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Brothers11:39 Sep 03 2026
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I was six years old when I learned there was a difference between being picked on by a Moroz and being picked on by anyone else.
By then, I had been a Moroz for several years.
Long enough to know that having brothers was not necessarily the blessing people liked to pretend it was.
I had ten of them.
Ten.
They ranged from only a little older than me to nearly grown, and every single one of them seemed to consider tormenting their youngest brother a sacred family tradition.
They stole food from my plate.
They hid my things.
They messed up my hair after Galina had fixed it.
They called me malysh whenever they wanted to annoy me and occasionally invented entirely new names when the old ones stopped getting a reaction.
I was the youngest.
That made me prey.
At least, that was what I thought.
Until my first year at school.
It happened during a break.
Three boys cornered me at the edge of the schoolyard. They were two grades above me, which at six years old might as well have made them adults.
They started by blocking my way.
Then came the pushing.
Back and forth between them, laughing every time I stumbled.
I remember trying not to show them that I was scared.
Then they started talking.
“Orphan.”
“Your real parents didn't even want you.”
“Nobody even knows where you came from.”
That one hurt.
I knew enough about my past by then to know that they were wrong.
But children have an instinct for finding wounds they don't understand and sticking their fingers into them anyway.
Then one of them said the thing that hurt more than all the others.
“You're not even a real Moroz.”
I didn't answer.
I didn't know how.
Then I saw one of my brothers.
He was standing some distance away, watching.
For one terrible moment, I thought he was going to help me.
Instead, he turned around and ran.
I still remember the feeling in my stomach.
I thought he was leaving me there.
He wasn't.
A few minutes later, he came back.
He wasn't alone.
My brothers appeared behind him one after another until all ten of them were standing at the other end of the schoolyard.
The youngest was seven.
The oldest was eighteen.
And suddenly the three boys in front of me didn't look quite so big anymore.
My brothers walked over and formed a line behind me.
Nobody touched anyone.
Not yet.
The oldest folded his arms.
“Do it again.”
The boys stared at him.
He nodded toward me.
“We dare you.”
There are moments in life when you are presented with an opportunity to reconsider your decisions.
The three boys were presented with one that day.
They declined.
One of them looked straight at my brothers, laughed, and shoved me again.
Hard.
I hit the ground.
In retrospect, that was a poor decision.
Ten Moroz brothers moved at once.
I remained on the ground for a few seconds and watched.
It was educational.
I won't pretend it was a fair fight.
It wasn't.
It also didn't last very long.
By the time the teacher supervising the playground reached us, she couldn't even begin to separate everyone. Two more teachers had to come running before they managed to pull my brothers away.
The three boys looked considerably different than they had a few minutes earlier.
One had a bloody nose.
Another had a split lip.
All three were bruised, dirty and dishevelled.
My brothers?
A few scratches.
Some scraped knuckles.
One torn shirt.
They seemed quite pleased with themselves.
All fourteen of us were taken to the headmaster's office.
The three boys.
My ten brothers.
And me.
I still wasn't entirely sure why I was there. The most violent thing I had done was fall over.
The headmaster was furious.
There was shouting.
There were threats of punishment.
Parents would be called.
There would be consequences.
My brothers listened with varying degrees of interest.
When he finally stopped, my oldest brother spoke.
“They owe our brother an apology.”
Our brother.
I remember those words more clearly than anything else that happened in that office.
Not Nicolai.
Not the orphan.
Not the boy Papa had adopted.
Our brother.
The headmaster eventually agreed.
The three boys stood in front of me and apologized.
Properly.
Then they had to promise they would never touch me again.
They kept that promise.
When we got home, I thought perhaps things would be different.
After all, my brothers had just fought an entire battle on my behalf.
Surely this meant they would stop tormenting me.
That illusion lasted until dinner.
One of them reached across the table and stole food directly from my plate.
I stared at him.
“I thought you said I was your brother.”
He grinned and took another piece.
“You are.”
“Then stop stealing my food.”
“No.”
I frowned at him.
He shrugged.
“I'm your brother. I'm allowed.”
That was the day I learned what it meant to be a Moroz.
My brothers could torment me.
They could tease me, steal my food, hide my belongings and make my life generally unbearable.
But no one else was allowed to touch me.
There was something else I learned that day.
I didn't have to let my brothers get away with it either.
Until then, I had mostly endured their teasing.
After that day, I started fighting back.
Not always with my fists.
Sometimes a carefully placed bucket of water was far more effective.
Salt found its way into tea.
Shoes mysteriously disappeared five minutes before someone had to leave for school.
Once, three of my brothers woke up to discover that their shoelaces had somehow been tied together.
I was six.
I was learning.
They complained to Papa, of course.
Papa listened very carefully to the accusations.
Then he looked at them.
“Did you start it?”
Silence.
They stopped complaining to Papa after that.
And I got better.
Much better.
Looking back, I think that was the year my brothers finally stopped treating me like the little orphan Papa had brought home.
I wasn't someone they needed to be careful with anymore.
I wasn't a guest.
I wasn't the child who should be grateful simply because someone had given him a place at the table.
I was their brother.
I belonged there enough to fight with them.
Enough to annoy them.
Enough to make their lives miserable right back.
I had become their little brother.
And I made damn sure they regretted it.
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