ARYA
"They had decided to play hide-and-seek at Harrenhal. Bran had been quick to approve of the idea when she came up with it, and when she had told it to him. Septa Mordane was just laying there anyway, seemingly that scared of a little bat, and just when they were beginning to go up to her to see if they could wake her up, they had heard a sound of somebody coming from the stairs below, and they had both ran away into the next corridor to hide.
The somebody, a tall tawny-haired boy with crooked teeth close to Sansa's or perhaps Robb's age, had called on some others and dragged the septa out. Arya and Bran had stood peering out from the corridor, half terrified and taking good care to remain silent, soundless, as they watched from some twenty or thirty feet away behind the corner of the next corridor.
Arya was sure that they would help her wake up and recuperate, but meanwhile she and Bran were finally free, free for once to roam about and explore in the greatest castle in all of the Seven Kingdoms. The Red Keep, for its relative greatness, was a small one, as she had found out some time back, and though Winterfell was larger, even it could not measure up against the enormity of stone that was King Harren the Black's massive keep, Harrenhal.
"Shall we play hide-and-seek?" Arya had simply said, smiling with glee at the thought.
"Okay!" Bran had said, practically jumping at the idea. "But... Who will count? I don't want to count. It's impossible to look around here, and you are much better at hiding. I'd never find you."
Arya soon had a solution to that particular problem, though. They sneaked forward, slowly slowly, ever so slowly through the corridor, their feet on high alert, and then they spied a cleaning boy who was just now washing the stairs down towards the cellars in the middle of the tower.
"You there!" Arya shouted out. Bran almost hushed her, but then realised what she meant to do.
"What? Me?" the boy said. He was around their age, perhaps even a year younger, only as old as Bran by the looks of him. It was perfect.
"Yes, you! Do you know who I am?" She said. The boy shook his head.
"I haven't seen you here before", he mumbled. "But maybe you're from the other tower..."
"I am Princess Arya of House Stark. Daughter to King Eddard Stark. Now do you know me?"
The boy looked at fault, though he sensed that she was someone important, not least by the account of her clothing, and the presentation that she now gave him.
"I don't know, my lady."
"Princess.", she said.
"My princess", the boy repeated.
"Right. Well, this is my brother, Prince Bran of House Stark. We both come from King's Landing. Have you heard of it?"
The boy nodded to a reply.
"I know of King's Landing. It's where the king lives."
"Yes, and that king is my father", she said. Now at last the boy seemed to understand her.
"Oh... The king... Your father?... I did not know. I'm sorry, princess." The boy said, kneeling down and bowing his head before them, so that his pale blonde lugg almost touched the soap and water on the step by his head, and of his broomstick in front of him. She felt sorry for him suddenly, and hurried to explain herself.
"It's okay. You don't need to bow your head to us. We're children, just like you, and we are here as guests to your lady, Lady Shella."
"Oh... Yes... Guests of Lady Shella..."
"Yes..." Arya confirmed. "But we are so bored now that we wanted to go and explore the castle with our own eyes. We want to play hide-and-seek, so you will be our counter. You will count and come and look for us. All right?"
"Oh yes", the boy was saying. "I know about hide-and-seek. I used to play it with Jella. Some of the older boys and girls have played it at times too, though only at night. And they got smacked for it once. But... I don't want to get smacked. Not by Weese. Or by my mother..."
"You won't get smacked", Arya promised. "I will tell my father that I ordered it, and he will make sure to give you a full royal pardon. Now come on and get back to where we were, so that we can start playing. It's a hurry of time!" She said.
The boy looked at them curiously, once more, and then asked if he should take his mop and pail with him. "Do as you like", Arya replied, though she could not see what good it would do him if they were to be playing. The boy nodded, hurriedly, and picked up his pail and broomstick mop, taking it with him and placing it by the wall in the corridor as Arya and Bran showed him the way back to where they had come from.
"This is only the entrance, though", the boy said. "I know much better places for playing hide-and-seek. The older boys and girls, Dwerryl and Genya and Lya, and Pia as well, they were all playing out there in the upper stories. On the fourth floor. That's the best place for it. And there are not many guards there as well. At least not by nightfall", he said.
"We will start here", Arya said. "Maybe we can go to the other place later."
"All right", the boy said.
"You start counting now", Arya said. "Count to one hundred."
"I only know how to count to fifty", the boy said. "Only... when I am cleaning the steps, if Weese tells me to clean a hundred steps, then I have to count to fifty two times, and sometimes not even that much is enough. Sometimes it becomes fifty two times and two, or fifty two times and three. One time it even became fifty and fifty and twelve."
Arya was beginning to grow tired of the boy's talking. Didn't they teach their servants to be more quiet and respectful here at Harrenhal? She supposed that they didn't.
"Listen. You just stay there and count to fifty two... Or... four times", she decided. "Yes. Do that. And then you come looking for us. And you can call us by our names, Arya and Bran, if you don't find us after a long while. Do you understand?"
"Yes, all right, princess Arya", the boy said.
"Good", Arya said, and Bran nodded in a short reply as well. The boy sat down on the floor beside his mop and pail, only a couple of feet away from where Septa Mordane had fallen earlier, and started counting.
Arya and Bran both exchanged a look of excitement, and she saw the same mischievous smile in Bran's eyes that she knew she must have herself. Bran might only be seven, but he certainly knew how to play. It was a shame that he was with Erryk and baby Rickon so often, she reflected. They should play more together, even though he was a boy and she was a girl.
She did not have much time to reflect on that, however. Harrenhal, the biggest castle in all of Westeros, stood before them, its vast corridors and walkways open before their eagerly awaiting feet. And as she heard the boy starting to count, "One... two... three... four... five... five and a half... six...", she and Bran both darted up towards the stairs leading to the floor above, the third story, as she thought to herself.
Then they immediately regretted themselves, upon seeing that there were indeed entire nests of bats resting beneath the rafters high up. If they went beneath them, the bats might fly away again just like they had when Septa Mordane had walked by close beneath before, and then they would easily be found by the noises of the bats.
They both decided to go back down to the second floor again, and then they stood stamping for a moment by the side of the boy, as he put his fingers more hardly inside his ears, doing his best not to pretend they were near, and Arya looked at Bran, mouthing "Where? Where are we gonna go?".
"I don't know", Bran said. "What about the window?"
"Are you going to hide in the window?" She asked him, loudly as the boy was still plugging his ears closed with his fingers, not intending to hear them.
"There might be a balcony there, or a rafter leading up to the next window, so that we can climb up without scaring the bats", Bran said.
