Chapter 13
I stared at the hand, panicked uncertainty flaring within me as I took in the highlights limning the black sheen of its leather glove.
It looked so real.
Real and tangible and whole and here and—
The Angel!
I looked past the gloved fingers, up the arm, to the figure they were attached to.
The Angel of Music was here. In my dressing room. With me now.
He’d come, just as I’d asked, just as he had for Father, taking form and appearing in person, and he was…magnificent. He was exactly as I’d imagined, imposing and radiant, powerful and divine. He was…
He was…tall.
I had the urge to laugh. It was such an absurdly prosaic observation, but a strange, otherworldly glow—was that Heaven’s light?—blazed behind him, illuminating his form even as it obscured his features, so that all I could sense was the size of him, and he was so very tall.
“Christine,” he murmured, and his voice…his voice…
It had never failed to enthrall me—so beguiling and hypnotic—but now, this close, this near, it was as much a physical presence as he was. I could feel the force of his syllables stir the air, as potent as a lover’s caress.
“You’re really here.”
He dipped his head, and I could see he wore a hat, a swooping fedora that masked his face. I wanted to bridge the span between us and cast it aside. To have him finally here and to still be unable to see all of him was maddening.
“Come with me,” he said, extending his hand.
It was a command. It was an offering. It was an instruction I could not possibly ignore.
I reached out, unaware that I’d made the decision to do so until I felt the press of leather around my fingers. I marveled at his hand’s weight, its warmth.
Nothing about any of this felt real. The Angel of Music could not possibly be here now, with his hand around mine, pulling me up and through my dressing room mirror.
But he was.
And he had.
And somehow, I had too, escaping the confines of the little room to…Where were we?
There was a long corridor, a tunnel of thick gray stone, lit by a lantern the Angel carried and the periodic glow of golden-candled sconces.
They swayed and flickered as we passed by, and that movement was magic, a miracle, proof that something wondrous was taking place and I was here to witness it.
I felt like Hagar or Elijah, Angela of Foligno or Francis of Assisi.
My Angel had taken physical form and revealed himself to me.
His figure caused flames to dance. His hand could wrap around mine with a tender pressure so exquisite I wanted to cry out.
But I didn’t dare. I didn’t want a single thing to obscure this astonishing encounter, even tears of joy.
I kept my gaze fixed upon him as he led me down the passage. Now so close, I could make out more of him: the heft of his fine wool cloak, the brush of dark hair at the nape of his neck.
He looks like a man.
It wasn’t how I’d pictured him—not exactly. I’d assumed all angels had wings, giant spans of radiant plumage, and an inner light so beatific and divine they’d shine no matter how bleak their surroundings. Had he taken on such a humble appearance to set me at ease?
Only once did I turn back to glance behind at the way we’d come.
I’d thought I’d heard someone shouting my name, but it was too far away to make out, and, truly, it didn’t matter. I was with my Angel. Who else warranted my attention?
We seemed to be in a hidden corridor, secreted between the walls of the opera. The flooring sloped, taking us deeper. It seemed impossible to believe we could still be within the Populaire. It seemed impossible to believe we could still be within the world as I’d ever known it.
“Where are we going?”
The air in the tunnel was hazy with candle smoke, creating a dreamy filter so thick that as I waved my free hand through it, I was certain I’d feel its tangible caress.
Sensing the motion, the Angel looked over his shoulder, and I caught a quick glimpse of one side of his face.
There was a flash of sharp jawline, a hint of a shadowed eye, the crook of his lips.
“Home.”
The word was so short I wasn’t sure I’d heard him speak, and I wondered if his voice was now inside my mind, engraving his words upon my thoughts. It felt as if our spirits and our voices had combined into one. I was him and he was me and, together, we were music.
On and on the passage went.
We turned left. We turned right. We went down so many stone staircases I lost track of them all. I caught glimpses of other tunnels, with tall bricked archways, leading off into corridors as dark as night.
Down, down, down we continued.
Water trickled from the granite walls, and the air grew damp. I tried to stop my trembling, but the thin silk of my robe was no match against the subterranean chill.
Still, we descended.
A thousand questions filled me, welling up like water from a spring, but it felt wrong to voice any of them. The atmosphere was thick and unbreakable, like the quietude of a sanctuary.
But that didn’t stop the Angel from singing to himself as he guided me. His soaring baritone rang off the walls and echoed throughout the labyrinthian network until it seemed as if an entire chorus was with us.
His melody swelled inside me, unfurling in my heart like the opening of a peony, unlike anything I’d ever heard or felt before.
The questions and doubts I’d worried over grew small and unimportant.
I followed after his dark form without qualm.
I was so transfixed by the power of his voice, I would have blindly followed him straight over the edge of a cliff.
When he finally came to a stop, we stood at a wooden dock.
I had a vague memory of how an underground lake came to be beneath the opera.
When construction first began, it was discovered that the site was too marshy, thoroughly saturated with rising groundwater and spill-off from the Seine.
After attempts to pump away the excess water failed, the architect had instead built a double-walled cistern to form a lake.
Standing before it now, with the Angel, made my breath catch.
The water was still, and shrouded with a thick layer of swirling mist. A series of colonnaded archways rose in the distance, and it was all too easy to imagine getting lost in their number.
At the dock’s end was a long, low-profiled gondola. It was a beautiful vessel, with filigreed curls carved along the bow. The black wood shone with a quiet luster in the lantern’s glow.
The Angel turned to me, his face still hidden beneath the sweep of his fedora’s brim.
“Come,” he said, before setting the lantern on a hook at the front of the boat.
He stepped down into it then turned to help me.
The gondola swayed as I entered, and I grabbed the Angel to steady myself.
