Chapter XII
The wake of the dragon
The streets had that sweet sleepy merriment usual in the twilight hours, the waters of the Seine were painted in orange and pinkish lavender. Connor leaned his elbows on the bridge white rail, looking down on the flowing river.
He couldn´t say he was happy, Beaumont had spoken to him earlier that day about the wolfmaid.
The ballet master told him about his obsession for her, obsession unfortunately fed by the hundreds of pamphlets handed out by little dirty boys anxious to receive a coin in exchange for news, yellowy paper brochures stuck on light posts and street walls. They all had her face drawn on them, her ethereal features hardened by those stormy eyes, cold and sad.
Yet, for all of this, Beaumont told him she was no good for him, her melancholic countenance and sharp words would damage his good spirit.
-I know you Connor- he said, -You´re a nice fellow, but waste a bit too much time trying to get people to like you. I´m not saying it´s good or bad, that´s just how it is. You don´t really like arts and dare I say, you somehow made fun of Louis for dedicating his life to dancing. Odette won´t…can´t, if I may add, be with someone who doesn´t appreciate what she does for a living. Remember what you told us when we saw her in the theater months ago?
-Not really- his voice rasp and cracky.
-You said she was like a winter sunset, and she is my boy, but then you´re like a summer morning. It can´t happen and if it does, it´ll break your heart- he said in an almost forbidding tone.
-Did she say something? - he asked raising his eyes, as green as spring grass. –I´m sorry Beaumont, but it seems weird you´d try to dissuade my interest without any…
-No, you´re right- Beaumont interrupted, rolling the far side of his mustache with his fingers. –Look…- he started, -I think Odette is falling in love with Mérante, or at least she likes him.
-What? - Connor´s eyes were beginning to get moist.
-But he won´t do a thing knowing you like her.
-He better…
-But that´s where you got it wrong… really Connor, what´s the point?
-Does Louis like her?
Beaumont kept silent but it was hardly necessary for him to say anything at all, after that the conversation died together with the sun in the horizon.
Before they reached the bridge, Beaumont asked him
-Will you come to the function?
-Can´t- he replied in a low voice. –My patrol is around the bridge.
-I see.
Beaumont put his hand on his shoulder and spoke in a fatherly tone.
-Connor, I know choosing is painful, it has always hurt and it always will. But one must strive on in the hope of finding whatever your heart is looking for, you´re young and therefore I know there´s still a wide long path for you to take, full of surprising encounters, shining maids dressed in silk with lacy fans, and…mind you, after some bad experiences it´s more than likely you´ll find her, the one you´re meant to be with.
The young policeman gave him a small smile and Beaumont took it as a good sign, he put on his top-hat and adjusted his cane, grabbing the golden handle with firmness. Tonight was the Swan Lake premiere, and he wished to see Odette in all her might.
-See you then Connor, please don´t mention anything to Louis, he wouldn´t be happy if he knew I told you this.
Connor shook his head softly, his auburn curls bouncing and Beaumont repressed an urge to mess his hair, so he smiled and turned to walk towards the Opera.
A few lantern bugs were starting to come out, their little lights flickering on and off on the river, the violet misty plume the sun had left on the sky invited him to day dream.
.
And he would´ve if the shouting hadn´t erupted in his brain like a thorned whip.
He would´ve if the darkness of the sunset hadn´t been suddenly turned alight by the fire.
A fire so bright and so high he thought the whole city would burn.
-The Opera House!
-The Opera has caught fire!
-Fire! Fire!
Connor thought the end of the world was upon him, people running towards the bridge, running in panic from a danger they had already left behind but running only for the sake of it, like a herd of deer escaping a lion.
He began to walk towards the Opera House, ironic how his obligation as a public server urged him onwards but his duty as a human being was to go backwards. Men tremble on the cusp of half remembered tales of people dying in fires, and as he got closer, the air got warmer, the smoky smell of burnt wood and lime dust reached his nostrils; and Connor couldn´t help but shake in fright as he saw how the massive building was brought to its knees by the flames.
The windows were shattered which meant there´d been an explosion…
"The ultimate monument to French Art" was how the newspaper used to call the Opera House, an Art that was now engulfed in flames hotter than any tears any art could´ve provoked on any eyes.
