The current carried him a few feet before he felt the sloping wall of the aqueduct curving up to his left. He tried to plant his feet, but for a nervous moment could not stop slipping along with the water. His toes dug into a crack in the concrete, while his bruised and sore hands scrambled for purchase on the rough edge of the manmade waterway. Weakened from hunger, broken from his lethal encounter less than five hours ago, numbed from the frigid channel water, it was the most primal of drives that pulled him from the water and allowed him to roll away from the edge before he passed into unconsciousness.

A night and a day passed before he swam up to awareness again. Awareness was not the place he wanted to be; it was filled with a chorus of physical exigencies, each as desperate as the next. He was stiff almost to paralysis from his injuries. He had not eaten in better than a day, and he had been underfed for years before. The small parcel of food Leslie's mother had given him would make one quick, soggy meal. He was blue and shivering with cold. He needed to void. As he lay there, he began to laugh despite the slicing pains from his cracked ribs. He was alive. Debased and entirely without dignity, but alive. And free.

Crawling first, then dragging himself into a slow, limping walk, Erik forced himself to begin exploring. His survival depended on his finding the kitchens soon. From his years with Herroux he knew that the only way to relieve the stiffness of injuries and exertion was to keep moving, always keep moving. He struggled to remember how his mother's house was laid out. The kitchens had to be on the ground floor, and near the back, because of the heavy ovens and the fires. He was certainly below ground now, so he had to find his way up.

The splashes and drips of water echoed around him, and he thought he heard the occasional rat squeak. For several terrified seconds, he expected to hear Herroux' pounding boots chasing behind, until he remembered...

"I killed him. He's dead. Because of me." His words were whispered, but the curving walls of the catacombs reflected them back at him; an accusation he couldn't deny. Leslie's indignant voice argued with the whispers. "What were you supposed to do? Let him beat you to death?"

"Would it have mattered?" Erik growled. The echoes spoke back, muttering, "mattered…mattered…mattered."

I'm talking to myself. Alone in a basement, talking to myself. Erik shook himself back to awareness.

Fortunately, a service door appeared in the wall. Erik tried the knob, sighing in relief to find it unlocked. Upon opening it, though, he was faced with steep stairs leading up into darkness. Not right now, he thought, just a moment to rest." But he knew that if he rested, he might not be able to start moving again. He imagined some one coming down the steps, finding his body. Again he started laughing. The expression on that person's face when he lifted the mask to identify the body…

Each flight of steps felt like a mountain. He made it to each landing, where another door waited. These doors were marked B4, B3, B2, B1, and finally G. Leslie's voice murmured in his memory, this time not comforting at all, "If they find you here, they'll probably just kill you…" That was still true, even if no one outside the fair ever knew he existed. Now that he was a murderer as well as a freak, there was no reason he shouldn't be killed on sight,

"Like a rabid animal" he whispered, breaking his moratorium on talking aloud to himself. This door likely led to some hallway in the great House. There would be people. Leslie had said that lots of people lived there. That meant servants, staff, musicians and performers and maybe audiences…all of whom had to be avoided. To the ten year old boy it felt as though all of mankind had rejected him. To the rest of the world, he simply did not exist.

Let it be like he killed me, then. Until Hannah died I was a ghost in my mother's house. Let me be a ghost.

He opened the door the slightest bit and peeked through just in time to see a maidservant's skirts swishing away down the hall. He took a deep breath, which caught in his chest. Food! He could smell chicken or duck, some sort of sauce, maybe peppers… The smells alone gave him the courage to stick his head out. This hall was empty. The tantalizing smells seemed to be coming from the left, so he stepped in the hall and hobbled that direction as quickly as he could.

Any other time of day, Erik would have been caught before he'd gone ten steps. Right now, though, everyone was either at dinner or serving dinner. Even the cooks had banked the fires and were in the service kitchen taking their ease after setting up the desert trays. Erik limped into the kitchen after peeking through the door. He kept his head low and moved from countertop to countertop, hoping something would be left out. Success came in the form of a huge wheat loaf fresh baked for the morrow's breakfast and a long sausage link. His only conflict was a struggle to grab the food and keep moving, instead of gobbling what he could right there. A shuffling movement through a doorway beside the ovens set him in motion. Bread and sausage in hand, he limped to the door, peeked out into the empty hallway and scurried as well as he could to the service door. Settling down to his first substantial food in weeks, he forced himself to take small bites. Experience was a good teacher, and griping stomach cramps were not on his agenda.

As he sat digesting, he heard a sudden bustle of activity in the corridor on the other side of the door. The after-dinner clean-up had begun. It must be dinner. No other meal inspired this much effort. Hannah had described the elaborate six or even eight course meals served by the duchess to her distinguished guests when he had asked about the evening bustle just outside 'their' wing. If this was dinner, then night could not be far away. Night would be a safer time to explore his new home more freely. Patience was on his side, and with a full belly and an overtaxed body, patience was easy to come by. He huddled on his landing and waited in the dim glow of the gaslight fixtures for silence to reign.

But silence didn't fall as he expected. Instead, the rush intensified, crested and receded, into a brief silence broken by…music. Beautiful, floating, and ethereal, yet powerful enough to stop his breath, the symphony orchestra was striking up the prelude to the night's performance of Tristan Und Isolde. Erik never dreamed music like this existed anywhere but in his head; even he had never imagined this array of instruments or the sound they made being played together. The music was gentle, the music was sweet, the music was swallowing him whole.

Just as he remembered to breathe, a new instrument rose above the others. It was a voice, but sounded unlike any voice he had ever heard. It was controlled, its range was enormous, its resonant base thundered in his mind. When a woman's full-throated soprano joined the bass, Erik surrendered. He forgot that he ever had a face, let alone a broken body. He yearned to be near the singers, to be able to sing with them, like them. Food, drink, and rest never did more healing work than those hours of opera music bestowed on Erik.

After the performance, Erik slept briefly. His dreams were filled with music, sacred music that nourished the fading remnants of Hannah's Erik. He woke with a remembrance of serenity in his heart. There was no sound from the hallway, so he crept through the door, and limped down the hall. The fact that he was limping anywhere, that there were no bars in front of his face, filled him with a fierce excitement. Mentally mapping his route, he worked his way towards the place that had been filled with music. He passed the servants' quarters with trepidation, knowing that servants lived most of their real lives at night, while their masters slept.

Every corridor of the central building was imposing, decorated with hanging silks and tapestries, floored with smooth marble. Timid hands pulled open the enormous doors to the concert hall, with its rows and rows of cushioned chairs, balcony, small stage-like boxes set into the walls, and enormous chandelier sparkling in the muted glow of the gaslights. He walked down the aisle, between seats that had been filled not long ago with people thrilling to music. The stage beckoned to him.

He found the place where the proscenium curtains met and slipped between them. The sets for the opera were still here. Like the child he was, Erik played among them, putting himself in another world and letting the real one slip away. It was not long until he discovered the complex workings of the stage. Catwalks, curtain pulleys and ropes, and in several places, trapdoors set into the floor of the stage to allow actors to magically appear; all these things fascinated and delighted him. His fertile brain churned with a thousand ideas. Not only could he survive here, he could live well and happily. If he was clever, no one ever need know. When further exploration revealed the costume vaults and the library, Erik knew he had come home.