Part I - Clipped Wings

I

Northern England

In the winter of 1854

.

A fierce burst of lightning lit up the casement windows. A huge rumble of thunder followed, so close, it seemed to shake even the stones of the walls and the floor, making the tiny girl perched near the panes let out a terrified squeal. Yet she moved not from her vigil; nor did she lift her small hands from the pebbled glass.

"Christine!" The matronly housekeeper balled her fists on her hips. "Come away from that window at once!"

She shook her head rebelliously, her dark curls bouncing around her shoulders. "I know Papa will come tonight, Berta! I just know it!"

"Hmph, or more likely ye'll be roasted to a pulp when the lightnin' comes flyin' your way, you naughty child." But her words came grudging and tempered with love for the saucy young mistress of the house.

"Christine, you're nothing but a trial," the young master said in a bored tone as he finished off his leg of mutton.

She wrinkled her nose at her older cousin, wishing the lightning would fry him!

Suddenly she squealed again, though no thunder roared as the herald to her cry. She scooted off the chair and ran for the door, struggled to open it, then threw it wide.

"Papa! Papa! Papa!"

A torrential spattering of rain blew inside, driven by the fierce wind.

"Saints above," Berta cried, "Close that door – ye'll be drenched!"

But Christine did not hear. She was already running for the carriage that had stopped in the courtyard. Joseph hurried to unharnass the horses and take them to the stables, as she ran to her father and threw her arms around his cloaked figure. Something bulky and hard met with her chest, surprising her.

"What have you brought me, Papa! Oh, what have you brought me?"

"Christine, you shouldn't be out in this rain! Hurry inside, missy, before you catch your death."

Even her Papa's stern words didn't quench her excitement, for she had felt the object beneath his cape move! The lump was too large for a kitten and too small for a horse ... what other animal was there for which she had ever asked?

Her father hurried with her inside, moving with difficulty. Berta closed the door behind them.

"Christine, foolish child, when will ye learn to mind?" she muttered, trying to dry her wet curls with a strip of toweling, but Christine would have none of it. She moved away, clinging to her papa's arm concealed beneath the very bulky front of his cloak.

"Show me, Papa! Oh please, please show me!"

"Very well, Christine, calm down now, and do not frighten him. I fear he has had a bad experience."

"He?"

Her father opened his long cloak and Christine blinked. A thin boy, looking perhaps three years older than she, clung to his middle. His wet dark hair grew long and ragged, dripping to his jaw, and his eyes were a startling shade of gold that seemed to look right through her. But what made her gape was the dirty canvas tied around most of the right half of his face with only a hole where his other eye stared.

"A GYPSY!" Henri barked, abandoning his leg of mutton as he jumped to his feet. "Uncle Gustave, why'd you bring a filthy gypsy to our home?"

"Silence, Henri," her papa reprimanded harshly. "I expect you to treat him with kindness. You should not speak ill of those less fortunate than yourself. God rewards those who are merciful to those in want."

Henri sneered behind her Papa's back, and Christine stuck out her tongue at him then turned to look at the boy.

"I'm Christine Daaé. What's your name?"

He recoiled and buried his face in her Papa's shirt.

Christine frowned. A kitten might have been friendlier.

"There, boy, it's all right. You're safe now." Her Papa unclasped the gypsy's arms from around his back where they clung, and then his legs from around his hips, until he stood on his bare feet. He wore a long loose shirt, soiled and torn. His limbs were long, his trousers tattered at the knees. He stood much taller than she did. Maybe he was older than her by more than three years. She had to tilt her head up to look at him.

He quickly glanced away, into the flames.

Her papa led him with a hand to his shoulder to the hearthstone. "Come and warm yourself by the fire. Berta will give you something to eat." The boy went, unresisting, but remained silent. Papa nodded to the housekeeper and she hurried to ladle soup from the big iron pot hanging over the fire as the boy sat down near the hearth.

Christine watched the gypsy curiously as Berta brought him a dish. He grabbed it in hands that shook. The soup must have been hot due to the steam, but he brought it to his mouth and gobbled it down as if he'd not eaten in days. As skinny as he was, maybe he hadn't.

Her father said a quiet blessing and ate in silence. Christine was surprised when he didn't chastise the boy for his bad manners, as he always did to Henri. Henri glared the whole time at the boy, but the boy did not look at him once.

"Berta, see about making him a bed by the fire until we find more suitable arrangements," Papa said as he stood from the table. "I fear these old bones cannot travel such long distances anymore. I am most weary and ready to retire."