"There are no rafters like at the Red Keep here. It's all built in massive stone", Arya said.
"I saw some rafters earlier on the outside", her brother insisted.
"Fine. You go and stay there then. I'll go someplace else", she said.
And just with that, they were off, separated from each other, Arya continuing inside the castle again, beyond the boy and back towards his cellar stairway, while Bran stood behind, seeminly thinking of whether to climb up to the window and have a look.
Arya hurried past the doors like they had before, seeing the places where the boy – she only just now realised that she had not learned his name, in case she were to call out for him – had been washing earlier. But differently from before, she now heard commotion behind the doors to the right in the corridor, and saw the door beginning to get moving just as she slid past it. The door opened up behind her, as Arya pressed close towards the wall, and a busty woman with a huge basket of newly cleaned clothes came out and swiftly went in to the other door across, opening it with an iron key and stepping inside.
Arya looked after her, but she did not seem to have seen anything, neither Arya nor the boy who still sat counting far away in the beginning of the corridor. She sighed a sigh of relief, and then snuck into the room from where the cleaning woman had come.
There were large and small baskets of clothing on the floor and on palls and stools in the entire room. Four cleaning women of different ages, two old ones and two young ones, looking to be around fourteen or fifteen to seventeen, were standing folding the laundry, looking up at her with surprised faces.
"Who are you?" one of the young girls asked. She immediately got a hard look from one of the older women.
"That's the Princess, you stupid girl! Good day, Your Grace. Lovely to see you here. Is there some cleaning we can do for you?"
"No thanks, not just of the moment..." Arya mumbled, not knowing what to say. Did they not realize that she only wanted to look around a bit? What would she give them? Although, she could of course ask for some new commoner's clothes, like she would at the Red Keep... But no. She decided against it. If she were to get lost inside the enormous castle while trying to find a good hiding spot, she would not have any way of making herself known and come back to her parents again. Then perhaps they would think that she was a servant and she would have no way of proving otherwise, except possibly the way in which she spoke, though her accent and voice was not yet as beautiful or royally preened and pringling pretty as Sansa's. She was only Arya Horseface, and in here she feared that she would be reduced to little more than a grey mouse if wearing such clothing.
She thanked the cleaning women for the offering, and then stepped back outside the room again, into the corridor, and continued along, running quickly now for the small amount of time which she had already lost.
Her steps were fast against the hard stone of the floor, as she ran forward, opening another door and then a third one to cover her tracks behind her, so that the boy would not know which door to look into and hear the cleaning women say that they had seen her just then. If she was fortunate, he would try looking in one of the other doors before, even though they came after the first one. She ran further.
After a while she found a door to her right with a room full of barrels and carpentry things. She immediately went into it, examining all of the various tools which lay there, and decided that this would surely be a good place to hide. She went in and climbed up to the largest barrel at the back, hopping down into it and curling together into a small ball. The shading from the barrel seemed to make her so dark that she doubted the boy would even see her, even if he managed to climb up the edges of the barrel and peek down into it. It was perfect.
She held her arms around her knees, trying to stretch them out, experimenting with the feel, then changing position to sit in a tailor's position, and then back to normal again. The barrel was newly made, a beige yellowish brown, and smelled strongly of forest and wood. She reached out her hand and felt the wood. It was not as smooth as it looked, however, and she found that she soon got a splinter in her finger.
"Ouch! Devils!" she cursed.
Blasted barrel-makers... Can't they even scrape and sand away the flinks up here? The carpenters of Harrenhal seemed slower than those at the Red Keep. There they made new barrels by the dozen each day, to transport carrots, turnips, fruits, fish, steel, firewood, iron and much more. Here it seemed as if all the servants were living by the slow-winding rhythm of the castle itself and that of its owner, of the lady of the keep.
Lady Shella Whent was a nice woman, but old and grey and tired, Arya could tell. She doubted that she could have any children anymore, and neither could she imagine her being wroth with her servants when they were working too slowly or had made a mistake. Poor Lady Shella... She thought. She should deserve better. Just because she is nice, they take advantage of her kindness. Her Father had told her often of such stories, where a man or women – but most often, almost always, a man – was seen as a fool for having the honour that others did not. Arya sat brooding on the lesson as she suddenly heard steps echoing from outside the room in the long corridor. It was the boy! He had finished counting now and come to look for them! He did run very fast for his age, though, she thought. But of course he would have to, if he had grown up trying to get away from the likes of Weese and the others he had told them about.
She sat down on the floor of the barrel, thinking about what to do afterwards. She had wanted to see the lake of the God's Eye with her own eyes up close. They had ridden close enough to see the lake below a ridgeline on their way there. She imagined it to be an even greater sight up close.
After a long enough while, Arya soon heard another pair of steps coming from the corridor. Though this time the steps were more silent, slower, and more carefully moving, as they trod forward, apparently examining each part of the wall and crevace that they found while making their way along door after door. But surely this must be the boy then? And that other person before... That had to have been Bran, she realized. Yes. So he had chosen to go her way after all, then... Apparently he did have some wit inside of him, then.
The boy did not find her, however. He only went in to the room very quickly, only surveing the smallest barrels closest to the entrance, and some parts along the walls, she heard. She had been smart to jump into the large barrel. He would not be able to climb up to it unless he took some crates or something to stand on.
As she heard him going out of the room again, she waited one or two minutes, and then continued after to try and choose an even better place to hide, and to go exploring further.
She soon found that the edge of the barrel was almost too high up for her to climb it, though, and almost started to panic slightly.
Finally, she got a hold of a long stick from the wall which hung in a net, and dragged it down with great effort to make it fall down into the barrel beside her. She put it against the sides of the barrel, making it into a sort of bridge plank, and stood on it to get higher up. Arya wolf, the clever leader of the pack, succeeds again, she thought triumphantly, as she danced her way out of the store room and out into the great long corridor again. The boy was nowhere to be seen.
She took another door to her right, coming into another storage room, similar to the one before, but with even more barrels, and almost no tools or such. The same in the next door, and the one after that one. The fourth door, however, held a side corridor which she followed until she came into another place. Herein, it smelled and sounded suddenly of commotion. It seemed to be a small kitchen for the servants. She decided not to enter, however, as it would be hard to hide in there with all the commotion going on. Servants and cooks were going around carrying pots and pans and huge barrels of stew and mead, and the springs in the door were steaming with the white smoke.
