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What Lies Ahead
Michael Carriére and Robert Destler watched one of the less common roads between Paris and Vaujours, stopped all those who caught their eye that traveled through. There were only a handful of persons passing through, and none made their collective instincts stand on end and offered no useful information. No one lived close or within acceptable range of the forest filled with bodies.
Then as time went on and patience started to wane by the hour, Robert straightened in his saddle, lifting his chin towards section of road to the west where there was a blind spot until the traveler crested the hill. "There."
Michael turned his attention from the eastern section in time to see a pair of black horses being driven by a man cloaked in black cresting the hill at a steady pace.
"He has an air about him, I see it already," Robert continued. "Tread lightly."
Michael quirked a brow, "You take the lead." Though Michael was not inclined to disagree with Robert's intuition, he preferred prudence over more direct methods of questioning.
Robert needed no further blessing as he surged ahead at canter with Michael following suit. "Bonjour, Monsieur!" he greeted with a bit of brass in his raised hand to denote the official compacity of his presence as he blocked the road. "A word if you please!"
The man eased his team to a halt as he looked between them. At first, the man's face seemed rather odd and smooth, catching light strangely although the fedora cast much of hit in shadow. It was as Michael neared that he saw the lines that were slightly shadowed of a mask. A mask that was stained in a such a manner to match a fair complexion.
"Of course, Messieurs," his spoke almost as smooth as Robert's soft silken voice, only his was both richer and naturally darker in tone. His eyes however, darted between them in a near unreadable fashion while there was only a slight hint of tension in his spine. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"Yes, we are looking for information. You see, we've recovered quite a mess of bodies in the forest six kilometers from here quite recently, seven in fact. We are looking for information of any sort on the matter."
"How recently?" asked the other.
"I rather you tell me where you have been and where you are going."
The masked man tilted his head, his posture going more erect. "I've spent the last few days in Paris resupplying, I am headed home now."
"How many days?"
"Two."
Michael wordlessly dismounted an began to inspect the cart and horses, under the eye of the masked man.
"What were you doing in Paris?"
"Again, I was resupplying," the man shifted a lever that set the break, to Michael's benefit.
"So far out?"
"Anyone more local does not like doing business with a man in the mask. I get accused more often than not."
"Of what?" pressed Robert.
"Theft."
"Why do you wear the mask?"
"I cannot continue to have everyone swooning over my devastatingly handsome appearance. It is not by choice I assure you."
Michael felt a smile tug at lips while he ran his hands over the horses. The team was immaculate, well brushed and maintained. The larger of the pair however, he felt a few bumps and possible bruises, but no cuts that he could find.
"I am no mood for jokes Monsieur," Robert growled.
"Your compatriot found it funny."
"I am not him."
Michael shook his head to himself, not wanting to engage and more than necessary, and focused on the horses as he snaked a hand down each of their legs until they obediently popped a hoof up for inspection. Pulling a knife from a sheath on his hip, Michael used the back of it to scrape away bits of mud and debris that already packed into the orbit of new iron shoes. The soles and fogs were freshly cleaned and trimmed. "They've been to a farrier," Michael reported.
"Interesting," Robert drew out in a tone akin to a hiss.
"Perhaps if you asked more direct questions Monsieur, I could be of better assistance. I fail to see how caring for my horses or ensuring my supplies are met are cause for concern."
"It is not the act themselves, but the timing of such is rather…convenient."
"I cannot help that things transpire when I merely try to go about my daily life."
Michael moved around the cart, tugging at sections of tarp to view at the contents which seemed to be nothing more than the supplied that the masked man claimed. With the addition to some furnishings.
Before Robert could utter another word, Michael spoke up as he returned to his horse. "I thank you for your time and cooperation, Monsieur. You may go."
The masked man released the break in a snap of motion and urged his team on down the road.
Robert in turn, was glaring daggers.
"Antagonizing him will get us nowhere," Michael answered.
"I have no doubt of his involvement."
