Mockingbird
The
Phantom's Angel
Prologue
My father's name was Charles.
When I was just a little girl, he was my God. Since he adored my Maman, Lilith
Anna Valerius, I wanted to be exactly like her.
I often asked my Papa the story of how he and Maman met, especially after my
Maman died of the consumption. It reminded me that some things stay stable and
unchanged when the rest of my young world collapsed around me.
My Papa was a wonderful violin
player, turning simple folk tunes into angelic masterpieces, to my ears. It was
through his playing that he met my Maman.
When Papa was two and twenty, he was
as poor as a church mouse. "Poorer even," he used to say when he
began his story. I always thought that was silly, since what is poorer than a
church mouse? However, I never contradicted my Papa because my Papa was always
right. Even if he was not, he was a marvelous storyteller. He said that he
loved music, and only music, before he met Maman. Papa told me that my
Grandmother and Grandfather had been killed in a horse-and-buggy accident two
years before that, and all the rest of his family had gotten sick or moved far
away. That always made me sad for him, this Papa from long ago, before he was
even a Papa, and people only called him Charles. However, I consoled myself by
saying the good part was coming soon.
Papa started playing the fiddle
when he was five years old, seventeen years before he met Maman. His papa, my
Grandfather, taught him how. When Grandfather and Grandmother died, Papa used
to play his fiddle at fairs and put out an old hat he had found to collect
money. He would play well-known folk songs, so that there was always a large
crowd around him singing, and when he was done, they'd clap and laugh merrily
and then leave a little money for giving them their merriment.
It was one of these times when
he was playing The Resurrection of Lazarus, his favorite song. There was
the usual crowd around him, clapping their hands, but no one was singing, for
no one could do his violin playing justice. All of the sudden, there was the
most beautiful voice he had ever heard singing the tune with his violin. Papa
swore people looked heavenward when they heard that voice, because they thought
an angel was with them.
He was just as convinced when he stood upon a wooden crate to
see in the direction the voice was coming from. He saw an exquisite-looking
girl singing with his violin playing. She looked like an angel. She was golden
haired, with huge green eyes and lily-white skin that looked like velvet, yet
she was tiny, no more than five feet tall. She obviously did not live around
the provincial town they were in, Uppsala, because she looked like aristocracy.
Not just because of her clothing and how she took care of herself, but in her
bearing. Papa stared, but was awoken from his trance by chants of "Play!
Play!" In his astonishment, he had frozen with the bow poised over the
violin strings. He and the pretty girl finished the song to a flourish of applause,
and twice as much money as he usually made. The pretty girl turned to another
girl beside her and whispered something to her, looking at my Papa.
Here Papa always said, "I
am usually a brave man, but your Maman was so beautiful I was afraid to
approach her!" I always laughed and said " You' re so silly,
Papa!"
Papa found the strength in him
to approach her. At this point he would stand me up and pretended I was my
Maman, and he bowed to me and introduced himself, saying "I am very
impressed with your singing, miss," and he gazed into my eyes.
Since I knew this story by
heart, I would always giggle and say " Sir, my name is Lilith Anna
Valerius, though I would prefer you call me Lilli. I am quite impressed with
your violin playing as well." I would gaze back into his eyes, knowing all
the while that he was thinking of how that first look told him he was in love
with my Maman.
My Maman as Papa soon learned,
was a genuinely loving, sweet girl. She was twenty at the time, but because of
her size, she looked sixteen. She looked after all seven of her younger
brothers and sisters as if they were her own children. She was of aristocratic
descent in Sweden, but her Mamma and Father moved to Brittany, France when they
were married. Her Father was some form of duke in Sweden but had no way to
prove it. Contrary to the archetype of high society, my Mama was very kind and
not at all arrogant.