Its architects vowed another Revolution would come before the building fell. But blood runs truer and thicker than oaths, blood as red as the sky set ablaze by the fire. Like the old folktale of a queenless king who fought a dragon to keep his lover, a beautiful maid from a star; the dragon shattered the spears from the king´s army, its claws scratching the clouds as the sky was torn in two.
Connor stepped on the marbled lobby, the source of the explosion was from the stage according to the fireguard; and there was still people trapped behind. He walked towards the back where the air was a bit more breathable but the wooden walls looked like they´d been grabbed by a giants hand and then trampled by savage horses, burnt petals of flowers roamed about… he walked carefully among the debris, it was so hot he discarded his police coat. An open door to his side revealed him where the burnt petals came from. Two huge bouquets of what had been blue roses lied there, utterly destroyed, the flowers where either flying to the roof or its petals floating amongst the splinters.
He heard screaming and rushed to the backwall of the stage, there chaos reigned still between people running from the flames, fireguards, police and theatre attenders.
-There are some dancers on the stage!
-But the flames have already eaten it up!
Connor grabbed two little dance students and ran towards the nearest entrance, carved from the wall where the fireguards had managed to put the fire out. Once there he left the girls to the physicians gathered in an improvised tent and ran back into the Opera, he approached the stage once more, its embers red and hot like the sun in summer.
-Leave!
-Leave!- screamed so many throats that it sounded like a thousand voices
-It´s going to collapse!- someone shouted.
Connor grabbed a man that had fallen square on the ground, and dragged him towards the exit. But he didn´t manage to get there in time before the stage´s back wall fell.
The only thing he could think was throw the man with all the strength he had left before his world crumbled from the core and his life twinkled like the starlight he´d seen in the wolfmaid´s eyes, it wavered and then it stilled, turned out in the crash of the stage´s dome.
.
.
-HURRY THE BLOODY UP!- shrieked Mérante in blind rage at the driver, almost hanging from the davit.
But it was near impossible to move opposite the direction of all the other carriages running away from that red mayhem, the torch in the night the Opera House had become was a sight enough to chill up his very core, but knowing Odette was somewhere in all that fiery vortex made him nauseous.
-I´m sorry Monsieur! But this is as far as we can get, the police is blocking the way.
Louis heart fell to his stomach, as true as the devil, the gendarmerie was allowing people out but no one in.
Frustrated Mérante looked as some others tried to break through the line, undoubtedly anxious to go and look for their loved ones. Through gritted teeth, the young ballet master turned to the driver of his rented carriage and shouted above all the confusion.
-I´ll need one of your horses.
-But Monsieur…
Louis Mérante waited for no response and threw his gold handwatch and his purse to his hands as he untied one of the horses to mount it, he ruffled the reins and sent the scared animal rearing up to the front, right into the policemen perimeter.
The sinking sensation in his gut intensified as he heard the whispering tremor of explosions and felt the earth quivering. Terrified to look in the way of the Opera, he strived on.
His soul was shouting for the black swan´s ballerina, seeing nothing but her crying face when she´d asked him to go to her hometown to check on her old foster parents and he couldn´t say he brought good news; their sickness combined with old age had proven fatal. They were still alive but barely, the flowershop was no more and they were being taken care of by neighbors and friends.
Mérante had no idea how in God´s name was he going to break her the news before it broke her heart; the moon blazed against the fire, as if challenging it to glow brighter, its silver light painted in red, a red moonlight was a bad omen in old times… and now Mérante just thought it made everything look like it was covered in blood.
The Opera was closer now, shouting and crying could be heard now and thick gray smoke coated the streets like the breath of death, reeking of burnt timber and the acid rock leaks when it shimmered white hot.
He saw a little kid knelt next to his mother, crying with his face covered in black smudges. He saw an old lady with a dress that had once been velvety red. He saw a teary young man between his lover and his mother, struggling which needed physician tending the most. He saw Paris sinking underneath that tragedy, like a weeping princess whose crown has been stolen under a nightmare moon.
The impressive building was a gigantic lantern, the hatching place of a bloody new French tragedy, the birth of a monster, a fire monster, a dragon.
He gave his horse to the young man and carried the boy´s mother to the improvised medic´s tent. And then he looked among that sea of burnt would be corpses, hoping and fearing at the same time to find Odette.