"Neither do I," Michael swung up onto his horse. "But you were getting him agitated. Mere suspicion because of mask and time table is not enough to put him in irons. We'll learn more by watching him than locking him away."
The younger man growled something under his breath. "I suppose he will be…easy enough to track now, with a cart. Though I'm certain he will destroy any evidence before we move on him."
"That evidence is likely already destroyed, if the horses are of any indication. If one of those horses left that print, that cast is useless now. In the meantime, I think it will be best that you head on back to Paris and brief Claudin and Petrie on our findings."
"And you will do what?"
Michael gave a nod towards where the cart vanished. "I will keep an eye on him. The two of you sharing a space is like two powder kegs with a short fuse, and both of you are holding torches."
"I will be sure to laugh at your funeral," Robert darkly foretold.
"Well, at least he seemed to like me more than you. My trip to an early grave might yet be stalled."
"Wishful thinking."
~x ~x ~X~ x~ x~
There was much that she had in common with her mother, more than she really cared to admit. Follow the same path in both life and career it seemed. Widowed, single mother to a darling girl, and dancing as the Prima Ballerina at the Palais Garnier. In the years since the reign of the mysterious Opera Ghost, the former edifice to music lost its taste in opera and strictly favored hosting ballets a its main source of revenue.
That with a few galas and concerts to round it out.
It was a shame really. All the beautiful voices no longer filled the magnificent baroque and marble rooms of unmatched artistry that left every newcomer with their mouths agape from the stunning beauty. Beautiful music remained of course, and the dancing, but the absence of bel canto voices made the triad of performance incomplete.
What was an opera house without operas gracing the stage?
Did the Palais Garnier truly need its Opera Ghost to flourish to its full purpose of staging magical and detailed stories through music? Or did management fear that daring to stage another opera would summon the Ghost again?
Madame Meg Corbin, Prima Ballerina and soon to be Mistress of the Corps du Ballet stretched out over the barre below the line of windows. in a small rehearsal room. On there opposite and adjoining walls were lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and a piano empty of any player sat in the single mirrorless corner. Her only company was her seven-year-old daughter, Helene, who so quietly brushed the hair of her doll while Mozart's Moonlight Sonata began to play over the gramophone.
With it, Meg let the pointes of her ballet slippers carry her to the center of the room where she let the grief of the past two, hellish, years of loss begin to flow through her. In slow measured movements from the toes of her feet to the tips of her fingers. Every motion and position that she transitioned between was of her sorrow from the float and curves of her arms, the bends of her torso, and lift of her leg as slowly spun on the tip of her toe.
First it was her husband, Auguste, taken by illness. Then her mother by age. Now…now her best friend with her family lost to tragedy. Although she had friends within the ballet and the Garnier, they were not ones she could hold confidence with. Especially when they sought her position on the pay role an attention from patrons.
Never had she felt so alone. To have everyone that mattered so dearly to her, gone. So quick and without recourse. Just, gone.
All she had was sweet little Helene, who lost a friend in Charles.
Meg almost always imagined that Charles and Helene would become sweethearts and then she and Christine could finally become family in a greater bond than they already shared.
There was times Meg knew her mother had been lonely while she grew up. However, she at least came to have some sort friendship with the temperamental Opera Ghost. Such an option was not available to her, and even if a new Ghost were to appear, she was aware of the foleys of the past. Meg was certain she learned from the mistakes of her mother and Christine.
As Meg move with fluidity out of a slow twirl that nearly defied physics, she posed at the end of the end of the sonata, arms raised above her head and hands flared out. Her front knee was bent low, toe turned out while her other was drawn back straight in an exaggerated bow. Then as the last notes hit, Meg brought her hands down to cross over her sternum as though she cradled a fragile flower, head bowed and a trickle of tears dropping into her palm.
Meg held the pose longer than necessary, even as the song switched to something livelier and brighter than her mood under the scratchy needle. She struggled to push the headline of the discovery of Christine's body that morning from her mind. Although no further details were given, it was surely a matter of time before they found Charles's too. As time passed, too went the hope that he was alive or would remain that way for much longer.
