked at. Gavrill didn’t want his children to be fostered or adopted, so Elmira kept a constant eye on them instead. She could afford it — if she wasn’t asleep, she was at the orphanage. Sometimes, she was on the administration team. Sometimes, she was a counsellor for the children. Sometimes, she was a tutor. And sometimes, she was a caretaker, like when five-year-old Hygd Vorobyev refused to touch her workbook.

“I don’t want to learn Ingush,” Hygd declared one day, in English.

Hygd and her older siblings, Hrodwyn and Merethel, were in Elmira’s office. Its size allowed the room to be transformed into a small classroom. They were here for their daily Ingush lesson Elmira promised their father.

“Why don’t you?” Elmira replied in Ingush. “I thought you liked learning Ingush. Look, your siblings are doing the same, too.”

“I don’t want to,” Hygd shook her head.

Elmira glanced down at the photocopy of an Ingush textbook. She had modified it to fit her curriculum. Next to it was the Ingush workbook she wrote herself.

She took in a deep breath. “Hygd, it’s Ingush class, so you’re learning Ingush.”

“Why do I need—”

“If you keep speaking English, that means you need to learn more Ingush!”

Hygd frowns. “I want to learn English instead!”

“But your English is perfectly fine. You use it all the time in school!”

“I talk to you and my siblings in Ingush more than I talk to my friends in English. It’s seven days of Ingush and only five days of English. If you don’t teach me, I’ll get worse!”

“If you want to learn English so badly, fine. I can teach it to you. But now, you learn Ingush. Learning Ingush will not make your English worse.”

“No. I don’t want to learn Ingush anymore.”

Elmira furrowed her brows. “If you stop learning Ingush, how can you talk to your father, hm?”

Hygd’s voice quietened. She looked away. “I don’t want to.”

There it was. Elmira’s face softened. She put a gentle hand on Hygd’s back. “Hygd, what happened? Did your friends at school talk about your father again?”

Hygd said nothing at first, but her silence was broken by a quivering lip and a scrunched nose. She nodded, and wet words bubbled out of her mouth. “Cassey is having a birthday party, but her mom doesn’t want me to go. Cassey said it’s because daa’s not a good person. Auntie Elmira, am I not a good person, too?”

Elmira brushed Hygd’s orange hair back. “Oh, Hygd… you are a good person. You are the kindest, sweetest little girl. Your father is a good person, as well.”

“Then why wasn’t I invited?”

“Because Cassey’s mom was wrong. Grown-ups make mistakes all the time, Hygd.”

“Then what about daa?”

Elmira pursed her lips. “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, but that doesn’t make them bad. Do you believe your father is a good person?”

Hygd nodded.

“Do you believe it with all your heart?”

Hygd sniffled and nodded even harder.

“Then that’s what really matters. Okay, Hygd?”

Hygd nodded again. “But I still don’t want to learn Ingush. I don’t want to be like vosha and jisha-vosha.”

“What’s wrong with Merethel and Hrodwyn?”

“No one wants to talk to vosha because he’s not good at English. Jisha-vosha doesn’t want to talk to other people, and now they don’t have friends.”

Elmira thought for a moment. She offered a smile. “Hygd, do you want to see photos of your father and mother in Ingushetia?”

Hygd’s eyes lit up. “Yes, please!”

Elmira smiled. “I will show them after class. You can ask your father about them when we visit him, but you can only do that if you learn Ingush!”

“Mm… okay. Then I want to learn!”

Elmira taught Hygd the language of her family. After that, she took Gavrill’s photo album from the storage room and showed Hygd the memories of her family.

—

A storm began. The Ugly Duckling tried to look for a warm place. He went to a barn, and he went to a house. But no matter where he went, everyone laughed at him. The Ugly Duckling hid inside a bush, cold and wet and alone.

“Hygd? Hygd?! Have you seen Hygd? Do you know where she is?”

It was nighttime. Elmira pushed her way through the sea of children being ushered to sleep. She went from room to room, asking the orphanage staff and the children they tucked into bunk-beds, if they had seen the orange-haired girl. No one had — not her siblings nor her friends. When the orphanage grew quiet with sleep, the orphanage staff joined Elmira’s search. The other staff fanned out through the building, while Elmira checked every room Hygd visited and was last seen at.

“Hygd? Oh, where did that girl go?”

A streak of light caught Elmira’s attention. The door to the storage room was cracked open. Elmira frowned. She sighed and pushed the door. Of course Hygd would be here. As expected, a large suitcase was opened. Spilled open beside it was a thick, old photo album. Curled up near it was Hygd, fast asleep.

Elmira opened her mouth to scold the girl, until she noticed Hygd clutching a photograph to her chest. Slowly, Elmira bunched up her skirt and knelt next to Hygd. She reached and gently opened Hygd’s hand, upturning the photograph.

When the storm ended, the Ugly Duckling found an empty lake. He looked in the water and saw a reflection from above. A flock of large birds flew over him gracefully. Their bodies were pure white and slender. They were the most beautiful birds he had ever seen.

He kept watching them until the last white bird disappeared. Oh, how he wished to join them! But he was too young and could not fly. And he was too ugly. The beautiful, white birds would never want to fly with an ugly bird.

Elmira looked at the old photograph. Hrodwyn was at the front, beaming. Next to them, Merethel shyly smiled. Their mother — Elmira’s best friend — sat in a chair next to the two children. Her bright smile was unrivalled by her blazing hair of fire. The infant she cradled, Hygd, shared her hair. Behind them, Gavrill stood tall and proud. His toothy grin matched Hrodwyn’s. In each arm, he carried a child — one boy, one girl, both brunettes and both with the same face.

Elmira looked back at Hygd. She sighed, then tapped Hygd’s shoulder.

“...Mm?” Hygd rolled her head.

“Hygd Vorobyev, you should not be here. Come now. Put the photo back where you found it, give me the room key, and go to bed.”

The little girl rubbed her eyes and looked at the photograph. Her head drooped. “Sorry...”

“For what?”

“For taking your keys without asking you…”

Elmira’s expression remained stern, but her voice softened. “If you want to look at the photos again, simply ask me. There is no need to be sneaky, yes? You are old enough to ask questions, and I will always let you see photos of your family.”

The little girl nodded, her eyes still heavy with sleep. “Okay...”