The bedroom window was filled with the idea of nothing—a black sky that blotted out any hope of starlight, let alone the waning sliver of the moon that hung above the house the night before. Save for the hiss of the wind blowing through the forest and the pattering of raindrops on the roof, a scant reflection in the glass pane flickering with the lamp light, one might have the impression that there was nothing outside of the bedroom besides endless emptiness. Still dazed from the events which transpired downstairs, Christine stood frozen, surveying this void she called home—from darkness, into darkness. In many ways, it was like she and Erik had never left the opera: her fidgeting and worrying herself behind the closed door, him pacing outside of it like an animal behind bars, waiting for its meal.
She had to remind herself a hundredfold that it was not the same: that she was Christine Daae, in her own ordinary house, asking her husband to do what seemed to come naturally to most men—to her. For her. Christine unbuttoned her tea gown, still damp from the storm and Erik's attentions, and let it fall to the ground, the barege wool sighing against the wooden floorboards. She caught that shadow of herself in the window, standing in nothing more than her chemise and drawers—her nipples dark beneath their thin veil of cotton, her hair braided and wound around her like a crown of marigolds. There was that wildness to her again, that sharpness that she seldom let herself indulge in but no longer had the energy to dam up in the backmost parts of her consciousness. This is me, Christine thought. And while the idea was laughably simple, she ached over the knowledge of how many years she wasted in an attempt to run from this iteration of herself.
With slow determination, Christine finished her toilette. The water in her basin was as cold as her husband's fingertips grazing her face, the dabs of Jicky she anointed her wrists and mound with as viscous and sweet as his tongue dancing its way down her neck. There was want within Christine—strange as it felt to her, stranger as it was to even acknowledge it, but the truth inevitably forces its way out. There was a man waiting downstairs for her, awful and thirsting and uglier than most human comprehension, and she wanted him. She wanted to know why he hurt her, why he loved her. Why he did the awful things he did, when he was so capable of gentleness. Why he fled from her. Why he returned. She wanted him to tear down that last barrier that stood between them, hand in hers as they claimed this life together. She wanted him to look in the window and see every bit of himself, slashed in shadow and lamplight, and have the same thoughts she did—this is me, this is me, this is me— and to not crumple at such a notion.
And as daunting and unfinished as the notion was, it was enough. She threw her wrapper over body, the silk oppressive against her bare skin, and opened the drawer on the little bedside table. There sat the piece of paper that might send them both into a new sort of madness, the plainness of her words the last hand of cards she might play. As she lifted it up to read it over, tendrils of music as soft and sad as a goodbye floated up through the cracks in the floor; for a brief moment, Christine struggled to recognize its source—hardly the brackish piano, nor half so insidious and lewd as the violin. A buzzing sensation moved through the soles of her feet, upwards and upwards, until the hair on her head was standing at attention—it was the guitar. She stared back down at the letter and pressed a kiss to it—once, twice, three times; it was time. The stairs creaking beneath her feet be damned, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer be snuffed out with her doubt.
The parlor was empty, save for the small fire in the hearth; melody poured forth from the kitchen like the smell of fresh bread. Christine followed it, paper pressed to her heart, until it led her to her husband. The room was as dimly lit as the rest of the house, yet Erik sat at the scrubbed table with his head stooped and eyes closed in concentration, his shirt-sleeved arms wrapped around the instrument in communion. Oblivious to her presence, his hands ran laps up its long neck, making swans from six paltry strings. Christine's eyes lingered on his exposed left elbow, pitched as it was against the hip of the guitar, nested there like it was home. She realized how she had come to adore the thing—how she associated his sad fados and jotas with the house and the way the mattress molded to her body, or else the sound of water gurgling from the pump in the garden and the feeling of her trowel pistoning through soil.
"What lovely music," Christine said simply. Her husband turned in his chair to regard her, as if her comment were the first kind word he'd received in a lifetime. It certainly felt like the most effortless thing to have left her lips in ages. After a long second, his eyes slid down her face and widened, as if her state of undress had shot him through the heart.
"It is only a trifle," Erik whispered, the ruse of casualness in his voice growing more and more apparent by the word. "Something I picked up in Cordoba as a younger man." She saw how the light picked at the graying hairs on his head, and felt her heart twist with urgency. "Do you know, Christine, that Cordoba houses one of the finest buildings in the world—despite Erik himself not designing it?" He chuckled, but the sound of it was tired and parched. When Christine failed to respond, the man before her turned his gaze to the guitar frets, bashful. He swallowed and continued, picking away at his song. "A mosque—or a former mosque, you know, for the Spanish seldom find a building they won't try to make into a church. But what a church! A riot of candy striped arches stretching as far back at the eye can perceive, funneled at the center by enough groin vaults and gold leaf to make a saint greedy. It shouldn't be half as lovely and holy as it is, and yet—"
"Erik," Christine interrupted, sitting down at the chair opposite him. "Why did you run away?" The better part of her wished to cover that spindled palm of his with hers.
"I don't wish to talk about it," he said, his soft tone curdling. The music stopped entirely. It was then Christine noticed the cup of tea sitting on a faded placemat in front of her, steam curling into the air. "At any rate, what does this have to do with me? I thought you were so hellbent on discussing that little fellow of yours."
"Please," she answered. "I'm not mad at you—"
"Why did you not run away," he snapped, fiddling with a tuning peg. "Why did you not take the freedom you so desperately wanted and flee the moment I left your sight? I certainly wouldn't have begrudged you it. What haven't I done to you or taken from you at this point to not have you running for your life? You ask me why I left, and yet the real question is figuring out why you are sitting here before me."
"What do you mean," she whispered, her fingers pinching at the bridge of her nose. "Erik, I have stayed. I have held you and kissed you. Have I not been a good wife?"
"And what happens when you drink that tea you've come begging for," he said, the guitar jarring against the floor as he dropped it to the ground. "Is this how you finally run from me? By letting some hallucination hold you, kiss you? What then, Christine? What happens if it makes you honest, as you claim? What if you do not like my face so much then? What if the very magic you seek paints me in some newer and more horrible fashion? To hold you has been one thing—a facsimile of marriage, however pleasant —but after months of sharing every day with you, my face bare and you not weeping… is this your final revenge?"
