The Lost Queen by Frewin Jones

fingers, like unfurling leaves, like strange new limbs.
    She wrenched her hand free from Gabriel’s grip. She heard him shouting as she fell, but the whirling wind drowned out his words. She spun in the air, feeling the power surging through her newborn wings. The monster roared beneath her, its eyes blazing like furnaces, its claws reaching up for her.
    But she wasn’t afraid anymore. Her wings cupped the air, sending her soaring upward in a long, smooth curve.
    She flew high into the rain-filled sky, her body tingling with delight as her wings curled and spread, lifting her above the black crags and chasms of Ynis Maw. The taste of iron was gone from her mouth. Shestretched her arms above her head, her hands together palm to palm like a diver. She twisted in the air, her wings beating fast, and with a single deep breath, she plunged upward into the heart of the storm.
    A dense blanket of sodden darkness closed around her and for a few uneasy moments she was afraid that the storm would swallow her whole as she fought to beat her wings in the drenching, airless wet belly of the cloud.
    But then, with a suddenness that took her breath away, she burst into bright daylight.
    She climbed into the vast blue sky, her wings beating freely, her heart leaping with an almost unbearable joy. This was what it felt like to be truly alive! Laughing aloud, she folded her arms around herself and went spiraling, higher and higher, until she felt that she could reach up and touch the face of the sky.
    Then, with another peal of laughter, she wheeled around and hung poised for a moment in the upper air, feeling the wind of her wings stirring her hair. She glanced over her shoulder at the gossamer-thin film of her wings as they stroked the air and held her aloft.
    Between her feet the island of Ynis Maw was hidden beneath a boiling mass of dark cloud. Behind her, and to her left and right, the gray-green sea stretched on forever, but in front of her a dark peninsula lifted out of the troubled water, white foam breaking on its craggy cliffs.
    â€œNow what?” Tania said aloud to herself, trying to think through the euphoria of the moment. “What happens next?”
    Her mouth was suddenly flooded again by that horrible taste of iron.
    â€œYou awake from the dream, my lady,” said a smooth, chilling voice. “And you return to the nightmare.”
    Cold fingers closed around her hand. The blue sky was snuffed out like a candle. Darkness roared all around her again, and her hand was caught in an icy grip. Her wings were gone and Gabriel’s voice was crawling like poison in her mind. “Did you think it would be so easy to be free of me, my lady?”
    But Tania refused to be beaten, not when she had known what it was like to break away from him and fly. With a huge effort she jerked her hand free. Gabriel let out a shout of anger that dwindled away to nothing as the dark of Ynis Maw bled away and was replaced by the incense-scented gloom of the fortune-teller’s booth.
    Too startled to react, Tania stared across the table at the woman. The fortune-teller’s face was ashen, her brown eyes staring in shock at Tania as if she had been awoken from a deep sleep by a slap across the face.
    â€œIs that it?” came Jade’s peevish voice. “She comes and goes and you don’t understand it? What about meeting tall, dark, handsome boys? What about going on long journeys? What about fame and fortune and all that?”
    Tania looked at her friend, trying to unscramble her brain. Clearly Jade had no idea of what had been going on between Tania and the fortune-teller.
    The woman spoke, and her voice was weak and subdued and full of confusion. “That’s all there is. I can’t see any more,” she said.
    â€œWhat did you see?” Tania asked, looking into the woman’s face and trying to read from her troubled eyes how much she knew of what had happened between