A/N: Heehee, just finished the Leroux book. Erik's crazy little ventriloquism scene is so great...! I'm near the end of "Phantom" as well...argh, I wish there was more! Huge thanks to Carillon and AuroraSky for being the first to review:)

So, without further ado, here is the second chapter...

--------------------------------------------------------

After the mishap with the rope, Erik was very much disinclined to return and try to climb up to the rafters again. In theory, rope-climbing seemed so simple...but it proved to be not so easy in practice he had the burns to prove it. So, instead, he kept to the passages behind the walls and below the floors, feeling considerably safer and more at home than in the worrying light and sound of the open corridors. The cool darkness had become less fearsome to him now that he could see its advantages...

Now, he began to explore the other corridors, the corridors that led elsewhere onto other floors. He would wonderingly walk down sloping passages, up flights of roughly-cut, forgotten stairs, along hidden hallways that echoed with the sound of gently dripping water. There was an entire maze of abandoned, unused corridors, now completely reserved for Erik and Erik alone! This feeling of triumphant ownership made him increasingly eager to discover every single passage, storage-room and corridor - as well as the rooms that lay next to and above the dark tunnels. But above all, he found himself searching for a place to stay, to reside in, other than the end of the small corridor behind the chapel's walls. He wanted to find a safer, drier place to sleep, away from the sounds of the occasional person coming to pray in the chapel. The silent whispering he heard annoyed him at the best of times; whenever he would peep out from his hiding-place through a tiny hole in the mural-door, all he would see was a person kneeling on the ground in front of the small statue that stood in the alcove. Why would somebody ever want to just sit on the floor and whisper to a statue? Such things were completely beyond his understanding, which frustrated him to no end. Religion had always seemed pointless to him - why pray for help to a God who always ignored him? He could hazily remember the long evenings spent kneeling beside his bed entreating for his mother to love him, for his terrible face to somehow "get better". If God could create an entire world and make miracles happen, then surely he could change the hideous face of a little boy...? But Erik had begged and pleaded in vain, for his prayers never seemed to be heard. Eventually all traces of faith were lost, and the only thing he believed in was the ugliness of the world...an ugliness that sometimes showed glimpses of the beauty he always had been and always would be searching for, until he either found it or died unsatisfied.

--------------------------------------------------------

One day - or possibly night, as it was impossible to tell in the constant darkness of the passages - Erik was climbing down the stairways, slopes and ladders to the very depths of the opera house, his lantern held in his hand. He had been forced to reluctantly leave Pantin sitting in the corridor behind the chapel, as he felt more comfortable with a hand free to catch himself if he ever tripped in this dank darkness. The air grew damper and colder the further he descended, the glow from the lantern reflected back at him from the streaks of moisture that clung to the rough stone walls. Silk webs, laboriously draped like veils across the passage he travelled along by industrious spiders, created a ghostly form of resistance against his frail body; it was as if he was passing through a secret gathering of spirits, who were trying to gently stop him from continuing his rude journey straight through their meeting. Nets of barely-visible spider silk trailing from him, Erik walked on, stretching out an arm before him to part the pale curtains that caught on his lantern. He was glad of the sack he wore on his head now, as it protected his poor, awful face from the small black creatures that either lived or were trapped in the thick webs; he shuddered to think of anything crawling into the crevice of his nose like a flesh-eating insect exploring a corpse. The grey-white curtains parted and parted before him...Erik continued down the long passage, quietly destroying the webs carefully spun by generations and generations of spiders. As he walked, he marvelled at the multitude of hapless insects and flies that appeared to hang eerily in midair, caught in the nets all around. On the damp walls, arachnids of varying size and species crawled warily from the light cast by the candle in Erik's lantern. He gazed in wonder at a particularly huge one, easily as large as the span of his abnormally long-fingered hand. How these predatory insects enthralled him, with their intricate, delicate webs and their pincers that gleamed malevolently in the lantern's light! They appeared so monstrous, the way they spun their beautiful silk to trap the thousands of pretty little mindless flies that whirred unknowingly through the darkness and into those merciless gossamer threads - yet they created the most lovely illusions in the passage, lovely webs that waved gently and made him so unhappy to break. He felt an eight-legged being become caught on his outstretched palm, and stopped walking to watch it crawl quickly over his fingers, dark and swift. It began to fall gently from his hand, floating down on an invisible thread to the ground that was littered with the remains of the spiders' previous meals, hundreds of tiny dried bodies that crackled underfoot. Erik's lips were tugged into an odd smile as he moved his hand to the right, and saw the spider on the floor being helplessly dragged back by the silk still linking it to his pale hand. He pulled it gently and experimentally by the invisible string of silk, marvelling at the way it seemed as if his will-power alone was making the spider move where he wanted it to. However, this small game was put to an end as the spider quickly severed itself from the thread, scuttling off to the wall. Erik then proceeded on his way, musingly; he liked this illusion very much, and he decided to remember it in case he ever cared to reproduce it. He wondered: could it be done using an everyday object, and something thin but strong like a spider's thread? People did not often look very closely at things, and a very thin thread, pulled taut, could very well create the illusion of something moving by itself...

