"Ah, yes, the menagerie. Mr Bloom?"
"You wish to show me the menagerie?"
"Yes."
"Then lead me to it," said Bloom generously.
Doctor Volospion continued to brood as he advanced before them, through another series of gloomy passages whose gently sloping floors took them still deeper underground. Doctor Volospion had a tendency to favour the subterranean in almost everything.
By the time, however, that they had reached the series of chambers Doctor Volospion chose to call his "crypts", their guide had resumed his normal manner of poised irony.
These halls were far larger than the museum. On either side were reproduced many different environments, in the manner of zoological gardens, in which were incarcerated his collection of creatures culled from countless cultures, some indigenous and others alien to Earth.
Enthusiasm returned to Volospion's voice as he pointed out his prizes while they progressed slowly down the central aisle.
"My Christians and my Hare Krishnans," declaimed the Doctor, "My Moslems and my Marxists, my Jews and my Joypushers, my Dervishes, Buddhists, Hindus, Nature-worshippers, Confucians, Leavisites, Sufis, Shintoists, New Shintoists, Reformed Shintoists, Shinto-Scientologists, Mansonite Water-sharers, Anthroposophists, Flumers, Haythornthwaitists, Fundamentalist Ouspenskyians, Sperm Worshippers, followers of the Five Larger Moon Devils, followers of the Stone that Cannot Be Weighed, followers of the Sword and the Stallion, Awaiters of the Epoch, Mensans, Doo-en Skin Slicers, Crab-bellied Milestriders, Poobem Wrigglers, Tribunites, Callagriphic Diviners, Betelgeusian Grass Sniffers, Aldebaranian Grass Sniffers, Terran Grass Sniffers and Frexian Anti-Grass Sniffers. There are the Racists (Various) — I mix them together in the one environment because it makes for greater interest. The River of Blood was my own idea. It blends very well, I think, into the general landscape." Doctor Volospion was evidently extremely proud of his collection. "They are all, of course, in their normal environments. Every care is taken to see that they are preserved in the best of health and happiness. You will note, Mr Bloom, that the majority are content, so long as they are allowed to speak or perform the occasional small miracle."
The Fireclown's attention seemed elsewhere.
"The sound," said Doctor Volospion, and he touched a power ring, whereupon the air was filled with a babble of voices as prophets prophesied, preachers preached, messiahs announced various millennia, saviours summoned disciples, archbishops proclaimed Armageddon, fakirs mourned materialism, priests prayed, imams intoned, rabbis railed and druids droned. "Enough?"
The Fireclown raised a hand in assent and Doctor Volospion touched the ring again so that much of the noise died away.
"Well, Mr Bloom, do you find these pronouncements essentially distinguishable from your own?"
But the Fireclown was again studying Mavis Ming who was, in turn, looking extremely self-conscious. She was blushing through her rouge. She pretended to take an interest in the sermon being delivered by a snail-like being from some remote world near the galaxy's centre.
"What?"
Bloom cocked an ear in Volospion's direction. "Distinguishable? Oh, of course. Of course. I respect all the views being expressed. They are, I would agree, a little familiar, some of them. But these poor creatures lack either my power or my experience. I would guess, too, that they lack my courage. Or my purity of purpose. Why do you keep them locked up here?"
Doctor Volospion ignored the final sentence. "Many would differ with you, I think."
"Quite so. But you cease to entertain me, Doctor Volospion. I have decided to take Miss Ming, my Madonna, back to my ship now. The visit has been fairly interesting. More interesting than I believed it would be. Are you coming, Miss Ming?"
Miss Ming hesitated. She glanced at Doctor Volospion. "Well, I —"
"Do not consult this corpse," Mr Bloom told her. "I shall be your mentor. It is my duty and destiny to remove you from this environment at once, to bring you to the knowledge of your own divinity!"
Mavis Ming breathed heavily, still flushed. Her eyes darted from Bloom to Volospion. "I don't think you'll be removing either me or yourself from this castle, Mr Bloom." She smiled openly now at Doctor Volospion and her eyes were full of hope and terror. They asked a hundred questions. She seemed close to panic and was poised to flee.
Emmanuel Bloom gave a snort of impatience. "Miss Ming, my love, you are mine." His high, fluting voice continued to trill, but it was plain that she no longer heard his words. His birdlike hands touched hers. She screamed.
