Wildflower
The sparkling silver glow of the morning had grown gradually muter as Christine paced absently across the path of the park in anxious contemplation. "After all, it would be rude of me not to call and express my condolences," she murmured aloud to herself as she continued to wring her hands. "I really should go."
But her words were not unheeded by Raoul, who looked up from where he leant patiently against the path's railing. He lifted a hand to brush a powdery layer of snow from the brim of his hat and then watched as the crystals melted into the smooth wool of his glove.
Christine stopped and turned back to him. "Wouldn't it?"
He glanced across at her, lowering his hand. His brow creased in a disapproving frown as he further took in her agitation. "Perhaps it would be best if you went home to rest?" he pressed gently.
She stared at him for a moment, then turned away and began to pace once more, wringing her hands all the more desperately. "They really do deserve to hear from me, I think, even if they do not know why. Why, it would be cruel of me to refrain. I really ought to go at once."
Raoul stepped forward and caught her by the arms, immediately halting her dizzying movements. "Stop trying to justify this with shoulds and shouldn'ts. If you want to go, then go," he said with the softest of sternness. "I have said I would take you. What is it you are afraid of?"
She blinked up at him and then pulled away. "Nothing," she whispered.
He took a step after her. "If it is the scandal that hinders you, then it is they who should be worried, not you."
She shook her head and once more took to wringing her hands, though her feet remained planted where she stood.
He put a hand on her shoulder, but before he could even try to turn her, she pulled away again and took a few more steps down the path that left delicate white footprints between them. His shoulders rose and fell in a weary, silent sigh, and then he turned to go back to his place by the railing while checking his watch with the jerky movements of frustration.
The revolving motion of Christine's hands ceased, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she stared at the naked branches of trees above her where the virtuous blanket of snow was stealthily gathering. "Raoul?" she murmured, but did not glance back to see if he was listening. "A pinson is a bird, isn't it?"
She waited for him to speak, but she only heard the snow-muffled sounds of his footsteps.
"Raoul?" she asked again, a note of shrillness entering the soft tone of her voice.
"Yes, Christine." He was directly behind her, and she could see the cloud of his breath as it blew over her shoulder before she felt his arms once more encircle her from behind. This time she did not resist. "Yes. A bird."
She shivered and closed her eyes. "It is snowing."
"Yes. So it is," Raoul said with most generous sweetness.
She sighed softly as he pulled her more closely against him. "I thought it might be warm today," she whispered. "I thought the snow might melt… Like the day she disappeared."
"Why did you think that?"
She turned about in his arms to face him, gazing up into his patient, red-rimmed eyes for a moment before confusion flashed across her own. "I… I don't know. I'm not sure why I thought that…"
He lifted a hand to her face and brushed away a few snowflakes that had fallen there and refused to melt. "Let us go, Christine, or let us not," he said softly. "But either way, let us stay no longer out here in the snow. The wind has begun to blow right through the both of us."
She nodded, but lifted her hands to remove his from her person, and then she began to make her way back in the direction they had come. "Does your brother still know them?"
He fell in stride with her. "He will refuse to have anything to do with them. I doubt he even still will acknowledge their existence… He's said not a word about any of the news."
She glanced at Raoul as she pulled the soft material of her cloak more closely about herself. "And you… Do you hate them too?"
He met her eyes before she looked away again. "None of it was any of my affair."
"So you do not?" she pressed.
"I… Christine, I've never even met them."
She turned to look at him and then her gaze fell away again to the flickering white. "Neither had I…"
They stopped briefly at her apartment so that she might exchange her cloak for a warmer wrap of furs while Raoul's tired driver readied his carriage to embark again. But by the time they were on their way, the skies had grown considerably darker and the wind rattled the brougham's windows.
Christine slid closer to Raoul's side on the seat. "Do you think it will storm?"
"For the driver's sake, I hope not." Raoul smiled and put an arm about her shoulders.
If Christine noticed, she did not object, for her eyes were fixed on the little silver heart that she spun methodically around the chain on her wrist. "What exactly did you tell the police?" she asked, distractedly.
Raoul was silent for a moment before speaking. "The note said that I regretted to inform them that Elainoire Pinson is dead and her body irrecoverable."
Christine nodded. "Yes… Irrecoverable…"
He looked down at her. "You know where she is, don't you." It was not a question.
