As we were stretching at the bar, preparing for class, Mme. Remy walked in with M Lefevre, the manager of the opera house. He had bought the house the year before I began living here, but we had rarely ever seen him. He spent most of his time on stage with the older ballerinas and opera stars. All the girls stopped their stretching as Mme. Remy shut the door. The other girls stood and sat up in the room at attention, awaiting what this surprise could be.
"Girls, pay attention, please!" Mme. Remy called, as if we weren't already, "M. Lefevre is here and he has some exciting news for you."
"Thank you, Mme. Remy," M. Lefevre said. He took off his hat and stood before the girls. "Good morning girls. Well, down to business. As you all know, you're age group is the eldest age group in the opera house who is not preforming on stage yet. It has come time to take your dancing test and decide which of you girls shall continue studying here and which of you girls will be sent home."
"That's nothing new," Yvette said, Mme. Remy's daughter, "We've been having those tests every year and every year four five girls are sent home."
"Well, Mlle. Remy," M. Lefevre said, "There is a bit of a difference this year with your test. You will, indeed, be judged on your dancing on the stage and some of you will, yes, be dismissed from the opera house. However, to those of you who are still here after your final test, you will begin practicing dances for our next opera and will be performing with the older girls there."
Every single girl gasped. The girls sitting stood up in surprise. Everyone started talking about, at long last, performing on stage in a show. It was finally happening. After years of training and practicing, bloody toes and sore muscles, we had our chance of dancing on stage in a real live opera.
"But your last test is different." M. Lefevre continued. All the girls hushed and turned to listen to the manager, "You see, instead of individual dancing, Mme. Remy, along with our most talented ballerinas will be teaching you a dance that all of you will perform together, including the male ballet dancers. this performance will be open to the public."
"The public?" Sarah asked, clutching me for support.
"Oh, the public looks forward to this every year." M. Lefevre replied. "The judges will actually be five people whom have never seen any of you or the boys dance before."
"Wow," Sarah said. She gulped from fear, still clutching my arm.
"I'm sure you girls will do superb." he said, "and I'll be in to check on your progress once a week. Thank you for letting me speak with them, Mme. Remy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must see Mme. Therin and speak with the boys. I'll leave it up to you to pick the girls who will be helping you."
"Of course, M. Lefevre," she said, "Thank you for stopping by." He left quickly and Mme. Remy shut the door behind him. The girls started chatting excitedly again.
Sarah was still clutching my arm, "You can take your fingernails out of my arm now, Sarah!" I cried.
"Oh, sorry, Marguerite." she said, dropping my arm. I looked down and saw ten marks pressed into my skin. Surprisingly it wasn't bleeding.
"Alright, girls," Mme. Remy said, "This is very exciting news for you all. I know that all of you will try your hardest to make stay at the opera house and to move to next ballet class. We will begin our training in a few days, once Mme. Therin and I have everything planned out. During those days, you girls will be free from training." Everyone was pleased to hear this. A few days to relax and have fun. "But! I expect to see every single one of you in here at least for one hour each day to stretch. Just because you don't have to practice doesn't mean you can't let your body's go. As for today, we will not have practice today. I have just gotten word that a traveling fair of gypsies is in the city. This afternoon, we will be traveling with the boys to see it."
"You were right, Sarah!" I cried, "She is letting us go!"
"And we're going with the boys!" Sarah said.
"You girls are to dress approiately. I will not have any of you disgracing the opera house! We have a reputation to protect. How embarrasing it would be if someone in the city thought we didn't take such pride in our ballet. That is all, you may go to breakfast!"
The girls rushed from the room to make it to the dinning hall. Sarah and myself were very excited. What a wonderful day and we hadn't even eaten breakfast yet.
"Can you believe we'll be preforming on stage in front of a real audience?" I asked.
"With the boys!" Sarah cried.
"Don't you ever think of anything else?" I asked.
"No," she said, "I can't wait! I'm going to become a great ballerina and marry one of the male ballet dancers. Then, I'm going to have two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, who will both become ballerinas, and then I'll take over as guardian."
"For the boys or the girls?" I asked.
"I haven't decided yet!" she said.
I rolled my eyes. Sarah always thought big. I didn't want to crush her dreams, though. Perhaps she was right and that would happen to her, "Which boy are you going to marry?" I asked.
"Oh, don't worry. Dimitri is all yours!" she said.
"Sarah!" I cried, blushing again, "I don't want to marry Dimitri!"
"Yes you do! Whenever you see him, you smile like you're performing for an audience on stage!"
I rolled my eyes again. We entered the dinning room for breakfast.
Later that afternoon, the girls dressed in some of their finest dresses and outdoor dress shoes. Mme. Remy insisted each of us wear a cloak. We exited the opera house to a cloudy sky.
"I do hope it doesn't rain!" Mme. Therin said as she and the boys left through the other doors. Sarah and I giggled when we saw them.
