About my other fics...please, please, please...don't ask. O:-) I want to work on them. I hope to work on them. Just...don't ask.
Insane for the infamous slacker to start yet another? Oh yes.
Started scribbling this in a notebook when I got bored in study hall one day. And whadda ya know? It evolved into an inspiration.
WARNING: Contains some heavy-type stuff that may make some people uncomfortable. Nothing graphic, but plenty of...references. Please take heed, 'cause I love you all and truly have no desire to offend or disturb anyone. ^_^
Author's Note: This story is, at the moment, rather important to me. I say this because it might mean that updates may take...well, a long time even for me, and that's saying something. Please just remember that it's only because I really want this story to the best it can be, and that means endless proofreading, editing, revising...well, perfectionism. So bear with me, loves? O:-) Thankee very much.
Dedication: For eleven beloved Newsies sisters: Eire, Poker, Cocky, Let, Runaway, Tree, Tag, Spy, Puck, Trolley, and Mousetrap. For Zippy and Ghost, two more dear NML friends: I finally wrote you a Skittery story. :-) For my darling Liz/Fish/Seagull, who started it all. For my English teacher, Mrs. Foster, for providing me with wonderful descriptive language for the smell of makeup. And for my best friend, Jess/Cricket/Symphony, with love.
One Last A/N: This is just the prologue. It's, uh...*smiles sheepishly* Really long for a prologue. ^_^ Also, there are no newsies in it at all. Please don't be discouraged. Chapter One will start two years after the prologue, and I promise it will start off right away with newsies.
Appassionata
By Flare Higgins
Prologue
"Butterfly?"
The thin voice echoed faintly off the hulking factory buildings that sheltered the dim alley. There was no response.
"Butterfly!"
The cry was higher this time, harsher, choked with the impending threat of tears. Again, the brick fortress surrounding the frightened child threw back her desperate call in empty, resonating tones: "fly-y-y..."
Gradually, the echoes faded, and then the night was still; still as a New York City night had never been before, like the eerie silence that follows a violent storm.
Presently, the girl emerged from her gloomy refuge. Sparkling, salty trails stained her hollow moon-white cheeks.Eyes of murky brown blinked rapidly as if against a sudden flood of sunlight, though they were met only by a shroud of darkness, and the usual clouds of yellow-grey smog from the nearby factories.
Leah Bailey was fourteen years old, but she didn't look it. She stood several inches below five feet, her body rail-thin, her face holding the pinched, emaciated look of starvation. Ebony hair, as fine and silky as a baby's, framed her face, but was cut so short it didn't reach her chin. A filthy grey dress, little more than a rag, hung loose and formless on her skeletal frame. From her thin salmon lips, parched and badly scabbed, three hopeless syllables were very softly rasped into the unsettling silence.
"Butterfly."
The street Leah walked was deserted. It was like a sacred burial ground, traversed only by a solitary specter, who had risen restlessly from her crypt in vain pursuit of the light and warmth belonging to the world of the living.
If these were the qualities Leah sought, however, she was to be disappointed; for when another figure did at last appear, in the doorway of a dilapidated building, it was only another ghost like herself. As Leah stopped to observe her fellow shade, the contrast between them was stark; while Leah was a tiny, dark shadow, this one was large and robust, bright and colorful, a veritable rainbow of a phantom. It leaned down close to the small girl, placing crimson-nailed hands on her shoulders, and the heavy, waxy aroma that filled Leah's nostrils caused hot acid bile to rise in her stomach.
"Lost, honey?" the gaudy spirit inquired, in a tone as sickly-sweet as the scent of her lavish makeup.
"No..." The waif recoiled. "I'm lookin' for..."
"A place to stay?" oozed the honey-coated voice. "A job, perhaps?"
"...my sister," Leah whispered.
The woman laughed, a rich and raucous sound that crudely shattered the almost holy silence of the night.
"You got plenty'a sisters in there, honey," she cooed, motioning in through the doorway filled by her formidable body. "Just c'mon in and you can meet 'em all."
She pulled forcefully on the young girl's arm, backing into the ominous structure from which she had emerged. Leah resisted.
