Chapter 1: Sing
In the spring, my mind always begins to wander…My heart tossing from wanting the snow to wanting the sun…and sadly, I get neither.
I sit here and write this to you…Diary? Journal? Let's just be more simple, and say it is you, the audience, the sentient being of which I can pour every ounce of my heartfelt emotion onto-
I'm sounding a bit like my father. Melodramatic as he always is, seeing as he's always drunk. And yet somehow he still retains the businessman's eye for good investments and such…thankfully I have been reduced to an orphan waif out on the street by his outrageous affliction with liquor.
Ever since my mothers passing, I feel as if I've been another child altogether. How queer; None of my friends would think that they are still children. Indeed, 16 is close to being eligible for wedlock, as so many of my friends love to squeal about.
I believe that, even if this is just my ramblings, this is the first time that I have 'spoken' in almost a year. I believe it drives my father farther from me because of this very same thought…I will not speak. The sound of my voice is too much alike to that of my mothers. The thought of her is hardly bearable…but I suppose that since I am in her dressing room at this very moment it can't hurt me further to write about her.
Maybe it would be best to cut off my ramblings for now? I hear the clock chiming not to far away, and there are too many flights of stairs that I must go down in order to meet my father for dinner. The Opera House is so immense…But no matter how much I can feel her here with me, there is only one thought that saves me from nightmares.
The dream, rather. Of singing again. Will someone give me a reason to sing?
Signed,
Anna
It has been almost a year since young Di'Anna Daae de Chagny's hesitant, yet swift, move into the opera house. Her father could not stand the sight of her any longer, sitting alone in her room, simply reading. The girl would not speak, she would only write…the maids at their home learned to judge her moods by what she was reading, and what she was wearing.
If her loosely curled brunette hair was tied up, she was only vaguely interested in what she was reading. Just something to pass the time. Yet when it was down, curling like a veil around the sides of her face, she was intensely interested in the subject at hand.
Her mood was easy enough to decipher, depending on the color of the clothing she wore. If the color was darker, she was upset, or merely not in a pleasant mood, and vice versa for lighter colors. With her pale features, a strikingly beautiful combination of her father, Raoul de Chagny, and her mother, Christine Daae.
All of this mattered little to Monsieur de Chagny. Ever since his wife's death, he has tried to trudge on, facing the world with a bleak outlook on life, caring little for the inner turmoil of his young daughter. On the eve of Christine's death, he sought only the comfort of finding his wife in his daughter. He begged her, whiskey heavy on his breath, to sing for him, to sing for her mother, and she would do no such thing. It was on that night that she suffered a broken bone for the first time, being roughly tossed away by her unstable father. It was on that night that she vowed to never speak again. The one thing that connected her to her mother would never bring heartache to her, or her family, ever again.
Or so she hoped. A week went by, a month, and her father's state only worsened. Locked away in his lavish study, a bottle of some sort of liquor his only companion and his only confidant, he began to whittle away at his relationship to his daughter. No longer would he lavish her with presents, coddle her and give in to her requests. He would not ask If she needed or wanted things, new books or new frocks. For she never asked for anything, wanting to be as little of a reminder of her mother as possible. And for this childish hope, and this sad feeling of responsibility, he hated the young girl.
On the next eve of his wife's death, the young girl was 16, and had not spoken a word. Her father could bear it no longer, and he sent her away to the opera house. The scene went somewhat like this…
It was dark. A chilling spring morning, Di'Anna was torn from underneath her blankets, by a cold, unfeeling hand. No sound escaped her lips and she was pulled out of her room, down the stairs. In nothing but a nightdress, she was cast out of her own front door.
'You do not care to speak? Then you will not care to work for a living. Go, and dance, and get drunk and sell yourself. I care enough for your mother, to know that you are the reason she died!' He took a swallow of his bottle, some of it dribbling down his chin. The maids had rushed to the door, hearing the commotion, and one bravely tried to step out of the doorway.
'Get back!' a brutal slap was delivered to the young maids face, and the rest watched on, their faces torn, and horrified.
'Don't you ever,' he took another swallow, 'EVER step foot on this doorstep again. Cast away the de Chagny name from your breast, and go back to your ROOTS, Di'Anna! Go be a beggar wretch on the doorstep of the opera, and see how they receive you!' He stalked back to the doorstep, shouting at the maids to give her no aid, and slammed the door.
Young Di'Anna, sixteen, laid on the cold cobblestone road, in nothing but a nightdress, shaking. And just as they would each night, silent tears ran down her cheeks.
She struggled to her feet, realizing that something in her arm was either broken or badly sprained. She wiped her face with her other arm, and began to walk in the general direction of the opera house, knowing nothing else that could be done.
Meg Giry was on her way out of the Opera House, off on a personal errand when she saw a young girl, collapsed on the steps leading up to the Opera House. It was late, and the temperature was much too chilly for simply a nightdress to be clinging to the young girls slender frame. Her heart fluttered; Was she dead? Was there some terrible crime committed, right on the doorstep of the Opera house? She knelt beside the girl, gently laying her fingers upon her. All she felt on her fingertips was cold flesh. Her hand went to her mouth, as she nearly flew back up the steps. Flinging open the doors, she ran to the sleeping quarters of all of the dancers, frantically calling for someone to help her carry the girl inside. Her mother, frail as she was, came hurrying up to her daughter, then began to tap the wall with her cane.
"Wake up! One of you morons put yourself to good use! We have a young girl who might be dead outside!" Some of the more respectable stagehands began to rouse themselves, throwing on their trousers and boots.
"I'll only need two of you." She said, glaring down the other three, less reputable men who had hastily dressed.
Taking two of the men with them, she and Meg began to move their lips, almost in unison, in a fervent prayer for the young girls life.
Authors Notes:
Hello Everyone! This is just the beginning of what I hope to be a very intricate story. However, I have a few things I'd like to mention.
This is based loosely on the more recent Phantom of the Opera film. Loosely. Simply because certain things in the book do not mesh well with my concept.
Also, Just to clarify, I've decided that Erik, whilst Christine was present, was nearly the same age as both Raoul and herself. That way, he's only in his early thirties. As was common in that time, and as Di'Anna stated in her Diary entry, women were of age to be married very early. Just to clarify.
I hope you enjoyed my first work, and I'd love to get comments and reviews from you all.
-Mello
