Work Text:
The halls echo with a mournful tune.
In a perpetual night, the subterranean passages of the Opera House sprawl out before Erik–an endless succession of shadowed corridors, their wooden ribs creaking softly, as though the very bones of the place shifted in some sort of uneasy sleep.
Cobwebs weave their gauzy lace from corner to corner, their gossamer threads whispering against his coat as he passes. They are always there, no matter how often he disturbs them; returning each night as if in patient anticipation, a fresh net almost always spun anew. Always waiting, as if expecting him–or a far gone, far lost wanderer; stranger to the labyrinth, stranger to Dante’s infernal honeycomb; transposed into oak and marble–to someday stumble into their snare.
Erik shifts the small leather bag between his fingers, the contents lightly clanking together, as his feet habitually skip over a whining step.
Around him, dreaming, the walls hum with the memory of the day’s exploits. Stone and timber stir and sigh, their restless settling at times a noise close to distant laughter, something drip, drip, dripping in tandem with his footsteps.
He counts each one, one-two-three, one-two-three, like a waltz, something Chopin reverberating vaguely in his mind.
When he had first helped raise these walls, when it had stood gleaming in its newness, even he had half the mind to believe it was alive. Golden foyers and their winding staircases like lungs; the grand auditorium, a great and throbbing heart; and these hidden halls, as if veins. Breathing with the inhales of every prima donna, bending with each piqué of the corps de ballet.
Rounding the jut of a pillar, he watches the glow of an oil lamp–the lights still not having been modernised; gas favoured for above, not below–spill in trembling rivulets through the cracks in the panelling, shards of warmth shattering the dark passages. His fake nose itches.
A fanciful notion indeed, though, one that the impressionable ladies of the ballet–as well as the stagehands, box keepers and cloak-room attendants–enjoyed petrifying each other with. Some of the young girls–though, he’s sure half the ballerinas and chorus girls all, albeit concealed, share the same unease–really do fear that, with the wrong hallway, the Opera House may just swallow them whole.
Confident as they may appear draped in the palatial gleam of the foyers, mingling with patrons and flattering the great and good of Paris, they gather like flocks of nervous birds as they traverse the dimmed halls, never entering their usual daytime perches the moment night falls. No longer women of poise and training, but children once more, crying ‘wolf’ at every missing earring and gasp of cold air.
Thus, as the hour grows later and he makes his unhurried way towards his apartment– reminding himself to collect his order in the coming week–he is…surprised, to hear the low tremor of voices from the other side.
“I am telling you; they have put up the list!” One whispers, or attempts to; the result is a mockery of secrecy, pitched high and sharp, and as loud as a murmur dares to be. One…two, and three pairs of heels clack, clack, clack upon the steps beside him, metronomic and anxious, as they descend.
“And I am telling you it has been done too hastily!” Replies another, her voice smooth and unctuous, though its practiced cadence falters under the weight of irritation. An alto, perhaps, in some other life, but certainly not this one. “We only heard of the routines but a fortnight past-”
“-Did you see if any of the new ones have been chosen?” A third voice joins–Accented; Belgian, he thinks. All whispers, but still needless, headache-inducing chatter.
“I am not certain,” she speaks in a flurry, and he begins to attempt to faze them out. “I- I did see one about a swan, which I hope-”
-he must make an alteration with one of his orders-
“-Please say it is not Swan Lake again.”
And restock the pantry. He always finds it unfathomable how fast everything dissipates.
“I-”
One of them stumbles with an expletive–a curious, almost amusing sound to hear from a lady’s mouth–and the vibration hums beneath his own feet as he ducks beneath a low beam.
“-If it is, we can count on one less chance at performing.” One of the girls cuts in with a scoff, mumbling, “the director always chooses Émilie…”
Perhaps for good reason, he thinks to himself, moving the bag in his hand again. Most of the others–bright-eyed, trembling at the edges of their confidence–still moved as if newborn fawns; all innocence and no grace. Principals were chosen so justifiably, after all.
A low murmur ripples through the group; discontent weaving between them like smoke, like starlings chittering at a cat.
For all that, he cannot entirely disagree with their grievance. Swan Lake is a thing of beauty, yes–its melodies delicate and well formed, costuming exquisite–but beauty, pressed too hard, will stale. Even loveliness, repeated ad nauseam, loses its bloom. A lesson far from learned by the managers.
The high-pitched voice from before cuts clean through the grumbling, and through his thoughts. “Mhm, but no; I believe it to be the Russian one.”
But that does remind him.
“Are you sure you are not thinking of Swan Lake?” The smooth toned one presses.
He must send a letter to the managers soon. His monthly pay has not yet come through; while it is most likely a trifling matter of accounting, he smiles to himself at the notion that the messieurs might believe themselves capable of withholding what is due.
“Certainly not,” insists the first, indignation sharpening her pitch.
Perhaps…perhaps a small scare might hasten their attentions.
“Are you ever certain of anything, Cécile?”
The thought brings a small smile to his face.
“Do you not remember the ballet master talking of it?” Cécile groans.
It falls as the girls continue their gossip. Wearily, he rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm. The Opera House never sleeps; not truly. Its dreams are much less fanciful, and much more tangible, if only ever to the fretful cast members. Stage long cleared, it still sings a mundane, domestic symphony; late practices, whistling cleaners, creaking bones. A tune he’s come to cherish, even yearn for, in the still silence of his apartment.
The footsteps beside him falter. One pair, then the others, stop, and chatter their collapses into a stillness far too conspicuous. His heart sings for it. Quiet; always a hard thing to come by, especially when one wants it. After an evening spent sorting papers, tallying accounts, and attending to the dull necessities of the living, he has little fortitude left for another round of girlish squabbling.
“Surely not!”
Yet here it is.
As Cécile splutters for words, they begin to walk again, “performed recently at St Petersburg-”
“-Do not let Yekaterina hear that pronunciation-” another giggles, Belgian vowels dancing.