Christine paused, felt the paper in her hands nearly crumble under the force of shame; she had grown so used to hating Erik for everything else—for his cruel humor and tricks, for his neverending malice and the music it inspired, for the relentless and uncomfortably understood desire for release—that she was hard-pressed to dwell upon his ugliness. In these long and lonely months, the sheer unthinkableness of that visage had bored Christine to the point of tears—had become as common to her as sweeping the floors and beating out the rugs. It was only skin, after all—the same as the skin she'd tossed into the yard that morning, to be washed away with the next storm; she'd failed to consider how her indifference to his face, however hostile, might have affected her husband—what it might have meant to him, even if it was a nothing notion to her.
"I am not trying to run from you," Christine whispered, the revelation shooting through her like a weed. Erik barked out a dead laugh, head turning to stare out the window. "I mean it. I know I've been dishonest in the past,"—and here her voice dropped—"I know I've lied to you. But I am speaking plainly here and now, Erik. I am only trying to understand. To see things as you see them." When he refused to look at her, Christine prayed to whatever gods remained that she was not sending them further into sadness that bound them together. "I want you to read this letter. No interjections. No comments or snide jokes. Just my own words. Will you do that for me? It is not so terribly long." She smiled weakly, if only for her own courage. The man before her raised his head slowly, regarding her with the stare of a soul resigned—she thought of the bronze scorpion twisting under sweating palms, the tremble that followed realizing when all was saved but oneself. How they still looked at one another through a mirror.
"If it is what Christine truly wants," Erik sighed after a moment, defeated, a hand sweeping over the table to wearily pluck the paper from her. "I can deny her nothing, even if it means my own doom." Christine says she must marry, and so marry she will, a voice echoed to her across time.
"It is," she said, bowing her head and taking the cup of tea into her empty hands. The contents within were nut-brown, the malevolent fungus little more than fine dust pooled at the bottom. A vision of her husband, vomiting and weeping and honest, flitted across Christine's vision, terrifying her briefly before withering into the darkness that engulfed the kitchen. Such strange actions were little more than necessary caprices, she told herself, despite her doubts and the pungent taste of decay in her mouth; she had kissed Erik, after all, and what was a kiss compared to the bliss of truth? With one last goodbye to herself, Christine brought the brim of her cup to her lips, tipping its contents back as steadily as she could manage. When she lifted her eyes, Christine saw that Erik was still watching her, watching the undulations of her throat with a mixture of horror and hunger.
"Very well," he said, his voice cracking, his free hand fiddling with those buttons on his collar. With a long exhale, Erik shook the paper out. "My dear Raoul— Christine, must you really?" Christine choked down the liquid in her mouth, foul and freeing, and nearly slammed its cup down in frustration.
"Do you want to be married to an honest version of me or not," she shot back. She heard Erik shift in his chair, his sigh lost under the hiss and pop of wood, and resumed her tea.
"My dear Raoul ," he repeated, his voice already revealing his own terror by the syllable. Christine braced herself. " I've heard that you are stationed in Tromso, and that the early ice has kept you from moving onward up the Arctic. The news grieves me—" Christine saw those skinny shoulders rolling in effort to bite back venom, and continued to drink. "It grieves because I know how at ease you are upon the sea, and to what lengths you are prepared to help your fellow man."Erik paused again, a hand wiping at his face, the pageant of unshed tears. A reflex, she supposed. "Yet honesty compels me to say that I am also happy to hear it. To know that you are wandering the same Scandinavia I once called home. That you might go pink from the cold, and perhaps see the night sky make all colors of the rainbow. That you might know me better for it. That you might, perhaps, understand me. "
Christine heard the chair groan against the kitchen floor, watched in suspended animation as Erik fought to keep from fleeing from his seat; the exposed tendon of his arm rippled, his empty hand spasming softly against the table. The tender thing would have been to grab it, kiss it—tell its owner that the game was enough, and that they could go to bed, forgetting the whole affair and losing themselves together in sleep. But despite the man's twitching, the forced and clinical tone of his voice—like he was reading his own death sentence—he continued onward:
"But mostly, I say this because I like to imagine that you are content, wherever you are. And that makes me glad in turn, if only because of something Papa told me often as a child, but that I seldom understood until now: that peace, however small, is seldom offered to any of us—especially to those that have been born into such hardness." Erik stopped again, and for a moment Christine wondered if she had finally killed her husband. But soon that hand, now shaking, reached up to cover a mouth buckling under the weight of her words. "But Papa was also constant in his belief that such hardness was not the beginning and ending of one's home. The wild there, as he liked to say, is cold and dark—but not unkind. It is not so hard to find warmth and beauty there. Perhaps even happiness."
For a long moment, Erik sat, the letter fluttering in his hands, his head nodding to some loping and sad music Christine could not hear. "Until I hear from you again. I remain yours in friendship, Christine." Her name was a bird's wings on his voice, so soft and fleeting was it uttered, so quickly did something heavy leave the room with it. They sat in silence for some interminable length, him seizing up in his chair, her forcing down the dregs of her mischief.
"Oh, Christine," Erik sighed, voice thick, head shaking. "Your vicomte will hate you for this." To her surprise, there was no victory in his tone—not even the faintest glimmer of glee or malice; it then occurred to Christine that Erik was reading her words as if they were directed at him. A vision of that alternate life came to her—one where she had successfully fled with Raoul to wherever they might have run, where the man before her would have had to digest such words and survive. They had all lost, regardless of her choice; still, they lived. "I tell you—there is no coming back from this. He will despise you."
"Perhaps he will," Christine answered solemnly, the china still poised at her lips. "Perhaps he won't. But I think it is time for all of us to reckon with the things we've done to each other. Don't you?"
