It was a new moon on the night he fled from the only home he'd ever known. The lack of moonlight had made his flight possible under the cloak of pure, inky blackness. He ran until he saw the distant lights of the carnival. The smell of bread and warmed honey had proved too intoxicating, intoxicating enough to overcome his natural fear of others. It was there that he had been caught, like an animal and treated as an animal would. Caged, abused, neglected.
"She was called Annalisa. She was Spanish, or so she believed. Her mother had told her she was conceived during the May Day festival. Did you know that bastard children conceived on May Day are thought to be special? It's because, in the revelry, they could possibly belong to anyone - knight and noble, beggar and pauper... it is never quite known who the true father could be." Erik paused, taking a long drink from the glass beside him. His throat still felt ragged.
"She had special stature among the women, even though she was barely twelve when I met her. She was pretty, in that same way most of the gypsy girls were, but she had this hair... it was red but not in the way hair is normally red. It was red like blood, like rubies. Unnatural, captivating. She was prized by the men, and I often heard them offer her mother money for her... for her innocence. Her mother was saving her, it would seem. Saving her for something better." He laughed slightly as he noticed the look of shock on Christine's face. "It was common for a Romany girl to be wed by twelve or thirteen, Christine. It wasn't so scandalous that there were offers made."
He shifted, flexing the fingers of his left hand, relieved that the tingling sensation appeared to have passed. "She was a dancer, a cutpurse, and a notorious liar. They are a bit more kind than that, in the camps. They referred to her as a 'storyteller.' There were many storytellers around the campfire at night - men who would claim to see fairies and fauns in the forest; women who told tales of hidden secrets to finding luck in money or love. Annalisa was neither of those types of storytellers. She had a vicious streak wide as the sea, and she turned it on any who displeased her."
Erik's voice grew softer, the memories being pulled through time painful as the haze cleared. "She decided that I was supernatural. That the devil himself had gifted me the power of my voice. She told people that she was with Javert the night he found me. That she saw my birth firsthand. That I had sprung from the ground in a spurt of flame and brimstone. The other girls believed her, as they did at all times. My caravan door was marked with the evil eye. They began to spit on the ground when I approached. If a child was stillborn or a goat died in the night, it was my cursed existence that was to blame. It made the torments I endured even more heinous than they had previously been."
Christine's eyes shifted away from him then, staring down into the deep pile of the Persian rug before her.
"I suppose that's not the story you wished to hear," Erik said quietly. "I suppose I could become a storyteller in my own right. Weaving you tales of my happy existence and the strange fate that caused my face to become this way suddenly, tragically. This face is my birthright, Christine. I have had to learn to live with that fact. And perhaps I can ask something of you, now that my soul is so laid bare?"
Christine's gaze flicked back to his eyes, clear and pleading in the firelight.
"Do you think you could learn to live with it, as well?" he asked plainly.