The white stone walls were just as she remembered them…or, rather, dreamed she could remember them. The corridors of the castle were not strange to her, though she had never before set foot in such a place. Even as she pushed away, her bare feet remembered the purple carpets lining the halls, keeping the floors of the white castle from ever growing cold. The memories of another, she told herself, long gone and long dead. I was born a Fenn of Wyrelake, and I would see my husband and my son again, my mother and my sisters sooner than some white castle formed of dream. Her lord did not appear though, no more than her son did or her mother gone the year before they'd heard of Lord Eddard Stark's murder. This castle made of starlight is aught to me. I want to go home. She found herself shutting her eyes when she chanced to pass a mirror, turning away to ensure there would be no seeing her reflection in it. Wyrelake has no mirrors, and this place has no Fenns. The name of the castle was as known to her as her own, but she forbade herself from thinking it. She heard the cries of a newborn girl, a delight to her parents who'd thought their childbearing days behind them. Her mother died birthing her, and her father's heart will burst of grief a half-year later. There, now. What fragile creatures these earthbound stars, made of white glass that shatter at the slightest scratch. Who could count me among them, after the burden I shared with my lord and love? Somewhere in the waking world that babe would be a woman near of an age with Meera, she knew. Minding another child, a fair-haired nephew even younger than herself. Nearly every house has lost a member. Some may well have vanished to the last. The dead were beyond her reach, it was Meera who needed minding now. Her, Howland and Jojen, the new babe. Our daughter and our grandsons.
"Naerys, Princess of Dragonstone." she heard Lord Stark rasp, throat parched from battle and the dry mountain air both, as well as grief. That hurts, my lord, she told the memory. It hurt still more to remember the day that Howland had broached the topic with her that had lain undisturbed since they'd first arrived home from the days of rebellion. Though in her eyes Meera was still the baby she'd breathed life into and Jojen still more helpless, she knew that their time together, at least as House Reed, had come to an end. Her hand went over her eyes, wetness stealing past her fingers to freeze against the air.
Jyana sniffled, moved her hand down over her mouth, tried to compose herself. She would sooner die than discomfit Meera so soon after bringing her babe, untroubled though the labor had been. It was the water, she remembered. Jojen had not come beneath the boughs of the underground godswood, but forth from the same waters that had swallowed Dawn as well as its dark twin.
"You've not been sleeping well…" her daughter's voice was gentle, but it still irked Jyana that Meera should worry for her. I am the least of anyone's concerns. From across the castle, one of the hatchlings shrieked. The castle's varied inhabitants had all but forgotten the Starks of Winterfell in the wake of three new dragons, and so Jyana thanked the gods for the moment of peace vouchsafed them. "Was it the battle? The noise before, the silence now?" The castle was certainly not quiet but compared to the storm, to the coming of the Others, the place might have been garrisoned by silent sisters.
"I miss your father's arms around me." Jyana replied, Jojen burbling at the sound of a voice that was not his mother's. "Without him beside me, I find my dreams have turned queer." Dreams of white stone and dry air, a world apart from Wyrelake.
"Dreams of the tournament?" Meera sounded as eager to know as she was reluctant to ask.
"What tournament?" Jyana asked. Those are the memories of another. Until I accompanied my husband to Winterfell, I never left the Neck. Meera sat up from her pillows, stretched, shifted Jojen in her arms.
"The one at Harrenhal, my lady." I've never been to Harrenhal. The castle stood there in her mind, grotesquely vast, its towers warped and withered by dragonflame. "If I may, my father fell in love with Ashara Dayne, not Jyana Fenn. Nor Wylla the maidservant. He went into the world to see what lay beyond the bogs of home because he wanted to, not because it was pressed on him." She bit her lip. "I daresay it was only what was due you that you should catch the heart of the finest man in Westeros. You had eyes for nobody but him, even when he was just the little crannogman." I did, Jyana thought before she could stop herself. The Starks had overtopped him, even the girl, but once upon a tourney Ashara Dayne had seen eyes of every color and among the purples, browns and blues, among the glittering greens and stark clear greys. Alone among the throng, the crannogman's gaze had been deep moss green…and when Ashara Dayne had met it, she had not looked away.
"I can't think how hard it must have been. You were born on the banks of the Torentine, in the foothills of the Red Mountains-"
"No Fenn was ever born anywhere but Wyrelake." Jyana interjected, standing to fix Meera's pillows.
"And how many Fenns have violet eyes, lady mother? How many have skin white as cream?"
"This one." She leaned over to kiss Meera's forehead. It was her daughter's turn to sniffle.