"I…" She met his eyes and immediately regretted doing so. She did not need to say another word.
Raoul frowned. "But Christine…"
She shook her head quickly. "You do not understand. I cannot make you understand."
He sighed and looked out his own window, withdrawing his arm then from her furred and feathered shoulder. "You do not even want to try."
"Raoul…" She waited, but when he did not glance back to her, she looked away as well, only adjusting her wraps and returning her focus to Elainie's necklace.
As she felt the carriage pull to a stop before the Marquis de Pinson's house on the Rue Saint-Florentin, she tucked the little heart away into her sleeve and tugged up the edge of her glove to save her wrist from the cold and hide the necklace from anyone who might recognize it. The driver opened the door on her side and helped her step down, but when she looked back in to Raoul, she saw he remained as he was, the back of his shoulder turned toward her and his eyes fixed out the opposite window.
"Won't you come with me?" she asked, her voice wavering in the gusts of breeze.
But he did not look to her. "It is none of my affair. I will wait for you here." So she nodded in silent politeness to the driver and made her way to the marquis's door alone.
It was answered by a sour-looking maid with wet hands, who dried them quickly on her apron when she realized who was calling. The elderly woman took Christine's furs and boa and then ushered her into a finely furnished parlor before disappearing to retrieve her master. In the seconds before the door swung closed, Christine was certain she heard the distant sound of a canary singing from somewhere much deeper within the house.
A comfortable fire drew her to the hearth, and her eyes roved over the painting that hung above it. It was the same one she had seen represented in the newspaper only an hour ago. The marquis and his wife with their three children. The man himself was handsome for his age, which must have been close to fifty. His wife couldn't have been older than thirty-five, but her lovely features were etched with the wisdom of a woman born to be a marquise. The young boy's eyes were filled with all the petulance of a fourteen-year-old first-born aristocratic son. And then there were the two little twin girls, looking absolutely identical, only now that Christine viewed the image in its fully colored shades, she saw one wore blue and the other wore pink. If they had been dressed alike, she would have never known which one was Elainie. She stepped closer to the portrait, rising on the toes of her boots, the hem of her dress—she too was wearing pink—swaying dangerously near to the fire's edge.
"We commissioned it last summer."
The female voice caught Christine off guard and she whirled about too quickly, causing herself momentary giddiness. She pressed a hand to her forehead before her eyes were able to focus on the very image of the woman in the portrait behind her, changed only slightly by dreary signs of fatigue etched about her features.
"Madame la Marquise." Christine nodded to her, her voice too soft.
The woman stepped into the room from the doorway, pulling a soft shawl about the shoulders of her powder green dress. "Mademoiselle Daaé." She returned the nod of respect, though her words were clipped. "It is kind of you to call in our hour of sorrow, but I am afraid the marquis is not at home, and I am not well enough for company."
"Forgive me," Christine said softly. "I was not invited, but I thought someone must express our sympathies…" She pressed a trembling hand over her heart. "On behalf of the Opera, I mean."
"Oh?" The marquise tilted her head in sudden, subtle interest and a small smile tugged at one corner of the pale lips that well matched the dark circles of sleepless grief beneath her eyes. "Is that so?" She lifted a hand then in a gesture to offer Christine a seat on a pistachio colored couch.
Christine sat gratefully, clasping her hands above her knees and thought desperately of whether it was wise to speak for the Opera at all. She did feel she could be quite certain that no one else from her company would had ventured to say a word to the scandalized former-patrons, but again, there was much reason for that.
"It really is most kind of you," said the marquise again when Christine did not reply. She took a seat in a wing-backed chair on the opposite side of the low table legged with talons. "Would you like something to drink? Annabelle has just made the coffee."
Christine shook her head slightly. "You are not well?" she asked. "I will not stay long."
The marquise dismissed the question with a wave of her hand and flick of her shawl. "I am only as well as can be expected…"
Christine nodded sympathetically.
"Actually, it is curious that you should call," the woman continued, eyeing her warily. "And on behalf of the Opera."
Christine slowly unfolded her hands. "I call on behalf of myself," she said softly. "This tragedy has broken my heart."
