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Tasting the sweet mouth of my erstwhile love, Vassily recalled a favourite dessert of his childhood: figs with cream. That was how she tasted, his delicious Angelica.
    ‘ “Wild thing!”   ’ she said. ‘ “You make my heart sing!”   ’ (This from the woman who had declared herself my love only moments ago. Was eternal Angelica forever unreliable?)
    ‘I’ll get to your other parts right away.’ (The coarseness of the man!) ‘Excuse me for just a moment,’ he said as he stopped the car. ‘Call of nature.’
    Vassily stepped behind a bush, dropped his trousers, there was a little straining and I, Volatore, was expelled, hitting the ground as a full-size hippogriff. Then Vassily got back in the car and drove off with Angelica.
    So easily had Vassily Baby disposed of Volatore the hippogriff!
    I tried to revert to the mode in which I was idea without visible form but I was unable to do it. How had the Russian been able to expel me like that? Had the idea of me become so weak that an ordinary human was stronger than Volatore the hippogriff?
    Fortunately the hour was late and there was no one about. If only I could fly out of this situation! But I had no winged words to lift me. Trying hard to think small, I crept away in the dark, cursing and whimpering, seeking a place to hide.

Chapter 13
    Extruded, Excluded and Bewildered
     
    Many scents came to me: animals; grass; trees; flowers; fresh water; wooden buildings; bushes. I smelled my way to a great park and there I hid myself in the bushes and tried to think what to do next. I was distracted by a roaring, then I realised that I was doing it: my loss was too great for words. Only roaring and the outpourings of madness could express it. To find Angelica after long centuries only to lose her after a brief moment of happiness! Only those who have possessed and immediately lost the fulfilment of their hopes and desires can know my despair.
    Then my lamentation turned to rage. How could Angelica, after what had passed between us, drop me and go off with Vassily Baby! Faithless slut! How could I ever trust a woman again! No, I mustn’t think that, there must be some explanation for her behaviour that will eventually reveal itself to me. Perhaps my power had faded and needed recharging – that would explain much. But not Angelica’s acceptance of Vassily Baby as her lover.
    What to do now? No idea; I couldn’t be invisible and I couldn’t fly. And I was hungry. Following my nose I found large, shaggy, horned cattle which I could have killed, but they were too big to be eaten in a single meal and I didn’t want to keep a carcass that was starting to smell. I contented myself, therefore, with such smaller cattle as I could find: frogs; toads; lizards; mice; ducklings. I required a great deal of this sort of provender, so I hunted every night in areas of the park not frequented by visitors or homeless men.
    This was certainly a low period in my life and I could see no end to it. I tortured myself calling to mind Angelica, naked, waiting on all fours for me to cover her as the griffin had covered my mother.
    ‘Yes, Volatore,’ she had said, ‘I am your love.’

Chapter 14
    Up, Up and Away, But …
     
    Sometimes the fog came rolling in off the bay, heightening scents and muffling sound. It rested on my face like the touch of Time’s hand and I felt lost and alone. My existence is so tenuous that it could be snuffed out like a candle by any unfriendly wind. If the vital connection between me and Angelica were broken … but I dared not think of that. Nevertheless I did think of it and everything else: the raven in whose mind I live and the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep. I had broken through the membrane that divided the reality of the imagination from that of the tangible world and only now did I question my right to do so. This world, whatever its reality, is held together only by consensus, by everyone’s agreeing to abide by rules