"The things you've done," he echoed dully. "What have you done that I have not given back to you a hundredfold? Even now, I sit and watch my wife willfully poison herself, if only to make my company more agreeable—"
"Stop," Christine interjected, slamming her cup down against the table so forcefully that it startled him into silence. "Stop this, Erik. Did you not listen to a word of what I wrote? To anything I've just said? I do this because I want us to be open. I want us to be vulnerable with one another again. I seldom understand anything about this marriage, and I sometimes wonder if it's because I don't even know how to be myself anymore. That I haven't been myself since I was a small girl." She reached out to catch a sweating palm within her own grasp. "I want someone to hear the things I can't articulate with words or music. Someone to someone to bear witness to the things about myself that I don't understand, and not fear for my soul because of it. Surely you understand that?" Erik blinked at her, his eyes so full of half-baked spite and wonder that she fought the urge to shake him by shoulders. "You told me earlier that to dream was enough—but it isn't. I don't want to just dream. I want us to live and maybe even be happy to live. Don't you, too?"
"I'm afraid I have little experience with happiness," he answered sullenly, a hand covering his face. "If it's happiness you want, know that it is a distant island." She saw fresh tears gathering in those strange eyes of his and did her best to not crumble in sadness. It had to be enough for her to just sit and listen and hope. "Every bit of joy that comes my way… it is like I am a shadow in Elysium, watching it pass in front of me, unable to comprehend it before it either flees or reveals some new deceit in its place. How can I smile, when it is easier to hurt? How can I laugh, when laughter is less trust-worthy and crueler than righteous anger? There are so many wretched things about me you don't know—that you couldn't begin to comprehend. That I barely comprehend myself. You ask me to understand the darkness in you, when mine is as wide as the ocean itself. How can I be happy, Christine, when my presence is unhappiness itself?" And here the poor man's breath hitched, before collapsing into sobs; this time, there was little trace of self-pity—only the threadbare truth.
The rain wept along with Erik; there seemed to be little point in any more words, so Christine resolved to sit motionless instead, watching her husband fall back into the only way he seemed able to express himself—that didn't depend on music or malice. She thought back to that fateful night, the one where she cradled a monster against her chest and kissed it like it was innocence itself. She thought of Erik sick and shaking, clinging to her against the nightmares she had foisted upon him. She thought of him tall and dark, a taper flickering in the storm, as he blew through the front door to kiss her of his own volition. A tingling ran through Christine's limbs at that kaleidoscope of memories, along with a churning in her stomach that made her feel as if she were falling from a great height; perhaps it was the tea. Perhaps it was her husband himself. Who was she to say when the hour felt so late and the notion of their bed felt so sweet?
"Erik," Christine said, resting her chin in a clammy hand, eyes fluttering. "I want to go lie down."
"Christine," he exclaimed softly, leaping to his feet, rubbing at his wet and broken face with a shirtsleeve. How scared he looked. How mild. How aureate, wreathed in banked fire and clothed in cotton. She might have swooned over that image alone, mushrooms be damned. "What would you have me do?"
"Dry your tears," she said, as naturally as if she were telling him to button up his shirt or shut the window. "And carry me upstairs, won't you?" Erik stared at her for another eternity—maybe they were gods, after all, with the way time seemed to melt around them—before nodding slowly and rising to his feet. It was always his delicateness that shocked and scared her most—how he licked his thumb turning a page in his book. The manner in which he neatly pulled weeds from the soil, as if they deserved their own consideration as much as the flowers; it was with the same surprise that Christine found herself gathered into her husband's arms.
"You are sure, then?" Her hair went askance under Erik's breath. She was frightened and alive. And it was good.
"I am."
"You understand my hesitancy," he continued, rocking Christine against him as the hearth popped and hissed its death. "About why I am so scared of all of this." She considered his question and could only conclude with some vague negativity. They still understood each other so little most of the time—yet the reasons why were becoming less and less opaque.
"Erik," she asked, the walls swelling around them both. "What would you do with me? If you knew I could not say no." The arms which held her tightened, but Christine pushed onward, fiddling idly with the buttons of the shirtfront against her cheek. "If you knew I would not say no." Her limbs were going loose as old garters; the wherewithal to steel herself for his horrible answer was long gone, leaving only earnest anticipation.
"I would kiss you," he answered after a long moment, voice distant and lovely. "I would kiss you until—" And he paused again, arms shaking as they cradled his wife. They sat in silence like this, until a deep breath eased the night forward. "There are such statues littered across the world—the holy sites of virgins or ascetics or martyrs—where they have been kissed and caressed so many times in so many places that the stone itself is rendered smooth to the touch; I would kiss you like that, Christine. Yes. To be the pilgrim seeking constant transfiguration through a kiss. To return to show such devotion again and again, until the both of us are hardly recognizable."
A hand—her own, on its own accord—reached up to touch her husband's face. Golden eyes flicked down to meet hers. Christine could see that long ago version of Erik, watching her through glass, the wanting so palpable that what else could one call it but a ghost—an entity which existed on its own terms. A being of its own making, rocking her in its arms stories beneath the earth, as surely as the man holding her now did— and now she no longer feared either. What lies were there in Erik's answer, she thought, when she already kissed that specter on its forehead and saw it changed into the docile mess she married. Transfigured, as he had said. What was devotion, if not the anchor to which one weathered change? What was marital union, but the only solid foundation between two living and unstable people?
"Christine?" She blinked in surprise, and when she focused her eyes back upon his face—all flesh and bone writhing in wonder, its outward rot a promise of change to come—it was to smile at him.
"Kiss me, then," she said.
By the time Erik's lips were upon Christine's forehead, the kitchen ceiling was a mess of stars, the dying fire alight with the promise of sunrise.
#
A long time ago, in some forest of steel and marble, Christine was lifted into the embrace of a silent shadow; fingers skimmed her body, bathed her face, their reverence underscored by the dominating and self-assured belief that it was free to drag her wherever it might go. To ruin. To Hell. To the pits of music itself, where everything was noise and discord once you ripped the farce of harmonics away. The drugged horror of it all—the raw terror that sprang from knowing a shadow wanted you, clinging to you with a force that might have folded you into its very being until you were nothing but darkness itself. Walking pits of want, cursed to roam places most people feared to tread.