Carefully filing away this interesting idea in his mind for later, Erik noticed an opening in the passage, an open archway leading to the left. Without hesitation, he walked through it and found himself in one of the many large store-rooms of the Opéra Populaire.

This store-room was full, from floor almost to ceiling, with props. They were ancient props, from some of the earliest productions of the opera house, and had been put here, in this room that had either been locked and forgotten or just filled with more items that were no longer of use. Erik gawped like the child that he truly was as he took in the wonder that surrounded him; set pieces, rolls of dusty fabric, rotting wood with intricate carvings, books with pages yellowed by damp...he grabbed at the books first, eagerly harvesting all of them that he could see into a little pile on the floor. These were old, ancient books, donated from many sources purely for the purpose of filling the odd bookcase on stage, or of being held by actors when needed. They had been used as mere props, then been carelessly abandoned, but they were still full of interesting tales and old knowledge. Erik picked one up at random, flicking through the foul-smelling, wrinkled pages. This one was an informative tome with a dull-green board cover, about eighteenth-century execution methods. It included some rather intriguing illustrations, too, of the same sorry chap coming to many painful ends. Erik glanced at the ink man's exposed innards and trailing visceral organs with loose, morbid fascination, then closed the book and placed it on his pile for later reading. Already he had almost finished the few books Antoinette had given him to keep him occupied, and he was thirsty for more reading material. He was becoming more and more literate at a startling pace, effortlessly bypassing the reading skills of other children of his age with his feverish, almost obsessive reading, always searching to fill his head with new knowledge. Soon he would have a small library of his own, with all of these new books!

Abandoning his heap of cardboard-backed literary material in search of still more, Erik straightened up and went further into the room. To his right, there was an enormous mound of old costumes, covered in dust and stinking of musty mothballs. Kingly capes and exotic garments lay piled over each other, along with a large array of cloaks and caps. Entire spectrum of colour, though faded with age, still clashed with one another, different fabrics thrown into the same heap. Forgetting his search for more books, Erik gazed at them all, touching the different textures he saw with wondering fingers. He gave a sharp gasp and cowered back as he knocked into a hard, cold figure that stood tall above him, but then laughed at himself as he realised it was nothing but an old mannequin, its dirty cream-coloured fabric body moth-eaten but still sturdy. The mannequin's body was visibly female, despite the fact that it had no head, arms or legs, and he was almost level with its shoudlers as he was quite tall for his age. Even though it was definitely female, somebody had dressed the mannequin in a man's cloak and hat - whether this was for a joke or unintentional, he could not tell, but Erik found himself touching the hem of the luxuriant black cloak with open admiration. The garment was in surprisingly good condition, and made of a thick, warm material that smelt musty but not as malodorous as Erik's own well-worn clothes. The mannequin, being without a head, did not stare at him reprovingly as he took off his sack to press the cloak's lovely material against his hollow, stark-white cheek. The warmth of it against his high, jutting cheekbones was wonderfully comforting, and he closed his eyes, rocking gently from side to side in simple bliss. Once more or less satiated, he looked at the matching wide-brimmed black hat that was sitting oddly upon the wooden knob of the mannequin's neck. To amuse himself, he tried it on, finding it too large and prone to falling ridiculously over his eyes. The cloak, too, was most remarkably warm, but it was so long that it trailed some way behind him. This was obviously some sort of oddly-cut stage cloak - perhaps it had been left down here because it had been not cut to the right length, or in the right shape? It seemed to fit the mannequin well, though...

