IV

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Christine wasn't sure how she made the ten minute walk to the library without exploding from pent up worries and the fearful knowledge of what little she understood. Add to that, the apprehensive excitement to know what Antonia discovered, and she was barely coherent. Somehow she kept her voice low and level as she asked the white-haired librarian at the front desk for Antonia.

Her friend appeared within seconds. "Come with me," she said without preamble, and Christine followed, her fingers digging into her clutch.

"I was going through old files, cleaning out cabinets, and I found records of old newspapers," Antonia explained as she led her into a back room.

Christine took the sole chair at the table, Antonia's intent, serious manner making her legs too unsteady to support her.

"Reprints, not originals, we kept from when we put clippings into microfiche years ago. The originals are now at the London Library." Antonia's sentences came disjointed as if she also had trouble maintaining logical thought. "I was thinking of our conversation, when I ran across this."

She plunked an 11 x 14 folder down on the table, protected in clear plastic. The cover's label, typewritten in black, displayed the year: 1871

Christine cast a curious glance toward Antonia, whose eyes were somber, then turned the flap, her hand shaking. Old yellowed pages had been Xeroxed onto new ones and covered with protective plastic. Convivial talk of the theater, of members of society, of an upcoming ball plastered the first page. She turned to the next and froze. Her breath lodged somewhere in her throat and tingles of disbelief shot through her body, seeming to short-circuit her heart, for she was certain it, too, must have stopped beating.

There, in the center of the page, her own dark eyes stared back at her from an artist's sketch, forever frozen in a moment of time.

The former Christine Daaé, the entrancing soprano who took Paris by storm with her two exquisite performances, has vanished from her husband's estate with nary a trace. The young diva had been supposed liable for an incident involving the fire at the Paris Opera House three months prior to her disappearance, along with a man said to be her collaborator in the destruction, the infamous Phantom of the Opera, whose identity was often speculated but who remains, to this day, a mystery. It is rumored that this Opera Ghost was in reality a man named Erik, the eldest son, long thought dead, of the Count of Chagny. The matter was never proven and, with all the aplomb of the ignoble nobility, neatly swept beneath the carpet. Nonetheless, with this new chain of events, speculations have once again arisen ...

Christine's head swam. Her fingernails dug into the plastic. The written words brought images to her mind, not as an account of history but as a memory once lived.

The terror of the night of the Don Juan opera, their frightening escape to Erik's lair. Passionate kisses preceding tears, followed by the mob's arrival and her narrow escape with Raoul ... Days later, her reunion with Erik at the de Chagny estate followed by weeks of uncertainty, of discovery, of shared love. Their marriage and suggested journey here, to England, where Erik thought they would be safe at last ...

"Oh my God," she whispered, clutching the edges of the table to keep from falling.

The entire world span in a dizzying circle. She felt the inexorable pull of her body being dragged downward, similar to when she slowly walked toward Erik in an ecru lace wedding dress, with the high water impeding her cumbersome skirts and trying to trip her, to pull her below the surface ...

Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. Muted sobs caused her shoulders to tremble.

"Christine?" Antonia queried softly as if afraid to speak. She rushed to her side and put a supporting hand to her back as she crouched beside her. "You look as if you're going to pass out. Would you like some water or maybe have a lie down? There's a settee in Mrs. Fairaday's office."

Christine numbly shook her head, unable to respond, unable to think or put syllables together to form words.

At last she turned unfocused eyes to her friend. "If there is some way," she rasped, "I -I must find him. Must find my way back to him. Will you help me?"

Antonia awkwardly fell to her bottom on the floor, her lack of grace uncustomary.

"Then ... it's really true? I thought the sketch a strange coincidence, or perhaps you're a descendant. But the resemblance, the detail, is beyond uncanny. Right down to the small mole high on the left cheek. It's you."

"Not a ghost trapped inside a mirror," Christine whispered on a laughing sob, "but still a ghost. Trapped inside another dimension ... another time."

"You're no ghost," Antonia countered, her tone firm, though her words shook. "You're flesh and blood, and as alive and real as I am."

"Perhaps not a ghost in the exact sense of the word, but I've never felt as if I truly belong to this world. Ever since Gran found me wandering in the park, I've felt like ... a visitor. Trapped in a life that didn't fit. At times I felt I was going mad." She looked down at the page in her hands, spreading her trembling fingers over it. "Now I understand, now it's crystal clear. Reading this feels more real to me than the past year and a half has been. This is home."

Antonia's mouth parted further. "I never thought this kind of thing possible. Time travel?" She gave a slight disbelieving shake of her head as if reason still fought revelation. "It's absurd, like something out of a movie. Being a librarian, of course I've heard of stories with parallel universes, and alternate histories - where the scope of time remains unchanged, constant, but in two different dimensions. But this ..." She shook her head again more firmly. "This is the real world. Not illusion. This is supposed to be reality."

