Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology

by Anika Arrington

  The first instance of Meg’s discovery that her mother’s preferred physician was none other than the Opera Ghost himself set the young woman into a fit of stubbornness nearly equal to that of Mme. Giry. For once, the familial resemblance was acute as the young lady refused the patient her cure of dubious origin. Instead, she called upon the company’s physician, in order to save her mother from the aid of the fiend.

  Too many years in the ballet corps, succored on tales of the Phantom, Meg saw not a kind physician but a madman. Even so, after five days of watching helplessly as her mother’s condition deteriorated at a new incredible rate under the doctor’s ineffective care, she capitulated.

  Luckily, re-introducing the phantom’s cure halted further degeneration, and Meg found herself free to concentrate on her duty to the dance corps.

  The Phantom’s latest was a smash hit. The papers swooned, the audiences wept with awe, and there were no empty seats—save for Box Five.

  A modern piece, the tale followed the tumultuous relationship of a boy and his father, a toymaker who turned to his craft when he couldn’t bend his son to his ambitious visions. Resplendent in effects wrought by new scenery and props lovingly rendered, the story brought to life the toymaker’s magical workshop.

  In spite of its novelty, some were not entranced with the Phantom’s latest work. One critic called to question the whole production, unique and heavily mechanized as it was:

  “While undoubtedly a solid performance, the company of the Palais Garnier Opera must temper their ambitions if they are to expect audiences to believe their fantastical undertakings are the genuine article. One comes expecting Art and finds a Circus, chicanery of the worst sort. I half expect we’ll see the bearded lady in their next performance.

  “The singing was fair to excellent, however.”

  Armand could not care less about the artistic merits of the production. A businessman first and theatre manager second, he could have laughed at the highbrow criticism they received were it not for the potential chilling effect it could have on ticket sales. “There ought to be laws against this. Libel and slander,” he paced the office while Firmin chuckled, rather inappropriately, over the harsh review.

  “Chicanery,” Firmin snapped his fingers, “Bah. Someone probably paid him off to say that—just jealousy.”

  “Jealousy or not, this mechanical mayhem is driving me mad,” Armand interjected, “All I hear from the staff is how deucedly hard this stuff is to work with—”

  “I’ve heard no complaints.”

  “Yes, well, they’ve filled my ear,” Armand grumbled. “ ‘The clockwork ballet is making my dancers look sloppy.’ ‘The props need winding and oiling.’ ” he did a fair imitation of each complainant.

  “They’re just lazy,” Firmin waved the concerns away. “‘Course some of these things need maintenance; of course M. Munier’s corps looks sloppy—they are. Even that Giry girl. How many times has she been passed over for prima?”

  “So you side with the ghost?”

  “I’m not saying that—”

  “But you do—”

  “I’m not saying that, Armand. Though I find it interesting that the staff seems only to complain to you.”

  The heated debate raised both tempers and voices, the final exchange leaving the two men in discomforted silence.

  Firmin bent his head and began scribbling upon a piece of stationary.

  “What is this then?” Armand cocked his head, glancing uneasily at his partner.

  “Tendering my resignation as I’ve just discovered we’ve a shocking redundancy of management around here,” Firmin was brusque in his reply. With a final flourish he handed off the crisp sheet to his partner then donned his coat, “Good day to you, sir.” He left the room.

  Armand glanced down the page, eyes widening for a brief instant before he mastered himself. “‘Suppose I’d better go after the fool,” he muttered under his breath, donning coat and hat and scurrying after his fellow manager.

  The managers made their peace, though it was a shaky one, and the company suffered for it. If Firmin said white, you could count upon Armand to say black. M. Richard’s instruction that they double the number of Saturday performances would result in M. Monchamin cutting all Sunday matinees. Everything from the length of intermission to the speed at which the orchestra should play was suddenly a bone of contention.

  “I knew, I knew those two would be a bad idea. I said it from the first,” Mme. Giry was heard to gripe to the prop master.

  “There were co-managers before Mm. Richard and Monchamin,” had been the counterargument.

