Page 36 of Angel's Kiss
“Do you have witch hazel?” Christine asked.
“Hamamelis mollis. In the middle.”
Christine rolled her eyes. “Pretentious.” She moistened her rag with the ointment and carefully dabbed it on Erik’s cheek. “I’m sorry, by the way,” Christine said, voice as gentle as her touch. “Even if this wasn’t my fault – and it was – I’m sorry you were hurt on my account. I don’t want to cause you pain.”
Erik stared at her as she withdrew her hand, uncomprehending. How was she possible? How could she do this? How could a face as perfect and beautiful as hers hold such concern as she looked upon the monstrousness of his?
“I keep telling you, I’m used to it,” he said, the words fleeing his mouth before he could stop them. Perhaps brandy was a bad combination with blood loss.
“You said you were born like this, but if these are scars...” Christine began haltingly, tracing one long line at the edge of his face with the lightest touch. It still made Erik shudder and retreat on instinct, and Christine’s brow furrowed. “Erik—”
“You asked about the song,” Erik said, looking down and away so that his hair fell in his face, shielding him from her eyes. “I learned it from my mother. She was born in Ireland.”
He heard Christine’s sharp intake of breath. He wanted more brandy but didn’t want to move again.
“She had been broken by the cruelty of the world already when I was born, this grotesque thing she had never asked for,” Erik went on, voice unsteady. “She would go in and out of madness. One day she would be wild and violent, the next week she would not leave her bed. She called me a changeling, sometimes, when her mind was afire. She would say the fairies had taken her real son and replaced him with the withered corpse of one of their own. She’d scream at me and shake me, demanding I reveal my true nature. She hated my face and she—” Erik stopped, the pain and horror of the memory choking his lungs and stealing his voice.
To his amazement, Christine grasped his hand. “What did she do?” she asked gently. And like magic, her voice gave him comfort and the touch of her hand did not sting. Erik took an unsteady breath.
“She’d claw at me and strike me. And once...she tried to cut it off. My face.” He dared to look up into Christine’s eyes and was still amazed at the depth of pity he saw there.
“Oh, Erik.”
“It’s strange, really. I was the one that drove her mad, and yet I was the only one who could calm her when she was at her worst. Or get her to move when she wouldn’t come out of her room. She loved music, you see. She’d sing to herself. She had a beautiful voice, even when she was weeping. It’s one of the first things I remember.” In his mind, Erik could hear it still. “There were three ravens sitting on a tree, with a down, a down, hey down, hey down,” he sang barely above a whisper.
“When I realized I could sing too, I’d sing to her. It was like magic. She’d come back alive or calm down. I’ve always wondered if she was right. Perhaps I am some otherworldly thing...” Erik shook his head as Christine squeezed his hand. There was moisture on his face that was not blood.
“Sometimes I didn’t want to sing to her,” Erik went on. “I didn’t think she deserved to be brought back, after what she’d done. But the maid who cared for us would make me. She left marks too. And at night I’d sing to myself too. I’d sing myself to sleep in the dark, old songs of my mother’s home that I’d never seen. I loved them, because for all her madness and cruelty, I loved her.”
Christine’s thumb glided over the back of Erik’s hand in an unfamiliar, soothing gesture that made him shudder. He tried to push away the memories, but they crowded around him like ghosts.
“When I was small, I’d sneak out of our house. I wasn’t allowed past our gate or into the village, but I wanted to be free, even then,” he said wistfully, surrendering to the impulse to simply tell Christine everything. “I’d go to the church and hide outside. I knew it was where people went to find God. And I heard the music of the organ and the choir and I remembered of how my voice could soothe my mother and save me, and I was sure that the musicwasGod. It was so beautiful, and even a monster such as I could share in it.”
“That’s beautiful,” Christine said. Still holding his fingers with one hand, her other hand found his wrist, and he shook again, from the touch and from another shadow of the past.
“Years later, in the worst place in the world, chained and tortured, music saved me again.” The feel of shackles in his memory was overcome by the tender pressure of Christine’s fingertips on the marks from long ago.
“These are scars. Your skin...” Christine gasped and looked up, not at his face, but at his half-bared chest. She pushed back his ruined shirt to reveal the old burns that radiated from his shoulder and mingled with narrow scars far longer than the one he’d have from today’s adventure. Her fingertips grazed the ruined skin, and the heat was searing. Erik startled back again as Christine’s eyes widened in understanding.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, not sure what he was apologizing for.
“Is this why you’re afraid of me touching you?” Christine asked instead, horror and pity in her voice. “You have only ever been hurt? No one has ever touched you with kindness?”
“No one who has lived to tell of it,” Erik replied. He did not know if it was the brandy or the pain or the warmth or her closeness had loosened his tongue so disastrously. She did not seem terrified though, only sad.
“Erik, if I ever made you think I’d hurt you; or if I did hurt you, I’m sorry.”
Erik’s mind flashed to the awful sight of her raised hands and the feel of her fists on his shoulder the last time she had seen him unmasked in this room. “I deserved it.”
“No, you—” Christine bit her lip, her hand still hovering above his chest, so warm he could still feel it. “I’m still sorry.”
“I’ve learned to expect pain from...other people,” Erik said, keeping his eyes on Christine’s extraordinary face.
“If it is something you have learned, can it not be unlearned?” Christine asked carefully.
Erik cocked his head, unintentionally revealing more of his face to the light and her observance. “What?”
“Could you not learn to be...touched with tenderness?” Erik stared at her, unable to understand. “With the right teacher.” With those words, she cautiously laid her hand upon his scarred flesh.
