I stumbled, numb not only in mind, but also in body. Snow beneath my unstable feet crunched and crumbled away, horribly symbolic of my spirit. One last glance back as the heavy door slammed shut behind me, wrenching away any remaining light and warmth I could feel.
Numb. The cold settled around my frail shoulders, and I felt them quake, from cold, not tears. But then the tears reappeared.
A firm hand grasped my shoulder, and squeezed harshly, not in any form of rebuke, but a distanced attempt at comfort. But who could comfort me now? There was no one left to comfort me. Papa was gone now.
"Be strong for your father, child." The woman spoke, her voice forcibly gentler than it was used to. I could tell from the way her primary tone was sharp, dying swiftly to a dulled, pitying murmur as she realised who she was talking to. She was a contrast indeed.
I gave no sign of acknowledgement, not a curt nod of the head, nor a meek shrug of the shoulders; no acquiescent mutterings passed my white, viced lips. Indeed, I did not speak for days after that night. How could I open my mouth when all that could emerge was a wracking, painful scream, an agonised stream of pain, begging, pleading, demanding a different fate for myself, for my father….
I was once praised for my angelic voice. If a person called my voice angelic now I would spit in their face. I am no angel. And yet… I was promised an angel. An angel of music. Mere hours ago.
My father, lying in cold agony on his deathbed, dripping with a final sweat, one pointless final effort by his body to obtain some form of comfort, forced his dull eyes open and focussed on me: his daughter of twelve, hanging onto his hand with a death grip, one last connection, a desperate prayer for mercy filling her eyes, breaking his slowing heart. I saw this in the glassy reflection of his eyes. I saw it all- the climactic suffering, the eventual acceptance, the great underlying sense of wretchedness shared by all mortals on this earth.
I saw this, and clenched his hand tighter in mine, fingernails sinking into bluish flesh, a welcome distraction for my father from the more fatal pain in his chest.
"Christine," he had rasped, breathing in harshly with terrible, heavy control. He coughed then, coughed up blood and bile and mucus. It rattled in his throat as he re-inhaled it all, struggling futilely to settle his erratic breathing.
I said nothing, my lips already squeezed together, the horror-screams mercifully caught and kept in my raw throat. I answered with silent, hot tears. He closed his eyes. I do not know if he felt the tears falling on his hands, rolling down his arms. With effort, he wrenched his eyelids apart once more.
"You remember… dear child… the stories I told…." He trailed off breathlessly, the effort of speaking almost overwhelming him. I nodded frantically, cheek resting against his hand, my curly hair sweeping over his shuddering arm like a curtain.
"I will send you the Angel of Music."
I tore my head from his palm as I jolted up, eyes widening in unexplainable terror as my father calmly spoke his last sentence, with nary a stutter or pause. His eyes were fixed on the bare white wall at the end of the room, unfocussed and staring. There was nothing there. It was like he had been possessed. One last straining breath wrenched his lips apart and then he fell back against the headboard, and the piles of useless pillows, and yet his eyes stayed open, glassily looking at nothing, at no one.
He had died of that final sentence, it seemed. Had he disobeyed some heavenly law? Had he betrayed some eternal, noble secret of the gods?
I would never know. But he was dead. And I had taken one tottering step forward, my own eyes unfocussed from the streaming tears, and collapsed upon the still body of my father. I lay there for hours it seemed, flopped like a rag doll over the sweat-drenched corpse. I didn't move. My eyes didn't flicker from my father's eerily peaceful face. I tried not to breathe but I had to, painfully and erratically, through the narrow passages of my nose.
My lips were sealed shut.
I had no way of knowing the time then. I did not care. My mind had closed off, desperately grasping onto those happy memories of before, before now, before this. But now, out in the cold and dark, for even the stars had hidden their faces in sorrow, I wanted to know. I wanted to know all sorts of things. What was I to do now? Where was I to go? I did not even know the name of the woman clutching my arm, stroking the top of my head shakily. I don't believe she knew mine.
It had started an eternity ago, though in reality it was probably as little as five hours. My father, the renowned and highly esteemed violinist, held my hand as we walked leisurely along a little street in Paris. On both sides were tall, intricately decorated buildings with iron-railed balconies, doors and windows drawn tightly shut from the cold. The sun had disappeared minutes before, as a fresh slurry of snow breathed down upon the streets of Paris.
I never minded the snow. I enjoyed its cleansing freshness, revelled in its sparkling purity, played endless, childish games in it every winter. A smile was on my lips as I had walked confidently beside my father, the hand not occupied within his strong grip holding the bow of his violin. It was too cold to sing, but I hummed and skipped, heavy shawls bouncing up and down off my shoulders with every jump.
It had happened outside a brightly lit, noisy inn. Happy hour had started, and the local revellers were making merry with their drinks and their friends, and the sound of laughter carried straight to our ears in the cold street outside.
My father had stared longingly into that pub, wistfully stroking his thumb up and down the soft skin of my calm little hand.
"It's not far now, is it Papa?" My high, bright voice broke into his short reverie.
He looked down at me fondly. He didn't have to look too far, for in the past year I had grown quite a few inches. I was tall for my age, but still a few heads shorter than my father. "No, it isn't, child," he replied softly, and tugged gently at my hand as he began to continue past the inn. But only two steps further and…
"Papa!" I had cried loudly, in shock. It seemed that he had tripped and fallen to his knees, releasing my hand to clutch both of his hands to his chest. His violin fell down upon the snow. Its arch broke as my father's heart broke, as my own heart was to break.
