Paris, France
1886
The boy could not breathe.
Breathe in… breathe out… in… out…
His lungs shuddered beneath his chest as he struggled to breathe in the confines of the burlap bag. He tried to keep his gasps to a minimum, lest the ringmaster hear him. Despite his struggling gasps, he did not dare lift the bag over his head. The boy's dirt-encrusted fingers clumsily grasped at the edges of the bag to keep the thing in place.
He could hear the taunting jests of the crowd already. Their screaming laughter threatened to shatter his eardrums and burst out of his very mind.
Look at his face!
Oh, poke him with that stick again—look, he crawls like an animal!
The boy's chest shuddered again, and he pulled the burlap sack further down his face. He screwed his eyes shut, but the images of the taunting crowds appeared on the backs of his eyelids. Women, men, children—it did not matter. It seemed that all throngs of Parisians traveled just outside of the city to gawk at the Circus of Freaks.
"Francis!"
The ringmaster's voice cracked in the air like a whip, and the boy felt the sting of it before he felt the man's walking stick crash into his shoulder. He fell to the dirt and clawed at the bag over his head, making sure it did not move. Despite his efforts, the ringmaster reached a fat hand through the bars of the cage and yanked the burlap sack off of his head.
"The show is starting, get up," the man barked. When Francis hesitated, the man hit him with the stick again. "Do as I say, boy!"
Francis pawed at his face and sprawled his fingers out in an attempt to cover his face. He staggered to his feet. In the dim light, wearing only a rudimentary loincloth, he only felt naked without his burlap sack over his head. Tears began to well up in his eyes, but he hastily wiped it away with the back of his hand. He could not afford to let the ringmaster see him crying.
"Monsieur," Francis gasped, pulling at the ringmaster's sleeve. "I'm thirsty."
He should have known better. The man simply pulled his hair with an angry, fat fist.
"You dare make demands of me, boy?" he hissed. His breath reeked of cheap wine. "Shut your mouth and do your job. We'll see if you deserve a drink after this, eh?" The ringmaster shoved Francis back into the dirt before he left to wave the circus-goers toward his cage. The boy scrambled to the other side of his barred living space and stared up at the people who approached him.
Francis' hands moved slowly at first, trembling as they moved to cover his ears. However, as his master commanded, he kept his face up so that the attendees could see it. He always thought it so strange that these people paid money and traveled so far just to see his face and mock it. He could not stop his tears now.
Their words began to blend together—a horrific melting pot of insults and ridicule.
Make him do something… Poke him with that stick!
Almost immediately, he felt one of them prod him on the back with a walking stick. He fell to the dirt and crawled to his feet, much to the amusement of his audience. One of the women shrilled with laughter that could be heard over the throng of mockery. Francis backed into the corner of his cage in an attempt to avoid them.
He prayed that they would move on to the next "specimen," as the ringmaster called them. Please move on, he thought. Please move on. Please move on.
In that moment, a soft hand grazed his arm, and he whipped around to see who touched him. To his surprise, a girl, only a few years older than him, met his eyes. Her eyes reflected the sadness that Francis felt welling inside his chest. For a moment, he had forgotten that he even had an audience.
The girl said nothing, but her eyes spoke volumes. As did the sharp twine that she placed in his palm.
Suddenly, Francis felt a surge of courage rise within him.
The crowd had begun to move away, save for the man that hit him with a walking stick earlier. His trembling hands moved away from his sides, and he took a courageous step toward the other side of the cage. All of the swelled anger inside of him began to boil over—all of the rage and contempt he held for the people who mocked him for days on end finally exploded.
In a flash, he wrapped the twine around the man's throat and pulled hard.
"H-Help!" the man gurgled. "Help me!"
Francis did not stop. Not even when the ringmaster rushed over at the sound of the man struggling against the bars of the cage. The remaining spectators screamed and ran away from the cage, and the ringmaster had to swim through the crowd of people to reach the cage. He pulled at the dying man, but by the time he freed him from Francis' grasp, the boy had already killed his prey.
"You… You monster!" the ringmaster spluttered.
He reached his fat hand through the bars and unlocked the cage before he swung the door open. Francis did not hesitate. He stole the opportunity to slip through the ringmaster's legs as fast as he could, and he dashed out of his prison. Before he slipped out of his grasp, he snatched his burlap bag from the man's fat hands.
"This way!"
It was the girl who had given him the twine earlier. Francis reached out for her hand and grasped it between his fingers; he had trusted her thus far, it was only to his benefit to trust her further. The girl pulled on his hand and ran in the opposite direction, toward the center of the city.
"Where are we going?" Francis hollered.
"Somewhere safe," the girl called back to him as they ran. She turned around briefly and smiled at him. "My name is Elizaveta. I promise that you can trust me, all right?"
"A-And I'm Francis," the boy stammered in reply. "I trust you."
They seemed to run for hours. Francis' legs burned with fatigue, and he was about to collapse on the ground when Elizaveta finally stopped. She entwined her fingers between his and squeezed his hand reassuringly. Francis' chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. He had never been a decent runner, and until then, he had never run so far (and so fast) in his life.
He looked up with wide, frightened eyes at the building that loomed over them. He had never seen anything like it.
"It is the Opera Garnier," Elizaveta breathed. "You'll be safe here."
"Here?" Francis asked. "I cannot go in there! They have already mocked me enough—"
"Just follow me," the girl insisted. When Francis did not believe her, she tugged on his hand. "It is all right, my father works here. I promise you'll be safe. Or would you rather go back to that ringmaster of yours?"
Without a second thought, Francis shook his head. However, he hurriedly pulled his burlap sack over his head again, to hide his face. Elizaveta led him toward the building, and to the sewers. Francis had heard that there was an entire series of crypts beneath the city of Paris, and he supposed that one of the crypts led to this opera house. Still, he hesitated before entering.
"Elizaveta," he began. "Thank you. For helping me."
Elizaveta shook her head.
"Come on," she said, smiling. "We have no time to lose, Francis!"
With that said, the two children ducked into the crypts beneath the Opera Garnier.
