Her heart was cold. One lover lost, the other deserted because she felt she was not worthy of him. A nobleman, come to rescue her only to be met with her ungrateful heart, though he did not know it. He thought she was happy. He thought wrong.

Once your heart is touched by that despairing, seductive darkness, it can never go back. Always it will pull, inexorably, at your soul till you are ready to give yourself to the deepest of labyrinths, knowing that at the darkest point of the maze there will be the voice of an angel to guide you, to fiercely embrace you when you are least expecting it.

There is a rose that blooms for

Hearts that love in secret;

There is a time for lovers who

Kiss only in darkness.

The bright flame that burns

your skin will die and quiver:

but the never-ending night

will sing to us forever.

But like a fool she had given it up. Given up the mystery and music she knew she yearned for secretly for the familiar sunshine, which she began to realize, as she looked into the handsome face of her childhood sweetheart, offered her nothing. The light held everything and nothing; it was full of empty promises. And now perhaps that maze had closed itself to her forever.

With a grief-stricken cry she plunged herself into the freezing lake and swam away from her rescuer. Of course he jumped in after her; but she was too fast for him. Pushing, pushing further and further down to the murky depths till all light from the surface was lost and she could see no more. She refused to be saved. She would return to her Angel of Music, and she would save him from the misery she had left him in.

But when she reached the banks, he was not there. Only a few silver shards of glass gave any inkling of his having been there at all. The trail of glass led to a broken mirror, which opened to a secret exit. With an act of courage and tomfoolery she stepped through the frame of the looking glass and wandered along that narrow corridor, not knowing where it led, not knowing if she would die there, alone and comfortless. Many days she walked, and walked, and finally crawled, but she was lost. And finally she reached the light again. She was once again in familiar surroundings; she was backstage, where the ballerinas waited always for their cue to come a-flittering onto the stage like butterflies.

The cold and exhaustion had taken its toll on her body. She was dying; her fine dress was in shreds, her hair in limp tangled locks around her heart-shaped face. But as her last breath left her, she reached out, poised to enter the spotlight, and sang her last song:

Waiting in the wings

For your breath, your touch

Beneath my skin.

Frozen in wax am I

Beneath the opera-sky

Where the chandelier sings and I

can not.

My lips are sealed; I am

Helpless.

But still I wait.

For your kiss and one

Frail chance

When your song pours forth then

I can dance.

Till then spirits linger

Between these bone-like fingers

Ivory and ebony

Play forever on your piano

infinitum.

The grand opera house now stands in desolate shambles, but perhaps, just perhaps, a wax-like figure of a girl stands there still at the edge of the raised curtain, her mouth open in eternal song, where she waits for her Angel to rejoin her.

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