𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒, game of thrones

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lyanna had never felt so good, she was in someplace warm again, most of those days she had been cold, she was finally near the fire again. Bran lost his consciousness when the explosion almost caught him which threw him off. Hodor got to him just in time. Bran was laying on a bed made of pines, Jojen was laying next to the fire as Meera sat next to him. Summer was sniffling Bran and Visenya was sitting next to Lyanna. She finally noticed her wolf got bigger.

"What happened?" Bran woke up.

"Hodor" Hodor said.

Meera explained what happened to Bran, then said "It seemed fire kills them"

"Fire is always hungry" the little girl creature said.

That was not Arya's voice, nor any child's. It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that Lyanna had ever heard and a sadness that she thought might break her heart. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe's beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer-large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes. No one has eyes like that. Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it.

"Who are you?" Meera Reed was asking.

Lyanna knew. But Bran spoke first "She's a child. A child of the forest." He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan's tales.

"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."

Lyanna said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."

"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."

"Two hundred years?" said Meera.

The child smiled. "Men, they are the children."

"Do you have a name?" asked Bran.

"When I am needing one." She waved her torch toward the black crack in the back wall of the cave. "Our way is down. You must come with me now."

Bran shivered again. "The ranger ..."

"He cannot come." the little woman replied.

"They'll kill him."

"No. They killed him long ago. Come now. It is warmer down deep, and no one will hurt you there. He is waiting for you."

"The three-eyed crow?" asked Meera. "The greenseer." And with that she was off, and they had no choice but to follow.

Meera and Lyanna helped Bran back up onto Hodor's back, though his basket was half-crushed and wet from melting snow. Then Meera slipped an arm around her brother and shouldered him back onto his feet once more. Lyanna smiled at Bran "We're here" she said.

Bran weakly smiled and nodded.

The way was cramped and twisty, and so low that Hodor soon was crouching. The child went in front with the torch in hand, her cloak of leaves whispering behind her, but the passage turned so much that Lyanna soon lost sight of her. Then the only light was what was reflected off the passage walls. After they had gone down a little, the cave divided, but the left branch was dark as pitch, so even they knew to follow the moving torch to the right. The way the shadows shifted made it seem as if the walls were moving too. Lyanna saw great white snakes slithering in and out of the earth around her, and her heart thumped in fear. She wondered if they had blundered into a nest of milk snakes or giant grave worms, soft and pale and squishy. Grave worms have teeth.