"Help me," Christine heard herself calling out, as if from down a long tunnel. "Who am I now?" The shadow rippled in response, its touch running over her lips, her nipples. Her head was naught but fog, her body nothing but the occasional spasm of nerves against a leather caress. Those long gloved hands plucked away at her until she looked down at herself and realized she was nothing more than bones herself. Christine knew she ought to be terrified of becoming death—ought to have kicked and pushed at the shade until it relinquished its hold on her, released the penny rags of ether it held against her nose. But as the shadow descended further into the earth with her still-breathing corpse, its dark raiment began to unravel in long spirals, flesh flayed off with a sharp and exact knife. She looked down at her own skin in awe as it came into ribbons, too. They were two beings being stripped to nothing but light and marrow, and for the life of Christine, she couldn't find it in her to scream.
"My dearest," the specter murmured into her scalp, although a part of her knew that something so glowing and white-hot could no longer be considered shadow. She closed what remained of her eyes and shuddered. "My poor Christine." There was no skin left to be kissed, and yet the sensation of thousands rocked what remained of her being, all wet and languid and trailing down her body like vines. She was lit up, a body of stars, each pressing of ghostflesh against hers a puncture through the lacuna around them.
"God," she cried out, the heat between her legs nearly unbearable. The shadow writhed its way down the length of her soul and made its bed right above that warm calamity. Another series of kisses followed there; it hit what was left of Christine like sunshine after weeks of being buried alive. She was unbuttoned in that moment, every drop of her releasing in one great deluge, a shower of stars and lifetimes falling out from her. The shadow lapped away, and in the space between everything and complete nothingness, it seemed to Christine that the two of them were repeating this dance to infinity—that ascent to a place where everything felt full of wonder and potential, that great fall towards a release where all fell into pieces. Again, she dissolved. Again, the shadow wrapped its claws around what remained. And somewhere in the gilt expanse of what the strange couple made, every Christine to have ever existed caught a glimmer of creation out of the corner of a tearful eye.
And suddenly, they were no longer descending into the earth's core, but floating upwards—higher and higher, oblivion gradually giving way to a thicket of hazy, twinkling gold. From the slits of her eyelids, she saw her veins shimmering amongst this field; her companion's limbs were intertwining with them like the roots of an old tree. In the distance, she caught the silhouettes of many—fair and flaccid, their forms dissolving into the ether as they watched the strange pair make their home abed. And then there was softness, warmth—that chilled embrace departing, leaving only comfortable nothing.
"Look at me," that celestial voice whispered. She felt it brush her forehead and heard her own laugh outside of herself, before a hand wrapped gently around her jaw. What could she do but obey, giggling as she took a thumb between her own lips—did she still have lips and did it even matter—and sucked on it like it was sugar cane. A gasp, earthbound and jagged, ripped through her ears, just at the taste of her own happiness rocked her. "Look at me, Christine." So she did; the specter was gone. And there in all his misshapen glory was a man, silhouetted in lamp light, staring down at her with a wild tenderness that almost dragged Christine back to her senses. She released him from her mouth and blinked, the image of him blurring, making oil paint of his features and the ordinary bedroom surrounding them. The air was thick with the scent of warm flesh, the sound of a familiar domestic music: a wick burning, wind blowing through the cracks in the windows, rain above her head. Her pantalettes were off, her chemise pushed up past her hips. And everything that lay below was now bare to the man who sat in front of her. The man—
"Erik," Christine croaked aloud. "It is my husband, Erik."
"It is," he agreed, his tone low and plush. Through her fading delirium, she noticed a cloth draped over his bare right forearm, the ends damp and dripping. "And how is his wife feeling?" Christine's first impulse was to laugh again, to pull his hand back to hers and marvel at how his fingers were a human's fingers. In the low light of the room, they were the points of some magnificent star, and she was the only girl lucky enough to catch them. Her husband, however, seemed contrite—the wetness upon his lips had given him little courage. She saw the urge to cry written across his features, as nebulous as the universe itself.
"It's so dark in here," she answered instead, turning his palm over to examine it.
"I am sorry," Erik answered; Christine was not so far gone as to not notice him blushing— what beautiful blood he has. "I can fetch another lamp."
"No," she responded, feeling a lurch in her stomach. She shuddered and rolled onto her side, eyes pouring over the man before her who looked so dead and yet was alive. A ridiculous miracle, and it was all hers to drink up. "I don't want more light. I want my husband to lie down with me."
A smile followed, and the notion of it struck Christine with all of the sleek force of an arrow: all was dark and her husband was smiling at her again, the room was dripping with all of the gentle, hesitant mirth the expression carried. Christine looked down at her body, the weft of her chemise dizzying and oppressive, lattice upon lattice that locked her away from her own liberty, and lifted it above her head. She heard Erik suck in a breath, felt a weight on the mattress shift as he stood up from his spot by her side and retreated into the darkness.
"Come back," she called out softly. When Erik ignored her plea, his eyes glittering from the corner of the bedroom, Christine felt herself dissolving. "Don't you want to hold me?" A tired sigh blew back at her. So many sighs—her ears would always be full on them.
"You were shouting," he said sadly. "Crying out."
"I was dreaming," she shot back.
"You still are." She could argue little with that, the way the room still pitched and tossed with the breath of life. The way the back of her teeth still tasted of soil and something close to ruin. The way Erik's very silhouette seemed its own creature, sitting upon his shoulders and waiting to feast.
"I am sorry, then." Christine realized then how parched her throat felt, like she had fallen face first into the sand with her mouth wide open. "It was not because of you—it is only that I have just seen myself."
"I suppose I understand," he answered from his corner. "I've felt just as much, many times over." There were still no mirrors in the house, yet now Christine finally understood the real reason why—something that was bigger than mere corporeal ugliness. How long had she been Papa Daae's daughter, or the theater slut, or else the poor baby being goaded into doing something she did not want to do. How fantastic and awful it is to look at yourself, fully and finally—to live in the middle of your own thoughts, when everyone else has left you.
"Hold me," she whispered. "You've had me before. Why do you hide?"