"You are too good to care about us." She shook her head and pressed her eyes closed for a moment. "All of those people we once knew as friends, even in the face of such a catastrophe as this, refuse to put aside their petty differences to come to the aid of an ailing, grieving mother."
"You are not in mourning," Christine noted as politely as she could, wondering if perhaps the woman had somehow not been informed of what even the press managed to acquire in less than twenty-four hours.
The marquise's head snapped up, her eyes narrowed, and her delicate hand curled into a fist on the arm of the chair. "Don't believe what you read. They are lies. All of them. She is not dead. She is alive and my husband will find her."
Christine felt tears sting at the back of her eyes simultaneously as a sudden, shaking wave of nausea spread from her cheeks to her stomach. "How—how do you know?"
The marquise dabbed at the corners of her own eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve. "I know. A mother knows these things. You are young yet, but when you have children, Mademoiselle Daaé, you will know too. It is the intuition of a woman." She shook her head, and pressed the handkerchief to her lips for a moment before lowering it and clenching her jaw. "You must forgive me. I have been sick with fear for too many days now."
Christine's heart ached mercilessly for her. She was so determined that her little daughter was yet alive. So hopeful. And it made Christine want to weep hysterically. She bit the inside of her cheeks and wished she had a handkerchief of her own. "I am so sorry… You cannot understand how much I feel… for you and… and your children… I… If only I had known sooner who she was, I would have come…"
"Sooner?" The marquise glanced across at her sharply.
Christine shook her head and was unable to say anything more.
The other woman let the strange phrasing pass without another question, and they both sat silently for several very long minutes before she spoke again. "Is that the Comte de Chagny's carriage I saw out front?"
Christine passed a hand before her eyes, letting her glove absorb the escaped tears, and she shook her head. "His brother's."
The marquise tilted her head slightly. "The vicomte did not wish to come inside?"
Christine looked across at her evenly then. And simply said "No," with all the diplomatic confidence of a stage performer.
The other woman glanced away and did not press the matter further.
Before the strange tension between them could grow any more awkward, and dreading that she should be dismissed, in a much more entreating tone, Christine asked, "And little Helene must be missing her sister dreadfully?"
A blackness passed before the marquise's eyes, and for a moment, Christine feared that she had angered her, but then the woman only sighed wearily and nodded her head. "At first, she refused to believe at all that Elainoire was gone and nothing we could say could make her understand. I was hardly in any condition to help her myself… I was unconscious for hours that day, and I remember nothing after hearing the news until the next morning." She pursed her lips and her tired eyes narrowed briefly and then softened as she gazed into the fire. "Her denial then passed into a stage of fear, and she woke up screaming every hour of the night. She found no comfort in her new nursie either, and I was forced to sit up with her, letting my own health suffer." She straightened in her chair and folded her hands tightly in her lap. "Babette is a good girl, but has still yet to learn how to care for the children." She paused, then corrected herself, "For Helene…" She shook her head and her lips twisted into a thoughtful scowl.
Christine shifted uncomfortably on the soft sateen of her seat, but it only served to draw the marquise's attention back to her.
"Now, though," the woman continued. "She has suddenly become most bitter and impossible to deal with." She shook her head and her jaw clenched noticeably once more. "But this will be over soon. I know it. And she will return to herself again. The police are fast on the trail of whatever fiend is behind this. My husband is with them as we speak. Something new has arisen. With any luck, it will all be over before tonight." She nodded firmly, her eyes flashing as an abrupt whirlwind of snowflakes beat at the window behind her.
Christine's cheeks had paled so suddenly and her throat constricted, becoming coated in a dryness that tore with pain as she struggled to swallow. She quickly turned to the fire and hoped that her shaking was unnoticeable to the other woman. "How… How could this have happened?" she barely managed to rasp.
The marquise's voice met her ears as if through a wall of water. "Madame Ackart was too old. She had been with us ever since she was wet nurse to my son, Francis. She knew about Elainoire's condition; she had been the first to inform us of it! And yet she sat there on that bench with her eyes closed and dozed off like the old spinster she was. And after all we had done for the woman."
"Her… condition?" Christine dared a glance back to the marquise.