Arya continued on in the corridor, after a while reaching a stairway to the left and
The guards were [ ], [ ] and [ ]ing
When she ran down again she saw the boy immediately, but he had not seen her yet. He was still turned to the other way, by some miracle or else. She snuck as silently and fast as she could, like when she would be chasing cats in King's Landing, all the way back to one of the side doors, opening it and hopping down into a small barrel.
The boy came closer to the door, stopped at it, and then stood still. Arya did her best to lower her breathing, not letting him hear where she was, but there were only three or four barrels in the room, and the boy walked quickly up towards them. One, two... Three. He had found her. He was knocking on the barrel. No, I won't show him, she decided. He will have to climb up, and find me for real. But so he did. The young boy hopped up to the barrel's edge, gladly exclaiming "Found you!", and Arya was disappointed, but still glad in a way to have finally been found.
"Well done", she forced herself to say, although she was grumpy. "Have you found my brother Bran yet?"
"No, my princess."
"All right. Help me up from here, and we can both go and look for him together."
The boy did as told, giving her his hand and helping her up from the barrel, as she struggled free from it.
They began walking back to the beginning, as Arya said that Bran might have gone back to climb there again, though in truth she was mostly scared to go further into the corridor after having met the angry guards. They did not seem to care that she was the princess, or perhaps they did not understand what a princess even was. She would have been fierce to them, but they had swords, and she did not, and neither could she climb above their heads, or run away from them fast enough in the cramped confinements of the castle stairways. No, she decided, there were far better places to be a wild wolf than inside a huge stone castle made of men.
Just as they were making their way back, however, they soon heard commotion coming from the corridors. The guards were looking for them, it seemed.
"Princess! Princess Arya! Prince Bran!" The guards were shouting. There were at least ten of them by the sound of it, a terrifying number in such a small confine. The corridor might be broad and great, as if built for a giant, but three or four large men could nonetheless cover its breadth if they truly did their best and tried. She would not try anything foolish by trying to get past them. Instead she grabbed the boy by the scruff of his neck and hoisted him up the stairway to the right, pushing him in front of her as he struggled against.
"But my princess, they are looking for you! And it does not sound like hide-and-seek now anymore!"
"Let them look!" Arya said. "If I am to show myself to them and not get a proper spanking out of it, I have to be back behind them and pretend as if I had barely gone in here in the first place. Don't you see? We'll stay here until they have passed beneath us. Be quiet."
"All right..." The boy said, silently, agreeing to hold quiet, and they both lay down on their stomachs on the hard stone of the third floor to look on the dozen of helms and halfhelms streaming through the corridor below them.
"Arya! Brandon! My prince! My princess! Prince Stark!" the guards were crying out, shouting and opening doors to their left and right. They opened the door to the barrel rooms, the first one and then the other ones, and continued further on and further on, walking past them and even further at that. If Bran truly is in there somewhere, he will hear them, and then I wonder where he goes... she reflected. There were bound to be many ways out of the corridor, but she did not know how many of them were guarded and how many were free.
She saw Jory and her Mother then, and all the rest, though her Mother did not scream. She only looked worried. Arya felt a sudden pang of guilt inside her chest. She felt sorry for Mother. But she would have to wait until they had passed to get down and come up to them from behind, so that she could avoid the worst of being yelled on, she knew. But just then the boy moved slightly, and she flinched from the motion, letting out a tiny sound of fear mixed with annoyance.
That was enough for Jory to hear them.
"Arya!" His face angled up and back towards them, and her Mother did the same.
"Arya! Come down here!" Jory shouted up at her, running up and pushing the other guards aside to try and catch her. She sighed deeply, and felt annoyed once again, like so many times before, at being caught. If only the boy could have sat still. And she still did not know his name, she reflected.
"What is your name?" she asked him, just as she was about to turn around.
"Albyn", he replied.
"Nice to meet you, Albyn. Thanks for counting and looking for us. But you need to become better at hide-and-seek until next time. Be as quiet as a mouse."
Her Mother would be mad, no doubt, angry as ever before. Her Mother would also want her to slowly climb down from the stairway, but she saw that Jory had a different notion, and she knew that she could trust him in this. She relented, made way to prepare and hopped all the way down from the overstory and down into Jory's eagerly awaiting arms.
"There we are, Princess. Was that truly so difficult to manage?" he grumbled slightly, though with a relieved wry smile as well.
"Arya of House Stark!" Her Mother screamed. Here we go... thought Arya.
Another guard next to them, one of Harrenhal's own guards with the black bat on his surcoat, caught the boy Albyn as he half jumped, half climbed down after her.
Her Mother the Queen got a stern glance in her eyes, where just recently her worry had lain, as Jory lifted her over from his fathom to land on the floor next to Mother.
"Have you NO consideration for what is decent? Letting the septa faint before you!?"
"It was not my fault", Arya said muttering. "It was a stupid bat that came out, in the septa's stupid face. I would not have fainted for such a thing as that."
"That is enough out of you! Hold your tongue and stay here!" Her Mother said, gripping her hand tightly and pushing her in behind her to stand closer to the entrance where the boy had began counting before.
They stood awaiting like that for a while, as Queen Catelyn made her face and way seen towards the other guards and indicated that the princess had indeed been found. That took a long while.
"Where is your brother?" she urged; she insisted. "WHERE is Bran?"
"I don't know", Arya said. "We were just playing hide-and-seek. He might have gone farther than me."
Queen Catelyn turned her face away from her, shaking it furiously to herself in mid-air, and staring out at nothing in particular with a gaze of anger mixed with incredulity.
"Right, you will stay here now, and try and think of where he might have gone", she said.
And stay there she did. They stayed for a long time, as the guards continued looking for Bran, moving ever further and further down into the corridor.
After a while, the Queen decided that she could not go after them any longer, since they were blocking her entrance forward anyway, walking like so many human barrels in their armour, covering the entire corridor for her to not be able to approach, and so they turned and went out of the entranceway and out of the castle at last.
The courtyard was brown dirt, just as it had been before. The Septa stood beside them, still loopy after what had happened with the bat, but slowly trying to calm down herself. She was awake now, anyway, and the lanky boy with the snankled teeth still stood beside her along with many other servants who had come to look.
Her Father was still coming back from the tourneyground at the Flowstone Yard, walking slowly and with patient, great strides, while Robb and the others were still practicing at their horses somewhere off into the distance, she saw from afar. Father walked with slow steps. He did not seem as worried as her Mother, but he seldom ever was, or in every case, at least he did not show it.
"Arya", he said. His tone was a strange one between pleading and relief, she thought.
