Children of the Wilderness
Chapter One: Aftermath
Say you'll love me every waking moment.
Say the word and I will follow you…
As Eric wandered the side streets of Paris, his hand covering his deformed face from the even the drunken impoverished who lined the alleys, he still heard her voice… Her haunting voice in his mind. In his soul. As the summer night suddenly turned chill, his once strong frame could not take the exhaustion nor the heart break form this night's most disastrous endeavor. He collapsed just as thunder clapped in the sky.
Break
As rain started beating on the ground, and lightening lit the sky, a young woman hurried to her hovel of a room, the poor excuse for a home. Though it was home enough for what she could afford. She could not take the short cut near the Opera House. It was swarmed with firemen and police and so many others. It was a terrible tragedy. Now she would never see the inside of the famous Opera Popular. But, as she took the other alley, one further form her apartment, she saw near the end a large lump. At first she thought it yet another drunk, but then, seeing the fancy shoes, the whiteness of the shirt, she knew it must be an Opera patron. He must have been hurt when he escaped the burning theatre. She rushed to him and brushed back his pale blond hair.
"Oh dear God!" she gasped, seeing the right side of his face. "The poor thing must have been burned." she tried to wake him, shaking his shoulder. He stirred… looked up at her face. She almost wished he had not opened his eyes. They were a blue she'd never known existed in the world. In this one moment she saw pain and heartache and… fury… Yet her heart broke to see him.
"Christine…?" he mumbled.
"Monsieur," the young woman said, trying to lift him, putting his large arm around her slender shoulders, then using her knees she rose up, and he staggered up with her, stumbling beside her. "Monsieur," she said again, "You are hurt. Come with me, please."
"No Hospitals!" he shouted, trying to wrench away form her. The poor man was too weak even to escape her grasp. "No Hospitals! I shall die!"
"You are delirious, Monsieur," she tried to calm him, yet as he struggled he tripped, and slumped against her. She nearly fell with him, yet she held steady. She knew she should take him at once to have his burns treated… but she did not. Against her better judgment, she led the stumbling man to her home. Slowly she helped him through the door, up the creaking stairs, and into the room of her meager dwelling. Carefully she helped him to the bed, and began removing his shoes. As she tugged her torn and ragged sheets up over him, he opened his eyes again, and looked up blankly. He was shivering. She hurried to her closet for another blanket, and she heard him speak again.
"Christine… Christine…" he murmured.
"Celeste," she said.
"Wha-?" he said, closing his eyes and turning, muffling his voice in the old pillows.
"I'm Celeste," she said again, but he was sleeping.
Break
Eric did not wake again for many hours. At first he only smelled. Where ever he was now it smelled disgusting, but he was used to disgusting. Rat droppings, mold, dank, it was all familiar. Yet, this mold was not the slime that grew along the stone of the Opera's underground. This was wood he smelled. Then a good smell. Food. Someone was cooking. He even heard the sounds of that someone nearby, sizzling meat on a skillet. He opened his eyes slowly. Not jail, as he feared, nor a hospital, which he feared worse. He sat up, and one of the blankets that covered him slid to the floor. He picked it up and studied it. The fabric was softer than silk, yet it was warm, as he wrapped it around his shoulders, it was warmer than wool. And the design, he saw, depicted a sort of story. A story from a far and foreign land. The colors and patterns, all were exquisite, and it seemed to simmer, as if jewels had been stitched in with the thread. Such a treasure! It did not belong in this hovel.
"Magnificent!" he said. The person in the nearby kitchen dropped a plate, shattering it. Without thought Eric stood up, and turned by the half wall that hid the small stove. There was a woman kneeling, picking up the shattered plate. Her long black hair, though dull and poorly washed, had sparks of red in it as it fell over her shoulders. Her skin was palest white. She briefly looked up, then looked upo at him again, staring at him. Her eyes were green, but she was obviously from the Orient. He could tell that by the shape of her eyes. Eyes with very long lashes. Her eyes were nothing like Christine's velvety brown ones. Nor was this woman's small mouth like the petals that were Christine's lovely lips…
He remembered his face, and covered it with his hand, turning back to the bed. "Don't look at me!" he barked at her.
Yet she stod up and rushed to him. He felt her tiny hands on his back, and her say in perfect French, "Monsieur, please lie down. You've been burned, fleeing formthe Opera. Forgive me for not taking you to a hospital but you begged me before not to-"
"It is no burn!" he growled. He wanted her to leave, leave him to escape and hide. But her hands didn't flinch, no matter how angry he sounded. "It is my own face."
"Oh…" she breathed, her hands lowering a bit from his shoulders, though they still did not leave his back. "I… You… You were feverish," she said. "I felt I had to help you."
"You help me?" he yelled, turning to her. She stumbled back. "You see? I am a demon! A monster! You would have done best to kill me in the street! Admit that I frighten you! Admit your fear!"
