Songs In My Head
Prologue- Paris, 1875
It was dark in the Rue Scribe, black thunderclouds threatening to spill their contents over the French city as a dark figure wandered gracefully through the streets. The sounds of the Opéra Populaire faded away as the figure walked through the night, a soft sound like heart-broken sobs following the cape that billowed in the lamp-lit alley.
The figure stopped however when a piercing cry echoed across the cobbles, and turning to follow the almost musical wailing the shadow stopped over a tiny bundle of blankets that writhed in its dead mother's arms. Picking up the baby, the figure pulled back the blanket that covered the little one's face, frozen by the child's wide blue eyes.
Just like hers.
Lonely cries were suddenly replaced with silence, the baby staring up into the stranger's red-rimmed blue eyes with understanding beyond his tiny life span. With a deep breath, the figure reached up with a pale, trembling hand to stroke the child's pale face with gentle tenderness, shading the boy from the fat drops of rain that began to fall with a crash of lightening, the heavens tolling out a cacophonous symphony.
"Mon Dieu..." The figure breathed, a deep, melodic whisper that was heard by none in the deserted street. He looked up to stare down each end of the street he had just walked up and then bit his lower lip and smiled very softly. No-one was out this late, and even the gendarmes had left the theatre finally. Shaking his head, the cloaked man held the baby close and went back down the street the way he had come, disappearing into the shadows thrown by the massive bulk that was the Rue Scribe side of the Opera House with a swoosh of his cloak and a creak of an iron gate.
Afterwards, all that was heard in the street was the patter of the pooling rain on the cobbles.