Antoinette Giry carried a cane; she did not use it. She knew that most of her girls felt it was a prop, affected, a bit of theatre to make her that much more formidable. This was a perception she encouraged; the older girls, the ones who had been around long enough to have glimpsed things she might have preferred them to miss, let the younger ones keep their comforting delusions.
It was comfort, after all, to imagine there existed such a thing as a person who felt no pain and knew no weakness. She stood in place of mother and father for those girls, even those with parents still living out in the world. Her own mother had been alive when she came here - her painfully thin, beautiful mother, widowed and destitute and with all her desperate hopes pinned on graceful Antoinette.
She knew the world outside looked in at the fey little creatures who were her charges and imagined a pretty faery-tale of childish dreams realized. Noble little girls and the daughters of rich businessmen attended the ballet and dreamed; the daughters of butchers and dead sailors danced for them. They were all orphans here, because no girl came here who did not know her mother and father to be mortal, whether they still breathed or not.
Thus it fell to Antoinette, no longer so young, no longer so graceful, to be a little bit immortal for them. She would not hobble like an old woman in front of them; she would be as invincible as she could be, so that they could be girls, maybe a little longer than she'd been able.
It was a long, long way down to the caves and back again, though – long and cold and damp, the clicking of her joints with every step she took counting off the years she'd danced, like a miserly banker counting his coins. This much you owe. Antoinette carried a cane she did not use because she needed one, and in extremity, it was better to lean on it a moment than to fall. It would be unthinkable to let them see her fall.
She leaned on her cane the better part of the walk back into the world above-ground; there was no one to see her there, and in the deep, cold dark she felt a prick of envy for Erik and his mask and his dark and his madness, into which he could escape at will.
No, not at will, she scolded herself. Not at will at all, and you are a bitter old woman to even think that.
In another world, another life, she might not have been so old; she was only thirty-seven. It was not young, but there were women who bore babies at thirty-seven. Antoinette could not even imagine it, as she dragged her way back up into the meager light of burnt-down candles. Muffled voices murmured from corners, and the corridors were redolent of sweat and smoke and alcohol. She picked her creaking, aching away around bodies curled into corners like oversized dormice. Their joints would raise protest in the morning, along with their heads, but for the moment the celebrants slept well, and Antoinette let them.
Here and there she saw a somnolent form, a half-hidden face or a familiar shoe, that belonged one of her girls, and prayed for a lack of broken hearts and quickened bellies, but she did not disturb them. It would be a mistake, she knew, to guard them too closely. She could not guard them from the way their joints would begin to ache at the end of the day, how they would tire more quickly, the critical eye the managers would begin to pass over them; no one dances forever. Most of them had five, maybe ten years; fifteen for the very blessed.
Then they would have to find their way out into the world – unless, like her, they found some way to stay. Some way to linger on, like ghosts.
Yes, she acknowledged, shamed, some part of her did hate Erik very much – not so much as she loved him, but it was there, some hidden part.
Antoinette opened her door to find her daughter there in her sitting room, asleep in a chair. She set her cane against the door-jam and stood as straight as she could. "Meg?" she whispered questioningly; the girl did not stir.
It was a relief to know she was not curled into a corner somewhere, draped around some random male body. She was sensible, Antoinette knew, but so beautiful, and young enough to be just discovering that fact. It could not have escaped her Meg's notice, how some of the other girls used their beauty; she was sharp, her Meg, clever and watchful of everything.
And guarded, Antoinette thought as she tip-toed across the room, taking the opportunity to observe her child's face relaxed in sleep. There was a softness about her mouth and her eyes, a carelessness to the drape of her hands that reminded Antoinette of when she was much smaller – it was an expression, Antoinette realized, that she had not seen on her daughter's waking face in some time. Sometime between being the loose-limbed, sleeping toddler carted about on Antoinette's hip and turning into the woman now asleep in her chair, Meg had learned to hide her thoughts and seem pleased with what she had.
Maybe she even was; she would dance for twenty years at the least, if Antoinette had any say in the matter.
She would never ache, she would never bend, she would never hate, if I had any say in the matter, Antoinette thought. She would look just as she does now forever.
What Meg wanted or dreamed, what had taught Meg to guard her face and her thoughts, Antoinette did not know and was afraid to ask. She knew there was no young man, at least not one regularly. She had never seen her daughter drunk, nor in an opium trance. She was healthy. She smiled. And she danced. It was enough – it had to be enough, because Antoinette had nothing else to give her. If it wasn't enough, Antoinette didn't think she wanted to know, and could take a mournful sort of pride in the knowledge that she'd raised a daughter wise and thoughtful enough to appear contented.
I taught her, and she learned well, Antoinette thought, bending painfully over the sleeping form and brushing a strand of pale golden hair away from her daughter's face. Jules' hair had been just such a shade of gold; in her youth, Antoinette had been fair as well, but she had darkened.
Meg frowned in her sleep.
"Marguerite," Antoinette whispered, and the frown tightened. "Come, my Meg, open your eyes. Foolish child, why did you not take the bed?"
Meg blinked, muttering something unintelligible, before focusing on her mother. Antoinette smiled reassuringly at her daughter's dream-fogged bewilderment.
