She was always essentially evil with
Her long, straight raven hair,
Her eyes as black as a midden, and
Her cheeks, so smooth and fair,
Her lips were ripe with the juice of love
Though she had no love to give,
But coloured them with a hint of blood
From her last aperitif.

She lived in an ice-bound castle, pitched
Next to a frozen lake,
Under a towering mountainside
As white as her wedding cake,
The clouds that hung on the mountain top
Were dark and as foul as sin,
And every day was a shade of grey
Where the sun could never get in.

She wandered the dark and gloomy halls
In a fur, but shivered her bones,
Her footsteps echoing off the walls
Her shadow cast on the stones,
The braziers on the passage wall
Would light her way to a room,
The room where a magic mirror hung
Reflected her in the gloom.

The hearth held a blazing yew tree log
That never seemed to go out,
Apart from a sneaking graveyard dog
There was nobody else about,
She’d stand in front of the mirror there
And look at her hard, cold face,
Say, ‘Mirror, when will you let me be,
I need to get out of this place!’

The face in the mirror grimly smiled
With a look of evil intent,
‘Why don’t you visit the dungeons, dear,
You know you need to repent.’
She tossed her head at the steely gaze
As her conscience peered on back,
‘I only did what I had to do
To replenish the blood I lack.’

The woman back in the mirror snarled
And she grew long pointed fangs,
Her brow had darkened, her eyes were fierce
‘We reflect our rights and wrongs.
The darkness deep in your cold, cold heart
Has entrapped this place in ice,
Compared to what lies ahead of you,
This place is Paradise.’

The woman turned and began to sob
And she paced the flagstoned floor,
There wasn’t a hint of the word ‘Repent’
As she opened the passage door,
She ran down several flights of steps
To the dungeon underneath,
Then stood and glared through the rusted bars
At her husband, Gordon Reith.

But Gordon sat on the ice cold floor
His back to an icy wall,
The frost had set on his face and hands
He wasn’t moving at all,
The puncture marks on his neck were red
With the last of his lifeblood flows,
She’d screamed the moment she’d found him dead
And ripped and torn at her clothes.

And that was the day the blizzard came
To freeze the lake in the night,
Covered the castle and mountain top
In an endless coat of white,
The mirror showed her an evil face
In place of the one she had,
‘You’ll not be drinking his blood again,
The blood of a corpse is bad!’

She opened the lock of the dungeon door
And she walked right into the cage,
Shook his body and gouged his face
In a wild, impotent rage,
The door had creaked as she turned her back
And it slammed and locked for good,
As the mirror fell from the wall above
And shattered where she’d stood.

A castle sits in a valley green
And beside a wide blue lake,
With mountains towering up above
To a sky where the sun’s awake,
You wouldn’t know that there once was snow
And I don’t know if you should,
But down in the dungeon lies a man
And the woman who drank his blood.

David Lewis Paget