She's lost in wilds unexplored Far from dreamers' shining lands In misty moors where even Sleep Lets fall his useless magic sands There is no rest for mortals here For fools who play where Faeries tread On Faerie roads, in Faerie lands The world is turned upon its head Her stride is sure, yet she is not Perception is the Faeries' game Sending visions, glamours, ghosts Illusions wailing out her name A fearful girl along the roads Will bargain for most anything And here, the threshold of Lost Hope Is purview of the Raven King The Raven King! The Raven King! She fell in wonder at the sight As castles grew before her eyes And wild dark turned blinding bright He led her to the winding halls She rushed down cobbles Faeries tread She gulped the dizzying Faerie wine And took the proffered Faerie bread They swept her up in swirling dance For frenzied days, she whirled along In drunken time, she stumbled to The beat of Faerie's wild song And, wilder still, her heart would drum Excited in the glittered haze As Fae lay stardust in her eyes And drew her with their feral gaze But wait--why did her weary bones Resist the Fae's beguiling thrall? Even as her mind was pulled to Pirouette the Endless Ball Dissonance--a spell had snapped She scrabbled at the gilded walls "Is this to be my cage?" she called Across the King's ethereal halls She couldn't sleep; she couldn't rest Paced and fretted, cried aloud But she had bargained, drunk the wine And for the Raven King now bowed "You made the bargain, mortal girl You said the words and you were bound You called out for the Raven King When you were lost on Faerie ground." She'd never known the ancient laws The tricky ways of binding rites The way the Fae could draw you in With silvered tongue and phantom sights The Faeries laughed; the Faeries danced They brought her back under their spell She didn't fight--their dazzling daze Was better than a living hell So there she stays, a wayward girl Heartsick, lost, and trapped in Fae A fearful girl along the roads Who bargained her whole life away