Chapter Text
The boy is weak but improving, his frail little body somehow finding and drawing strength from a new source. No thanks to her.
How did I not understand until now? Alayne wonders. The maester warned them what the sweetsleep could do. Lord Baelish certainly already knew.
One slip, and she and her cousin are dead, if she has not doomed them already by confiding in Yohn Royce last night.
“I am afraid, my lord,” she told him.
“Of what, child?”
“My father.” The word tasted bitter on her tongue, but she could only peel back one layer of truth at once, to test what might happen as a result.
The man had gone away, troubled, after telling Alayne to stay with Robert Arryn, to comfort him if she could. She had sung to him and prayed and hoped for his recovery, and that she would not have been a party to his death.
Lord Robert can be an impertinent child, yes, but one of his mother’s making. Alayne pities him for that. He is only a boy, a child like her brother Bran had been, and she would not see more children treated so cruelly while men play their games for power and glory. He has been a pawn, just as she has been, just as her siblings were.
The last few days have also seen the appearance of a lady knight come to compete in the tournament. That is only a story to mask the truth, however. Brienne of Tarth is not familiar to Alayne, but her squire Podrick Payne is, and she claims they have come to rescue Sansa Stark.
Lord Royce knows one secret, and Lady Brienne knows others. Either could be her way out of this prison or a new trap to ensnare her. And what of Sweetrobin? Who will be his salvation?
She watches the boy’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall, his breaths growing stronger. He survived the night, and the worst should be past. Alayne is exhausted from sitting vigil by his side most of the night, but she decides to sing one more song before curling up and falling asleep in her chair by his bed.
*
“Alayne, sweetling, be a good girl and give our little lord his medicine.” When he is done speaking, the man’s mouth hooks into a mocking smile.
Her hand shakes as she holds the amber bottle over Sweetrobin’s mouth. It feels wrong. Why does it feel wrong? The sweetsleep will stop the shaking; her father said it would.
“Another drop or two should do it,” Harry says. “Don’t you want me to be Lord of the Vale? You would be its lady. Quite the honor for a bastard girl.”
“No,” she says, and lets the bottle fall from her hand.
It shatters on the ground. …
The castle made of snow has burned, and now snow or ash covers it; she isn’t sure which. It falls heavy, thick, and white, coating the towers and ramparts.
“Help me take it back,” Alayne pleads. “We are all that is left. I know you swore vows, but, please, I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“Who are you?” Jon asks.
“I am Alayne.”
No, she is Sansa, but her own name is stuck in her throat. She tries to shout it out—Sansa, my name is Sansa! I am your sister—but no sound comes from her mouth.
“I know no Alayne.”
Pulling a black cloak over his shoulders, he turns and walks away.
The castle melts at her feet.
*
The escape happens too soon for fear and anticipation to build inside her.
There is no time to take anything with her either, though it matters not. Alayne Stone has few possessions, Sansa Stark even less, and she long since lost the things that matter most—Lady at the Darry, Father on the steps of the Sept of Baelor, Mother and Robb at the Twins, Bran and Rickon at Winterfell, and Arya she knows not where.
“My lady, we must go now!” Brienne of Tarth whispers harshly, a hand wrapped around Sansa’s arm as the crowd shouts and jostles around them.
This wasn’t the plan, to leave in broad daylight, but the tourney is fast devolving around them and Littlefinger has hinted that something will happen tonight and someone is bound to notice the lord protector’s natural daughter speaking to a tall woman knight and—
They lurch around a corner, weave between tents, dodge spooked horses, Brienne leading the way. Sansa follows as swiftly as she can, her false brown braid thumping her back as they go. She hopes their haste does not attract notice, that it is lost in the increasing frenzy and violence of the tourney grounds.
A horse is cut loose and mounted, then nearly throws them when Lady Brienne kicks it hard. Sansa clings to its mane with one hand, the other clutching her hood over her head so no one will see her face as they ride away.
*
Only one regret remains to her, and as they ride, she prays to the old gods and the new to watch over Robert Arryn. It would not have been safe to bring the boy with them, but still she feels guilty over leaving him behind. Littlefinger’s plans will be fouled or at least delayed with Sansa gone and given what happened at the tourney. She hopes it will be enough.
