A good hero is often attracted to those troubled and in distress. This can either be a flaw or a virtue: a flaw if the hero exploits another's weakness to better play the hero, a virtue when the hero wants to help the troubled friend find her strength.
Luckily, this was Meg Giry's virtue when it came to Christine. She saw the sorrow and the fragility, but she knew with proper nurturing Christine could flourish. For Meg also saw Christine's strengths, something indefinable but undeniably present. Perhaps it was the way that despite her trembling, Christine met Meg's mother with shoulders squared.
Christine's adjustment to the opera house was a rocky one. Her first weeks confirmed her greatest fears. Her poor dancing earned scoffing from dancers who resented Christine's placement as understudy without the usual rigorous try-outs while they'd been forced to undergo countless grueling auditions, and Christine also had to contend with the strained disappointment in Giry and Reyer's eyes.
The only member of the throng genuinely encouraging, nodding to her when she was uncertain with bright, faithful eyes was Meg Giry.
Without realizing it, Christine quickly became dependent on Meg for moral support. Never before had anyone needed Meg so much, and naturally therefore the young dancer grew to love Christine more than she had any other friend. They both met each other's needs: Meg met Christine's need for support, while Christine met Meg's need to be helpful.
If either were inclined toward possessiveness or vanity, this could have become a very unhealthy balance. As it was, each were genuine in their desire to do better and be better individuals, and were too swept up in their careers to fall into a truly co-dependent friendship. They felt a kinship between them that they both lost a father and only had their mother figure to cling to of their family. Meg, of course, was too young when she lost her father to greatly feel the loss, but she could sympathize with the stranded and isolated feeling encasing Christine.
Whereas many confident people prefer their less sure friends to remain needy in order to boost their already inflated self-worth, Meg right away tried to help Christine become more independent. Still, her good intentions and impulsiveness sometimes did more harm than good. In her eagerness, she set Christine up too quickly with too many singing instructors. The results were always the same: Christine's nerves and lackluster delivery failed to endear her to each instructor who let her know that in no uncertain terms. She'd end up in a small corner of the dance studio with Meg after each unsuccessful lesson and each dismissal from various teachers, clutching her friend's hands and crying.
Meg would stroke her dark curls, her feeling of responsibility increasing.
She took to ingratiating Christine to the other dancers. It took some doing, and not everyone was won over. But Christine shared Meg's sincerity with an added vulnerability that made some of the more tender-hearted dancers protective.
What also helped was Meg's discovery of Christine's love for storytelling.
They had been rehearsing alone in the studio not long after Christine's arrival, Meg coaching Christine as she tried to memorize the intricate turns and steps to the choreography. During a much-needed break, Meg prodded Christine for more information about her background and her favorite pastimes.
Flush with reluctance, Christine admitted, "I like telling stories I heard from my father."
Meg latched onto this at once. "Tell, tell!" The little hand that squeezed her arm and the wide eager eyes reminded Christine of that faraway attic of her childhood. Her voice faltered at first, and she'd lose the thread of her tales, but Meg's attentive audience and her own love for the folktales of her youth soon took over. She lost herself describing the korrigans dancing in the moonlit skies, the Norwegian king in his little boat, and various stories about dark winter ghosts of varied friendly and fiendish natures.
So enthralling were the tales and their narrator that Meg was wrapped up in every word. In these moments they weren't young women on the cusp of adulthood but true children.
Before and after rehearsals with the other girls, Meg encouraged Christine to repeat some of what she told Meg. Frozen at first being the center of attention in a group she was only slowly gaining acceptance in, Christine nonetheless enthralled the petite rats in the same way.
At this point in time, ghosts were particularly in vogue with the ballet girls, as the Phantom was paramount not only in Meg's mind but all over the opera house. Once Christine would begin her yarns, another girl would pipe up about how "that reminds me of the opera ghost's tricks, surely!" Or "yes, the korrigan or whatever-you-call-it rising out of the mist is just like how Joseph Buquet described the Phantom appearing down in the cellars!"
"I don't think the ghost much likes to be talked about," Meg would put in warily, eyeing the rafters and remembering her mother's words. He's real, not a ghost.
She knew her mother worried that the day would come when Buquet, too intoxicated, could not stop himself from describing that face. Both mother and daughter feared the inevitable outcome should that ever happen.
Christine was at last tolerated on the whole. Each member of the ballet corps, either permanent or working like Christine as an understudy, had their allotted place: Meg was the den mother, Jeanne the gossip, Adele the clown, Nynette the frightened squealer, etc. Cecile was the outspoken one; or she felt pressured into picking up that mantle after her audition. She refused to let Meg continue playing her savior, and if that meant shouldering the role of the outspoken dark girl on her shoulders, then sadly, so be it. She might have preferred sometimes to appear as vulnerable as she felt, but there were some things even Meg was not privy to and could not take care of for Cecile.
