Earlier in the night, by some strange blessing, the overture reached Roxanne’s ears down in the lowest level of the opera house. It must have come through the ventilation system, but whatever the method, gratefulness overwhelmed Roxanne. She inclined her head to listen to the music, and sorrow quickly replaced the thankfulness. She wondered how Lady fared at the moment, alone and anxious. Usually, before a performance—whether she sang or had a silent role—Lady would pet Roxanne’s fur with trembling fingers. Roxanne knew her presence gave Lady strength; tonight, Lady would have to do without Roxanne. The thought weighed heavy on her heart.
She glanced at the passage above the bookcase. Somewhere in the room a different passage remained concealed, for a few minutes ago, Orpheus had left via a different route. He had told Roxanne that he needed to check on a few things before vanishing in the darkness. Roxanne had sniffed the general location where he’d disappeared but was unable to find an opening or crevice that Orpheus might have slipped through. When she returned to the chaise lounge, she wondered what business he needed to deal with. He’d told her he meddled in human affairs, but how? Why? It still seemed rather strange and ominous to Roxanne.
Through the brass vent next to the ceiling, familiar screeching echoed into the room. Roxanne straightened herself. Lady had made those screeches. Surely since Star had returned, she should have been the one performing. So why was Lady screeching?
Roxanne sighed. How she wished she could watch Lady! Her thoughts turned to Orpheus’s words regarding her beloved human. He’d said Lady was one of the better screechers—or singers, as he claimed. Had his errands pertained directly to Lady? Roxanne hoped not. Orpheus had caused Star’s sickness. Had there been other acts he committed just as horrible, all for Lady’s sake? The thought of Orpheus dealing with Lady’s career sent a ripple of fear down Roxanne's spine.
Itching to move, Roxanne leaped off the lounge and began pacing. Why was Lady screeching? Had Orpheus done something to make it so? Was that one of the things he had to ‘check on’?
The confines of the room made Roxanne pant. She hadn’t been bothered by the small room before, but now the walls seemed to close in on her, suffocating her. Yowling, she flung herself at a wall and scratched the peeling paper. Strips of wallpaper cascaded down, curling around her paws. Slivers of wood lodged in her tender paw pads, but still she clawed as if she could dig herself out of her prison. The lamp light flickered, stopping Roxanne in her scratching. The light had been on since she'd first entered the room. Soon it would extinguish, and she’d be engulfed in darkness. The thought made her heart thump faster.
A loud thud reached her ears. Swiveling around toward the source of the sound, her thoughts a jumbled mess, she half expected a horde of rats to appear before her eyes. Instead, the faded Halloween mask appeared in the gloom. Orpheus had returned.
Roxanne forced her breathing to resume a normal pace. She succeeded only in gasping. Trying to appear calm and knowing she looked anything but, she asked, “You’re wearing your mask?”
“I thought it would be best,” Orpheus meowed, his words slightly muffled from the silly decoration.
The weary note in Orpheus’s voice didn’t go unnoticed by Roxanne. Without thinking, she blurted, “You must have run around the opera house twice. You sound exhausted.”
Orpheus walked into the dim light, his kinked tail flicking dust in the air. “I have been quite busy,” he admitted. “There were several matters I had to deal with, many of them popping up without warning.”
A momentary sense of boldness filled Roxanne. Narrowing her eyes, she said, “What were those errands, if I may ask?”
“Things regarding the opera, what else?” Orpheus replied curtly. He walked around the room, inclining his head every few steps as if listening to something only he could hear. Nothing but the humans screeching and the sound of their instruments accompanying them filtered throughout the room.
Feeling braver, Roxanne pressed, “Did any of those matters pertain to Lady?”
“One of them did,” Orpheus said without stopping his strange inspection of the room.
Roxanne took a tentative step toward Orpheus. Her mouth had gone dry, but she forced herself to speak. “Is she all right? What did you do?”
“Shh!”
Roxanne's fur bristled. Something obviously troubled Orpheus, but Roxanne couldn’t determine the source of his agitation. Whatever the issue, it made it difficult for her to get a straight answer from him regarding Lady. Right now, she needed to know if her human was all right. At least Lady was screeching, which proved a good sign. But had Orpheus harmed her in some way? Had he hurt another human? Roxanne needed to know.
Determined to obtain answers, Roxanne demanded, “What is bothering you?”
“Nothing that concerns you!”
“Lady concerns me!” Roxanne snapped. “Tell me—what did you do?”
