Luna Park's Arc

Chapter 13 of 14

Luna walked the broadcast grounds while the crew set the live feed cables. The tally pole stood at the gate, a stack of stone rings hung with frost-laced markers. Her column showed three notches. The rival's column showed four. One notch between them, and the live vote would close that gap or widen it. At the far end of the deck, the rival's crew had raised a tall mirror-faced monument with sharp cut angles. It threw the work lights back at the crowd in clean white bands. People stopped to look at it before they looked at the stage. Luna had a clean run and cut shoes. She had no reason for a stranger to type her name into the vote box. She sat under the tower and tried to think of one. The pipeline scout had said it plain at sunrise: the rival's crown had pulled the early count. A crown was a picture people remembered. Luna had a parka turned inside out. She pulled her sister's banner from her bag and spread it across her knees. The cloth was thin and creased from the tower climb weeks back. Her sister had stitched her name in the corner in red thread. Luna ran her thumb over the letters. The banner had carried her once already. It was the only thing on the grounds that belonged to her and no one else. She found a framed mirror leaning against the prop wall behind the gate, left from an earlier act. Silver frame, frost etched into the glass. She carried it to her mark on the deck and set it at the upstage edge, angled to catch the broadcast camera. Then she tied her sister's banner to the top of the frame so the red name hung in the shot. She walked to the pipeline scout and asked for one change to her run. She would open the song facing the mirror, not the crowd. The camera would see her and the banner and the name together before she turned. He looked at the rival's monument, then at her banner, and nodded once. The feed went live. Luna stood with her back to the crowd and her face in the frosted glass. She held the banner's edge for one count. Then she turned and ran the song clean. The runner walked the tally pole at the end and hung a new marker in her column. Four notches. The rival held at four. The scout came down from the cabin and told her the live vote had broken her way by a thin margin in the first hour, pulled by the banner shot already cut into the replay loop. The final tally would close at midnight. She was tied going into the last count, and the broadcast had a face and a name to vote for.