"Well anyone would get a fright when you yell and jerk around like that!" she suddenly yelled back at him. Eric stepped back from her, surprised. From the tenderness she's shown before, and her demeanor, he had not expected this hot temper.
The girl stood up and went back to the broken plate. As she grabbed a broom, he sat down on the bed, wondering. How could she not be afraid of his face? Even after learning that it was no burn?
"And who is Christeine, anyway?" she asked over her shoulder as she stood and went to a window, tossing out the pewter shards.
"What?" he asked, still in a daze.
"That was the name you kept saying," she answered, going to her cupboard and getting out the last two chipped plates. "Is she your wife?"
Eric laughed. "In my wishes," he whispered. "No," he said louder, "No, I am unmarried."
"Your sweetheart then?" she asked, putting what he now saw was sausages and eggs on the plates.
"I have no one," he answered roughly, "No woman on earth would want one such as me, can't you see that?"
"All I see is a man getting over a fever who is feeling sorry for himself," she said equaly rough. She handed him the plate, a napkin, and a fork. "Now eat this. You need to eat something. Though with your temper and ingratitude I should throw you out on the street." As the woman across from him ate her meal, he stared at his share. She looked at him and then to the plate. "It's not poisoned," he said.
"What?" he asked, looking at her.
She was chewing her food. She swallowed and answere,d gesturing with her fork, "You look at it as if it were poisoned, or like it'll attack you as soon as the tongs go in. It's perfectly good food," she continued, taking another rbite of hers, "Not spoiled. You rich aristocracy think too little of the common."
"I am not rich," he said.
"Oh," she said, setting her fork on the plate. She picked up the hole filled napkin on her lap, wiped her mouth, and said, taking full measure of him, "Oh yes, all beggars dress in fine silk shirts and pants made for dancing in parties."
"It is a costume," he said.
"Oh, then you are a theif?" she asked, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
"I am a perfomrer," her said, now truly angry with this impertinent woman. "I have sung arias, composed several operas, and designed every set imaginable in the Opera Popular! I wrote the very Opera performed this night!"
"You mean last night" she stated.
"Last night? You mean this night," he said.
"No, Monsieur Maestro," she said, "Last night. It's been an entire day since I dragged you up here."
Eric gapped, "That's- That's impossible!"
"No," she said, "it's been a day. As I've said before you have suffered form a fever. And I highly doubt that you wrote the Opera for last night's performance."
"Why? Do you doubt my talent?" he snarled.
"No," she said, "Rumors say that the Phantom wrote it," she stood up and took her empty plate to the rust lined sink. "And I don't believe that you could be the murderous Phantom whom people are raving about in every corner of Paris."
Eric set his plate on the bed as he stood up, and said as threateningly as he could, "And what makes you believe I am not?"
She stopped wiping the plate she was washing, and looked over at him. "You don't have the look in your eyes, for all your voice growls like a dog's."
He was speachless. How could this girl, with her quick tongue and temper, still be so trusting? So forgiving? He sat down again, and this time, he took the fork and plate, and slowly began eating what he now knew was his breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
As he chewed the tough meat and the eggs, the girl left the room, going to another. He sat,contemplating how he would take his leave of this place, and where he could go to avoid the authorities 'America, perhaps' he thought, when he suddenly heard the beginning notes of the third movement in Brahms' 3rd Symphony. He stopped as he was lifting the fork, and looked over to his hostess. She was playing Brahms! Oh, and the sound, the sound was exquisite! He closed his eyes, and the music that flowed from the sweeping of the bow across the strings took his mind away. He imagined great tales in the notes. He saw a weeping woman running from an unrequited love; he saw an innocent man running from prison and death… He saw himself, running from heart ache and the burning Opera House.
As the girl went on to the 4th movement, he turned to her and asked, "How can you play like that?"
She smiled. It was not an uncomely smile. "You see I am not a common beggar either?" she asked in return. "I am also a performer, 'Phantom'. I was taught in my father's house. Before he died."
"I am sorry," he said.
"Don't be," she said, ceasing her playing and laying the violin on her lap. "It isn't your fault my father died of pnuemonia and left me with a stepmother with the personality of a shrew."
"It was a waste of talent," Eric said. "You should be in London, or Venice. You should be holding concertoes for royalty… not locked here in this dismal place."
Break
"Yes," she mused, "But would anyone take a daughter whose mother was a Japanese Geishia girl, and her father a dead man surrounded in scandal?" Celeste stood again and went to take her violin back to her room, when the man on her spare mattress asked, "And what is the name of this diamond in the rough?"
She smiled, and did not try to hide it as she returned and sat across form him again. "I am Celeste," she told him again. "Celeste Angeline Coupette. And you, Monsieur?"
"I am Eric," he said, taking her hand, to shake, "The Phantom of the Opera."
'Again with this jest?' Celeste asked herself. Fine, she would go along with his joke for a time, untill he was willing to make his true identity known. "A pleasure," she said, "Monsieur Phantom."
"And you, Mademoiselle Diamond," he replied, smiling. It was not an uncomely smile.