Chapter 6: Clothe the Cat

Myrcella, princess of the house Baratheon, what am I to do with you? You seem to be causing me more trouble than I know what to do with, and my sword-sworn lords of the north want the blood they are owed to run beneath their swords. Why is your life so precious in my eyes, when so much life has been blotted out, and may be completely blotted out, when winter comes?

I don't know the answers in the long hall, but for now I am giving her all the attention the little cat seems to want. I am sitting with her and talking with her and letting her ask me for presents. I am bringing her meals to her, making sure no one poisons them, and watching her eat her bread and milk and cut of chicken. She prides herself on eating daintily, but still manages to keep talking nonetheless. Sometimes I think she is afraid to stop.

She is so small, so frightened, so lonely all by herself. Even if her family commonly ignored her, she still had to have been used to servants, to teachers, and most of all to her brother. She misses the last most of all. I do not do well with conversation, but she seems to like me there all the same. She always seems sad to see me go, as if I were the only thing bringing her comfort.

She has her cat, its true; she spends copious amounts of time bathing it and combing it and picking the fleas out of its fur. The creature can be cranky with her at times, but also seems to have accepted she cares for him more than anyone else ever has or ever will. And I suppose every creature, two-legged or four-legged, wants to be cared for in the end.

I make sure she gets her northern cloak, with a matching muff. She is ridiculously happy about it, gazing in the mirror of her room every few minutes to see how it falls on her. "Thank you," she says to me, over and again, "Thank you, Jon Snow. I am ready for winter now."

Her words make me wince a little. "Do not wish for it too soon, little cat."

She looks almost like one of my own now, except for the summer gold hair that seems to belie her heavy garment. She has a matching smile, too full of warmth for the snows surrounding us, and her eyes may know tears, but never clouds. They are the purest of blue, like robin's eggs, not like the clouds gathering above us. They make me want to cry sometimes. But I am a king, and must learn to better steel myself to such passing fancies.

I wonder if she could be taught adapt to our ways. A little Cersei, with a Lannister mind and a Stark soul; that would be something to see indeed. I wonder if she might ever truly be my own. She said she wanted me to be her brother. I can't get it out of my head now, and I am seeing her, more and more by the passing days, as one dear to me. Sometimes I feel as if her presence alone staves off the winter in my own heart.

One day I decide to take her for a walk through some other parts of Winterfell. She's been cooped up on one floor for over a month. I know that the lords will never approve. She could be some sort of malicious little spy, couldn't she? But I also know that she'll love it. She'll view it as some sort of adventure. She's not old enough or experienced to know the barb at the end of adventures, or at least all the adventures I've ever had.

I'm not an idiot about it; I'll only take her to rooms with no major significance, and not tell her any of our family-kept secrets contained within these walls. Still, she takes it all in, wide-eyed, and is remembering this room or that from her childhood visit years before as part of the royal visit of King Robert, the start of all our woes.

When we reach the room where the ladies of the house had commonly congregated to sew or play music, she catches sight the ornate harp standing in the corner. She sits down in front of the dust-strewn instrument without invitation, and I am tempted to berate her for it. I can remember my step-mother teaching my sister Sansa by that harp. Neither of them had treated particularly well back in the day; perhaps that adds to the conflicted feelings I have over the things that belonged to them. I both grieve for them and the feelings that might have existed between us, if they had not viewed me as some evil mistake. It is hard to always bear the shame of an evil mistake.

But as Myrcella begins to play, I am suddenly taken up with the beauty of it. When is the last time I heard beauty penetrate my ears like this? It whispers of the falling snow, and the survival of a rose in winter. She sings a song of it, of winter, and the moon, and the snow, and the rose of true love, like the kiss of lovers…and I think of Ygritte.

Why, why, why…wild fire that loved me, and hated me, and wished me dead, and then could not strike me through in the final encounter? Why, why, why, did you not, my first love?

Now she is singing about heroes. I wonder if there are any left in this world. Her voice, for once, makes me think there are, even if she should know better. She sings about how, no matter how much they go through, or how long it takes, a hero always comes home…

"They don't always, Myrcella." The words tumble out of my mouth before I can suppress them. "You know that…well enough…"

She looks at me sadly. "Maybe they do, and we just don't see them."

"Or maybe there are simply no heroes left. None from the ballads or storybooks at least, if those kind ever really existed."

"Yes, there are still heroes, Lord Snow," she says, and looks at me. "They may not be sung about, or thought of very much, but there are…good men. There gentle and there are strong men. And heroes are both."

Now she starts playing another song, more of a lament mixed with a lullaby. And she sings a sad story about the death of a king, and his men all cut down in battle. But then the ballad turns, for a broken blade falls to the ground, blood-spattered, metal-splintered. And the poem questions if any arm has the strength to forge it fast and wield it whole.

She is looking at me solemnly with her life-giving eyes, and I wonder if, in her mythic world that seems to cut through all the sorrow we have seen, she sees me as the sword…and herself as the mending fire. Or perhaps it is I who sees it that way for the first time, as her northern cloak drapes over her like a sheath.