  “Yes. But them, I liked,” Giry had sniffed haughtily. Then, she tottered off to find a more receptive audience for her gossip.

  As the Great Managerial Row raged on, much of the old company’s scenery was stripped away, ushering in a new era of rich, complicated designs that complemented the ghost’s latest operatic brainchild. Dioramas and engineering designs for a new configuration of stage trap doors and secret compartments were delivered and adopted (with contention, of course).

  What is more, in the midst of the harried readying of a new set, stage, and score, the phantom found no small bit of time to inquire as to Madame Giry’s health via his intermediary, Meg. Hurrying down the hall on one of her never-ending errands for her mother, Meg unconsciously placed her hand upon her breast, her thoughts caught up on a different sort of thrill.

  Her cheeks flushed, she bowed her head, feeling as though every eye were upon her. If they knew what she carried over her heart, beneath her bodice . . . She blushed anew, trying valiantly to ignore the letter concealed upon her person, a note penned to her in the Opera Ghost’s distinct hand and delivered alongside her mother’s latest dose of medicine.

  All young women are fools at one time or another, and Meg was no exception. The ghost’s kindness to her mother forced her to admit, at last, that perhaps Mme. Daae hadn’t been wrong about the mysterious, though temperamental, benefactor.

  The opera ghost’s latest production followed the life of an engineering prodigy, called upon to build a new manufacturing facility for two merchants. The plot outlined the commissioning, building, and subsequent betrayal of the artist by his benefactors who, in the end, turn on their architect, throwing him from the smokestack of the newly-built warehouse. The story ended with the triumphant return of the hero who, by luck, falls not to his death but into the river that flowed alongside the building, his machines rising up in his defense to turn on their masters.

  To perfect his vision, the opera ghost delivered additional dance corps members and “extras” to supplement the cast, clockwork creations that far outstripped their predecessors in that an operator could remotely control them from behind the curtain.

  Wild with delight over this gimmick, sure they would attract yet another sold-out run, Messrs. Richard and Monchamin pointedly ignored the covert threat being leveled their way by the storyline, especially once a hushed consultation with Madame Giry revealed the phantom’s opera to be more autobiographical of events before he settled in Paris. Though, with what followed, perhaps the managers should have been worried.

  A small cluster of ballerinas stood at the end of the hall, not daring to pass, watching in suspense as M. Munier and M. Armand argued not forty paces away, the former gesticulating wildly, his face red and dangerously apoplectic. Rehearsal had, once again, been delayed by a mechanicorps gone missing. But this time, nobody yet had managed to find said machine.

  Whilst the ballet chorus tittered in their dressing room, stagehands had searched high and low for the missing “cast member.” They discovered one of the control panels in a storage room, the device crackling with life and seemingly abandoned in haste, judging from its overturned state upon the ground. It sent M. Munier over the brink at last.

  Bunned heads swiveled in unison, a movement that would have pleased their teacher had he noted it, the girls gawked as a newcomer puffed down the hallway in haste. The portly stagehand
hailed the two arguing gentlemen with an apologetic shake of his head. Though they still huddled at the far end of the corridor, the young ladies could hear the news relatively easily: the missing mechanicorps had been located.

  And it appeared that the timely discovery of its control device had averted true disaster, for the errant machine was found in one of the subbasements; most particularly, in the room selected for installation of the new electrical controls for the theatre. Tangled in exposed wiring, the machine’s methodical sabotage had apparently been arrested by the severing of the signal, saving more than just the better part of a month’s work.

  A curious Meg Giry now joined her fellow dancers, having used the delay in rehearsal to minister to her mother. True to form, she was quickly caught up on the news, the excitable girls adding rapturous and dramatic assessments of the danger they’d narrowly avoided. With a frown, Meg took in the girls’ disordered description of events, wondering how close they were to the mark—a seventeen-story honeycomb of a building riddled with gas piping was not the place to spark an electrical fire.

  Oh, Erik, please tell me you had nothing to do with this, she pleaded inwardly, her mind’s eye picturing two glittering eyes and a wicked smile that gleamed in the dark.