"How many Reeds have grey eyes? How many Reeds ride dragons?"
"This one." Jyana touched her forehead to Meera's. "And Viserion is not half so much a dragon as he is a lizard-lion, any more than you are." Meera looked to her babe.
"What of him?"
"What of him? He came into the world from the waters of the godswood-"
"-and I came into the world with water in my lungs in a land of deserts and mountains where no water can be found. It took your hand as well as my father's breath to get me breathing on my own." Her lip quivered. "As soon as Aemon, the First of His Name had come along, he was bawling at the top of his lungs. Naerys, Princess of Dragonstone had been so quiet and so still. Were she born in the Red Keep surrounded by midwives and maesters, she would never have breathed, never have lived. Another may have given me flesh. You gave me life." Her tears fell off the tip of a nose no Reed had given her, nor any Fenn. Nor any Dayne. "It pleases me some to know Naerys Targaryen was born to the same mountains Ashara Dayne was. Just as I was born to the same close greenery you were."
"Meantime, it pleases me that Meera Reed has the gods' favor when it comes to giving birth." Jyana replied, giving Meera's hand a squeeze. Favor I enjoyed scarcely more than Lyanna Stark.
"You carry bad memories of two lifetimes, small wonder sleep is difficult for you. Maybe you should try the grotto…you might dream of the Dawn Age, but at least you won't dream of anything in living memory." The notion of a night's sleep unbothered by ghosts was powerfully seductive.
"If you need anything, I hope you'll send for me."
"Like what? Breakfast? Blankets? I'm the bloody Princess of Winterfell, a few maidservants can see to those while my dear mother takes a well-earned rest." Perhaps it isn't the quiet, Jyana thought. Perhaps it's the absence of so great a weight. "Maybe the waters have yielded up Dawn by now, as well. It belongs to my father and to you, not to the gods."
"I'd sooner the gods took Dawn and left your father." She walked to the door, the weight of secrets replaced with the mundane burden of weariness. I may not reach the grotto, she thought. There were less stairs on the way to the godswood, though, and with hatchlings to bustle over in Winterfell's Great Hall nobody seemed to much have time for trees. Save for me, a ghost from a world that no longer exists.
The godswood was much warmer than Jyana expected it to be. It will be the Children of the Forest in the grotto below, or else Viserion has returned to the depths of the lake. There was no snow on the ground, even her breath had ceased to cloud on her walk into the trees. The heart tree had lost its share of leaves and even branches but the trunk stood inviolate, the face holding as ever it had. Jyana sat, put her back to the white trunk. Strange that a tree should prove more comfortable than a chair. Then again, I suppose I shan't be closer to Howland or Jojen than here, until the day comes I join them.
"That implies I'm not with you right now, Mother." Her eyes shot open, lurching upright off the heart tree. Jojen had not aged, had not changed at all since last she'd seen him. She was halfway to her feet when she realized that even if she were to reach him before he vanished, there would be nothing to hold. Instead she stood, hiding her tears all over again, wanting nothing more than to put her arms around her son.
"Are you some working of the tree?"
"Some working of mine own. It's the least I can do, for you of all people." He walked toward her. Even had he lived to the full prime of manhood, he would not have overtopped her. There were tears in his eyes as well, the same deep moss green as his father's. "Had I known what it cost you to give me life, I might have managed to come back to you."
"I would pay it again and happily if it meant you could come back to me." she said at once, hands itching to spring from her sides and pull him close. He is not there, she told herself, but in your mind.
"And in your heart, lady mother." Jojen added gently, tears falling down his olive cheeks. He smiled through them. "But it grows so crowded now. Once, it held only your husband and your children. Now there is a new Howland, and a new Jojen as well. Even a piece of no little portion for the twin of Naerys Targaryen."
"Should I not? I was at his birth as much as hers."
"Aemon Targaryen had a mother, has a mother. The same cannot be said for Jon Snow." She reached out, cupped his cheek with her hand. All she felt was empty air, though Jojen's tears knelt to the passing of her thumb meekly enough. "You must not fault yourself, lady mother. Meera became who she was meant to. She was always destined to leave Greywater Watch, as was I." He took a breath. "As were you."
"I can't help but wonder what might have been had word from the wider world never come." Jojen smiled again, sadder.
"A long sleep needs must still end. Even one full of dreams that make the waking world seem bleak and colorless. Your husband had the right of it, she would not have become the woman she needed to here. Can you imagine Meera with long black tresses and in a dress of all things? Learning needlework and courtesies? Small help those would have been when Viserion turned up." Jyana gave a gasp of laughter despite herself, covering her mouth with her hand.
