Walser interviews Fevvers in her London dressing room after a performance to investigate whether her famous wings are genuine.

Fevvers recounts being abandoned as a baby at a brothel, where her foster mother Lizzie raised and cared for her.

Ma Nelson dies and her brother claims the brothel as inheritance, forcing Fevvers, Lizzie, and the other women into the street.

To earn money for the household, Fevvers accepts an invitation to join Madame Schreck's exploitative museum of women with physical abnormalities.

Rosencreutz advances on Fevvers with a knife on his estate; she fights back with her sword and escapes naked through a window.

Through a contact named Esmerelda, Fevvers meets Colonel Kearney and signs on to perform as an aerialiste at his traveling circus.

Walser persuades his news chief and joins Colonel Kearney's circus undercover as a clown in St. Petersburg to continue investigating Fevvers.

An escaped tiger injures Walser during rehearsal, and Fevvers and Lizzie discover that Walser has been investigating them undercover.

Fevvers's trapeze is sabotaged during a circus performance; frightened, she descends a rope ladder rather than flying back to the platform.

Heavily drunk, Buffo the Great tries to murder Walser onstage with a carving knife and is forcibly restrained and sent to an asylum.

Fevvers dines with the Duke, who breaks her sword in half and attempts to imprison her in his estate.

Fevvers escapes the Duke's trap by supernatural means and finds herself suddenly aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway with Lizzie and the circus troupe.

The Trans-Siberian Railway train explodes in Siberia; the surviving circus members are forced onto sleighs at gunpoint by a band of brigands.

Escaped murderess Olga unearths the unconscious Walser from the train wreckage; he has lost all memory and regressed to infant-like behavior.

Fevvers reveals her wings to a group of tribal villagers and Walser suddenly recognizes her, restoring both their lost identities.

In London, journalist Jack Walser interviews the winged aerialiste Sophie Fevvers to expose her as a fraud, then joins her circus undercover as a clown to continue investigating. Fevvers recounts her extraordinary life: raised in a brothel, exploited in a freak museum, and nearly killed by the obsessive Rosencreutz before finding her place in the circus. In St. Petersburg, disaster accumulates as Fevvers's trapeze is sabotaged, her clown leader Buffo suffers a violent breakdown, and a dangerous encounter with a powerful Duke costs Fevvers her sword and her sense of control. Fevvers escapes by magical means onto the Trans-Siberian Railway, but the journey ends violently when brigands blow up the train in the Siberian wasteland. Walser is left for dead under the wreckage, stripped of all memory and identity, while the circus survivors are taken hostage. The story reaches its climax in a remote tribal village, where Fevvers and Walser finally recognize each other and recover their lost senses of self as the new century dawns.

The headline events driving Fevvers and Walser's story from London to Siberia.

Ma Nelson incorporates Fevvers into her brothel's décor as the living Winged Victory statue and presents her with an admiral's sword.

After Nelson's brother claims ownership of the brothel, the women burn it to the ground in protest before parting ways.

After financial hardship strikes Lizzie's sister's household, Fevvers accepts Madame Schreck's invitation to join her museum of women with abnormalities.

Madame Schreck agrees to sell Fevvers to a mysterious customer; Fevvers forces Schreck to reveal that the true price is one thousand guineas.

Fevvers escapes Rosencreutz and returns to Battersea, where she discovers that Madame Schreck has mysteriously evaporated and vanished.

Colonel Kearney hires Walser as a clown after his intelligent pig Sybil spells out the word 'clown' on her alphabet cards.

Walser discovers the Professor secretly conducting a genuine anatomy lesson for the other educated apes inside the empty circus ring.

Walser brings the distraught Mignon to Fevvers's hotel suite, where Fevvers coaxes out Mignon's tragic backstory by speaking to her in German.

Fevvers persuades the reluctant Princess of Abyssinia to incorporate Mignon into her dancing tiger act as a singer.

Mignon and the Princess rehearse their combined tiger act for the first time and the tigers respond with surprising enthusiasm.

Samson the Strong Man attacks Walser out of jealousy; Fevvers discovers that Samson believed Mignon had left him for Walser.

The Professor presents Colonel Kearney with a written contract renegotiating the apes' pay and management directly, backed by Sybil's endorsement.