She shook her head with sudden energy, her hands clasping and unclasping too tightly around her handkerchief. "My little girl… She would have screamed to high heaven if some fiend had laid hands upon her. She would have woken the dead! It was a public place. Someone would have stopped it. But she… She was often subject to headaches... dizzy spells, and even faintness, and Heaven knows who could have taken advantage of her vulnerability if one of her episodes seized her at that moment." The handkerchief threatened to tear between her hands. "If that old biddy had only had her eyes open—"
Her tirade was cut short by the shrillest of shrieks that rang like the ghost of a demon through the house. Both women were on their feet immediately and looked to the door. The scream was repeated, this time followed by sobbing, and somewhere in Christine's mind, she knew she had heard this voice before.
"Mama!" the shriek formed a word this time, and a little girl, half dressed in blue, came flying through the parlor door.
The marquise strode over to her and Helene threw herself into her mother's skirts, burying her face there and sobbed horribly.
Christine could only stare in shock at the bouncing golden curls and the little rosy white back exposed from its undergarment where the buttoning had not been finished on the little blue dress. It was her. It was really her.
The marquise pried her daughter's hands from the back of her legs and knelt to take her face in her hands. "What is it, my precious little angel? My darling little Wildflower? Why are you screaming when you know your mama is ill?"
"Babette hit me!" Helene sobbed.
The marquise's eyes widened in shock. "No…"
The child's head began to nod furiously. "She did! Mother, she did!" And then a strange and very small smile spread itself against the little, round, red and tear-stained cheeks, and she lifted a hand to her face. "Mama… Right here!"
Her mother smoothed one hand over the girl's tousled curls, but Christine clearly saw the other clench violently around the handkerchief it still held.
"Dear!—"
All three of them looked to the door again then at the voice of a very out of breath Babette, who came stumbling into the room.
"Oh!" She gasped, her mouth falling open in horror. "Madame!" She curtsied too quickly. "I was just—"
The marquise stood up immediately. "You struck her!"
"No!" The young woman shook her head hastily and took a step back to the door. "I wasn't… It… She…"
Her mistress lifted and arm, and with the sharp point of a finger, gestured for the servant to leave the room. She only glanced briefly back to Christine and said with barely contained fury, "If you would please excuse me, Mademoiselle Daaé." And then she too left the room, the parlor door swinging closed behind her.
Helene jumped up and down where she stood and clasped her hands together, then turned around and looked at Christine. She froze briefly, then slowly smoothed the front of her dress. "Mother is ill," she said in a much calmer tone of voice. "Company gives her headaches."
Christine could do nothing but stare.
Helene stared back for a few moments before frowning in irritated confusion. "Who are you?"
"My… My name is Christine."
She nodded. "My name is Helene, but you can call me your little Wildflower."
Christine pressed her eyes closed for a moment, shaking her head, then opened them again. She saw the child had begun to attempt to button up her own dress. "Here," she said softly. "I'll help you…" She crossed and knelt beside her, turning her around by her thin shoulder and began to fasten the delicate buttons, repressing the shiver that coursed through her. "Wildflower?" she asked gently.
Helene bounced on her stockinged toes, making the buttoning slightly more difficult. "It's Papa's name for me," she said. "But Mama uses it too. Everyone except my brother. Francis even calls Elainie Elainoire."
"Oh? What do you call Elainie?"
"Songbird!" She stopped bouncing and twisted to glance back at Christine. "When she's being nice to me."
The last button finished, Christine released her and folded her hands over her knee, forcing a shaking smile for Helene's sake as the girl faced her again. "Is Elainie sometimes… not nice to you?"
"She ran away from me." Helene's hands tested the buttons at the back of her neck while her lips twisted into a pout. "She thinks she's better than me at hiding, but I don't care. She doesn't know I stopped looking. I hope what they say about her is true. That will teach her for leaving me. I hope she and Hubert never come back."
Christine blinked slowly. "Who… Who is Hubert?"
Helene turned away from her and went to pull herself up into her mother's chair. She took her time to arrange her little blue skirt prettily, and then reached up to rest her arms against the chair's, crossing her ankles and swinging them idly where they hung above the ground.
Christine waited only one more moment before asking again, "Who is Hubert?"
"Elainie's friend!" Helene chirped.
Christine stood slowly and made her way back to the couch. "Her… Her friend?"
"Yes." It was almost a snap. "She doesn't share him with me. He only talks to her. They keep secrets from me."