Christine, meanwhile, was soon deemed the dreamer.
Christine warmed to the title with equal parts embarrassment and gladness to belong in any small way. Then that very dreamy nature would distract her from her new friends and the opera house, taking her miles away from rehearsal, from backstage gossip.
Not long after the subject of the Phantom first came up, Meg took her aside, near Christine's dressing room.
Mamma Valerius, intending to make Christine's work at the opera house as tolerable as possible, used her influence to procure the girl her very own dressing room. This only accomplished increasing her unpopularity at the time. The other dancers were enraged. "She's just an understudy," they all fumed, indignant this talentless leach should be graced with her own room just because of her famous last name, while they sweat and struggled together all in one compartment.
Still, a combination of Madame Giry assuring the girls that this way they'd be cramped one less person, along with the fact the girls gradually became fonder of the sweet Swedish girl, made them less spiteful. What also helped was the fact this dressing room was so far away from the others—no girls envied this isolation with rumors of the Phantom so rampant.
It was this topic Meg spoke to Christine about. "You know, Christine, there really is a Phantom."
For all her dreamy nature and love of ghost stories, Christine was surprisingly straightforward in everyday conversation. "Now, Meg...isn't that a little too far? An actual Phantom?"
Meg by now trusted Christine more than anyone else outside Madame Giry, so she whispered, "My mother knows him somehow." Before Christine could question this, Meg added, "I don't know how she knows him. She won't tell me. But Christine, whatever you do, be careful!"
Christine shivered unwittingly. "What do you mean?"
Meg looked around in the darkness, then satisfying herself they were as alone as possible, she whispered again, "I think he lives underground, in one of the cellars. Don't go down there, whatever you do! And if you do, raise your hand to the level of your eyes! Something about a Punjab lasso."
Christine shook her head, positively perplexed. "I simply don't understand."
Meg looked a little abashed. "Well, neither do I, not really. I'm just repeating what Mother told me. Please don't repeat this to anyone! I don't want to get her into trouble, you understand, I just want to make sure you're safe!"
This earned a loving embrace from her friend.
Not long after, Christine revealed her own secret to Meg, a secret she made Meg swear not to tell anyone: the story of the Angel of Music.
They were sitting on the floor of the Girys' quarters after an impromptu practice session. Giry was out settling a dispute between a costumer and a dancer, leaving them alone to chat and stretch their tired limbs. In a soft voice, Christine told Meg that the Angel of Music was a sort of muse sent from Heaven that gifted deserving artists with genius.
"Christine," Meg chided. "You said it was silly to believe in the Phantom, yet here you are, believing in Angels!"
Christine shifted, reddening. "I...I don't...it's not like I really believe in an actual angel exactly...but...well...maybe some sort of spiritual event does take place in real geniuses that's sort of like being visited by an angel."
Meg tilted her head, thinking it over. "Yes...I suppose I could see that."
Christine murmured, "Anyway, it's something my father used to tell me."
"Oh," Meg said softly, understanding dawning. She placed a hand over Christine's. "I see. I didn't know. I'm sorry. Your father sounded like a very wise man, so who knows! Maybe he will help you, in his way."
Christine smiled sadly but gratefully at her friend.
More than a year passed, each day cementing their close friendship further. They grew from young girls into young ladies.
The popular but unspoken consensus at the opera house was that they were the principal beauties—but "different breeds of beauties," as lascivious stagehands were wont to say. At seventeen, Meg retained the childlike contours of rounded cheek that denoted her an adorable beauty, and the fascinating tilt of her green-gray eyes and the hint of curvaceousness to her petite form lent her sensuality. Christine, at nineteen, was a classical beauty, her refined features, tall, lithe form, and remote demeanor giving her a pervasive ethereal air.
Not that the features of one was totally lacking in the other. Meg's graceful movements and the way the light hit her flowing golden-red curls often evoked the ethereal feeling most closely associated with Christine. And when a melody's dark, slow undercurrent pulsated in just the right rhythm in Christine's ear, a close observer would note a gleam of sensuality in those deep brown eyes. Sometimes dark, mad fantasies tormented Christine's soul, which would increase the subtly sensual expression about her features, often so easy to miss.
As Meg grew older, the babyish curves to her face would smooth and thin and heighten the sensual allure to her features, and her body would become leaner and more muscular while still retaining the curves that were already turning the heads of particularly brave members of the Opera Populaire. Christine's beauty would increase in its classical refinement, along with a serenity about her that very few of her class achieve. It was a serenity often shaded by deep periods of melancholy that threatened to overwhelm her, but those who loved her soon ushered back that deep calm sea she floated in.
