"We made it beautiful again. Is that not 'useful', Amelia?"

"It does not satisfy me, at any rate."

"You have scarcely begun, however, to express your creativity. Tomorrow, perhaps, we shall invent something together, to delight our friends."

She made an effort to brighten. "I suppose that you are right. It is a question, as your father said, of attitude."

"Exactly." He hugged her. They kissed, but it seemed to him that her kiss was not as wholehearted as, of late, it had become.

From the next morning it was as if a strange fever took possession of Amelia Underwood. Her appearance in their breakfast room was spectacular. She was clad in crimson silk, trimmed with gold and silver, rather oriental in influence. There were curling slippers upon her feet; there were ostrich and peacock feathers decorating her hair and it was evident that she had painted or otherwise altered her face, for the eyelids were startling blue, the eyebrows plucked and their length exaggerated, the lips fuller and of astonishing redness, the cheeks glowing with what could only be rouge. Her smile was unusually wide, her kiss unexpectedly warm, her embrace almost sensual; scent drifted behind her as she took her place at the other end of the table.

"Good morning, Jherek, my darling!"

He swallowed a small piece of toast. It seemed to stick in his throat. His voice was not loud. "Good morning, Amelia. You slept well?"

"Oh, I did! I woke up a new woman. The new woman, if you would have it. Ha, ha!"

He tried to clear the piece of toast from his throat. "You seem very new. The change in appearance is radical."

"I would scarcely call it that, dear Jherek. Merely an aspect of my personality I have not shown you before. I determined to be less stuffy, to take a more positive view of the world and my place in it. Today, my love, we create !"

"Create?"

"It is what you suggested we do."

"Ah, yes. Of course. What shall we create, Amelia?"

"There is so much."

"To be sure. As a matter of fact, I had become fairly settled — that is, I had not intended…"

"Jherek, you were famous for your invention. You set fashion after fashion. Your reputation demands that you express yourself again. We shall build a scene to excel all those we have so far witnessed. And we shall have a party. We have accepted far too much hospitality and offered none until now!"

"True, but…"

She laughed at him, pushing aside her kedgeree, ignoring her porridge. She sipped at her coffee, staring out through the window at her hedges and her gardens. "Can you suggest anything, Jherek?"

"Oh — a small 'London' — we could make it together. As authentic as anything."

" 'London'? You would not repeat an earlier success, surely?"

"It was an initial suggestion, nothing more."

"You are admiring my new dress, I see."

"Bright and beautiful." He recalled the hymn they had once sung together. He opened his lips and took a deep breath, to sing it, but she forestalled him.

"It is based on a picture I saw in an illustrated magazine," she told him. "An opera, I think — or perhaps the music hall. I wish I knew some music hall songs. Would the cities be able to help?"

"I doubt if they can remember any."

"They are concerned these days, I suppose, with duller things. With Jagged's work."

"Well, not entirely…"

She rose from the table, humming to herself. "Hurry, Jherek dear. The morning will be over before we have begun!"

Reluctantly, as confused by this role as he had been confused when first they had met, he got up, almost desperately trying to recapture a mood which had always been normal to him, until, it seemed, today.

She linked her arm in his, her step rather springier than usual, perhaps because of the elaborate boots she wore, and they left the house and entered the garden. "I think now I should have kept my palace," she said. "You do not find the cottage dull?"

"Dull? Oh, no!"

He was surprised that she gave every hint of disapproving of his remark. She cast speculative eyes upon the sky, turned a power-ring, and made a garish royal blue tint where a moment ago there had been a relatively subdued sunrise. She added broad streaks of bright red and yellow. "So!"

Beyond the willows and the cypresses was what remained of the wasteland. "Here," she said, "is what Jagged told us was to be our canvas. It can contain anything — any folly the human mind can invent. Let us make it a splendid folly, Jherek. A vast folly."

"What?" He began to cheer, though forebodings remained. "Shall we seek to outdo the Duke of Queens?"

"By all means!"

He was dressed in modest dove-grey today; a frock-coat and trousers, a waistcoat and shirt. He produced a tall hat and placed it, jaunty, on his head. Hand went to ring. Columns of water seemed to spring from the ground, as thick as redwoods, and as tall, forming an arch that in turn became a roof through which the sun glittered.

"Oh, you are too cautious, Jherek!" Her own rings were used. Great cliffs surrounded them and over every cliff gushed cataracts of blood, forming a sea on which bobbed obsidian islands filled with lush, dark vegetation; and now the sun burned almost black above and peculiar sounds came to them across the ocean of blood, from the islands.

"It is very grand," said Jherek, his voice small. "But I should not have believed…"

"It is based on a nightmare I once had."

"A horse?"

"A dream."

Something dark reared itself from the water. There was a brief flash of teeth, reminiscent of the creatures they had encountered in the Palaeozoic, of a snake-like and powerful body, an unpleasant rushing sound as it submerged again. He looked to her for an explanation.

"An impression," she said, "of a picture I saw as a girl, at the Crystal Palace I think. Oh, you would not believe some of the nightmares I had then. Until now I had forgotten them almost completely. Does the scene please you, Jherek? Will it please our friends?"

"I think so."

"You are not as enthusiastic as I had hoped you would be."

"I am. I am enthusiastic, Amelia. Astonished, however."

"I am glad I astonish you, Jherek dear. It means, then, that our party has every chance of success, does it not?"

"Oh, yes."

"I shall make a few more touches but leave the rest until later. Let us go into the world now."

"To —?"

"To offer invitations."

He acquiesced and called for his locomotive. They boarded her, setting course for Castle Canaria where they hoped to find the Iron Orchid.

"The Lat are still with us?" Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, licked lush lips and widened her already very wide blue eyes to assume that particular look of heated innocence so attractive to those who loved her (and who did not?). "Oh, what splendid news, Iron Orchid! They raped me, you know, an enormous number of times. You cannot see them now, since my resurrection, but my elbows were both bright red!" Her dress, liquid crystal, coruscated as she lifted her arms. They walked together through the dripping, glassy passage in one of Mrs. Underwood's obsidian islands; at the far end of the tunnel was reddish light, reflected from the bloody sea beyond. "The atmosphere is rather good here, don't you think?"

"A trifle reminiscent of something of Werther's."

"None the worse for that, dearest Orchid."

"You have always found his work more attractive than I have." (They had been rivals once, however, for sighing de Goethe.)

The light was blocked. My Lady Charlotina rustled towards them, in organdie and tulle of clashing greens. She staggered for a second as a wave struck the island and it tilted, then righted itself. "Have you seen the beasts? One has eaten poor O'Kala." She giggled. "They are fond of goats, it seems."