“-To Carmilla, no,” her voice swells, emboldened by its own conviction. “Carmen Saint-Säens’ music-”
He winces at the butchering of the vowel, “-Good Heavens, do not let us hear that pronunciation-”
“-you know who I speak of!” She snaps, exasperated. Erik brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose; glad to know he’ll be turning away from this corridor soon enough. “You two must certainly be going deaf if you do not-”
“-Please, Cécile,” the new voice–affable, uncertain, as though half-afraid it were speaking only into the dark–makes his ears, and heart, perk. At once the girls halt, and so does he. “May you keep quiet?” Tempted beyond sense, his feet shift against the boards without a sound as he brings his eye to a narrow slit in the wall. “We are not meant to be down here this late.” Even if in only splinters–in shards, in fragments–he’d know that voice, “I do not wish to be reprimanded,” know that S/C skin; know those H/C locks, bathed in the warm glow of the mounted lamps. “Or reported by one of the lamplighters.”
Gently, he smiles to himself;
“And where have you been?”
You.
You answer with something simple; a hushed murmur about retrieving a forgotten item.
Of all, he is in the least unsurprised with your presence.
The blonde–short, button-nosed and bright even in her fluster; Cécile–murmurs her own apology before promptly linking her arm through yours as they begin their descent once again.
Late evening practices–the crisp tap of your shoes, and the somewhat gaudy tunes wrung from whatever pianist you’ve coaxed into playing at such an hour–are commonplace for you.
And, like clockwork–
As is his watching.
–his legs urge him to follow.
“Mhm,” the Belgian hums, deep brown eyes, almost black, catching the shine of the low light. “We were wandering around half-blind without you! It is like Bluebeard’s vault down here.” Her laughter flutters, thin and nervous, like a moth trapped inside a glass.
He would call it routine–he would call it ritual.
Through a sliver of lamplight, he catches your smile; apologetic, tinged with amusement. “Forgive me,” you laugh. “I did not know you were all so afraid of the dark.”
Would call it solace, even.
The honey-toned one scoffs, a pale hand carding through the wisps of chestnut that have escaped her tight plait. “Mm, speaks the woman as pale as a dying man. You linger here later than any of us,” he catches a playful grin; full of perfectly aligned teeth. “Do tell, what has spooked you?”
Especially on those long, tireless nights. Where it would end with just you and him; one fixated spectator to your impressive perseverance. A low hum of song, not from your own throat; not from your own mind, to accompany you.
The Belgian interrupts whatever response you had planned with a conspiratorial giggle. “The Opera Ghost, no doubt.”
You are not afraid of many things–certainly not that which goes bump in the night. Certainly not the shadows drawn on the walls. Certainly not ghost stories.
The others titter uneasily, the sound skittering down the stairs like loose beads.
You have spent enough time pressed between patrons to know the darker dangers lie in the glint of gold, in the faint brush of silk.
Behind the wall, Erik’s mouth quirks.
But sometimes–between the guttering candles and the oil lamps–you feel as if your reflection isn’t the only pair of eyes on your form.
“If there were such a thing,” Cécile whimpers, pouting, no doubt, “out of all of us, he would have appeared to Y/N.”
You part your lips to reply, but, again, the Belgian beats you. “Who is to say he has not? Perhaps he has already placed a curse upon our dear Y/N.” The girls press closer, clinging to you as though to a talisman. Their laughter ripples nervously along the corridor, and Erik nearly lets a scoff escape. “And perhaps,” she continues, turning slyly toward you, “he has sworn her to silence.”
“Well-”
“-I say there is naught to fear.” Cécile interrupts, too quick to be entirely convincing.
Their voices begin to recede as they descend further into the warren below. Erik lowers a foot, expecting the next step, and instead finds solid ground beneath him.
“Ah, yet you are the one clinging to her for dear life!” Another teases, and their laughter swells again–lighter now, easier; swiftly drowning out their talk of ghosts–before drifting away entirely.
Soon only their echoing footsteps remain, trailing off toward the old practice rooms as he stands at a crossroads, head turned to follow your voice.
There are still things left undone, papers and plans and the weary pull of sleep–but he is a man of patience. A man of ritual.
So he turns, steady as the wind turns the crow’s wings.
A cobweb tickles his nape.
And, as ever, he follows–the tap, tap, tapping of your shoes his metronome, his summons.
The wood is uneven beneath his feet as he follows, soundless as smoke, the bright thread of your voice through the gloom. Gaps of light fracture the darkness here and there; small, slanted panes that catch upon flaking plaster and the corroded lips of iron lamp brackets.
“...ook! I told you, Joan.”
Before long, he finds another slit in the wood, heart thumping in his chest; a thrum he cannot quell.
“I have eyes, Cécile.”
Through it, he spies the little flock huddled close–yourself in the centre–with skirts brushing in the narrow corridor. They’re gathered around a small sheet of paper, pinned to the wall. Whatever ‘the list’ may be, the print, regrettably, is too fine to read; mere black loops of ink, barely touched by the dim halo of the lamp it hangs beside.
The Belgian turns to you, hands pointing towards the note. “Y/N! Do any pique your interest?”
You hum, tilting your head, E/C eyes narrowed as though you might will the letters into clarity. A gentle shake of your head follows, then, “No…well, Giselle’s part would be nice,” Joan nods, as does he; a programme, then? “Or even one of the Wilis.” You add, softer, now. Surely a programme. You turn your eyes to the Belgian, “What of you, Ida?”
She worries on her answer for a moment, lips pressing together before she lets it spill. “Something from La Sylphide, or like you, from Giselle.” Her gaze flicks back to the paper, lingering wistfully. A programme he was not even aware of; since when did the season’s set change so? “They’ve chosen well; the summoning, the pas de deux…so pretty.” A sigh escapes her, wistful and small. “Only one of the new ones, though…”
Cécile leans toward you, “I think you’d suit it.” almost conspiratorial in her compliment.