'I return you your cloak and hat, mademoiselle,' Erik told the dummy with mock-politeness, replacing the glorious black sweep of fabric around the feminine shoulders, but neglecting to put the hat on the neck. He gave a small frown, his almost translucent skin furrowing at the brow. 'You need a head before you can have a hat,' he remarked critically. 'I shall try to find you one; I shall not be long!' Putting the hat on his own head for safekeeping, he proceeded to search around, wondering what he could possibly use as a head for the mannequin...

Something grinned at him from under a large, half-empty box of candles, and Erik started back in surprise before rushing to it. He wrinkled his nose analytically as he picked it up; it was a head - in fact, it was the very essence of a head...but it did not seem very fitting with the mannequin's voluptuous patterned fabric body. Erik turned his head to one side musingly, then decided it was the best he could find and returned to the dummy. It was waiting patiently, and he shyly fixed the grinning death's-head on the wooden peg of the neck. He stood back and stared at the grotesque thing he had created, finding that although the skull was the perfect size and sat obediently on the neck like a real head, it made the mannequin lose some of its delicate femininity. Erik sighed, disappointed at his own incompetence, but approached it and placed the hat onto the dome of the plaster skull's head. He regarded his creation warily, feeling somewhat amused and disconcerted by its quaintness; it was an odd sight indeed, the body of a woman clad in a man's cloak and with an inanely grinning death's-head that wore a black hat perched at a jaunty angle. Erik gave a small, light sigh. 'Ah, well...' He looked up at the mannequin's empty eye sockets, his own dark-ringed, sunken yellow eyes filling with vague sympathy. 'I'm afraid you look rather like me now. But don't worry; at least this way you have family...' The mannequin stayed silent, teeth bared in horror at the corpse-like boy it now resembled after its blissful years of neutral headlessness.

Feeling only mildly guilty, but glad he now had a "friend" with whom he shared a similar appearance, Erik left the mannequin along with his hopes of making it beautiful as he had first intended. He ran a long-fingered hand over the sharp bones and absent nose of his own face, bending down to pick up his lantern once more. He had not yet explored the other end of the room, where there was bound to be still more interesting items to discover -

The light of his lantern suddenly illuminated a multitude of fearsome faces that leapt from nowhere, looming before him along with the further wall. Erik started, jumping back defensively...then he realised what he stared at and his eyes widened, body freezing in the sheer wonder of the sight.

Masks of every colour, size and description lay in boxes or in dusty piles, where they gazed out with sightless eyes and countless different expressions. Such a spectacle he had never seen before in his entire life. Here and there lay littered and scattered animal-masks, leering faces of white, black, gold and every other colour imaginable...here there lay the handsome, golden face of a prince - here, a diamond-patterned half-mask - over there, a bird-mask - and there, a neutral white mask with black lace edging - in that box, more hand-painted masks with curling designs and intricate decoration...

Erik's hands were shaking at sight of the glorious opulence that lay spread before him. To think he had worn the most primitive of cloth-masks and even a sack when there was such beauty in the world of second faces! He looked about feverishly, feeling dizzy with the realisation that this great treasury of masks was unknown to all but him, and he could look upon them all to his heart's content...he reverently picked up a white mask with black, carefully painted teardrops that ran down the curiously blank face, then put it down again to pick up and look at another, then another, and another...

There were so many textures and designs - ivory, porcelain, leather, even wood - and they were all so beautiful! Soon, however, Erik had found his favourites and laid them in a row. He looked down at them with great indecision, hesitating over which he would choose to wear. All of them were so grand and beautiful - to have any them in the guise of a proper face would be simply wondrous! And there were still so many boxes he had not opened yet...After a long, long period of hesitation, in which he had to pause to re-light his lantern with the tinder-box he carried in his pocket, he finally settled upon the most impressive: a black, deliciously powerful-looking mask that had long, fine male features and a tenebrous frown. Eyes dancing gold with glee, Erik lifted it from the ground, and tremulously put it to his face.

