After putting up my procured groceries and stacking Sorcha’s dishes away where they belonged, I decided to attempt sleep again. Returning to my room and locking my door, I still didn’t feel comfortable removing my mask with another person in the house. That mistake was one I did not intend to make again in a hurry. So, I dressed for bed with it still on, resigning myself to a night sleeping on my side.
I actually turned out my lights and slid between black sheets before I admitted to myself there would be no sleep for me tonight. Too many strange occurrences, too many strange feelings, just too much strangeness in general and about Sorcha in specific for me to get any rest. As if I have any right too complain about strange. I have half a face, a house by a lake UNDER the opera and make my living by being presumed dead. No nothing strange here.
But, there was still some shine in Sorcha’s eyes that spoke volumes to me. In the few hours since I had first sighted her in the foyer, her every action had been a contradiction, either of accepted behavior for an adult woman or of how I expected her to act. And in a few of those already precious to me moments, I had spotted secrets and pain beneath her shining exterior that seemed far too familiar.
But, what had she to feel pain about? She is kind, beautiful, enchanting even….I shook my head, violently and sat up. Stop Erik, that way madness lies. But still, I could not get a picture of us, walking leisurely, hand-in-hand out of my head.
With some difficulty, I convinced myself it was only her friendship I was picturing, nothing more, and lay back down to force myself to sleep. I tried thinking of the coming opera season; I tried thinking of more trouble to cause with the managers, and which ballet rat I would ‘sponsor’ to first spot this year. I even tried thinking of my lasso snapping tight around that nasty Mimi’s neck, a vision that always inspired a dark chuckle. The only thing I did not think on was Madeline, having long since trained myself not to dwell on that particular pain in the dark watches of the night.
But, images of Sorchs invaded each safe thought, and finally, I snarled to the darkness, my oldest and most trusted friend, “Fine, I will let myself think on her, then!”
I rose from the bed and sightlessly retrieved my dressing gown from the chair, shrugging into the garment as I made for my door and my music room. If I were going to think, I was going to do it musically.
But, when the scant candles I needed were alight and the great organ there before me, no thought or music came. For once, no melody of mine or any other’s rang through my head, and I wanted to lay my head on the keys in despair.
But, then I realized, there was a song. It was so simple, it had lost itself in my mind, which usually played vast symphonies on epic scales. Simple and old and beautiful, and my fingers absently picked it out on the keys….
Alas my love, you do me wrong to cast me out discourteously…
And, I remembered we had a music lesson in the morning. We had a music lesson and it needed planning! Suddenly, my own lack of sleep seemed to no longer matter, and my flagging energy was instantly raised. I had a whole week of music lessons to plan, and I had best get started. If I was to impart any musical skill into a totally untrained singer in a week, I needed a very thorough and exhaustive set of working exercises.
I began by pacing about the room, grabbing this text here and that libretto there, arranging them in neat stacks near my organ. Soon I had a tidy and growing pile of practice scales, texts on technique and beginners solos and arias gathered atop the great instrument. I was feeling accomplished until I looked at the organ itself. That instrument was too powerful for even Sorcha’s street-strengthened voice. So, I began my orbit of the room once again, gazing on the lower shelves and mentally dismissing each instrument there as too harsh, too awkward to teach with or too unlike her own voice.
I paused a long time at the violin, but it is one of my particular favorites, and I dismissed it as well. I had no desire to play my favored instrument along with a singer of untrained talent. When she had received benefit from my tutelage, perhaps I would accompany her as she sang, but not now. Finally, I settled on the tenor flute, a rarer instrument, but close in timbre and tone to Sorcha’s voice, and something I could play a note on as I moved around the music room.
With materials gathered, I settled at the bench again to work out the first day’s lesson in detail. She had guessed well in the little training she had given herself, but still had a number of major flaws in her technique. Today, for it was today as I could hear from slight noises coming from above, we would work on posture, breathing, volume control and production of tone. For her, it would be a very boring and repetitive day. For me, it would be most exciting; because we would be uncovering her true voice, and I would know for certain what material I had from which to sculpt this singer.