“Hm?” you hum.
“‘The Swan’; the new one,” her grin widens. “I think you’d suit it.”
You return her smile, kind and bright, your eyes crinkling at their corners. Even if tired, you give the same look to the mirrors–to him–after practice; it never fails to bring heat to his face. “How can you say so when you have not even seen the new routines?”
“I spoke to the ballet master’s assistant,” Cécile shrugs, all girlish confidence. “He said it was very beautiful.”
Gently, your eyes shift back to the paper, eyes catching on the words, a smile unfurling across your lips. “It would be wonderful…” you say it under your breath, more so to yourself than your friends; as if saying it too loud would shatter your wish.
Nodding, Ida adds, “Either way, Y/N, you’d deserve such a r-” but the sentence dies upon her tongue, as if taken right from her throat.
For an instant, he stiffens, certain he’s made some noise–a floorboard groaning under his weight, an exhale too close to the wall. His gaze darts back to you. Your head is turned to the other end of the hall, the one you came from, eyes dancing from shadow to shadow; like a partridge listening to the snap of a twig beneath a hunting dog’s foot.
Before he can decide, the whole group scatters–skirts swishing, shoes striking the wood in frantic rhythm–into the folds of the dark; only sign that you were ever there the swish of the oil lamp’s flame.
He blinks, momentarily disoriented. He’d only ever seen girls move so fast when-
-the glow of the hall swells, almost to the point of blinding. He squints, blinking rapidly at the sudden burn, before his eyes adjust and reveal…
…a lamplighter.
Erik’s shoulders fall. He wonders if, perhaps, your covey thought the man to be him.
The man hovers a moment, eyes drifting to the sheet that had enthralled you, before he turns the wick down, extinguishing the light. Erik hears the slightest blow of air before the other man’s footsteps disappear back down the hall whence he came.
He exhales between his teeth, steadying the wildness of his pulse. Silence returns–heavy, complete–and, with it, the hum of your voice, ringing in his ears.
For a moment, he stays stagnant in the hall; thoughts stuck on the programme. Season starts and ends smoothly, predictably; October calls for autumnal favourites–Faust, Lucia di Lammermoor and La Bayadère–as does June and its Spring, the pit growing green with Roméo et Juliette and Coppélia just before the rich leave for their countryside and seaside estates.
So, for the second time this evening, he is given another surprise–that of a possible gala. A possible chance to see you perform; a new piece, nonetheless.
Contemplative, he turns away, back on his original path. Shifts past his mechanisms, fades through walls, glides down below; six feet under the ground below.
The Swan, he thinks.
His lips curve faintly in the dark.
How fitting.
And so, the days, the weeks, pass, as they always do; the Opera House singing its lullabies, its laments, all the same. Nights fold into days, fold into nights again, like pages of an oft-read libretto; scenes blurring and bleeding into one another.
One week, the house is awash in crimson and brass, its stage a Bacchic revel for Don Giovanni. Tambourines rattle against the marble bones of the auditorium, dancers whirl in clouds of brocade and tulle. Another, the orchestra bellows Verdi’s elegies–air thick with incense, cigars, and the salt of practiced tears. He counts each sob before the applause erupts.
The Arcadian pillars rattle with the sheer noise of it.
A truly stupendous sound, but, not the one he yearns for. Not the gentle plink of the rehearsal room’s battered piano, not your exhales, not the sound of the smile in your voice–bright as Summer’s nightingales’ morning call–as you accept the cheers of your fellow dancers.
Not your mumbles, when you believe yourself to be alone.
It is on one of these nights, on one of these evening visits, that he hears it.
It had been a long day–an unpleasant one, at that; mind stricken with too heavy a thought. Enough so that he’s sure the foundations of this painted marble heart shook with the despondency of his fugues.
He had traversed upwards with the hope that it was one of the days in which you remained late into the evening, possibly without the accompaniment of a pianist. There is peace, there is comfort, in watching the bend of your legs, the frustration, then, the joy on your face as you glide across the polished floors with all the ease of the tide. Something simple to calm his mind.
Something awe-worthy to bask in.
He had not yet entered into the slim, hidden room behind the practice room’s many mirrors–merely a turn away from it, before he had stopped. He’s unsure where he had found himself in the song, but his ears perk nonetheless. It is not brassy, nor jubilant, but low and tremulous, as though the piano itself mourned a dying thing. The melody coils upward with a kind of sorrowed grace, tender as a farewell whispered into a fading dream. Each note falls upon him with the weight of Autumn leaves, piling somewhere deep within the hollow of his chest.
Not a song he has heard before; not one that conjures a troupe of sylphs, nor that breaks and mends Giselle’s heart.
Then, it stops. Chords scattering and fading into the wood, hypnagogic, before their absence is filled by your muffled voice; so close, yet so far.
“May you play that section again, Freja?”
There is a moment of silence, a moment where something deep within his stomach aches, before the song begins anew. It wails, quietly–something Saint-Saëns in its lilt–and he finds himself backing away with two thoughts; that he will only watch with the rest of the crowd, and that you will be magnificent.
The melody clings long after it finishes. Even when silence settles over the Opera House once more, he hears it still; distance and warm with reminiscence. It follows him through corridors and into restless sleep, coils itself about his thoughts, and chews. Maggot to corpse; gapeworm to crow; devotion to man.
If he is to be sick with it, then he is the happiest sufferer of all humanity.
But, suffering, as he has come to know, has a price.
During season, he knows the weeks fly by like swifts, but now–alone once more in his evenings, and abstaining from the sight of you–it seems as if even hours crawl, slower than wax surrendering to its flame.
