Intricacies of a highest order is what they are in the purest form. Not the highest order, as if there were one, or as if there were but one which pertained to us. They exist as a tangled rope, a kind of metaphysical Gordian knot, or would if we found them alone and unspoiled. As I said, their purest form would be such as that. As they are, having penetrated our sphere of being, which exists in the most unspherical way poissible, you might liken them to a ghost.
Walking into those northern woods at night would lend your eye no notion that she was even there. She exists as one of these mottled entities that call our world home, and those knowledgeable enough to recognize her existence are unable to really pin down her thoughts. We know her as old lady winter, for she is aged and she is cold. When I was younger, I did take that trip into the forest in search of her. I had heard the tales of the legions that thought the woods would be a shortcut around the mountains and oceans that otherwise ring this country. All that most scholars say on the matter is they never came out. Some brave enough to theorize say they came down with sickness or disease when they traveled through, or perhaps were unprepared for local wildlife as of yet unknown. The bards string along tales of lost cities of great magic such that the tall towers of our empire would be awed to shame.
I had heard but one tale of old lady winter in all the tales that were thrown around, and by a most curious sort. The lowest of the beggars, clad in little more than scraps of burlap whilst sitting in the street. Of all the accounts, he was the only one to have actually claimed to venture in and back out of those woods, though quite a few expeditions had made known their intent at the former. He said he saw a ghost of a great lady, all frosted over and walking through the dark parts of the forest, surveying her kingdom. With a bit of a tremor in his voice he finished his tale with a short rasp. "I fled."
So into the trees and snow I strode with a pack on my shoulders and a pipe in my mouth. It was two days in when I noticed the trees rise taller around me as I dragged my feet through knee-deep snowdrifts. In a land of continual winter, the trees were mostly scraggly things, growing up out of the hard ground and spurting up on the few days it would thaw to let water flow down into their roots. Here though they began to climb higher into the sky and clump closer together, weaving their needled limbs together into a great canopy atop the sky. I walked in wonder, asking myself why nobody had talked of such trees as this, for surely some had ventured deep as I had. The thought did not quite reach my young and brash brain that few would make it back out again but those who traveled alone and quietly.
I would draw out the sights I had see that day by campfire-light upon the few sheets of parchment I had taken with me before settling in to warm furs through the night. I had at first been worried about wolves or bears menacing me on my journey, but the farther I walked inwards the fewer signs of life I found there. By the third day I hardly ever heard a bird, much less saw tracks of any kind besides my own.
It was the fifth night before the forest really awoke with what I would deep as its great power. A long day of walking and staring at the thick forest and the ever increasing gloom that was nestled within it left me to find suitable wood to make my fire, a task harder than it would seem. The underbrush was surely flourishing, but where other forests might have a good deal of old and fallen trees or a few broken branches there was nothing but grass and bushes and rocks and snow. I was driven to chopping off low hanging branches from the trees themselves to fuel my fire.
The ground, of course, was not dry, so I had taken to the habit of building up a pyre and letting it burn down into the ground and steam up the snow beneath throughout the night. It was a great surprise to see the fire expose a ground littered in bones when it did indeed burn down to the frozen ground. I had felt the ground grow more rocky over the later half of the day, but I reflected later when I had returned that the field I found myself in, must stretch a few miles in diameter, if not more. The bones were not naked, surrounded by rusted metal that had all but been erased by time, and scraps of cloth and leather that made up their uniforms. Not all of them were the same, and I counted up to three different insignia on helmets and belt-buckles and shields before I had the sense to pack my things and head back away out of the place.
It was nearing midnight by then, and a few frail beams of moonlight had pierced the canopy to guide my way, though I also carried my torch aloft to find my tracks. I walked through the night, though I had not made my way to dawn before the second disturbing thing happened to me that night. I felt a prickle in my neck, and after walking a few more steps I gave in to the temptation and looked backwards to, as I thought in the moment, 'relieve my overactive mind of strange fantasies'.
She was standing there, all in white and at least ten feet tall. Her eyes were white and her skin was white and her gown was whiter than white could seem to be. Her steps wove her through the trees, and as she walked towards my petrified form I could feel the air harden in cold around me. It was an instinct when I went to cross my arms and huddle against the cold, but the rattling stopped me before the chains did. They were thin things at first, and clear, but the shackles swelled with the cold. They held by hands together, and my feet, and more grew up to chain me to tree-branches that were close enough.
By the time she had arrived facing me, I was immobile and would have violently shivered had I the leeway. Her face was expressionless, as if it were untouched with any emotion having chained me up. There was not even the hint of boredom you might expect. I lost sight of her as she paced around behind me, moving smoothly through the chains which rippled as she interposed herself in their space. When she had made a circuit, I saw her holding one of my sheets of drawings in a spot of moonlight. I swear that for but a moment she smiled the smallest smile that I ever saw. Then she was walking away through the trees again, back deeper into her winter realm. It was still before dawn when the chains melted off.
I did not make it very far with stiffened limbs and chattering teeth before the dawn greeted me. The rest of my trip back was cold, but uneventful. I never had the same level of circulation as I once did, still frozen on the inside by that encounter. The years since I have guessed and second guessed why I survived that night unlike the thousands and more that never walk out of those woods. What I know of their kind that exist in this world tells me it stands beyond my comprehension, that my eyes were playing tricks on me and she didn't smile at all, yet I can't shake the memory no matter how hard I try.
Anyway, stay out of those woods if you know what's good for you. Every year some more people go in there and never come out, though by now the armies have stopped trying to cross it. Perhaps in another few decades some general will be stupid enough to lead his troops within, but even without a tale of the old lady of winter the histories speak of the poor choice it would be.
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