"It's different," Erik answered haltingly, stepping back into the circle of light to return to her side. "It was much easier when—when I was the uninhibited one. When I saw you through a veil of death. A dying man like me has no scruples, especially in the arms of a woman like you. But now you would have me alive, and I'm not so sure I understand what that means yet." In that moment, Christine could not blame him—the feeling of demise now flew through her, and it had made her giddy and weightless, eager to pierce that veil and purge what fear lay beyond it. The hole in his face was ink-black and lovely, onyx. The limp hair across his sweating face was silver and shining like morning dew on grass. As her hands curved out the contours of her body, a new question formed in her mind. A dying man.
"Erik," Christine asked, her fingers dancing across her rib cage. She watched his gaze follow the wide arcs they made beneath her breasts, and enjoyed the way his stare made her body feel molten. When their eyes met, he turned away, sheepish. "How old are you?"
"Why do you ask?" The words were stiff. "To mark the number of days left on your sentence?"
"Because I want to know you. Is that a crime?" A small huff followed her question.
"I couldn't say," he answered with a tinge of bitterness. "Forty-five. Maybe fifty. Too old for Christine, at any rate." Perhaps Erik was right on that count; nevertheless, his answer provoked a strange, sad thought. In that bed, she saw all twenty-five of her turns around the earth in front of her, and was stunned by how devoid of joy they'd been, save for the rare flashes of music that gave her purpose. How long had it been since her art brought her joy that was genuine and not tethered to deception or someone else's fulfillment? How long had it been since she and her husband sung together without her loathing the very idea of it? It felt like Christine had existed for one miserable eternity, and she was only half her husband's age; that there was so much living left to do was both terrible and good. Her stomach clenched at the thought, and she was compelled to whistle through her teeth in discomfort.
"Christine," Erik murmured, leaning over her. "What can I do?"
"Tell me something about yourself," she said. "When you were my age." Her left hand flew across the bedclothes, tracing the dip in the mattress that belonged to her husband. "Lie down and tell me a story about you. Like the one you mentioned earlier at the kitchen table—with guitars and pretty buildings."
"I'm afraid I don't have many stories like that one," he mumbled, tugging at his ear. "At least, stories that are happy ones."
"I don't need it to be happy," Christine whispered dreamily, rolling on her side to stare at him. "I just want it to be about you. Who I might have known in another lifetime." He hummed for a moment and regarded her, before sitting down in his appointed spot.
"Turn back onto your other side," he said. "So that you're not facing me." She acquiesced with a small sadness, only to be rewarded with the sound of shoes hitting the floor. A quiet medley of rustling followed, before the bed shifted and the new weight of its load caused Christine's backside to bump up against her husband's body. She startled and then laughed, their collective lack of poise a benediction for the evening. Erik cleared his throat.
"I was not always a recluse," he started, an arm snaking its way around her waist, fingertips clipping the skin above Christine's navel. A soft exhale followed when her spine brushed up against chilled skin and that fascinating hardness which reminded her that the man next to her was just that—a man. Erik hummed again, before closing the distance between their bodies with a fledgling confidence that charmed her. I want us to be happy. "That is not to say I didn't make it a habit of avoiding people to the best of my abilities—but when I was younger, I was much more pliant—more eager to please others by being useful." There was low thunder in his voice, and it made her shiver. "And useful I was—a man with little care for right and wrong can carve out a decent niche for himself in this godforsaken world." The hand which skimmed her torso trailed its way past her breast, and Christine's eyes flew open in pleasant shock. But when she looked out into the darkness, it was only the torpor of her drugged state that kept her from screaming—for hovering a few feet away from their little bed was a face shining out from the darkness.
"What's wrong," Erik asked. She felt his body tense and his embrace loosen, the tops of his thighs backing away from the backs of hers.
"Nothing," Christine whispered. The familiar green eyes, kind and mischievous, stared at her, still and benevolent as a statue of St. Francis. Sandy hair. An upturned, boyish grin. When it failed to move, let alone breathe, Christine reached behind herself to catch her husband's forearm and wrap it around her shoulders like a scarf. "Don't stop." The slack in her husband's limbs fell away, and he cleared his throat again.
"I made a living for myself along the South China Sea for a short and memorable time—in a career I'd loosely refer to as diplomacy." Erik allowed himself to laugh here, his thumb rubbing whorls into Christine's collarbone. The face continued to watch them, unblinking. "Others might call it piracy. Politeness demands I spare you the details, to spare that darling face of yours from some early wrinkles. Suffice to say, having an ear for languages while having no allegiance to anyone, in the midst of a great scramble where everyone wants to protect themselves and fill their coffers, is a valuable skill; it was a hard life in its own way—but in many ways I did not mind. The people I encountered thought me ugly, as they always have, but they were less precious about it—if you proved useful."
"I'm sorry," Christine whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from the vision before her, wondering if its lips would curl into a sneer to mock them both. But it kept its kind expression, and in the sputtering of the lamps, she imagined its smile grew wider.
"Don't be," Erik answered, his embrace tightening around her. "Such people will laugh at you and call you a demon or a sinkhole, but in time, the insults morph into a crude badge of honor. I ended up spending a long summer on a jonque doing all matter of small jobs for a man who would spit on the deck every time I walked past him—but he otherwise left me to my own devices and paid me well enough, so long as I listened to him. He captained the boat, I dove; it was as simple as life has ever been for one such as me. The Opera might have been my most distinguished home"—it was hard not to smile when Erik laughed again—"but what is a building compared to the open sky? What is a busy boulevard compared to a nursery of limestone islands so numerous they might have been stars, a sea so blue and clear that it was hard not to think one was flying, instead of swimming?"
Erik paused again and sighed into Christine's hair. She felt him shudder for a brief moment, before pressing his brow against her shoulder. The wind ripped through the woods outside the bedroom window, and the rain continued with its relentless drumming; it was hard not to wonder if the little house would be swept away by sunrise, taking the two of them along with it. Returning the faded young man staring at her from across the floor to whatever underworld he'd risen up from.
"I remember ending up on my back in the water one hot afternoon, enjoying one of the few pleasures life afforded me then—the sound of a current in your ears and the percussion of one's own heartbeat matching it. The strange clicking music of whatever life was swimming in those waters. My hideousness was turned heavenwards, and I saw nothing but clouds and cliffs—far older than anything I could comprehend. Perhaps I floated for hours before I was dragged back onto the boat. Perhaps it was only for a minute. But in such moments, I felt like any other man. I felt free." And here, Christine heard Erik suck in a deep breath, before she felt his lips press a small kiss on her shoulder. "You'll forgive me for being sentimental," he continued softly, a hand playing at the curls next to where marked her. "But the first time I saw the blue of your eyes, I caught the notion of such freedom."
