The narrator, Queen Herod Ice, watches three queens—Grace, Strength, and the black queen dubbed Happiness—standing at the palace gates, each bearing gifts of meat, wine, dancers and music for the king and queen. Their sweating beasts are loaded for a long trek, following a guide and a boy toward the stables. The queens speak in cryptic verses about a newborn star in the east, calling it a husband, boy‑next‑door, paramour, and ultimately the Wolf, assigning it many epithets. The black queen scoops the narrator’s breast and feeds the infant, swearing no man will ever make her weep. A peacock screeches outside; later, camels kneel in snow and the guide, leather‑gloved, shouts, seizes a smoky jug of mead from a twelve‑ to thirteen‑year‑old maid. Each queen rises on her beast like a god, while the black queen’s warning repeats: “Watch for a star… it means he’s here.” The narrator summons the Chief of Staff, a mountain man with a red scar, ordering him to gather men, horses, knives, swords and cutlasses, ride east at midnight, and kill every mother’s son without mercy. The night sky trembles with Orion and the Dog Star, while a studded diamond “W” glints in the west and a blue “Boyfriend’s Star” rises in the east. The queens declare they will wade through blood for their sleeping girls, wield daggers for eyes, and let the thunder of terrible horses drum behind their lullabies.