Meg continued to frown, her eyes only half lucid; she reached out with clumsy fingers to grasp the cuff of Antoinette's sleeve. Antoinette's gaze followed her daughter's hand and saw that the cuff was wet.
"You smell like cold," Meg murmured, cross and dreamy, brow still furrowed.
"And you are asleep," Antoinette responded, smiling softly. She gently pried her daughter's fingers away from her sleeve and gave them a little squeeze. "Come, up with you." She felt no need to ask why Meg was there, not on the closing night of a performance; Antoinette was careful not to venture anywhere near the dormitories on such occasions, and assumed Meg had simply wanted to sleep in peace. She stood and turned towards the bedroom.
"Where have you been?" Meg pressed sleepily; she had not moved from the chair.
"Nowhere that need concern you," Antoinette replied gently. "Come now, up – I cannot carry you to bed anymore."
"No," Meg agreed, her frown losing its sleepiness. "No, I'm not a little child."
It was an odd thing for her Meg to say, unlike her. "No, you're not," Antoinette agreed carefully. "You are becoming a beautiful, talented young woman. I am -"
"We couldn't find Christine," Meg interrupted.
"She is safe and well; she was with me," Antoinette replied.
"But where was she, with you?" Meg asked, voice rising.
"That is not your concern," Antoinette snapped, her patience evaporating. "Marguerite Giry, you should not be so eager to borrow troubles!" She turned away towards the bedroom once more. "I will not have the luxury of sleep tonight, but you will, and ought to be sensible of the privilege. Now you will take yourself to bed!"
"I will not," Meg responded in a trembling voice.
"And why will you not?" Antoinette demanded impatiently, pausing, still facing away from her daughter. Meg said nothing; Antoinette glanced back over her shoulder, and saw her daughter's hands clutched tight together and her jaw stubbornly set. Tired as she was, she could feel only annoyance, where perhaps there should have been curiosity as to what had so unsettled her usually placid child. "Well?" she said sharply.
"Did you ask him to kill Buquet?" Meg asked quietly.
"Here," Christine offered, tearing off a chunk of the near-petrified loaf of bread Madame Giry had found. It crumbled like old plaster, but it was nourishment. Once cleaned, the side of his face which had not been masked was revealed to be an alarming shade of pale, sickly yellow. His cheek, even on the more ordinary half of his countenance, was more sunken than she remembered, and the line of his jaw sharper.
He took the offered chunk of bread with a hand that shook badly, watching her with an expression of unwavering awe.
Christine blushed, but did not look away; it seemed terribly important that she not look away. Instead she smiled encouragingly, still working at the loaf of bread with her fingertips, trying to get a piece for herself. She was not remotely hungry, but she thought it might put him more at ease if she ate as well.
He put the bit of bread into his mouth whilst still staring at her as if bewitched. Then he grimaced, his whole face contorting with it.
"Erik?" Christine asked, alarmed. He shook his head rapidly, a hand flying up to his mouth; she could see his throat working as he lurched unsteadily to his feet. She dropped the loaf back onto the plate and hurried to follow him as he wove and stumbled to the water's edge, then spat the mouthful of bread into the lake.
Christine hovered, feeling her own stomach twisting in nausea as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, swallowing frantically. He was sweating again, and she could see the movement of his ribs through his thin shirt as his diaphragm spasmed. He made a noise that sounded painful, a tearing sort of gag that seemed to catch in his throat and made Christine wince, her hand fluttering to her own neck. His throat will be sore – he will have to rest his voice – She stayed half a pace back, not knowing what to do. He was not sick, perhaps because there was nothing in his stomach. After a few moments he calmed, his breathing becoming more shallow, though he continued to shake.
"Erik?" she enquired again, shuffling a tentative fraction of a step closer.
He attempted to turn towards her, and his knees buckled. She gave a cry and darted forward, images of him tumbling into the water and disappearing beneath the dark surface flying through her mind. She caught one of his flailing hands in her own, while her other hand found his shirt and clung. His face had gone even more disturbingly pale, and was twisted into a grimace of utmost humiliation, his eyes screwed tightly shut. He clung to her hand as he stumbled, trying to regain his balance, but she had to reach out and pull free arm across her shoulders. He would not do it himself.
"Christine," he groaned miserably.
"Erik," she replied, as steadily as she could; her voice trembled terribly regardless of her intentions. He was heavy, too heavy, and her own legs wanted to give way. She was completely unaccustomed to having so much close contact with a male, which was unsettling all on its own, and beyond that, the smell of him was making her eyes water.
He was also shockingly, unnaturally hot, where he was pressed against her.
"You know my name," he said, at the same time she blurted out, "My God, you're burning with fever!"
His eyes opened, meeting hers. "Madame Giry told me," she offered. "Your name, I mean."
"What else -" he began in a wary tone.
"Nothing else," she hurried to assure him. "I do not think I can hold you much longer," she confessed, then tightened her grip on his hand when he would have flinched away. "Please, I do not mind, but I lack the strength – we must get you to bed."
The wide-eyed look he gave her then made her flush with such intensity that she was momentarily dizzy; she had to look down at the floor. "You are ill," she muttered almost inaudibly, "and in need of rest."