"Erik," Christine breathed, her gaze breaking from the ghost in the room. She turned in his arms and looked right into those burnished irises, the adoration in them almost undoing her entirely. She remembered his dreams of walking barefaced under moonlight, his wolfish grin as they walked home from the market in the rain. Beneath the bedclothes, her touch slid over the canals of his ribs, the link chain of his sternum. His lips smelled of her pleasure, more swollen and misshapen than ever from the brunt of his affection. Her husband, wild and alive and capable of so much.
"It is a wonder," Erik continued, "to be young and to answer only to the whims of your own liberty." He brought her hair to his lips and almost kissed it, the darkness vibrating around them, before letting it drop to the sheets. Cold fingers tilted her chin upwards. "Christine. The things I have taken from you—I can't begin to express how much I regret every single one. How much I will regret them until the day fate decides to flick me off this mortal coil."
You will obey me, or else I must vanish. You will love me, or we will all perish. So many precepts, so many wills—how miserable such words had made them both. Here, in the bed that ushered her husband into this world, such demands felt like silly lifetimes ago. There was nothing that either of them had to do—not now, not really—and in the same way that the Erik of decades past once felt near freedom, Christine began to understand her own all the more.
"Then give them back to me," she replied. Erik bristled, the hand skimming her jaw faltering in its homage. "If you mean it. Give me all of the things you've taken away. Give me my freedom. Give me laughter and music. Give me myself, and give me the version of you that you always wished you could be. It is not too late."
The bedclothes rustled again. Her husband's caress fell away.
"I already gave you your freedom," he said flatly. "Twice, if I recall correctly. And both times you chose not to run away."
"That was not what either of those situations were. You and I both know that." Somewhere in the distance, thunder. More rain. "And that is not what I am asking of you."
"You would leave me, then." As Christine stared back at Erik, he brought his hand up to his mouth in shame. "Yes. You would. That version of Erik that you talk about—the one he wishes he could be—cannot exist. Not when he looks this way. Not when he is this way." He moved to turn away again, the shadows swallowing his pale form—but the new part of Christine that made stars and smiled at ghosts could not, would not let the man next to her move an inch further.
"But Erik," Christine said quietly, her palm running along a waning shoulder. "You are holding me now, aren't you?" And saying so, she leant her head upon his chest, putting her lips above the spot where his heart had always existed. "Let me go, so that we might find each other again?" Warm droplets graced her forehead, ran down the same spot she once beat against a dark wall; all the while, a tiny death passed through the bedroom—the sensation of a candle wick curling into ash, a hair falling out from one's head. A passing of small and staggering proportion, incapable of being undone. Christine felt the calamity of his pulse against her cheek and glanced back up.
"Let you go," Erik echoed thickly, face wet again. He lifted her fingertips from his shoulder and brought them to that bloated and bandied mouth. "I will always find you, Christine. You can beg me to leave you, and I will obey gladly, but—I will always be able to find you. There is no corner of this world or the next into which I couldn't follow you."
"I know," she answered. "That is why I asked."
What followed was the beginning and the end—or as close to an ending as any two people who finally want to live could hope for; body still smarting deliciously from the tea and Erik's overtures, Christine moved to kiss him; it was an unsure kiss that pledged nothing besides the overwhelming urge to try again—a desire that Erik must have understood, for the way he returned the gesture tenfold. To wake up to another again without dread and rage. Such was the promise passed between them in those embraces. Again, again, again.
"On your side," he panted, his large hands wrapping around Christine's hips and turning her back against him. She obeyed, however sadly, even though she didn't understand his strange reticence; or perhaps she obeyed, because she did understand somewhere deep down in the darkest parts of herself: that a person did not suffer so easily to forget it. It was hard for Christine to dwell on such thoughts in that moment, however, with the way his Erik's mouth moved slid its way down her shoulder blades. The way one hand wrapped itself gently into her hair as its partner reached around her body, fingertips grazing every soft bit of her with shaking reverence. The way his length pressed against the spot his mouth had traversed earlier that evening. As a forefinger and thumb met at her right nipple, the sensation nearly pulling her from her body, Christine realized the face of the young man was gone from the perimeter of the bed; his spring-eyed stare and distant smile had faded into the walls like whitewash. Gone.
"I am sorry," Erik whispered. For a moment, Christine wondered if he had also noticed the ghost in the room—mourned its loss in his own little way— until she felt a set of knuckles brush against her bottom, chased by the hard warmth of her husband's desire meeting hers.
"I am not," Christine sighed, closing her eyes in anticipation. The fear that such a moment might have inspired a fortnight ago now felt silly; they had played at death for so long that the terror of living now seemed sweet as cake. When Erik finally entered her, the overwhelming relief that flooded Christine's body nearly made her cry out—damn the actual pain itself. Damn it for making Erik hesitate, the litany of apologies more unbearable than the raw and ripped sensation of being lovingly torn in two. Damn it for hurting in such a banal manner when she spent years expecting torture. Damn it for giving way to something strange and vulgar and fascinating—like the angel itself; why was it always pain before pleasure for the both of them, Christine mused, the sound of Erik's soft gasping ringing in her ears.
"My lady," he said, teeth latching onto her earlobe. The hand splayed across her breast was clumsy and wonderful in its devotion, its partner now traversing its way to the point where both of their bodies were joined. Christine caught sight of the whole mess: the slow and rollicking undulation of her own body taking in Erik's ardor, the slash of flesh disappearing into her very core, pale fingers playing at the curls between her legs. Overwhelmed, she cried out, her hands reaching out to clutch at something—anything. The sheets, the mattress itself, the firm and thin blanket of sinew covering her husband's thighs.