It was a little large - after all, he was only a child - but it gave him a marvellous sensation, the knowledge that such an imposing face was now his own. The absolute, euphoric power he felt filled him completely; his fearsome, deathly features were now covered by a gloriously dark and finely-cut mask, so different from the banal roughness of the burlap sack. Erik's long, skeletal fingers fumbled with the slack ties, making a knot in the black ribbon to secure the mask to his face. Mouth smiling behind the mask's scowling, finely sculpted lips, he straightened up, rising to his full height. He no longer felt the need to lope around like an animal as he had with the degrading sack on his head; instead, he stood taller, straighter, full of a dark dignity that could rival any king's. How curious he must look now: a skeletal, scarred young boy with stick-like limbs and the grim, shadowy face of a man! He almost wished for a mirror...

Almost.

Although the mask grew slightly warm and damp inside from the air surging in and out of Erik's gaping nose, it was light and the smooth inside surface did not scratch at his delicate, easily irritated skin. He gave a short, delirious laugh, skipping gaily back with his lantern to his pile of books. He stacked them up carefully, and was about to leave with them when he happened to glance back at the mannequin. It was grinning morosely at him, its face still as unnerving and macabre as the one beneath Erik's mask. He gave a small sigh, and put the books down before walking over to it. His yellow eyes stared into the vacant sockets of the skull with a look of pity. 'I'm sorry...I had almost forgotten...' he said, then added with abrupt brightness: 'Look at my new mask! Aren't I handsome now?' He turned his head this way and that to show every majestic plane of his mask, and then stopped as an idea came to him. 'Oh...of course! I know how to make you pretty - I shall return in a moment...'

With that, Erik ran off to the other side of the room, lantern swinging from his hand, the candle flickering behind the glass panels. When he arrived at the vast collection of masks, he visibly calmed himself, all the better to search through them with the utmost care. In one box, there were hundreds of masks from the city of Venice - one after the other, Erik studied them, gazing at the intricate painted faces, at the other theatrical masks that depicted the well-known characters of the Commedia dell'Arte...he peered at an Arlecchino, amused at the curling moustache and snub-nose, before picking up the ruddy face of Il Dottore. Although he did not know these names or the parts they played in Italian theatre, he could guess at their roles and personalities, and he would have gladly spent several more hours looking at them all - however, he had a task at hand, and needed to keep his focus on it. Carefully putting the theatrical masks back, he explored the other Venetian creations, until he found a truly beautiful white mask with intricate painting around the eye, and a most lovely design of musical notes upon it. Triumphantly, Erik lifted it, and replaced the other masks in the box. Yes, this one would be perfect! It had the same elaborate beauty as the long, startlingly authentic black-and-gold gondola he had seen resting on a pile of discarded props. This mask was wonderfully female, too, and would serve its purpose well...Arriving before his poor mannequin, he smiled behind his full mask and showed it his discovery. Full of pride, he stood on his toes and fastened the fine mask onto the false skull, lovingly tying the ribbon behind it. He took a step back and his eyes lit up. 'You look very pretty indeed, now!' he declared, for it was true: now the mannequin was no longer the grotesque, pieced-together creature, but a very feminine figure. It ceased to be an "it" and suddenly became a "she". Now that the immobile mannequin's skull was covered, and the hat properly in place, she looked rather ravishing with her painted leather lips and finely-shaped face. She even maintained her womanliness when dressed in the masculine high-collared cloak and hat. 'A bonnet would be more suitable, but I suppose it does make you look nice in a strange way,' mused Erik as he took her in. 'You could do with some arms and legs, too, but I can't see any in here...' She seemed to look at him in a more tender and thankful way with her empty eye sockets, now that they were behind the mask's eyeholes. Erik lifted his chin happily. 'No need to thank me...but I will marry you, if you insist so much...' he told the mannequin gallantly, in response to her imaginary, delighted exclamation. 'I'm afraid I must go now...but I'll definitely visit you again!' With that, he bowed to her in a gentlemanly manner, then picked up his books and was gone from the room, back through the broken webs in the adjoining passage. Lying forgotten on the floor near the mannequin was the sack with the two holes in that stared up emptily and blankly in the darkness. The now-beautiful mannequin gazed back, dead until Erik came back to fill her with the life of his quaint, youthful games...

