Luna Park's Arc

Chapter 5 of 14

Luna climbed down from the lookout post with the crystal token in her fist. The torn pink flag still leaned in the snow at the base of the pole. She did not pull it. If she pulled it, her rival would know the marker had been found and switch to another method. Better to leave it standing and feed it the wrong story. She walked to the service path, phone dark in her pocket now, and looked across the lot. A stone watchtower rose at the far edge, ice clinging to its slits. A small shape moved at the top, then ducked back. Someone with a long lens was already watching the broadcast grounds. Luna had two days to make that watcher report the wrong place. She spent the afternoon at a supply shed two lots over, paying cash for canvas, four poles, and a bundle of zip ties. She picked a clearing on the opposite side of the broadcast grounds, well within sight of the watchtower slits, and set up a white tent with frost already crusting the poles. She walked the boundary three times so the lens upstairs could count her steps. Inside the tent she taped a printed setlist to the inner wall, the word BUTTER large enough to read through thin fabric when the sun hit. Then she carried out a wooden deer decoy she had bought from the same shed, antlers chipped, paint worn. She stood it at the tent's mouth and tied her sister's spare scarf around its neck. From the tower it would read as a mascot. From anywhere closer it would read as junk left in the snow. That night she livestreamed from inside the tent for eleven minutes. She stretched. She counted eight-counts under her breath. She never showed her face clearly, only the setlist on the wall and her shoes on the canvas floor. She tagged the stream with the rehearsal hashtag her rival's bots already tracked. Then she cut the feed, slipped out the back seam, and walked the long way around to the ice cave the pipeline staffer had texted her about an hour earlier. The cave held sound. No lens could see through stone. She rehearsed the full Butter choreography there for three hours, alone, with the slot crystal set on a ledge for light. At sunrise on day one, Luna watched from a service window as a pink-jacketed runner crossed the lot toward the white tent. The runner photographed the deer, photographed the setlist through the fabric, and spoke into a phone. Luna turned away and walked the other direction, toward the cave entrance where the real rehearsal call sheet waited. The tail was chasing the tent. She had her three days. She also knew her rival would learn the trick by day two, and the cave only hid sound, not arrivals.