The building shifts in ways only the spiders and their webs truly know. First, the scent of rain on the stones as late summer fades to autumn; the faint draught seeping down from the grand vestibule when the nights grow colder. Rehearsal lamps burn earlier and longer now, their golden glow creeping through the cracks like fingers of ivy steadily conquering an abandoned abode.
And now, slipping from staircase to staircase, a feeling he has known to name as restlessness bubbling at the tips of his fingers, he is beginning to regret his vow.
Between marble and the watchful gaze of Apollo, the strings of practice echo, albeit muffled; strong as waves crashing against a cave’s mouth, soft as wind flitting through handmade chimes. Someone whistles along with it, out of tune, yet still familiar–as all music seems to be–as he crosses from corridor to corridor, past the stares of marble busts and carefully painted Gods.
Here, in the hush of painted grandeur, he feels the ache of absence. He feels as if each of his cells strain towards the rehearsal rooms, his feet almost betraying him, as if magnetised, and he is coming to realise that the phrases of the cast–spoken between strings and the flit of music sheets–do hold some truth to them.
To him.
Up and up he ascends, as far from the plink and tap of the practice rooms as he can manage. Sunlight casts its aureate glow across the walls, gilded rays slipping over frames and canvases, igniting the painted saints and heroes with false divinity. He doesn’t pause, doesn’t hesitate, when a cluster of men drifts past his wall, their shoes muffled by the carpet. Cigar stained, their laughter drips like oil, as he slides by, as always unseen and unheard.
Habit–routine–is God, here. Slips between stonework and the fingers of the candleholders as the same invisible sanctity that drapes itself across Notre Dame and La Madeleine. Early rises, late finishes, bread and wine at their proper hours; the orchestra’s tuning, the ballet master’s clap, the hush before the curtain ascends.
The tap of your pointe shoes; steady as rosary.
Careful, he slinks through a tighter passage, holes for the lamp fixtures offering glimpses of a group that chatter excitedly around a clerk’s desk, hums of delight swelling each time some machine–a Remington, he’s heard them call it–chimes.
He does not pay them much mind–
“...ore of a piano than a pen…”
“...strikes the wrong key?”
–only scoffing to himself as he peels a cobweb from his shoulder.
He has never found much comfort in such places; not in St Michel’s, not in the many mosques of Persia–walls of stone and whispered prayers never warmed him, never saw him.
He is a patient man, he tells himself, again and again, as though repetition might make it truer.
Still, the sentiment gnaws. It always does, and patient men find ways to ease their ailments.
Which is why he climbs–chasing height as though it were penance–towards the director’s office for the nth time in this week alone. It is not, by any means, a common haunt for him–the affairs of administration and their petty intrigues hold little allure; he leaves the odd letter if he is in disagreement with anything major–but in these weeks he feels as if he can walk the route blind. Knows which corridors cut the distance shorter; which hour finds the director and his assistant absent for luncheon; which drawer conceals that which he seeks.
And so, with the practiced ease of a ghost, once he has waited long enough beyond the wainscot to assure himself the chamber is empty, he slips inside, as he has done what feels like a hundred times before. Late afternoon light drapes itself across the dark oak furniture and paneling, spilling in thick amber bands that turn the bookcases–and their many well-thumbed books–desk and chairs into honey. It seems somewhat spartan compared to the manager’s offices–always providing themselves a certain imitation of the opulence they’re surrounded by–let alone some of the singer’s wards, but for that very reason he finds he prefers it.
Graceful, dust motes rise and drift in the beams like tiny sentinels, disturbed by the air he displaces. Mindful of the old floorboards, he carefully makes his way across to the desk, situated in front of the window. A pallid bust–Mozart, believes; a replica of the one that adorns the Opera’s façade–watches him from its perch upon the mantelpiece, blank marble gaze joined by the lifeless eyes of all the dull paintings, cradled in carved faux gold.
A faint pricking of conscience stirs when his hands begin their furtive work amongst the side-cabinets–as it has each time he has done this beforehand–but the sensation dissipates as his hands clear a small stack of bills, and grasp what he has grown to become familiar with in a drawer above its usual spot.
With a bit of shuffling, he draws a small brown notebook from the depths of the drawer. Its cover is battered at the corners, rubbed and smoothed by frequent handling; a familiar artifact he has held many times before. The ballet master keeps something similar, that too has been searched on the one occasion he’d managed to slip it out of the man’s coat, but in the end, it is this book that matters most; where final decisions take form, and where patrons’ whims and flatteries are sifted into something resembling decree.
Loosening the string that binds it, he withdraws to a chair set back from the window’s glare and begins his work. Like a scholar leafing through some sacred codex, he turns the pages and lets his eyes glide over the careful script, each entry an incision of judgment: ‘Mlle. Bouvier, footwork commendable, elegant; contender for Giselle,’ ‘perhaps Mme. Laurent for Dido’s lam-,’ the remainder of the word smudged into obscurity, ‘Mme. Lefevre recommended by M. Vicomte du Beaumont for…’ and so on. Page after page; tidy names, tidy roles, tidy futures carved into the paper.
But not yours.
Never yours.
Just as during his last visit, he finds no mention of you. Not a single note. Not even a half-considered phrase. And, worse, the only mention of the elusive ballet he’s managed to find is a scrawled ‘cygne’ near the bottom of one of the pages, splodges of ink below it as if someone had spent too long contemplating the word.
His hands grip the small notebook tighter as his frustration builds.
He knows you attend rehearsal–he still hears the bright cadence of your laughter and that of your companions cascading down the stairwell as the sun steals into the corridors, still catches, in weaker hours of his resolution, the ghost of unfamiliar melodies winding their way through the gloom. So, why does the page refuse you?
Why does the world of ink and decision not acknowledge what he already sees?
Surely, he thinks, riffling the pages forward and back with increasing urgency, he must have overlooked something. Perhaps the director has begun a new volume? Has he taken to keeping his notes with the ballet master? Or–though the very notion sets his teeth on edge– have you chosen not to apply for any roles at all?