--------------------------------------------------------

'Oh!' Antoinette's hand flew to her mouth in shocked surprise, her eyes wide. 'Where on earth did you get something like that, Erik?'

The handsome full mask turned its frown up to her. 'I found it!' the melodious voice replied cheerfully from beneath it, yellow eyes smiling through the angry eyeholes. 'Isn't it lovely?' Antoinette gave an inward sigh of exasperation. She was glad that the poor boy appeared happy, but she was suspicious of the origins of this fine mask. Hopefully nobody would remark its absence, from wherever he had taken it...three neat piles of books in the corner caught her eye, and she frowned. 'I suppose you found those books along with the mask?' she asked him. The child nodded, a hint of pride in the way he held his shoulders. Tucking behind her ear a strand of hair that had come loose during practice, she bent down and plucked a book from one of the piles. It appeared to be a very old book, that nobody was sure to miss. The print was rather fine, and it filled each page in a tediously solid block. An ancient ribbon bookmark was placed carefully in the final quarter of the book, and she raised her eyebrows at the length of some of the words she could see. A mix of complicated and archaic sentences leapt out at her, baffling her completely. How could he be reading a book with such complex words? She glanced over the top of the book at the boy who sat still on the floor, watching her with vague, patient interest.

'Erik,' she said slowly with suspicion, 'Do you happen to know what "obsequious" means? And...heavens...' - she squinted at the text as she spotted a ridiculous word - '...what about "pulchritudinous"? You can't possibly have read this much of such a difficult book -'

'Oh, really?' he suddenly shot back testily. 'And whyever couldn't I have read that much?' Antoinette frowned at him in surprise, taken aback. How could he be so arrogantly ignorant of his own capacities?

'Erik...' she said reasoningly, trying to calm him, 'Look at these words - even I don't know what they mean. I suppose you don't have a clue what pulchridit...pulchritiditio...pul-chri-tu-di-nous means! See, I can't even pronounce it myself!'

She put down the book and was about to turn away when Erik voiced, very quietly: 'Beautiful.' Antoinette stopped and looked at him. 'What did you say?' The fine black mask tilted up towards her defiantly. 'It means beautiful,' he explained simply, his tone rather mutinous. For a long, long while Antoinette stared at the child in awe, that turned to mild wariness. 'How did you know that?' she asked him, sensing his pride at her look of surprised stupefaction. 'Who taught you such long, strange words?'

Erik's thin chest seemed to swell beneath his ragged shirt. 'Me,' he said with a graceful shrug. The ballerina raised her eyebrows at him dubiously, as if prompting him to tell the truth. He met her unconvinced gaze with a scowl. 'Don't look at me like that. The word's context helps me find the meaning, if you must know. I'm not stupid.' His words were full of grumpy contempt.

'I didn't say that you were,' Antoinette said hurriedly, growing uneasy of the dangerous flashes in those yellow eyes of his. Already she could tell that he was not an ordinary child in more ways than one; he seemed to possess a brilliant mind, and his gaze was full of a shrewd, mature intelligence that was far beyond his nine or ten years of age. Noticing Erik become slightly more pacified, she delved into her pocket for the spare candles she had managed to bring. Seeing her put a hand in her pocket, Erik's eyes lit up with curiousity and he was once more a small boy, displaying the keen interest of a normal child as he strained to see what she had brought him. He took the candles gladly, but didn't comment on the absence of the small dinner she usually brought with her, as she had expected him to.