"We were just playing hide-and-seek", she explained.
He sighed, barely even looking at her before he turned away towards Mother.
"Bran is still inside there", Mother said.
"Gods be good..." Father mumbled. "And the guards too, it seems."
"I did not want for it, if that is what you believe! They all started following me and Jory without an order to it.", Mother said, angrily, as if she was being blamed for it all.
Father said nothing. He only stared up, as far as he dared, at the massive, giant construction of Harrenhal, seeming to pray deep inside with closed eyes and a solemn face.
Then he opened his eyes again.
"Jory!"
"Aye, Your Grace."
"Go in there and tell half of them to move out. The other half to be quiet and not scream after the prince. Only to find him before sundown, if they can."
"At once, Your Grace." Jory nodded, and went in again.
After that, they only stood waiting, with Arya's gaze turned down in silence towards the brown dirt of the ground, as servants came and went all around them farther off, but their own host was a silent and still one, as Mother held her hand hard and fretted, and looked up at the sky and in towards the castle corridor again and again.
"Your Grace", a guard approached. "We have a guard dog if that would be of service. There are better dogs in the kennels, though that will take some time to get them here. My man Weese can sort out a search with his one now if you like."
Mother seemed to sigh, and contemplate the idea. "No... Not any dogs... Bran is terrified of dogs..."
"Perhaps he will learn something for it", Jory suggested.
"Hold your tongue, ser!" Catelyn screamed at him. Jory was ashamed then, and surely held his tongue after that.
The Queen sighed.
"Fine. Do away with the dogs. As long as there is only the one, and as long as he is properly tethered."
"Aye, Your Grace. The dog is a tame one. Weese says he would not ever stray from his command, nor from his leash."
"Good", Father said. "Be on with it."
The guard bowed quickly, and then was on his way.
Queen Catelyn asked some other guards what was on the other side of the tower.
"That is the courtyard between all the five towers, Your Grace. It has a small tree lund with a small sept, a fruit orchard, some servants quarters, and a bear pit, along with the backdoor entrance to the bathouses, though they are in the other tower."
"Thankyou", the Queen replied curtly.
The King, the Queen and Arya stood there for what seemed like another half hour after that, however. It was warm and stuffy, and she stood turning her clothes, rolling them up and down in her right hand, thinking thoughts of being a wild wolf out in the Riverlands, with no parents or guards to hold her, her jaws wild and frenzied, on the hunt for some fresh prey.
Her Mother did not say anything. She supposed that she would wait with dealing out her anger until Bran was there to hear it too. Neither did Father say anything. He only stood bowed down to the ground, seemingly in deep thought and prayer.
A quarter passed, she was sure that it must have. The wind swept around them, caressing the small soft blades of green grass which grew by the side and edges of the courtyard some few feet away next to the castle where the septa seemed to have lain only half an hour before.
Mother seemed to grow more and more worried at Bran. Arya soon began to wonder herself. Could he truly have gone so far? He had not seemed so far off when he had left the barrel room, if that indeed had been him. But he did like to climb, after all... What if he had climbed all the way up to the upper parts of the castle?
She looked off to Jory, who stood guarding the entrance without even looking her way. He looked tense somehow, as tense as she had ever seen him, she was sure. Mother did not like Jory, and this had not done much to help that.
"Have you looked on the upper stories?" Arya mumbled towards Ser [Arys?].
"Quiet, Arya!" Her Mother said.
Arya held quiet. Nor did Ser [Arys?] dare to reply.
A tall, blond-haired and bearded guardsman came up to them, bearing good news and a sweaty visage.
"We found the prince at the western gatehouse, Your Grace. He had climbed out the window and hopped down in a hay cart."
"Thank the Mother!" her own Mother said, closing her eyes with her face angled in relief towards the heaven above.
"Bring him here. This instance!"
"Yes, Your Grace. They are on their way, Your Grace."
Her Mother turned to Arya now, opening her eyes again, with a look that promised words and much more.
"Arya of House Stark... "
She was in trouble now, truly in deep trouble. It was always worse when Mother used her surname.
"...Do you have any idea how worried I was for you?"
Arya became surprised. She said nothing, only stood listening, still with high alert fear in her chest.
"Do you think it's some childish game to run around here? You had me scared to my wit's end! No more running away. No more bad behaviour. And no more running away from the septa! I swear to the Mother, I will put you and Bran in a cage guarded by all the watchmen in the Seven Kingdoms if you do something like this ever again! That seems to be the only way I can keep you safe from your own selves!"
Her Mother was fuming, still now. She only seemed to grow angrier and angrier for each word. And yet Arya had thought that she would not be as angry as before. They had not even climbed anywhere high this time, only walked around inside the castle. Or... well... She did not know if Bran had climbed somewhere – he likely had – but she had not.
"I haven't even done any climbing!"
"You haven't even done any climbing? Do you think that is some excuse for your behaviour? Septa Mordane was terrified! She fainted to the ground all because of you! And you ran away like some wild street rats the first chance you got, bringing shame to all of our house! Bringing shame to your Father! How in the Seven do you believe that the common people will look on the King if he cannot even keep control over his own children?"
Arya did not know what to answer. She supposed that she had not thought about it that way before.
"Now you will stay here with me for the entire rest of the day, and I will not let you out of my sight for a single moment!" She said, gripping Arya's hand firmly, yet also somehow, in some impossible way, still gently. Her Mother stood still for a few moments more, fretting with her worries, looking around to see if the haycart with Bran had arrived yet. Then she turned back her head to Arya again.
"Have you not heard of the curse of Harrenhal? Do you not know what has happened here before? To King Harren himself, and all his sons? And to the Qoheryses, to the Towers, to the Lothstons, to the Strongs?"
And to the Whents? Arya thought secretly, somewhere deep and secret down deep inside, yet she dared not speak nor even think something of the sort. She did not wish for anything ill to befell kind old Lady Shella.
"Make no mistake, Arya. This castle may be that of my mother's house, but it is a dark and evil place, and one which I had best thought we move away from as soon as we can, since it seems to want to lure you into it with every waking moment. I will go and tell your Father for us to leave at sundown first thing."
"But Moth-..."
"No arguing!" Mother practically screamed out, her face wildly red as Arya had seldom seen it before.
She held her tongue then, looking down on her feet. They stood more so in silence, waiting all the time, with only the faint whistling of birds from far away and the silence of the wind, waiting in silence all the way until Bran came visible in the distance.
"Brandon..." her Mother sighed in relief.