"And yet, to me, this 'real world' has always been the illusion." Christine felt unable to answer what she herself did not understand. "I cannot tell you how this happened or why. But I can fill in the pieces that are missing..."

She briefly closed her eyes as memories, once chained and hidden, fell into the empty slots of her mind with alarming velocity now that she understood.

"I was born to Swedish parents, my father was a famous violinist. I don't remember my mother, she died when I was very young, and my father also died when I was young. I went to the Paris Opera House to live."

Her slight smile toward Antonia became tremulous with realization. "It was one of your ancestors who took me in and raised me. Madame Giry. She was the ballet instructor and like a mother to me - but very strict, especially in matters concerning the ballet." She laughed through her tears. "And Meg, Meg is her daughter, a sister to me, and my dearest friend. We are a year apart in age, but she would be your great, great - great grandmother? Or maybe a great cousin?" Christine let out another laughing sob. "I'm not sure how many greats are involved, but I'm sure you must be related even though you share the same surname and she wasn't yet married. You have her fair hair and delicate features. And her poise. She probably was the one who experienced fame in your family. The one you told me about. She was the best dancer of all of us."

"Far back in my family tree, near the end of the nineteenth century, two second cousins did marry with the same name of Giry," Antionia admitted in a dazed monotone then gasped as realization struck. "But – that would make you close to one hundred and fifty years old!"

"At least I show my age well," Christine quipped, "walking ghost that I am." Tears still wet her eyes as old memories, ancient for this time, settled into her heart and became her reality.

"It just doesn't seem possible."

"What more do you need to convince you? Would you like to know about the Phantom of the Opera the paper alluded to as being my collaborator, and exactly who he was?"

Christine's expression grew tender as she ran her fingers over his name on the page. "He was my Angel of Music, my guardian, my teacher, and my lover." She met Antonia's stunned eyes. "He is my husband. We were married only one month before ... this happened. And because of so many obstacles, so much anger and uncertainty and resentment and pain – it took us some time to reach that point. I've always loved him, but did not always act wisely. We both had to learn to forgive and trust again before we could be together. But once we did ..." she let her words trail away.

Her eyes fell closed in remembered delight as she recalled those idyllic days of being Erik's bride. She could almost feel his warmth pressed against her now as she remembered their last night together. Still wrapped in the bliss of their recent lovemaking, Christine had been unable to sleep though Erik had not encountered the same problem.

She had kissed his unmasked face, so peaceful in slumber, then left their bed and pulled on her wrapper, intending to locate a maid to ask for a hot toddy. Something Madame Giry had given her when she could not sleep as a child.

A glance in the mirror revealed her long wild curls in complete disarray, so Christine had taken a seat before the dressing table and laboriously brushed out the tangled mass to make herself more presentable. Erik loved her to wear her hair unbound whenever possible and she never braided it before bedtime, as was the custom for women of her era, gladly suffering the consequence for his pleasure. And hers, she thought, faintly recalling the sensation of his fingers tenderly running through her locks, over her scalp, entwining in her hair and gripping handfuls as he passionately kissed her.

"Christine?" Antonia urged softly.

"On that night, the light of the moon washed through our bedroom window, drenching me in a pool of brilliance. I had no need to light a candle it was so bright. I remember sitting before the dressing table, brushing my hair out, but nothing after that. That part of my memory remains in darkness up until Gran found me." She shook her head, wondering why her mind would still blank that out now that she recalled all else. "The vanity dresser was a wedding present from an old acquaintance of Erik's. That same dresser stands in my flat now – the dresser Gran feared. So you see, Antonia, I am the lady ghost of your tale."

Antonia only stared in shock, but the dawning of belief touched her eyes.

"Yesterday, you said the composer whose wife vanished was disfigured," Christine went on in a flood of words, unable to stop now that she finally knew who she was, eager to reveal the truth, "but you didn't know how. I can tell you: he wore a mask on the right side of his face to hide a deformity from birth. But his deformity didn't mar my love for him. He is the most magnificent man I've ever known, the most passionate, the most exciting, the most ... beautiful. Though that may sound odd to you, he is beautiful. Beauty exists within his spirit, inside his voice, deep in every facet of his being. I feel empty without him, lost, yes, even a ghost. For you see, as I am to him, he is the reflection of my soul."

Antonia's eyes widened in troubled perception. She averted her gaze, unable to look at Christine.

"What?" Christine urged, leaning forward. "There's something you're not telling me. What is it?" Her nails pressed into the vinyl-covered armrests of the chair. "Is it about Erik?"

Still not meeting her eyes, Antonia gave a slight shake of her head and raised her hand to chest level, a sign she couldn't speak at the moment.

Fear again attacked Christine, its bite razor sharp.

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