“What if I can’t do it?” She moved on to the next model, calling back, “Queens don’t think those thoughts.”

An hour passed before Strena was satisfied with our poses, and Jordan Kane with her camera placements.

“Stay on the platform,” Strena told me as I put on my robe. “I want you to get used to the movement. The others have practice.”

She signaled, and the stage slid toward the double doors that had been left open. The whole thing ran on a rail. It smoothly rolled out of the auditorium, back into the prep room.

The doors closed behind us.

“All right, people.” Strena sent off a quick text. “Our audience will be seated shortly. Models, you have ten minutes to move around and stretch your muscles. I suggest you take it.”

I wanted to talk to her, but Jordan Kane walked over to discuss something with her, and I felt too intimidated to disturb them.

The half an hour was half a second. Then we were ordered to step back onto the platform and take our places.

Tiana came around and collected our robes.

Strena stopped by to give me a reassuring nod from the ground.

The prep room was plunged in darkness.

The buzz of the audience on the other side of the doors built and built, and a terrible, horrible thought hit me in the gut.

“Tell me Bram isn’t here,” I whispered.

“With his grandfather and his cousin, Sergei. I sent them tickets.”

“If I could see, I would run away.”

“Why do you think I’m standing next to you?”

The doors opened, and the stage glided forward in the dark, slowly, smoothly, thank God, or I might have fallen on my face.

In seconds, we stopped.

Perfect silence, but I could sense the people in the room, holding their breaths. I was an inch from hyperventilating.

Music started, a primal melody, ancient flute and drums. A light dawned above, like a sunrise. People in the audience gasped.

When Strena walked in like a queen, a thunderous applause erupted, men and women calling her name. She stepped onto the stage, gave a gracious bow, and then she began.

Because I was facing the volcano and her, I could see most of what she was doing, and I finally understood it. With the music and the lights, the way she moved with an audience to watch, her act was more than performance art. She was a shaman, a creator goddess. She transformed us.

She worked on one model for a few minutes, then the next, then the next, a dance, guiding our female bodies through metamorphosis. She created something extraordinary, not a spectacle, but an all-immersive experience. She wasn’t merely transforming her models. She was transforming the entire room, her audience.