What wouldn't you do in a fantastic opera ballet house?


Erik decided that since Marguerite had given him permission to explore his new home, he would take the opportunity to do this. His first exploration would be to find out what the interesting activity of ballet was, since any place that showed people how to do the beautiful show of ballet – which reminded him so much of Babette and Belle's show – had to be as interesting as what she had shown him. So he opened the door to his room and peered out.

There was no one in the hall. Though she had given him permission to explore – a thing he was still uneasy about – he still felt it would be easiest and safest for him if he remained unseen, at least until he knew his way around enough to fit in or knew who would keep him secret enough to show himself to them. With his face though, he was not certain he would ever fit in, no matter how much he learned. Still, his curiosity won out, and he set out on his first explorations of his new surroundings.

When he got to the first opening, he turned and stared. There were large boxes the same size as the ones beside the stage – steps, he remembered they were called. However, he had never seen so many of them. Above, there seemed to be another hallway. "Brilliant…" he whispered as he had overheard one of the spectators remarking about Babette and Belle. As they had told him the word meant something new and impressive, he figured it was the right word to use in this case.

Within another second, he had climbed the steps and stood inside another hallway. There were more closed doors, with rooms behind them to explore the contents of, but he would leave them for later. The men who had chased him for killing Master Namir would never find him here, not if he was certain never to show himself to people whom he did not know. He knew Marguerite would not betray him. He had known it even before she had helped him escape, when she had met his eyes and not laughed in the way the others had. But even with her assurance, he was still not sure if other people in the Opera House would tell the men who were after him where he was.

There was another set of steps so he climbed it. Then, he saw something he had only seen when he had escaped into the city on first arrival into it and had ducked into a giant stone building. When he had seen it the first time, he had immediately asked the nearest person what it was, at had waiting while he told him, those few seconds costing him his hopes of seeing more of the city when Master Namir had run around the corner and had dragged him back to the circus. He remembered the name though, and it was stained-glass. Although this one did not have the beautiful designs of the one in that building, he still thought it looked like the patterns on Babette and Belle's costumes and was therefore beautiful.

He walked over to the stained-glass and touched it as he had not been able to do with the previous stained-glass. It was smooth and thin and he could see through it. He pushed it open and noted that it was daylight, probably mid-afternoon, and that the stained-glass door was small and close to the ground.

He heard someone walking nearby and closed the window, ducking into a nearby space where he would not be seen and looking behind him, but the hallway was still empty: the sound had not come from behind him but from above. And, it was accompanied by a woman's voice, clearly angry with whomever she was yelling at.

"I want a higher salary, Gerard, and unless I get it, you can find yourself a new star!"

This demand – Erik did not understand "salary" and "star" but understood "want" as a demand – was quickly followed by the response of what sounded like a rich, though startled, man. "Please, my dear, we are doing our best. We need you. You need us -."

The walking started again. "You need me! I need a bigger salary!"

The man cleared his throat. "Yes, Miss Giulia. We'll see what we can do!"

The walking stopped. "And even if you cannot give me what I want, I must at least remind you that two months of my salary are due!"

"I understand, Miss. They will be delivery to you as tonight."

"Good. Now, get out!"

A door slammed, causing Erik to jump. He stared up at the ceiling and told himself to remember to ask Marguerite what "star" and "salary" meant. For the time being, he had found something that interested him more: a narrow set of steps leading up one side of the opening. He set his foot on it and proceeded to climb up the shaky steps. When he got to the top of the steps, he realized he was standing among rich woman's clothes and peering into the lady's red-flowered room.

At present, that lady was lounged across a huge chair, holding herself in a posture Erik had never seen before. She was wearing a dress such as Erik had never seen before but which looked like a shinier version of a man's robe – he had only seen robes once or twice when he had peeked into a house window and had seen somebody holding bound, thin sheets of cloth out before him, staring at it as though amused with what was there while wearing a robe.

Now Erik peered at the lady the same way he had peered at the man, though he found the woman far more interesting because of what she was doing. She was brushing her hair into long, dark curls down her back. Erik watched as her curls caught the light and reflected into much the way that stained-glass had done. He found the word "beautiful" of the tip of his tongue and almost whispered it at her. But he did not know her yet and do not trust her not to betray him to the men who were following him, so he kept his silence.

The woman put down the brush and picked up a red flower, twirling it around before gazing into it. Then, suddenly, she frowned, threw down the flower and strode from the room. "Gerard!" she snapped before slamming the door behind her with a rustle of her robe. Once she was gone, he ran out a grab the fallen – and offending, he figured from the way she had thrown it down – flower of the floor. Then he climbed back down to the floor below and ran the other way towards the next, wider steps.

At the top of the next steps, he saw the woman arguing with the man… "I asked for fresh roses every day, and these ones aren't fresh! Go find someone to replace them." She gave a dismissive hand wave at the man as she returned to her room. As the man turned, sighing, to go, Erik ducked into another space. The man passed, muttering something under his breath that Erik did not catch, and started up a set of steps that circled around a single pole on there way up, leaving Erik unseen in the space.

He ducked back into the hallway and found himself staring at the contraption down the wall from where he had hid. Ladder, he remembered Isabelle had called it and said it was used for climbing: another set of steps then. He climbed it for quite a while and opened a door at the top of it. He was on top of wooden planking in a wide hallway. There were people down at the other end of this long hall, but they were making loud noise and were not paying attention to what was happening in his area of the planking. Still, there was nowhere to hide if they should happen to look, and there was a door opposite and down a few feet. He ran for it and pushed himself through on to an empty plank in a giant room.

The only thing Erik had ever seen that was about the room's size was the building with the stained-glass, except this time he was looking down into it, making it seem that much grander to a boy who had never been off ground level before. But the sheer size alone was barely even half the impression it made upon him.

It was clean, and it was as color-rich as the stained-glass only more so. There were soft, red chairs lining every free inch of space slowly rising up on steps. The walls were made up of shiny glowing-brown metal, complete with cloth-less human forms done in them. Above the chairs, there was a ceiling where someone had done the sky. Around his, there was wooden planking, full of things he did not know but that looked like thing he desired to add to his knowledge.

Under him, he saw Marguerite, dancing with other similarly dressed girls under the instruction of a tall woman in a matching dress to the girls'. There were all doing the same activities he had attempted to follow her in. He peered at them, noticing that some of them were girls he recognized from there leering faces the previous night, although now those same faces were twisted in concentration. He did not trust these girls at all. A certain element of their dance, however, made him whisper, "Beautiful," though he was not sure he liked calling anyone who would be mean to him by this word.

Still, he moved further out onto the planking to see their dance from a better view. Then stood up, shakily because he was so high, and tried to do as they did. As he did this, he did not dismiss the reversal of their positions from the previous evening: now he was watching them instead of the other way around. He liked it as he did the exercises in the planking above the floor where they danced. He definitely liked it.

All too soon in his opinion, the dancing was over and the angel-like dancers moved off through the doors on the side of the floor. Marguerite glanced up at him, and by instinct, he hid from her eyes before they could catch him there. He would tell her he was there later if she kept her word. If not… well it was better than his cage in the gypsy circus and they were looking for him besides. He would have to stay here. And this beautiful place was his new home and he meant to uncover every space within it until somebody caught him, and he never meant to let that happen. He whispered the word that had once referred to Babette and Belle again: "This place is beautiful."