Yet it remained presently that Meg was the one, physically, that burst with girlish youth and ripeness, while Christine looked the more mature, the more gothically constructed heroine. Christine always physically gave the impression she was a few years older than she was, Meg a few years younger. Therefore it would have been a comical sight indeed to see the two girls as they so often were, with Meg taking Christine's hand almost as you would someone blind, Meg the leader and the maternal and Christine the follower and the child, were it not that their personalities—in many ways diametrically opposed to their physical appearance—were so well known around the opera house, and easily read in the subtle shades of their expressions and gestures.
How haughty Christine could have looked in her imperious, regal beauty were it not for the soft luster in her warm dark eyes, the two delicately molded lips always halfway open like a sleeping child's, the lost expression she wore. How insipid Meg could have looked with her full pouty lips, her mass of strawberry blonde hair with the ribbon, her small frame, were it not for the grave keenness in the face, the quick, decided movements of her body, the sharply cut lines of her almond-shaped eyes.
Despite Madame Giry's precise accent and Meg's fair coloring, many around the opera house assumed they probably had a drop or two of foreign blood in them. This did not worry Madame Giry much, since most assumed it was either Spanish or Romani blood.
This so-called exotic air about Meg was combined with what bigoted members of society deemed contrasting traits of frankness and chasteness. She was often quietly thoughtful in manner, while still humming with pent-up energy. Madame Giry felt that Christine with her slow movements and demure ways was a good and calming influence on her daughter, whom Giry likened to a happy but caged lark, content to trill away but wouldn't object if the door to her cage were left open.
Despite their growing beauty, neither Christine nor Meg was very interested in the ballet girls' gossip about men. Meg was sentimental when it came to reading novels or watching operas, but for herself she was not in the least romantic. She saw too many love stories explode backstage at the opera house to hold many fond fantasies of indulging in any of her own, particularly when she considered what sort of life romance led such gentle and naive girls like Elodie to.
As for Christine, there still remained but one shadow of a man she longed for in that way.
She'd long since confided in Meg about Raoul. The story of Christine's one-sided infatuation enthralled Meg just as much as her other tales had.
Shortly after her sixteenth birthday Meg became lead dancer of the corps de ballet, and 1881 saw an increase in her solos, both in the ballets and in silent roles in the opera. Reyer and Lefevre had more a hand in this than Giry. They both noted the young girl's talent and decided another pretty face made prominent on the stage could never hurt ticket sales. Christine, meanwhile, was still understudy in the ballet, only her voice had improved just enough that she was now seriously preparing to audition for the chorus. The thrill that gave the ever-sickly Mamma Valerius was more of a sweet triumph to Christine than any personal milestone.
Therefore both girls were in an optimistic frame of mind when New Year's Eve 1881 approached, and with it preparations for the yearly masked ball. Meg's excitement sprang from her love of anything bright and alive with music, where you could dance to your heart's delight in any array of loud costume. Christine always held out hope that a certain sailor might appear, though she hadn't word from him since he left for the Navy almost seven years past.
Although Meg was usually too eclectic to settle on a particular theme for the ball, whether it be princess, fairy, or animal, she decided that year to dress as a Dresden shepherdess—her mask perched on a small makeshift shepherd's hook. Favoring the color pink, her dress was a frilly explosion of the color, lacy bows embedded along the hem of her skirt.
Christine chose Diana, goddess of the moon and the hunt. Compared to Meg's busy costume, Christine's was sleek and simple, in the Grecian style. She wore a tiara with a silver crescent moon on it, a bow and arrow of the same sparkling color embroidered on her gown. Pauline, the chief costumer for the ballet, suffered her usual numerous breakdowns and fits making sure all her girls were ready in time, frustrated that the fittings were often disturbed by the girls bursting into giddy guffaws, flinging precious material at their co-horts.
Still, the ball began just as everyone fit into their custom-made arrangements. Taking each other's hands, Christine and Meg dived in.
The festive cheer seemed even to thaw Madame Giry a bit, who as usual wore nothing more ornate than a sequined cape over her black gown. She let lax her rigid supervision, as she'd extracted from Erik the promise that he would attend and focus primarily on Meg and her doings each year that she attended the ball.
Meg dipped in and out of dances with jesters, knights, dominoes, tigers, and pirates, unaware that an unseen gloved hand that twirled her once made sure to keep her in his sights.
These eyes peered out of his dull black mask, watching as the small, lacy frame with its radiant curls piled on top of her head in the Dresden style whisper-hissed, "Christine! Over here! I have an idea!"
Christine's cheeks were tinged with excitement and the rush from champagne, just as Meg's were. "Yes? What is it?"
Again that forever reassuring squeeze of the hand. "You'll see!" Meg looked around her to make sure no one was watching. She failed to notice the figure with the eyes and the gloved hand. Then she pulled Christine through and away from the madding crowd, up the stairs, down the hallway, through dark doorways, and then onto the open stage.
