Luna Park's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

The scout left at noon. Luna stayed on the broken planks until her breath slowed. The showcase posted in the morning. She had one notch on her column and one slot to defend, and she could not rehearse here again. The wooden stage sat in open view of every path through the grounds. Any runner with a phone could film her counts and feed them to the rival before the showcase opened. The cave was worse. The entrance was scorched black, beams charred through, icicles hanging from a frame that had bent in the heat. She walked the perimeter once and counted what she had lost. A floor she could not trust. A roof that no longer held. Nowhere to run the song clean. She climbed the lookout tower at the edge of the grounds to see the whole field at once. From the railed platform she could trace every sightline. The wooden stage was visible from three paths. The burned cave was visible from two. Behind the tower, facing away from the trails, sat a small stone hut half-buried in packed snow. She had passed it a dozen times without looking. The door was low. The walls were thick. No windows faced the grounds. She climbed down and stood at the entrance. Inside, the air held still. She clapped once. The sound stayed in the room and died. Luna worked through the afternoon. She dragged two split planks from the wooden stage and laid them across the dirt floor for footing. She hung her sister's scarf over the doorway to break any line of sight from outside. She paced the room corner to corner and found she had just enough length for the Butter floor pattern if she cut the diagonal short by a half step. She ran the first thirty-two counts. Her shoulder clipped the wall on the turn. She adjusted the spacing and ran them again. By the third pass, the pattern held. She ran the full song twice through before her legs gave. No one had seen her enter. No one had seen her leave the planks behind. The hut held the sound the way the cave once had. She sat against the stone wall and pulled out her phone. The showcase lineup had not posted yet. The slot token was still in her pocket. She had a floor, a roof, and a door no camera faced. It was enough to rehearse. It was not enough to perform. The showcase stage would be public, lit, and watched by every feed in the pipeline, and the rival was already on the list beside her. Luna set the phone face down on the planks and started the count again from the top.