"I have to find--"
"You ain't gonna find nothin' tonight, honey," her captor protested, with the same sugar coating on her words, though they also contained a note of irritation, of urgency. "This ain't no night for littluns like yourself to be out an' about."
And before Leah could argue further, she was literally dragged through the door, which was clicked shut behind her by the heel of a sequined, rose-colored shoe.
The first thing Leah noticed about the room was that it was stifling; more so even than the smog-choked streets outside. The cigarette smoke was so dense that Leah immediately began to choke, bending over and covering her mouth and nose with both hands as harsh, rattling coughs shook her frail body. Her eyes stung fiercely; she could barely see a foot in front of her.Then the woman was there again, bending over her, straightening her up and fanning the smoke away from her with an ostentatious flower-laden hat, and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Leah smiled weakly but gratefully as her throat cleared; but when her vision cleared as well, she wished it hadn't.
She found that this place she had been drawn into was filled with women. Beautiful women. Women all clad in attire as gaudy and bright as that of her hostess. Women in tight scarlet dresses with low necks and skirts that were too short. Women whose faces resembled those of clowns, standing out as brilliant pallets of color even in the poor, flickering light of several cheap wax tapers placed strategically around the room. Women covered in beads, in feathers, in sequins and glitter, in glittering paste jewels. Women smoking cigars and cigarettes, guzzling alcohol from glass bottles, talking and laughing loudly, flipping their hair and their feather boas. Women with full lips and bosoms, and hollow, hateful, haunted eyes.
It was not even the room full of women that disturbed Leah the most. It was something nondescript and off to the side: a plain, rickety staircase leading upward, the top of which disappeared into a chasm of darkness.
"Madame!"
The word came from the mouth of one of the women, who stepped out of the shadowy, smoky realm like any wraith floating from the mists. Her garb was much simpler than that of most of the others; a low-cut, forest-green dress, and no more. Not a single glamorous adornment. Only a hint of powder and paint tinged her stunningly flawless face. Thick mahogany tresses cascaded down her back. Her eyes, a grey-blue as deep and as forbidding as the ocean, gazed fixedly down at Leah, who returned the gaze with horror. For she realized now that this was no woman at all...it was a girl, no older than herself.
"Madame," she repeated vehemently. Her voice contained a trace of an accent, Leah noted; but, despite the origin of the word it spoke, it was not French. While she puzzled over it, the girl rushed on. "What are you doing, bringing this girl in here? Look how little she is. Just a kid. What's she doing here?"
The woman who still stood beside Leah...Madame, as she seemed to be known...raised an eyebrow and laughed mockingly. "The girl's no younger than you, September. She needs a place to stay. Look how thin she is, how pinched; you know hunger when you see it, I'm sure. Are you objecting to my kindness?" She laughed again, and Leah suppressed a shudder.
The girl called September did not bother to; shudder she did, and in a quick gesture, she took Leah firmly by the hand. "Come with me, come with me...she never should've brought you in here...c'mon..."
Head whirling, Leah meekly allowed herself to be tugged across the room, through the smoke, through the powerful smells of sweat and alcohol that attempted to compete with the smoky odor pervading everything, past the gaudy ghosts and their clinking bracelets and drunken laughter...and past the staircase. There September clutched Leah's hand more tightly and sped up her pace. Nevertheless, Leah's ears caught the sound of heavy footsteps descending those stairs and a growling voice, a male voice...and then her guide had turned a corner, leading her swiftly down what she instantly understood to be a second staircase.
The cool, damp air and musty earthen smell were a great relief after the overwhelming atmosphere of the room upstairs. As they approached the bottom of the staircase and Leah filled her lungs, she frowned slightly. From the bottom of the stairs, she could hear voices floating up to them, and something else...music?
"Don't worry," September cautioned, glimpsing the apprehension in her charge's eyes. "It's only a small bar...some drinks, card games, and such. Not nearly as bad as upstairs. It's where I sleep," she added, "in a little storage room...you can have the bottom bunk. I work there during the day...serving drinks, cleaning glasses, you know. At night..." Even in the underground darkness, Leah could see September's cheeks flush under their dusting of rose-colored powder. "It doesn't make enough," she mumbled in explanation.
