Letter Five – The Voice


"Papa, tell me again." The little girl, all chubby limbs and bangs, stands before a harried looking man cradling a violin.

"Again? What again?" He smiles, but distractedly, focused as he is on the instrument he is oiling. He sees her draw a little closer out of the corner of his eye.

"About the angel, papa. You promised!"

"The Angel? When did I promise?"

"Papa, PLEASE," she cries dramatically, flinging out her arms and looking towards the mildewed ceiling as if God alone understands the burdens she must bare. She falls to her knees with a thud, slumps to the ground, and mumbles into the carpet, "you do this to me every night."

"Christine, don't lay on the floor like that, the carpet is filthy." He rubs the oiled cloth over the wooden body of the violin in slow, rhythmic circles. "I am almost finished, and then you shall have your story."

The little girl stands reluctantly, and balances on one foot, then the other, watching the man. He is very old, at least thirty-seven, she thinks. She is seven, and the little girl remembers her mama saying, a long time ago, that papa is as many years thirty as she is years old.

She begins to spin in a circle, like the ballerinas on TV. She loves spinning. The man looks at the violin with a critical eye, and places it and the oiling cloth carefully in the worn case. He watches the little girl spin, a bright spot of light in the cheap motel room. She doesn't know how low on money they are, or the fact that they can't afford even this room for much longer. She exists somewhere else, somewhere far away from those worries.

"Do you want to dance," he asks in mock incredulity, "or do you want to hear about the Angel?"

"FINALLY," She stops spinning and careens towards his lap, using the front of his shirt of pull herself up, "the Angel, please, if you don't mind."

"So prim and proper, älskling," he says, his swedish accent growing thicker as he prepares for the tale. She settles against his chest, and he tucks her small head under his scruffy chin. "In that case, let us begin."

"Instead of Little Lotte having blonde hair and blue eyes," the little girl says quickly, the man already nodding in agreement, "can you you make her like me?"

"A long time ago, in Sweden, where your papa and mama were born, there was a girl called Little Lotte. She had the biggest brown eyes in all the land, and straight, dark hair she liked to wear long. The head under that hair was always full, but was it full of nothing? She flitted, and danced, and twirled in the summer air. Her nature was as bright as her eyes were dark. She loved her mama and papa, was attentive to her doll, and took care of her dress, her red shoes, and her violin. But most of all, she loved going to sleep listening to the voice of the Angel of Music."

The little girl sighs happily as her eyes began to droop, and the man continues. The Angel of Music visits all great musicians, at least once. If he leans over their cradles, they become prodigies. He sometimes visits good boys and girls who learn their lessons, practice their scales, and have pure hearts...but naughty children must wait until they are quite grown, if they are visited at all. He might come when you downcast or discouraged, and sing away your sorrows with a divine voice. He is never seen, but those who hear him are said to be geniuses, making music almost too heavenly to be human.

The man looks at the little girl, now asleep in his arms, and pulls her closer. He looks around the dirty room, all water stains on the ceiling and chipping paint. He clears his throat and tries to blink away the tears in his eyes. The little girl wakes just enough to feel his kiss on her forehead as he tucks her into bed.

o...o0o...o

Christine messaged her temples and hummed the measure again. She'd been tripping over the same sixteenth note in rehearsals, and had been sitting at her dressing table, staring at the sheet music, since rehearsal ended. The slight pressure that had started in the back of her head an hour ago had blossomed into a full-fledged migraine. Exasperated, she ran her fingers through her hair and leaned back in the chair.

A yawn interrupted her contemplation of the ceiling, and she shook her head. It was late. She needed to get home, get some sleep, and get some food. Not necessarily in that order. The music could wait until morning.

The past week had been pleasant, though somewhat uneventful. It was nice, in a way. To just feel normal. She was familiar with the layout of the opera, at least the parts that pertained to her. It had been exactly three days since the last time she had gotten lost on her way to the bathroom, a fact she was very proud of, and she was starting to know the people. She was greeted in the mornings, farewelled at night, and had a nice little routine starting to settle in.

Part of that routine, apparently, was staying later than anyone. Christine was constantly one of the last people to leave, and consequently was getting to know Charlie, the night security guard quite well. He had two daughters all grown up, and cautioned her repeatedly stop going home so late.

He meant well, she knew, but if the music took her, then...well, it took her. Hours could go by, and she wouldn't notice. It reminded her of how lost papa could get in cleaning his violin, and she smiled at the memory as she shook out her ponytail and shrugged into her light jacket. She had begun working the buttons through their holes, when a soft sound caught her attention.

She paused, listening. It was...music. A song. Sweet and low. She thought she knew the voices of all the singers at this point, but this one she could not place. Maybe one of the baritones had stayed late? She walked into the hallway and headed toward the stage, wanting to know to whom the voice belonged. As she headed down the hallway, the voice grew quieter. She paused. The someone was still singing, but now it sounded far away. She turned back towards her dressing room. The sound grew louder. Confused, she turned and took a few steps toward the stage. The sound grew quieter.

Moving toward her dressing room, she could no longer deny that the song was coming from within. The closer she drew to her door, the louder the voice became. She'd never heard anything like it before. Her heartbeat quickened, her eyes felt heavy, and her body wanted to swim in the beautiful pool of sound. She walked through the door, and it was like walking into honey. Golden and thick. Her limbs grew languid, her eyes shut, and she stayed.

o...o0o...o

It was all going perfectly, as all his plans did. There she was, just on the other side of the mirror, her face upturned and her eyes closed, lost in listening to the song. His song.