"Of – of course," he stammered, and together they stumbled towards the stairs.
Meg watched in grim determination as her mother spun, eyes wide and face ashen. "What did you say?"
"I asked," Meg repeated, and had to pause to swallow, her voice trembling, "if the ghost killed Buquet because – because you asked him to."
Antoinette stared silently, her face a mask of shock. Then she ducked her head, swearing softly, and stumbled back to sit heavily on the chaise across the small room. Meg stayed where she was, chin up and stomach writhing.
"Why can you not let this alone?" Antoinette asked softly, shaking her head and not meeting her daughter's eyes. "It is not your burden."
"All the opera knows he is your ghost, and you are my mother," Meg protested, "and yet I know nothing, while Christine -"
Antoinette's head whipped up, pinning Meg with a fiercely reproving glare. "Do not envy Christine," she snapped.
"Why shouldn't I?" Meg retorted, jumping to her feet. "Tell me why I should not! Tell me something! Don't you trust me at all?"
Antoinette held her gazed stubbornly. "Very well – I will tell you that I did not, would not, ask him to kill anyone. What would put such an idea into your head?"
"Oh," Meg responded, abruptly off-kilter and floundering. "I – I thought -" She swallowed hard, flushed, and sat. "He – Buquet – he grabbed Regine, and you – with his rope -" Her mother sighed.
"Yes, it was a threat, but an empty one, and he knew it. He knew altogether too much – maybe that is why he is dead, I do not know," she confessed, throwing up her hands.
"You don't know?" Meg asked in a small voice.
"The Opera Ghost – you know he is a living man, don't you?" Antoinette asked, her tone resigned.
"Yes," Meg responded. "I remember – when I was small – I remember he visited us, in the night. You bought him shoes." This curved Antoinette's lips into a small, humorless smile.
"I thought you slept through all that," she said, with a self-deprecating shake of her head. "I should have known better; you are my daughter, after all."
"You called him Erik," Meg offered.
"Yes, that is his name," Antoinette agreed. "And no, I do not know why he killed Buquet. I would never ask such a thing of him, never."
"You – you care for him," Meg ventured, very carefully.
"If you would have me speak with you like a grown woman, then speak like one yourself," Antoinette snapped impatiently. "What do you mean to ask?"
"Is he your lover?" Meg blurted out, clutching her hands together in her lap to keep her mother from seeing how they shook.
"No," Antoinette replied evenly. "No, and he never has been. He is more like a brother or a son to me than anything else. I gave him the best home that I could. I did all that I could, but -" she spread her hands, then let them drop to her sides, "- there is only so much that can be done. Some things – some things cannot be changed, cannot be healed. He had been too long taught that he was a beast, a demon. The devil's child."
"Taught by who? Why?" Meg asked, mind spinning a dizzy, queasy whirl at the images her mother's spare words conjured. Then, another terrible thought; "Christine was with you - Christine is with him, even now, isn't she?"
"Yes, Christine is with him," Antoinette agreed tiredly.
"But he is dangerous!" Meg exclaimed, aghast. "You just admitted it, he killed Buquet, he is a murderer -"
"Do not judge what you do not understand," her mother interrupted sharply.
"I would understand better if you would explain!" Meg retorted.
"I am answering your questions, am I not?" Antoinette returned.
"You are not!" Meg protested. "Your answers tell me nothing, explain nothing at -"
"Lower your voice," her mother ordered.
" – all," Meg concluded, voice dropping to an embarrassed hush and face flushing. "I'm sorry."
"You are not," Antoinette countered. "You are horrified at me."
Meg flushed more darkly, half a dozen conflicting sentiments caught in her throat, but no words making themselves available.
"Very well," Antoinette answered with a graceful nod of her head, "You have reason to be." She said nothing else, though Meg waited.
"That is all?" Meg finally demanded, incredulous. "I do have reason to be! You admit he killed Buquet for God only knows what mad reason, yet you still keep his secrets, you defend him, and – and Christine is with him, now, as we speak! Why is Christine with him, why does Christine know what I do not, why is she permitted to see what I -"
"Because I could not reach her myself," Antoinette interrupted quietly.
"What?" Meg asked in utter exasperation, hovering on the verge of tears. "You could not reach her? What does that mean?"
"Here we are," Christine murmured, and managed to twist herself about so that Erik fell in the general direction of the bed before she collapsed, trembling, to sit on its narrow edge. It took some time for her to catch her breath, and she let her eyes flutter closed in exhaustion.
For a long moment, all was calm, and Christine was filled with an absurd sense of accomplishment. She could feel his eyes on her, but let her own remain shut; it was strange to think that he was right there beside her, so close, fragile flesh and blood, but his scrutiny was easily borne. That, at least, was familiar, almost comforting. Minutes ticked by, and Christine felt the lateness of the hour settling on her, all the heavier for the depth of brick and earth and stone it had to pass to reach her there, where day and night had no meaning.
