When she looks up from the amorphous stanza she realizes she’s walked out of the area backstage and into the wings. Red curtain legs hang ranked alongside her, and she peers around them to see the grand drapes drawn shut behind a false proscenium. This device, she recalls, is called a tormentor.

Is there an audience out there? Of whom or what would it be composed? She almost doesn’t want to look, but her father would admonish her for willful blindness. Aniridia thinks of his poetry books and goofy legerdemain, and pulls the velvet apart to step out onto the apron.