"Look at you, darling," Erik murmured, arms tightening around her as he rolled the both of them onto their backs—him, propped up by pillows and the headboard. Her laying against the cold expanse of his chest like she was a young girl floating in the ocean once again. The blood roared in her ears, surging through every inch of her body to the strange rhythm of the second heartbeat that thudded at the center of herself. "Look at how beautiful you are."
It was for the best that Erik couldn't see Christine's face—couldn't see the mixture of pain and ecstasy that painted her features, the bittersweet tears that prickled at the corner of her eyes; how was it he could hold her like this and love her, she wondered, despite all of the things she had asked of him, done to him? Despite all of the countless awful things he had done, had believed about himself and the world to which they were chained. Yes, such love hurt—as much as Mama had prepared her to expect it, as much as the ballet rats laughed it off as a necessary evil. But everything had hurt her. Living had hurt her, just as much as music and God and the people who claimed to care for the most had hurt her. Even the tender inequity that existed between Christine and the Vicomte hurt—and surely, somewhere northward, he felt the unfortunate sting of those impossible and pleasant memories. But to see such agony give way, if only a little, to warmth—
As Erik groaned into her hair, his touch against her seam as frantic and filthy as the pistoning of his hips, Christine felt herself begin to let go; in those moments, all felt like one last, massive surge of her heart, the final note in a challenging piece of music. "Oh, God, my darling, my dearest—". His words, she realized after a moment of beautiful panic where they might have been someone else's. One of the ghosts in the room—the green-eyed youth, the distant woman who seemed to frown down upon them. Perhaps, in some braver and bolder lifetime, her own. That train of thought was broken quickly; somewhere in between the realm of sleep and drugs, the smell of Erik's desire against her back filling her nose, Christine heard crying. Felt the source of so much panic and anxiety slide out of her, leaving a strange barren feeling in its place.
"Sing something," she said; he caught the rope she cast, and she felt the disbelief rolling off of him, could practically hear Erik wondering how long it had been since she'd requested to hear the voice that almost made her love him.
His response came to her in slow measures—
In the hollow paths of the moor,
The dark goblins, the werewolves,
In the night, in a saraband
Chase one another like mad.
Christine almost laughed, despite how much her body longed for sleep. It was a familiar lullaby—one she recalled listening to in horror as she watched Breton mothers sing it to their babes as they nursed or pushed them around the rocky shore in bockety prams.
I hear a noise near the door,
Close your eyes, my little boy
The nasty werewolf takes away
The children who don't sleep.
How the verses appalled her as a young girl, in the same way that most songs meant for children left her stricken by their darkness, once she was old enough to understand. She remembered Mama Valerius laughing at her dismay, patting her atop the head: " Älskling , the words are not meant for the wee babes themselves."
"Then who for?"
"For their mothers, who long to know how to keep their little ones safe. For their fathers, who forget they were once weak—who need to remember that the night is stranger and wilder than any man or common beast they might find."
Half in that memory, Christine felt Erik's large hands running through her hair, pausing in his song to kiss those waves like they were as precious as children. A part of her wondered how Erik even knew the song to begin with—what new ruse this was to meld her soul with his against her own will. Had the angel stalked her long enough to know the pressure points that might get her to snap as cheaply as pressed wood, perhaps? She thought of the young, ugly man floating in the water, so bereft of dreaming, still so filled with hope. She pondered the lifetime's worth of a person given nothing but a terrible world to traverse. A world that hated and feared and rejected every little bit of goodness that might have once blossomed. So many lives he'd live, and every single one so terrible—was it too hard to imagine some universe where they both might have traversed the same pink stones, heard the same simple song?
Perhaps not.
And like a chain rattling off decades of rust and disuse, she felt her voice rise to meet her husband's in song:
Sleep, my little one
For near the cradle your mama
Watches over your light slumber.
Till tomorrow, till tomorrow
Sleep.
Sleep.
#
When Christine awoke the next morning, the sky was the sort of sharp and clear gray that promised nothing in particular—perhaps more rain, perhaps muggy warmth. The bedroom was awash in that indecision, the rumpled bed clothes stark in their whiteness, the curls falling across her eyes almost silver in that strange morning light. As she blinked the sleep out of her eyes, wondering if the entire night before had been one bizarre fancy caused by too much wine, Christine felt a gentle huff of air brushing against the top of her head, a thin arm curled across her bare waist.
My husband.
With as much delicacy as she could muster, sleepdrunk as she felt, Christine slid out from beneath Erik's embrace and sat up. Slowly, she turned against the mattress to look at him, terrified—although of what, specifically, she could not say. A muted, wet discomfort twinged at her insides, but it was hardly the sort of pain that demanded further scrutiny. As she caught sight of the man next to her, face down in slumber, palms open, Christine realized it was the terror of understanding that one day Erik would actually be dead. That she would be, too. All dead and buried, as he had said—albeit in a manner that was almost comically different to the moment at hand. To hear those words, after years of watching people pass into nothingness before her eyes, made her realize just how numb she'd become to death. Had she also not contemplated the idea of taking down a whole city quarter's worth of people in the initial folly they'd made of love? It was an idea presented under extreme duress, and but she had entertained it all the same, rather than marry Erik. She remembered him sobbing into her lap after yielding her consent, the life emanating off of him, thinking him close to death and smiling because of it.
But now—
Now.
Christine stood up from the bed on frozen toes. From her position, she could see out the bedroom window and into the yard, where last night's storm had made chaos out of a season's worth of devotion; all below was mud and scampered, bruised petals. The birdbath dribbled water over one scanty edge of its lip. Even the cracks between the trees were oozing mist and a vague calamity. Such a mess called to her—to come right every wrong as best as she could, to let the woods around the house teach her how to make green again. With a heavy sigh, Christine threw on the first clean and comfortable dress she could find, too tired to even consider her underthings; the fabric chafed pleasantly against every part of her body where Erik had made his mouth and hands know. She suppressed another smile at the thought as she tied on her pinafore, before turning to stare at him again.
Love me, and you shall see.