  The curtain fell on the first act, and soot-faced industrials exited the stage, transforming immediately into the fresh-faced young ballerinas they actually were.

  “This blasted ash is ruining my complexion,” little Brigitte complained, espying herself in a mirror.

  “It’s not ash, it’s stagepaint,” Meg chided, “And the whole thing’s rather brilliant.”

  “Yeah, if you’re a smokestack-worshiping roast beef. I hear they’re positively clamoring to get this new opera,” one of the other girls piped up, pulling a face at one of the automated actors as it clomped past.

  Meg turned to the long mirror on the wall. The inky smudges actually didn’t look all that bad, really. An added drama, a deeper contrast to rosy cheeks, it brought out the ebony hues of her hair and eyes. Wickedly, she wondered if the phantom watched tonight, if he approved of his having turned blushing young ladies into bedraggled industrial symbols. Such was the magic of theatre.

  Still . . . with a sigh, Meg thought back to three years prior. Christine, with the voice of an angel, the handsome comte with his endless bouquets of expensive hothouse flowers, the corps talking ribbons and silks instead of rivets and steam.

  Movement in the hallway caught her eye. Meg turned to espy a rough-looking gentleman who simply did not fit in with the usual flurry of activity occurring backstage of an opera’s intermission. He appeared to be in hushed conference with someone who stood in greater shadow, unidentifiable at this distance. Curious, Meg crept forward, staying near the wall and out of the speakers’ line of sight.

  “It is done then?” the figure in shadow spoke, his voice immediately recognizable to Meg as that of M. Firmin. Who, by rights, should be out front, Meg frowned.

  “No, sir. I mean, we’re prepared and ready, but my man below said that the opera ghost was not at home. He reported scarcely half-an-hour ago that the phantom had apparently decided to view this evening’s performance in person. Said he came up passage 9B.”

  Meg concluded from his manner of dress that he might be one of the electricians who had been re-assessing the Palais Garnier’s grounds. For the past several days, they had worked overtime—even during performances, so long as they did no electrical work.

  “Show me,” a new voice sounded, that of M. Armand.

  Interesting . . . Are they no longer on the outs, then? Meg snuck a peek in time to see the electrician pointing obligingly to the aforementioned passage on a leaf of opera house plans. The managers certainly looked chummy as they gazed together at the schematics.

  “And we can’t just take him now?” Armand suggested, his tone indicating he did not quite believe it a viable option but felt it needed voicing all the same.

  “No,” Firmin shook his head, “Not without endangering the cast or audience. You remember Faust, my dear Armand. No, we stick with the plan until we seal that deformed rat in his hole. Your man is standing by, then?” This last he addressed to the electrician, who’d since furled his blueprints and clearly awaited further orders.

  “Yes, monsieur. Soon as the phantom returns to his lair, we seal him in,” the man nodded smartly.

  “Well, my dear Firmin, it appears I must quarrel with you a while longer,” Armand smiled, “Appearances, you know.”

  “Quite right. Divide and conquer.” Firmin adopted a stern look. “Well then, we’ve about two minutes to curtain. Gentlemen, to your posts.”

  Meg retraced her steps back along the hallway. She directed her most disarming smile at Monsieur Monchamin as he strode past.

  “Positions. Positions!” M. Munier hissed out of the darkness, startling Meg out of her reverie.

  So they plan to seal the opera ghost below? She mulled the thought over in her mind as she took her position, unsure of what she thought of it. For all his apparent kindness of late, the opera ghost was a murderer, a sick and twisted fiend who suckled on fear. Or so they said.

  After all, her own mother had agreed to serve him and received nothing but kindness from the poor wretch. And Christine—hadn’t he done her any number of favors? While Meg knew very few particulars, she had heard something of tenderness at the heart of the terror, reverence for the man, Erik, amongst the revulsion.

  You must warn him. This last thought flashed through Meg’s mind as the final notes of the overture struck and the curtain opened.

  There were no words to describe the agony, the abject and total mortification poor Mam’selle Giry felt, especially as she alone suspected why she had turned her ankle during the final piece of the evening. In front of a sold-out audience. While he, of all people, was watching.

