Okay, okay. If you're going to review as a guest please leave an email if you want a reply; I can't answer questions if I can't reply! This is going to be a very strange mishmash of canon and non canon. Let's go.
Notes rippled through the air as effortlessly as dye through water, fanning and dancing of their own accord. Careless, simple, chestnut hair a curly mop of a bun on the top of her head she swung in an imitation of a ballet, stocking-clad feet lazily spinning on the slats of the wooden floor. The low folk tune was Irish, she supposed.
She could hear it. Misty mountains she had never seen, druids with their mouths stained bitter with the juice of mistletoe, cold chalked streams and the hang of magic in the air, she wove her song like a spell of imagery which layered like a veil over her eyes. Fluting, rippling. She was unconscious of her own music, listening instead to the pictures which wavered in her mind as clear as a painting. Art painted with sound. Images with voice.
"Christine." A voice behind her was sharp. She broke off, watching the paintings waver, faint, fall. A sigh. She turned her head to find Madame Giry watching her with a strange expression on her stern face, fingers plucking unusually at the impeccable black front of her skirts. Her black hair was pulled severely from a tartly pretty face full of cheekbone and angle, lips thinned by time but eyes luminous and trained to stand out from the stage. These eyes were fixed on Christine unerringly, chips of liquid ice which warmed marginally at lighting on her adopted daughter. "You missed ballet practice."
Christine pursed her lips and uttered a curse in pretty, parlour-room French as loudly as she dared. She was prepared for practice, she had simply forgotten to attend. Her ballet slippers were laced up her calves, the standard pale ballet skirt was tied tight about her waist, the corset dipping low enough to allow easy breathing through exertion without scandal. She thought of offering an excuse, but she had none. Madame Giry noted the stricken expression on her face and softened, drawing one hand towards the younger girl with a maternal grace which might have surprised those who had not seen her with her two children. Sure enough, Meg was at her elbow, blue eyes wide and sunny with exercise as she panted, wiping tendrils of sweat dusted blond hair from her forehead.
"You're lucky." She murmured when her mother's attention was drawn elsewhere, "she nearly killed us, today."
Christine smiled despite herself, hiding her mirth with a kiss on her sisters cheek.
"Where did you hear that song?"
"I don't know maman, I must have picked it up from someone whistling it."
Madame Giry fixed Christine with a look which had frozen many a director, many a man, many an actor. It was a look charged with I-don't-know-what, the frosty glare of someone who knows. Precisely what she knew, Christine could not guess. She turned her face away, marginally, towards the stage. The three women were in the wings of the Paris opera, in one of many forgotten corners left dusty with varnish and abandoned props. A faded velvet cloth covered several box-shaped things which they seated themselves upon. If she stared very hard she could just make out Carlotta's wavered form through the gauze of the first curtain, her plump body squeezed into a corset which looked ready to pop. Piangi's skinny form beside her was skeletal, as ridiculous as a scrawny hen plucking around the fattest cawing rooster.
"Our Prima Donna must lose some weight." Meg whispered into the silence broken by the shrieks of Carlotta on stage. Christine shot her an amused glance.
"Or her voice."
"Or her husband." Madame Giry added to their light banter, before rearranging her face back into one of the stern ballet mistress. "Onto stage, I want twelve perfect plié's."
Meg darted away before she was forced to share in Christine's punishment, leaving her to slide in behind Carlotta, Piangi, and the assorted other practioners so as to satisfy Madame Giry's thirst for extremities.
The Irish song fluttered through her mind again like butter. She stopped herself from singing, content instead to play it in her head like a record as she stretched and bent to its soulful tune, Carlotta's shrieking like a long-forgotten dream.
CDECDE..
"Three; Jean, Alice and Eduard."
"Two girls?"
"And a boy."
"Why three?"
"A good number."
"Oh."
The girl's knees were touching as they lay on their sides, watching the shadows of the night shift on the other's face, feet drawn up to stave off the chill which crawled into the covers with them. Meg's light hair was in two clean braids, one on either side of a pretty face. Christine's was loose, a heavy pillow in its own right. Their eyes were vague and heavy with possibilities of the future, fingers tracing invisible children's foreheads.
"You?"
"A girl. Angela."
"Angela?"
"It means 'angel.'"
"Oh." Meg paused, "after your angel of music?"
"That's right."
They smiled at each other in perfect understanding; an understanding impossible except to girls who have spent their childhood and teenage years confessing to one another. Meg's nose dropped imperceptivity as fought sleep which was not to be fought. Christine watched her succumb, perversely intrigued in watching her friend in such a vulnerable state. She considered her own body, feeling the tugs of sleep but without the security that she would soon be pulled under. It eluded her yet.
With a sigh she leaned onto one elbow to blow out the candle by her bed, shutting her eyes immediately as darkness flooded the room, and pulling her sheets high over her head.
It wasn't long before she was singing.
The room was empty, as it had been for so long.
And yet she still sang into silence.
The next morning dawned cold and with a clarity of crystal under moonbeams. When Christine stretched out a hand the bed was empty, but for the sharp crackle of paper.
Bonjour, Christie,
Maman woke me early. Lefevre is expecting important guests.
See you at dance at 11.
M.
The paper dropped from her fingers as uninterestedly as she had picked it up, eyes already alert from her sleep. She pushed the covers away from herself, a sway in her step as she twirled across the floorboards do the piece of silver nailed to the wall. Meg had left a cream jug of lukewarm water on the table, a butter-yellow flower floating on its surface. She buried her nose in it absent-mindedly, toes tapping erratically to a rhythm she couldn't quite capture.