It felt safe, having his eyes on her, and she was suddenly so very tired. She had slept in that bed before, knew it was warm and soft; now that she was still, her pulse slowing, sweat cooling on her skin and the hot flush of exertion fading, that warmth was very inviting. It was a scandalous thought, to lay down in the same bed with a man, and half of her was quite frantically appalled – but that half was already badly unsettled, overwhelmed and worn thin. He was ill; that leant a measure of decency to it, didn't it? Her intent was not sinful, not lustful – she just wanted to be warm, and safe, and to explore the sheer novelty of being next to him -
"You must not leave these rooms while I sleep."
Christine startled at the sound of Erik's voice, jolted back from her drifting into full wakefulness. She turned and looked at him worriedly; there was a fearful urgency to his tone, and he was struggling to sit up, reaching for her. She took his hand and tried not to wince at the strength of his grip, or the sickly heat of his flesh.
"You mustn't," he repeated fervently. "It's not safe."
"I will be careful," Christine tried to reassure him, laying her other hand over his. "I won't get lost." He is laying atop the sheets, and still in his shoes. I am possibly the most dreadful nurse there ever was. All thought of laying down at his side, snug and peaceful, fled.
"You mustn't try to go back!" he exclaimed frantically, her ambiguous assurance serving only to further alarm him. "There are things – traps – they're not meant to kill," he hastened to add. "But if I weren't watching, they could. I'm careful to watch them; they're necessary, but I'm careful to watch them."
"I know," Christine murmured soothingly. His eyes were dilated, his hair sticking out wildly around his head; she wanted to reach out and smooth it, but didn't dare.
"I would guide you around them," he insisted, "You would be safe with me."
"Of course I would," Christine agreed.
"You must stay – you must stay with me!" His hand tightened on hers to the point of pain and his tone hardened, the volume of his voice rising sharply and turning fiercely autocratic. Some detached and critical part of Christine's mind noted a slight rasp. You mustn't strain your throat – mustn't risk your voice, your beautiful voice -
"Please don't shout," she answered softly. "Yes, I'll stay. Of course I'll stay."
He stared, breathing hard and clutching her fingers; after a seemingly infinite moment, his grip relaxed.
"They're necessary," he whispered miserably. "People are stupid beasts, never listening when they're told to stay away, always prying – always wanting to see – they make me take these measures! But I would guide you around the traps, they weren't meant for you. They weren't meant to keep you here."
"Shh," Christine murmured, screwing up her courage and reaching out to brush his hair out of his face, smoothing it down over the back of his head and tucking it behind his ears while he just stared and shook. Her hand came away smeared in charcoal dust and faintly greasy, but that was a very small thing compared to the look on his face.
It was so very, unfathomably strange to be able to touch him, her angel – to be the one offering comfort. Half of her felt as though she could weep with the joy of it; the other half just wanted to weep, and she was so very, very tired.
"I won't try to go back," she insisted. "I don't want to leave you, until I see you're well again."
He flinched at that, and nodded. Though his hand remained in hers, he seemed to draw away, shoulders rounding, eyes studying the tangled clutch of their fingers and avoiding her face. What did I –
- oh. Until you're well again. And then?
"And then you will show me all your traps and mazes," she pressed on, "so that I may come and go – that is, if you wish," she concluded awkwardly, suddenly unsure of herself as his eyes snapped back up to her face, feverishly bright.
He swallowed several times before he managed to say, "You – you wish to come and go – on your own? You would come to me yourself?"
"If you wanted me," Christine said hurriedly. "Not too often. I would not make a pest of myself."
He laughed, a harsh burst of sound that made her jump, and his hand broke free of hers to reach toward her face. "If I wanted – my God, Christine -" He let his fingers fall just a breath, a shiver away from her cheek; his hand dropped into the sheets. She realized abruptly that he was swaying where he sat, as though it took great effort for him not to fall back onto the bed. "Please," he said hoarsely, his eyes struggling to remain open. "Please don't wander – stay where there is light. Where the candles are lit, you should be safe."
A flash of fear skittered across Christine's mind and sent a shudder through her weary limbs. I saw candles everywhere. She thought – hoped – that he hadn't seen it.
"I will stay where there is light," she promised; he held her gaze as if he might thus hold her to her word. "I swear. Lay back and sleep; nothing will happen to me."
He kept watching her, as if he didn't dare believe her – or perhaps as if he feared that she would vanish like a dream.
It felt different and new, this meeting of gazes; it made a slow heat trickle down the back of her neck and a flush rise in her cheeks, though she was not embarrassed. Her skin prickled, rather like the sensation of slipping into a bath with the water just a little too hot, almost burning.
The thought that she could just lay down beside him was there again, made suddenly impossible by the unexpectedly desperate, thirsty way she wanted it. That he was both feverish and filthy didn't seem to matter at all. She wanted to press close to the beating of his heart, to feel it in her own chest. It was at once tempting and petrifying, and the fear – a far more familiar emotion – won out. She stayed where she was, on the bed's hard, narrow edge, her heart thumping almost painfully.
"W-would you like me to tell you a story?" she ventured, hushed.
"Yes," he answered, just as quietly. "Yes - very much."
"Lay down," Christine whispered. "Close your eyes." He did. "Little Lotte let her mind wander . . . "
"You know that Christine -" Meg watched in anxious, almost tearful frustration as her mother shrugged helplessly, seeming at a loss for words.
I know nothing, Meg wanted to shout, nothing at all, because you will not tell me!
