Fondest greetings!

This is a short chapter to span the time gap that passes between the last chapter and the next. It is simply to give you an idea of what Erik and Cecily have become in this time. For this chapter, I used yet another new source delivered to me by the Phantom. Alas, I did not see him, nor can I yet tell you what source this is. Hopefully you shall know soon.

Your obedient friend,

S.R.

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Time passed. Cecily and Erik both kept their word. She returned often to his lair, and he taught her to read. After the first year, she could read and write basic French, after the second, she was fluently reading some of Erik's hardest works, and writing responses to them on nearly the same level. Nearly every waking hour was spent below ground, poring over books, digging for another unknown fact.

Erik watched her silently as she read. She was curled up in a chair against the wall reading The Man in the Iron Mask, flipping the pages with a surprising rapidity. Beside her lay its predecessor, The Three Musketeers, Les Misérables, and hhha copy of Jean de la Fontaine's fables.

He should have been composing, and had begun to do so, but found his mind muddled and too full to distill his thoughts into music. He smiled when she closed the novel and added it to the pile of her finished books. "Done so soon?"

She looked over at him, startled out of some train of thought. "I've been reading that one for a whole two days, Erik! I should have finished hours ago!"

"I wonder if you realize how quickly to read. You read and write French nearly as well as I do."

"Ah, but Erik, you also read and write Russian and English, and know medicine and numbers and all sorts of things I can barely even dream of."

"Would you like to learn these things?" Erik was relieved for the suggestion. He had been worried that once she exhausted his library, within a few months at her current rate, she would stop visiting, and he would be left alone again.

She smiled over at him, a comfortable, friendly smile. The two of them had spent so much time together, it would be impossible to not be at ease around him. "You know I would, Erik."

"Well, then, little cat, you shall learn. What first?"

She paused for a moment biting the right side of her lower lip like she always did when she was thinking. "Math and Russian."

"Both?"

"For my reading lessons, Russian. I can read about the math in French, and have you help me when I need it. I think it will work, don't you?"

"I wouldn't put it past you, Cecily." He rose gracefully from the organ bench and walked to the bookcase, pulling out a large volume with markings that Cecily didn't understand.

He motioned her over to a table and sat the book down in front of her. "Now here, the Russian alphabet, called the Cyrillic alphabet, has thirty-three letters, twenty being consonants…"

"And thirteen vowels. See I can already do some of the math."

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "Yes, well, that would be right, if it weren't wrong."

"What?"

"The Cyrillic alphabet has twenty consonants, eleven vowels, and two letters that don't stand for sounds. Now look here…" So began the first lesson in Russian, which Cecily acquired nearly as quickly as she had French, although her writing of it lacked for quite some time. Math followed, and in time she could do the long architectural equations that Erik set her to.

Erik watched her work with pride and a bit of admiration. She certainly was a fast learner. She was dedicated too. All the time she did not spend in practice or performing, she managed to escape through one of the many passages Erik had shown to her and visit his hideaway. It sometimes seemed that she was in his home more often than she was in the dormitories. When her duties to the younger ballet girls kept her from coming, she put them to bed and came during the night. Neither she nor Erik ever thought that those night visits would one day prove dangerous.