From the whispers and movements I could catch sound of from my listening tubes, I knew it was morning at the Opera, though I was unused to being up and about at this hour of the day. There is little enough haunting to be done in the terror-dispelling light of a bright, warm morning, even in the bowels of the opera. As I am well known for my later night jaunts and movements, and am very much a creature of the night, I tend to sleep in. It was a great shock, then, when I heard the sound of running water from the next room, again.
Sitting at the organ in my nightclothes, I felt like hitting myself on the head. Of course she gets up early; she’s been living in a tent. She probably wakes with the dawn, ready to move on. It seems a good thing that I was sleepless last night, aside from the preparations I’ve made for our lessons. I had foolishly assumed I’d have been the first one to wake, and waiting for her to emerge. Instead, it seems a little careful manipulation of our two natural schedules was in order, that they might more closely merge.
At the moment, however, I needed to change into something more suitable for the Phantom and I fled back to my room. I donned my usual evening-wear for the morning, splashed cool, soothing water on my face, nervous to be without the mask for even those few minutes, and returned to the music room as refreshed as I could be without having slept.
Rather than be idle as I waited for her, I decided to play one of my own compositions on the organ to pass the time. On a whim, I flipped open a few listening tubes at random, accomplishing both the practice and a bit of ‘haunting’ out of my own morning practice. At a pause between the movements, I could hear suitably frightened whispers from a few of the tubes. I closed them again, wanting to avoid becoming a ‘common’ occurrence.
It took Sorcha much longer than I would have thought to accomplish her morning toilette and I had almost finished the whole piece when she came in. I was so caught up in the cascading notes, interweaving harmonies and drastic key changes, that I almost missed her soft step when she came in. She paused at the doorway, however, likely taken aback by the sight of me in full grip of the powerful instrument. I wound the concert down to an impromptu ending and steeled myself for the sight of her in the doorway. I was sure, wearing Madeline’s clothing and standing where she once stood, the image would be too close to my past to bear as the present.
But, when I turned, I was relieved. She was wearing Madeline’s clothes, yes, but she had given them her own flair, with a scarf at the waist and the blouse unbuttoned over a lacy undershirt. There was no flash of recognition or pain in my heart, and It made me glad. And then she smiled and made me gladder, still.
“Good morning. Am I going to be singing that?” she asked.
“Hardly,” I chuckled. “Maybe if I had hold of you for a few months, but not in a week. Did you sleep well?”
“Like the dead. And waking, I felt like the dead, as well.” She smirked. “I kind of look like it too. My ribs are the most interesting shade of corpse purple….” Her hand strayed to her side, tentatively.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “How do you feel now? Better after your shower, I hope?”
A look of worry changed her features, and I saw a hint of that shadow again. “How did you…” She refused to finish the question.
I gestured at the wall to her room. “Organ pipes aren’t the only ones running through that wall. I was here, planning our first lesson when the water started. You do feel better, don’t you?” I found myself surprised to be genuinely concerned about her.
The wariness receded some, but not all the way, and I wondered what happened since I last left her to cause this slight withdrawing in her. She must have seen you checking on her last night! I was instantly flooded by guilt. “Yes, I feel much better now, and I used the serum you gave me, like you said.”
Though I felt bad for my prying, I insisted to myself it had been necessary, and I had not actually seen her, just listened for her breathing, like a parent might check on a child. And then, the feelings and excuses melted away in the onrushing of a familiar feeling, one of superiority mixed with eagerness, and soon I knew to be mixed with frustration. Though I was still in my usual mask, a different one replaced it, invisibly. The one of Maestro.
“Excellent,” I smiled, slightly predatory and standing. I brought the flute with me as I approached where she was standing, and passed her, so she would turn around and look at me, and hence the mirrors, reflecting herself. “Then, let’s begin. Sing this note.”