Author's note: Hello everyone reading this! This is my first fanfic and I would really really love comments, ideas, reviews, anything! So PLEASE review! Thank you so much for reading!
The tears flowed freely over his ravaged face, a face which years had not improved in the least. He had suffered decades of tormenting loneliness, years of agonizingly humiliating torture, and years of depression to finally find companionship. But now she is gone. "Linette Viardot," beautiful words, horribly immortalized on a stone slab. She is gone. Taken from him forever. Last year she died. Even though they had thirty glorious years together, it was not enough. An eternity would not have been enough.
Slightly consoled by the presence of his children and grandchildren, Erik found the courage and resolution to complete the task he had come here to do. With a heart wrenching sense of finality, he removed the secret chest in her tombstone. Thrice his trembling hands fumbled and nearly dropped his most prized possession, a stunningly bright ring that had been Linette's engagement ring.
Erik swallowed back his tears, and placed the tiny piece of his beloved wife in the velvet-lined compartment. He slid it back into the tombstone and sealed it.
Erik's eldest daughter, Serena, draped her delicate arm around his shoulders. Facing her, he was once again struck by how much she looked like her mother. She had Linette's mass of auburn curls, petite nose, full red lips, and enormous eyes that appeared to change color from blue to green to grey. The similarities between Serena and Erik lay in their pale skin and their hands. Hands that obviously belonged to a pianist, long, slender, and delicate fingers that contained a hidden strength and dexterity. Their main similarities, however, were in their personalities and the workings of their minds.
"We should go now, papa," Serena's hushed appeal broke Erik's reverie. He blinked back the memories and made certain that his silent sobs had not caused his porcelain mask to come off, and nodded to his daughter.
As Erik stepped back from Linette's grave, he gently placed a bouquet of roses the color of fresh blood in front of the tombstone. He looked at his family, his three children and four grandchildren, with a mixture of sadness, love, and longing. He noticed that his son, Gaston, had tears streaked down his cheeks.
Gaston was a flawless model of how Erik would have looked, had he not been born deformed. The opposite of his elder sister, Serena, Gaston had his father's looks (without the deformity), and his mother's personality. Gaston tightly gripped the hand of his wife, Arianne. She, too, had a steady flow of tears.
A quick glance at their party, and Erik noticed that they all were crying. It brought a fresh wave of tears to his eyes to see their love for his Linette.
Erik dried his one accessible eye; the other was hidden beneath his mask; and said, "Serena is right. It is time we leave this morbid place." It started to snow. Erik added, "We can have hot chocolate and tea at home."
As the family shuffled towards Gaston's new automobile, Kara, Serena and her husband, Derek's five year old daughter tripped on a gnarled root protruding from the base of an eerily leafless tree. As swiftly as a lightning bolt striking a tree, Erik swooped down and carried his granddaughter to the vehicle. T he brave little girl cried only briefly.
It appeared to be only moments later when they arrived at Erik's home. His children knew the house well. They had all grown up in it.. Erik asked his butler, an Englishman named Elijah, to have Cook prepare hot chocolate and tea for them.
Erik's family went into the study to warm themselves by the fire. A fire crackled in the beautiful, massive fireplace. Erik went over to stand by his youngest daughter, Thia, who stood by an oversized window that provided a perfect view of the extensive gardens.
Thia turned to face her father. "we will not be able to go home tonight," she admitted. "Not with the weather like this."
Erik turned his head away from his child and stared out the window. It was as if he viewed another world, a world of complete white. A blizzard had crept upon the chateau, engulfing it in a sea of velvety white. When they left the cemetery Erik had observed a light snowfall begin, but it did not seem to indicate a blizzard of these proportions.
"You all must stay the night," Erik directed his reply to the entire silent family. He addressed his oldest daughter, "Serena, you and Derek can stay in your old rooms. You may go into your mother's wardrobe and borrow fresh clothing. The two of you always were the same size. "Derek," addressing his son-in-law, "You should borrow some of Gaston's clothing. He still has plenty left in his rooms and is somewhat closer to your height than I." He turned back toward Serena, "Some of Kara's things are still in your quarters from the last time you visited."
Erik gave similar instructions to the rest of the family. The mahogany grand clock in the hall struck nine. Elijah herded the smaller groups down the hall to their respective sleeping quarters. Erik drifted up the many flights of stairs to the attic.