One finger twirled her hair as she vaguely looked at her reflection, lips fluttering unconsciously as she tried to puzzle out the tangle of notes in her head. She was under no illusions that it was of her own creation, but it was not a tune she could ask a musician to play for her if she could not even present its bare bones.
But no, it slipped away from her like smoke through grasping fingers with the morning like an elusive dream.
Christine set to pinning her hair from her neck in a chignon, eyes still vague as she twisted and plaited away the mass of chestnut. The gold corset was difficult to lace without help, too tight and cinching her waist in to painful proportions. The red gauzy skirt brushed her knees.
With short breaths, she checked the time and breezed from the small room, a shawl around her shoulders against the Parisian chill, mind still elsewhere, soaring mountains and drifting like snow. As she walked, more and more people brushed by her, the crowds of stage hands, dancers, actors, growing like weeds as she slid between them, hands holding her shawl and eyes high above their heads. A greeting, two, three. She returned their smiles with her own, not seeing them when they shook their heads amusedly at silly Christine Daae with her head in the clouds, soft amiability in their expressions.
It was a buzz, a hubbub of activity. There was nothing like backstage before the dress rehearsal.
Where the smell of varnish and oil-based make up was strongest, she allowed herself to fall back to earth with a resounding thump, blinking at the dark wood of her surroundings in the wings before stepping out to the empty theatre as she had done a thousand times before.
"Here she is! Ladies, in your lines, monsieur Lefevre will be here momentarily so you haven't a moment to stretch. Quickly now, quickly!" Madame Giry clapped her hands sharply, causing the row of eight to bend immediately in a well rehearsed stretch of the legs. From her vantage point with her elbows lightly touching the boards of the stage, she could see Carlotta from between her legs, fussing desperately with her hair as she led Piangi in vocal exercises. A burst of amusement fizzed in her throat like champagne, causing her to drop her face to hide her giggle at the look of frazzlement on the prima donna's face. Meg, to her left, caught her eye and winked quickly.
"They're here!" A voice shrieked from somewhere in front of them, but suddenly Christine was blinded as lights aimed at their faces, Carlotta a beaming presence before them all.
She shrieked, butchering the first few lines of Hannibal despite the beauty of the spectacle surrounding her. Christine followed the other dancers, bending into positions practiced thousands of times, unaware of her audience than if it had been a whole crowd or merely a mouse; indifferent. Her mind was swimming, dizzy. What was wrong with her this morning?
White noise pressed behind her eyes as she danced, eyes shutting at intervals to try and relax. Something, someone, something was there.
"Stop!" A voice beyond the lights shrieked, cutting them off mid-song, "Monsieur Lefevre wants to say a few words!"
The lights shuttered out as quickly as they had appeared, and Christine had to steady herself against the dancer beside her at the sudden swoop of vertigo. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her too-tight corset cut off her breathing.Lefevre was speaking; something about retirement. She couldn't concentrate, she was blinking, trying to steady herself. And then there was movement, two men, a flash of a young man who looked familiar. And then they were preparing to sing again. Carlotta squawked her opening line. Pressure built up behind her eyes, her knees too jellied to move as dancers swarmed past her like a pent up dam, trying to conceal her from the prying eyes of the directors whose eyes would soon find the prone dancer—
CRASH. Christine dropped to her knees, staring ahead blankly and breathing fast in direct contrast to the rest of the crew who swarmed away, shrieking, at the piece of the stage which had fallen inwards, missing Carlotta by mere inches. The world swam into focus, snapping like elastic.
"These things do happen, Carlotta!" One of the newcomers rushed onto the stage, laying a hand on her had, his face a puce colour of nervousness.
"These things do happen?" Carlotta shrieked in his face, her tone not dissimilar to her singing voice. Christine tuned out her voice quickly in a practiced move which removed herself from a headache for the next few days. She watched as if from a muffled cloud as Carlotta poked him in the chest, her wig quivering with indignation. Her soft Irish lullaby played in her mind as she watched, absently.
Then, something happened.
Madame Giry was gesturing to her, her eye satisfied, if slightly wild. The word phantom drifted on the air, whispered from ear to ear, lipstick smudging on rouged cheeks. A thrill ran through Christine's stomach, a jolt of liveliness unusual for the sedate girl. She welcomed it, eyes fastening on those of her adoptive mother.
"Christine can sing it," She insisted, fingers clasping the empty air, smile somewhat strained. "She's had a wonderful teacher."
Christine didn't know what she was talking about. Her mind was suddenly white with panic.
"No—no, I can't I—"
A hand pushed her sharply between the shoulder blades, shooting her forward into the limelight as a hundred pairs of eyes bored into her.
"What is your teacher's name?" The kindlier of the two men asked, the other merely irritated.
"I don't know-" Christine cast a beseeching glance in Madame Giry's direction, who simply nodded. Everyone stopped, silence echoing around the room as they waited, and she realized with a sudden horror that they wanted her to sing, here and now.
"This is doing nothing for my nerves." The more irritable man muttered to his companion as the silence stretched on.
"Hush, she's very pretty."
Christine swallowed bile, her heart palpitating desperately. A croak escaped from her mouth before she took a deep breath, and allowed the first few strains of a Hannibal song escape her lips.
Think of me…
Think of me…
His eyes darted down, where before they were irritated, sickened by the caliber of his opera, they were wide. The child, her hair effortlessly thrown back from her face, her eyes towards the sky, expression stoic, was singing.