"He…" Christine leaned forward slightly, staring across at the little girl who continued to smile despite the still moist tearstains on her cheeks. "Where does he come from?"
Helene shrugged her little shoulders. "The water, I think. She sometimes acts like he isn't there, but she told me he's always there. She said if I let her have my white ribbon, he would let me see him, but he didn't. He never talks to me. Only to her. She told me once he went away, but then I heard her laughing with him. She said she was laughing alone, but I knew he was there. She talks to him when she thinks I'm sleeping. She gets up at night and chases him downstairs and Madame Ackart has to run after her." A shrill peal of laughter filled the parlor. "She turns blue and purple when she runs! She… But Babette only turns red. When is Madame Ackart coming back?"
"I…" Christine shook her head. "I don't think she will be coming back."
Helene frowned, but it was less like a pout and more like a slow growing of understanding that tugged with aching fingers at Christine's heart. When the girl spoke again, her voice was much softer and all the more childlike. "When is Elainie Songbird coming back?"
Christine choked on a sudden sob, and had to lift a hand to her mouth to hide it.
"Are you crying?" The little girl tilted her head to the side, her golden curls falling over her shoulder, and her own lip began to quiver.
Christine shook her head quickly and pulled off her glove to wipe at her eyes. "No... No… I'm… I'm not crying, and neither should you…" But the parlor was already swimming beyond a window of tears.
"Why are you crying!" Helene demanded, fear belying the command of her tone.
"Hush… hush…" Christine rose and crossed around the table to kneel before the chair. "Nobody here is crying, see?"
But Helene was crying, and she lifted her hands to push Christine away as she shook her head back and forth violently and began to kick her feet. "You're just like they are! You think she's not coming back! You want me to be all alone!" She hiccuped between her words.
Christine reached for her, but Helene turned and buried her head in her arms against the arm of the chair, her narrow back heaving in much more pathetic sobs. Christine pressed her lips together and looked to the parlor door nervously, then lifted a comforting hand to the girl's shoulder. "Hush… I don't want you to be alone…" She reached around and lifted the little, moist face so she could look into the big, round eyes. "I'll be your friend if you like…"
The girl swallowed thickly and seemed about to speak, but then her eyes flickered to Christine's wrist. "What's that?"
Christine's head suddenly felt far too light.
Little hands reached out and dug into Christine's sleeve.
"I know what that is!"
Christine stood abruptly, pulling away from the child much too roughly. Giddiness seized her at once in its nauseating grip and she staggered back towards the fire.
The startled girl stared at her for a moment, then reached up and pulled a silver chain from within the collar of her dress. "Mine says Wildflower… Yours says Songbird… Like Elainie's."
Christine's vision blurred into a white fog, the flickering from the hearth barely managing to penetrate it as no more than the flashing of fireflies. Her breathing echoed in her ears with the distant buzzing of the music of grasshoppers. Somewhere there was a couch where she could find her balance, but her fluttering hands were unable to locate it as she drifted in half the speed of dying reality.
"No…" she tried to speak, but without breath her word was inaudible. She needed to breathe. She needed to find air. A cool gust of it suddenly brushed against her face, and she gasped to take it in. "No," she said again, and this time her words were heard.
"But…" The little girl's voice pierced through the humming of the fog.
Christine shook her head and exhaled heavily as the parlor began to return to focus.
"Mademoiselle Daaé?" A timid voice from the doorway caught her attention.
Christine looked up to see the girl, Babette, who had indeed turned quite red in uneven splotches across her face. Her hair seemed to have been shaken out of place, but she carried Christine's furs over one arm. Her eyes were rimmed in pain and raw from too many of her own tears, but she managed to curtsy most politely and kept them downcast. "Madame de Pinson is not well," she stammered. "She… She wishes you her goodbyes and… and her apologies. She has… has retired to bed for the rest of the day." She bit her lip then and seemed as if she meant to look up, but willed her eyes to stay on the carpet. "Come… Come again, soon?" she barely managed to add in the faintest of whispers.
By the time she had done speaking, Christine's faculties were fully returned to her. She nodded quietly and glanced back to Helene, but the girl had folded her hands demurely in her lap and sat with her gaze fixed out the windows.
"Goodbye, Helene," Christine murmured gently.