The guards and servants escorting Bran in the haycart waved towards the Queen, and then bowed down, even though they were standing so far away. Queen Catelyn took Arya's hand firmly, telling her to hurry up, and then ran towards the haycart towards Bran.
Was he hurt? She hoped not. Could he have jumped or fallen into the haycart somehow? How else had they found him, and why did he have to sit there just now? Could he not walk beside it? Arya thought. Meanwhile Bran just sat there, apparently calmly, in the hay, being driven forward in peace and calm.
Catelyn ran further, almost cursing under her breath as she strode her way forward in her broad red dress, reaching almost all the way down to her feet, but dragged up by her left hand now, with her right hand still in Arya's, clinched so tight that it hurt. Arya did her best to keep up. Her Mother was tall, an enormous goddess running beside her, as always, looking ahead towards Bran and some point in the distance where elation or dispair awaited her to see.
Bran arose slightly from the haycart, moving in slowly waning movements.
Mother reached the cart, let go of Arya's hand for a moment, and pulled Bran up towards her chest, smothering him in a close set hug. Bran merely looked back and down to Arya over their Mother's shoulder with a still look of nonplusenment.
"Brandon Stark!" She [ ]ed. "Where on earth have you been?!"
"We were only playing hide-and-seek", Bran said, meekly, ashamed, as Mother put him down on the ground in front of the haycart, and her brother looked down to his feet just as she had herself.
"Why did you abandon the septa like that? You are NOT to stray from her immediacy ever ever again!"
"I don't know...", Bran said, clearly not knowing. "She didn't wake up."
"And so you thought it would be best to sneak off, leaving her to her fate? How in the Seven Kingdoms have I raised you to behave like that? Answer me!"
"I don't know", Bran said again, clearly much more afraid and shameful already from the start. He knew that they had done wrong. "We only wanted to see some more of the tower... "
"And you could not have asked [ ] or [ ] to accompany you? They are here to protect you, Bran, not to be your jailors!"
Just now you said that you were going to keep us locked in a cage, Arya thought, but said nothing. She would most like come back to the idea immediately if mentioned.
"And how in the Seven...? You know what? I want you to promise me now to not climb anymore. Promise me, Bran. No more climbing! Do you understand?"
Bran looked down to his feet.
"Yes, Mother."
Queen Catelyn beheld Bran for a few moments, apparently weighing his words, and then seemed to try and believe his words.
Her Father approached her soon, bending down to see her face properly.
"Hey, how are you?" He said, with a concerned tone in his voice, but a thousand times calmer than Mother had.
"How she is? How she is?" Mother was furious, now with Father. "She is a ruthless child who ran away from Mordane when she lay dying! She has no reserve for what is proper. I dare say we shall have to send her to a septry if she does not put up with this, for I know no husband who would have a princess this wild to wife!"
"Calm down", Ned soothed, trying to put her hand above her shoulder, which she did not take calmly to.
"Calm down? Our royal children, the prince and princess, just ran away into the most accursed castle in all of Westeros without a thought in the world as to what would happen! And you tell me to be calm?"
We did have a thought as to what would happen, Arya thought sullenly. We had many thoughts. We thought that we were going to go and explore the castle, and we did. But we knew that we would get yelled at again, like we always are. Just for trying to have some fun.
"I want us to leave and be on our way right before sunset!" her Mother declared. Her Father seemed torn between the decisions.
"Already today? Was it not you who insisted on staying for two nights here?"
"Perhaps so I did, but now I am of a different mind entirely! We will leave before sunset!"
The King only stared back at her, as she stormed off from him, but then he came after her, telling her to try and calm down once again.
"Calm down, husband? Calm down? My blood is of this castle. I know it better than anyone! It's trying to lure them into its gaping depths so it can have their blood as well! It will not have had its due until it has had the blood of all the members of House Whent crept into its mortar and stone!"
Father looked incredulous. They began screaming at each other again then. Or, well... Mother screamed, Father only spoke strongly, and loudly, but with a certain restraint, as Arya held on reluctantly to her Mother's hand, looking out to her south across the walls and through one of the windows to the small square of glittering of the lake. The Gods' Eye was a blue beacon of hope somewhere along in the distance... She only hoped that she would see it some day again, if they were indeed to leave.
At dinner, some eternal hours far later, when they had all calmed down as much as they possibly could after what had happened, Bran told her about the things he had heard from one of the guard about the fishermen, and what large fish there were in the God's Eye. She immediately thought of going there, but for that to happen, their Mother would have to consent, which she in all likelihood would not for the remaining part of the month. She was still mad, though she tried at last now to calm herself down, eating her food in silence and with her face hard like that of a stone statue against the silhouette of her hand and the fork coming up to her bitterly frowning mouth.
Arya supposed that she felt sorry for her Mother. It could not be easy to take care of such rowdy children, but she simply could not either imagine ever having such children of her own, nor even less to marry... If she were ever to marry, it would have to be with someone who was as wild and fun as herself, and those boys were a rare thing, especially among lords. Perhaps one of Lord Robert's sons, but they were not interested in her, and Eldyn had been mean to her one time, calling her a girl as if that was something less than being a boy somehow... She knew what he meant. She hated him for it, still now.
Arya finally took courage to herself and went to Father to ask him if they might possibly all go down to at least see the lake before leaving. King Eddard seemed to think about it for a while, but then consented.
"As long as you do not wander off. And I mean it."
"We will not. I swear it." She looked up to him to show her severity.
"All right. But do not make me regret this."
His tone was equally serious and foreboding. She nodded and ran up to Bran to tell him the good news.
They finally decided to make their way down to the lake before leaving. Arya thanked her Mother and Father, and all of the Seven, and the Old Gods too, deeply in her prayers for that.
The God's Eye was beautiful in the afternoon, sparkling blue and somewhat dying down with the heat of day now, a certain swallor leaning over the green hill line which stretched down from the outside of the castle walls and along a small tramped up pathway down towards the enormous slope of green grass going all the way down to the lake itself, which lay like a vast expanse covering half the horizon before them, the sun still shining a good four or five widths above it in the sky.
The fishermen were all sat down by the shore in their boats, mending nets and chewing sourleafs, or else cleaning and scrubbing the decks of their small wooden boats.
King Eddard went up to the boats, with Arya and Bran in hand, and Queen Catelyn following along shortly after them, still holding Arya's hand with hard stubbornness.
"Good day", the King said to the fishermen. "Are you the fishermen serving under Lady Whent?"