'Er...I'm afraid I could not bring you your bread tonight,' Antoinette told him, deciding to confess it even so. 'I am a dancer, after all, you see - somebody saw me putting the extra small loaves in my pockets, and now they watch me like hawks at the dinner table. I have to keep a strict diet as a ballerina, and it wouldn't do if people thought I was overeating...forgive me, Erik - I'll find a way to bring you food, I promise -'

But the boy seemed unperturbed at the prospect of going without a meal, half-starved though he appeared. 'Don't worry, Antoinette,' he said, in a civil enough manner. 'I'm not very hungry, anyway...it doesn't matter to me.'

'But...you've only had one meal today -'

'I have survived on less, and it's easy enough to go without food,' Erik replied, shrugging as he idly picked up a book. 'To tell the truth, I only eat when I need to...and I don't need to very often.'

Antoinette was shocked. 'You'll starve, Erik - or you'll become very ill!' she protested, but he did not answer, merely flicking through one of his books leisurely. Soon she abandoned hope, and decided to accept this as another odd facet of his complex personality. Perhaps less frequent meals to bring to him would relieve some of the pressure being put on her...

She found her gaze drawn to the imposing, regal frown of the adult mask that sat disconcertingly over the boy's haunting features. It was unnerving indeed, to hear his young but undeniably and irresistibly beautiful voice coming from behind such a manly face...but it was less unnerving than the blank, rough sack he had previously worn. What also amazed her was Erik's astounding eloquence of speech; only a week or so before, he had spoken like a child - perhaps out of shyness and fright - and now, his vocabulary was more or less equal to her own. This boy was almost disturbingly brilliant, and she feared for his future. Such a mind could not be kept behind a wall for long, and she shuddered to think what would happen when he finally made that inevitable step out of the shadows...

--------------------------------------------------------

A skeletal shape tiptoed across the brightly-lit balconies that were above the stage and just under the hanging scenery and pulleys. It peeped over the banisters at the glossy stage below, giving a childish giggle of excitement and joy. Erik ran lightly along the wooden boards, his feet making no sound as he gazed at all of the winching mechanisms hanging above him, marvelling at how many ropes he could see. A veritable spider's web, in fact, despite its apparent lack of order...!

He skipped around a corner, looking up and down alternately; there was so much to see out here, and it was so warm and lovely! He did not care that Antoinette had told him these places were unsafe - nobody was about, and he could go where he wished. Well, almost everywhere; only the world of the rafters high above his head was closed to him...but he was sure that one day he would overcome it, and find his grip strong enough to pull him all the way up that treacherous rope. Erik leant over the banister again, his black mask obscuring his look of glee completely. He very much liked the look of that shiny, magnificent stage, with its gleaming wood surface polished by thousands of ballet slippers and cleaners' cloths alike. It would be a grand thing indeed to stand on that stage, if only for a short while...Erik was sorely, sorely tempted to descend onto it, but he knew there could be people in the huge theatre hall and he would be discovered. He settled for gazing at it admiringly, wondering how it would feel to be on the stage before hundreds of people...although he disliked audiences from past experience, it was a nice thought that perhaps one day an audience would look at him in admiring awe instead of horror...

'...and then she said: "Oh really? I thought that was yours all along!"' a rather rough-sounding male voice soliloquized exuberantly, the raucous laughter that accompanied it growing nearer. Erik jumped, startled by the approaching company. At least two or three stagehands were approaching, by the sound of it...their voices had a greedy, almost obscene tone which reminded him forcibly of the gypsy who had kept his cage. They were travelling up the corridor that contained Erik's trapdoor, so there was no way he could run there to disappear back into the cellars. He began to panic slightly, making rapid calculations; they were approaching quickly, and would be around the corner in a matter of seconds - there was no time to make a suitable hiding place, and nowhere to run to. Erik's heart began to pound painfully behind his ribs as his yellow eyes darted from side to side, looking for an exit. Backing into a wall, he wondered whether he dared run the risk of being caught by running quickly to his trapdoor...

The stagehands were almost around the corner. Erik's thin chest was rising and falling rapidly beneath his ragged shirt, and he looked about wildly, body poised and tense. The only thing in his sight was that stupid rope, the rope he had spent so long vainly trying to climb up. If he had not managed to climb it then, he certainly would not be able to climb it now. Erik looked in a full, desperate circle, then, in a mad burst, ran at the rope.