See what? A small house in half-wildness. An attic bedroom with the ominous threat of a leaking roof hanging above their heads. Two desperately sad people clinging onto one another, however clumsily, through the preamble of whatever twisted and dark game was necessary to keep them alive. Erik startled in his rest, and for a brief moment, Christine worried he would wake up—and then what? He might kiss her. Might swear at her and make her doubt every good thing that had occurred last night. Might run. Might let her go. Might carry her back to his lap and keep her there forever. Every single possibility sent her tingling with some unknown energy. Sparing one last glance at Erik's prone form, Christine made for the bedroom door, closing it behind her with all the tenderness a mother might reserve for her sleeping child.
The cold teapot and her letter to the Vicomte lay abandoned on the kitchen table—the remains of yesterday's call to hope. A part of Christine yearned to reread her words, if only to see where she might have been mistaken in her convictions or else catch the moment her last pieces of sanity fell into dust. Erik said that the young man would hate her—and perhaps it was no less than she deserved—but her husband made hatred into an artform; he saw it everywhere, in the same way he heard music in everything. The foolish man—kissing her like that. Where did such a man fit into her life? Where did the Vicomte, for that matter?
Christine picked up the folded paper and brought it to her lips briefly, before setting it back down to its prior spot amongst the china and crumbs of toast. As she opened the back door, she caught a flash of red and white on the countertop's edge—the little mushrooms that had brought the two of them so much hard-won relief. She scooped them into her apron pocket, patting them as they settled against her thigh; eyes searched the room until they landed on a pair of boots by the doorframe, an old, grubby set Christine kept for the best and longest days of work before her. She laced them up with quiet determination, fingers twitching to feel the earth between them. Erik's coat hung on a hook just above them, still slightly damp and stinking from the rain—with a shaking hand, she lifted it from its perch and placed it over her shoulders with all of the ceremony of a wedding veil.
Maybe one day we'll be married proper, Christine thought, the mud squelching underfoot as she stepped outside. With a church and a priest and a banns in the newspaper. The approval of God. The air was just slightly too warm for the mantle of black wool on her shoulders, to say nothing of how its length trailed behind her in the dirt, yet she could not bring herself to part with its cover. With long, wobbly strides, she crossed the width of the backyard and did her best to temper her disappointment over the massacre that was once her garden—alliums strewn across the marshy terrain like snow, crumpled carnations now turned into blood clots. She lifted up a wayward Rose of Sharon and sighed into its anthers, the damage gutting her like a bayonet might have. The flower fell into the muck underfoot, and Christine pulled Erik's coat tighter around her.
A low and bracing wind blew up from behind Christine from the edge of the woods, winding around her like an embrace. A primal and holy music, plucked on strings of sap, beaten from the drums of earth; she turned around and peered into its source. It was the first time she'd been able to look confidently into the forest since she found the toadstools that brought her this newfound clarity. One heavy foot stepped towards its edge, and then another. As if moving through a dream, Christine found herself at the line where grass gave way to moss and great dark soil. Here, all was black and green, teeming with life despite the blows of nature. Here, all was deliciously crisp and cool and comforting. The garden would come back to itself, with love and care. Her hand dove into the apron pocket and picked out the mushrooms once more, staring at the bright things with a measured happiness. Funny, how the sight of them staining her palm was no longer a thing of dread. Hardly the evil things from her memory—one simply just had to know how to handle them. And all the while Papa worried that his daughter longed for death. Funny.
Funny—
"I love you," Christine blurted out, those three syllables reeled out of her soul by the hand of whatever force governed the copse before her. She clapped her free hand over her mouth, eyes roaming the trees. The ridiculousness of such words, said to no one, made her blush. Made her wonder if she had finally snapped whatever leash kept her tied to the surface. She looked back down at her hand and laughed. "I love you." Maybe it was meant for the mushrooms that let her die and be reborn. Maybe it was meant for the woods, that gifted such tokens to her, that let them both live in something close to normality. Maybe it was for her dead mamas, her foregone papa, the smiling Vicomte who had all made her who she was.
Maybe it was for Erik, a voice whispered.
Christine startled and glanced over her shoulder. There was nothing behind her but the trampled backyard and the little house it circled—the splintered garden bench, a drainpipe clinging to the very walls of the house like it was also made of ivy. A flash of gold caught her eyes from the bedroom window; there, staring at her with an expression she longed to decipher, was her husband, half-dressed and leaning with his forearm pressed against the glass. So dazed was Christine that it took her a moment to realize he was waiting for her.
She smiled at him and dropped her gaze to her hands. To dream. To live. To learn the art of bravery. It was decided, then. She returned his stare, wherein blue met yellow across the morass. With a deftness that might have shocked her in another lifetime, Christine took the smallest cap amongst the handful and pushed it past her lips. Without the veil of tea leaves and sugar Erik had been kind enough to use the night prior, the fungus was as tough and off-putting as her memory had painted it. As she chewed, she blinked slowly, recalling the sweetness of the night before to mask her discomfort; it was hard not to grin wider when she saw Erik's arm drop from the window pane in response, his body rising to its full height. She swallowed lightly—unsure of what was to come, but eager for it all the same.
And then Christine saw Erik smile back.
The mushrooms were swept back into their cotton-spun resting spot. Christine bowed her head in coy recognition. And with one fortifying breath, she turned back to the forest. Erik had been right all of those months ago, down in the cellars, when he lamented being unable to keep the moon for himself: she was not the moon, pale and distant and meant only for darkness—and him, hardly darkness itself. They were simply Christine and Erik—and in the liminal shelter of the woods, they could be anything they wanted. Wife and husband. Woman and man. Two wild and roaming creatures who lived for themselves and feasted on each other's dreams—each other's ghosts.
When Christine looked back one last time at the house, her heart swelled to see that Erik was no longer standing at the window. I will always find you. She heard those words as if he were just behind her, tracing the crest of her hips, mouth twisting into her neck. With one last thanks uttered to the wind, she threw back her shoulders and stepped into the unknown.
"I feel immensely freed and sustained, the dark months of doubt washed away, and that I can look you gladly in the eyes as you take me in your arms. My beloved! My beautiful one. I thank God you do not try to fence me off, but trust me to take life as it comes and make something of it. With that trust of yours I can do anything — and come out with something precious saved.
Sweet, I kiss your hands."
—Margaret Mead
The End.