The Glass I Peer Through

Chapter One - Harper *DRAFT*

The next note comes out just as mangled as the last.

"Again!" Madame Extos has made me sing this song a hundred times in the past hour, with no breaks, and not even one sip of water. What I would give for something to quench my thirst.

"If you ever wish to sing like an angel, Harper, you can stop sounding like a strangled cat for a start!" She reprimands me, time after time, and I have started to become numb to her insults. Madame Extos believes she is helping, that her methods are the right way, but it just makes me even more stressed every single time she opens her mouth.

No orchestra plays behind me, no violinists string their bows. It's just me. I am alone. Just me and my strangled-cat-resemblant voice.

"Do you want this apprenticeship? Or do you want to go back to the streets where I found you?" She did have a point though. Never would I want to return to the grimy alleyways or those frosty winter's nights with no shelter.

"Fine." was all I said. I tried again, one verse after the next, but it was that last note. It wasn't too high or too low. It wasn't too loud or too quiet. It didn't last so long that I fainted from lack of air. I guess... it didn't work with my voice.

Madame Extos huffed and crossed her arms whilst peering out of the open window. She had chosen to have a private session with me in her study, which had sketches of dresses, notes for upcoming performances, and most of all lots and lots of scribbled compositions pinned on the walls that she had yet to present to the Chief of Theatre, as the old man who ran this place called himself.

A merriment when he had had one (or two) too many ales at the tavern or an ongoing festivity celebrating a holiday or something other. Any excuse for a party. Yet when he was sober... a terror. Chief would go back to the gloomy, wretched man he was. If you wanted something from him, he wouldn't do it. End of story.

I had tried to ask him something once when he was like that. All I wanted was to take part in the minor performances that took place in the dreary season between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. The hall struggled financially then, as the audiences were small with many people wishing to stay indoors, but in the safety of their own homes. As soon as I opened my mouth to say one word to him, he held one finger up and told me never to return. I have relied on Madame Extos for opportunities like that ever since.

"The Summer Solstice is less than a week away and you still can't master the first song. Of twelve, may I add!" I didn't want to fail her, not after I had proven myself to be above the other apprentices, who earned their keep here, same as me.

I, for one, had mastered the piano, flute, the lute and even the simplistic tambourine and castanets. My favourite though, above all, was coincidentally the harp. When my fingers begin to pluck the strings, I am transported to a different world. When I play the harp, I am in my element.

"I can practice, Madame Extos. Or I can find a different song." No matter how many times I suggested this, she always insisted that I stick with the one I am learning. Probably some weird tradition of the theatre that I have to stick to because I am the soloist.

Soloist - that was still a new word for me. I had never been given this opportunity before, as I had been deemed young and inexperienced.

I earned money cleaning the theatre when I wasn't being taught by Madame Extos. The stage was always dirty, and all of the snobby theatre boys laughed and sniggered at me when they saw me with a mop and bucket on the boards. I had learned to deal with the constant teasing though as I needed my earnings to care for my younger brother Quinn. It was a challenge sometimes, but I loved him, and I would never kick Quinn back onto the streets to fend for himself.