Luna Park's Arc

Chapter 11 of 14

The count from the canopy hit four and Luna stepped onto her mark. The swept floor caught the light from the broadcast tower above and threw it back at her in a hard sheet. The stage was polished ice over wood, smooth as glass, sealed for the cameras. Her training shoes were made for a stone hut floor. The rubber was worn flat at the ball and the heel, the stitching split where she had drilled the song three times that morning. She felt the surface under her sole and knew it before the music started. The floor was a mirror. Her shoes were bare. The music started and she ran the opening eight clean by shortening every push. She cut her turns half a beat early and landed flat instead of on the ball. The camera tracked her black outline against the white tier. She held the line. On the sixteenth count she pushed off for the jump that opened the chorus and her back foot slid. She caught it with her hand on the floor, made it look like a drop, and came up on the beat. A small bright patch of cracked surface marked where her heel had skidded, a white star with dark lines running out from the center. She saw it as she rose. There were two more like it from the dancers before her, near the front edge and the left wing. She had two choices. Run the rest safe and forfeit the jumps, and the scout would mark her a third notch for missing the choreography. Or hit the jumps and fall on live broadcast. She chose a third. She moved her marks. She danced the chorus three steps inside her blocking, away from the cracked patches, and aimed her landings at the rough seams where the panels met. The seams gave her grip. The camera followed. She lost the center of the frame but kept her feet. She finished the song upright, hit the final pose half a meter off her mark, and held it while the count ran out. The head scout's runner walked the floor and read the score. Clean run, no fall, one notch off for blocking drift. The rival took the mark next in heeled boots with rubber soles cut for the surface and ran her song center frame without a slip. The board at the gate showed Luna down by three notches now, not two. The pipeline scout came off the canopy stair and stopped at Luna's shoulder. He said the showcase had one round left, a final solo on the crystal platform the next morning, and the platform was the same sealed ice as this one but raised and rimmed with open air. He said she could not dance it in those shoes. He said she had until sunrise to find a pair that would hold, and the storehouse was still empty.