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The Seastone Chair may be the heart of the Ironborn, and the sea, their lifeblood, but their soul belongs to the skalds’ songs.
Theon Greyjoy was no exception. Music was his mother’s arms, sea shanties, her lullaby. The Lord Reaper’s son nursed on the heady pipe of the conch-shell and the heartbeat drum of the bodhrán. Ballads of storm gods and sea-dragon slayers and bold pirates sailing beyond the world’s edge nourished him, sweet as mother’s milk.
Then the Northmen came and spirited him away to the landlocked forests where skalds were called bards and they never played shanties on their wooden lutes.
There, amid the foreign sounds of snow-crunch and pine-in-the-wind, Theon learned to sing wolfsongs and summersongs and southern songs brought north by Lady Stark. (He and Jon would linger by the door, sometimes, to listen to her sing Arya to sleep. They didn’t get along very well, but in this, they maintained an unspoken understanding.)
They fed his Iron spirit, foreign as they were. A legend was a legend, after all, even if its heroes couldn’t tell the difference between starboard and port.
Besides, the North was a cold and lonely place. A boy could get lost there. Theon desperately wished to get lost. How easy it was to chase a song of heroes and armies and steeds. Why, he could nearly forget the shadow of Eddard Stark’s blade poised above his neck.
Winter Kings and blind knights and dragon princes. A boy could dream of a kraken lord that would someday join their ranks. One day, he thought, all the world would sing of Theon Greyjoy.
It was that song that played in his head when he pledged his sword to Robb and named him brother. Imagine how they’ll sing of us! he thought. The King in the North and his faithful brother-in-all-but-name!
The song echoed in his head as he sailed to Pyke with the letter of Robb’s proposal blazing in his breast pocket.
“The Islanders will sing of this day,” he told the captain, beaming. “Of the bold ship…er…”
“The Myraham,” supplied the captain.
“Yes, the bold ship Myraham, ferrying their lost prince home.” Theon’s grin faded when he caught the insolent man rolling his eyes. Just you wait. They’ll be singing my name, from Seaguard to the Lonely Light. And not just Ironmen, Greenlanders too. He brightened. I’m the King in the North’s brother after all. The first in a thousand years. Every blacksmith’s daughter in the Riverlands and crannogman in his swamp will be singing my name. Just you wait.
Theon could practically hear it, then and there, ringing from the masts of the Myraham, from the creak of her lines, from the cries of the gulls overhead. The song of King Robb and his foster brother, King Theon of the Seastone Chair. Perhaps even, King Theon and his Queen, Sansa Greyjoy, nee Stark.
I bet she’d like that, thought Theon. Far better than that twisted bastard Joffrey, for all the four kingdoms left to him. He wondered what she’d say when he took Casterly Rock and forced old Tywin to release her. He’d hold out his arms and she’d run to him, her rescuer. His back would face the water, and the sun would turn his hair to fire. His ship would sit out in the distance, its deck still slick with Lannister blood.
Later, Robb would spot them together, when Theon delivered Sansa to Riverrun. He would notice Sansa staring at his best friend with wonder in her eyes, at how brave Theon looked with a new scar or two from a dying Lannister’s final blow. Rob would notice and decide he had the perfect reward for his bravery. And a perfect means of tying together the two Houses, equals in daring and honor.
But the song of his dreams twisted into something darker as his hurried letter to Robb burned to ash. Theon, the dread pirate prince. That was all he could hope for now. The Islands would never sing for a wolf, his father threatened. Better seek glory as a kraken than end up forgotten, the last of Balon Grejoy’s sons to fall and nothing more.
A kraken’s song is a terrible thing, Theon thought as Sir Rodrik’s blood soaked through his boots. An alien sound, more shriek than melody, meant only for the deep. He shuddered. Perhaps his ears had turned as wolfish as his father claimed.
Then the melody shifted again. A final swell of song to the tune of screaming horses and pleading children and the bellow of a war horn. The chorus repeated throughout, “Did you hate us the whole time?” Over and over. “Did you hate us?” “Did you hate us?”
The song crescendoed to a thunderous peak…and then Theon died, and his dreams died with him. Not all at once, of course, for Theon died in pieces. A fingernail here, his manhood there. With each bit of stolen skin, another verse was ripped away.
There would be no ballads for him, he knew. No one sings for a stinking dog.
Until she came. Sansa. The world conspired to beat the music out of her, but Sansa was a wolf Theon knew, and wolves sing no matter how hard the wind blows or how loud the lion roars.