"She does not live in the world," Antoinette finally concluded, though she didn't look entirely satisfied with this explanation.
"I don't understand," Meg pressed stubbornly. Why can you not just say what you mean, plainly? "Where else can she live?"
"In her mind," Antoinette sighed. "In all those wretched tales Gustave told her – I could kick the man for it, if he hadn't suffered so much, though I suppose he meant well."
"She's imaginative," Meg countered, a note of defensiveness creeping into her voice on Christine's behalf. "She loves those stories; they're all she has left of him. I don't see how it matters, how it makes any difference as far as your 'ghost' is concerned, if she likes to imagine -"
"She does not imagine," her mother interrupted. "That is the difference it makes – she does not imagine, she believes, she -" Antoinette paused again, giving Meg an almost fearful, weighing look. "- she hears things, sees things that are not there," she concluded quietly. "She has since she was a child, even when Gustave was alive – he didn't want to see it, wanted to believe as you do that it was only a vivid imagination, but I saw, even as infrequently as I visited them. She was never a normal child – and then he grew ill, he died, and -" Antoinette gave another helpless shrug. "I did not know what to do with her. I brought her here and I fed her and I clothed her and I tried to show her kindness, but -" and again her hands lifted, imploring.
"But she's alright," Meg protested. "I remember she cried all the time at first, she was very quiet and shy, but she's alright now."
"She was not quiet and shy," Antoinette countered tiredly. "She was silent. She spoke to no one, no one at all."
"She missed her father," Meg insisted; there was a queasy coldness forming in the pit of her gut, and her pulse had picked up its step. She was grieving, like any child would, and she's just quiet. It's just her nature. There's nothing wrong with her.
"Yes," Antoinette agreed. "She missed him very much, but she is not the first or the last girl to come here orphaned, and I know something of what is to be expected and what is not."
"She's just quiet," Meg repeated determinedly.
"One day she would not get out of her bed – do you remember?" Antoinette asked; Meg opened her mouth to say that she did remember a little, only vaguely; Christine had not yet been her friend, and what she remembered most was her own jealousy at the attention her mother bestowed upon the sick little girl. Antoinette pressed on before Meg had a chance to speak. "I sent for a doctor, and he berated me – oh, the things he said to me I will never forget, and will not repeat. She must have been very ill for some time, he told me, a child does not reach such a state overnight. She nearly died without ever complaining – without ever speaking a word, and I did not even notice."
"She did not die, and when she recovered, I tried to watch her more closely," Antoinette continued. This, Meg also remembered, the memory again colored by childish envy and a feeling of abandonment.
"Imagine my surprise when I discovered she did speak," Antoinette was saying. "At great length, and in terms I would not have expected from a child – of course, who ever spoke simply to her? When she was alone in the chapel and thought no one was listening, she spoke of all her thoughts and her hopes and her troubles, to God, and to her father, and to her angel of music."
"To your Erik," Meg said.
"No," Antoinette shook her head, and the look she gave her daughter was gentle, pitying. "Not yet."
It was very quiet once Erik slept; Christine sat with him for some time before she began to feel restless, and ventured forth.
He had called his home the seat of sweet music's throne, and indeed it seemed like some strange and wondrous realm, apart from the world above. Her fingers trailed oh so very carefully over the keys of the pipe organ, raised on its dais like a sacrifice on an altar. She crept down the stairs into the adjoining room, trying very hard to ignore the faces that adorned the walls and to see only what worldly things her angel had chosen to keep near him. Surely those things, acquired or created when he was more himself, could tell her more of who he was.
My Angel of Music – my mad, horrible, beautiful angel, who has made this world for himself. Masks of porcelain, of paper mache, of leather, lay scattered about this room; one could not walk two paces without having a mask at hand. These Christine did not touch, feeling as though to do so would be an unwelcome invasion of his privacy, but she let her fingers dance across the mildewing spines of much-handled books, skim across pots of paint and a gathering of brushes stuck into a vase like a strange bouquet. His small facsimile of the opera stage was a work of art itself, a tiny kingdom within a kingdom, peopled by small wooden replicas of everyone she knew.
Something scritched in the wall to her left, and she glanced up, startled. The paper mob met her eyes, laughing nastily at her flinching. Christine spun hurriedly away from them, facing back towards the pipe organ. I will pay them no mind. There is more to him than his madness, and more to this place.
- this kingdom where all must pay homage to music -
She tiptoed back up the stairs, along the ledge that led to the bedroom and past it, finding a little curtained washroom with a toilet and a tub and a multitude of pipes disappearing into a wide crack in the floor. At the back of the room sat a huge metal contraption over top of what looked like a small stove; she could not guess its purpose, and the chasm in the floor made her nervous, so she moved on. Next was the library Madame Giry had mentioned, shelves upon shelves of books rising up into impenetrable dimness. Most of the candles here were unlit, and it was too dark for her comfort, so she retreated; there were more tunnels beyond, but they were darker still. Mindful of her promise, Christine drew back towards the familiar set of rooms by the lakeside.
She paused at the door to the bedroom, straining for the sound of Erik's breathing; it was faint, but she thought it sounded deep and even.