Surely not.
He heard, saw, your excitement, plain as silk, all those nights ago. You would not hide yourself away from such a chance.
His eyes skip from patron’s title to patron’s title, and the sour thought finds him that perhaps favouritism is getting in the way. That, maybe, he must gently advise some of the troupe to stay home, if only to bring the ballet master’s, the director’s, eyes to you.
Then, small, near the top corner of a page, his eyes catch upon it.
‘Mlle L/N is performing incredibly well, no?’
And beneath, in a finer, lighter hand: ‘Agreed.’
His breath falters, and the exasperation weaving its way through his ribs is washed away with a sense of pride at the sight of it. It is not entirely his to claim, yet it feels like a triumph, nonetheless. Though a part of him chafes at such a scant mention–the cruel brevity of it compared to the notes lavished on lesser talents–it is silenced by simmering delight.
His fingers peel away from the notebook’s leather face, and, carefully, he reaches out. A gloved finger presses to the ink, tracing the loops and curves of your family’s name.
They see you. Not in the way he sees you, not even close, but they know. You have a chance, a strong one if this notation is anything to go by, and your acquisition of it without his assistance makes the success all the sweeter.
…yet, performance of which piece remains unseen.
He sighs to himself as his curiosity finds a way to nag at him again; the hum of the music, your music, buzzing in his ears. It whispers–tries to persuade him to take a different turn when he makes his way to his apartment, down to the endless walls of mirrors that make up the main practice room.
Unhurriedly, he pushes himself out of the chair, closing and re-tying its string with the same meticulousness in which he found it.
Perhaps, he thinks, his mind and heart would fare better if he stayed below, where-
-a sudden ripple of chatter cuts through his thoughts; far too close.
He freezes for a moment, cursing himself for losing his ear to the corridor. With a muted hiss of the leather, he shoved the notebook deep into a drawer, loose pages crinkling under the sudden force and wood thumping dully as it shuts. Already, the key scrapes in the lock; brass handle shifting, and-
“-ainly,” he inhales to calm himself as the muffled voice of the director reverberates on the other side of the wall; clipped and measured, even through the plaster. “Ah,” Gently, he shakes his head to himself, more reflex than thought, as he begins to retreat. “And what do you say of Mademoiselle Rousseau?” Now is certainly not a time for him to be seen. “Do you think she’d…?”
But, the second voice–drawled, faintly incredulous–halts Erik mid-step.
“What?” The ballet master. “En travesti?”
The pairing of them, voices circling possibility, possibility that touches the stage, touches you–despite himself, it snags him. Holds him.
“Yes,” replies the director.
Makes his eyes turn towards the thin fissure in the wall.
“Her movements need much more work.” The ballet master scoffs, lightly, a kind of dismissal in his voice that he’s sure has sent many ballerinas away sulking.
Makes him want to stay, if even for a second longer, to perhaps catch a breath of what is not written down.
The director steps into view, his angled face sharper in the sunlight. He bobs his head side to side, conceding the point but not surrendering as he mumbles, “true…” whilst dragging a hand through his already greying beard.
Erik’s gaze shifts left, “Who was your other choice?” spying the ballet master lingering, arms crossed, in the doorway.
The director’s eyes begin to drift across the same papers Erik rifled through minutes before. “Mademoiselle Deschamps.”
At once, his attention wanes. The same names, the same tired praise, repeated like a litany.
The ballet master exhales through his nose, almost satisfied. “A good one. Why not settle on her? She’s well seasoned.”
Repeated like a litany, and nothing to do with you.
A pause, the sound of paper being lifted, considered, squinted at in minor confusion, and set aside again. The man continues, still somewhat distracted with, “We are showcasing new talent with this, no?”
The words make Erik still. His pulse leaps, caught in his throat.
New talent.
The phrase trembles with promise, and he clings to it–
“True, true.”
–hungry, certain–
The thump of drawers opening imitates his heart; one-two-three, one-two-three.
“Ah, that reminds me.”
–as if it had been uttered for you alone.
“How are you for The Swan? Have you made a decision yet?”
Two words. One mention–enough to coil his stomach tight, enough to have the organ twisting like a dying thing, enough to drag him closer to the wall, pressing cheek and shoulder against the plaster as if proximity alone might pull the answer out faster.
The director falters, squints down at the disordered heap on his desk; still confused, still distracted. For a sickening beat, Erik wonders if he misplaced the notebook, if in his haste he tucked it into the wrong drawer, then–“yes,” murmured absently into the air, paired with the careless hum of a man who has no notion what his words are worth.
The air thickens, weighted with his anticipation.
Something.
Even the ballet master leans forward, silent encouragement etched in the angle of his body, urging the director onward.
Give him something.
The only answer they’re–he’s–given is the scrape of drawers and the shuffle of papers.
He has half the mind to whisper something into the air, a spectral suggestion hummed into the silence, but the ballet master fills it instead with an almost soundless, resigned exhale. “Do you still aim to print the shortlist by the end of the week?”
“Yes. Aha!” The director straightens, notebook raised aloft. “There it is.” He busies himself collecting the scattered documents, stacking them into some semblance of order. “I believe Monsieur Guérette would kill me if I didn’t.” He gathers them in his arms, rounding the desk and heading towards the door. “The costumers are already hounding me f-”
His words cut off with the final thump of the door as both men retreat, voices trailing into the corridor beyond.
Erik slumps back, spine striking the cold, damp wall. The Opera House trembles around him, noise, noise, noise, but in this hall, draped in shadow, he hears nothing but the hollow echo of his own breath.
It is more than he has found before–yet far, far less than he craves.
Almost an answer.
Almost confirmation.
And ‘almost’ gnaws at him worse than silence.
He drags a sigh through clenched teeth and forces himself down the hidden staircase, but his heart pounds restlessly, mind unmoored, every nerve itching for the sight, the sound, of you.
