Journey woke slowly, to the unfamiliar sounds of hushed voices, giggling, and pattering feet in the hall. Soft notes surrounded her in a cloud of excitable happiness and for a moment, she too felt swept up in the joy that the young singers exuded.
But then her fears returned. Her audition was today, and she had not had time last night to learn the layout of this place. What if she stumbled, fell, while onstage because she couldn't see? What if they refused her a job because she was a blind cripple just like her papa had always said she was? She began to get out of bed, but then realised that she didn't know where anything was; she couldn't find her clothes or start to get ready at all! Her heart raced. What time was it? Had she slept late? Were those girls going to auditions? She scrambled out of bed, her hands swinging out blindly before her, feeling her way slowly, frantically, around the room, tears pricking at her eyes as she fervently wished for the familiar feel of her old room.
I watched, incredulous, from the shadows of the old passageway whose end was the dust-covered mirror once used to draw the fabled - and despised! - Christine Daaé into my father's home and arms. Who was this girl? She stumbled about, looking for something she couldn't appear to find. What was she doing in this place? She was obviously blind, and I winced as I heard her connect with the old dressing table along one wall.
Before I could stop myself, I had slipped up to the old mirror and moved it aside silently with my own two hands in a display of physical strength that left me quietly gasping for breath with spots flying before my eyes. Apparently this was what Father had meant by not overdoing things, but I shrugged it off and slipped silently towards the door, knowing that if she were blind, she'd have excellent hearing and would know from where I'd come. She luckily hadn't heard me shift the mirror; she'd been crying too hard for that, but she heard me when I cleared my throat with a cough that had been tickling there. She whirled, her hand flying to her throat and demanded who was there in a voice broken with frustration and pain.
"I only mean to see if you need help, Mademoiselle..." I replied, ignoring her request to know who I was. "Is there anything you need?"
Instantly, she had forgotten her need to know my identity; with a sob that oddly tore at my heart, her words spilled out. "Yes, I cannot find my way around, I need to get dressed, I have an audition today and I have to get ready, but I can't see anything and I don't know where I am or where anything is... Oh, please help me!"
"Of course, Mademoiselle..." I replied, eyes wide with astonishment. She wanted me to help her? She did not even know me. Nevertheless, I went through her meager possessions, lost as to where she would find her clothes. "Did you not bring clothes with you?" When the current diva had come here when I was a boy, I remembered watching with awe as countless footmen paraded boxes and trunks of more sizes and shapes than I had seen in my entire life. There was nothing here like that, though; it was if the poor girl had come with no more than the clothes on her back... Digging through the few possessions she seemed to have, I froze at the sound of footsteps in the hall, and, not knowing how to do it any other way without the girl hearing me, vanished back behind the safety of the mirror by way of my magic just as Meg Giry, the young ballet mistress who had taken her mother's place soon after her poor mother had passed on, entered the room and began speaking to Journey so quickly she luckily forgot my presence. I fled down the passage on silent feet, but her haunting, blinded eyes, wet with their entreating tears, followed me, turning my graceful steps into stumbling parodies that led me right into my father's arms.
He caught me with the same grace that had so eluded me in my way back down to our home, and steadied me, his warm yellow eyes raking over my tired features, looking worriedly for any sign of returning illness. "Are you all right? I told you to be careful, Erik." He guided me down the passage a ways, until we were close enough to the still waters of the underground lake that I could smell the minerals within it and see the faint light of Papa's lantern dancing on it's surface.
"I'm fine, Papa. I was not watching where I was going, that was all. There's a new girl in that room down there, did you know that?"
"In what room, beloved?" he replied, running his hands gently through the hair falling over the right side of my face.
"In the little room just down the passage." I pointed, watching Papa's expression. It changed, from tender concern to a raging anguish that would never abate, and I clenched my hands into fists. He was thinking of HER again! Would she never leave him be?
"Who is it?" His beautiful voice, gleaming before like a liquid version of his golden eyes, turned harsh with rage and fury. "I shall have André's head for this! Not in twenty years has anyone been in that room!" He started to stride angrily forward and I stopped him.
"Papa, no, she is in there, changing for an audition!" I watched his expression change again to sick sadness.
"She... is here as a chorus girl?"
Damn you, Christine, damn your selfish heart to the worst hell you could ever imagine! "She is auditioning, Pap. You know how picky André is. And she's probably just some hopeful off the streets, with a tiny bit of talent that wants to say she was good enough to be considered by L'Opera Populaire..."
"Picky?" He turned and stared at me. "If Monsieur André were picky in the least, he would never have assigned the questionable title of diva to that caterwauling excuse for a young woman!"
I knew who he meant of course; the current diva was so very terrible that neither of us even attended the operas any more, and Lord knows there were fewer of them these days. It could be attested to the fact that those patrons of the Opera who wintered elsewhere were not yet back from their sojourns elsewhere in the world, but Papa and I had lived here together, surrounded by the day-to-day details of such a place of music, to know that this was simply not the truth. The Opera was failing, people were not interested in it any longer as they once were. With the recent inventions of the phonograph and the later gramophone - neither of which Papa owned -, people had no wish to listen to music live now that they could have it within the comforts of their own homes. "Perhaps this time he has learned his lesson, and after all, could there not be the chance that she has some talent?"
He grunted, his eyes torn with a haunting grief that made me turn away in shame for having brought it to him once more.
He caught me gently by the shoulders and brought me close to him. "This is not your fault, beloved. I would have found out sooner or later. You know that."
I started to speak and then stopped, turning my face away, knowing words were not good enough in this moment to assuage the pain of these past minutes. "Will you be speaking to André?"
"I most certainly will speak to him today, oui." His eyes were sad and soft, but I ignored them, and he knew better than to press the issue. "Is there something you wish me to say to him?"
"Tell him that the next time he invites a blind girl to stay until an audition that he should know to give her clothing in a place easily accessible to her." Without letting Papa ask anything more of me, I nodded curtly and swept the shadows around me like a cloak, swirling off into the darkness, leaving the lantern with him as a single point of light in the shrouding black.
