Listen, you traveler of lands long past,

of lakes and of sands and of skies blood-red.

Open your ears to my ready cry

“Turn back; Turn back,”

lost wanderer this way, for the

slyest of blinks will leave you stone

 

dead. For she so still and so silent will catch

her poison-tipped claws in your muddled

mind. She, with hands of mirroring ice, with hair

of the hardest of fractaling flakes, with glassiest skin

and most graceful form, will snatch you away in your

 

sleep. You’ll wake in wonder to snowy-sharp scenes

of prisms and spindly high-pointed spires that scratch

at the stomachs of her starry skies. But soon

your awe will turn its clear eye as faces now freeze

to the trump’ted approach of the woman in white. Her

 

beauty will shine in the shimmering light,

but woe to the man trapped within her tight

grasp. For she longs for another child of man, to

replace that which was stolen from her, to

adore and protect in her frigid realm. As a pillar

 

you’ll still, so silent and grave, as she offers a hand

for your help and your aid. This solemn queen

will watch and will wait with eyes keenly knowing

that no wanderer, no traveler, no walker of lands

could resist or repel such a clarion

 

call. You’ll extend your blue hand that will shake

for the promise, but when fingertips meet, a gilding

of ice will grow and will sheath your shuddering

frame. You will watch behind glass as a crystalline tear

falls and cracks with a clink ‘pon your outstretched

 

palm. As your gaze clears, you will notice with awe

a shining white splinter that falls from your

eye, a reflecting needle of lies and distortion, that

caused that dear land that you left long ago to seem

blighted and ugly and filled with disgust. Yet

 

now you’ll remain in a mansion of ice, building words out

of shards of glimmering cold, desiring but one to

release you from her, to be free to return to more warming

earth. So open your ears weary traveler, hear,

for the trumpets have sounded their ringing call. Beware

and take haste as you take my hand, for your fate

will be sealed by the brush of my touch.