It swayed precariously with his weight, and flaked beneath his frantic fingers. The inside of his mask grew hot and damp as he clamped his bony knees on the rope, urgently pulling, pulling -

He hardly dared to believe it at first, but soon he found that he was ascending with great swiftness up the rope, leaving the floorboards of the landing behind. Hands tightening, he climbed higher, higher...his arm hooked spasmodically around the rafter that he had suddenly reached, fingers curling around the edge. The stagehands were in the corridor, laughing amongst themselves, and if he fell now, it would be the end of him. In a feat of strength, Erik managed to swing a long, thin leg around the wooden beam and hold on tightly. There was a moment of breathless suspense as he hung more or less upside-down above the landings, but it passed when he courageously righted himself.

As the blood slowly began to leave his face, Erik heaved a great sigh of relief, straddling the beam with one leg on either side. He lifted his precious mask slightly to wipe away the sweat that had condensed around the inside of it and made his skin clammy, then looked down. The stagehands were checking and knotting ropes, completely oblivious of the presence of a little boy sitting high up astride a rafter, gazing at them. A wide, delirious smile stretched Erik's invisible lips as he raised his eyes to take in his surroundings. Around him, beams of wood criss-crossed one another, some wrapped with rope and many supporting large pieces of scenery. Up in this lofty retreat, airborne dusty gently drifted across the shafts of light that came in through the small, circular windows that nobody had cleaned since their fitting. The beams of wood, sanded to smoothness to avoid any possible rope-cutting splinters, glowed with a warm, gentle grainy brown hue. Shakily, not daring to get to his feet for fear of losing his balance, Erik shuffled awkwardly along the rafter, marvelling at the close warmth of the sloping sides of the roof that were almost within touching distance. After a short while, he arrived at an intersection of beams, and then was still, looking down with sheer awe. If he had been high above the stage before on the landing, it was nothing compared to his altitude now. Erik's eyes widened and he wobbled slightly, for a moment dizzily triumphant at the height he had acheived; the stage looked so far below! He began to shake like a leaf, knowing that death lay one unbalanced movement away. His body froze completely; nobody knew he was up here, and nobody could get him down - not even Antoinette. He couldn't see her climbing a rope all the way to the rafters to prise his stiff limbs from the beam he clung to. He was all alone...

Erik trembled, the strong, dark face of his mask even more out of place upon his face. He wanted to get down! He wanted to find some way to the safety of a floor...

Suddenly his body unfroze, and he gave a short, derisive laugh, taking his arms away from the beam, nudging the cool metal of a pulley as he did so. Why was he behaving so childishly all of a sudden? This was fun. The fact that nobody could come to get him up here was a welcome one - he was safe in this dangerous place! He glanced contemptuously down from his perch, then swallowed nervously. Well, safe so long as he kept his balance.

'I belong in this place,' he told himself. 'I can learn to master everything about it!' Erik summoned up his courage, then shifted his weight, putting his feet onto the beam until he was crouching on the wood. Then, slowly, carefully, he stood straight, his mask lit by the light that came from beneath his feet as he looked down. At first the sight made him sway, but then he put his hands on his hips. 'Ha!' he said contemptuously. 'Can't scare me!'

Feeling amazingly bold and strong, Erik began to walk forwards along the beam. He did not stop walking until he had passed over the length of every single beam; once that was done, he gained the confidence to even run over the beams, feeling lighter and freer with every step he took. His balance was progressing marvellously, and he laughed defiantly at the height more often as he skipped breezily along the rafters that nobody could climb up to even touch. Only when the light in the window began to dim did he decide to go back underground, seeing that the stagehands had gone for dinner and the landings were briefly deserted. With graceful confidence, Erik sat down on a beam, leant down and gripped the rope he had climbed up previously in his frantic bid for freedom. Taking care to keep a tight hold on it, he quickly descended the rope, and when his feet touched the ground he had not a single extra rope-burn on his already scabbed palms. Erik grinned and ran quickly away, through his trapdoor and out of sight.

