Chapter One
"Thorns"
Every time she had said "no more" every time she had thought "just one more look then no more" and yet there Claire stood at the foot of her mother's grave. She stood gazing at the tombstone and the words carved into its gray face: Viscomtess Christine Daaé de Chagny. Claire's eyes filled with tears that never once fell; she pulled her dark cape around her as she shivered in the snow. Her crystal blue eyes fell to the base of the grave where rested a red rose tied in black silk. She hadn't placed it there and her father had but once come to this grave. Claire stooped and plucked up the flower. She ran her cold fingers lightly across the tops of the petals that reached out as if offering a kiss on their red lips. The wind swirled around her frail figure and seemed to sing in a ghostly voice a melody that Claire didn't know and yet was so familiar. She nearly lost herself in the wind's voice but remembered herself enough to realize the sky was darkening. She began to hurry home still fondling the rose and the wind's song in her ear. But once she left the graveyard gates the wind faded and died and she walked the rest of the way in silence.
"Where were you?" Asked Claire's father from his wheelchair.
"Visiting Mama." Answered Claire as she let her cape fall from her thin shoulders.
"We're getting water on the floor!" Fussed father's nurse sweeping up the cape in her arms.
Claire quietly sank into an armchair, there were many armchairs in the room, all red, all old and soft. Father in his wheelchair sat next to the great fire which all the arm chairs were arranged around. Claire herself seemed to almost disappear in her chair, though she was eighteen she was thin and fragile as if made of glass. Father blamed the fact that she was small on the fact that she never had mother's milk, her mother had died in birth another thing father blamed Claire for. Claire knew inside that her mother's death was caused because she was in her forties when she gave birth to her but her father's cold glances and muttered sentences pained her.
Claire sat quietly still gently holding the rose in her hand, her free hand clenching and unclenching the folds of her black dress. She was trying to remember that melody on the wind but it wouldn't come to her, she knew she had heard it before.
"Where did you get that?"
Claire snapped her head up. "What?"
Father turned to her and repeated, "Where did you get that rose?"
"I got it when I went to visit mother."
"Through it away. Now."
"What? No. I can't." Claire clutched the rose to her chest cutting her fingers on the thorns.
"Now look what you've done!" Huffed the nurse trying to pry the rose from Claire's hand.
"No don't—" Pleaded Claire but the rose was gone from her hand leaving a bloody mess behind.
"Now go wash that hand." Ordered the nurse throwing the rose in the fire.
Claire stood slowly her eyes never leaving the inflamed rose. She left the room leaving the door open a crack. She went to her rooms and washed her hand clean in her basin. She was about to reenter the drawing room when she heard voices floating from between the crack in-between the door and wall.
"You can't think she met him do you? Surely he must be dead by now." Said the nurse.
"I don't think a man like him can die." Came father's feeble voice.
"Oh, nonsense." Reasoned the nurse.
Claire wanted to hear more but she could hear the nurse making for the door so she bolted up the stairs hopping she hadn't been seen eavesdropping.
Claire sat on the stairs in the darkness. She hadn't been able to sleep and so she sat on the stairs humming to herself then singing softly words she didn't know she knew, As she sang, not knowing what word came next but saying it all the same, she almost felt that someone was there with her but she wasn't afraid. It was if she was singing to someone else but they were not her words.
"Madam,"
Claire shrieked and looked up; the nurse was standing on the stairs gazing questioningly at her.
"I-I'm sorry." Claire stood shakily. "I was just going to bed." She turned and hurried up the stairs and into her room. She sank to the floor suddenly weak. What was happening to her? She knew—or she had thought—someone, someone other then the nurse, had been in that stairwell with her, singing with her, guiding her. But that was of course ridiculous. However, in that moment when she was singing she had believed it.
Claire stood and walked to her bed falling into it's softness. She slid under the covers trying to forget what had just accrued in the stairwell.
He stood there in mist, a black shadow against gray, waiting for her.
"Lonely child
So lost
So empty
Yearning for true beauty"
A hand, as black as his shadow, reached out to her. Oh, she longed to take it! But the mist held her back.
"Too long have you been cold
Without a fire
To set your soul alight"
Claire awoke the next morning feeling as if she'd been asleep for ages. She sat up and stretched her arms as she tried to recall what she had dreamt. There had been a man, or at least she thought it was a man it was heard to tell for his face was shrouded in shadows. And this man had been singing to her, beautiful songs they were. She grabbed her dairy and quickly jotted down what she could remember of the dream. But both the man and the songs were quickly fading from her mind and by midday she no longer recalled them though she unknowingly hummed the melody of her dreams as she walked the halls.