"Doctor Volospion!"
Doctor Volospion was fully himself. "It is hardly gentlemanly, as I have pointed out, to force your attentions upon a lady, Mr Bloom. I would remind you of your word."
"I keep it. I use no violence."
Doctor Volospion now appeared to be relishing the drama. The fingers of his left hand hovered over the fingers of his right, on which were most of his power rings.
The Fireclown's hands remained on Miss Ming's. "He's really strong!" she cried. "I can't get free, Doctor Volospion. Oo…" It seemed that an almost euphoric weakness suffused her body now. She was panting, incapable of thought; her lips were dry, her tongue was dry, and the only word she could form was a whispered "No".
Doctor Volospion seemed ignorant of the degree of tension in the menagerie. Many of the prophets, both human and alien, had stopped their monologues and now pressed forward to watch the struggle.
Doctor Volospion said firmly: "Mr Bloom, since you remain here as my guest, I would ask you to recall…"
The blue eyes became shrewd even as they stared into Mavis Ming's. "Your guest? No longer. We leave. Do you come, Mavis mine?"
"I — I —" It was as if she wished to say yes to him, yet she continued to pull back as best she could.
"Mr Bloom, you have had your opportunity to leave this planet. You refused to take it. Well, now you have no choice. You shall stay for ever (which is not, we think, that long)."
Mr Bloom raised a knowing head. "What?"
"You have told us, yourself, that you are unique, sir." Doctor Volospion was triumphant. "You prize yourself so highly, I must accept your valuation."
"Eh?"
"From henceforth, Sir Prophet, you will grace my menagerie. Here you will stay — my finest acquisition."
"What? My power!" Did Mr Bloom show genuine surprise? His gestures became melodramatic to a degree.
Doctor Volospion was too full of victory to detect play-acting, if play-acting there was. "Here you may preach to your heart's content. You will find the competition stimulating, I am certain."
Bloom received this intelligence calmly. "My power is greater than yours," he said.
"I led you to think that it was, so that you would feel confident when I suggested a tour of my collection. Twelve force-screens of unimaginable strength now lie between you and your ship, cutting you off from the source of your energy. Do you think you could have shattered my first force-field if I had not allowed it?"
"It seemed singularly easy," agreed the Fireclown. "But you seem still unclear as to the nature of my own power. It does not derive from a physical source, as yours does, though you are right in assuming it comes from my ship. It is spiritual inspiration which allows me to work my miracles. The source of that inspiration lies in the ship."
"This so-called Grail of yours?"
Bloom fell silent.
"Well, call on it, then," said Doctor Volospion.
Every scrap of bombast had disappeared from Bloom. It was as if he discarded a useless weapon, or rather a piece of armour which had proved defective. "There is no entity more free in all the teeming multiverse than the Fireclown." His unblinking eyes stared into Miss Ming's again. "You cannot imprison me, sir."
"Imprison?" Doctor Volospion derided the idea with a gesture. "You shall have everything you desire. Your favourite environment shall be re-created for you. If necessary, it is possible to supply the impression of distance, movement. Regard the state as well earned retirement, Mr Bloom."
The avian head turned on the long neck, the paint around the mouth formed an expression of some gravity (albeit exaggerated). Mr Bloom did not relax his grip upon Miss Ming's hands.
"Your satire palls, Doctor Volospion. It is the sort that easily grows stale, for it lacks love; it is inspired by self-hatred. You are typical of those faithless priests of the fifth millennium who were once your comrades in vice."
Doctor Volospion showed shock. "How could you possibly know my origins? The secret…"
"There are no secrets from the Sun," said the Fireclown. "The Sun knows All. Old He may be, but His memory is clearer than those of your poor, senescent cities."
"Do not seek to confound me, sir, with airy generalities of that sort. How do you know?"
"I have eyes," said Bloom, "which have seen all things. One gesture reveals a society to me — two words reveal an individual. A conversation betrays every origin."
"This Grail of yours? It helps you?"
The Fireclown ignored him. "The eagle floats on currents of light, high above the world, and the light is recollection, the light is history. I know you, Doctor Volospion, and I know you for a villain, just as I know Mavis Ming as a goddess — chained and gagged, perverted and alone, but still a goddess."
