A/N: A few reviewers mentioned all the trouble Emilie might cause if she tells people who Erik is. How did I never think of this? Time for rewrites, I guess. Although it has been over six years. Perhaps everyone has forgotten? (Besides, in my mind, after having their lead soprano kidnapped during a production, the managers finally decided they were not cut out for the arts and retired to quiet countryside towns and never ruined an opera again.)

Thank you for all your reviews! Your theories are always better than mine :)

Chapter 16

For the first time since Nadir had been visiting this peculiar family, Émilie answered the door, alone.

"Good afternoon, Uncle Nadir," she said pleasantly. Just like a lady, she showed him into the parlor and had him sit down. She wasn't permitted to use the samovar or stove, not because Erik was worried about burns and fires but because he knew what a mischievous child with endless imagination could do with a flame. So instead Émilie filled the teapot with cold water from the pitcher. Nadir drank it politely.

"Madame Giry was concerned that you haven't been to class in three days. Where is Erik?"

"Papa is in mama's room."

The answer was normal enough given the circumstances, but her tone was curious.

"Was he angry?"

"I don't know. He was strange. Uncle Nadir, am I ugly?"

"Certainly not."

"Is papa ugly?"

Nadir cursed Erik. Silently, of course. He cursed the man's appearance, his fears, his doubts, his daughter. Cursed the people who made him unable to see past his own horror of a face. But hadn't Nadir known it would fall to him to explain this? Erik could not possibly have done it.

He had once explained to Reza why Erik covered his face. Child as he was, blinded by the magician's tricks and stories, he had not understood, even as Nadir described the death mask with gruesome detail in a shameful fit of jealousy.

"Émilie, do you realize your papa looks different from other men?"

"Yes, he is much taller."

"That is true. But I mean his face looks different."

Solemnly, Émilie nodded. Nadir took a deep breath and decided to continue with the truth.

"All faces are different, but Erik's is very different. Many people don't like things that are different. They find them frightening and unpleasant. So when people see Erik's face, they are scared and think it ugly. They are not brave like you and I."

Again Émilie nodded.

"Now Erik has looked like he does all his life. Since he was younger than you, people have been afraid of him. Imagine if you walked into ballet class and all the other girls saw you face and screamed because they were afraid. How would you feel?"

"Émilie would be sad."

"What if they laughed at you because you were different?"

"They do laugh. They say Émilie is too quiet and speaks oddly. So I don't want to talk to them anymore."

"Your papa feels the same. Because people laughed at his face, he doesn't want people looking at it. It made him sad. That is why he wears a mask. And when people talk about it, even if he knows they love him, he worries they too will be afraid and laugh."

"Why is his face different?"

Nadir hesitated. What was that wonderful thing Christine had said when Nadir had asked if love kept her from noticing her husband's face?

"I still notice it," she had replied, smiling wistfully.

"And it doesn't bother you?" Nadir had known Erik for decades, had seen the man at his worst, saved him and wanted to kill him in turns. He could look upon the unmasked face without flinching, but he could not say it was pleasant. It did not blind him, but it did repulse him.

"Of course it doesn't bother me!" Christine said. "Without his face, he never would have come to me."

Nadir pulled Émilie onto the sofa beside him. As she watched with her child's seriousness, he said, "His face looks different because he would not have been your papa otherwise."

She accepted the words as quite reasonable. "You always have the best reasons, Uncle Nadir," and she laid her head against his arm.

"So what have you been doing the past three days by yourself?" he asked, anxious to return to neutral subjects. "Have you eaten?"

"No, I haven't been hungry. I've been drawing! Do you want to see?" She twisted away and scrambled to the side table. "There was a rat in my bedroom yesterday and I tried to sketch him, but he wouldn't sit still. So I had to-"

"Émilie, what's wrong with your arm?"

Across the back of her upper arm, a purple black ribbon of bruising stood out sharply on the ivory skin. Émilie stared at her forearm, trying to figure out what Nadir meant. Without explaining further, he brushed his fingers against the bruise. She flinched. He moved his clinical touch along the path of discolored skin to prod at her back as well.

"Ouch! That hurts!" she exclaimed angrily before retreating to the other side of the room.

"What happened?"

Émilie only shrugged.

"Would you like to go see Madame Giry and Meg, my dear?"

The girl nodded enthusiastically, probably ready to escape from what had been her longest confinement in the cellar in years. She skipped all the way up to the opera, nearly activating traps and sending the pair of them to their deaths twice.