Having teased her hearing to such a pitch of sensitivity, she perceived other sounds; the soft lapping of the lake, yet more scratching somewhere past the walls, and a distant dripping. She shivered, wrapping her arms about herself; they were not comforting sounds. Her one previous visit had been a mad whirl of overwhelming emotions, first breathless wonder at the discovery that her angel was someone she could see and touch, then bewildered pain at his rejection when she'd taken his mask. Then, returning tonight, she had been subsumed in his own agony of madness.
Always, the force of his personality had filled the place; Christine found it very different in his slumbering absence. It was cold, and still, and much too quiet. Where she stood amid the candles it was almost painfully bright to her tired eyes, but beyond that was dark – a deep, impenetrable, gaping dark. It occurred to her that without the fragile light of the candles, it would be complete blackness, no moon or starlight to which her eyes might adjust in time, but just utter, blinding black.
The lake lapped softly at the shore, and Christine heard a new and sinister note in its whispering, as if it resented the candles and their light, and her. Without Erik's voice, Erik's dominating presence, these caves whispered of what they might have been had he never come. The lake had been there before he was; Christine felt herself an intruder into a kingdom not of music, but of scampering, sharp-toothed things that ran blind in the dark. The bright fabrics and polished metals with which Erik had surrounded himself, the trappings of art and music and science, seemed frail defenses indeed without their master.
I felt safe with him. He knows this darkness; he has made peace with it, and it accepts him.
Her eyes flickered again to the faces on the walls, watching her with scornful derision. It is all that has ever accepted him. She knew nothing of his past, though she meant to ask, but those faces needed no explanation; every one of them had a flesh and blood counterpart, she was certain. No imagination, however brilliant or demented, could imagine such human detail – the crook of a previously broken nose, a loose stitch on the finger of a glove, the exact crinkle of the skin around cruelly laughing eyes.
She knew not where or how, but she knew that every one of those faces had stared and laughed and pointed at him just so, once. It was fitting that they be sketched in ash, for these images, these cruel memories, had been burnt into his very soul.
And there she stood doing nothing to oppose them, she realized with a spurt of shame; was it any wonder she felt as though the very darkness itself, his one friend and ally, disapproved of her? What had she done to earn her welcome here? Once upon a time and not so very long ago, she had imagined her Angel of Music ruled over the sparkling world of her father's stories, king of all things bright and wondrous; he was no such thing, but this, such as it was, was still his home. His kingdom.
Not an angel, but perhaps . . perhaps king of goblins. Still something regal and noble and fearsome and wondrous. And mine.
He called himself a loathsome gargoyle. A repulsive carcass.
The charcoal faces cried out their cheerfully malicious agreement with that sentiment, loud despite their silence, and the lake murmured its disdain of her.
He wanted to give me wonders, Madame Giry said.
It was not quite the magical kingdom she had imagined, but this was his home, his refuge, and those awful faces had no right to intrude into it.
Trying to ignore the cold and the unshakeable sensation of the lake watching her from the dark, Christine strode purposefully to the wall and began to pry the first sketch she reached away.
"He did speak to her!" Meg insisted. "She told me, just three nights ago, that a voice had been speaking to her ever since she came here. She believed it was an angel, sent by her father. She used to believe so, anyhow."
"Yes, he did speak to her," Antoinette acknowledged.
"How could you let him?" Meg demanded. "How could you let her be deceived, and in such a cruel way, to think that her dead father -"
"I did not let him," Antoinette corrected her, with a voice that was calm and level but a spine that was far too straight and an expression of brittle, affected indifference – expecting judgment. "I asked him to watch over her."
"You – you asked him -" Meg parroted, sure she was somehow misunderstanding. Her mother would not do such a thing.
"I could not spend hours every day hiding in the corridors outside the chapel," Antoinette explained. "I had other responsibilities – I had you," she said pointedly, "and the other girls. But I could not just abandon her, and so I asked him to listen, and tell me if she spoke of anything of consequence – if she were ill, or cold, or if her stockings had holes in them or she'd outgrown her shoes, anything, all the things I could have expected another child to bring to me herself."
"Then you didn't ask him to pretend to be her angel," Meg sighed, relieved.
"No," Antoinette acknowledged, "and when he told me what he had done, I was very angry with him, until he explained."
"What explanation could he possibly give that would justify that?" Meg asked incredulously.
"Her angel thought perhaps she would be happier in heaven, where her father was," Antoinette responded simply.
"He – he told her to kill herself?" Meg had to fight to keep from shrieking the words, horrified.
"No!" Antoinette snapped, then sighed. "No, of course not. He is not a monster, Marguerite, any more than she is, that is what I am trying to explain."
"But you said -"
"I said, that she received this advice from her angel," Antoinette repeated. "He told me they discussed it for several nights in a row, in increasing detail, though of course he was privy to only half of the conversation. It was at the point where she began to contemplate aloud which colors of paint might be most poisonous that Erik joined the discussion."
"He – but – he was her angel," Meg insisted faintly. "Your ghost was her angel. He was the voice that she heard."
"He became her angel," Antoinette corrected. "But no, Meg, he was by no means the only voice she heard."