Doctor Volospion's laugh was cruel. "All you do, Mr Bloom, is to reveal yourself as a buffoon! Not even your insane Faith can make an angel of Miss Ming!"
Mavis Ming was not resentful. "I've got my good points," she said, "but I'm no Gloria Gutzmann. And I try too hard, I guess, and people don't like that. I can be neurotic, probably. After all that affair with Snuffles didn't do anyone any good in the end, though I was trying to do Dafnish Armatuce a favour."
She babbled on, scarcely conscious of her words, while the adversaries, pausing in their conflict, watched her.
"But then, maybe I was acting selfishly, after all. Well, it's all water under the bridge, isn't it? What's done is done. Who can blame anybody, at the end of the day?"
Mr Bloom's voice became a caressing murmur. He stroked her hands. "Fear not, Miss Ming. I am the Flame of Life. I carry a torch that will resurrect the spirit, and I carry a source to drive out devils. I need no armour, save my faith, my knowledge, my understanding. I am the Sun's soldier, keeper of His mysteries. Give yourself to me and become fully yourself, alive and free."
Mavis Ming began to cry. The Fireclown's vivid mask smiled in a grotesque of sympathy.
"Come with me now," said Bloom.
"I would remind you that you are powerless to leave," said Doctor Volospion.
The Fireclown dropped her hands and turned so that his back was to her. His little frame twitched and trembled, his red-gold mass of hair might have been the bristling crest of some exotic fowl, his little hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, like claws, as his beautiful, musical voice filled that dreadful menagerie.
"Ah, Volospion, I should destroy you — but one cannot destroy the dead!"
Doctor Volospion was apparently unmoved. "Possibly, Mr Bloom, but the dead can imprison the living, can they not? If that is so, I possess the advantage which men like myself have always possessed over men such as you."
The Fireclown wheeled to grasp Miss Ming. She cried out:
"Stop him, Doctor Volospion, for Christ's sake!"
And at last Doctor Volospion's long hand touched a power ring and the Fireclown was surrounded by bars of blue, pulsing energy.
"Ha!" The clown capered this way and that, trying to free himself and then, as if reconciled, sat down on the floor, crossing his little legs, his blue eyes blinking up at them as if in sudden bewilderment.
Doctor Volospion smiled.
"Eagle, is it? Phoenix? I must admit that I see only a caged sparrow."
Emmanuel Bloom paid him no heed. He addressed Mavis Ming.
"Free me," he said. "It will mean your own freedom."
Mavis Ming giggled.
13. In which Doctor Volospion asks Mavis Ming to make a Sacrifice
She awoke from another nightmare.
Mavis Ming was filled with a sense of desolation worse than any she had experienced in the past.
"Oh, dear," she murmured through her night-mask.
An impression of her dream was all that was left to her, but she seemed to recall that it involved Mr Bloom.
"What a wicked little creature! He's frightened me more than anything's ever frightened me before. Even Donny's tantrums weren't as bad. He deserves to be locked up. He deserves it. In any other world it would be his just punishment for doing what he had done. If Doctor Volospion hadn't stopped him, he would have raped me, for sure. Oh, why can't I stop thinking about what he said to me? It's all nonsense. I wish I was braver. I can't believe he's safely out of the way. I wish I had the nerve to go and see for myself. It would make me feel so much better."
She sank into her many pillows, pulling the sheets over her eyes. "I know what those energy cages are like. It's the same sort I was in when I first arrived. He'll never get out. And I can't go to see him. That ridiculous flattery. And Doctor Volospion doesn't help by telling me all the time that he thinks Bloom's love is 'genuine,' whatever that means. Oh, it's worse now. It is. Why couldn't Doctor Volospion have made him go away? Keeping him here is torture!"
Doctor Volospion had even suggested, earlier, that it would be charitable if she went to his cage to "comfort" him.
"Repulsive little runt!" She pushed back her pink silky sheets and turned up the lamp (already fairly bright) whose stand was in the shape of a flesh-coloured nymph rising naked from the powder-blue petals of an open rose. "I do wish Doctor Volospion would let me have a power ring of my own. It would make everything much easier. Everyone else has them. Lots of time travellers do." She crossed the soft pale yellow carpet to her gilded Empire-style dressing-table to look at her face in the mirror.
"Oh, I look awful! That dreadful creature."