Erik entered the intimate space above the vast lonely expanse of his chateau. Shaking his head to remove himself of the sorrow, he walked to an old, dusty chest made of wood and brass.
He removed a lavish brass key from a gold chain around his neck. Erik fitted the key into an equally lavish brass lock on the chest. With a sigh of musty air, the chest opened.
Erik searched through the silk lining of the chest. His hands met the icy surface of a picture frame. The frame was made of silver, shaped like leaves and stems on top of an abalone surface of roses made of hundreds of tiny rubies.
Erik pulled the frame from the chest. The picture within was of Linette, exactly as she was when he first saw her. It was a detailed drawing Erik had begun using his almost perfectly photographic memory. He was inspired to create the picture since the first moment he laid eyes on her. Later, when she sat in the parlor of his home for him to complete the picture, he added colored paint to the charcoal sketch.
Making certain that none of his renewed tears hit the painting, Erik closed and locked the trunk. He glided towards the stairs. Taking a last glance at the trunk, he began his descent back into the world of the living and the new.
The next morning, Erik's cook, Mathilda Johnson, a slightly plump, pleasant Englishwoman whose cooking could make even the most stubborn person's mouth water, made a huge breakfast with a wide variety of food. Although the food tasted heavenly, the family's conversations were stilted at best. At one point during the meal, each adult realized the reason for their lack of communication: Linette was not there.
Linette was always the one to start the flow of talk, the one to make them all comfortable, the one to make them laugh. Since she was gone, no one knew where to begin. Erik was not particularly a sociable person, neither was Serena. Although Thia and Gaston had their mother's social skills, finding an acceptable theme for conversation, given the circumstances, was a feat only Linette could have accomplished.
After the isolated meal, Thia's twin daughters, Amaryllis and Narcisse, played with the China dolls that their father bought for them in Germany. The dolls were unique. They looked strikingly similar to the twins for whom they were made. The dolls had white porcelain skin, rosy pink cheeks, light blue eyes, and hair in tight curls, so dark, it was almost black. The dolls wore long gowns. One was blue and the other was pink, with bows in their hair matching the dresses, and white shoes. Since Amaryllis and Narcisse were both in that stage in their lives where brushing a doll's hair brings the most exquisite pleasure, they were entirely entranced. They scarcely remembered that their father was in Germany for business again, or that they were trapped in a mysterious chateau by a blizzard.
Derek and Gaston were discussing Derek's musical career and Gaston's scientific studies. The two of them had interests, tastes, hobbies, and opinions so similar that they appeared to naturally be brothers, not brothers through marriage. Their differences lay in physical appearances, age, and Derek's passionate adoration of Serena. Thia and Arianne were watching Thia's daughters giggle with delight at their dolls, while Arianne and Gaston's son, Lionel, was playing with his cousin Kara.
The entire household was making the most of their infrequent time together. Everyone was happy, except for Serena and her father. The melancholy atmosphere from the previous day's excursion had not yet departed from the pair.
"How did you meet her, papa?" Serena verbalized her thought to her father and asked the questions she had sought answers to for years. "How did you fall in love?"
"I assume you mean your mother?" Erik inquired. When Serena nodded, he added, "That is a long and complicated story, with answers both excruciating and wonderful."
Sensing that her father would not elaborate willingly, Serena tried a new tactic. "I must, at least, know why you refuse to talk about it. Why is it so painful?"
Erik searched his daughter's eyes and found his own stubborn nature. He knew she would never leave the subject alone without answers. "Come with me." He held out his hand to her, "I believe I know something that will answer all of your questions." Serena, shocked, yet delighted by her father's sudden acquiescence, accepted his arm and together they traveled to a part of the chateau Serena had never seen before.
Erik took Serena to the same chest he had removed his prized painting from the day before. He opened the chest, and again his hands moved of their own accord to find the object he sought. He pulled a box made of solid oak wood. It had carvings of roses and songbirds on the top. This box, like the chest, containing it, required a key. Erik handed the box to Serena. She turned it over in her hands and examined it from every angle.
"What is it?" Serena questioned Erik.
