When the Good Folk set things in motion, they moved with great speed and upset the usual order of things. Thus, Meg Giry, the constant outsider found herself on the inside of things and Nadir Khan, long accustomed to knowing and keeping secrets, was left outside.
The night before her flight left for Santa Cecelia, Meg Giry quarreled with Jennifer, the self-same Jennifer who wore a leather jacket, with whom she shared an apartment. Between them, they said things that neither could take back and both knew that only time would heal the rift between them, although neither was prepared to admit it. Meg gathered up as many of her possessions as she could carry and stormed out of the building. As she waited in the airport, attracting some interesting looks from security, she couldn't even remember what she and Jennifer had fought about but it didn't matter. She was moving on to Santa Cecelia and a brand new life without Jennifer in it. Meg Giry began to cry.
Meanwhile, in Santa Cecelia, Nadir Khan slept quite peacefully, unaware that he would wake to what seemed, at the time, like the worst news possible. Overnight, the great crystal chandelier in the newly built Santa Cecelia Opera House had somehow fallen. It was incomprehensible. No one had been in the building at the time. The building had been designed to withstand an earthquake. And yet, there was the chandelier in pieces, shards of crystal embedded in the walls as if the thing had exploded. Well, it had, in point of fact, burned, despite the fact that the power had been shut off at the time. It was some kind of mistake in the wiring, or so they said. Well, for whatever the reason, there was no possible way for the rehearsals to begin and it would be another three months before the opera house would be repaired and ready to mount a production. Nadir Khan laid his head in his hands and, had he been the sort of man who weeps, he would have.
The last thing Meg Giry needed was time to herself, but upon arriving in Santa Cecelia, she discovered that she had it in abundance. Her contract with the opera was being extended by several months to cover the delay caused by the chandelier disaster. Well, it was inconvenient, but at least no one was hurt. In the meantime, she would be provided with a studio apartment as promised in her contract and a stipend on which she could live decently, if not extravagantly. Within twenty-four hours, Meg felt she had exhausted the infinite possibilities of the entire internet which meant she had little to do but reflect on how miserable she felt. Bitterly, she thought that she could always going running back to mother, but of course, she would do no such thing. On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt to connect up with the Good Folk again, so she began searching for them.
There was never any official word about the Goblin Market, but the Good Folk never had any trouble finding it. In the old days, the information had been passed around by word of mouth from one person to another. In the internet age, much of that was handled though e-mail lists and websites. Needless to say, finding the Good Folk wasn't as simple as typing "Goblin Market" into a search engine. You had to know the languages the Good Folk knew, and then you had to figure out the right words. For Meg, it took no more than one try.
Had Nadir Khan gone searching for the Good Folk online, he never would have found them. In fact, he hadn't gone searching online, he'd gone searching through Mr. Van Der Luyden's e-mail account. It wasn't entirely wrong, because he'd stumbled across the information in the course of locating information his employer had requested. Still once one knows a thing, one cannot un-know it. Well, it was a public mailing list after all. Nadir had joined it under his hospital board address, which routed to his usual address. He wasn't technically hiding. If list members happened to be concealed unless they actually posted, that was no fault of his. Lots of people read without ever posting to the list. Mr. Van der Luyden didn't post either, and Nadir had no idea which one of his employer's many e-mail aliases was the one he'd used to subscribe. Unfortunately, however, it was all moot because the messages were always written in a language Nadir couldn't understand. The best he could do was to keep an eye out for dates and locations, when he had the time. For the time being, Nadir left the messages unopened. He had more than enough to deal with at the opera house.
With considerable amusement, Meg Giry watched her mother, for lack of a better word, flail. For the first time in more years than anyone could remember, the forecast was predicting rain on the night of the Goblin Market. This year, Samhain fell on a Saturday, which meant that the market would last for only one night. Rather than ending at midnight, it would be held over until morning, otherwise there would be hardly any time at all for anything. That wasn't a problem under normal circumstances, but these weren't normal circumstances. The weather report didn't merely say that it would rain. Rain didn't mean much to the Good Folk. They'd just carry on with business because it wasn't as if the rain would melt them. The trouble was, the weather report was promising a huge storm with torrential rain, and that was going to be a problem. It was going to be a big problem. The Harvest-Santa-Cecelia list was going absolutely wild over with hundreds of e-mails being passed back and forth in the hopes of finding someone who could provide some form of shelter. "Oh come now, mother," Meg said to the screen, "you know you can take care of this easily enough. All you have to do is ask your boss and he'll let you have your tent and whatever else you need. How hard can it be? Just admit that all your talk about sticking with your own court and not trusting outsiders has been nothing but a great big sham because you're more attached to a bunch of outsiders than you are to your own daughter, never mind your own court."
Shortly before on October 31st, Nadir went looking for Mr. Van Der Luyden, but he was nowhere to be found. Mr. Van Der Luyden had gone out. Outside, the wind was howling and the rain was pouring down. Surely Mr Van Der Luyden was mad enough to go out in weather like this? Apparently, Mr. Van Der Luyden was that mad. Nadir shuddered. On the positive side of things, there wasn't so much as a glimmer of sunlight, so his employer would return blistered and bleeding. On the negative side of things, if he was standing outside in the downpour, he was likely to make himself ill and that could be disastrous. Even a minor cold would send the entire household into a panic, lest it should somehow set off an attack. It was much too late to follow Mr. Van Der Luyden, so Nadir would have to find him. After his initial panic subsided, Nadir turned to his e-mail inbox. Even if all of those messages were written in gibberish, he might still be able to discern a location out of it all.