Papa would never tell me about
their courtship, no matter how much I begged. When I was younger, I was simply
in love with faery and romance books. I wanted every winsome detail, but my
Papa never told me. Even when I was older I would ask Mamma Valerius, my
Grandmother, but she wouldn't tell me either. At this point in Papa's story, he
would just say, "Mama's parents liked me so well that even though I was
poor and she was rich, they let us marry."
Maman and Papa were married in a
quiet ceremony in a Catholic Church in 1860. Papa did not want a big ceremony
since the only people he could invite were his older brother, Owen, and his
Scottish wife, Bonnie, newlyweds, and Papa's only living relatives. Maman
invited only family and had one friend, Sophia, as her maid of honor, and the
oldest male child, Tobias, two years younger than her, was best man.
My Papa told me "With
loving your Maman, I became the most caring man in the world; I loved
everything and everyone in the world." This made me contented and happy,
not just that my Papa was happy because of my Maman, but that he said many
times that I had the same quality to bring happiness to him, and to others.
He and Maman built a cottage a
little north of Uppsala, where Papa had been born. Next door, in that little
village, lived my Uncle Owen and Aunt Bonnie, as I have said, my Papa's only
living relatives.
Since my Papa had become so
happy, he said, he was only happier when, in January 1861, Mama announced she
was going to have a baby. Papa would try to tell me this part in turn
pretending to be Mama, and then himself.
"Your Maman had a coy way
of telling me good news," Papa said. "When she came to me she said
'Charles,'" he would say in a high pitched voice. I giggled.
"No, Papa, she said it like
this," I would say, then put on my most coy tone and say
"Charles,"
"Why, you sound just like
your Maman!" Papa would say. "By now I knew that tone of hers, and I
said, 'Yes, my love?' Your Maman's eyes lit up with excitement, and she
said,"
"'We're going to have a
child!'" I would say, excited.
"Yes! I stood from my
chair, dropping my book, then I sat back down again. I was completely
astonished! I said 'What?...When?...How...? Well, not how, but when?'"
"'In August.'" I would
reply, playing the part of my very own mother well. Then I would laugh, and
Papa would take me in his arms and twirl me around the room, as he did with my
mother not so many years before, but it seemed like forever ago.
"But this baby wasn't me,
was it, Papa?" I would ask, prompting the story to go on.
"No, it wasn't. We began
making plans for the baby, and we were so happy that we would finally have a
child." Then Papa would say about how he and Maman prepared anxiously for
the baby.
In June, Papa said, Maman had a
baby. It was a boy, and his name was Alexander Charles. The doctors told Papa
that Maman had a very hard time giving birth to baby Alex, and so she would
never be able to have any more children. Alex was rather sick for a baby,
because he was born so early. "This meant he would cry and cry and there
was nothing we could do for him," Papa would say gravely. I nodded.
"Your Papa, rest his soul,
loved that sweet baby," Mamma Valerius said when I asked her, at fifteen,
what had happened to Alex. "The child was so bright, so happy, and so handsome,"
Mamma Valerius said. "He was only around six months. . .yes, six months,
because it was in December. . .that the poor sweet child died." I was
shocked when Mamma told me this. Papa never told me that. He said that Alex was
gone by that Christmas.
"Your Maman and Papa loved
that little boy so much, they were completely heartbroken when the little boy
died," Mamma Valerius said, crossing herself. "Your Maman, the
determined child she was, and always had been, was intent on conceiving again.
Your Papa wasn\rquote t sure if he could love another baby as much as he loved
Alex. He tried to talk her out of it, and he said the doctors said it might be
fatal to her.
"'Mamma,' Lilli said, 'I
don't care. I want another child.' Your Maman wanted a child with her whole
heart. She had always loved the weak and helpless. She once found a baby
kitten, your Missy, and the thing could not have *picked* a better
mother..."
Papa said that Aunt Bonnie had
conceived a child by then. Maman would go over there constantly to talk to
Bonnie. "It was as if she were trying to have the experience of having a
child through Bonnie," Papa said sadly.