The cacophony from the party did not reach them here. Meg pulled Christine center stage.
Christine stared out into the rows and rows of empty seats. This was one area of the theater the partying citizens of Paris were not allowed to debauch with their revelry.
"Meg," Christine said in a mild scolding way, "I don't think we're allowed to be here right now."
A determined chin jutted out at her. "And why not? We're not just ordinary people, you and I, we're artists! We work here, you know! We have every right."
So saying, she primly sat herself at the piano situated upper-right.
"But we've been here plenty of times before. What's so different now?"
"What's so different is I'll wager you've never been on the stage without at least thirty other people up here with you."
"Yes, that's true," Christine admitted after thinking it over.
Smiling merrily and extending her hand to the empty audience, Meg continued, "So go on! Appreciate it! Breathe it in!"
Christine took a deep breath and exhaled, throwing her arms out. Then the two somewhat tipsy girls burst anew into giggles.
Meg thumped out a few bars on the piano. "Now, sing, mademoiselle! Sing!"
Christine burned crimson. "Oh, I don't think so, Meg." Even though her audition for the chorus loomed somewhere in the close future, Christine was still so insecure about her singing she seldom let anyone hear who didn't have to. She only performed privately for Meg and after much coaxing. Meg was a sympathetic audience whose limited knowledge of singing made her a softer critic than most. Still, she had to bite her tongue when she convinced Christine to sing for her a few days after they met, struggling to find encouraging words for such weak and dead trilling.
However, she knew Christine had improved markedly in the past two years, and the various singing instructors didn't quite despair of her so quickly anymore. And thus Meg was now adamant. "Yes, you must sing! It would be a total waste of the opportunity! Here you are on the Paris Opera stage, no one to hear you but me! What are you so afraid of? Come, sing!" She cleared her own throat and steadied her fingers above the keys. "Here, I'll play 'Caro Nome' from Rigoletto. I know it's one of your favorites. Anyway, you know your singing can't be as wretched as my playing." She wrinkled her nose self-deprecatingly. She was in truth a very poor piano player, a fact which bothered the young dancer not at all. She leaned toward Christine, staring at her significantly. "Sing for your Angel of Music! He might be listening tonight."
"But"-Christine protested.
It was too late. Meg began playing the opening bars, clumsily but cheerfully.
Even with the amateurish playing, this was a tune that invariably swept Christine away. Soon she was closing her eyes and swaying there center stage, the faint light from the candles on the piano illuminating her fine bone structure.
She sang.
The combination of the joyous celebration, the promise of the new year, the champagne, Meg's friendly, non-judgmental presence, and the beauty of the song made Christine sing better than Meg had yet heard her.
To be sure, the voice was still too soft, a little flat in some places, a trifle sharp in others. Yet there was a tone there that Meg had detected before but never noticed so marked. It was difficult to describe. It was sweet, pure, and most of all unique. Like bells, but more ethereal, winged.
The absolute sincerity and lilting passion build and build as Christine sang, Meg unconsciously adjusting her playing to fit Christine's soaring voice.
"Caro nome che il mio cor
festi primo palipitar,
la delizie dell'amor
mi dei sempre rammentar!"
As Meg listened breathlessly, she felt that her friend with her regal bearing and her beautiful silvery dress was indeed the goddess of the moon. If the moon had a voice, this is most certainly what it would sound like, luminous and misty.
Again, it was not quite a good performance: but it was an extraordinarily touching one, a beautiful one.
She finished the impromptu aria. A quiet moment passed. Christine stood with head leaned back, beautiful brown curls cascading down her shoulders. Her eyes were still closed. Then she smiled embarrassed as Meg clapped behind her, whistling. "Oh, Christine! I've never heard you sound so good!"
She ran up and threw her arms around her pleased friend, kissing her on the cheek. "You'll go places for sure, Christine, if you keep that up."
Christine sighed, suddenly a little morose. "I don't know, Meg. I know my voice can carry a tune well enough for a friend, but for a whole audience?" She glanced dolefully out at the empty seats. "I'm not so sure."
"Oh, nonsense," Meg began, steering Christine away. Once more she commenced explaining to Christine all the usual reasons why she shouldn't give up hope, should simply continue working hard and have a little faith in herself. Christine cast one more wistful look behind her shoulder at the empty stage before disappearing behind the curtains with her friend.
The stage was now empty. The girls returned to the ballroom, just in time to raise a toast in farewell to 1881 and another to ring in 1882.
For the figure sitting unseen in Box Five, who had been witness to Christine's song, nothing would ever be quite the same.
A/N: For those curious, here's the song Christine sings: watch?v=nE_eEGgpRxE
Also, many thanks to Wild Concerto for the fabulous, in-depth reviews! Wonderful stuff for an author to read.