Free Blue Moon by Cindy Lynn Speer Page A

is. So, her son still lives. All is not lost.
    She willed herself to the surface. There she wandered, trying to find a direction that would take her to what she needed. She shook her head. Who knew that a soul could be groggy from so much sleep?
    She heard footsteps crunching on the path and looked for a place to hide, then laughed because she was invisible, unless she didn't want to be. At least, if the old rules held.
* * * *
    Jill broke down on the highway but managed to roll her car off the road sputtering and hissing and leaking fluids like a slain dragon. Her father would be angry, mostly because she had bought this car rather than let him buy a better one for her. It wasn't really stubborn pride but the desire to do for herself and prove herself.
    She kicked the tire and grabbed her backpack out of the trunk. She wished she'd let him buy the better car, now. Or the cell phone he'd offered.
    She looked up at the sky and realized she'd better get going. Girls were prey after dark, and staying by the car was even more dangerous than heading through the woods. Besides, she was familiar with the area and in an hour she'd get home. She was only an exit, maybe two, from where she'd meant to get off anyway.
    She jumped over the rail and began climbing. After a time, she reached a path. Her feet crunched on dead leaves, and she tried to walk more softly. The moon had broken through, bright even though only a sliver showed, and she could see.
    The path melded into a clearing. She saw a stone and thought she would sit and rest—it was about waist-high and flat enough on top. A cloud passed, darkening the land, and she looked down at her feet to make sure she was still on the path. When she looked up, she saw a woman.
    She was the most beautiful woman Jill had ever seen, and she wished desperately that she could look like her, with such glossy, raven-black hair, such large gold eyes set in a finely boned face. The woman was slightly alien-looking, and very exotic.
    "Would you really like to look like me?” a Shadow voice in her head asked.
    "Yeah,” Jill said. “Who wouldn't?"
    The woman smiled. The moon's light glittered again through the trees, and Jill realized she could see through her.
    "Now, now,” the voice said as cold fingers touched her face. “It is too late to change your decision."
    The cold poured into her, shoving her consciousness into the back of her mind.
* * * *
    The Black Queen stretched as she filled Jill's body, was reminded of how it felt to have arms and legs and a back.
    Do I still have the power? she wondered, and tapped deep into the earth, looking for one drop, one little rivulet of magic.
    She found what she sought in the stone of a ring trapped on an ancient skeleton's finger. She absorbed it, and Jill got her wish. Her face and figure reformed; her hair became long and black.
    "Sabin?” she whispered, and the wind took her voice as she sensed for magic. She let her knowing spread until it touched the sea, where she felt her own kind coming closer along the waters. Silly creatures. They thought Titania, far away on the other side of existence, was the one they should be afraid of.
    She smoothed her hands over her hips, swayed in a few steps of dance, feeling muscles bunch and slide beneath flesh. She giggled with undiluted joy, and small things for miles around cowered in the brush and would not make a sound or move until she was far away.

Interlude
    The Ghost Ship
    "So, it's coming,” Captain Cearvus said, eyeing the other three gathered around the table. He was the oldest, which was ironic considering that once he had sat at this table, the second youngest of a group of rebels who saw the splitting of the worlds as a chance to get away from oppressive rule. It did not seem so long ago that he and the others had decided not to heed the call of the parting song, but took to boats and floated in the ocean while their people departed for another world.
    They lived on the sea and built a huge