"Your mother, the stubborn
girl she was, conceived again the February of 1863. She wanted a baby that
would *live* , she said, one that she could care for and nurture." Papa
would say quietly. I never asked him what had happened to Alex, because
whenever he told me this part of the story, it seemed like he was in a trance.
He would stare straight ahead of himself, remembering the stubborn, determined,
caring woman that was my Maman. It was almost as if he could see her standing
there before him.
"Your Papa had grown weary
after Alex's sudden death. He loved the first baby so much that he wasn't sure
if he could love another child so much. Most of all, he feared for Lilli's
health. Her physical health was in jeopardy, first of all. It might have proven
fatal for her to birth another child. He had also seen her emotional state
after losing Alexander. She had been broken up for months. If she lost this one
too, and survived herself, what kind of emotional torture would she put herself
through?" Mamma told me.
Meanwhile, on August 17th,
Bonnie gave birth to a healthy baby girl. My Maman, although she was with child
herself, helped birth the baby. She was named the child's Godmother, and my
Papa her Godfather. The girl had her mother's face, and her father's evergreen
eyes. They named the girl, who was to become one of the closest friends and
greatest adversaries I would ever have, Sasmoe Lilth.
"The day your mother went
into labor," Papa recalled, "I was so nervous! She woke me up early
to go get Bonnie to tell her that the baby was coming. I ran over to your Aunt
Bonnie's house to tell her, waking both Bonnie and Owen up in the process. When
I told Bonnie what was happening, she turned as white as a sheet. 'It's too
early,' she said, although she was getting up and ready to leave as she said
that. She rushed out the door leaving Owen and I standing there. Your Uncle
Owen looked at me, still half-asleep, and said 'What...?'"
My Aunt Bonnie locked the door
to the master bedroom in my Papa's house. My Papa waited for what seemed like
ages. My Uncle Owen came after what seemed like days, but was really only about
an hour. "I paced and paced...would Lilli be all right? Would the baby be
all right?" Papa would say, getting up and demonstrating for me. Then he
would launch into a silly thing that always made me laugh, and that he probably
made up. I don't think he was actually thinking "What if the doctors don't
come out alive?! What if the bed does not come out alive??! What if...."
Then he would pretend the doctor had opened the door in front of him.
"Thank goodness you're okay!" he would say, pretending to shake the
doctor by the shoulders. I think, in retrospect, that he did this just to make
me laugh. I was only a little girl when he told it to me.
"But then, the doctor
grinned. He said the words that changed my life forever. He said 'You have a
daughter.' Then he said 'Your wife is perfectly fine,' but 'You have a
daughter,' are the words that would make me the happiest man to ever walk the
earth.
"I walked into the bedroom
and saw your mother sitting up in bed, she was a little tired and her hair was
plastered to her face with sweat, but she was glowing. She beamed at the tiny
bundle in her arms. 'Charles,' she said, 'We have a daughter.' 'I know,' I
said, for lack of anything better to say. 'Wh-what shall we name her?' I
asked."
"How about Lilli, in honor
of her mother?" Aunt Bonnie suggested.
"No, that would get a
little confusing." Papa laughed. "How about Anna, in honor of her
Grandmother?"
"May we come in?" my
Uncle Owen, accompanied by Mamma Valerius, a priest, and holding baby Sasmoe.
" I took the liberty of getting her Grandmother and a priest. And,"
Owen said, looking at the three-month-old in his arms, "I knew Sasmoe
would want to come and see her little cousin."
"Have you decided on a
name?" the priest, Father James, asked gently.
"No, Father, but I think
I've got it." My Maman said, a still wider smile growing on her face.
"Kirsten-Anna. I've always loved the name Kirsten."
"I think it's
perfect," Papa said. Everyone agreed. "What do you think?" he
asked the tiny bundle in Maman's arms. The baby gurgled. "I think she
likes it," my Papa said, laughing.
Father John said the baptism
rights. "I christen you Kirsten-Anna Daaé."
And this is where my story begins.