The fishermen all looked back at the king, very calmly, slowly, but curiousy, turning their heads towards the strangeness of it all, watching the court as it came down along the greenery of the hill, and one of them, lying leaned back on his back in his boat quickly stopped away a small wooden sculpture he was whittling on into his shirt again, along with his knife.
"My king!" Some of them mumbled, doing their best to bow down. "My lord king!" some others said, and "King Stark", and "King Eddard", and some few apparently befuddled ones mumbled "King Aerys...".
King Eddard strode forward in his tall boots, standing next to one of the boats wherein an old long- and grey-bearded fisherman sat. The fisherman looked up at the King, surveying his gleming armour, and mumbling to himself, "Aye, that'll be the King, all right... "
The King laughed a bit at that, and bent down slightly to speak to the old man.
"What is your name?" the King asked.
"Yrgund/Gwellyn/", the man replied, "though I am known as Grunden-Swanthey[ ], for the groundness of my boat. See, it's not got a deep keel like some of the rest of them, my king. It goes into the small skears and coves and what not, so that I can... go along and find the smaller fish and things hiding in there as well".
"You seem like you have rowed on these waters for a long time", the King said. "Am I right?"
"Oh, that'll be true, that. A long long time. Seventy years, almost. If I ever had the tally or the fingers to count them myself."
"That is certainly an impressive feat. Tell me", the King commanded.
"Aye, it's surely seventy years by now, that'll it be... When my father first took my out to sea, I was no older than six or seven. That was in the days of the first Lord Whent, well before all of the other ones, when Lady Shella was only a wee little girl, if even that, I suppose... I was taught how to fish, my father taught me, and he taught me that well, and how to build a good boat and to care for it... Then after that I have fished here for well over forty and fifty years, sixty and then another couple of ones as well, I think... In my youth it was another king who sat on the throne. King Maekar. And then Aegon. Then all the rest of them... But I have always been in service to the Whents here, my king. Aye, that'll be true that..." the old fisherman was mumbling, almost to himself. "Always well and true... Aye, that'll be the truth of it, all right... "
Arya could not tell if it was out of nervousness from standing before the king, or from old age and dotteringness, or something else entirely. Some people were just strange like that. But Arya was certain that the old fisherman would have a thing or two to say about the stories of what was in the God's Eye, if noone else. He looked to be among the oldest of them, if not for one or two bald and balding a bit further off, including the one who had sat whittling on a bark piece with his knife.
As Arya came closer, she saw that the old fisherman's beard was very dirty, if not black and swarthy in certain places, though if it was truly from dirt, or from the black of his hairs, or both, she could not know. He looked older than Grand Maester Pycelle even, at least by ten years, she was sure. He had an ancient, wrinkled forehead with an old grey-green cap on top, a wrinkled face and forehead like old leather, and his hair was thick with sweat, matted and grey, but his eyebrows were still black, bushy and weathered from a lifetime of years out to sea. They almost went all the way together in the middle, in small spreaty hairs like black pine needles. His head was large, though his face was somewhat square and broad. He looked a wee little bit like a frog, Arya supposed. His nose was large and broad enough, though, and his mouth was broad and smiling black, though with only three or four teeth left.
"Could you tell the prince and princess some tales of the God's Eye?" the King asked. "They are here for the first time, and so would like to hear it from someone who has lived here for all his life. I am sure you must have some many stories to entertain children?"
"Oooh, the children, the little bairn, aye, yes, that'll be true..." Grunden-Swanthey started mumbling. "Come around, my prince and princess, if you wish to hear. Come closer, I don't bite. Not any more than an old salmon, for my teeth have they taken. The years, that is... Hahaha... Nay but I say I don't bite, no biting at all for me, no, no, none at all, that'll be the truth of it... I shall save my few teeth left for my meal tonight... I just hope it don't bite back, that is, haha... Aye, that'll be the truth of it, all right... -"
"We wanted to ask you about the God's Eye", Bran said. "There was a guard that told me that there are sea monsters here. Have you ever seen any sea monsters here?"
"Sea monsters? Hahaha, aye, that'll be the one big one, then... Shiye me' around the old slampart, if that weren't ever the biggest one the Riverlands ever seen... As big as a hill come alive she was, aye that'll be the truth of it, the pink and bloody truth of it until the day I die, all right... - "
"What? So you have really seen one?" Bran's eyes went as big as tea platters.
"Aye, seen it I have, all right, though only the first and last time, though they were both the same, then... Hahahahrr... Nay but aye, I have seen it, all right, my prince... Most of all of us who were old enough to be here in that old time saw it when it came about. It was impossible not to see it. It covered half of the lake, it did. Well, not the lake itself, but the nearest part of it, I suppose... - "
"Tell us! Please tell us the tale, mister!" Arya pleaded, desperately curious to find out.
So it is true! There are sea monsters here! He has seen one! A true sea monster! Arya was extatic, and Bran too. This was truly the best thing she could ever have hoped for. Septa Mordane always said that the sea monsters were all gone from the lakes, but apparently she had not heard about this one... "
"Aye, that'll be truth of it, all right...! Oh, I shall tell you the tale, princess, don't you worry! Though it's the best one I have got, and so you will have to save it in your ears for all the rest of your years if I tell it to you."
Arya promised, eagerly nodding her head up and down. Bran did as well.
"Well, they say that someone had seen the monster several times before, for all knew there to be one, but we did not know whether it was a story or the truth. Some older men claimed to have seen it, the ones who were old already back in those days. And this is the time of King Aegon, when I was still a young man.
And the old men talked, and every man talked of it back and forth, as one did... And if there was indeed a monster, then some said that it could be caught, and others said that it was so large and monstrous as to never canning be caught. But there was one lad, only a young lad, a couple of years younger than me, around fifteen or eighteen or thereabouts, Jerven/Deven/[ ], who set out to try and catch the monster.
The old fishermen had said to him that if he ever wanted to catch the monster, he would have to have an oxes head, or rather than that an entire oxe for bait, for else the monster would not bite. And he would have to aign it with the roughest, thickest rope that he could find, for else the monster would rip right through the line as if it were a haystraw. And so they spoke of it, to and fro, spoke of it a lot, and however it came to pass and be, he managed to get himself a freshly slaughtered oxe taken right from the green hages out by north. I don't know, nor I can't say whether he got it from Lord Whent, or whether Lord Whent knew of it, but whatever the making of the oxes head, he surely must have knew of it later, as the lad went out to catch the monster.