At that moment, the two girls reached the last step, and arrived at their destination. Looking around, Leah decided that it was, as her companion had promised, not that bad. Compared to upstairs, this crowd was practically as subdued as a graveyard. A scattering of young and middle-aged men sat around small, round tables, shuffling cards, shoving coins and wooden poker chips around, sipping mugs of beer, and discussing a variety of topics (mostly politics, from the sound of it) in low, gruff voices. In the far corner of the bar room was something which seemed extraordinarily out of place. There sat a dusty baby grand piano, being dutifully plucked away at by a scrawny little white-haired man. Most out of place was the music drifting from the corner to fill the room. Leah caught her breath.
That music...
It was fast, bright, energetic, lively and bursting to the seams with emotion. It was passion, as she had never heard expressed this way before. It was beautiful.
Behind a grubby counter slouched the bartender, a beer-bellied older man with tangled, greasy hair and a bad squint. He glanced up from a drink of his own, taking in September with no surprise, but eyeing Leah with mild suspicion.
"She's a guest of Madame's," September called quickly, her blush deepening.
The bartender grunted with satisfaction and returned to his previous engagement.
"This way."
September had to drag Leah away from the bar and its piano. She drew her through a small side door that Leah wouldn't even have noticed without assistance, closing it behind them and quickly fastening the latch.
Shivering a bit...she had just noticed how cold the cellar was...Leah glanced around. There wasn't much to see. The room was basically the size of a large closet. A small, crudely built wooden bunk bed was shoved against one wall. Squeezed in next to it was an equally small and rough-hewn dresser. Only a few personal items were scattered over the top of the dresser...a hairbrush, a hand mirror, a pad of paper, a few cans of paint with a brush, and a photograph of an attractive, dark-haired teenage boy.
"Who...?"
Before Leah could even get the word out, September had reached out and flipped the picture face-down. She turned with a tight, false smile, deliberately misinterpreting the question.
"Who am I? Just September's fine. I haven't used my birth name for a while now. And who are you?"
"Leah Bailey," Leah replied.
Nodding, September approached the bed and perched on the bottom bunk, patting the space beside her. Leah sat, and September turned to face her, taking the smaller girl's hands in hers. "Leah," she started gently. "You can stay here tonight; it's fine with me. And tomorrow, I promise I'll help you in any way I can. But most girls..." She faltered. "Most girls who come here..."
"I know," Leah replied quickly.
"You...are you..." September's cold blue eyes almost seemed to shimmer, but it could have been a trick of the light cast by the candle on the dresser. "What's your story, Leah?" she finally whispered.
Four words. Four words were all it took to cast Leah's mind back through the day...back five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, two, three...back to the alley, to the voices, to the footsteps, to the torches illuminating faces twisted with wrath, and her hand slipping, losing its grip on another's.
The feelings rose inside her, without warning, without preparation. Her body was wracked with pain, so suddenly and so thoroughly that the sensation was physical. The sobs were torn out of her as if by some wild animal, an ocean of tears bursting past some invisible dam to flood her face for the second time that day, as she doubled over and clutched her suddenly seasick stomach.
Her motions created a quick draft, fanning the nearby pinpoint of candlelight and causing it to dance wildly, throwing crazy shadows around the room, illuminating bits and pieces of a puzzle that blurred before Leah's eyes. Then it calmed, as did the draft that had alarmed it, and settled into focus on a single square of space: September's dresser. There in a pool of sickly yellow, through a haze of tears, from beneath September's protective arm, Leah beheld that modest array of objects: the paper, the paints and brush, and an overturned photograph of a boy she had never known.
Outside the door of the tiny room, the music of the piano swelled to a crescendo, its chords penetrating the bolted barrier September had created, causing the floor to vibrate with their power.
"September..." Leah choked out. "That music..."
The girl's answer came surprisingly quickly, though gently; September still held Leah in her arms. "It's by a famous composer...his name was Beethoven. A German composer," she added with a note of pride.
So that's what the accent is.
"That song, that...piece...what is it?"
September stroked her hair, as gradually her tears dried and her trembling ceased. "I think," she softly replied, "it's the one called the Appassionata."
Author's Note: There ya go. 11:00 at night. No further comment. Flarey not a night owl. Feedback...please, please, please, a thousand times please, and I will love you forever and ever. :-)