Still leaning toward the wall, Orpheus said, “If you must know—if it will silence you for one moment—I scared that insufferable Olga, causing her to run away in fear. She’s lost somewhere in the opera house. I also terrified Olga’s human enough so your Lady could sing tonight. I was more successful than I’d anticipated. Star is leaving for a different city.” Orpheus paused to gaze upward as if a myriad of stars stared down at him rather than a moldy ceiling. “And that means Olga will also leave! Tonight brought such triumphs I only ever dreamed of!”
Roxanne blinked. Olga and Star leaving the opera? What had Orpheus done to cause Star’s departure? Surely Olga felt devastated by her human’s decision. This theater was Olga’s life.
A thought occurred to Roxanne. If Olga left, that would leave the main roles in need of a singer. Her heart fluttered at the prospect, but she couldn’t deduce if it came from fear, joy, confusion, or a mix of those emotions. Perhaps the news meant Roxanne would be able to leave her dank prison to replace Olga. Taking a shaky breath, Roxanne asked, “Then… then who will sing Olga’s roles?”
“Ack!” Orpheus yelped, shaking his head in frustration. “Let me listen to the walls! There will be plenty of time in the future to contemplate Olga’s successor.”
Pinning her ears down, Roxanne trotted to Orpheus. “What is wrong? Why are you listening to the walls?” Roxanne’s continued boldness startled her, and she wondered how badly her outbursts angered Orpheus.
Apparently not much, for Orpheus kept walking along the wall, his ears pricked.
As Roxanne opened her mouth to speak, a yowl erupted from the other side of the wall. Roxanne froze. Following the yowl, squeaks and hisses created a cacophony that sent fear tingling from Roxanne’s nose to the tip of her tail.
“What was that?” Roxanne asked in a hushed voice. Images of large rats clawing at a poor, helpless cat flashed in her mind. “Orpheus, tell me what made those horrible sounds!”
When Orpheus made no intention of answering Roxanne, frustration bubbled within her along with newfound fear for whoever happened to be trapped on the other side of the wall. With a flick of her tail, Roxanne trotted in front of Orpheus and stared into his blazing eyes. Even with his head lowered, Roxanne had to slightly raise her own head to gaze into his face. Now that Orpheus looked at her, Roxanne spoke again.
“What is on the other side of this wall?” Roxanne demanded.
Orpheus kept staring at her. It became too difficult for Roxanne to look at the slits in his mask that his eyes practically burned through, so she stepped back on shaky paws.
“I can’t tolerate insistence from others,” Orpheus growled, “even from you.”
Roxanne swallowed the bile rising in her throat. The sounds emanating from the other side of the wall grew louder. “Tell me,” she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t sure why the noises mattered so much to her—they might be something totally different from what she envisioned, although she had strong doubts about that—but they were important to Orpheus.
Lowering his head more, Orpheus said, “If you must know, two cats entered one of my various passages. They fell through a trapdoor into a room full of rats that I keep for protection against such intrusions. The rats also serve as a decent food supply when mice are scarce.”
Roxanne barely heard the rest of what Orpheus said. Two other cats were in a secret room next to this one. They had traveled through Orpheus’s passage. Did that mean those two cats had been searching for her? Why else would they have entered the passage? The yelps from the other room bit into her heart. The two cats, whoever they were, sounded as if they wouldn’t be able to keep the rats at bay for much longer.
Her mind racing for a way to save the cats, Roxanne asked, “Who are they?”
Orpheus walked around Roxanne, tapping her shoulder with his tail. He remained silent.
Roxanne forced her paws to move. She ran after Orpheus, but he had jumped on an old seamstress’s dummy, his tail sweeping Roxanne away. She slid across the floor, bumping into the wall. She picked herself off the wall, shreds of wallpaper clinging to her fur, and hopped onto the dummy after Orpheus, who now sat draped across the dummy’s shoulders.
“Orpheus, please tell me! Who are the cats?” Roxanne begged.
“You are very concerned about them, aren’t you?” Orpheus snapped, the anger palpable in his voice. “Perhaps you wish they’d be gone so we two could be alone. How moving! How sweet!”
Tears welled in Roxanne’s eyes. She slid off the dummy, her claws ripping the dummy’s rotted cloth sides open. Fluffs of stuffing fell through the slits and landed on her head. “Who are they?” Roxanne asked again, ignoring the debris covering her.