“I’m worried about my cousin,” she says to Brienne when they stop by a mountain stream to water and rest the horse. “You truly trust Podrick Payne to help Lord Royce keep Sweetrobin from being harmed again?”
“Podrick is courageous, and with your letter he is to deliver to Lord Royce, Robert Arryn stands a fair chance. Besides, it would be unwise for Petyr Baelish to make another attempt on the boy’s life so soon after he almost died—and when the Vale is in turmoil, no less.”
Or it is the perfect opportunity to concoct an accident. “I remember Podrick from King’s Landing. He served Lord Tyrion. He was—” Shy and nervous, she thinks, and not capable of protecting someone from the likes of Petyr Baelish.
And a Payne, relative to the man who took Lord Eddard Stark’s head. Sansa hopes he is still sweet despite that relation, just as Marcella and Tommen were sweet despite being Lannisters. But she also hopes that he is fierce enough to protect young Robert.
Brienne is looking through the saddle bags of the horse they stole, adding and redistributing supplies from the satchel she carries.
“The boy is much more skilled and less fearful than when you knew him,” she says. “Still green, but I trust his courage. He has seen worse things than Lothor Brune or any of Lord Baelish’s other hired friends.”
“What sort of things?”
Brienne stops organizing and looks off into the fog that has settled just above the rocks and trees of the mountains, her face mournful. The silence that follows is weighty, and it makes Sansa shiver.
“We all have seen terrible things these last few years, including you, my lady. I won’t trouble you with imagining any more.”
She thinks of Father’s head mounted on the walls of the Red Keep, of wildfire burning on the Blackwater, of bodies being ripped apart during the bread riots. And then there has been the evidence of dreadful events—scars and burns on men and purple bruises under her own skin. Cruelties upon cruelties in an endless cycle.
Until someone is brave enough to end the pattern.
They remount the destrier and ride in silence, not as hard anymore so they will not run the horse to exhaustion. After a while, Sansa pushes away her memories and finds her voice again.
“Lady Brienne?”
“Yes?”
“I am sorry for the awful things you have endured in keeping your vow to my mother.”
When the knight responds, her voice is strained. “Thank you, my lady, but I would do it all again.”
*
They make camp in the hills, eating hardtack and dried apples for their meal. A fire is not safe this close to the Bloody Gate with so many armed men who came for the tournament still about, their blood hot from the violence that broke out.
Sansa and Brienne were not the only ones who fled, but Sansa is not sure if that makes it safer or more dangerous for them. Someone will come looking for her sooner than later, but they may also be discovered by a knight or clansman looking for someone else.
She has not spent long with Brienne, and a part of Sansa wonders if she should not trust the woman. How many have extended a hand to help her, only to later reveal a hidden motive, a knife up their sleeve waiting to harm her?
But Brienne has told Sansa things about Riverrun and her mother that only someone who had been there or met her could know—not much, but enough to make Sansa believe that Brienne served Lady Catelyn. Her face is honest as well, a weakness if they are discovered, but it is a boon to Sansa’s belief in the woman.
And then there is her sword—a part of Eddard Stark’s greatsword Ice, melted down and given to Lady Brienne by Jaime Lannister, his way of fulfilling an oath he made to Catelyn Stark. It is so absurd a story that Sansa supposes it might be true. Why else admit to carrying such a weapon?
Just as Brienne’s face cannot hide much, her words are plain and truthful as well.
“Until we know who will side with you, I am not sure where you will be safe, Lady Sansa,” she says as they eat. “A small village perhaps, somewhere remote that those who wish you harm would not think to look.”
“I want to go home,” Sansa says. It’s silly; she knows the Boltons hold Winterfell, and Brienne is one warrior.
“I would take you to my home, though I fear the rumors that Tarth has been invaded are true, and it is too far south. Too close to King’s Landing.”
The blue shadows of falling night make it hard to clearly see the woman’s face, but Sansa hears the sadness in her words. So many homes have been left in ruin by war. Everyone in Westeros has had a piece of life stolen from them.
