A Light in the Dark

Chapter 26

Chapter 26 (Erik's POV)

Elaina didn't quite know how to handle my temper.

Don't misunderstand me, please, she was a wonderful singer, but she had so much more potential than what she was giving me. The more nervous she got, the more timid she sang, and the more Gustave or I would try to calm her, the more nervous she became.

Eventually I had all I could possibly take.

"Would you just calm yourself?" I yelled.

Elaina cowered, and I could see tears coming to her eyes. "I'm sorry, Mr. Y. I knew I wasn't good enough."

"Papa, please control your temper!" I heard Gustave yell from the orchestra pit.

I sighed. "You are good enough," I said. I took Elaina by her shoulders so I could see her squarely. "But to be good enough, you first have to believe that you are. Now, sing it from the top please!"

Elaina's confidence came forth a little more, but her posture became poor again. I rolled my eyes in irritation and pulled her shoulders back once more. I lifted her chin with my finger tips and looked her in the eyes.

"Sing for me and only me," I said. "Imagine no one else is here. Imagine no one else has ever performed here. You have no one to impress. You have no reason to hold back. Now, sing for me!" I shouted so the words would ring through the theatre.

She watched my eyes intensely, and her voice swelled and rang through the theatre.

"Now doesn't that feel better I asked?" I asked as she looked around the theatre in awe.

She put her hand on her throat. "Was... Was that my voice?" she asked wide-eyed.

I nodded. "I told you that you could do it. Now, from the top once more!"

She sang it even better the second time. She still wasn't quite there, but I was pleased with her progress.

"Gustave let's give it about three more lessons before a performance," I said down to him. He nodded, and I turned to see Elaina's shocked face. "Don't worry, my dear. As long as you keep progressing like you did today, then you'll be ready. If not, we can squeeze in more lessons. It's not a problem."

She nodded happily although I could tell that she was still nervous.

"Now you two go rest up," I said. "We'll have another lesson tomorrow."

With that, they collected their things, and I watched them exit the theatre. Elaina was buzzing about her lesson, and Gustave was listening intently.

I smiled sadly to myself as I watched them walk away.

It was true, all I wanted as a father was for my son to be happy and to make the right choices. I had no doubt that he made wise decisions, and I had no doubt that he was perfectly content. Still, I had this nagging thought in the back of my mind that made me sad. I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly that thought was. Perhaps it was because he was growing up.

The house was terribly lonely without Gustave there. Between the two of us, there was always music, but when it was just me, it was quiet unless I provided the music. It was strange to have no one rambling around the kitchen in the morning or reading on the couch. There was no reason to keep my bedroom door closed anymore. I still did though out of habit. I didn't like letting go of him. Something told me that I had to let him go, and I listened to that voice. Still, in my heart I wanted him here. Nothing good had ever happened when I let someone go. True, it was done out of true love, but I couldn't get the thought out of my head that something terrible would happen to him.

I promised Christine that I would give him everything that I could give. It was a shame that I couldn't give him protection and a future of his own. No, to have a future of his own, he would have to come out from under my wing. I knew that he was more than ready to do that, but I wasn't.

It wasn't about me though, and I was okay with that.

The more he was away, the sadder I became. It was difficult to compose. I thought about Christine more. It was like those years that I had spent away from her. I was lonely.

That's when I got an idea. I needed a project. True, I was working with Elaina, but there was only so much I could do with her before straining her voice too much. What in the world could an old man like me do though? What did I even enjoy anymore?

I sighed and shook the thought off. I was simply fooling myself.

I got to thinking more and more about how I wished that I could have seen Gustave grow up from the very beginning. We had a good nine years together, but it wasn't enough. I wished that I had been there for the late night wake up calls and his first words and steps, but I wasn't. I hadn't been there because I was a coward.

Wait. That was it. Children. I adored children. I loved their innocence, and the fact that most of them had never been scarred. Funny, I had never thought much about children until Gustave. Now, it was loud and clear that's what I wanted to do. My childhood had been painful. I preferred not to remember it, but that did not mean that some poor child out there had to go through the same pain.

I went to my desk and pulled out paper. I wrote letters to several national circuses. I had gotten most of my performers from the circuses. They were people that the managers of the shows said that they had no talent. Typically they got stuck in a sideshow or as some ridiculous clown. I would pity them and take them in as my own. As it turned out, everyone that supposedly had "no talent" usually had some sort of skill that had just not been recognized.

I wrote and asked if there were any children that I could take off of their hand with payment of course. Circuses ended up with runaway children quite a lot. Some of them had terrible home lives. Some were orphaned and were scared to go to orphanages, and some were just simple sold off like my mother had done to me. It was a pity, but if I could offer them a better life here at Phantasma, then that was what I was going to do.

Within a week, I had several letters back, and within two weeks, there were ten children walking through the gates of Phantasma.