She sighed. She often had trouble sleeping, for she was very highly strung, but this was much worse. For all their extravagant entertainments, their parties where the world was moulded to their whims, what they really needed, thought Mavis, was a decent TV network. TV would be just the answer to her problems right now.
"Perhaps Doctor Volospion could find something for me in one of those old cities," she mused. "I'll ask him. Not that he seems to be doing me many favours, these days. How long's he had the Fireclown now? A couple of weeks? And spending all his time down there. Maybe he loves Bloom and that's what it's all about." She laughed, but immediately became miserable again.
"Oh, Mavis. Why is it always you? The world just isn't on your side." She gave one of her funny little crooked smiles, very similar to those she had seen Barbara Stanwyck giving in those beautiful old movies.
"If only I could have gone back in time, to the 20th century, even, where the sort of clothes and lifestyle they had were so graceful. They had simpler lives, then. Oh, I know they must have had their problems, but how I wish I could be there now! It's what I was looking forward to, when they elected me to be the first person to try out the time machine. Of course, it was proof of how popular I was with the other guys at the department. Everyone agreed unanimously that I should be the first to go. It was a great honour."
Apparently this thought did not succeed in lifting her spirits. She raised a hand to her head.
"Oh, oh — here comes the headache! Poor old Mavis!"
She began to pad back towards the big circular bed. But the thought of a continuance of those dreams, even though she had pushed them right out of her mind, stopped her. It had been Doctor Volospion's suggestion that she continue to lead the sort of life she had been used to — with regular periods of darkness and daylight and a corresponding need to sleep and eat, even though he could easily have changed all that for her.
To be fair to him, she thought, he tended to follow a similar routine himself, ever since he had heard that Lord Jagged of Canaria had adopted this ancient affectation. If she had had a power ring or an air car at her disposal (again she was completely reliant on Volospion's good graces) she would have left the palace and gone to find some fun, something to take her mind off things. She looked at her Winnie-the-Pooh clock — another three hours before the palace would be properly activated. Until then she would not even be able to get a snack with which to console herself.
"I'm not much better off than that little creep down there," she said. "Oh, Mavis, what sort of a state have they got you into!"
A tap, now, at the door.
Grateful for the interruption, Mavis pulled on her fluffy blue dressing-robe. "Come in!"
Doctor Volospion, a satanic Hamlet in black and white doublet and hose, entered her room. "You are not sleeping, Miss Ming? I heard your voice as I passed…"
Hope revealed itself in her eyes. "I've got a bit of a headache, Doctor." He could normally cure her headaches. Her mood improved. She became eager, anxious to win his approval. "Silly little Mavis is having nightmares again."
"You are unhappy?"
"Oh, no! In this lovely room? In your lovely palace? It's everything a little girl dreams about. It's just that awful Mr Bloom. Ever since…"
"I see." The saturnine features showed enlightenment. "You are still afraid. He can never escape, Miss Ming. He has tried, but I assure you my powers are far greater than his. He becomes tiresome, but he is no threat."
"You'll let him go, then?"
"If I could be sure that he would leave the planet, for he fails to be as entertaining as I had hoped. And if he would give me that Grail of his, from which his power, I am now certain, derives. But he refuses."
"You could take it now, couldn't you?"
"Not from him. Not from his ship. The screen is still impenetrable. No, you are our only hope."
"Me?"
"He would not have allowed himself to be trapped at all, if it had not been for you." Doctor Volospion sighed deeply. "Well, I have just returned from visiting him again. I have offered him his liberty in return for that one piece of property, but he fobs me off with arguments that are typically specious, with vague talk of Faith and Trust — you have heard his babble."
Mavis murmured sympathetically. "I've never seen you so cast down, Doctor Volospion. You never know with some people, do you? He's best locked up for his own good. He's a sort of cripple, isn't he? You know what some cripples are like. You can't blame them. It's the frustration. It's all bottled up in them. It turns them into sex maniacs."
"To do him justice, Miss Ming, his interest seems only in you. I have offered him many women, both real and artificial, from the menageries. Many of them are very beautiful, but he insists that none of them has your 'soul,' your — um — true beauty."
"Really?" She was sceptical, still. "He's insane. A lot of men are like that. That's one of the reasons I gave them up. At least with a lady you know where you are on that score. And Mr Bloom has got about as much sex-appeal as a seagull — less! Did you ever hear of a really sweet old book called Jonathan…"
"Your headache is better, Miss Ming?"