The child only glanced quickly in Christine's direction, then looked away again. But the look of dark and frightened suspicion in that brief glance was unmistakable.
Christine shivered and moved to take her wraps from Babette, and then she hurried out the door. She did not make her exit fast enough, though, that she did not overhear the last bit of conversation from the parlor:
"Come, little miss," Babette beckoned wearily.
"I want to see Mama," Helene snapped back.
"Mama is resting."
"No! I want to see her now. I need to tell her something!"
Christine did not linger to hear another word and found her own way out and back to where she had left Raoul and his carriage. It wasn't there. She shivered and glanced both ways down the snowy street, but the morning had grown most desolate and dark, and wind-whipped flurries obscured any vision of distance. She pulled her furs more tightly about herself and found her glove again to replace it where it belonged upon her trembling hand.
Why would Raoul have abandoned her? He said he would wait for her. Perhaps the wind had grown too brisk for the horses and driver… Perhaps she had hurt him more than she had realized… She was tired. She hoped she would be able to find a cab to take her back home, but the weather appeared most inclement and she doubted many would be about. And then she realized for the second time that morning that she was not in possession of a single cent. She looked back over her shoulder at the house behind her. Nothing within her wanted to go back inside. A curtain moved at an upstairs window, and then all was still once more.
She shivered again and turned with the resignation to walk, but after she had only gone but a few steps, the sound of hoofbeats from behind warmed her heart.
Raoul's brougham pulled up alongside her and he pushed the door open himself from within and offered her a hand.
"I thought you had gone," she whispered as she settled onto the seat at his side, brushing snowflakes from her shoulders.
He offered her a smile of concern. "It became too cold for the horses to stand still. You are pale, Christine."
She exhaled a shuddering breath and pressed a hand to her face as she glanced out the window as they went, already unable to see the house behind them through the white air. "I…"
"I must insist now that you go home and take your rest."
She shook her head and met his eyes again. "Flowers. I must buy some flowers."
A noticeable flinch passed across Raoul's face. "Flowers, Christine?"
She nodded. "But I must go home first."
"Yes…" He lifted a hand and very gently placed it over hers in her lap. "You must go home and rest."
"No, Raoul. I won't stay long."
"Christine, you look as if you have not slept all night."
"I slept…" She frowned, pushing away her memories of the previous night.
"After you ran out of your house like a madwoman?"
She pulled her hands from his and turned slightly away from him on the seat. "I did not sleep after I left, no. But I am not tired."
He took her most lightly by the shoulder. "You are shaking…"
"It is cold."
"You are pale…"
"Raoul." She faced him again. "I will thank you to drive me home but not to instruct me what to do once I am there."
"I am worried about you, Christine."
And before she could form the words to answer him, her voice was stopped as she suddenly recognized in his eyes the exact same look of fear that had passed so terrifyingly through Erik's.
Her lips parted in a soft gasp and she pulled away form him, burying her face in her hands.
He reached to take her by the shoulders again, but she would not let him and so silent distance remained between them until the carriage stopped at her apartment. Raoul accompanied her within, but she spoke nothing to him. She did not even voice an objection when, after waiting for her to hand her furs to the maid, he followed her into her benefactress's room.
The old woman stirred and looked up at them. "Ah, my cherubs!" She smiled sleepily. "My dear snow fairies!"
Christine took her outstretched hand and sat on the edge of the bed. "I've just come back to say goodbye, Mama."
The woman's eyes widened, losing all of their good humor. "You aren't leaving me again!"
Christine pressed a kiss to her soft cheek. "Not for long, I promise."
"I agree with Madame Valerius," Raoul interjected.
Both women looked to him immediately, Christine with ire and her adopted mother with concern.
"Christine is not well at all, Madame. She should stay home in bed."
Christine stood. "Do not tell me what I should or should not do."
The old woman grasped after Christine's hand. "Is this true, Christine? You are pale. Your hands are like ice. Please stay here. Don't go back out into the cold."
"Listen to her if you will not listen to me," Raoul said in tones suddenly so pleading that Christine lost all resolve. "I am very worried about you."
The fretful hands that clawed helplessly at Christine's arm finally drew her back to sit on the bed again with a sigh. "I am not…" was all she could manage before her words lost her.