She shakes her head. “The only place left for me to go is Castle Black.”
“To your bastard brother?” Brienne asks.
“Jon is lord commander.”
“My lady, the Night’s Watch is neutral. And if Lord Royce believes both what you said in person and your letter, it may not be necessary to go very far from the Vale.”
“If Lord Royce does come to aid me, it will be in the North. And Jon won’t turn me away.”
Her half-brother loved their siblings and was especially bonded to Arya. Whether he loved Sansa—or she, him—is not something she has ever considered before. But she remembers him well enough to have faith that he will help protect her.
Brienne nods, but it is slow, hesitant. Sansa imagines there is doubt written all over her pale, freckled face, only hidden by the shadows. “As you say, Lady Sansa.”
The sky descends further into darkness around them as they finish their simple meal in silence. They are just laying out the bedrolls for a few hours of sleep before continuing on when they hear hooves in the night, raised voices, and the clang of steel.
“Castle Black, then,” Brienne says grimly. She quickly packs their things with Sansa’s help, and they are off again, running the horse until it is ragged and all three of them are weak from lack of sleep and little food.
Within four days, they sell the tired horse for a bit of coin and board a boat to Ramsgate.
*
“Finally flew out of your cage, eh, Little Bird? They’ll have another for you soon enough.”
The burn on his face twists as he speaks, and she isn’t sure if he is uglier and more terrifying now or when he is still.
“Flew away, flew away,” a songbird answers.
Sansa backs away, her heels searching for purchase on the narrow, icy path beneath her feet. She slips. And falls, falls, falls.
If she were truly a bird, she would be able to fly. …
Waves make the boat lurch. A lathered horse rocks her back and forth, lifting her up before dropping her down. The air smells of brine, rot, and smoke. …
“This one is your father,” the wormy-lipped boy king says. “This one here.”
It is Robb’s bodiless head that turns toward her, though, and then Grey Wind’s and then her mother’s, the last one still attached to her body but wobbling where her neck was cut.
I cannot see them, Sansa tells herself. I cannot. I will not.
“Would you like to see my sword, my lady?” Brienne of Tarth asks. “Valyrian steel, and half of the greatsword that slew your father.”
There’s blood on the sword. Blood in the sky, blood under Sansa’s feet.
The lions left her swimming in death.
*
The clothes Alayne Stone fled the Vale in are unsuitable to keep Sansa Stark warm in the North. Each day grows a little colder as they progress slowly toward Castle Black, still many leagues away but closer than before. Every step takes her away from the danger of Littlefinger’s clutches and closer to the safety of her half-brother, Jon Snow. She hopes.
Until then, the cold is its own danger, and Sansa shivers under the light cloak she wore the day of the tourney, fitting for early winter in the valley, but not in the mountains of the Vale or in the hills or forests of the North. Brienne gives Sansa her blanket when she sees the girl shivering, but the lady knight is less accustomed to the cold and nearly freezes in the night. Her lips are blue and her fingers barely functional in the morning, and Sansa insists they light a fire to warm up before leaving their overnight camp.
“I’ll g-go into the next t-town we are near and b-buy you something warmer,” the knight chatters as she holds her hands over the fire Sansa started for them, under Brienne’s instruction.
“No,” Sansa responds. “We should save our coin for food and lodging on the worst nights. When you hunt, save the pelts, and I will sew them into this cloak to make it warmer.”
Already, Brienne has had to pay for their boat fare and two horses once they reached Ramsgate. Money must be spent cautiously.
“But you m-might freeze before th-then.”
“I am a Northerner, Lady Brienne, and born in winter. I will adjust faster than you; my body only needs a little time.”
Brienne’s hunting trip that night is longer than usual, Sansa notices, and she comes back with two squirrels and a fox.
“See? A good beginning,” Sansa reassures her.
“I will do better,” Brienne says. “And if we find a place with plenty of game, perhaps we could stay a day or two so I can catch enough for you to line the whole cloak before we head further north.”
Sansa hums in agreement.
