Page 36 of Our Strange Duet

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.