"Why, yes." She touched her hair. "It's almost gone. Did you…?"
Doctor Volospion drew his own brows together and traced beringed fingers across the creases. "You do not give yourself enough credit, Miss Ming…"
She smiled. "That's what Betty was always telling me when I used to feel low. But poor old Mavis…"
"He demands that you see him. He speaks of nothing else."
"Oh!" She paused. She shook her head. "No, I couldn't, really. As it is, I haven't had a good night's sleep since the day he arrived."
"Of course, I understand."
Miss Ming was touched by Doctor Volospion's unusual sadness. He seemed to have none of his usual confidence. She moved closer to him.
"Don't worry, Doctor Volospion. Maybe it would be best if you tried to forget about him."
"I need the Grail. I am obsessed with it. And I cannot rid myself of the notion that, somehow, he is tricking me."
"Impossible. You're far too clever. Why is this Grail so important to you?"
Doctor Volospion withdrew from her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to pry."
"Only you can help me, Miss Ming."
The apparent pleading in his voice moved her to heights of sympathy. "Oh…"
"You could convince him, I think, where I could not."
She was relenting, against all her instincts. "Well, if I saw him for a few moments … And it might help me, too — to lay the ghost, if you know what I mean."
His voice was low. "I should be very grateful to you, Miss Ming. Perhaps we should go immediately."
She hesitated. Then she patted his arm. "Oh, all right. Give me a few minutes to get dressed."
With a deep bow, Doctor Volospion left the room.
Miss Ming began to consider her clothes. On the one hand, she thought, some sort of sexless boiler suit would be best, to dampen Mr Bloom's ardour as much as possible. Another impulse was to put on her very sexiest clothes, to feed her vanity. In the end she compromised, donning a flowery mou-mou which, she thought, disguised her plumpness. Courageously she went to join Doctor Volospion, who awaited her in the corridor. Together they made their way to the menagerie.
As they descended flights of stone stairs she observed: "Surprisingly I'm feeling quite light-headed. Almost gay!"
They passed through the tiered rows of his many devotional trophies, past the bones and the sticks and the bits of cloth, the cauldrons, idols, masks and weapons, the crowns and the boxes, the scrolls, tablets and books, the prayer-wheels and crystals and ju-jus, until they reached the door of the first section of the menagerie, the Jewish House.
"I had thought of putting him in here," Doctor Volospion told her as they passed by the inmates, who ranted, wailed, chanted, tore their clothing or merely turned aside as they passed, "but finally I decided on the Non-Sectarian Prophet House."
"I hadn't realized your collection was so big. I've never seen it all, as you know." Miss Ming made conversation as best she could. Evidently the place still disturbed her.
"It grows almost without one realizing it," said Doctor Volospion. "I suppose, because so many people of a messianic disposition take an interest in the future, we are bound to get more than our fair share of prophets, anxious to discover if their particular version of the millennium has come about. Because they are frequently disappointed, many are glad of the refuge I offer."
They went through another door.
"Martyrdom, it would seem, is the next best thing to affirmation," he said.
They passed through a score of different Houses until, finally, they came to the Fireclown's habitat. It was designed to resemble a desert, scorched by a permanently blazing sun.
"He refused," whispered Doctor Volospion, as they approached, "to tell me what sort of environment he favoured, so I chose this one. It is the most popular with my prophets, as you'll have noted."
Emmanuel Bloom, in his clown's costume, sat on a rock in the centre of his energy cage. His greasepaint seemed to have run a little, as if he had been weeping, but he did not seem in particularly low spirits now. He had not, it appeared, noticed them. He was reciting poetry to himself.
"… Took shape and were unfolded like as flowers.
And I beheld the hours
As maidens, and the days as labouring men,
And the soft nights again
As wearied women to their own souls wed,
And ages as the dead.
And over these living, and them that died,
From one to the other side
A lordlier light than comes of earth or air
Made the world's future fair.
A woman like to love in face, but not
A thing of transient lot —
And like to hope, but having hold on truth —
And like to joy or youth,
Save that upon the rock her feet were set —
And like what men forget,
Faith, innocence, high thought, laborious peace —
He had seen her. His great blue eyes blinked. His stiff little body began to rise. His birdlike, fluting voice took on a different tone.