"Is he to stay here then?" Henri asked with disdain. "Would he not be better housed in the servant's quarters? Or perhaps the stables?"

Her Papa frowned at her cousin. "He will live here, with us, as a member of the family."

"But Uncle Gustave –"

"Did I not make myself clear, Henri?" Her Papa's thick brows beetled over eyes that had grown stern. Even Christine knew better than to cross Papa when he looked like that.

Henri bowed his head, scowling. "Yes, sir."

Christine hated to see her Papa upset. She jumped up and hurried around the table to him. "Did the kintucter like your music, Papa?"

He smiled gently. "The conductor was pleased, but sadly there was no need for a second violin in his orchestra. The position had already been filled by the time I arrived."

She hugged him fiercely. "You'll find work again, Papa. You play so wonderfully well! And one day, I'll sing on stage with you."

Henri snorted.

"I will so!" She glared at him and lifted her chin high. "My Angel of Music will come visit and gift me with a special voice, more lovely than anyone else's in all of England, in all of the world. And he will teach me – just you wait and see!"

"Now, now ..." Her father wearily patted her head. "You must be good and not too prideful, my Little Lotte, for the blessed Angel to come visit you."

She smiled in delight at hearing the nickname from her favorite tale and what she often begged him to call her. "I love you so much, Papa!" She reached up and he bent down so she could wrap her arms around his neck and kiss his whiskery cheek.

"Be kind to the boy," he whispered, "make me proud."

She nodded and glanced toward the table where he sat.

"That's my good girl."

Once her father disappeared upstairs, and Berta went to see about bedding, Christine drew closer to the gypsy. His eyes darted her way.

She smiled.

He again looked into the fire, his strange eyes seeming to take on the color of the flames.

She sighed and took the chair next to his.

Immediately he jumped up and backed away.

Henri stretched out his foot and tripped him. The boy went sailing backward, almost smacking his head on the hearthstone.

"Clumsy oaf."

"That wasn't nice, Henri!" Christine jumped up from her chair and put her hands on her hips, glaring at her cousin. "Papa said we should be kind."

Neither of the boys paid her any mind. The gypsy lay on his back, resting his weight on his arms, but he didn't move or say a word. Henri frowned and stood up, towering over him. He looked older than the gypsy and was bigger as well.

"Can you not speak? Are you a mute?" he barked. "Have you no tongue in your head?"

The gypsy remained silent, vexing Henri further.

"What DO you hide beneath that scrap of cloth, boy?" Henri sneered. "I want to see!" He made as if to pounce, but the flats of the boy's feet shot out, kicking him hard in his fleshy groin and sending him flying backward.

"Now you asked for it, gypsy cur!" he growled as he awkwardly pulled himself up from the floor.

Henri dropped on the boy with his arm swinging, his fist connecting with the boy's face.

Christine rushed to Henri, where he continued to beat the gypsy by the fire. The boy tried to block his punches but didn't fight back.

"STOP IT!" she screamed. "YOU'RE HURTING HIM!"

She threw her tiny body on Henri's back, pounding his shoulders and head with her little fists. He shook her off like a puppy and she came at him again, remembering what she'd seen dogs do in a fight. She bit his ear until she tasted blood.

He yowled in pain then whirled and backhanded her across the face, so hard, he sent her whimpering and sprawling to the flagstones.

An inhuman growl erupted from the hearth as the boy lunged at Henri and attacked, straddling his fat stomach as his fists pummeled his doughy face.

"Lord above and saints be merciful – what the devil is going on in here!" Berta ran into the room, threw up her hands in shock at the sight, and then hurried to pull the boy off Henri. She glared at both of them.

"Well?" she demanded.

"It's his fault!" Henri struggled to stand, his eye blackened, blood trickling from his mouth as he pointed at the boy, who scooted away, also wiping blood from his lip. "He started it!"

"He did not!" Christine stood up from the floor, her legs shaking, her cheek throbbing from the blow and smarting like fire burned it.

Berta looked at her face. Shock then anger filled her eyes. "Christine, who hit you?" she barked.

"Henri did!"

Berta grabbed her cousin by the ear and he let out a yowl. "You do not fight and you do not hit girls, Master Henri! I should put ye in the barn with the animals, but with this storm I'll not step foot outside and risk the banshees comin' to claim my soul. To your room with you, and you'll stay there till daybreak." She pulled him by the ear and up the stairs.