“Who can tell?” Orpheus exclaimed, rolling his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “It could be any two cats! That insufferable Olga, for instance. I told you she’s lost somewhere in this grand opera house. Or perhaps that pompous Norb is one of those cats. Whoever they are, they will either perish or need to figure out an escape, which is impossible. There are several entrances to that room, but only one exit!”
Roxanne’s breathing came in raspy gasps. Harry might be one of the cats in that room, but no matter which two cats were trapped—even if one of them happened to be Olga—she couldn’t bear the thought of them being mauled to death by rats.
“Please, Orpheus, please let them go,” Roxanne pleaded, digging her claws deeper in the dummy. “You can save them! I know you can! Please!”
Orpheus sat in silence, save for the yowling cats and human music filtering down to the cellar. After a few seconds, he glided to the floor and stood before Roxanne.
“You don’t even know who’s in there,” Orpheus meowed, his voice softer than it had been since he’d returned to the room.
Swallowing down her fear, Roxanne sidled up to Orpheus, much closer than she’d ever been to him, and stared into the eye slits on his mask. The tips of their fur touched. Being this near to Orpheus made Roxanne tremble, but she forced herself to speak. “I don’t want anyone to suffer from horrid rats. Please,” Roxanne whispered, unable to talk louder for the shivers rocking her body.
Orpheus flicked his ragged ears toward Roxanne. The seconds seemed to stretch into eons as the two cats’ wails grew louder and more frantic. For some strange reason, Roxanne wished Orpheus would remove his silly mask. She’d already seen his face, and the mask made her feel as though she were talking to a stuffed cat rather than a real one.
One of the cats from the rat room screeched in pain. Roxanne flinched. A wave of fear washed over her. She wanted Orpheus to say something, or better yet, do something.
Orpheus’s shoulders sagged as if a huge weight had settled on him. When he spoke again, Roxanne had to lean closer to hear his words due to how quiet he’d become.
“If I let those two cats go…” Orpheus tilted his head toward the wall where the yowling grew fiercer. He sighed, but it came out as a doleful moan. “Do you promise you’ll watch them leave and not attempt to run off with them, no matter who they are?”
Harry. The name popped into Roxanne’s mind as soon as Orpheus finished his question. Harry was one of the two cats suffering behind the wall. After all this time, Harry had been searching for her, just as Roxanne had hoped. And he’d soon meet his fate if Roxanne didn’t act fast.
As Roxanne’s silence grew, so too did Orpheus’s agitation. “You must decide, my dear. Decide whether two cats will die or if those two cats shall walk out of here alive! You created this problem, not I. Their dying screeches do not bother me in the slightest, but they seem to terrify you.”
Roxanne cowered. She knew what she had to do, but she hadn’t expected it to be quite so difficult.
Upon seeing Roxanne’s reaction, Orpheus’s body softened. He crooned, “You must choose to stay with me because you want to. I refuse to have an unwilling companion.” His voice broke. “All I desired in life was for someone to want to be with me. You can’t imagine the loneliness or pain of watching other cats, young and beautiful, be in love and enjoy their lives together. It fills me with despair.”
The rats’ squeaking pierced Roxanne’s ears. The cats’ yowls grew more desperate.
“Time is running out,” Orpheus said, flicking his tail at the wall, sounding as nonchalant as before. “What is your decision?”
The decision had already been made for Roxanne as soon as Orpheus had made his terms clear on the matter. But a new feeling overwhelmed Roxanne, one that mingled with her self-pity. This new sensation was sorrow. She wondered at Orpheus’s age. How many years had passed in which Orpheus went through his days in loneliness, not truly living, but rather merely existing, watching other cats experience moments and emotions he must have only dreamed about?
Roxanne lifted her eyes to Orpheus’s face in a fervent desire to understand him and to likewise be understood. She pitied Orpheus. He was so pathetic. She hated Orpheus. He’d done horrible things to the cats and humans of the Shelley Opera House. She wanted Orpheus to know this decision proved harder for her than anything she’d endured, even singing on stage in front of cats she didn’t know. Her heart pounding so hard her body shook, Roxanne nosed Orpheus’s mask off. Orpheus let it slide off his skull. It thumped to the floor.
“I choose to stay,” Roxanne whispered. Her words sounded muffled, as if they emanated from beneath a heavy blanket. For a moment she wondered if she’d spoken at all.
Orpheus remained still, reinforcing Roxanne’s belief that she had never uttered a word. However, a strange rumbling rolled forth from Orpheus, enveloping Roxanne and startling her at the same time.
It took Roxanne a second to realize Orpheus was purring.