The snow did little to dampen the sound of the wind as the man sat by the remnants of the campfire. 

What was it now, near midnight?

He tightened his cloak around him, watching the moonlight shine through his breath in front of him. He turned to look through the surrounding trees, whose branches cast dancing shadows in the forest. It looked as though the forest floor itself was shifting, dancing in the memory of the leaves that now lay decomposing under the layers of deep snow. Snow that would, with harsher gusts of wind, rise up in clouds, sparkling in the crisp night air in the shape of wolves and barmaids that he knew from home. Wind that would sing to him the whistle of his mother and distant goblin cries. Tunes that he had, on a few occasions, hummed along to. But over the past five days he had grown used to these illusions, for that is all they were, or could be. 

So he sat, shifting his gaze from the distant shadows to the handle of his woodcutting ax by his side, slowly disappearing under the snow as the hours crept by. He blinked to keep the ice from freezing on his lashes, and to check whether or not the clouds of snow surrounding the camp had indeed settled. One whirling snow couple had waltzed behind a pair of trees, and fallen to the forest floor on the other side. Perhaps fifty paces out, an owl flew down through the figure of a woman into the whitecapped ground below, rising with a small rodent in its claws. The bird landed on one of the branches overlooking the ashes of the fire, though the man eventually lost sight of him. What he could see were the drops of blood that began to melt the snow beneath it. 

Well, at least one of us can spend the night with a full belly, he thought to himself, Two more nights. Two more nights and we’ll be back at The Hearth with warm beds and fires that will last the night.

He and his companions had departed earlier that week to leave a midwinter offering to the spirits of the woods; an old and superstitious tradition of the town he had been passing through, but an expedition that provides coin and holiday privileges for a traveler with an empty coin purse is something one could hardly afford to ignore. He had, of course, heard rumors about the Northwood, but what old forest didn’t have its fair share of legends and tales? His eyes fell upon the sleds that had carried the offering, a deer, that they had lain upon the long, stone slab in the empty glade. He wished that there would have been an extra stag for the journey back, but he knew there would be food and drink awaiting them. Traveling hungry was nothing new. Even so, he could now hear his stomach over the subsiding wind. The branches of the wood had begun to settle, and a carpet of crisscrossed light and shadow returned to the forest floor. He watched as distant figures reached out to the moon, folding themselves and their silvery gowns under their blankets of snow, back to sleep. He locked eyes with the woman the owl had flown through, as she sank below the hole where the rodent had been. He thought her pupils looked almost green. The dissonance of the wintry hum faded, the soft and empty silence of the Northwood returned to the glade, and the moon kept watching the man from up on high. 

Something small fell from the tree above, and the man’s hand had found his ax before whatever it was had hit the snow. Standing slowly, he glanced up, around the campsite, and into the surrounding wood. In the distance, he thought he saw the faint outline of deer, though as he blinked they dissolved into the jagged shadows of the trees. The crunch of his boots seemed to echo through the now silent wood, as he took two steps closer to the fallen object. The owl, it seems, had gone, leaving the tail of its midnight snack behind as an offering to the watchman for keeping an eye out while it focused on its tiny feast. For a moment, he was tempted to accept it. He found his hand reaching down towards that piece of meat slowly melting the surrounding snow. Fresh, still barely warm. He stopped himself as his fingers began to reach out, though out of hunger or curiosity he could not tell. He stared down at the tail, and squatted to see it better. For a moment, he thought it was a trick of the branches, but no. The tail had begun to move. 

The low hum of the wind had begun to rise, and the sliver of fur and sinew swayed back and forth like a metronome to the new tune. He plucked it off the ground, and stood motionless as he felt the tail curl, and relax. Around him, the dance began again, and he could see clearly now the creases in their cloaks and outlines of their horned masks. They danced into the camp, and over the now long-dead coals of the fire. It quickly disappeared under a layer of white from one of the lady’s dresses. As it brushed against the man’s trousers, his pant leg tightened with the frost against the hairs on his leg. The rodent’s tail continued to move of its own accord, and the harmony of pitches in the air crept into his blood. He felt his pulse against the frozen hairs in his pant leg slow to match the tail’s sweeping motion. One….two….one….two…

I must have stayed awake too long, the cold is playing with my mind.

The man thought, turning to the nearest tent as one of the ghostly couples danced through it as though there was nothing there. And, for a moment, it looked as though there wasn’t – the tent had been concealed by a blanket of white, though it was quickly tossed off as the wind battered against it. The snow by now had whipped into a frenzy. Though he could not see beyond the small grove he and his companions had made camp in, he could see the silhouetted deer skeletons emerging through the constantly shaking moonlight. Secure in the knowledge that he was beginning to lose his mind, he turned to go wake the gnome in the tent next to his. She didn’t have the third watch, but right now he didn’t care. She was the closest to him, and the sooner someone with some sanity was awake, the sooner he could get warm and sleep and leave this moment behind in the world of dreams. He usually liked dreams.

But he was not greeted with the sight of her tent, nor his. The green-eyed snowy woman stared into his eyes, as if she had been waiting, her silver hair whipping violently in the blizzard that had descended upon the clearing. Her face was hardly a foot from his own. He tried to jump back, but found that he could not. The only thing of his that moved was his blood, which continued pulsing to the now familiar beat. The woman smiled and took the ax from his hands, replacing it with her frigid palm. She took the wagging tail from his fingers and placed it into the pocket of his cloak, handling it with the same care as one would a delicate instrument. As she placed her hand on his shoulder, his empty hand found some frozen purchase on her lower back. He felt his boots begin to move, but not of his own accord. The man had danced on countless tavern tables in his travels, but never like this before. His feet glided through the snow behind him as she led them ‘round the dead campfire. Even as he felt the numbness take his limbs, they moved without command, and the man lost track of time as they circled the clearing. He could never move his eyes from hers, and slowly, through either the encroaching whiteness of the snowstorm or through lack of blinking, the man’s vision began to fade. The green-eyed woman and the glade slowly dissolving and intermingling in the waning moonlight, the last thing the man remembered was the cold touch of her lips on his.

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