Sansa, as strong and defiant as any legendary queen. She was a song rendered in flesh. The creature that once had been Theon Greyjoy had once been Ironborn. He had no heart, so far from the Seastone Chair, and no blood, so far from the sea. But his soul was made of music, still.
He took Sansa’s gloved hand in his. The bards will sing of you, brave lady, he thought.
They jumped.
The fall ripped Reek from his skin and revealed the bones of Theon Greyjoy. What was left of Theon Greyjoy.
He left Sansa in the care of Brienne and Podrick. She begged him to stay. He couldn’t. There would be no songs for a turncloak. Only the icy cut of Jon Snow’s vengeful blade through his neck, or worse, his forgiveness. Theon couldn’t bear the thought of either happening.
To think, I spent my whole life worrying about the wrong sword and the wrong Stark, he thought. He wondered if his life would have been worth singing about, if only he had stayed true to Ned’s teachings.
It doesn’t matter now, thought Theon, as he rode away from the group. It’s done now. It’s over. No one sings for a turncloak.
Theon was wrong.
There were songs indeed. A great many of them.
First, “The Ghost of Winterfell,” made its rounds throughout the North. Suddenly, Theon’s panicked leap with Sansa into the snow was immortalized, albeit with some exaggeration. For one thing, Theon didn’t recall summoning a flock of seabirds to grip hold of their cloaks and ease their fall. Nor did he remember Sansa kissing him full on the lips after they had landed.
Then there was “Theon Latecomer, Come Again.” A shanty, a true Islander shanty. With this song, Theon discovered that the Ironborn were no less prone to embellishment as the Northmen. True, Theon did indeed make a stirring speech advocating for Yara’s coronation. But he had not raced into the Kingsmoot at the very last second in perfect dramatic timing. And he was sure he would have noticed if he stirred a tear from every eye on that beach, from man and crab and albatross alike.
That tune was joined by another. “One Hundred Ships,” a rousing, lively number that tended to get stuck in one’s head. Soon enough, every sailor in the Iron Islands would drink to the story of how Theon and Yara managed to swipe nearly the entire Iron Fleet from under Euron’s nose. At least the name prevented the number to be inflated over time. Once upon a time, a boy named Theon would have boasted about stealing three hundred, five hundred, a thousand ships. But the man could still feel the terrible fear in his gut as he readied the sails as swiftly and quietly as possible. A hundred ships they took, and that was the end of it.
They sang of the Godswood, too. Of course, they did. Ironman and Greelander alike. The swarm of the dead, torches flickering out one by one as ironmen fell. Then it was just Theon and Bran, Bran in his chair, Theon with nothing but an empty quiver and a spear in his hand. The Night King, with his empty eyes. The eyes of the Weirwood, watching them. A rush. Snow crunching under Theon’s boots. Snow stained red.
It was a song for cold winter nights, Theon thought. The kind of story Bran used to love. A song for a crackling hearth long after you were supposed to be in bed. Whenever he heard it, Theon would shiver.
On warmer spring days, he could hear lovers woo their sweetlings with renditions of, “The Wolf And Her Kraken.” That was his favorite of all.
She sent him to sea with a kiss on his brow
She sent him to sea with a kiss
Not that he would admit it. Theon always made a show of deep embarrassment whenever a gathering erupted into a chorus of, ‘A Dead Man’s Kiss,’ or a visiting minstrel would play “The Girl and The Ghost,” while pointedly eyeing the Queen in the North and her Prince Consort.
That part of Theon, the Theon who dreamed of glory, died long ago. It was buried next to his knowing smile and delusions of piracy. The reality that earned him the songs of legend had killed it.
This new Theon understood that a hundred songs of valor could not compare to the relief in knowing that no hot brand would ever touch his skin again.
That a hundred songs of miracles could not hold up to the first blessed rush of air through hislungs. The first glimpse of sky after believing his last sight would be the icy eyes of the Night King.
That a hundred songs of love were nothing, nothing at all. Nothing compared to the brush of Sansa’s lips, the whisper of her hair on his skin, the tenderness of her hands. She was the only song that mattered.
Still, he couldn’t claim the songs were unappreciated. He didn’t seek glory, not anymore. But all his life. Theon sought to belong. Somewhere. Anywhere. He couldn’t be Theon Greyjoy in Winterfell, he couldn’t survive Theon Stark in Pyke.
But now, a thousand voices in every corner of Westeros welcomed Theon Sea Wolf into their legends. He couldn’t say that he minded. No, he didn’t mind at all.