*
Despite Sansa’s claims, the cold is a bother. It nips at her, scratches any bare part of her skin and sneaks underneath her layers to grab at her bones. But she refuses to complain because she would rather face the kiss of the cold than of a false father. The cold feels like death and freedom all at once, enveloping her as she willingly rides deeper into its open maw.
She has not bathed since leaving the Vale of Arryn, so her hair remains brown until the day the snow falls heavy and wet throughout the morning as they ride. By evening, Sansa and Brienne are freezing and wet through to their skin, and they decide to request lodging at a farm they come upon before nightfall.
The farmer eyes Brienne’s sword but agrees to let them bed down in the barn, the horses in one stall and the women in another. Sansa notices that a farm hand hangs around, keeping an eye on the pigs and the sole old mare in another stall of the small, weather-worn stable.
She does not fault the farmer for this precaution. How many smallfolk have offered shelter to strangers during the war only to have their kindness repaid by treachery? Brienne must worry about the same in return, for she keeps one hand on or near the pommel of her sword as they unload their steeds for the evening.
Around them, the wooden barn creaks in the wind. A leak in the corner lets occasional flakes drift down onto the dirt floor, staining the ground as the snow melts.
Sansa has just pulled back her soaked hood when her knight gasps quietly.
“My lady,” Brienne says, eyes going wide, “your hair.”
Sansa reaches up to pat her hair, for a moment wondering how awful it must look to cause the Lady of Tarth to look at her so. It feels wet and flattened to her head, and when her hand comes away from her hair, there are droplets of brown water on her skin. The dye. It’s coming out. And her roots must be growing in as well, though Sansa has no looking glass to see for herself.
There’s nothing for it; they have more important things to consider than the shade of her hair if they want to stay alive.
“I will keep my hood up around others until we reach Castle Black,” she tells Brienne. “Jon will know where I can procure more dye if I need it.”
Still, she is transfixed by the change. After that, when Sansa brushes her hair—most nights, though sometimes she is too tired—she watches it grow brighter and redder, and her hands and the bristles of the hairbrush Brienne procured for her come away stained brown whenever her hair is wet. It makes her heart beat faster, thrilling and terrifying her at the same time. Her true self is slowly returning.
To keep any of her locks from falling into her face or otherwise peeking out from under her hood, she pulls them back into a bun every day and keeps it wrapped in a scarf. Braids and unbound hair are too dangerous of styles for her to wear until they reach Castle Black. If the hood falls, at least then the bun and scarf will keep her hair tucked away, out of sight.
Lady Brienne has often looked at Sansa with something like grief behind her eyes, but as chestnut waves give way to auburn, the look grows more frequent and more haunted.
My mother. She is thinking of my mother.
It stings like the icy snow that cuts at her cheeks and forehead many days, to continue to be looked at and not seen for herself but for someone else. And Brienne only knew Lady Catelyn a short time. What will Arya think if she is alive and Sansa is ever reunited with her? What will Jon think?
At least he will know her, Sansa decides. How could he not, if she looks so like her mother?
But will Jon want her? It was not a question Sansa wondered at when she and Brienne started their journey, for she was too focused on progressing away from the Vale and Lord Baelish as quickly as possible. But as they grow closer to Castle Black, doubt creeps in.
Has she been right to put her faith in a boy—a man now, she reminds herself—whom she never knew well? He is loyal to the Night’s Watch, and Brienne is right that the black brothers are neutral. Jon has stayed away from the conflicts of the Seven Kingdoms even when it has been their family in danger—when Robb rode to war, when their father lost his head, when Bran and Rickon were captive and killed by Ironborn, and when Robb was murdered at the Twins.
To calm her nerves, she thinks of Jon as he was before—beating Robb at swordplay in the training yard, and the triumphant look in his stone-colored eyes; the smile he had the one time she saw him hold baby Rickon; the way he treated Arya as an equal, gossiping with her, but transformed into an older brother when he would ruffle her hair; how proud yet embarrassed he looked when Bran said it was Jon who convinced Father to let them keep the direwolves.
I am journeying toward Lady as well as Jon, she thinks. Father sent her bones north. We might be reunited, one day.