"Papa, what is wrong? What's the matter? Do you need help?" I tugged at his arm wildly, my voice breaking slightly with panic, falling to my knees, losing all self-composure in desperation. When he didn't respond, clutching at his chest like he was trying to hold his heart inside, gasping like a fish out of water, I pulled myself up and ran though the entrance of the inn.
"What's all this, then?" The surprised voice of the barkeeper greeted my ears, and the eyes of all the patrons of the bar swiftly fell upon my panting, terrified form.
"My father," I choked out, seized with a strange fit of shivers, "My father is out there and he's collapsed!"
The barkeeper wiped his hands on a rag before moving hurriedly towards me. His eyes assessed my uncontrollable shivering, my wide, frightened eyes, and nodded to himself. "Right then. He chucked the rag to a startled man near the door and nodded curtly at him. "You look after this place right, you hear? I'll be back in a minute."
He placed his large hand in the small of my quivering back, and gave me a push towards the door. "You'd best show me where your father is, my girl, if I'm to help him."
I almost ran out of that inn; however, the little self-restraint I still possessed held me back, and allowed me to instead walk rather calmly through the door, and back into the gathering darkness. The icy wind bit at my exposed cheeks as I frantically scanned the nearby snow for my father, and as I spotted his agonised form, I burst into a little jog and collapsed beside him, shaking with fear. It was only when I heard the barkeeper talking rapidly to another person above us that I realised that a woman had joined us outside on the snow.
"How long have you been here?" he asked the woman quietly.
"About thirty seconds," she replied brusquely, disregarding etiquette in regard of the situation. "She wasn't here when I came."
The barkeeper leant closer to the woman and muttered, "Is her father still alive?" I was clearly not supposed to hear that question, but I did, and the implications of that sentence hit me like a bird hits a window. I crept closer to my father, now lying prone on the snow, and gave a small moan of relief as I heard his irregular inhalations.
I looked up as the woman nodded in affirmation. The barkeeper's gaze immediately swung to me. "Where's your family, girl? Where do you live?"
I gave them all the answers they needed as I shook my head and turned my gaze back to my father, his face as white as the surrounding snow. My father was my family. I was his family. There were only us, only us as we travelled the countryside, him playing his violin, me singing along in that voice which earned me praise from the appreciative audience and a glowing smile from my proud father.
We had been headed for a little cottage in another area of Paris, away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds and the markets, and the carriages as they rolled briskly across the slippery paved roads. I didn't know exactly where the cottage was, so I could not even give that information.
Returning immediately from my overly lucid thoughts as my father gave a low, desperate moan, I looked up to find the woman's face before my own, her serious, sharp eyes finding mine and holding their gaze calmly. "You are to come with me now, child," she told me.
I threw my gaze around, desperate for a familiar face of any sort, some form of protection, of safety. "Where is the man from the bar?" I asked plaintively.
The woman offered me her hand, and I took it, pulling myself with her help off the road. "He has gone to hail a ride," she answered simply enough, brushing snow off my coats in a motherly fashion.
"What is to happen to me? To my father?" I asked stiltedly. I had lost all control over the situation. Strangers were now deciding my fate, arranging help for my father. My fate lay with my father, for I had nothing if I didn't have him.
"He is going to be taken to the house of a very reputable doctor near here," she replied, rearranging her shawls. After that sentence, I felt she had finished talking with me, and my eyes dropped quickly from her down to the bucking body of my father.
Shortly we had been collected by a carriage driver, harshly spurred into action by the very capable woman who seemed to have accepted responsibility for my father and me. The barkeeper, who had taken a horse and sped ahead of us, had notified the doctor of our desperate situation. The barkeeper and the carriage driver took my father, by this point unconscious, to a room in the doctor's strange, sterile house. I was held back by the woman, who then sat down in a chair in a cold, impersonal waiting room. I stayed there, chewing on a strand of hair, violently shaking for hours.
The doctor had sent for me when my father regained consciousness.
My pale hands shook as they grasped each other. The snow had stopped falling at some point, and the glow of eerie moonlight drifted through the carriage window and onto my lap. I did not know where I was going. The woman was silent now, sitting opposite me, perfectly still and straight-backed. Both of us remained quiet as we were rudely jolted to the side, the wheels of the carriage having slipped slightly on the icy road. I jumped a little as she unexpectedly turned her perfectly-coiffed head and began to speak to me.
"You may call me Madame Giry. It is what the girls at the Opera House call me. I work as the ballet mistress there."
I looked down at my palms. That was one of my many questions answered.
Madame continued, accepting my continued silence. "The good doctor told me that your father called you Christine."
I gave an involuntary shudder at the mention of my father, but nodded almost imperceptibly, affirming the woman's assumption.
The silence after her last sentence stretched long and awkwardly. Madame Giry cleared her throat before she continued speaking, probably hoping that the familiarity of conversation would calm and comfort me. "I have a daughter of about your age. Her name is Meg. She is one of my students at the Opera House. That is where we're going," she added as an afterthought.
I looked out the window and caught sight of the approaching Opera House. Its magnificent, intimidating appearance frightened me, sent a chill running through my body. I was used to the humble, the small and the warm and the friendly. This place was none of these things, it seemed, from its ornate exterior. The marble statues adorning the outer building smirked at me, mocking my pitiful existence.
"You will live with us here. I hope that you enjoy music," Madame continued. At the mention of that word, music, I sat up straighter and stared past the statues. My early life had been built upon the foundations of music. My childhood had ended that night, my previous life had been shattered into pieces with the death of my father, but I still had music.
The Opera House exerted an almost religious awe over me with its gargoyles and statues and magnificence. An angel of music would certainly not seem out of place within its mysterious confines.