As reddened eyes lifted to the mirror, staring at the cold glass, and missing the fleeting apparition that delighted in the over-the-top squeals of the ballet on a regular basis during practice. Perhaps it was merely a way to playfully vex her mother when she started getting too serious.
Erik had vanished for years after everything, and only more recently kept a kind of correspondence. Notes really, a small congratulations over her rise to Prima Ballerina, her marriage, Helene's birth. A condolence for her husband. Nothing more than a short line really. Until her mother died. Then, he wrote a lengthier condolence.
He annoyed her to no end after everything that happened, when he was seemingly willing himself to die beneath the opera when Christine and Raoul left. Thoroughly unpleasant and unwilling to let her, her mother, and the Persian man help him at all. He only cooperated long enough to regain the strength to lock them out permanently.
Only in the death of her husband, did Meg come to understand some measure of the pain he must have felt then. Were it not for her mother, Christine, and especially Helene, Meg would have gladly climbed into that pine box with her husband. No question. She understood how deep love ran and how it felt to not have it understood by anyone else.
As Meg looked at her reflection, she asked him a question he would never actually hear. "Do you even know?" she whispered and rose to full height.
The answer would come soon enough.
Meg sat beside Helene and kissed the top of her daughter's dark coppery hair and gave a warm hug around her shoulders before untying the soft pink ribbons of her slippers. When she pulled on the lady's boots and rose to slip on the black skirt of her dress over the leotard, the door cracked boy and a boy poked his head in, "Madame Corbin?"
"Hmm, yes?" she asked, distracted as she buttoned the waist of her flowing skirts to sit properly over her midriff.
"A note came for you," the boy held the envelope.
"Bring it here," she said, holding out a hand.
The boy flushed and timidly came forth.
"Come on then, it's not like you haven't seen me with less on when I dance on that stage."
The boy grew redder and hastily went to her before dashing from the room once she took the envelope.
Taking a moment, she laid it down on the piano to shrug on a blouse and chinch a belt, reading the familiar scrawl of La Prima Ballerina, Palais Garnier.
"Think of the devil, and he shall appear," Meg sighed.
Helene looked up from her place on the floor, hugging the doll to her chest. "What, Maman?"
"Oh…nothing sweetie, I'm just thinking aloud," she smiled at those cheeks, rosy with freckles.
Meg settled onto the piano bench and tore through the black wax seal and drew out perhaps the lengthiest letter from him to date.
Madame,
In light of recent events, I find it is only fair to inform of events as I have come to understand them, for our mutual care for those who were targets of such vile transgressions. In their flight of the chateau, we crossed paths after They had ridden for kilometers and begged for my aid before we realized our identities. Several men pursued Them across the countryside.
While Their pursuers were dealt with, there was little I could do to spare Her life. Her injuries were too grievous to remedy, and she passed away in the arms of the Boy and I.
From what little She managed to say, I have reason to believe that the danger to posed to the Boy remains great. It is likely those behind this assault are watching you, in hopes to find him to finish their despicable quest.
Know that the Boy is safe in my care, and I will let no harm befall him.
See to it that this Letter is Burned.
Regards,
~O.G.
Meg choked a sob of sadness for the loss of her friend, but also in relief knowing Christine died in the arms of the man who cared for her so deeply, and that Charles was alive. She knew of no safer place for him if what Erik suspected was true, it was explained the lack of use for any of their names, should the letter be found by any such ne'er-do-well.
Titles were easy enough to dismiss if questioned. O.G. did not exist anymore, Erik usually signed is letters and notes with a plain ~E.
After taking some minutes to gather herself, Meg tucked the letter into her blouse, even under the thin fabric of her leotard risk no chance of losing it by accident.
With Helene's hand safely wrapped in her own, Meg hurried home with a constant eye turned over her shoulder. She could not help that as fear clawed at the back of her mind and she had no one she could depend on, aside from the man who just sent her a letter.
Just as requested, she burned Erik's letter in the hearth of her small flat the moment she and Helene arrived home.