The Professor and the other educated apes resign from Colonel Kearney's circus and depart together with train tickets to Helsinki.

The brigand leader reveals that his gang blew up the train specifically to capture Fevvers, believing she has influence over the Tsar.

Fevvers and Lizzie bring a tribesman's newborn and its exhausted mother to the tribal village, where the tribespeople mistake Fevvers for an evil spirit.

Pool 2 traces the secondary events that give texture to the novel's world, beginning with Fevvers's earliest performances as a living work of art at Ma Nelson's brothel and the defiant burning of that brothel when Nelson's brother claims ownership. Fevvers's path through Madame Schreck's museum — her discovery of what she is truly worth and her escape from Rosencreutz — fills in the life she lived before the circus came calling. In St. Petersburg, Colonel Kearney's eccentric troupe takes shape through the apes' subversive intelligence, Mignon's desperate rescue, and the surprising triumph of the new tiger act with the Princess of Abyssinia. The circus's fragile order begins to collapse as the Professor negotiates his freedom and the apes resign, while behind the scenes Lizzie manages secrets Fevvers is not allowed to know. The train explosion and subsequent kidnapping by brigands expose the absurdity of the brigands' plan to use Fevvers's supposed royal connections as leverage with the Tsar. The pool closes as Fevvers and Lizzie bring a newborn and its mother to a tribal village, triggering the confrontation that sets the stage for the novel's final resolution.

The supporting events and circus life that fill out the full journey.

Fevvers first discovers her wings growing in at age fourteen while living at Ma Nelson's brothel in London.

Fevvers learns to fly by carefully studying thermodynamics with Lizzie, mastering the physics of her own body in the air.

A mysterious man begins making private visits to see only Fevvers at Madame Schreck's museum, calling her 'Azrael' each time.

The interview concludes and Walser walks Fevvers and Lizzie partway home, still undecided about whether her wings are genuinely real.

Walser discovers an unexpected sense of freedom and selfhood in the hollow identity of his clown costume, finding himself by erasing himself.

Buffo the Great holds court at dinner, comparing the clown's endless humiliation and self-sacrifice to the suffering of Christ.

Walser realizes he has fallen in love with Fevvers while wandering alone in distress along the banks of the Neva River.

Lizzie secretly burns a note that arrived for Fevvers alongside the Duke's bouquet of violets before Fevvers can read it.

The Princess is forced to shoot one of her beloved dancing tigers when it turns and attacks Mignon during their performance.

Olga and Vera abandon the amnesiac Walser when a rescue train arrives; Walser weeps like a child and wanders alone into the Siberian woods.

The clowns perform for the brigands and literally call down chaos, blowing the entire brigand camp apart and freeing the surviving circus members.

While teaching a bear to waltz in the shaman's isolated village, Walser is suddenly struck by the memory of his own name.

Walser and the shaman ride out on elk for the shamanizing ceremony; Walser glimpses Fevvers but the tribespeople flee from her in terror.

Fevvers tells Walser that she and Lizzie were secretly helping political comrades, explaining the mysterious letters and dispatches throughout the journey.

Fevvers confesses she lied about being a virgin and laughs; her laughter spreads infectiously through the whole village as the new century dawns.

Pool 3 traces the decisive moments of inner change that drive the novel's characters from beginning to end, beginning with Fevvers first discovering her wings and learning through study how to fly. The middle of Part 1 surfaces quieter but crucial revelations: the mysterious worshipper who will become Rosencreutz, the unresolved question of Fevvers's authenticity hanging over the interview's end, and Walser's first unsettling discovery that disguise can feel more like freedom than constraint. The emotional core of Part 2 is captured through Buffo's dark philosophy, Walser's recognition of his own feelings for Fevvers, and the acts of secrecy and sacrifice — Lizzie's burned note, the Princess's agonizing shot — that signal the circus world coming apart. In Siberia, the story pivots through a sequence of hard turns: Walser abandoned in the wilderness, the clowns' chaotic destruction of the brigand camp, and the slow, fragmented return of Walser's identity in the shaman's isolated village. The pool closes at the new century's threshold, with Fevvers's joyful confession and the laughter that spreads through the village confirming that she has fully and freely reclaimed herself.

The key discoveries and emotional shifts that define each character's transformation.