Love Will Continue - Sequel to Phantom Child

11. Reunions pt.1

The sun rose up in the morning and peeked into the room through the balcony door. As soon as the first sunrays reached Gustave's face, the boy was wide awake in no time. Right after him, because of his wild and therefore loud exitement, I was on my feet as well and not much later Christine and Raoul were too.

The breakfast went without any rows this time, maybe because neither Christine nor Raoul were really willing to speak. For their son, they were putting on a smile and from time to time answering his questions. I had to play a similar game of make believe with Gustave and pretend that the Phantom of the opera was totally not after us and that everything was alright.

When we were walking out of the hotel I took the advantage of the fact that there was a mailbox next to the entrance and slipped my response to John's letter right in there. Now what was left to do, was wait until it gets to France and a response from John comes. I didn't expect it to come any time soon. But since I was going to be stuck on this continent for a few weeks, I didn't mind the anticipation.

Once we arrived at our destination, I stopped in awe. Phantasma was a place that seemed almost unreal. Great circus tents here and there, glowing marry-go-rounds and its workers, each of them a different oddity, succesfully precluding our minds from determining what's normal and what's wierd here. And above it all, towered a great castle, built up of a dark blue material. I knew that it could be a work of only one architect's mind in the whole world, but even despite what I was feeling towards him at the time, I couldn't deny how much of an artwork the place as a whole was. It was, after all, a work of genius.

Gustave, the eager boy he was, ran in, leaving all of us a few steps behind, not even looking back to see whether we were still there or not. He was so amazed by the park and had his head in the clouds.

"Gustave wait!"

I called out running behind the boy, who was chasing every single wonder that came to his notice. His newest discovery was a child the looked like a bat. He was about Gustave's hight, dressed in black, with wings on his back and a tail attached to his belt. His laughter was ringing together with Gustave's as they ran.

"Slow down, Gustave" I heard Christine right behind me, when we finally managed to reach him, when  istead of running off again, the two children were circling around some workers' legs. "There are people working here. Be careful." She added.

"But I want to find Mr Y and go see the island!" Gustave exclaimed excitedly and his big, brown eyes lit up like two golden coins.

"I'm sure he'll sent for you when he's ready." Christine responded turning her head away from her son, as if she didn't want him to see her reaction to the mention of the owner of Phantasma.

"Who is this Mr Y?" We heard Raoul, who, with his cheerful snail's pace, finally made it to where we had stopped to talk "What does he do? Apart from spending ludicrous amounts of money on light entertainment?"

Raoul laughed at his imagined a picture of Mr Y. To be honest, I saw no aim in asking this question to us. He had no real reason to think that we could be more informed about this topic than him, right?

"How should we know?" I muttered, not even intending on Raoul to hear it. I felt like I needed to prove to myself that it looks believable when I say, that I have no idea who Mr Y really is.

"Father, look over there!" Gustave shouted, pointing at something in the distance and running off in the shown direction.

"Gustave, slow down!" His father only managed to call out, but to no avail, as the boy was already far away.

Resigned Christine looked around herself and a few seconds later both mine and her attention was drawn to a high pitched voice from behind us:

"Heaven help me, could it be?
No it couldn't possibly-"