--------------------------------------------------------

Antoinette, on her customary afternoon visit to Erik's hiding place behind the chapel wall, was flicking through one of his ridiculously complicated books. Erik himself was pointedly ignoring her, absorbed in a book of his own with Pantin in his lap, sitting with his legs boyishly crossed. The monkey's black button eyes stared good-naturedly at the pages Erik read, as if it, too, was reading. Antoinette sighed inwardly. Giving up all hope of understanding a word of the book she had picked up, she put it down, and wondered what to say to him. She had visited him almost every day so far, and he was now well used to her. So well used, in fact, that he was becoming slightly withdrawn, wanting to be alone on more and more occasions. He was a disconcerting creature indeed...

'What are you reading?' Antoinette asked him with polite curiosity. He did not look up.

'I don't know the title, but it has some interesting pictures,' he remarked, still with his gaze fixed on the book. Antoinette raised her eyebrows in mild surprise. 'Pictures?' she repeated incredulously. 'Pictures in such a difficult book? Let me see...' He obliged to her request somewhat wearily, as if it were he the elder one of the pair, and she was the younger, demanding child. She decided to ignore this, and turned the pages of the book, keeping his place with a thumb, until she found an illustration. Her face wrinkled in disgust.

'Urgh,' she said, 'that's horrible!' She had fallen upon the infamous book of execution methods, and had been treated with a picture of the curly-haired, morose-looking man with a hole through his forehead. Her eyes filled with more and more horror as she turned more pages, sickened by the other cruel illustrations she found. Soon she could take no more, and said shrilly to the boy whose calm yellow eyes glinted through the mask: 'How can you read and look at such terrible things? You're far too young to be exposed to such ghastliness! You should still be reading fairy tales, at your age -'

His eyes narrowed slightly. 'I've seen worse terrible things,' he told her simply with a voice too cold and composed to belong to a normal child. However, Antoinette refused to let him win. 'I'll be taking this back where it belongs,' she said, waving the offending book. Erik crossed his thin arms, his sharp elbows looking as if they were about to puncture straight through his ragged shirt.

'You don't know where it belongs!' he sneered triumphantly. 'Only I know!' Antoinette glared at him, finding it easier to be stern with him when he acted as the child he truly was. After his immature words, some spell seemed to have broken and he appeared less ominous, and simply more like an insolent little boy.

'That changes nothing! I'm still taking it away,' she said stubbornly, her urge to protect his easily influenced young mind from such horrors prevailing. But then, Erik played his last card, taking out his final, worst weapon.

His yellow eyes fixed on hers, holding her with his unblinking golden gaze. She found she could not bring herself to look away, so powerful was the intensity of the stare coming from the frowning mask's eyeholes. Then his voice - oh, his sweet, melodious voice! - sounded out from behind the black mask, and submerged her beneath a wave of soft, mellifluous sound.

'Give it back to me,' murmured Erik. It was not a command he gave; no, not at all, it was a beautiful, gentle request. Antoinette felt her hands begin to move of their own will, slowly holding the book out to the little boy who held her so effortlessly captive with his voice. Briefly, a surge of coherent thought that wasn't dimmed by the wonderful voice rose in her mind, and she wondered: how on earth could such a normal mouth make a noise so enthralling? She reached out quickly with her other hand before he could move, pulling the mask from his face in a sharp movement, still unable to tear her gaze from his eyes but desperate to find out what trick enabled him to speak with such a voice. However, she found no trick, and he merely continued to stare at her with his golden, mesmerising eyes for a while longer, dreadful face pale in the lantern-light. Then, he spoke again - but his lips did not move!

'Put it down,' said Erik's voice, a little more firmly. His mouth was closed, but she had heard his voice as clearly as anything! Not only that - she heard him again, from a different place...his voice whispered the request again, from faraway down the corridor, outside the lantern's glow, then from a different place, and a different place again, his voice circling her disconcertingly. Antoinette's fingers trembled, her face white with fear. What mastery of his own voice...what strange, terrifying illusions he created! Erik's voice sounded suddenly and softly inside her own head, and she gave a strangled shriek, dropping the book and running from the hidden passageway and the sinister child that sat inside it, his bared face smiling with his victory as he retrieved the book.