Sorry, guys, school has been just kicking my butt. Seriously. Sorry again. And sorry this is short. I know I suck. Sorry.
Chapter 31
A Performing Problem
All night long Meg fretted over her predicament. She knew Erik wouldn't accept having to teach her; his greatness was reserved strictly for training the likes of ingénues like Christine. Plus, she didn't want to make herself or her talent even smaller in comparison, both compared to Erik's mastery or Christine's natural purity.
And it wasn't like she was entirely ignorant of how to go about teaching herself. After all, she had just learned her audition material without any assistance, but she was only able to do that after having heard the music being rehearsed by the orchestra or hummed in practice by the other chorus members.
See, Meg's problem was that the notes just didn't translate to music inside her head. She could stare at the score and tell you the names of the notes but not what sounds they made. She could tell you what count a beat fell on but not always clap the rhythm. But what hurt her inside was just that there was music, right in front of her, in her hands, and she couldn't access it because of her own lack of talent.
Luckily for Meg, though, she had an excellent musical memory and incredible powers of mimicry. After once or twice of hearing a song, she would never forget its rhythm or words, and would know the vocals even if her own talent limited her parroting. After the third time of hearing it, she would have the motion of the dance memorized, even if the actual techniques sometimes got a little jumbled up. Honestly, it was only by copying others and the fact that her mother could still dance and sing that she was able to stay employed at the Populaire.
She went to sleep that night trying to think of the best way to tell Erik that she couldn't do it alone. She really didn't want to, and she couldn't expect him to help, but she couldn't just spend the hours she needed to be practicing just staring at the paper. In the end, she decided that all she could do was tell him the truth, and pray he would consent to help her.
The next morning, Erik turned from the breakfast he was cooking on the stove at the sound of leather placed gently on wood. He looked questioningly from the portfolio atop his table to Meg, her expression worried, her green-garbed arms hugging herself.
"I can't do it," she began after a deep breath, staring at the folder instead of at Erik's cold mask. She rushed quickly on, "When I was little, my father forbade music in our home. He said it was frivolous and a useless waste of time and paper. So I learned to sing and dance by mimicking my mother and people I saw performing on the street." She paused for another deep breath, then plowed on, "The point is, I've never been able to read music. I can understand what's on the page, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not a musician, I'm just a parrot, copying what I hear. So if you won't let me attend rehearsals, I'm afraid that I just can't perform this time." She coughed a few times, then finished softly, "I just can't do it alone."
After she finished speaking, Meg snuck a furtive look at Erik through the curtain of her bangs. Even though he had been careful not to appear before her maskless again, she could easily imagine the horrible face twisted with disgust and disappointment at her shortcomings. She winced as Erik stood silently and strode purposefully from the small kitchen, apparently unable to bear her presence any longer. She sank into one of the chairs and stared pleadingly at the leatherbound score on the table. If only she could appreciate its contents, if only she could really read it, if she could hear with her eyes…
She opened the pages of thick parchment and studied a random page. Laboriously she tapped out the rhythm and tried to hum the notes. She was woefully off-key.
She frowned at the page and tried again, this time concentrating on hearing the notes in her mind before they came out of her mouth. She thought that she could hear the faint echo of a mellow bassoon playing along with her humming, guiding her pitch. She stopped humming and smiled, pleased at being able to imagine a real pitch—and the bassoon kept going! She frowned, confused, and spun to face Erik with a grimace as he reentered the room. He did not look at her as he returned to the stove, but as a trombone joined the bassoon, she had to speak.
"That's the morning rehearsal, isn't it?"
Erik glanced over his shoulder at her, and Meg imagined that one sparse eyebrow was raised under the stoic mask. "Of course."
Meg's forehead remained creased in its frown as she asked too sharply, "How did you do that?"
She caught the faintest note of pride in Erik's voice as he said with an indifferent shrug, "There is a switch in my bedroom that opens a series of trapdoors through all of the basement levels that can carry the sounds of the stage directly into my living room." He paused, glancing at Meg's frown, and added, "That's what caused me to hear the leak that drew you out of bed three and a half weeks ago, the night we met."
Meg's scowl deepened. Had it really only been less than a month, since Hannibal had begun and they had met face-to-terrifying-face upon that darkened stage? The run of the opera had been a blur of work and worry, and her eight days in the little house on the lake seemed to mesh together without light to mark the passing of time. She coughed, remembering, and demanded, "Why did you have to frighten me so much then? What had I ever done to you? Is that just how you have your fun, frightening helpless chorus girls in the dead of night?"
"Hardly helpless, I would say," Erik said, his voice growing louder and stronger as he turned to face her fully. "I've seen you challenge our worthless excuse for a diva, O-Champion-of-the-Children. You're not afraid to stand up against me or anyone else in my Opera House."
"That's not true!" Meg nearly shouted at him. "I'm terrified to stand up to people!" Her stomach twisted as she said it, but she plowed ahead nonetheless. "But why can't you leave me alone? Why do you have to pay attention to what I do? Why can't you just go back to haunting Christine without my help and just let me go home?
Erik's mouth was already open to tell her she should be grateful to him for saving her life, and be glad to help him win his Angel, but he remembered, from a lifetime ago, how incredibly frustrating it was to have people treat you like you couldn't understand things just because you were young. He decided that, as he had enlisted her help in his quest for Christine, that he did owe her some portion of the truth.
"I watch over you because your mother asks me to." He saw the disbelief on Meg's face that said she thought he was lying to her. "When you first moved here, Antoinette Giry asked me to look over and help you. I admit, it was my idea; I knew how protective she was of you and promised that if she served and assisted me, I would make you an Empress. I believe she has clung to that promise for ten years now."
Meg's jaw was clenched tight in fury. "You mean that you have manipulated her for ten years, and now you're just replacing her with me," she said through gritted teeth. She stood abruptly, her hands clenching into fists despite the soft flute melody that now drifted through the air. "Well, I won't be your puppet, monsieur. You can't make promises or threats to me that will make me your slave. It doesn't work that way, and you can just find yourself another girl to manipulate, you monster!"
She whirled and began to stalk away, but Erik was in front of her as suddenly as if he had stepped out of a shadow. He did not tower over her as he did over Christine because Meg was so tall, but the darkness of his figure and the menace in his bewitching voice allowed him to loom nonetheless.
"Do your promises mean so little to you, little Megara?" he hissed, his voice seeping into Meg's ears and burning her mind like acid. She clutched her head in a physical pain, but glared up at him through a grimace.
"That's when I thought you deserved a chance, but now—" she cut off. Was she actually willing to say that he didn't deserve a chance anymore?
No, she supposed not. She gave a sigh and lowered her hand. Whatever had happened over the past then years, she had meant it when she said Erik deserved a chance to be happy. And, if she was seen as a helper rather than another pawn on the chessboard, then maybe she could swing the events so that less people ended up played with or hurt.
Meg turned to stare straight into Erik's eyes, her icy blue ones catching his sunken golden ones in an escapable grip.
"Very well," she said, her voice soft but iron-firm. "You're right. I did promise. I will help you." She paused, then smiled. "Now, weren't you making breakfast?"