Page 23 of Our Strange Duet

I heard a sharp intake of air. “Oh, Christine. I could never.”

My fingers fluttered uselessly over the glass. I wanted it to be him that I could reach out to and touch. I wanted to run my hands along his feathered wings, to see his divine beauty, to revel in his majesty. I was tired of heated conversations played out in empty rooms. I wanted him here. With me.

“Will I ever see you? Someday?”

“See me?” he echoed, sounding bewildered.

“Father said that when you came, you appeared before him,” I persisted. “He said he saw you and that you touched him. Held his hands.” My own hands strayed to my throat, running along its length to the hollow of its base.

He sighed, and I swore I felt strands of my hair shift, dancing in his breath.

“This is something you truly want? You’re asking this of me?”

“I have no right to ask for anything. You’ve already given me so much. Too much. But I…yes. I so very badly want to see you. I’ve pictured you in my mind so many times. I’ve imagined how beautiful you must be, and—”

I never got to finish my sentence.

The Angel of Music let out a sharp cry, as if in pain, and was gone.

Chapter 8

As I ground the tip of my toe shoe in the box of rosin just off stage left, a severed head flew through the air and struck me in the chest.

From the next wing over, Franz Schäfer, the props master, let out a long string of curses.

One of the répétiteurs hissed at him to be silent, but Franz wouldn’t concede. “That vile woman is doing it on purpose!” he declared to anyone who would listen. “The head is supposed to be thrown into stage right three. Yesterday, she threw it into two. Now where is it?”

“I have it,” I volunteered from the fourth wing, holding the macabre prop with loose fingers. It was made of burlap, wax, and trailing red ribbons, and was realistic enough that I felt queasy simply looking at it.

Franz hurried over and snatched the head from me as, onstage, Carlotta finished a long, extravagant cadenza. He winced. “God in Heaven, what was Lefèvre thinking?” He turned to go, but I grabbed at the back of his suspenders, waylaying him.

“Elephant,” I warned as the enormous plaster beast came barreling down from its storage bay.

It took four stagehands to ready the creature for its upstage entrance, and another two to operate the mechanisms from inside its torso. The slender men stretched their arms back and forth before climbing in. I was amused to see their ears had been stuffed with wads of cotton.

Elissa was not Carlotta’s best role.

It was the final dress for this season’s gala performance, and if the first act was any indication, opening night would be a resounding success.

Already, Ubaldo had been late for his first entrance, wearing the wrong costume, with his helmet on backward. Carlotta’s wig—a towering confection of twisting russet braids and a bejeweled crown—had gone missing, and the substitute refused to stay in place. During an earlier scene, it had fallen off and been snatched up by one of the Carthage army’s stallions. The animal’s handler had to drag the horse offstage as it pranced and bucked, trying to keep its prize.

A wave of choristers rushed on now, carrying wooden swords and long-poled candelabras.

“With feasting and dancing and song, tonight in celebration,” the women sang, filling the stage with a wall of sound so loud I could feel the vibrations along my sternum.

Meg and another dancer joined me in the wings, readying for our entrance. In this opera, the corps were captured slaves, clad in chained bracelets and swinging skirts of red, green, and gold cording.

“Where’s Lisette?” I whispered to Meg as I noticed Sophie with her.

Meg poked her feet into the rosin box and did a quick rise en pointe, testing the friction. “Gone.”

“What do you mean?” She’d been at rehearsal just last night. “Injury?”

Sophie stepped in as a group of supers made their way onstage, carrying treasure chests full of shining paste gems. “Quit. Her new beau didn’t fancy her showing off all”—she looked at our scandalously low corsets and the length of our exposed legs—“this every night. She’d thought he was joking, but then her station was cleared out this morning.”

“That’s terrible,” I gasped.

“That’s life,” Sophie said unsympathetically. “At least she got a proposal out of it.” She fixed a reflexive smile on as our entrance music began.