Frantically he started pacing amidst the bedplates and sacks. The entrance in the far side was being crossed non stop by the fireguard bringing bodies, each time making his soul shriek in anticipation.
He tried to make himself useful by helping nursemaids and physicians to move the bodies around, realizing that if we wanted to find Odette tonight, that was probably the best he could do; his last memories of her gray eyes haunting him like a ghost over the medical tent, his blood boiling when he realized she had asked him without words to promise her he´d come back.
-I promise Odette, I swear to you I´ll…- but it was past time to swear anything to her sobbing face, the blue orbs looking back at him in silent torment as if she was carrying the burning inferno of a starheart on her back.
Then, as seconds turned to minutes and minutes to hours, his mute and momentary calmness fluttered away… What if she?...No, no, no, no…
He finished helping a doctor amputate the limb of a theater assistant who had been crushed under some rocks and approached one of the fireguards, the Parisian coat of arms on his uniform indicated he held a position of power in the ranks.
-Have you evacuated everyone?
-Hmm?- He turned back to look at him, his face covered in smudges and exhaustion, -Yes sir, all the ones we could rescue have been rescued.
-Beg your pardon?- He stumbled with the words. No fireguards were venturing into the building anymore, struggling with putting the fire out.
-There´s…
-PEOPLE ARE STILL IN THERE?
-There´s nothing more we can do for them sir- he said, a sad hood clothed his sored eyes.
"I promise you, Odette" Mérante´s mind had only his silent oath in the middle of this doomed night.
-Look, if I send my men in there, we´ll only end up with more casualties. The only option now is to extinguish the fire and hope they had managed to get somewhere safe.
-What about the people who were on stage?
"I promise…"
-We believe the fire originated there sir, there´s not much else to do. Now, if you would excuse me…
"I promise…"
Mérante released a quiet scream. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head and looked into the tent once more and then to the Opera, the fuming wrath of the fire had gone out to be replaced by a rather terrifying stillness under a smoky screen, the sort of feeling a child gets when realizing he is lost in the woods.
"I promise…"
-NO!
The young ballet master ran towards the building only to be stopped by the fireguard, he could hear her cold magical voice again lamenting over her life and how it was unfolding in the worst possible way.
The truth, his memories and his dreams were mixing, all of it coming upon him in a rush of steel and shadow.
-Louis!- she called, even when she never did say his name in reality.
A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death. Stupid how now he realized the recurring dream he´d been having was about this night, a night for howling a tragedy, the way her wolf necklace howled in winter winds about her dance and her eyes.
-Sir, collect yourself if you please!
Odette called again. "I promise", he whispered, "Odette, I promise".
For years he hadn´t known what was really living like until he met her, her frozen countenance and her fiery heart. He sat there, in the corner of his life like a Harvest Day pumpkin, only taking part whenever ballet was involved. Yet the purple in her eyes had shown him a person is not only work or what it produces, it is a whole life, a life everyone knew was hard because it kills you in the end and yet, as merciless as the world was, she also taught him its magnificence.
The anguish of imagining her lifeless form under the soot and ashes; her beautiful eyes, fashioned to be in tune with her mood, closed forever; her chestnut hair covered in cinders; her winter-kissed lips dry and cold…No, no, no, no.
-Knock him out
-What?
-He´s desperate and clearly not thinking, some hours out and he´ll be himself again
Mérante felt a punch in his stomach, followed by a kick to his back and a final pressure to his nape…
In his wrecked mind, the dreams came in a rush, breaking havoc in his brain and devastating his heart.
"Promise me", she had cried, in a room of the backstage that smelled now of blood and roses.
"Promise me, Louis". The smoke had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his would-be-lover´s eyes.
Mérante saw the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing, not Connor, not Beaumont, not anyone who had been in the Opera in that cursed night, a night fit for a soaring dragon.
Hello everyone!
Hope everyone is doing great!
Hmm... I´m not sure to go through with this story really, the feedback is not that numerous anymore and it really brings down many inspiring ideas one can have.
Hope you like nonetheless and depending on the follow up of this one, I´ll decide to continue it or not.
Thanks a lot to the ppl who´s been keen on the story, (don´t you dare thinking I don´t appreciate it) and I hope you enjoy this chapter, which was sooooo very hard to write with so many things and emotions happening but here you go!
Lots of love,
PrimaScrittura