He does not listen, for the forbearing find their cure in noise; thunderous, drowning noise.
And so he lets the thrum of his organ devour him whole.
The chords crash like storm-surf, rattling the pipes as though a tempest had set Heaven’s rafters shaking. His fingers strike harder, faster, driving thought beneath the tide of sound; fugues knotted into furious counterpoint, progressions honed fierce enough to cut marrow from bone.
The cavern vibrates. The lake quivers. Still, the ache does not abate.
Every line he spins breaks, mutates, reforms into something silky. The storm falters. A melody slips through his fingers; something delicate, something almost tender.
Not his own, not meant to be crooned by his fingers.
He hammers the keys, hours of trying to wrench it into dissonance, but it resists. Returns. Blossoms.
And the walls sing it back to him.
His shoulders tremble as he bows over the keys, breaths trembling.
A walk, he decides. A walk, and the fresh air, will clear his mind.
Only does he return late at night, where the blue-white rib of the new moon hangs tall in the great expanse of night; a lone lamp lighting a long forgotten street, and glimmering gently on the calm waters of the Seine.
Paris is restless–as all cities, as all towns, as all buildings are, he supposes–even at night, and he finds the barest glint of the far-off stars has done nothing for him. His only temporary distraction was the vague shape of something being built across the waters; some great tower, taller than the Persian windcatchers, reaching higher than Apollo and his Lyre, as if it could pierce the blanket of night itself.
Interesting as it is, still not enough for his wandering mind, which has found itself in the dim passage that leads towards the practice rooms.
Patient men’s wills are pliable when it comes to woes of the heart, after all.
An excuse, that is what he wants. Some fragile warble of pain in your voice; a missed note from the piano–the wrong chords that you surely cannot dance to; a teacher’s rebuke, muttered harshly enough for him to seize upon, to twist into a counterpoint of praise whispered in silence.
But there is nothing.
He can almost–almost–convince himself that you have gone home for the eve for some much deserved rest, that he’d much rather be in his own apartment, if not for the slight tap, tap, tip-tap, of your shoes. Satin against the smooth flooring, dancing to no rhythm, no beat, but still as sure as the swan swims.
Still dancing, even if your pianist for the night has gone home.
He can’t fathom why they’d wish to miss your elegance.
It calms him; the sound of it. Like fingers of rain tapping against windows, against the roof of a house. Lets the knot in his chest unravel. Draws him in, and he wonders if it is how Icarus felt as he touched the sun.
You grow closer, huffs of breath–just how long have you been here?–slipping through the slats, uneven and faint. The honey-toned glow of the lamps bleeds faintly through the wall of mirrors, just enough to gild the dust that trembles in the air. It spills into his passage like a half-forbidden offering, warm against the damp stone.
The practice room emerges in fragments. A curtain cleaves it in two, sagging under its own weight and drooping in the middle as if too weary to uphold its division. Near him, on the darkened side, the piano slumbers beneath its cover, silent, awaiting a willing conspirator, and on the lit half–he supposes, he knows–you.
Carefully, he passes by it, towards the light, but flinches back when he catches the flit of an arabesque. It momentarily startles him awake; reminds him of his own vow that he cannot even hold together, reminds him that all good things come to those who wait.
Then, the veil of the dream falls again, and he yearns to peak Cupid.
But, Erik is a patient man, which is instead why his gaze flickers to the piano; glimpsing the ivory keys that wink at him in the low light. His hands itch for them.
You huff, annoyance in your breath, a pause in your noiseless twirl, before you begin again.
A middle ground; that’s what this can be. Something satisfactory for the both of you.
He slips through one of the mirrors, easily, silently, sliding it open.
He will not see you, and nor you, him.
Gently, he shifts the seat outwards, trying not to listen to his own heart pounding in his ears. The seat is well worn, plush of it barely a separation from the hard wood, but it will do. He shifts the drapery away, and lets his fingers hover, shaking, above the keys.
He should go–shouldn’t he? Should he play? That’s what he’s sat here to do, has he not?
He’s never been this close before. Always with the separation of walls, always with the distance of the stage. You are just beyond the curtain, close enough that, if not for the fabric, he could touch you. Let his fingertips graze tule, graze skin.
He clenches his fingers; a poor attempt to try to stop their quivering, to try to manage the warmth spreading through his body.
What should he play? Giselle’s pas de deux? Something from La Sylphide?
Or…perhaps…
His hands inch away for a moment, one of them coming to cradle the mask, cradle his face.
Fragments. That’s all he has.
His eyes dart towards the partition.
But, that is what he has been given his whole life, no?
The hand on his face tightens. He wishes it were yours.
Erik is a patient, patient, man–
–his hands fall back to the keys–
–and patient men do with what they have been given.
Quietly, he wishes he weren’t. A man can be greedy, once in his life, he hopes. Carrion crows, in all their preternatural nature, in their swooping and their cawing, still listen intently to the swan’s coo. Still yearn to know what it is like to float, so easily, on the mirrored sky.
He presses down upon the first note he recalls, fingers recoiling almost at once as your startled gasp rings through the room. Lesser so the beginning of a song, more an alert of his presence.
“Freja!” You breathe out, shock making your voice tremble, ending in a shaky chuckle. “I- I thought you were not in today.”
In the hush that follows, temptation tugs at him to speak, for he would hate this small, stolen moment to be attributed to anyone but him, yet the tap of your shoes silences the impulse.
The tap of your shoes, approaching the curtain.
“If you’re still sick, please do go home.” He can hear the grin, the weariness in your voice, and his feet find themselves ready to dash back to the mirrors. “I am quite fine without-”
Before you can finish, his hands fall to the keys once more, the chord catching you mid-step. He plays slowly, listening, searching, for the faintest hint of movement, but the sound never comes.
If he were to look behind him, he’d see your shadow; long and posed, filling his side of the room.