We were all standing here waiting to see it, and whether he would make it. Half a hundred people were gathered here by the shore, and you may not believe that to sound like any big number, since we are about that number standing here now,...- or, well, as I'm sitting down, then, but...- Aye, but it felt large then, and it was made to be felt even bigger by the happening itself. So they all stood standing here on the shore, and me and my father a little while further back, further southwest, over there, as the lad [ ] got out in his boat, just a small rowing boat like all the rest of us, to fish for the sea monster. He had brought his whole oxen calf, for it was only a calf, you see, but a grown and strong youngling calf, heavier than most men, I reckon, but not quite a grown bull as of yet, or at least that is surely how I remember it, though some say differently that it was a grown bull, but aye... At any rate...
And so... He took out the oxe from the bag and pulled a giant iron hook into its head crane, right through its temples between the horns, and then he lemped it overboard and cast it right into the sea with a great plums, head and horns and all!
We all stood waiting then, waiting with our baited breath on that small... - well, ye can't really see it all too well now, or I can't eyes, for me eyes are greying, but there is a little greening of reeds and tuves going out there, just as a small islet or skear, and there me and my father stood watching the spectacle from afar. For me father dared not go near it, you see, when he had the oxe blood and everything... My father believed in the story, mind you, and would you believe it or not, he still held the strong arms to straighten me away from it, though I must have been around three-and-twenty or thereabout at the time, though not quite with a full wife and bairn on me yet... Naye, aye...
Well, at any rate, and so we stood watching there, me father and I, and all of the others who stood watching by the shore, while some others were still fishing silently and calmly as any regular day, for they could not be without the catches for even a day, and some many did not seem to think that there would be a monster, or indeed that the lad would catch anything bigger than a mothfish at highest. And so they slowly slipped by him in their boats, gliding along smoothly as ever, as if it was just an ordinary day and nothing would happen, and the same with the old fisherman who had told him of how to do it, for he was in the boat next to him, though a bit further afar, watching him and telling him what to do if he should indeed catch it and how to row it ashore if he so did. But the others... well, most of them didn't expect to see a thing. Some were laughing at him, you see...
But were they not wrong, you see, those who talked about the monster, for when the lad had waited only a little more than perhaps thirty knopes or thereabouts, the line started tugging. He had a catch, if you can believe it. The lad fore up from his seat and tugged at the line himself, trying his best to hold it steady, as it went haywire straight away.
The line started moving, straining like mad, and the old fisherman told the lad to hold on for all that was dear, and to fasten the line in the boat itself, which he had prepared for just such a task beforehand, you see. And so the lad did, and he put the line through an ogel, and tied it hard with the rope that he had brought, the roughest rope in all the Riverlands, I dare say it, as thick as a man's arm it was, and as coarse as a tree trunk, if ever I saw a rope that was.
The old man stared to scream at the boy, screaming that he had to hold his ground, he had to wheel it in, and take to with all his forces, all of his strength, for rather that the floor of the boat should crack from his effort than that he should lose the beast... And so would you ever believe it, the boy held and held, and pulled and pulled, and he was mighty strong, mind you, even though he might not have looked it, but large and tall and a strong youth even he was, and he held and held, and pulled and pulled, as the monster struggled from beneath on the line... All the way until he crashed with his feet down right through the boat! Now the old man was shouting for real, and he was rowing a whole lot closer, for that, and then he decided that he had to rescue the poor lad, for he had not been able to catch the monster himself, he could tell... And so the old man hopped on over to the lad's boat, and did his best at trying to help him, and then they both hopped back into the old man's boat, for it was still whole and not broken in the bottom yet, and they both dragged and dragged, and pulled and pulled, and the monster arose from the depths...
It was a terrible beast, a hundred feet high, as true as I can swear it by the old gods and the new for as ever long as I draw my andning on this earth, a hundred bleeding feet high into the heavens it roared, with a neck as tall as quarter the castle walls, taller than the tallest trees, and on its terrible head, just like a dragon, were the horns and wrack and seaweed from a hundred years of sleep beneath the waves... seaweed grew along its neck, making it green, although it was more like grey and pink and red, and its back was the largest creature you had ever seen, as large as a whole island, but alive, and moving, and covered in green as if shrubs and bushes grew on it... I dare tell you this, my sweet children, and may your father take me to the sword if I lie in this, for I have ne'er seen a darer sight since the day I was weaned, nor 'til the day of my death!
A hundred feet into the cold air the sea monster arose, for this was in late summer, though even later than now, and colder it was, I dare say, and then it snarled and roared at the boat, and the sound was like a hurricane, as the blood and phlegm from the oxe and the monster itself came gushing out of its long, terrible jaws... It snarled and hissed, making the sea shake as a wild storm, and it dragged the boat all along with it... For what would they do, against the force of a sea monster of that size? Even the old man had not seemed to anticipate the strenght of the beast... It dragged them around in circles, trailing along in circles and spirals all along the God's Eye for I dare say near an hour, but somehow it never quite made the boat sink... It merely dragged it along, frusting wildly all awhile, as every last man standing on the strand screamed and prayed in horror at the sight, and more and more folks came flocking all the way up from the village to see.
At last, the old man had had enough, and we were all shocked to see that he was still alive, though he was fast bleeding from a great wound and scraping to his mage and bough, and so he began climbing up the rope, climbing all the way up along the rope, trailing towards the head of the monster, with an axe in his right hand... Or perhaps it was his left... Aye, his left hand, that'll be the truth of it, all right, for he had the right one hand to climb with, you see... And so he climbed and climbed, and got all the way up, meanwhile as the young youth slid around like a vant mitten down alone in the old man's boat, which was fast becoming like tatters itself by now... Barely the edges/rigging/[ ] of it remained, as the old man reached up to the head of the monster, and drove his axe right down into the monster's skull, dreaping it dead with three and five and then twelve hard drives right into the bone of its skull, and then it all fell down to the water as one dead, and the old man fell down with it. He was close to dying himself, having swallowed water and broken his ribs on the way down, but he made it, and the young man and some others, now coming out in their boats when the monster was dead, they come and managed to drag him all the way up along the shore, hauling the monster along behind them as well... At least for its head. The rest of its body was so big that it took five great boats and four great wagons to drag it onto the shore, and even then it was still half submerged in the water close by the strand as they hugged it again and again, beginning to carve it up... "
"Seven save me! They killed it?" Bran said, eyes wide open as they'd never been before.
