Chapter Two:
Catalyst
The day started badly…
Christine awakened that morning feeling entirely, inescapably, and dismally ill. Her head ached, her throat was scratchy and dry, and there was an awful tightness in her neck and across her shoulder blades; her body and mind felt as if they were both entirely devoid of any energy whatsoever. And, to make matters worse, her listless glance out the nearby window told her that the sky was already blanketed in thick grey clouds, which were gradually sending a fine misting rain down upon the land. It had snowed earlier that week—but now that snow had begun to turn into nasty grey slush, no longer fresh, fluffy, and white. It was cold in the dormitories, and frost was at the window.
It was an awful way to begin a day.
Feeling petulant and resentful of the world in general—and for no comprehensible reason—she grudgingly dragged herself out of bed, and began the same ritual that she had performed every single morning of her life since she had come to the opera house. With silent and not just slightly petulant silence, she splashed cold water from the pewter basin onto her face and neck: quickly drying her skin with the rough towel that hung on the peg in the wall nearby. She dressed, slowly and mechanically, as the other girls moved about in sleepy quiet. Then she made her bed, smoothing the coverlets and giving a quick, perfunctory pat to the pillow.
And on her way to the dining hall, she sulked.
She had never before felt so unhappy and—well—simply out of sorts, as she did this morning. Every other day of the year, she had been complacent and even demurely accepting in regard to the state of things in her life. She would never enjoy luxury, riches, or privilege. She didn't have a family, and she had precious little time to herself. She was an orphan, and poor, and a woman. She was a lowly ballet tart and chorus member, and had to work as an assistant seamstress in order to make enough money to pay her bills, and essentially keep herself alive.
But—she had accepted this, or so she had thought. She knew all of these things to be true in her life; she knew that there was little she could do to change them. Of course she had always dreamed.
Don't all little girls dream of castles and clouds and fairy tales?
Arching russet eyebrows gathering into a puckered frown over stormy amber-flecked eyes, Christine glared at the swirling patterns in the wooden floorboards beneath her feet. Wasn't it useless to dream? She would never be world-renowned. She would never be wealthy. She would never be beloved of someone with a passion unimaginable.
It's not fair.
That was the first time that that particular thought had ever entered her head. Christine felt a cold chill run through her, twisting in the pit of her stomach, as she paused and thought deeper. It wasn't fair. It really wasn't.
It never had been.
Meanwhile, in the Labyrinth, the Goblin King watched her in his enchanted mirror, and found himself smiling. And his smile—cold and mirthless, exulting and somehow knowing—broadened as he read the thousand conflicting thoughts that were chasing each other recklessly across her beautiful young face.
She had no idea how transparent her face was, in that moment! She couldn't have hidden a single thought, a single emotion of hers, from him then. He knew precisely what she was thinking and feeling.
And he intended to use it all to his utmost advantage.
The smirk still etched into the exposed portion of his face, he stood back from the mirror, and then strode away from it. He didn't have to stand and watch now to know, for sure, the inevitable truth…
She would be calling upon him soon now.
The cook had ill-attended the breakfast that morning, and Christine's bowl of lumpy porridge was cold, thin, and runny—and flecked with bits of gritty charcoal. After breakfast, she danced with the corps de ballet, and all went as usual until she nearly collided with another girl, Gisele Pontmercy, in a particularly complicatedfouetté rond de jambe en tournant, at a diagonal movement across the stage.
In the resulting confusion as the two girls attempted to avoid both falling down and dancing out of step, Christine wrenched her ankle and was severely scolded for her distraction—which had caused the mishap—by a disapproving Mme. Giry, and several older members of the chorus.
Then, later that afternoon…
Her book was taken from her.
The culprits in the incident were several of the young and audaciously bold stagehands, who had taken notice of the quiet, dark-haired chorus girl's obvious attachment to the beautiful, leather-bound book. As Christine had been walking back to the dormitories after the day's practicing was over—joining in the chatter and laughter of her group, mostly comprised of her fellow petite rats—the villains had sprung their trap. Out of the shadowy recesses of the wings they had pounced, startling the skittish ballet girls, who escaped unscathed into the darkness.
Christine and Meg were cornered, however. Upon recovering from her initial startled shock and realizing what was going on, Meg was livid. And, being the bolder of the two girls, she was entirely unafraid of giving the wicked, laughing boys a piece of her fifteen-year-old mind…
Green eyes blazing with righteous and indignant fury, Meg Giry rounded on the errant stagehand boys, her hands flying to her hips so that her arms were held severely akimbo. Her jaw jutted out defiantly as she glared at them.
"Jacques! Etienne! Vachel! Paul! What do you think you are about? Get out of our way this instant, or I shall call Maman on you! Now shoo, you idiots!"