I could just make out the glint of his eyes meeting mine before he shifted, seating me on the little bench near the bow and swiping up a long pole that had been stored within the boat.
With a great push, we were off.
The Angel navigated us through the tunnels, past enormous arched niches filled with winged statues and clusters of candles.
They were everywhere, even rising out of the water on towering wrought-iron structures as we approached.
They sparked to impossible life with flares of flame and sulfur as their wicks hit the air.
More and more of the candelabras grew from the water, with decorative muses and feathered sphinxes holding the tapers aloft.
The light was golden and quivering, a dance of heat waves and fluttering smoke.
The Angel’s song continued, growing with a pulsing splendor I found myself wanting to be a part of. “Sing with me,” he invited, as if overhearing my thoughts.
“I don’t know the words,” I admitted, feeling foolish. The music was just on the edge of familiarity, but each time the refrain began to resolve into something I felt I recognized, the Angel would alter it, changing the line’s tempo or its key.
“You don’t need them. Sing.”
“But—”
“Sing, Christine,” he pleaded.
I wanted to. I felt pulled by a strange compulsion to do anything he asked of me, but something about this song felt…dangerous. It was too big, too easy to lose oneself in. I had the unreasonable fear that should our voices blend together, it would be like tossing embers on a pile of kindling.
Both of us would be set ablaze.
“It’s there, inside you,” he promised. “Just let it out, Christine. Let everything out. Sing. Sing for me.”
I parted my lips, ready to protest, but a series of notes poured out instead. They wavered, trying to find the right complement to the Angel’s, before striking the perfect tone.
It was just as I feared.
It was greater than I could have imagined.
Our voices collided, igniting an explosion of fireworks. It was as if a bomb had gone off. The aftershocks left me reeling.
Together, we swooped along the melody, our notes entwined in a sinuous embrace. He coaxed the music from me, drew it out of blood and marrow, pulling it from parts of me so deep I’d never even known they’d existed.
But he had.
I felt laid bare and exposed. I could not have been more seen had I stood before him stripped naked, clothed in nothing but awestruck reverence.
He saw me. He saw all of me.
Every yearning, every impulse. Each soaring joy, each sorrowful regret and smoldering shame.
He saw my hidden secrets, my darkest desires.
I had no doubt that he saw things in me that even I was unaware of, dreams and wishes hoped for in the deepest recesses of my soul.
He saw every fiber, every flexing muscle, every straining sinew.
The beat of my heart. The racing of my blood.
I leaned toward him, wondering what things I could uncover there in his shadow.
But I suddenly lurched backward, my equilibrium thrown to chaos, as the skiff met shore. He grabbed my hand, saving me from falling.
I turned to look behind me and caught my first glimpse of…
I squinted, unable to make sense of anything I saw. There were too many candles; there was too much smoke. But then I saw the pipes. They spanned an entire wall, tallest at its center, then receding as they trailed toward the corners.
It was an organ.
And there, in one of the far niches, a grand piano, so sleek and black it looked as if it were made out of the night itself.
There were other instruments too. A cello, a bass, and a beautiful violin, resting on a marbled plinth like a prized statue.
There were brass horns and woodwinds of all sizes.
Some were familiar. Others looked like alien creatures pulled out of the deepest depths of the sea.
The Angel helped me from the boat, and I entered his domain, too awestruck to ask for permission, too enchanted to wait for a tour.
One table was heavy-laden with architectural renderings and schematics.
Rolled tubes of paper littered the floor beneath it.
Tiny models of arches and towers held open a ground plan.
Its blue lines were too complicated for me to decipher, but I traced my finger over one of the models, a small version of the opera’s facade.
There were other things littering the space too, strange mechanical pieces I did not understand. Cogs and wheels, tools and scrap metal. Springs and spools of wires, bits of fabric, coils of rope. Packets of ribbon, lengths of thread.
He was using them to build…I didn’t know what to call them.
They looked like the dress-form dummies filling the wardrobe department, but instead of structured muslin and horsehair, these figures were wood and metal, like the inner workings of a clock.
Disembodied hands flexed fingers in hypnotic patterns and a pair of pointe shoes pirouetted round and round without an attached dancer.
Automatons!
The word bloomed in my mind, though I was certain I’d never heard it before.
One of their ilk sat on a papier-maché box, looking more finished than the rest of its brethren.
It was a monkey, with tufted hair and a jewel-toned vest. He held a pair of brass cymbals, and I wondered if there was some sort of switch that would make him play.
As I looked, his eyes seemed to catch mine, and, for just a second, I thought he winked at me.
And then there was the music…
Stacked sheets rested along every open surface. There were shelves of scores. Some had been printed and properly bound, but most looked handmade, compositions still being worked on. There were dozens of them, hundreds, maybe thousands.
The space reminded me of a dragon’s lair, but instead of mountains of pilfered gold, my Angel hoarded his creations.
It was the most wondrous thing I’d ever seen.
Standing at its center, surrounded by such genius, was exhilarating.
My hands twitched, drawn by an immediate compulsion to create something myself.
My throat flexed, wanting to sing through every sheet of music I saw, ready to make my mark on each melody.
I’d never felt such a power before. I wanted to take everything I knew the Angel had seen in me and turn it into art.
Masterpieces hungered to escape me. Whole worlds were ready to be composed and crafted.
I turned, eager to work, and caught the Angel as he removed his cloak, revealing a solid, muscular frame in a beautifully appointed suit. His back was to me as he took off the fedora, setting it aside with the cloak on a tufted chaise.
His fingers clenched its velvet back, as if steadying himself, before he turned to me.
I let out a soft sound of confusion.
For there, instead of the handsome features I’d spent so much time dreaming up, was the hard and unyielding plane of a white mask.