Christine rubbed her cheek and glared at her cousin as she watched them go then looked back at the boy. Still on the floor, he stared at her, his feet flat on the stones, his back against the hearth wall. His hands were pressed down on the ground as if to boost himself up and run away at any moment. His face looked worse than hers felt, and she wasn't bleeding. She moved to fetch her napkin from the table and wet it from a bucket of water Berta had left by the hearth.

She walked toward him. He didn't back away this time, and she knelt beside where he sat. His strange eyes never left hers. This close by the fire, in the gold she could see faint glimmers of green and reddish brown. Never had she seen eyes such a color.

"Your mouth is hurt," she said putting the bunched, wet cloth there and wiping away the blood. "This will make it feel better. It's what Berta does when I fall down and get hurt." She saw red on the cloth covering his face. "You're bleeding there too." She snatched away the cloth that had been loosened in the fight before he realized what she was doing.

Her eyes went wide in horror and she gasped, recoiling as she fell backward to land on her palms. He clapped a hand over that part of his face with a little cry and hurriedly scuttled away to the corner until his bony shoulders came flush against the wall.

Christine's heart pounded like the rain against the windows. Never had she seen such a face! It was ... hardly a face. There was a ridge of mottled flesh above where an eyebrow should be, and his cheekbone was almost visible through his thinner skin beneath his eye. That side of his nose barely existed, and red and blue bumpy lines ran along the front of his skull where patches of hair did not grow!

Fear and dread shone from the one golden eye he had turned her way and she realized with surprise that he was more afraid of her than she was of him. She remembered Papa's parting words to her. She also remembered how this gypsy boy attacked Henri when Henri hit her.

She bit her lip hard and made a decision. "Don't be frightened." Crawling to him, she moved slowly, until she came up beside him. She sat back on her heels and held out both cloths. With a trembling hand he snatched them from her. The wet one he pressed to his mouth. The cloth that had masked him he held tightly against his brow.

Papa always said honesty was golden.

"Your face is ugly," she said. "But I think Henri's is uglier."

His lip turned up the barest fraction at the corner she could see. His eyes, still uncertain, lost some of their fear.

"What's your name?"

"E-Erik," he whispered hoarsely.

She nodded and her hands clasped her knees. "Papa plays the violin, and he told me I sing like an angel. Would you like me to sing for you some time? I know lots of pretty songs."

He barely nodded.

"Mama sang, and she danced, too. But she died when I was very little. I'm five now but soon will be six. We used to live in Sweden. Then we came here. This was my uncle's house, but he died too." She stretched out her small legs and leaned with her back against the wall, next to him. "Have you been out on the moors? I like it there. I like to sing as loud as I can to the sky, where only God can hear, and the fairies, of course. And the Angel of Music. He's going to come visit me someday. Oh, and there's a place where the stones stand so high all around that your words come rushing back to you! When it stops raining, I'll take you there ..."

.

xXx

.

"Erik!" Christine could barely contain her excitement as she hurried up the stairs and to the entrance of his gable room. "Erik! Come and see!"

He mumbled something she couldn't understand as he sat at his small desk, scribbling something on parchment. Impatient for him to join her, she rushed his way and grabbed his arm, tugging him.

"Come on!"

"Christine! I'm trying to write." His words were stern, but she saw the flicker of his smile.

"You can work on your song later. You MUST see what Papa just had delivered!"

Besides the academic lessons Christine took with him, over the years her Papa had taught Erik how to read music, and he could now even play her Papa's violin! He had discovered a skill for the arts that impressed Papa, who was a great musician, and he took Erik under his wing. Now he was trying to write his own composition … when he wasn't toying with his strange, little inventions. She asked him about those too, once, and he warned her never to touch them, because they could lop her finger right off! He had smiled then, rather mysteriously, and she was never sure if he was teasing or not. But she liked it when he performed his magic for her, pulling an egg or coin from behind her ear, or making something appear or disappear from his hand in the blink of an eye! The sexton called Erik's tricks evil, but Christine thought them wonderful.

"I promise, you'll like it," Christine tempted in a coaxing voice. "Come on ... pleeeeasse."

Erik threw down the quill pen. "Oh, alright," he groused, but Christine noticed he didn't seem too upset by her wheedling. She led him to the parlor by the hand and smiled when she saw the light of interest shine brightly in his eyes, as she had known it would.