"What else to do? It was a monster! A dreadful, terrible thing! But they come carved him up good, carving him for close on a moon afterwards, while the meat was beginning to rot, although there was so much of it, and such a thick layer of blubber in its hide, that I dare say it stayed fresh for as long as they were carving it... Near a hundred men stood carving at it, from sunset to sunrise, and I would have done so as well, but I got close enough to carve me just some small pieces of it, and to see it for myself, and it was massive, I'll tell you, and the pink hyde and the skin and the blubber... So just like a whale, a porpoise or tumbler, but thicker I guess... As thick as four men's arm was the hide layer of white spack, and wider even than that...
Pink and sweet it was, and as strange a meat as ever I have tasted... Ooooh, I tasted good, all right... But no, me father forbid me, you see. He forbid me from carving any more than just a couple of slices, for he thought that the beast was cursed, and that one should not eat from neither no monster nor any god... And so he would not let me have any more of it. But the other men carved it up better, and the meat from it fed all of Harrentown for a moon after. Aye... That'll be the truth of it, all right... That'll be the sweet and terrible truth of it... The meat was good and hard and sweet, pink and fibrous, like rope, but good as long as one chewed it or cooked it for twelve hours or more, and salted it properly... Aye... It was the biggest and finest feast that Harrenhal has ever known. Lord Whent had pieces of the beast served to all of his guests on his son's wedding day not long after, and all the guest proclaimed it to be the best food they had ever eaten. I cannot say for that myself, for it was strangely close to some tumling or whale, but aye... That was a special flavour to it, all right... The taste of a true sea monster... a true river monster, aye, that'll be truth of it all right... "
Bran and Arya both stood as paralyzed from the story. They both knew, without ever so much as taking another look at the other, that this was the most marvellous thing that they had ever heard.
"What happened to the monster afterwards? You said they carved it up."
"Aye, that they did, my young prince... But they also saved a huge stowaway of it in Lord Whent's earth cellar, and it ruck through all the long winter, as he saved it for years and years, taking out only a small bite portion of it for every winter feast, at Jule and at Baelor's-mass, and once a couple a year at some spring and or midsummer's celebration or such, he would take and he took a fetching of it, out to the strand for all of the children of the fishermen to eat... And how they ate, and how they all filled their stomachs, and said that it was the best thing they had ever tasted, the taste of a true sea monster, all right, aye, that was the way of it, you see... Mine own children took a taste from it more than thrice or four, perhaps six or seven, I had many children, you see, and they were not all grown at the same time... But they say to this day that there might be some left in the old earth cellar, and mayhaps some time someone will choose to take out a small piece again, and to let taste it... But I have not seen that happen for nearly forty years, I dare say, and so I would not count on it. Magic seldom comes when one asks for it. Only if one hauls out with an oxen and an iron grip around the line, heheh... "
"And what about the young man, and the old one? Did they make it? What happened to them?" Arya asked.
"The young man, he made it, all right... And he never did shut up about how he had caught the monster. The old man, not so much. I never found out his name for true, but my father said that they called him Red Ryllen or something like... Red for the blood of the beast, or if that was an old name, I cannot say... Well, at any rate... He died from fighting the beast, alas. But the lad, [Jerven/Deven], he lived on, all right. And he was boasting of the monster right up until the day of his death, I dare say. Oh, I dare say that, all right, yes... He died some twenty or thirty years back now, it seemed. Now I am one of the last ones to have seen the monster myself while I was a man, but there were many who were younger than me who still remember clear as day. Aye, ask the ones who were only young children then. Ask Stevyn, and Gippert, and Old Toby over there, and Marula, she lives in the village, she was always with us in those days, and a young beautiful rose she was, all right... Ask the children, and they shall tell you. The children all remember, though they are old now, fifty-and-five and older, or sixty and even further now mayhaps, and counting elder and more for each day."
Bran and Arya were euphoric from having heard the story, as they ran up and down along the green sloping hills of the God's Eye, screaming in delight and pretending to be the monster and the young man, and the old man who had died... Right until Mother proclaimed that it was enough, and that they had gotten to see and hear everything that they could possibly come for.
Father seemed to have quite the same sentiment. He bowed down slightly, thanked the man and shook his hand properly, and the man shook it right back, and bowed down to the King, although still sitting in his little wooden boat, with his net in his lap, puzzling and mending on it as he spoke.
They gradually made it back up the hill, as the Queen and King did their best to calm down their children and themselves after hearing the story. Mother still held Arya's hand hard, and Bran's too, on their other side. Father walked some ways before, leading the way along with Ser Barristan, Jory, Ser Mandon and all the rest.
"Do you truly think he was speaking the truth?" Arya said at last, some half hour later, when they had taken their leave of Lady Shella at the gates of Harrenhal one final time and were getting into the wheelhouse and Father made way to go towards his horse at the front line of the column. "Do you think that there was truly a monster as large as he said? Right here, by the shore of the God's Eye?"
"I cannot think of any better place for such a beast to thrive in all of Westeros", Father began. "But one should always be wary of fishermen. They tell their tales for that noone can say against them, for that they are the only ones to go in such waters, and so they alone know the truth."
"But he said that it came up ashore!" Arya said. "And that it stretched up so high that it was visible from Harrentown almost!" He had not said that outright perhaps, but if the monster had truly been a hundred feet high, that would have to have been so. And he said that at first, half a hundred people were watching, and then came more and more people flocking by, to carve it up.
"I do not know, but... Perhaps there are greater forces out there, forces that men should not trifle with..."
"Such as sea monsters?" Bran said.
"Maybe so", Father said.
"Have you ever seen a sea monster?" Arya asked.
"No."
"Have you ever been here to the God's Eye before?"
"Once or twice."
"But you were not born in the time of King Aegon, were you?"
"I was not."
"Did you ask Lady Shella about it?" Arya said.
"I did not", her Father admitted.
"What? How could you not ask her about a living sea monster?"
"I did ask one thing", Father said, as he was just turning around to go back to the front of the column, and Arya sat in place next to Mother, Bran and Sansa, with Septa Mordane and Lady Haelda a bit further away.
"What's that?" Arya said.
"I asked about the earth cellar. She has one... " Father said, And she has many types of old strange meat in it, salted and dried from decades before, all stuck in ice boxes deep down below far down in the ground."
And then Father turned and went his way, with a tiny apparition towards a smirk on his otherwise so solemn face.
As the wheelhouse turned and lumbered its way out along the way towards the Kingsroad once again, Arya Stark felt as happy as she had ever felt. She knew that she had done and seen what she wanted, but she only hoped that she could return one day, and perhaps taste some blessed piece of the sea monster's meat."