"And yet like none of these…" He put an awkward finger to his small mouth. He put his painted head on one side.
Mavis Ming cleared her throat. Doctor Volospion's hand forced her further towards the cage.
The Fireclown spoke first. "So Guinevere comes at last to her Lancelot — or is it Kundry, come to call me Parsifal? Sorceress, you have incarcerated me. Tell your servant to release me so that, in turn, I may free you from the evil that holds you with stronger bonds than any that chain me!"
Miss Ming's smile was insincere. "Why don't you talk properly, Mr Bloom? This is childish. Anyway, you know he's not my servant." She was very pale.
Mr Bloom crossed the stretch of sand until he was as close to her as the cage permitted. "He is not your master, you may be sure of that, this imitation Klingsor!"
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about." Her voice was shaking.
He pressed his tiny body against the energy screen. "I must be free," he said. "There is no mission for me here, now, at the End of Time. I must continue my quest, perhaps into another universe where Faith may yet flourish."
Doctor Volospion came forward. "I have brought Miss Ming, as you have so constantly demanded. You have talked to her. Now, if you will give up the Grail to me…"
Mr Bloom's manner became agitated. "I have explained to you, demi-demon, that you could not keep it, even if, by some means, I could transfer it to you. Only the pure in spirit are entitled to its trust. If I agreed to your bargain I should lose the Grail myself, for ever. Neither would gain!"
"I find your objections without foundation." Doctor Volospion was unruffled by the Fireclown's anger. "What you believe, Mr Bloom, is one thing. The truth, however, is quite another! Faith dies, but the objects of faith do not, as you saw in my museum."
"These things have no value without Faith!"
"They are valuable to me. That is why I collect them. I desire this Grail of yours so that I may, at least, compare it with my own."
"You know yours to be false," said the Fireclown. "I can tell."
"I shall decide which is false and which is not when I have both in my possession. I know it is on your ship, for all that you deny it."
"It is not. It manifests itself at certain times."
Doctor Volospion allowed his own ill-temper to show. "Miss Ming…"
"Please let him have it, Mr Bloom," said Mavis Ming in her best wheedling voice. "He'll let you go if you do."
The Fireclown was amused. "I can leave whenever I please. But I gave my word on two matters. I said that I would not take you by force and that I would take you with me when I left."
"Your boasts are shown to be empty, sir," said Doctor Volospion. He laid the flat of his hand against the energy screen. "There."
Mr Bloom ran his hand through his auburn mop, continuing to speak to Miss Ming. "You demean yourself, woman, when you aid this wretch, when you adopt that idiotic tone of voice."
"Well!" It was possible to observe that Miss Ming's legs were shaking. "I'm not staying here, not even for you, Doctor Volospion! It's too much. I can stand a lot of things, but not this."
"Be silent!" The Fireclown's voice was low and firm. "Listen to your soul. It will tell you what I tell you."
"Miss Ming!" Seeing that she prepared to flee Doctor Volospion seized her arm. "For my sake do not give up. If I have that Grail…"
"You may see the Grail, beautiful Mavis, when I have redeemed you," murmured the Fireclown, "but it shall always be denied to such as he! Come with me and I shall let you witness more than Mystery."
She panicked. "Oh, Christ!" She was unable to control herself as she sensed the terrible pressure coming from both sides. She tried to free herself from Doctor Volospion's restraining hand. "I can't take any more. I can't!"
"Miss Ming!" fiercely croaked a desperate Volospion. "You promised to help."
"Come with me!" cried the Fireclown.
She still struggled, trying to prise his grip away from the sleeve of her mou-mou. "You can both do what you like. I don't want any part of it."
Hysteria ruled now. She scratched Doctor Volospion's hand so that at last he released her. She ran away from them. She ran crazily between the cages of roaring, screaming, moaning prophets. "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"
And then, just before a door shut her from their view:
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
14. In which Miss Mavis Ming is given an opportunity to win the Forgiveness of her Protector
When Mavis Ming next awoke, finding herself in the soft pink security of her own bed, where she had fled in terror after scratching Doctor Volospion, she was surprised by how refreshed she felt, how confident. Even the threat of Doctor Volospion's anger, which she feared almost as much as the Fireclown's love, failed to thrill her.