"Isn't it grand?" Christine pirouetted over to the glossy small piano. "Papa is giving violin lessons to the de Chagny boy at The Grange, but he said he doesn't have the talent for it," she giggled, "not like you do. Instead of regular pay, Papa asked for this. They no longer use it, it belonged to their daughter who died and it was just sitting in an old room getting dusty. Can you imagine?" She watched him carefully, seeing the desire light his features. "Go on. Try it. It's alright."

He glanced at her before moving to the bench. It could barely seat two people, but she moved to join him regardless. She sat by his side without the black silk cloth he kept tied around his face, so she could watch every one of his expressions.

"Now that I'm ten, Papa says I must further develop my musical training."

His dark eyebrow lifted. "I thought you wished to be a dancer."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "You know what I really wish is to be a singer; don't tease, Erik. But … I think I want to be a dancer when I don't sing. Papa can't send me to ballet school at present – but really, I don't wish to go, because then I'd have to leave The Heights and we couldn't play together on the moors. And I would miss that dearly. But he says I have natural grace, like Mama did, and could probably be a dancer someday."

His lips quirked in that wry way of his. "Make up your mind, Christine, a dancer or a singer. Which will it be?"

"Maybe I'll be both."

He laughed.

"I can, you know!"

His mood became solemn as he looked at her. Today his eyes seemed more green than golden, like the grass growing on the heath. They often changed from one color to the other, as if by magic, sometimes becoming both colors at once. "Yes, you probably could."

Satisfied by his response, she continued. "Papa wants me to learn to play this, since I'm so horrid on the violin."

She watched his hand hover tentatively over the keys, his long fingers caressing them. She rested her much smaller hand on the keyboard, next to his, in the same fashion. His skin was darker than hers, which was bluish white like cream, but his wasn't brown like gypsies she'd seen from a distance, either. The sun, when it did choose to come out from the clouds, had darkened his skin a light brown. Hers only freckled or burned, usually her nose and cheeks, which distressed her to no end.

"Do you wish to learn to play, Erik?"

He hesitated then nodded.

Her smile was bright. "Then you should. Papa says anyone who wants to learn should be allowed to, if they have skill. And you're so wonderful with music and so smart, you'll probably be able to play this as easily as you do everything else."

He smiled at her. "If I learn to play, will you sing for me?"

"Of course. I'll always sing for you."

She watched him pick out notes, his slender fingers touching the keys as if they were born to them.

"Erik?"

"Hm?" He plunked out a chord.

"If you could live anywhere but here, where would you go?"

His brow drew in toward the cloth as he frowned. At first she didn't think he would answer.

"France."

His reply surprised her. He had never mentioned the country before.

"Why France?"

He plunked a few more notes.

"I was told that is where my mama is from."

"Oh." She thought about that a moment. "And your papa?"

The notes plunked harsher than before.

"I don't know where he is from. Maybe hell."

She hated when he got so dour and temperamental as he sometimes did. She continued to watch his hand as he strung together a series of beautiful sounding chords.

"Erik?"

"Yes?" His reply was terse.

"How come you never call me Little Lotte?"

His hand stilled and he looked at her. "Your name is Christine."

"Yes, but—"

"There are no such things as angels."

"But –"

"Only demons."

"That's not tr –"

"And there is no God!"

Tears rimmed her lashes.

"If what you say is true," she whispered, "there's no heaven either."

He gave a curt nod, his eyes hard.

"So tell me then, where is my mama?" The tears rolled down to her jaw.

He did not answer.

She flew up from the bench and ran outside and away from the house, ran toward the freedom of the moors, ran until she had no breath left in her body and collapsed to her knees in the wild grasses. He was wrong. She knew it. He must be wrong … he must be — he must be — he must be …

Panting for breath, she looked up at the sky and the stars just appearing. There had to be a heaven up there somewhere … If there wasn't … then all of what her Papa told her was a lie, and he wouldn't lie to her. He never lied … but then, Erik never lied to her either. And he was her dearest friend … her only friend.

Her heart torn, Christine sat in the grass and cried until there were no tears left. When the night grew darker and the moon disappeared behind a cloud, she hastened back to the manor but saw no sign of him. He no longer sat at the piano and he wasn't in the kitchen, or the main room, or in his garret room either. Distressed, she moved down the corridor and into her room. A sprig of wildflowers from the heath lay upon her pillow, and with it, a note crafted in Erik's unique hand, the letters both domineering and artistic.

I have not seen God, but you are here.

I have not known angels, but I see you.

Perhaps, if there is a heaven,

There is also an Angel of Music.

It is my hope that one day you shall find him.

~Erik

Christine brought the note to her heart and held it there, smiling through her tears.

xXx