Loudly amused laughter came from the boys.
"Shoo? Or what—you'll beat us?"
Meg gritted her teeth, as Christine watched: her dark eyes flared wide with uncertainty and disbelief at her friend's behavior. She could never bring herself to believe even her own senses when she witnessed such fearlessness from the little Giry girl, who stood barely over five feet in height…
"If I must," Meg grated out, meanwhile.
The boys laughed again, and then Jacques—the unruly mob's resident leader—sidestepped the incensed blonde girl. Wordless with fury, Meg immediately spun around and watched in horrified incredulousness as the sixteen-year-old youth plucked Christine's beloved Labyrinth neatly and coldly out of her arms!
Christine cried out, and threw herself forward, stretching her hand out towards the pilfered article. Pale as a sheet, she begged—
"Jacques! Please—please! Give it back!"
But he merely grinned at her desperation, striding back to his approving friends with self-assured and triumphant bravado in his gait.
"Well—!" said he, "If it's only a silly book, then you must be a silly girl for reading it, little Daae! Wasting your time on stupid fairy stories, and at your age? Pah! Such a great silly girl! What's so wonderful about them anyway?"
At that, Christine tore away from the two boys who had stepped in front of her and Meg whilst Jacques had gone on with his mocking little speech: an inarticulate shriek of rage and desperation issuing from her ruby-red lips. Jacques did not turn until it was too late. By the time he had even begun to recoil, the formerly solemn and docile chorus girl had latched her talon-like fingers onto his arm, and was beating him soundly with one curled and surprisingly hard fist.
"You hand that book back to me now, you horrid, horrid cretin!" she spat, seething at him like an angered tabby cat. The enraged light in her huge dark eyes was terrible and almost unnatural to see within the shadows. "You ogre! Beast! Stupid boy! What does it matter to you that I read stories! I should box your ears with them!"
The onslaught continued, and Jacques hollered to his cronies for their aid—in real, growing fear of the damage that the girl might do to his person—and things might have progressed to an even more chaotic state…
But they didn't.
"Arrêtez Christine Daae and Jacques Rousseau, you will cease your squabbling this instant, or I shall thoroughly cane you both!" (1)
In the very next second, a hand that was as firm and inexorable as stone itself grabbed hold of Christine's frail shoulder and Jacque's considerably more sinewy arm, and forcibly separated the pair.
Mme. Giry glared Christine, and then Jacques with hot, hot fury in her piercing hazel eyes: her lips were set so that they'd become a mere thin, severe line of dark red, and her arched eyebrows were set into the most terrifying of frowns. She was angry—very angry—and fear of her wrath now burned in the air. The boys, and Meg, fell back and watched: guilt-ridden and petrified that the formidable ballet mistress's baleful eye would be turned on them next.
But Mme. Giry had seemingly only two souls in the world on her mind at that moment, and they were those of young Jacques Rousseau, and Christine Daae—the latter of whom had not yet ceased to stare murderously at the boy beside her: Mme. Giry's arm his only protection. Mme. Giry looked from Christine to Jacques and back, seemingly speechless with incredulousness and ire.
Finally, she spoke.
"Good heavens! Your wicked squawking is enough to turn the dead in their graves!" She spat out the words like poison. "I do not even want to know what is going on here! You should be ashamed of your foolish, petty behavior—for shame, fighting like ignorant, uncivilized gamin, in the middle of the opera house's halls! Do you know how many people you have disturbed with your riot! I would have expected better from you both, at your age—especially you, Christine Daae!"
And Mme. Giry released Jacques, but kept her hand on Christine's arm—though the cold severity of her grip lessened quite a bit. Christine drew back, her own hand moving to clasp her shoulder as if she felt that her skin had been burnt. Her dark eyes never once left Jacques, who hung his head and backed away, red-faced and completely cowed by the ballet mistress, who had vanquished him in front of his friends.
"Christine!"
Mme. Giry's voice broke the silence.
And Christine looked at her, at last.
Something horrible—something dark and twisted and entirely not of that world—flickered for a mere, fleeting fraction of a second in the depths of those huge, onyx-tinted irises, and Mme. Giry's face paled, as her eyes widened…
In fearful recognition, and realization…
Then the flood broke loose from the dam.
"It's not fair!" she burst out. "You haven't any idea of what they were about, Madame! You don't know anything—none of you do! Not a one of you has a single thought in your piggish heads! You don't understand—no one does! I—"
Suddenly, she stopped short, her delicate chest heaving as she drew a deep, quivering breath. Time seemed to stand still then, as everyone in the shadowy backstage room stared at the livid girl, not able to even begin to comprehend what was going on. Christine's eyes shone with that same unearthly fire for a moment, but this time, it was there along with the proud independence of a child who had learned to live her life alone.
