Catelyn
When she regained her senses, she was lying at the bottom of a river. Immediately she began to thrash about, her limbs numb and clumsy, but when a few moments passed and she neither drowned nor tired, Catelyn's movements slowed and the fish swimming past drew close again, unmindful of her. Robb was her first thought, enough to make her cry out again- only for mud to issue from her opened throat. I'm naked, she realized, looking down. Her flesh was pallid and the color of curdled milk, and only stiffly responded when she tried to move. My own body feels like a glove that's too big, she thought. It was some time before she got to her feet, the current dragging her along until she worked out how to use it to hold her up rather than toss her about. There was no steep wall to cling to, Catelyn saw. The river was less cup, more plate. Come on, she told herself. You'll not get anything done at the bottom of a river. She tried to walk up the incline to dry land but the current was too strong and she ended up having to drag herself on her elbows out of the depths and then the shallows. When her head broke the surface her first glimpse world was filled with silver. The moon, she thought, flopping onto her back. She expected to be exhausted. She expected to be gasping for breath. Contrary to her expectations, she felt as though she'd done nothing at all, and with a bit of a shock she realized she was far beyond the need for breath. She sat up, sodden and filthy, throat still oozing muck. Catelyn tried to cry out for Robb, then for Ned, and only felt the issuing of river silt from her lips. It was like suffocating, only there was no pain and it didn't impede her in the least. Onto her hands and knees she went, trying to force the mud out. She felt a steady lightening sensation as her stomach emptied, throwing her head back and forcing air down a throat denied it for Seven only knew how long and into lungs that no longer needed it. Trying to speak, to cry out was very difficult, like blowing into a trumpet with holes poked all down the sides. Gingerly she held a clammy hand to her throat, to close the hole and keep the air, the voice long enough to sound aloud. "Robb." she rasped out, sounding like a leper gasping her last. The light of the moon made it easy to see, so Catelyn crawled to the cover of the trees on the river's bank to get out of sight. The Green Fork, she knew the river on sight. I'm still in the Riverlands. South of the Twins. Had she been north of Lord Walder's seat… I'd have been eaten by a lizard-lion already. She was at a loss as the fullness of her memories returned and the sharp edges of her shock dulled like a stone worn smooth from years underwater. Robb. I saw him die, she thought, despair robbing her of what little command she had over the corpse she was trapped in. She slumped against a tree, rasping out in grief, waiting for sleep that did not come.
Movement broke Catelyn out of her torpor. The sun had risen and her flesh had dried, though she was no less filthy. After pulling a clump of leaves from her throat through her throat she stood, legs wobbling like a babe's. "Eyes open. Nights with a full moon are always worst, the Green Fork's full of things hungry for any man what wears a Frey badge." The voice made Catelyn crouch warily, peeking out from behind an elm. Several men-at-arms, peasant levies, nervously clutched stars of the Seven or stout clubs or both, while the knight that led them wore the towers on his cape. "Seven save us." One man muttered. A boy, Catelyn amended when she saw his face had yet to know a beard. "Sod the Seven. If they had any right power to save, they'd have saved all them at the Sept before it blew to holy hell." the Frey knight replied. What? Catelyn thought, utterly confused. "There's one. Looks like an archer. Bow might still be good. Grab him." The knight ordered, and several of his men pulled a dead man wearing a Frey badge from the Fork. They unslung the bow from the corpse and handed it to their leader. "Sodden. Useless." he said after appraising it, snapping it and tossing it aside. The peasantry meanwhile got to saying a quick prayer for the man. They'll not even bury him, she saw. It would take too long and what was once Frey land is no longer friendly to them. She waited for them to move on north, toward the Twins, before gently carrying the corpse, another boy, she saw, out into the Fork, letting the river take him from her arms. Hardly a fitting funeral, she thought, but better to feed the fishes than feed the crows. She kept to the woods, keeping out of sight, heading north herself. Despite her bare feet and womanly highborn build, Catelyn had become sure of it. I do not tire. I could run all night and all day without so much as a breath, if only I could make my legs work. Indeed, she plodded along like a drunken man deadened to pain. Her fingers barely twitched and when she had to move a branch she simply chopped it out of her way with a stiff downward movement of her arm. I do hope I regain that much, at least, she thought. I feel like a stone statue stumbling along like this. The fled need for food and rest more than made up for her clumsiness though, and in short order she discovered that even pain was lost to her. She tripped over a root and when her skull met rock it split open like a melon. Catelyn cried out in panic as she felt something wet running down her face, only to blink and see her darkened right eye come back cloudy, then back as if nothing had happened. She felt her face, her head, where the rock had brained her. Nothing, she thought. In a fit of nerves she grabbed another rock and crushed her hand against a tree with it, seeing rather than feeling a knuckle split the drowned skin. To her amazement no blood came forth and her hand simply oozed water until her curdled flesh had been restored.