Jon saved the pups for her family because he loved Sansa’s brothers and sister. And he did his duty to the Night’s Watch in spite of that love, she decides, just as their father taught him to do. Just as Uncle Benjen did—for he did not ride south to assist them, either—and just as she did at every turn, until she finally fled her gilded cage.
I will make him want to protect me, make him love me. I will be kind and useful, the perfect lady. I will offer to do the sewing and help any way I can.
Yes, she could do the mending, and make new cloaks, breeches, tunics, and underthings. As winter wraps its cold arms around the North, the men of the Night’s Watch will be in need of warm layers. Other tasks she can learn, to free up the men who performed them before to fight.
In time, perhaps she will convince Jon that they must go home, that they must wrest Winterfell from the arms of the Bolton traitors. And if he will not leave the Night’s Watch, at least she will be safe with him until someone, whether Yohn Royce or another, allies with her.
*
Dark wings bend back into the raven’s body until it is hugging itself. The black, jewel-like eyes stare down at her from the bird’s perch on the white weirwood branch.
Sansa has grown weary of birds. She ignores it.
“Home,” the raven squawks, refusing to be ignored. “Home.”
“Yes,” she sighs. “I am trying.”
A mockingbird appears overhead. She runs toward the shelter of the weirwood, hoping the red canopy will shield her from view. But it is too late; the smaller bird has seen her as well.
It dives down from the edge of the clouds, its beak pointed straight at her. She throws herself out of the way, onto the ground, at the same time that the raven unfurls its wings and caws.
With a thwump, the mockingbird collides with the tree, its beak piercing the bark before the bird’s body falls limply to the ground.
“Dead,” the raven caws.
*
Heaviness and emptiness are all she knows, in concert and in contrast.
Something happened to Jon. Something terrible. They heard talk of it in the last village, and Sansa has been numb ever since.
The cold is rising, and the bloody Night’s Watch is collapsin’ into itself. Turned against another lord commander, an’ this one was Ned Stark’s bastard.
Everyone’s turning on Starks these days. Makes you wonder what they done to offend the old gods.
Brienne had hurried them out of the market at once. But she has not said a word to Sansa since they remounted their horses.
Finally she speaks, after spending the last hour casting one nervous glance after another at Sansa as they rode away from the village.
“Lady Sansa—”
“We ride on,” she says, knowing what Brienne might suggest.
“But your bastard brother…” That is all she says, not wanting to repeat what they heard. Despite that, the words echo in Sansa’s head. Her lady knight need not treat her so delicately.
“They did not say Jon is dead. He may still be alive but in need of our help. We are too close now to stop or turn around. And there’s still fighting in the Vale. We cannot go back.”
Jon is alive, she tells herself as she urges her horse to trot, each raise of its hooves taking her closer to Castle Black. He must be. He survived the attack. He is alive. He is alive.
A sennight, perchance a bit more, is all they have left to travel. Winterfell is behind them, though they traveled a wide berth around the keep. Other stories have reached them before today, of a fractured North, of Boltons in league with Lannisters and mountain clans joining Stannis Baratheon.
Of a Stark girl wed to Roose Bolton’s bastard son Ramsay, who rules Winterfell now. Sansa tries not to think of that rumor most of all. She nearly turned east when she heard, nearly galloped her horse to Winterfell’s gates, and Brienne had to plead with her to keep going on their set path.
Jon was her last hope. There is no one left to turn to that Sansa would feel safe revealing herself to. No one left to help her save Arya.
He is still alive. He must be.
Brienne keeps a close eye on her for the rest of the day but says very little. When they are settled for the evening, huddled close in a small canvas tent the lady knight procured for them along the way, she makes a suggestion.
“You could sing to lift your spirits. Your lady mother told me you have a lovely voice.”
Sansa does not want to sing; it does not comfort her anymore. But then she remembers that Brienne mentioned enjoying songs, so she resolves to try, if only for this true knight who rescued her from the Vale.
Singing of home might be a comfort, and a wish that their journey would not prove futile, so she starts with “Black Pines.” It has been years since she heard true northern songs, and the words unfurl like a scroll before her, with more of them revealed the further into the song she goes.