"This," Erik explained to her, while searching for a small silver key in the chest, "is your mother's story. She wrote down everything that happened to her from the beginning of the year we met, through her disease when she spoke to me and I wrote it. I wrote for her until she could no longer talk. When she died, I put all of the things relating to our love in this chest. The sections of our history that she could not remember she filled in with pages from her diary. My journal is in the box, as well. Combined, they should tell you what you want to know."
Serena looked at the box with awe. She realized that finally, after years of curiosity, she held the story of the two people who, besides Kara, meant the most to her, her parents.
Serena and Erik walked arm in arm to the rest of their family, after making a slight detour to leave the treasured box in her boudoir.
As the pair left her chambers, Serena knew that, no matter how long she had waited for the truth almost within her grasp, she would have to wait until the rest of the household was asleep, when she could read in privacy. Appearing as if nothing had transpired and as if she was not impatient for the night, Serena entered her family's company.
When Kara spied her mother she pranced to Serena's side. "Maman, look at what Lionel gave me!" Kara exclaimed, holding up a lacquered box of cherry wood with white roses painted on top. "It is a music box!" Kara demonstrated the box's genius by turning the small key the the back. "It plays our lullaby." A sweet melody began, the song that Linette sang to Serena and Serena sang to Kara. It was a heartfelt tune that was almost hypnotically calming.
Serena smiled.. "It is beautiful, ma cherie," she cooed to her daughter. "I hope you thanked your cousin for this marvelous gift."
"Of course I did, maman," Kara retorted playfully. The child then proceeded to snatch back the little box and run off to share her new treasure with the others. Behind her, Serena could feel Erik tense. She stepped towards him.
"What is the matter, papa?" Serena inquired.
"I will have to ask Gaston where his son got that box," Erik muttered, more to himself than to her.
"Papa?" Serena pleaded, knowing that when her father entered the world of his memories, it was immensely difficult to pull him back out. His daughter's plea managed to penetrate his thoughts. Erik's eyes lost their faraway look.
"My father... made that for my mother," he stumbled over the words, as if they were physically painful.
Serena decided it would be best to drop the subject and wait for night to come.
The day passed too slowly for Serena, much too slowly. She attempted to conceal her impatience from her family, but was simultaneously certain that her husband could tell. To distract herself from the love story she wanted so desperately to read, she tried to fill her thoughts with her own. She remembered when she first met Derek.
She was in Paris at the Opera Populaire, watching the performance of "Faust," in which Derek starred. She was only eighteen years old and it was the first opera she had seen. Once the performance was over and the actors had taken their bows, her mother, Gaston, Thia, Serena and their hosts stayed behind. Her hosts invited the entire cast to a masquerade ball at their home. The ball was in the visiting family's honor. The masquerade was so Erik could wander freely amongst the guests.
Serena began humming the song she and Derek had danced to. Derek caught her eyes, winked, and smiled, recognizing the tune. He started laughing when a colossal blush painted his wife's face.
"What is so humorous, Derek?" Erik implored with his eyebrows raised. He had already noticed Serena's blush, which deepened with his question, but did not draw attention to it.
"Nothing incredibly interesting." Derek made a noncommittal hand gesture. "I was just thinking about a joke Gaston told me earlier. It finally made sense to me," Derek lied, convincing all there, except his wife and father-in-law. The visible half of Erik's mouth turned up in a momentary flash of a smile. The brief smirk deepened Serena's blush even more.
Their dinner finished, the children ran to the nursery to play with their new toys, all gifts from Erik, except Kara's music box. The adults strolled to the main parlor for the customary post supper tete-a-tete.
Finally, after what felt to Serena like decades, the adults dispersed to tell their children, "Good night." When Serena made certain that her daughter was slumbering peacefully, she was, at last, able to retreat to her rooms with her husband. Serena frequently remained awake longer than Derek to read. She simply did not have excess time during the daylight hours.
Serena silently crept into her boudoir so as not to awaken her husband. She carefully lifted the cherished box, and ventured with it to her mother's library, knowing no one would disturb her there. Once inside the library, Serena sat in her favorite chair, a plush, deep red leather chair, which she had always rested on with Linette while they read together. Serena opened the box and removed a thick, heavy book with a cover of tooled leather. Opening it to the first page, she found her mother's flawless script. With a deep breath she began to read.