We began walking down the street. The sound of a violin was heard. A moment later, a boy came into view. He was a view years older than me, but I had talked to him often. Sebastien Daae was a poor boy who played the violin better than I had ever heard before. He would sometimes come into the opera house and visit when us girls would be playing around on the empty stage.
"Hello, Sebastien!" I cried as he came into view.
"Marguerite! I thought I'd see you today, what with this fair and all!" he said. He stood and gave me a hug. I felt so bad for Sebastien. He played such beautiful music, but not one person in town would hire him to play because he was a poor orphan boy.
"Have you been to the fair, Sebastien?" Sarah asked.
"Not yet, although I've heard talk about it." he said.
"From whom?" we asked excitedly, taking no noticing of the rest of the girls passing us by.
"People passing by the opera house. I plan on going there later tonight. There's this great attraction there I can't wait to see. Have you heard about... The Devil's Child?"
"The what?" Sarah asked.
"No, we haven't!" I declared, "Who's the Devil's Child?"
"Let's move it along girls!" Mme. Remy said, "Hello, M. Daae," She dropped a coin in Sebastien's hat. "Come along girls! We must be home by dinner!"
"I'll see you ladies at the fair, later!" Sebastien called, sitting back down.
"Bye, Sebastien!" I called, waving and turning to leave.
Mme. Remy remained walking behind us until she saw two of the little girls running in the street. "Amandine and Genevieve! Get back in line now!" She decided to stay with the younger girls to keep them from running off.
Sarah and I looked around the wonderous city as we walked. It wasn't often we got to leave during the day. The only part of the city we ever really saw was what we could see through the windows. I didn't even notice that someone was walking behind us after a moment.
"Hello, Marguerite," he said.
Startled, I turned to see who was talking to me. To my delight and horror, it was Dimitri Giry. As much as I always denied it from Sarah and the other girls, I did have feelings for him, but I would never admit it, not even to myself.
"Hello, Dimitri," I said, quietly. I could feel my face turning red. Sarah smiled at me and then looked away. I was extremely greatful she didn't say anything embarrasing. She was famous in the opera house for that.
"Are you excited about the fair?" he asked. He smiled with his perfect teeth. They matched his gorgeous light brown eyes.
"Yeah, I've never been to a gypsy fair before," I said, trying to sound interesting and intelligent at the same time. It was hard, though. My mind was growing foggy. "Neither of us have."
"Can you believe that it's almost time for our final test?" Dimitri said.
"I know! I've been waiting for this for so long!" I replied. I worked up my courage to try and say a compliment. "I hope you're chosen to stay."
"I hope you get to stay as well," Dimitri answered, "The opera house wouldn't be the same without you."
Before either could say another word, Dimitri left to walk with a group of boys a bit further ahead of them. Once he was out of earshot, Sarah squealed with delight.
"Oh, Marguerite!" she exclaimed quietly, "He is so smitten about you."
"He is not, Sarah!" I replied.
"Oh please! 'The opera house wouldn't be the same without you.'? He obviously fancies you. And you're taken by him, too."
"No, I'm not!" I said, "Besides, even if I was and even if he was, what can we do? We're not allowed to leave to opera house without permission. There's no way we could court."
"Well, no," Sarah replied, "But I have a plan."
"Oh, and I what's that?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer. Sarah's plans never worked out very well.
"We're going to spend the next few months together training with the boys, correct?" she asked.
"Correct," I replied.
"And there will be times when we'll have some free time to talk, true?" she asked.
"True," I said.
"Well, my plan is, if you two try to get to know each other a little better now and then you both are chosen for the ballet at the end of the season when we have our test, then you'll be living in the adult dormitories and have more privileges. You'll have curfews and allowances to leave the opera house, allowing you to court. Once you two are close friends, you it will more comfortable to start courting and then you'll fall in love and live happily ever after."
"Sarah," I said, "What a strange world you live in."
Ten minutes later, we made it to the fair. There was music and people for miles. Not only townspeople from the city, but gypsies, too. I had never seen anything quite like them. They were dressed so exotically, with fabric's I had only seen on costumes in operas we had attended. Some of them were acrobats and could bend their bodies in almost every postion imaginable. We past by a man who was breathing actual fire. We past by, what at first looked like an ordinary man in dress, but as I got a closer look, I saw it was a bearded lady.
"Do you think that beard's real?" Dimitri asked as I caught up to him near the woman.
"It could be," I said, "I wouldn't know, though, I'm not a gypsy."
The three of us wondered around the fair together. We didn't dare break off from the rest of the group, even though we were sure Mme. Remy or Mme. Therin wouldn't notice. We didn't want to get lost and then kidnapped by the gypsies. As I passed by a fortune teller, I remembered the stories my nanny use to tell me about how gypsies would kidnap children and turn them into freaks just like them.