As she sings, Sansa sews the latest animal fur into her grey cloak. It is the last one she needed; the fabric is fully lined now, and she will no longer require a blanket to block out the cold as they ride. It means the nights will be warmer as well as the days because the blanket will no longer be stiff with cold and damp from weather when they bed down for the night.
She is two songs in when she realizes that her mood has improved, and Brienne seems less tense and fretful. A smothered yawn at the end of the verse makes her realize she is sleepy now as well, no longer merely numb from the news of Jon.
After finishing the song, Sansa begs her apologies to Brienne and lays down to sleep. It comes quickly, tugging on the edges of her mind and pulling her under.
*
The grey direwolf races through blinding snow that coats her fur in a white shawl. She is no bigger than a wolf, but Sansa knows those golden yellow eyes, even though it has been so very long since she saw them in dreams and even longer since she saw them in life.
A heart tree appears through the veil of snow, tall and strong and white with bursts of red at the tips of its limbs. Even the snow cannot hide the leaves. Lady slows to a trot and then stops before the weirwood. There, she lifts her head and howls, and wolves in the woods answer her song with ones of their own. On and on they bay, fighting the wind for a chance to lead the mournful choir.
A hulking white shadow comes out from behind the tree, his paws leaving no prints in the deep snow. He is silent, red-eyed, and has grown much larger than Lady ever had a chance to. Ghost.
When he lays down in the snow, slashes appear across his body, the same dreadful color as his eyes. The direwolf remains silent as the blood blooms across his belly, his neck, his back.
Lady lifts her head once more and howls. Sansa opens her mouth to join the song.
Opens, but no sound comes forth.
And then she is falling—falling but never landing. Falling through air and wind and sky and snow.
*
Snow comes down at a relentless pace several leagues from Castle Black, slowing their progress and then halting it completely before darkness falls. Sansa feels despondent at the change of pace; before the snow, she had been able to see the Wall rising up on the horizon, and it felt like a piece of Jon materializing in front of her.
“We will lose our way if we continue, my lady,” Brienne declares.
Everything is a blur of grey and white now. Fat snowflakes whip about them as they assemble their shelter, barely managing to stabilize the tent under the protection of a copse of trees off the snow-covered road.
Half a day’s ride from Castle Black—that was all that was left between Sansa and finding out Jon’s fate. All week she has fretted about him, song the only thing that succeeded in calming her. (All week, and longer, she has tried not to ponder the Stark girl’s fate and whether she truly is a Bolton now.)
How much longer will the gods make her wait? A storm like this could last for days.
A gust of wind blasts the tent, mocking her. The canvas shudders around them, and Brienne warily eyes the tent walls.
“I wish we could have kept going,” the lady knight says. “I should have had us ride harder when we saw the storm clouds coming.”
“There wasn’t enough time even then. Winter will do what it will.”
But Sansa too wishes they were safe and warm inside Castle Black, if safety is possible there or anywhere. Her body has begun to shake, though she is not certain it is all from the cold. She is weary, and despondency seems to settle over her as suddenly as the snows came.
I cannot lose hope, not when I have come so far.
There is a song that she heard along the road and has not dared to sing, but her mind has clung to the words and the tune even after only hearing it twice. It is fitting for what she wishes, that the wolves would triumph.
Jon is a wolf, and so is she. So is Arya. So was Robb. Sansa is already sad, so there is no use avoiding her kingly brother’s song for that reason.
And the stars in the night were the eyes of his wolves
And the wind itself was their song
The wind is aplenty, but there will be no stars in the sky tonight with the clouds and snow blocking them from view. The only stars Sansa will see are Brienne’s blue eyes, and they are shining with tears by the time the song ends.
“Forgive me, my knight, I did not intend to make you weep.”
“You always sing so beautifully,” Brienne sniffs. “I heard that song for the first time when I was at Riverrun with your mother, and seeing you now reminded me, that is all.”
“You don’t talk about her much.” The lady knight stiffens at the words, and Sansa rushes on. “I know you’re loyal; I can tell from what you have said about her. And your sadness … At first I thought it was for my sake that you say so little, but now I see you must miss her as well.”