Christine gave a small, quickly stifled cry as the curling edge of a sheet of paper slid into the pad of her middle finger. She stuck the wounded digit into her mouth and cringed, spinning and staring about her with wide eyes. The echo of her pained yelp reverberated down damp corridors and across the dim, rippling surface of the lake, the sound transmuted into something fey and alien by the time it died away. The hot copper tang of blood was sharp on her tongue, just briefly, then gone.
It was quiet again, save for the distant dripping that never seemed to cease. And the odd, small sounds from the walls that she could only assume were rats, at home in their own burrows. And the way the softly undulating lake seemed almost to breath, sucking at the smooth stone shore with an obscene, wet lisp.
Smoke and steam from the scores upon scores of candles rose around her like mist, and it was so very, very cold.
Christine pulled her finger from her mouth and inspected it; the cut wasn't deep or even very painful, but it disturbed her. The whirling pattern of her skin parted like cut leather which, she thought, was really an absurd comparison to make, wasn't it? Leather was skin, or at least had been, when it was alive. The cut oozed a thin reddish fluid, not quite blood. Of course cut skin would look like scraps of leather.
Erik had masks of leather, two or three of them, one left sitting on the arm of a chair, one adorning the plaster bust of a Roman senator, and the last – where had she seen the last? It was brown leather. She'd thought it looked far more comfortable than the porcelain that she assumed he wore habitually – but then, did she know? She'd only seen him three times.
The brown leather mask had ties on its sides. He thought ties were not sufficiently reliable, and so he pasted his porcelain mask to his face – pasted it there and forgot about it until the glue melded with his skin. She'd kicked that mask – gently – underneath the table that housed his miniature of the Opera stage, so that she wouldn't have to look at it. Perhaps later, when she felt braver, she'd take it to the little wash-room she'd found, and clean the bits of things from the back of it.
She didn't want to; she wanted to hurl the thing into the lake and never see it again. There were pieces of skin stuck to it, she was very sure now, having looked again. She'd peeled the skin from his face when she pried it away; she remembered the sound it had made, and had to swallow rapidly, eyes squeezing shut, empty stomach threatening rebellion.
At her back, the lake breathed.
Christine shook herself, blinked determinedly, and returned to her self-appointed task. A space of wall as tall as she was and three times as wide had been emptied of jeering charcoal faces. Much of it was bare stone, but there had been other things beneath as well – architectural sketches and diagrams she did not understand, lines precisely measured, angles noted, feverish scribblings adorning the margins, full of question marks and circled words and heavy underlining. She thought one might be a bridge; it clung to the edge of a swath of beautiful red cloth, which was now covered in greasy spots left behind by the sticking paste. The edge of what appeared to be a watercolor of a fantastic, opulent cityscape peaked out from beneath a jaggedly torn sheet of paper bearing the countenance of a round-eyed woman. She was stuffing her knuckles in her mouth as if trying not to scream.
He had somehow captured perfectly the stretching of her skin at the corners of her wide, horrified mouth. Her shocked eyes were charcoal, her fist a thing of lines and smudges, but her mouth, half-obscured, was utterly real. Her thwarted scream hung un-uttered in the air, her terrified disgust a palpable thing.
Christine reached out pale, shivering hands and tore her down. The movement caused a small wave to pass through the remaining papers. They fluttered like leaves - or perhaps a plague of soft-winged insects, jittering, awaiting some excuse to rise into panicked flight and swarm around her.
Christine blinked repeatedly, pressing her eyelids closed until she saw stars, trying to still her shaking, but it was so cold.
The lake lapped and sighed at her feet, making her want to glance over her shoulder just to be sure it hadn't crept closer, but she didn't. She couldn't remember precisely how far away it had been before, which meant she could never tell for certain that it was still, and thus never be reassured. It was better not to look, no matter how it muttered at her.
She curled the drawing she held in around itself so that the sticky edges faced together and the image was protected on the inside. The inhuman mob at her back settled slowly, whispering amongst themselves in papery voices. The lake answered with soft, wet sighs.
The sketch made a tube, and the cookie-cutter edge of it was a shape that was almost a heart, but lacking the point at the end. If she creased the papers just opposite the place where the sticky edges met, they would make hearts, but then that would ruin the images inside.
She wanted to ruin the images inside, she wanted to burn them, but she didn't know what Erik wanted. He'd made them. Perhaps he felt some affection for them, impossible though that seemed.
Erik had called this his hell. If these were souls in hell, shouldn't they burn? Shouldn't they burn away and torment the living no more?
But if he conjured them here, then what was he? The devil's child, he's said on the roof. The devil was once an angel and the children of angels were the nephilim, and they were monsters. That had always seemed wrong to her. They were the children of angelswho had found mortal women fair, so shouldn't they have been beautiful? Why was it wrong for an angel to see the beauty, the good in a mortal being?
Her father said she would understand when she was older. She was older, now; she didn't understand.
The lake whispered at her, and the dank passages that lead off around her dripped. She could imagine them to be mouths, full of sharp teeth and great slavering tongues. Stay in the light.
She set the curled picture which was not exactly a heart down on the floor behind the miniature opera house, adding it to the growing pile of its fellows. She'd smeared some of them accidentally; she hoped desperately that Erik wouldn't be angry. Maybe he wouldn't even want them; maybe they could burn them together, later, or feed them to the lake. Christine only knew that she couldn't leave them on the walls and remain sane.