"Come in!" a large, older man called near a tent, "Come and see the Devil's Child."
"That's what Sebastien was telling us about!" Sarah squealed as we came closer.
"Who was talking about what?" Dimitri asked.
"My friend, Sebastien Daae," I said, turning towards Dimitri, "He was telling us about this devil child that was here that he heard about. He hasn't seen him yet, though. I wonder what he looks like."
Slowly, Sarah, Dimitri, and I entered the tent that the man was beconing us into with Devil's Child painted over the door. We entered through it with the other ballerinas and looked around. There was much inside. A stool stood outside of a large cage with straw all over the floor. But inside the cage sat a small creature with a burlap sack over his head holding a monkey doll.
"Who is that?" Dimitri asked. "Is that suppose to be the devil's child?"
Slowly, everyone made it into the cage. Most of the ballet rats were too frightened to go up to the bars. Even Dimitri and Sarah were a bit skiddish. But I was curious as to what this creature was, so I stepped forward right up to the bars of the cage. I grabbed them with my hands, trying to get a closer look.
There was nothing about this child that showed anything evil about him. He, well, it seemed like a he, was a boy under ten-years-old. The only clothing he wore, other than the sack, was a pair of dirty, ripped pants that were much too short for him. He looked very thin and underfed, his ribs showing so vividly through his skin. He was extremely dirty and bloody. The smell around him was so horrific, it almost made me want to throw up. I doubted this boy had ever had a bath nor a good meal to eat.
The man who had invited us in came into the tent. He went over to the cage door, unlocked it, and walked inside. He grabbed the poor boy by his brittle-looking arm and pulled him over to him, knocking the monkey doll from his hands. The next site made me feel even more sick than the smell of the tent. He pulled out a leather strap and beat him across his stomach, causing him to bleed. I wanted to cry out, to try and stop this evil man from hurting this little boy, but I was in such utter shock, my voice wouldn't work. He then reached down and pulled the sack off the boy. The little child hung his head, but the man grabbed his hair and made him look at us.
I could feel my stomach fall out of my body. My face turned away from the wretched appearance. I had never seen such an appalling, disturbing site. Half of the boy's face was deformed and mutilated beyond anything in this world. No wonder they called the boy the devil's child. A face like that could drive anyone insane. It looked like an evil demon in human form.
But there was one thing, one feature about this boy that told me he wasn't evil. As I forced myself to look at his face again, I fell upon the gentle, sorrowful beauty of his baby blue eyes. There were like an angel's eyes, full of good and adoration, and all the sadness of the world. I felt so terrible for actually thinking the boy was such a wicked beast.
A moment later, the little boy pulled the sack back over his face. The girls and boys started to turn and leave the tent, throughing a few coins into the cage for the boy's caretaker. I looked tearfully up at the man, the truely only evil person in this room. I didn't want to leave this poor being, but I felt someone tugging on my arm.
"Come on, Marguerite," Dimitri was saying, "We should leave now, more people are going to want to see this thing."
I didn't reply, but let him pull me away from the cage. Had just made it out of the tent when we heard screaming and gasping for breath. We rushed back inside to see what the terrifying commotion was. My fear was that the caretaker was hurting the boy again, but it quite the contrary.
The boy had taken the caretaker's leather strap and wrapped it around the caretaker's neck. For such a weak boy, he was strong enough to cut off the man's oxygen until he fell, lifeless in the cage. I screamed when I saw the dead man fall to the ground. The boy picked up his monkey doll and looked up at Dimitri and me.
"He killed him," Dimitri said, fear and shock on his face.
My scream had alerted people outside that something was wrong in the tent. I started walking towards the boy, but Dimitri grabbed my arm.
"Are you insane, Marguerite?" he asked, "That boy is dangerous!"
But I didn't listen, I walked right over to the boy and offered my hand to him. I couldn't see his eyes through the two small holes he had to see through, but he could see me. He examened my hand for a moment, then slowly took it. I helped him from the cage.
Dimitri checked outside. A few of the gypsies were alerting the police that were there and they were running towards the tent. "Marguerite, we have leave now! It's not safe!"
"We can't leave him!" I cried, "The police won't understand. They'll kill him!"
"But if they find us here, they'll think we did! We'll be kicked out of the opera house!"
"Dimitri, I won't leave him! We'll take him with us!"
Dimitri didn't say anything, he check outside. The police would be inside any moment.
"Please Dimitri!" I said.
Dimitri took a deep breath and ran to the back of the tent. He quickly grabbed the bottom and ripped the weak fabric large enough for us. As the police ran in, Dimitri allowed for the boy and me to sneak out first with him right behind us. They didn't follow us through the hole, but back out the other way. We ran through the fair, dodging townspeople and gypsies, fearful that Mme. Remy or Mme. Therin would be right around the corner.