Author's Note:

The tone of this chapter is kinda bittersweet but writing it reminded me (again) of how much I love Bear Island. But I'm a river/sea girl in real life so it makes sense that I'm drawn to an island landscape. Add to that a stoic, grim people who are all like "f*ck you we know no king but the king in the north whose name is Stark" and anyway…this is my House. These are my people :) #bearsarebest #TeamMormont

Jorah

When he was a young boy, Jorah remembers going down to the Mormont crypts more than once to seek out his father. Jeor frequented the crypts back then, sharing too much company with the flickering torchlight, damp stones and musty old tombs.

His father had a favorite among the graves, of course, and lingered near it. No one frequents a crypt without a reason.

Jorah's mother was buried down there.

She'd joined the dearly departed far before her time. There hadn't been one grey hair to be found on her head as they laid her to rest. Her blue eyes had still shown with youth and vigor, even a few hours before the end. The year had been a quiet one, years after the War of the Ninepenny Kings, years before Robert's Rebellion. The lords of Westeros played at civility for a long summer and kept to their own houses all through the season.

They'd been up in the mountains—at a bend in the river where the waters formed a calm, clear pool of crystalline glass surrounded on all sides by groves of high-reaching evergreens. It was summer on Bear Island and Jorah's mother had hiked up her skirt to wade knee deep and bare foot in the cool, spring-fed waters.

She had even smiled as she told Jeor she was going back to the Keep. The Old Bear, not so old then, was fishing in the long reeds and she waded over to him, disturbing a silver school of minnows and grinning at his grim frown, which chided her silently for chasing his game away. But she slipped her hand around his forearm and leaned up, kissing him and gaining his pardon immediately. She told him she'd meet him at home. Her head was aching fiercely and she thought she'd lie down for a half hour and maybe it would go away.

She never woke up. The maester who lived on Bear Island at the time said she wouldn't have felt a thing. The gods took the spark of her life in an instant, with all the caprice of a stray bolt of lightning in a clear blue sky.

Nothing good can stay.

Jeor Mormont never spoke of her again, never said her name, not to the lords and ladies that visited the Island to pay their respects, not to his men at Castle Black, whenever the discussion turned to their lives before the Night's Watch, not even to Jorah…whose last memory of his mother was too similar. That day at the lake, she had turned her glorious smile on her little boy after leaving Jeor's side, gently mussing the sun-lightened strands of Jorah's red-blond hair as she walked out of the water and continued down to the Mormont Keep, without breaking her graceful step.

But when Jorah was still young, he remembers that his father would talk to her, quietly, in hushed up tones, as Jeor sat with his back braced against the base of the marble statue at the mouth of her tomb. The statue had been fashioned in her likeness, as was custom among the Northern lords, but it was lifeless and Jeor didn't like to look at it, staring into the darker corners of the crypt instead. The Northern whiskey in the bottle he brought down to the crypts loosened his usually tight-lipped manner and a few times that Jorah had crept down there, he'd heard his father talking to his mother's ghost.

They tell me to take another wife…but my heart is full of you. There's no room for another. And I would carve out my own heart before I carved out you.

Jorah knew, for a long time, that Jeor would take the Black and join the Night's Watch, although they never discussed it between themselves. They were too alike, and grim silence in the face of grief was a Mormont trait that the family hadn't been able to shake for a score of generations. Jeor remained the Lord of Bear Island only until Jorah was old enough to take up the mantle himself. The day he left the Island, Jeor pressed Longclaw into Jorah's hands and sailed off for the mainland with barely a word of farewell.

Take care of the Island…

Jorah had always wondered if his mother's ghost went with his father, all the way to Castle Black. He wouldn't be surprised. He felt his mother's absence keenly from the moment she died but when Jeor left Bear Island, it suddenly felt fresh. A wound reopened to the sting of injury. It was like she was gone all over again, passing beyond memory…and this time, his father was gone too. Never to share words with him again.

Death pulls a veil over the faces of those we love. They fade under layers of gossamer sheets, a ghosting of memory pulled down with each passing year. Their voices linger, as echoes in the long grass and on the sea breeze.

But the voices of the dead come and go, rarely to be summoned on command.

Jorah needed his father's counsel now. He went down to the crypts, though he knew his father wasn't down there. Jeor Mormont had been murdered at Craster's Keep and burned with the others that fell that day. His ashes were scattered above the Wall, his bones buried in the snow.

Still, old habits die hard and it was as good a place as any to seek solace and wisdom. He lingered before his mother's tomb, standing in the same spot Jeor had frequented so often. But Jorah's gaze was fixed on his mother's features, or at least the marble face that claimed her likeness.

After I've forgotten my mother's face…

In his memories, her face was a haze already. The contours of hard stone could not capture the crease at the sides of her mouth when she smiled or the way her hands cupped his little face and kissed his forehead. The statue was a pale imitation. No wonder his father could never look at it.

"I don't know how to be a father," Jorah spoke to the darkness, sighing on the fears that rattled around in his brain.

Neither did I. Neither does any man, his father's voice was strong in his ears. So strong. The bear sigil had never been worn by a more worthy son of this House. The fact that Jorah was here, alive on the Island that he had dishonored and betrayed, while his father was hundreds of miles away, on the mainland, buried in the ice and snow...sat ill with him.

It would always sit ill, he knew, no matter how long he lived.

"But you were always good and strong, Father," Jorah found himself answering the voice, quietly, as if talking to ghosts was as natural as talking to the living. "I've been weak and unworthy."

We're all weak and unworthy. I couldn't save your mother. And I couldn't share her with you afterwards because my grief was black…black as the color I claimed as my own.

"You served with honor."

I ran away from grief, son.

Jorah couldn't argue with that, though he knew he was the cause of some of that grief. More sins to be counted with the rest. He muttered, "My sins are too many…"

Just love her and love the little one. That's the best any of us can do. Jeor's voice continued, gruffly but with feeling.

Listen to your father. His mother's voice joined in finally, cadence as clear as on the last day he heard it. He would remember his mother's voice long after her face receded from view.

He knew what Daenerys would say about talking to ghosts, "Don't talk to the dead, Jorah. Talk to me." And then she would grin and pull his face down to kiss him and make him forget every dark thought that had ever dared enter his head, whirling on the joy of love that sparked between them.

But he was his father's son and there was something to be said for the grim solace found down in this crypt too. No wonder Jeor spent hours in this place. Still…

Jorah had a sudden image of his mother and father in his head—alive, well, walking arm in arm through a meadow of blue and violet flowers in a far, green country, far away from the dust and cold of this old crypt. He wasn't a praying man but he sent up a quick prayer that it wasn't just nonsense and romantic fancy that conjured up that image. Maybe there was another life beyond this one. He'd seen enough that he knew nothing was certain.

Then let it be so.

He left the crypt soon after.