It had been amusing the think of how her mother must have squirmed when the call for help went out over the general e-mail list. They even wrote in English, which was a sure sign of desperation. It really wasn't all that difficult to read another court's dialect, heck, reading it was much easier than hearing it, but when you want to get the message out as quickly as possible, you write it in English. Technically, there was a common dialect in their own language, but English was still more convenient. Meg had found the messages to be quite entertaining, despite being less dramatic than she might have hoped. Between the Blossoms, who could throw a party anywhere for any reason, and the Leaves who had been holding rallies for every cause they could come up with, there were plenty of people who had access to tents. It was just a matter of deciding who would show up with what and getting a bunch of people to turn up early enough to get the whole thing set up. Granted, it wasn't exactly an ideal situation since there wasn't much available in the way of lighting and the ground squelched a good deal more than one might have liked, but it was still a Goblin Market. As always, Meg's mother was nicely settled with a few members of her own court towards the edge of the group, leaving Meg complete freedom to wander in the shadowed crowd with no fear of being seen or recognized.
Nadir Khan was very much relieved to find all the information he needed, even down to driving directions and suggestions about the best places to park, all laid out in perfectly comprehensible English. He quietly thanked whatever forces were responsible for the unexpected interlude of sense, not realizing that those selfsame forces were sending him out on his own in the middle of the worst storm he'd seen in years. He put the windshield wipers on their highest setting and put the headlights onto the bright setting as he'd turned and twisted his way through the hills. The directions were on the seat beside him, but he could barely see them, even when he picked them up and held them against the steering wheel. Luckily, he remembered most of the instructions. Unluckily, he had not remembered to bring an umbrella. Nadir resigned himself to bring drenched. Well, there were worse things and it wasn't as is a little bit of rain would melt him. If Mr. Van Der Luyden's driver was parked here, the man must be sleeping in the car. There was no light to be seen, but there was music and a sudden roar of cheering voices.
Meg had to give the Blossoms credit. They knew how to whip up a crowd. Instead of beginning with one of their usual opening selections, they picked a song about trading music for shelter from the bad weather. When they got to bit where the singer promises to keep on playing until morning, the crowd let out of whoop that probably could be heard as far away as the interstate. Those words weren't just lyrics, they were a promise. Of course, Meg could have gotten the same reaction if she were up there singing. She was a professional singer, after all. In fact, she probably could go up there and sing, if she really wanted to. She and Christine Daaé had been quite good friends, back in the day. They shared a bit of a bond, since they were both very much overshadowed and intimidated by their mothers. Granted, Christine's mother was long gone and Meg's was stubbornly present, but Colleen Daaé's reputation more than made up for her physical absence. It wouldn't hurt to say hello to Christine when she took a break. It was too bad, a bummer even, that Meg didn't know more traditional songs, because the more she listened, the more she wanted to join in.
Mr. Van Der Luyden was nowhere to be seen. Nadir Khan had circled the tent, well, technically tents, and found no sign of his employer. That didn't mean that Mr. Van Der Luyden wasn't there. Perhaps he was a little further off, among the trees. Nadir decided to look a little more. After all, he was already soaked to the skin, so it wasn't as if he could get any more wet. From time to time, he paused to listen to the music. He actually recognized an aria from one of Handel's operas and then a song from a Disney film. They were expanding their repertoire, apparently.
It had taken consider convincing, not just of Christine Daaé who was thrilled at the idea of having a break longer than two songs. The second soloist, Lisette, was not entirely sure she wanted to share the stage with yet another singer and Jack, who had the final say, was the hardest to convince. Still, if opera and pop music were fair game, then Meg would have no trouble fitting in, at least, she'd fit in musically. Even when Lisette joined in to plead for giving a Meg a chance, he was still hesitant. Meg needed a different dress, something that would cover up her tattoos, well, more of her tattoos, and she couldn't wear heavy clunky boots because they'd thump in the wrong way and she needed to brush out her hair. Well, Meg could live with that. She let Christine and Lisette fuss over her while she thought through the harmonies she would sing. That had been the hook, after all. Meg could come up with an alto line because two soloist singing in harmony was a duet, but three was a group.
Nadir Khan stood outside in the rain, quite transfixed. He had given up hope of ever finding his employer outside, but dared not go inside for fear of exposure. Still, he couldn't help but stop and listen for a while. Mr. Van Der Luyden understood music and although Nadir Khan could not say that that he understood what he was hearing, he knew that it was something quite magical.
Meg Giry had decided. She knew now what she intended to do with herself, at least until the opera season began. It would mean changing courts of course, but it could be done. Her mother would never forgive her, but her mother was already estranged and how much more estranged could she really get? Meg would have to learn how to pronounce things like a Blossom courtier, but if Lisette could learn the language from scratch then surely Meg could relearn it. When her contract at the opera began, well, she'd work that out when she came to it. Who was to say that more disasters wouldn't take place? Maybe the opera season would never get happen at all.
The opera season was going to happen, just not quite the way it had originally been planned. Mr. Van der Luyden had decided, quite unexpectedly, to make changes to the season beyond a mere postponement of the performances. Nadir Khan had even more to do now that before. He also had a dreadful cold.