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Star From Darkness

Chapter 9

Erik's Point of View

She always seemed to faint at the wrong time. It was like there was this cue in her head of when to faint when it is most inconvenient for me. I stared at her for a few moments, a loud ringing sound in my ears.

I slowly moved to her. I bent down on my knees to the floor and just looked at her.

She was so sick, no doubt of that. Her pale face was clammy and wet as I touched her cheek. Her heart rate was high as I touched my fingers to her pulse. Her body was thin and weak. She looked so fragile. I scooped my arms beneath to pick hr her up. Just then, Mme. Giry ran into my home as I lifted Christine's body from the ground.

"Erik, what have you done now?" she said with a slow regretful voice. My timing with things was getting worse and worse.

"You treat me as if I were a reckless sixteen year old boy. I have done nothing." I said as I placed Christine delicately in her old bed I had made for her. Her weak and cold body sunk into the sheets as I covered her.

"Oh, that's a first! Erik is not the cause of something…"

"Don't tease me please!" I said through clenched teeth. "I have much to think about."

"You know about Ettie don't you?" she said, a sad smile on her face as I pulled a chair up to the red swan bed. Christine ground a little and rolled over, her whole front facing me.

"Yes," I said putting my hands in front of my face as if I was praying to the Lord. Mme. Giry walked over to me slowly, placinf a kind and caring hand on my strong shoulder.

"She's yours." She said, one of the biggest grins I had ever seen on her face. I closed my eyes and sighed. A child. My child.

"That's why she has the scar isn't it?" I asked, frustrated anger etched in my hard voice. I didn't end with me. I had passed it to my… daughter. "I've forced her to a life of solitude. I destroyed and marked her before she was born!" I said, my voice growing.

"No, actually she lives quite happily. Make-up is a blessing for her. The scar does bother her though. It's dry and irritated and itches her so. It gets frost bit in the winter, and most nights then she sleeps with a warmed towel around her right side of her face." She said in a very honest, almost blunt tone. I turned to her, my mouth hanging open.

"I should know this. I should have raised her. I should have known…" the tears I had tried to suppress failed me, and rolled down my cheeks. I felt the hot salty tears hit and sting the opened wounds of the deformity under the mask.

"She didn't want you to know Erik, she was terrified of what you would have down to the child."

"I would have loved her more than anything!" I screamed. Christine thought I was really that heartless. Did she think I would have really killed my own daughter?

"You've committed murder, she had good reason to think you would do it again. And after you disappeared, well… she had an infant to take care of. She didn't have time or the energy for health to look for its father! She was physically ill knowing her daughter would never know her father."

"I ran away…" I said. The words were hard to get out. Before I had come back as they were rebuilding this grand palace again, I had lived as a nomad. Living wherever I could. Sleeping wherever there was soft ground. "If I hadn't…"

"You would have seen Christine give birth to your child, yes Erik that's right. It's time to pay your dues my boy. You'll be paying them all right. You're going to have your hands full."

Mme. Giry left me then. I was left for the first time felling as if I was in total darkness. I had always had my music to comfort me. Now music was not enough to consol me for the ebbing darkness. Now, I had nothing.

The only thing I had now was a daughter I had never know and the only woman I had ever loved with the right to hate me for causing her pain…

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXO

"Stop scratching your leg Ett…" Gabrielle said, her arms folded across her chest as she looked at her best friend gnawing at her lower right leg with her fingernails.

"I'm serous… stop scratching." She said, her voice sounding very much like Raoul when he was angry.

"I can't help it! GRRRR!" She screamed as the un-lady like sound came out of her throat "I'm it tights too much! My skins so dry! The tights rub against the skin and it itches!" she screamed as she clawed harder at her lower leg. Gabrielle stood up and grabbed her hand away from her leg.

"Stop! You're taking skin off!" She pointed to the forming scab below her knee and the flakes of skin around the flaming red of her leg. A huge bruise from dancing to the side of her knee did not improve the look of it. White streaks from fingernails covered her leg.

"I don't care!" she cried. "I just want it to stop itching!" she screamed and she brought her leg back bent in front of her back from underneath her tutu. She starting itching vigorously again, her face screwed into angry concentrated look. Her tights had already been shed to the floor from practice.

"FATHER!" Gabrielle yelled outside the dressing room door. "Ett won't stop scratching!" Raoul was in the room fast and walked over to Etolee and pinned her hand down. Etolee fought with strength.

"Stop." He said Calm but firmly. Etolee stopped fighting and let her hand rest in his tight grip. "You're going to hurt yourself." She nodded slightly, looking down to the ground. "You've been scratching your scar too haven't you?"

"Never saw her do that." Gabrielle said in an innocent voice. "I don't know why she scratches."

"Stress habit." Raoul said looking at his daughter. Etolee nodded. "Can you go get the cream from you mother's room please?" he asked his daughter. Gabrielle nodded and left the room, and Rould let his niece's hand go. She reached her hand up to her lower leg.

"Slap instead." He said smiling. She nodded and instantly started slapping her hands hard on her red inflamed leg. "Etolee, you only scratch when something that worries you has happened. What's wrong?"

"She went down." She said quietly. "Mom went though the mirror. I know she did. She's going to meet that man! I didn't MEAN to go down there!" Raoul sat up from the bed , his face pale and livid.

"WHY DID YOU GO DOWN THERE? DID YOU SEE HIM?" He bellowed at the girl. She only nodded. Raoul passed back and forth around the tiny room.

"What wrong with that man?" She asked, her voice rising. "I have the right to know."

"No, you have no right to know! His a sick sick man. He's mad!"

"I know that much. He seemed in good health to me."

"He's sick in love. With your mother. He loves your mother. He loves her more than anyone has ever loved another. That is all you will hear from me." Her mouth hung open for a few moments then she instantly went back to scratching.

"You're taking off flesh." He said darkly.

"I don't care, just let me scratch. Skin can come off, it can grow back."

"Sometimes the skin never grows back. Sometimes it's just left open to bleed." He said, his voice thick with emotion.

"Sometimes it needs to bleed." She said, she voice sad and worn.

"it's not supposed to bleed. It's not made to bleed.

"Some people are made to bleed. They can't help it. They were made that way. They bleed more, so they are shunned."

"Most don't like blood."

"They'll have to accept it. Everybody has a place that bleeds. Some more than others. And when the blood pours too much, no one's there to help them." Raoul knew whet Etolee was talking about. he could feel her pain, and he could feel Erik's soul in her as strong assif she was Erik himself.

"Be that as it may, you can't continue to let it bleed, you have to take care of it and heal the wounds."

"Sometimes there's too much blood to handle." She said as a tear ran down her cheek, and a trickle of blood ran down her leg.

And as Raoul looked at the girl, all he saw in her was Erik

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