He hadn't known what route to take, what plans to lay to lead her to him. He wanted, no needed, to train her. To mold her voice. The thought of it was a flowering vine taking root, impossible to eradicate, too beautiful to ignore. He knew, he knew, that if he polished her, she could shine. She had promise. She had potential. After spending hours watching and listening he heard what had caught his ear in auditions.

He would scoff if he wasn't singing. He had written that she could aspire to bit parts. Bit parts! Who was the empty-headed fool now? There was, in her tone and the quality of her voice, something compelling and pure. Something left unsullied by years of Julliard training. Something her knew he could shape into greatness.

She had a passion for music as well. A true connection. Not just a love for music, not just a dedication to her craft. No, she immersed herself in music, she lost herself in song, almost as nearly as he did. She stayed later than everyone, constantly practicing. He had known she would respond to his voice as she was responding now. He just had not known how or when to use his voice until a few days earlier.

Rehearsal had ended, and the chorus was breaking off into clusters. He moved silently above them in the flies, following Christine until she joined that Giry woman's daughter and some of the other dancers.

"...and then, the closet door creaked open. I squeezed my eyes shut till I fell asleep, or till morning, whichever came first!" The dancer Lyla Jammes gesticulated wildly to the laughing crowd around her. "And when I woke up, I saw that the Headless Horseman had not, in fact, taken up residence in my closet. Rather, it was just my winter coat and my imagination. That's what you get, I guess, when you grow up in a town actually named Sleepy Hollow."

The girls all laughed, Christine included. She laughed like it surprises her, like she had forgotten she could. Her face looked so open, so honest when she laughed.

Since when did he care about other people's laughter? Laughter was, in his opinion, groteseque. Guffawing, braying like donkeys. All teeth and harsh sounds.

Her laugh was alright, he supposed. All things considered.

"Christine," Meg Giry asked "Do you have any ghost stories?"

"Oh, um...yeah?" She glanced up in thought, and he stayed still. Motion gets noticed. She did not see him. "But of course, I can't think of any right now."

"Come on, you have to have at least one!"

"Well, ok, it isn't actually a ghost story, but it's all that's coming to mind at the moment. My dad always used to tell me about the Angel of Music…"

There it was. The perfect plan. Everything clicking, everything falling into place. The Angel of Music lit a fire of song in the chest of the chosen, and she was his chosen. He had the dressing room. He had his voice. He would be her angel.

Now it was all going perfectly, as all his plans did. There she was, on the other side of the mirror, trusting his song. Trusting him. He raised a hand to the glass.

"Christine."

Her eyes popped open, the spell broken. He hadn't meant to speak her name, there was a lull in the song, it had slipped out, and now she was frightened. He could see it in the way her eyes darted, the way her shoulders hunched, the way her body seemed to ask how it got there. She grabbed her bags, and ran.

He followed the sound of her flight, slipped silently through the spaces behind the walls. He threw his voice, made it bounce off the walls around her, calling her name. He had to craft the illusion of the celestial, the supernatural. He heard her slam into the push bar and crash into the night. He wrapped his hand around a rope, cut the anchoring sandbag, and hurtled up a shaft. Deftly climbing a few rungs to a roof access hatch, he had burst out on the roof. She must have paused at some point, because she was not as far down the street as he had anticipated.

"Goodbye." He threw his voice to her, unsure if it would make it to her ears, or if the wind would sweep the farewell out across the Manhattan skyline.

o...o0o...o

Christine looked back at the opera. Had she heard something? Had it followed her? Shaking her head, she ran a few steps, then paused. Took a few more steps. Stopped. She couldn't think straight. Should she call the cops? And say what? A voice followed her down a hall? That would go over well. She didn't know if she should head home, or wait until she knew she wasn't being followed. The August air was warm against her skin, and her light jacket felt too heavy now.

She spied a cafe and ducked into it. It was practically empty at this point, and she ordered a tea as she attempted to catch her breath. Waiting was the smartest option, she decided, if there even was a smartest option in this scenario. She didn't want who, or whatever, the voice was to follow her home. So she nursed her tea in a booth facing the window, watching for...something.

Could a voice that perfect, that beautiful, be bad? Was that possible? And yet it was all so unexplainable, so surreal. She couldn't figure it out. After fifteen uneventful minutes, she went outside and hailed a cab. She'd splurge. The subway was out of the question tonight. All the way home, her mind replayed the scene over and over again. The voice, the way it drew her in, the way it seemed to emerge from the bones of the opera itself. Everywhere and nowhere.

"Oh, Christine! You're finally home," Mamma Valerius called from the couch, "come join me. I'm watching the most delightful documentary about ghosts in...what's wrong?"

Christine dropped onto the couch next to her and was quiet for a long time. Mamma shut the TV off.

"Christine? What is it, sweetheart?" Mamma asked, concerned. Christine took a deep breath.

"Something...happened."


And you thought you had seen the last of me. HA. HA HA. Like a Phoenix from the ashes, I RISE.

Don't forget, this fic is a companion piece to my web-series The Private Letters Of Christine Daae. So if you haven't checked that out, I'd say it's worth it. I'm a bit biased, but I think its fun. PLUS if you watch it, and read it, you'll have the FULL SCOPE of the story I was crafting, so like...yeah.