Dance.
The shadow draws back, growing smaller as you retreat to the light once more.
Please, dance.
He begins again, filling in what he does not know, and smiles to himself at the sound of you. Breaths light as feathered wings catching wind, falling perfectly in time with the piano. The whisper of your feet against the wood, legs weaving with the melody.
As his own breath trembles, he allows himself to wonder what you look like. To paint your face feverishly in his mind; are you smiling? Eyes closed as you let yourself be lost in the routine? Perhaps focused, brows furrowed, or features maybe loose with serenity.
He leans forward, hunched over the keys, as though the angle could bridge the distance between the image in his mind and the reality beyond the curtain. His hands dance across the notes, but it is your phantom gestures he sees; the curl of your fingers, the sweep of your arms, each step ghosting through his imagination.
It is such a soft song. Surely you must move gently, tenderly, too. Hands carving reverent shapes from the air, feet kissing the ground as if even the wood is unworthy.
And still, his heart writhes in his chest at the thought. Only so long without the sight of you, without the thought of you, and he is undone, reduced to this.
But, he thinks, is Lucifer not permitted his dreams of angels?
As the song unfolds, he loses certainty of where the original ends and where his own invention begins. Pride will not allow him to simply repeat the past chords, to draw you both into a loop, a never ending Ouroboros of almost climaxes–that, he will not disappoint you with. Instead, his hands continue to flit from key to key, same as a weaver who pulls the strings of their tapestry–deft hands moving if only to create shape, create colour–and makes a mimicry of the Affabile.
Dance.
He lets it ebb and swell, rising like breath, sinking like the hush between heartbeats. The melody dips low, tender as a lullaby, just as the original calls for, then flares again with limerence and grandeur.
Please, dance for me.
Vague, he feels the caress of your shadow–inky fingers drifting, feather light, over his shoulders–just as he reminds himself what he should be playing. It almost makes his hands halt on the keys all together, but, instead, he forces them to wane, drawing the final phrases out as if he could bask in them forever.
Still, eventually, his fingers still; trembling above the ivory just as they had before.
The last notes hang in the air, and, for a few short moments, the Opera House, the world, is silent around the two of you, and he hopes, if he were ever granted Heaven, that it sounded like this.
Then, the hush shifts, broken by your exhale–a surprised thing that is half laugh, half astonishment. It makes the tips of his fingers buzz, as if the last chords, as if your voice, had hidden itself there, beneath his skin.
“Freja,” you breathe into the silence, the syllables rippling outward and stirring the lamplight until it trembles. “Since when were you, ah…” A small laugh slips free as you lift one leg, shaking loose the ache coiled in the muscles of your calves and thighs. “What have you called it…frem-ragen-de?” The chuckle that follows is gentle, self-mocking, and the steady tap of your steps draws closer to the curtain. “I hadn’t realised you’d taken such a liking to impro-”
You are met with naught but absence. Only the faint smell of warmed wood, an empty chair neatly tucked away, and the piano veiled in its white cloth once more, untouched, as if no hands had ever woken it into song.
Behind the piano, your reflection smiles at you.
It is not something you speak of; merely a memory–a realised dream of an exhausted, half-asleep mind–that hangs heavy on your countenance, and, he fears, scares you from evening practice.
He does not make any more visits; he’s satiated, for now, his hunger for presence, but he does keep his eyes on the paper work of the director’s desk. On the scrawled notes in his notebook, and the gossip of the costumers. And for that, he knows that it has not curbed your ardour in the slightest.
Waterfowl never startle easily to the shadow of a mere corvid, afterall.
So, when the week finally meets its end, he does drift down, along with the other excited gaggles of girls and their mothers, to gaze upon what has been laid, like scripture, upon the walls. Between various updos, the dancers gathered–voices overlapping in laughter, in sighs, in quick gasps of triumph or disappointment–in a tight bunch, he spies it; the grand poster, the gospel of decisions, heavy and pasted tall.
His gaze scorches over it with the fever of expectancy, with built up impatience, scanning past titles, past the careless script of other girls’ futures, until-
-there. Your name. Looped and grand, paired with a dance that has been renamed, he supposes, to ‘The Dying Swan.’
What joy it is to watch you. To see the relief, the utter elation, cross over your features as you laugh in something akin to disbelief to your friends. Your hands jitter at your sides before you bring them upwards, unsure what to do with the exhilaration flooding through you.
His own twitch, a silent yearn to clasp them in his, and your friend, Ida, completes the action for him; bringing you into a tight embrace. Even with your head pressed into the nook of her neck, praise swarms you and, while some of it is weaved with jealousy, he’s sure, you deserve every word of it.
Your grin, caught between the slats of wood, burns itself into his mind, as if waxed stamped, and, even if Erik is a patient, patient, man, he allows himself not to leave such a thing untended to. He makes do lingering on the edges, as he always has, barely grazing the lace trim of your work; prying into the notes of those with power, catching the murmurs whispered between the corps de ballet, peering the set pieces as they’re passed from stagehand to stagehand to the storage rooms.
Something to satisfy him, yes, but also to be certain you remain where you belong; part intact, competence unchallenged.
And, just as the itch mounts, just as he begins to yearn for you and the rehearsal room’s piano once more, the day comes. Fit between the week’s performance of Faust–while a favourite, one he finds he cannot sit still for this time–and Les Huguenots, it settles upon the Opera House like a silken veil; calm, thin, and as if one snag would tear the mere idea of it apart.
The hum of the auditorium is different than that of the walls, the practice rooms and the wings.
Here, at the great thundering heart of it all, sound swells and blooms; patrons’ laughter rising and falling like distant bells, the clink of champagne flutes destined to be left half-drunk. It rolls through the red, velour seats and gilded balconies until it almost, almost, becomes a song in of itself.