Raoul took a couple steps back toward the door. "I will tell your maid to prepare something warm for you. Please rest. Please call for me in the morning. Or this evening, if you like. I will be waiting for your call… I will be waiting..."
No one answered him, and so he left. When he was gone, Christine turned to the fearful and confused eyes of Mama Valerius, beside her. "It's all right, Mama. He's worried over nothing."
"I don't like this…" But the old woman only shook her head wearily and pulled her girl into her arms.
Christine listened closely for the sounds of the carriage's departure, but they never came. Perhaps the wind carried them away, or perhaps, as she waited for her mama to drift back to sleep so that she might make her escape, sleep claimed her as well. For she had only closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, she was in a field of green, a sea of blue, and entirely alone.
She was warm and it must have been summer again, for she found she was more than comfortable in the night air without one thread of clothing about her. "Wildflowers grow in the sea," she whispered to herself. "Songbirds fly in the grass."
They surrounded her. Flowers and birds. She smiled brightly and lifted a hand to one that lit past her fingertips. She bent and plucked up a flower, letting its petals float away in the wind.
"Wildflower," its breathy voice echoed past her ear, tangled through the billowing strands of her hair. "Wildflower…"
"No…" Christine whispered. "No, Songbird."
"Wildflower…" And the wind had already begun to moan.
Christine spun about, but the horizon was endless. "Songbird," she called. "Not Wildflower, Songbird! It is me you want... You want me."
"Wildflower..." The wind was beating against the walls of her world with pounding cracks. Two little girls skipped toward her, hand in hand, through the rolling fields. One was pink with life, the other blue with frozen death. They were wild. They were singing.
"No!" she gasped. She knew what it wanted now.
"Wildflower!" shrieked the bottomless voice of the wind, and then she saw him coming towards them. Rushing with the all speed of life at the three of them, a demon of death through the night.
Christine screamed, but the sound choked into a strangled gasp in her throat as she pulled herself awake in her mama's bed. She clutched at her own face furiously to make certain she knew what was real, and then she looked slowly down at the still-sleeping countenance beside her.
She had known resting would not be a good idea.
Panting heavily, she pushed her hands back through her hair and straightened the ache that had grown in her back from the awkward position she had remained in for she did not know how long.
The wind was beating against the walls of her world with pounding cracks.
But no, the cracks were not pounding as they had in her dream… They were there, but more distant. Further away. Her eyes followed the sound to the dark hallway beyond her mama's bedroom door. Tap… tap… tap… It was a regular sound, like the beating of a loose shutter or the knocking of a hand at a pane of glass.
She stood, slowly, carefully, very certain not to make herself lightheaded, and made her way out of the room. Yes, the sound was louder in the hall. Tap… tap… tap… She paused and listened closely. It was coming from the right. Tap... tap… tap… The light of day that lingered to illuminate Christine's view of the hallway was too dark and too grey, but she used it to follow the sound to her own bedroom door, and pushing it open slowly, she peeked in.
"Is anyone there?" she whispered.
Tap… tap… tap…
The door creaked protractedly as her groping fingers urged it open with no more than a child's strength. Tap… tap… tap…
She glanced about the room. Her bed was made… Not as she had left it the night before. But the window was still closed. Tap… tap… tap… Closed and vibrating softly with each of the sharp raps that jolted her heartbeat into attention. Tap… tap…
She would have told herself it was a tree branch, blown by the wind against the glass of the small balcony doors, but she knew there was no tree there. There should have been nothing beyond those windows but a simple railing and a blizzard of snow.
Tap… tap… Should have been.
Clenching and unclenching her hands about the folds of her pink skirt, she moved around the bed like the most reluctant of hypnotist's subjects. Someone wanted to be let in. Someone wanted her to open the window.
"It is snowing," she barely managed to whimper.
Tap… tap… tap… tap…
Someone must have been very cold.
When she lifted her hand to the curved latch, she watched it shake as if it were not even part of her but only an item of separated and simple curiosity.
Tap… tap…
She opened the door.
The wind seized her at once with hard and frozen wings that stung her cheeks like shards of glass. Gasping, she threw her arms over her head until the force subsided enough for her to notice that the tapping sound had ceased. There was nothing. Nothing at all. Except a simple railing and the ceaseless torrent of snow, and a very dead and frozen songbird lying half buried at her feet.