There is silence for several moments as Brienne spreads her arms and rewraps the blanket draped over her shoulders. “I swore myself to her and she died. I swore to find you and Lady Arya, but I would have protected her, too.”
Sansa reaches a hand out from under her own blanket and grasps the other woman’s arm. The losses they have suffered are great, yet they have come this far, all the way to the shadow of the Wall.
Please let Jon be all right, she prays for the thousandth time. And Arya … She cannot let her mind linger on her sister; it hurts too much.
The wind beats against the tent. Sansa shudders, then begins to sing again. The words spill out of her mouth and into the cold air, first “The Winter Maid” and then “Wolves in the Hills.”
As if answering her song, a wolf howl rises above the wind that blasts through the frozen hills and wraps around the tent like an icy blanket.
A ghost wolf, heard but unseen. She wonders if Jon’s white direwolf was caught in the mutiny. Ghost was always so quiet, always watching with his red eyes. Did he fight for Jon against his enemies as Grey Wind did for Robb?
The white direwolf has appeared in her dreams since she learned of Jon, but Sansa does not believe what she saw that first night was a reflection of Ghost’s fate, but rather her imagination run wild with fear over what might have happened to Jon. On more recent nights, she only catches glimpses of the direwolf—a flash of white darting across the forest floor, illuminated by moonlight; roaming on a cliff above her; or across a lake, Lady drinking from one shore with Sansa beside her while Ghost drinks from the other.
She cannot reach him, and neither can Lady.
“Will the horses die in the storm?” she asks Brienne when she is between songs.
“I do not know, Lady Sansa. But if they do, we can walk to Castle Black in a day, and then we can send someone from the Night’s Watch back here to fetch the meat. The cold should keep the meat good, though wolves or shadow cats might get to it first.”
Sansa wrinkles her nose. She does not wish to eat the beasts that carried them so far, all the way from one end of the frozen North to the other, nor does she want to think of others eating them. But there is no room for them in the shelter, so she resumes her songs and prays for the storm to pass soon.
*
Snow hits her back as she finishes making the wolf head, and Sansa whirls around to see a flash of brown plaits fly into the air as the younger girl flees.
Two can play this game. She forms snowballs and lines them up as she works—one, two, three, four, five. Then she gathers them into her skirts and scurries after her little sister.
“Ah! I found you!” Sansa hurls one of her arsenal into the air, but the snowball doesn’t travel far enough. It explodes at Arya’s feet, making the younger girl bend at the waist as she laughs, and laughs, and laughs. …
Frozen ground splits beneath her feet as easily as ice cracking. The shadow cats snarl and step closer.
The wind screams; she is tempted to cover her ears to block it out, but she needs her hands to dig through the snow. There’s something buried, something that might save him.
Sansa cannot find it. She digs and digs and so does Lady, but the snow seems to fill in the hole as they go. Soon it is stained red, the blood draining from the body having crept all the way to where they are.
She cries at the sight and looks over her shoulder, but there is no body.
Where is Jon?
The shadow cats bare their teeth, and in the trees, birds sink their talons into branches. They wait for remnants of flesh that will be left behind when the cats are done.
Lady is kicking and biting at the snow now, sending it flying in all directions. Sansa reaches down and finally her hand curls around something and she yanks it from the frozen snow, falling backward as she does.
A harp. It is only a useless harp.
She sobs in frustration.
*
Morning comes with a stillness so deep, it feels deceptive. The tent sags above them, heavy with snow, and when Brienne opens the flap, she encounters a drift of snow at the entrance that rises to her knees. It comes to Sansa’s mid-thigh.
They step out into the white world, and for a moment, Sansa thinks the horses are dead and frozen stiff where they stood through the storm. Then a snort and a shuffling of hooves tell her the sturdy garrons have made it through, and they shake snow from their blankets, manes, and tails as Sansa and Brienne approach them.
The women brush the remaining snow from their steads, feed them, and saddle them. Once they mount up, they turn north, to where the imposing ice wall once again rises out of the horizon.
North to one of the only people Sansa has left. North to Jon.