On his way back from the creekside rushes, down the short trail back to the girl, grass-wrapped fishes swinging at his side, his head rattling with thoughts, stones in his chest.
It wasn't till he had passed it and was heading down the break of ferns that he froze- something back there, a cut stump, why? because not a stump- and turned. The stump turned to him. Rose from her knees where she had been crouching. The vines, matted ropes of yellow-white hair, the roots her thin bare arms muddy to the elbows.
He stumbled back, disconcerted, unsure for a second if she were real. Old women belonged in their kitchens and solars, not growing out of the mud in a bandit's forest. Her river-rock eyes held fierce at his, deep under the shelf of her brow, and her right hand held a gnarled star-shaped root.
He understood, all at once. He took a step towards her.
She put up a hand and her white wispy beard jutted out like a billy-goat's as she set her jaw. He took another step, and her voice was a door opening:
"Be gone."
He frowned, looked down to the fish and back at her, started to speak and hesitated. They stared at each other as he made his choice. The root in her hand looked just like her- raw, stringy, too tough to be of much use. He stepped back, and back again. Before he had even turned around she'd returned to her digging.
Back on the trail he waited and listened, took a few steps, waited and listened, and then he started back for the girl, quiet and careful.
At the edge of the break he stopped and looked in. Dusk stacked itself in layers in the clearing- dim and foggy at the ground's edges, bright at the treeline. There in the half-light they stood facing away from him, the girl with her hand on his horse's shoulder. He had told her not to touch him. He stood still and watched the careful patting, watched the satin of his horse's shoulder smoothing downwards underneath the girl's hand, dusty black waves shining under her hand, watched his head drooping, watched his slow blink. He could not see her face but he could see the edge of her jaw moving as she whispered whatever it was that she was telling him.
He saw her hand outlined sharply against the black. He saw the mud-covered claws of the witch of the wood, digging. He saw her mother's hand in its lace cuff, delicate on her shoulder. He saw his Lord Tywin. The Young Wolf. The memory of his ward in his new-made armor, shouting. Her father's head leaping from its body. The smoke in the North. Rhaegar's girl, ribboned under a blanket. Lord Tywin. His brother's silhouette tall in the bright sun. His Queen's hand lifting, beckoning him go, and he saw his own hand swing to his hilt as he closed in on the boy running through the field before him. The mailed hand rising from the mud at the city gate. He saw Lord Tywin. He felt the breath of war blowing low against the ground.
Somehow and without his consent the girl had opened a door and the breath had blown in. The gust of this breath had pushed open another door, and another, and another, doors opening fast like playing-cards shuffling, a tunnel all the way down him; now his hollowness was roaring in the breath and he stood there, a jumble of broken-open planks, watching the girl's hand on the horse's shoulder.
If you will let me. He saw the furious whip of his life, a thin black flag snapping in a gale, turning with every rough wind, waving above a host where each man fights the one marching before him, a hundred thousand black flags bearing no signet, meaning nothing. He saw his past in total and with clarity.
Exchanging his future for hers took him no effort at all. I will keep you from it. He stepped forward into the clearing, and she looked up.