Catelyn was still considering the implications, the limits of flesh-that-was-water. She had no idea how she had come to be how she was, yet it was clear the waters were to her what the wolves were to her children. More, she thought. They were close, but they were not one and the same. Perhaps I would be better served walking north at the bottom of the Green Fork, she half-jested to herself. Where am I going, anyway? Why am I here? Why have I not been returned to the arms of my lord and love? she thought. She missed her children as well, the father whose dotage she had missed, the mother she had scarcely known. At the very least, I should see the others of Robb's court, the ones murdered at the wedding. Wendel Manderly and Dacey Mormont. Robb himself. Even Talisa, she thought. The girl her son had lost everything for. No, she thought. It isn't fair to blame her. She didn't even want to be Robb's queen, only his wife. She didn't want to bear Robb's prince, only his son. Catelyn remembered how Frey hospitality had done for Talisa. Is it just me, then? Doomed to wander the lands of my birth, death not enough to erase my faults in life? She tried to find the venom for revenge, but it was like building a castle atop a running river. The currents drag away the foundation before I can even lay it. She caught up to the band of men that afternoon, keeping her distance, hungry for information. "I tell you, this war will never be over. All the five kings have gone and yet we're stuck here fighting still. I hear Edmure Tully has expelled our garrison and hung all the officers from the walls of Riverrun, it will be petty kings all over again as it was before the dragons came." one of the men muttered. All five kings? Catelyn wondered. What happened to the others? "I swear, Red Wedding's come and gone these three years, or close enough, and still the rest of Westeros looks at us as if we're talking dog turds." Three years? Catelyn thought dizzily. "Says you. I heard the gilded bitch is massing an army at Duskendale to storm Dragonstone. Ain't Stannis' ghost they're chasing." "Beets, you get a flagon of ale in you and every frog's a dragon and every snake's a sea serpent." another man scoffed. Dragonstone? Her world was spinning. What else have I missed?
The men moved off in a hurry, no doubt eager to be behind the gates of the Twins when the sun set. Catelyn considered going after them but then remembered her brother. Edmure's returned to Riverrun. How? And what's become of Uncle Brynden? There was still too much unknown to her. Rather than follow the Frey band, she headed southwest. I don't even need a map. I just need to cross the Blue Fork and then let the Red carry me all the way to the moat of Riverrun. When the moon rose, so did the mists and Catelyn found herself wandering through trackless forest for miles, yet never once did she come to another river. Something is wrong, she thought finally. I ought have made the Blue Fork by now, at least. Movement caught her gaze and to her great shock she saw several people milling about sluggishly, the moon reflected in glassy eyes. Dead, she knew at once. She saw the merman of Manderly on their surcoats, yet not the rotund form of Ser Wendel himself. She stepped out into the night, into their midst, yet heard no cry of recognition. They merely turned to her, staring and unseeing. "Sers," she rasped. "What has happened? Where is Ser Wendel? Where are the rest of us?" she asked them, not particularly expecting an answer. One of them turned, his dead gaze staring north. The Twins, she knew at once. "Come, then. It seems we have a rally point to make, and smartly." she said, trying not to let their appearance get to her. While she was nowhere near alive, she had memories and initiative. These are just puppets with no strings, wandering and attacking anything wearing a Frey badge or flying Frey colors. As these lands belong to the Twins, I'd say the stories are already spreading, she surmised. To her relief, if faint sense of foreboding, they obeyed at once following her like a ghastly procession of ducklings. I thought I was going west. I suppose I can't leave sight of the Green Fork then, she thought glumly. Either they moved faster than she thought or the mists made strides of leagues, for she could see the outline of the Twins rising off the river in only a few moments.
There was no sound. As they moved they'd picked up more water-haunts, river men and northmen alike who'd died at the Red Wedding. What would Father say to this? Catelyn thought. Or Ned? Or any of the Targaryen kings? Even the Black Dread's flames could not boil away the Green Fork. The thought affirmed Catelyn's resolve. Even the Conqueror was just a mortal man, no more suited to breathing water than the men he burned. Still, she expected to hear cries of alarm with an army of the river-dead massing around the Twins. Instead the drawbridge lowered and she saw the form of Dacey Mormont, silt flowing down her belly from the wound in her gut, standing on the threshold. In her hand she clutched the longaxe that had killed her. You danced with Robb not five minutes before his death, Catelyn thought sadly. The woman was as heedless as her fellows, a sodden shade with a bear split in twain on her jerkin. Wordlessly she stepped aside as Catelyn crossed over the drawbridge, looking around. The Twins' inhabitants laid where they were slain, blood running with the river water to stain the bricks a muddy red. Young and old, men and women, the shades had put the entire castle to the sword. She couldn't care less. Passing the body of a boy with a gash in his head, she pulled the dress from a fallen woman to hide her nakedness. The shades pushed the heavy doors to the hall open. The hall where Catelyn Stark died, and years later I came up from the river, she thought. Am I Catelyn Stark anymore? Surely she would mourn the dead, and I do not. They had been in the middle of a feast it seemed when the first shades got to them. As thorough as a tidal wave, she saw. What shades lacked weapons had used their sodden hands, ripping the feasters limb from limb or else simply strangling them where they sat. A few arrows had been shot, a few bolts loosed, but they lay harmlessly on the floor and she knew the shades could no more be harmed than she could. A figure with long hair that hung about her face stood at the high table. She held something to her breast, like a helmet. No, a skull, Catelyn saw, drawing nearer. The skull of a direwolf. The woman turned to her. "Talisa." She could not remember having said her daughter-by-law's name aloud before. She blinked as if in a fog. "Talisa Maegyr." Catelyn said again, gently taking Grey Wind's skull out of her hand and setting it on the table. The sharpness of her voice shook the girl, who set a hand on her ruined belly. Her eyes got big as the fog lifted. "Lady Stark." she said in shock at the sight of Catelyn. She put a hand on Talisa's shoulder. "Are you alright, child?" she asked her. Talisa looked at Catelyn and then herself. The same but for the wounds, Catelyn thought. Not the puppets but the puppeteers. "It doesn't hurt." the Volantene got out finally. "No, it doesn't. We can be thankful for that small mercy, at least." I need a scarf, I sound like I have all the frogs of the Neck in my throat.