After a tremulous and terrible silence, she said it to them.
"I hate you! All of you!"
And then she ran.
Now, Christine sat against the cold wall of the secluded attic where she had first discovered the book that told the story of the magical Labyrinth. Her eyes vacant, haunted, and sad, she stared out at the dingy grey wall, as a heavy rain beat a steady, rhythmic cadence against the windowpanes and roof.
Since the day that she had found it, she had guarded her beautiful leather-bond tome with an almost religious care, keeping it safely ensconced between the mattress and the frame of her bed. And though many of the ballet girls knew that the book was there, they had never touched it. No one had. Yet now it was gone: first arrested by that stupid boy and his friends, and now likely held in duress by Mme. Giry, who was likely so furious with her now that she would never give it back.
It isn't fair…!
The Labyrinth's story had become—in some strange fashion, in her mind—the only tangible link that she had to her dead father. Charles Daae had told his beloved only daughter the tale again and again, countless times during her childhood: always surrendering to her relentless begging for the tale of the Labyrinth and its sinister yet enthralling master, the Goblin King, with a rueful smile and a bit of a laugh. Even now, when she was alone and unwanted in the world, Christine still remembered the words, knowing them almost by heart. They were ingrained within her soul, like the nuances of some beautiful enchantment in a lost wood.
But the book had been real. The book had been more than mere words, which were not enough to sustain the soul. It had been real. Night after night, when the world had fallen deep into the swells of sleep and was dead to the revels of the moon and stars, she had remained awake and devoured the lines and lines of raven-black script etched upon its creamy, age-lined vellum, unable to draw herself away from the magic. The fantastical world held within those pages had captivated her mind, and the intensity of its irresistible pull at her soul touched something deep within her.
A chord of fear had been struck in her, deep and resounding, as her mind felt more consumed by what she would have formerly dismissed as a fairy-tale that had been broken by reality, too many long and unhappy years before.
The Labyrinth pulled at her, invading her thoughts and causing her to see the world around her in an unthinking daze…
Twisting her dreams…
Her book was gone. Her happy dream world had been taken from her; the crystalline perfection of her most secret fantasy, in which she was the princess and beloved of the Goblin King…all had been shattered. She was alone again.
As she had always been.
Finally, Christine put her face in her hands and wept.
The Goblin King caressed one fingertip of his black-gloved hand along the misty, gleaming surface of the enchanted mirror: drawing it along the reflected image of the beautiful young girl's face. Hot, keen anger surged through his veins—anger towards the callous youths who had dared to accost her, and irritation towards Anrenielle for once again insistently meddling in his affairs. He watched as the girl wept, and his heart—black and twisted and inhuman as it was—ached within him.
Yes, he was the Goblin King, and a sorcerer of fey blood.
But he would not abide the torment of his unknowing beloved.
The object of his obsession must not be made to suffer…
With painstaking carefulness, he gently traced the curve of the girl's exquisite jaw line, the masses of her spiraling russet-kissed curls, and lastly allowed his hand to linger last and longest on the indentation of her chin just below her full lower lip. If only he could hasten her to saying the words, to wishing herself into his power…
But he would be able to know the euphoria of her delicate, rose-petal beauty soon enough. It wouldn't be long. Soon, he would have her within his grasp, and then he would be able to trace her features with his very own fingertips. Soon, he would never again be forced to content himself with merely looking at her, and wondering despairingly what her glorious tresses would feel like sliding against his leather gloves, or brushing against his chin. She would say the words, soon enough. He was confident of it. Soon, the throne beside his would be taken…
By his Goblin Queen.
He leaned over, and gazed intensely at the face of the distraught maiden. She was leaning over, huddled against a dingy grey wall, and her long, spiraling locks of ebony-dark had more than half hidden her porcelain-fine features. She was pale—so very, very pale: his perfect, abandoned, and desperate Persephone, starved for affection and craving whatever attentions she could be given, however dark…
And whomever their master…
Softly, ever so softly, the words issued from his lips: whispering like a covert, searing summer breeze over a still afternoon—
"Come to me quickly, my beauty…"
I am waiting for you…
A/N: Reposting this chapter and the next in order to do some minor editing...but the third is rather new!
(1) "Arrêtez! " Thanks to CleverLass for correcting my mistake. 'S been a while since I last really did any studying in French...
"...Christine Daae and Jacques Rousseau, you will cease your squabbling this instant, or I shall thoroughly cane you both!
—The caning line is in honour of Mme. Giry of phantom fans . net, because she's the Queen of Caning the Evil, the Unjust, and the Unruly.