Distantly, jewels and rings and promises glitter around him, shining like stars in the light of the chandelier–walls warm with expense, accented by the grinning cherubs and the halcyon blue of the false, painted sky; the limit for all dreams, here.
In the box to his right, a woman, and who he supposes is her husband, chatter endlessly in their drawling, nasal accents about something in the mountains, and a marriage ceremony that he’s found mildly entertaining to hear about. Though, it does nothing to distract him from his restlessness. Nothing truly can, he thinks. He knows it is only a few minutes until the calcium lights dim, can tell by the shifting of the musicians in the pit, but he still finds himself tapping his foot on the carpet beneath him.
He glances towards the programme–the title ‘Grief Endured, Farewells Whispered; a diverse eve’ stark against its dove white body–resting on the seat beside him, companion to the customary box of chocolates that he never eats. His hands reach for it, gloved fingertips grazing the thin paper as he flits through the pages. Titles parade before his eyes–‘Addio del passato’ from ‘La Traviata’, Beethoven’s ‘Ah! Perfido’, fragments of ‘Giselle’, the mournful ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’ from ‘Dido and Aeneas’, ‘La Sylph’–until the names blur into an index of farewells and lamentations. But, then, amid the sea of print, his gaze snags upon yours.
First on the programme.
A tremor courses through him–something akin to adrenaline–but, before he can think too long upon it, the auditorium around him begins to change. The warm glow dims; a hush sweeping the room, like a wind blowing out the candles in a house.
At once, his attention is shifted, leaflet set aside; watchfulness unwavering.
He is a patient man, and patience, he thinks as the heavy, carmine curtain spreads and rises, has never rewarded him more richly than this.
The piano starts mellow; just as he had remembered it. For a few moments, it is just the stage, a deep darkness, the yawning void of potential, and the music: loud as water hurrying through a riverbed, quiet as wind threading its fingers through the many arms of a willow.
Even surrounded by over a thousand–Paris’ pretentious donned in white bow ties and lace; fans fluttering like hummingbirds; temporary votaries worshiping at the altar of art–he feels, as the cello–how magnificent it sounds–laments, and you appear, that the two of you are the only ones in the world.
Your back is turned as you glide en pointe towards the centre of the stage, arms rising and falling in measured undulations as if controlled by the tide rather than will, your dress–a perfectly executed swathe of moon white feathers and opalescent sequins, as if you were a Schwanjungfrau caught halfway undressed–stark against the darkness. A star, luminescent, brought down from the sky above if only for a few burning, dazzling moments.
A ghost of the firmament; permitted for seconds to walk amongst men.
And, when you turn–chin lifted towards the painted cherubs, towards him–something in his chest twists. Knots.
You bend and dip, feet and arms stumbling, jolting, in something between control and disorder; brows furrowing as you do, almost as if you were in pain.
Genuine, palpable torment.
Not that of a wound in your side, something that tears and throbs as you move, but an old ache.
Slow, you sink towards the ground, not quite falling. Your head drops with the rest of you, face hidden in shadow with arms sweeping low.
Like a scar that still aches with a memory.
Just as fast as you fell, you rise again along with the cello.
Like sorrow–like grief.
Your arms–your wings–beat harder, before steadying themselves; sequins catching the light once more, shimmering like moonlight across water, like the burn of a candle flickering in a gust, as your body wavers.
An expression deep enough, etched onto your face with all the despair of Cain, that he only knew himself to wear.
You twist and turn, movements desperate, almost frantic, as if you were searching for something just beyond reach, or fleeing the drag of an unseen hand.
It is a strange, cruel thing to realise. To feel; to witness.
Your legs rise in a flurry of arabesques, head and gaze thrown towards a sky you cannot reach, cannot see, before gravity calls you back down.
To see himself–his own restless, grasping soul–in something so beautiful. Something so elegant, fine, soft as silk and murmured, sweet-nothings. Things of which he’s never had, never touched, never drowned himself in.
Gentle, you fold in on yourself, head bowed low, nestled between your outstretched arms like a prayer whispered too late.
He is no creature of grace and purity, destined to be mourned by kings and adored by crowds. He never was, never will be–born marred; a voice in the rafters, a shadow on the sill, doomed to watch splendour from afar.
You bring your head back up like it’s some great weight and hover your arms above you, bending and staring upwards once more in what he might call reverence. Then, with a sudden, aching urgency, you surge upwards. Your back to the audience now as the cello croons and the piano hums its sorrow; desperation in the way you reach and reach, arms stretched like a supplicant’s plea, and, for a fleeting second, he believes you might truly take flight. Ascend to the rafters, rise beyond the glares and the stares, beyond the fickle applause and sharper reprimands, beyond the reach of all hands.
Even the slightest comparison, and it feels almost wrong–is wrong; wrong the way smog blackens a spring sky, wrong the way oil sullies the surface of water–for, afterall, man’s hatred, a mother’s hatred, has made him a monster.
You turn back towards him, a laboured act, your arms drooping with exhaustion.
But it settles in his chest none the same.
Pain twists your face as you attempt another arabesque, only to falter–still en pointe, tap, tap, tapping, one-two-three, one-two-three–as if the very act of standing were agony. Your own body, own image, failing you.
He understands the title, now.
Your arms stretch outwards, seeking a support that never comes; a gust too weak to let you take flight.
He feels it–nestled in his heart, where it has always been, and sitting heavy in his gut; almost like fear, almost like longing. As if he stands at the bank of the river, unable to help, unable to dampen his feathers–powerless because he was not made for the great tumult of the current; barely made for the skies himself.
The piano cascades downwards beautifully–oh how beautifully–as you float down towards the floor, rising and falling, rising and falling, until at last, you lay your head to rest. Wings outretched, feathers drenched, weighted by your own being, as the tide of the river gradually ushers you away.
Something once admired, quickly out of sight, quickly out of mind.
As the audience roars, he finds tears falling down his face.