Whether or not the beings they'd become could cry was a question answered then as Talisa's eyes began to stream. Not river silt, but clear twinkling drops. Catelyn put her arms around the girl, cradling her head in her hands. "What now?" she whispered. I've been wondering that since I came out of the water, Catelyn thought. "My brother it seems has taken Riverrun for House Tully. He needs us not." she said. My children are dead or gone. I am a ghost lingering here, and I belong in a place fit for ghosts. The crypts sprung to mind then. Far was Winterfell from the Twins even tireless as they were, and then there was the Neck to consider. If the crannogmen can free us, so be it. Otherwise, we make for Winterfell, Catelyn decided. "Now we go home. It is for us to return Grey Wind to the earth that bore him." she told Talisa. "Robb used to talk of bringing me to Winterfell. After the war." "So he did. You will walk through those doors with me, Talisa. You are the only child left to me, one the fates it seems cannot take away. We will go to Winterfell together, with the others if they can or no. I do not doubt the castle is in ill hands, perhaps Roose Bolton got the north for his part in the murder of our king." I should like to see his face when he drives a blade through me and all that happens is I smile. Catelyn helped her from the hall, the shades following closely. Outside the castle ever more gathered, more than Catelyn cared to count. The gods took a mother, a queen and too many leal men, and sent a pair of revenants and a host of mist-shades loyal even beyond death. It began to rain as they headed north from the Twins, first a drizzle and then a deluge. Catelyn stopped on a small hill, Talisa's hand in hers. Rain enough to wash this place from thought and memory, she asked. Water enough to loosen the ground the stones stand on, high enough to sink the bridge to the bottom of the Fork. Overhead the sky grew darker. "We should go, my lady." Talisa said after a moment. The rain was driving, a howling host of freezing spears. Catelyn turned away after a moment and the two left the storm to rage.
The Green Fork forked off left and right in turn, they saw. Both led into them ass of low-slung greenery on the horizon. The Neck, Catelyn knew. "Those trees are the first steps you'll take of the North." she pointed. Talisa's eyebrows raised. "Already?" "The North is vast and the Neck is its southernmost part." "Robb never made mention of any Neck." "Neither did Ned. They are northern, but they are not northmen- at least, not the kind we know." Ned never spoke to me of this place and its people, Catelyn thought. Never once hosted a delegation from Greywater Watch, never once invited Howland Reed to Winterfell. "The Freys have tried countless times to conquer the Neck. Always the hosts they sent in fail to return. Vanished to a man." she told Talisa. "I like it already." was her reply. Though the distance between the Twins and the edge of the Neck was no great journey for a tireless army, Catelyn saw the shades melt away into mist at the first light of dawn. "So. They can come only when the moon is high." she observed. "Only too, when they are called." Talisa tapped the skull in Catelyn's hand. If I can feel nervous, I suppose I am right now, she thought as the bogs grew closer, wet marsh hidden from the sun by twisting canopies. "They'll have sunk the kingsroad. The crannogmen suffer no intrusions into the North. Upon word of Robb's murder, they'll have cut the North off from the rest of Westeros." Catelyn told Talisa. "Likely you are the first Volantene to pass through these lands." "I am not Volantene anymore." the girl said. "Not Talisa Maegyr. She died with her king, as Catelyn Stark did. We are the Ladies of the River, come to flood away those who thought us gone." Catelyn stopped a few yards from the silent swamp, vines and ferns and bubbling pools the least of the Neck's barriers. "When they murdered Robb's father, he told me with his arms around me and tears in his eyes that he'd kill them all. I told him we needed to get the girls back. My daughters by Ned have gone to Robb and their father. This I know. You are the only daughter that remains to me. It is for us then to do what we can." The girl turned to her. "Kill them all." daughter said. "Kill them all." mother replied.