Weary of human princes,

she set her sights on the sky,

watched darting flies, and

seagulls skimming over waves

until some cord inside her

tensed and broke, and left

her weaving fairy wings

of fishes' bones, well feathered

with her subjects' scales.

She sang them to her,

smiled as they died in schools

to make her projects, tested

wings of sharkskin sheets

and cartilage, then moved to

making glues of codfish guts,

and struts of steel-strong

narwhale horn to let her fly

above the waves.

Yet still they loved her,

all the creatures that she ruled,

and so they wept to have to

tell her of the day they found

the body of the Queen of Air,

drowned, floating on the morning tide,

wings ripped to tatters, legs

encased in some false tail

of eagle bone and mayfly wings.

Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is an Aurora Award winning poet/writer from the West Coast of Canada. She lives with her family in a house surrounded by acres of green trees and bramble bushes, where cats, cougars, birds, bears, raccoons and other critters, both wild and semi-domesticated, prowl. Marcie's work has appeared in such print magazines as On Spec, Weird Tales, Mythic Delirium, and Talebones, as well as in various anthologies and online publications.