  It all had happened so fast. Chassé-ing and leaping, the corps twisting and weaving a complicated pattern amongst the gleaming clockwork coryphée, Meg had lifted her eyes for one instant. Intended as a stagy gaze into The Beyond for a final transcendent moment of beauty, Meg had instead found her eyes directed to Box Five where two glittering eyes in a death’s head stared back at her. It was in that moment that shooting pain informed Meg of her error, and she landed in an indecorous heap upon the brilliantly lit stage.

  She still wasn’t sure if she’d simply landed wrong or if she’d caught her toe upon an imperfection in the boards. And what’s worse, her rapidly swelling ankle had necessitated a quick rescue by one of the burlier extras, his rough chastisement as he dumped her in the wings doing little to dim the reddening of her cheeks, nor stop the flood of tears now brimming in pain-filled eyes.

  The company really did function at times like an extended family. Full of all the bumps, fits, and starts of a real family, they weren’t perfect, and none save the props master came to see to her needs until the final curtain fell. But that was understandable; the performance did not stutter just because an errant dancer twisted an ankle.

  Oh, you silly, silly goose! Meg cursed herself through gritted teeth, more than slightly aware that, from her perch, she was mere inches away from craning her neck to espy one more time Box Five’s ghostly inhabitant. But no, she resisted bravely—after all, her error was sure to have displeased the spectral spectator. It occurred to Meg that her one glance at the man was likely to be the last she’d ever have. They’d sack her for sure after this, and that’d be the end of it. No more ballet. No more Palais Garnier. No more Opera Ghost.

  A new thought entered her head as the first of the curtain calls began and more of the crew now found themselves free to tend to Meg’s needs. If Meg was removed from the corps—and therefore relieved of her duties as the phantom’s interlocutor—how would her mother continue to receive her treatments?

  Despair at this new dilemma only served to heighten her pain, and she smiled wanly at the few ballerinas who now hovered around her. She could see the hunger in their eyes—already the polit
ics of vying for the coveted first row position were stirring.

  The growing crowd parted and Meg blushed anew to see M. Richard approaching, the look of concern somehow better filling the lines on his face than that of cheer.

  “Mademoiselle Giry. The doctor tells me it is a sprain, yes?”

  Meg nodded confirmation of the fact. Already the doctor had seen, assessed, and dismissed her injury with the bleak prognosis of a couple weeks rest. The damage to her pride seemed likely to be more permanent than that of her ankle, though both hurt equally at present.

  “Yes, well, good,” the manager looked troubled and he appeared to struggle to find the words. “Am glad to hear it is nothing worse. Would never have forgiven myself, you know?”

  Meg heard herself saying some nonsense about the inherent dangers of live theatre.

  “Well said, my dear. Well said. I, ahem, must be off—” He jerked his head towards the front of house, nervously tugging at his gloves.

  “Thank you for your concern,” Meg smiled through gritted teeth, touched that he’d came backstage just to check on her well-being when he was so clearly needed elsewhere.

  Firmin’s tone grew businesslike, “Gentlemen, see to it that Mlle. Giry is given the utmost care. I’ve been—I’ve been informed that Lady Christine’s old room is quite comfortable—” His voice broke on this last sentence, and he hurried away without a backward glance, one black dinner jacket amongst many now milling about the dressing rooms. A sea of gentlemen admitted backstage to call upon their paramours.

  Madame Giry arrived in time to see Firmin’s hurried exit. “Come, child, let’s get that foot up and out of harm’s way.” She shot a mistrustful gaze at the back of the retreating manager.

  Meg was grateful that she’d not have to sit, miserable, immobilized, and exposed amongst the graceful and lively corps of ballerinas as they flirted and teased the male suitors, men more interested in girls than opera. However, she was chagrined at the idea of being exiled to the long-disused dressing room of her former friend. Somehow, the isolation, while she changed, a blessing to her throbbing ankle, seemed redolent of her fears that her on-stage tumble meant expulsion from the company.