The watercolor of the beautiful, surely imaginary city was half-revealed now, full of gleaming spires and improbable arches, awash in brilliant hues. Its sun was rising.
The next face belonged to an old man, grimacing in bored distaste, utterly dismissive. No part of him stood out in such perfect detail as had his erstwhile neighbor's mouth, but the expression of complete disdain had been captured clearly, made of heavy, powdery black lines.
Christine wanted to reach out her charcoal-smudged hand, her cold-numbed fingers, and just wipe him away. It would be easy, heavily drawn as he was, all that ash just waiting to smear into nothing. It would turn the palm of her hand black.
Black like burns, muttered the lake. Your angel is dead, and this is his hell.
She peeled the old man carefully from the wall and tucked his edges in, hiding his face. Her angel was asleep in his bed, his goblin's face turned towards the pillow, still in his shoes because she hadn't the nerve to undress him. This was not hell, it was his home, and she would defend it for him. On freezing, quivering legs she walked the old man over to the pile of sketches and set him gently down, curled into a shape that was not quite a heart. So many of them, and the greater part of the wall remained covered. So, so many – she backed up still staring blearily at the heap of them, and her hip caught the edge of the table that held the miniature opera house.
Something fell with a clatter, and she gave a startled shriek. Her foot jostled the stack of curled sketches as she spun towards the noise, and the papers rolled, abandoning her neat arrangement to go spinning across the floor. Christine scrambled away from the touch of them, imagining charcoal-rendered hands reaching out to grab at her ankles. She stopped at other side of the miniature opera house's table, watching with wide eyes and rapid pulse as the curled papers settled into corners, skittled away under his bookshelves and ensconced themselves amongst the feet of the candelabras. Her breath came fast and shallow, and the air tasted of cold and damp and dark.
Something was rocking back and forth down by her toes, the thing that had clattered, slow to settle; his seal stamp. She picked it up hastily, wanting to stop the noise. It leered up at her with the grinning face of a skull, bits of red wax caught in his teeth.
Christine dropped the seal back onto the table and hurried to the bedroom, ducking beneath the black mesh curtain that obscured the doorway. It clung to her like spiders' webs, and she flailed, biting her lip to keep from screaming as she batted at it, trying to dislodge it from her hair. It released her reluctantly.
She turned to the bed; he still slept, apparently undisturbed by the noise she'd made. Christine stood there long enough to be sure his ribs rose and fell, then set her shoulders and ventured back out. She was careful to grab up huge handfuls of the curtain and hold it well away from her as she passed this time, though touching it now repulsed her; she half expected it to be sticky.
She could imagine the spider that would spin such a web, a huge bloated thing, pale and grey – she stopped, looking back through the black webbing towards the bedroom.
In her mind's eye, fat, poisonous spiders climbed the walls and hung from the ceiling, over her sleeping angel, her goblin king. They would come out now that she'd woken them, once she left him and all was still –
- no, no, there are no spiders. It's just a curtain. Lace.
Lace made of silk which is made of cocoons, spun by moth worms, great fat worms like great fat spiders –
The lake hissed and slurped behind her, and the tunnels seemed to lick their lips.
This is his hell.
She spun slowly, torn, towards the antechamber; dozens of those horrible, mocking charcoal faces remained, pointing their cruel fingers at her, staring at her, weighing her, judging her, finding her pitifully wanting. This is not his hell. I will not let it be.
But it is so cold.
His cloak lay sprawled across the bench, before the pipe organ. Christine tip-toed that far still caught in indecision, eyes darting between the jeering paper crowd that taunted her and the silent, spider-web doorway to the bedroom. She noticed as she passed that many of the candles were burnt down to stubs; some had gone out, drowned in their own wax. Stay in the light. She reached for the cloak.
Something small and brown leapt from it as she lifted it, running away along the edge of the wall. Christine froze.
It is just a rat. Only a rat. Her entire body was shaking, her teeth chattering. On the bench lay a slender sword, its pommel a grinning death's head. The cloak had obscured it.
Down the stairs, where the rat had run, Christine heard the piled sketches rustle. The image of gnawing rodent teeth tearing into those charcoal faces sprang sharp and vivid into her mind. It would rip them to shreds and make a nest of them – a nest of screaming mouths and round eyes and jabbing fingers –
Christine clutched the cloak to her chest, grabbed up the sword, and scurried back to the bedroom. She shuddered as she passed the curtain, her eyes scanning the ceiling frantically lest a bulbous, many-legged body drop on her unawares.
The ceiling remained bare stone, Erik remained asleep, and the candles burned low and flickering.
With a shuddering sigh, Christine untwisted the cloak from around her hands and slung it over her shoulders. It was heavy and too long, but warm. She tucked the edge of it beneath her and sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, letting her head fall back against the elegant metal neck of the sculpted swan. A glance up and sideways showed its eyes blank and its beak wickedly sharp; Christine looked hurriedly down and away, grimacing and shutting her eyes.
Think of it as a friend; that dreadful beak is to defend him. It would snatch up the spiders and eat them.
She set the sword across her knees and clung white-knuckled to the hilt.