Queen of Swords - the Ice Kali

We’re three candles into Advent, and the light is getting closer.

A very long time ago I was a student at a university on the shore of Lake Ontario. There was a large island maybe a mile offshore, and in the winter in those days the lake froze between the campus and the island. It doesn’t any more.

Students would often walk across in the cold vivid winter days of eastern Ontario. People would also drive, and there were stories, none of them confirmed, of people who drove too late in the season and went through to an icy grave.

Very late one winter night I set out across the lake. There was a strong wind and it was very cold. In the silence of the night, unaccompanied by anyone, I could hear the ice talking to itself, groaning in the dark. That and the whoosh of the big snowy wind were all the sounds there were. Soon enough the blowing drifting snow had obscured the lights on shore. There were no directional markers left. I hoped the wind was blowing out of the north, and turned and kept it in my face, freezing the tears of cold as they trickled from my eyes, freezing the lining of my nose. This was possibly one of the most dangerous things I have ever done (we won’t talk about stupid rock-climbing in the south of France or catching an unidentified snake by the tail in the Turkish outback).

I have always loved the cold, when the air itself has crystallized and there’s only the mystery of your own heartbeat to keep your blood from freezing to ruby, your eyes to pearl. Had I been wrong about the wind, I might have learned more about cold that I had wanted. Facing the wind, mitts over my mouth and nose, I kept walking, spooked more by the voice of the ice than anything else, and soon the lights of town were visible through the moving snow.

This would be the home of the Snow Queen, this lethal diamond-edged cold. If you haven’t read Hans Christian Andersen’s story, go and read it right now. You can find it online easily enough if you don’t own it.

She is the ice Kali, as there is a fire Kali. That kind of cold burns, and in some places frostbite for that reason is cold frostburn. She needs only to touch you and the place she touches is hers – watch the frost patterns spreading from the contact point as skin crystallizes, a kind of fierce icy necropathy.

If you want to meet Her, go find the Queen of Swords. Sentiment draws back from the cold edge of Her blade. Unsentimental Herself She cauterizes the heart and focuses the flame of the will. She is the owl falling talons first from the sky, she is the rabbit caught in the snow, and the wide arc of frozen blood droplets left behind. She will always tell you the truth.