"She has Dark Sister as well."
"Of course, it is hers by right of blood as well as deed." He glanced into the water. "And Father had Dawn. It's still down there somewhere, lady mother, its twin as well-"
"-they can stay down there, let Viserion count them among the riches his coming to the Neck earned him." He shrugged.
"Once, a lowly maidservant accompanied my father home thinking their princess would stay so hidden in the Neck. See what's come of that. You will live to see Dawn wielded again…and, I think, you will live to return to Starfall." The word made her wince. "If Jon Snow and Aemon Targaryen can be one another, why not Jyana Reed and Ashara Dayne? Meera spoke true when she said you stole our father's heart with but a glance."
"A castle half a world away and half-remembered at that, what is that to a feast hall full of your nephews' laughter?"
"So it is out of reach today. Tomorrow too, most like. It does the oak no good to deny the part the acorn played in its being though, lady mother. The girl a little crannogman once danced with by candlelight is still within you, beneath the lilies of Wyrelake." It was his turn to reach for her, and she prayed he could feel her even when she could not feel him. "They will wonder at Lord Howland Reed, as they never wondered at Ser Arthur Dayne. Your grandson will not be the only boy born these next few years named for him. I would have them wonder too at the woman without whose strength he could not have persevered, would not have reached the stars themselves to hold one in his grasp." She buried her face in her hands, but she could not find it in herself to deny his words. When she looked up, Jojen was gone.
The guardsmen outside the godswood were too caught up in rubbing their hands over a fire to notice Jyana until she was nearly upon them.
"Milady." one said, straightening before his fellow guard did the same. But which one? Am I Lady Reed or Lady Dayne? She'd worn her armor so long that without it she felt a breeze would scatter her to the winds, unable to reconcile who she'd been with who she'd become. The tumult within her breast died when she found Winterfell's Great Hall, the double doors open to any and all. Despite the sheer number of people present Jyana found she did not have to wade through the throng to reach the high table, the hall's occupants parting before her without a word. Occasionally, she caught a murmur of "Lady Reed" or "Lady Dayne" and was surprised by how untroubled she was. One means the other and both mean me. When she reached the Starks, she found Prince Brandon bouncing her grandson on his knee, the babe sucking noisily on a fistful of stew. Howland's face lit up on seeing her, pointing with his free hand and burbling through his dinner, sending it all down his front. His father beamed in turn at her approach, standing to wipe away Howland's latest mess before handing him to Jyana. I have spent two lifetimes dwelling on death. The babe's hand on her cheek was warm and tender, Howland's eyes as grey as his mother's.
"Is Meera well?" Bran asked, while Jyana took the little hand in hers, making Howland giggle.
"Well as ever. Your pardon if I worried you, my prince. I had a last few things to divest myself of in the godswood, I rather carried them far enough."
"So you did. I know a thing or two about putting the past to rest, my lady. Might be I'll tell you about it one of these days, not like there's aught else to do." A chair was brought forward for her, a bowl of hearty stew and a plate of venison set before it. Giving Howland back to his father, Jyana found she was famished, the food gone almost before she could taste it.
"Poor dear, must be where the prince gets it." one of the serving women said, fetching her another bowl.
"Have as much as you like, milady. The hunters on their sledges bring it in almost as fast as we can see it cooked and served." Of course, there was nothing for it but to carve a thin strip of venison off to tempt Howland with. At once he snatched it and stuffed it in his mouth, his grey eyes popping.
"Muh." he said emphatically, raising his empty fist in the air.
"More?" Bran asked, laughing as he pinched off another strand. Howland shrieked with delight suddenly, making a few heads turn. The northmen began to pound the tables and raise whatever they were drinking out of. Jyana saw cups, mugs, drinking horns, wineskins… Howland reached for Meera as soon as she sat down, straining for a peek at the babe she held. "Let your mother alone. Here, have a bit of this…" Brandon said, tipping half a swallow of ale into the cup before Howland. There was nothing for it but for him to seize the cup with both of his little hands, bring it to his mouth and upend it, earning Brandon an admonishment from Meera. The prince is right, Jyana thought. What's past is done. All the tears I had to shed, I have. We ought turn our minds and hearts to what's to come. Somewhere out beyond the walls of Winterfell, a hatchling gave another cry. Whatever shape the future might take was not for her to know, but it could not have bothered her less.
"Oh, my prince, it seems you started something you oughtn't have." Jyana said, watching Howland strain to reach the tankard before Bran.
"None of that. You're a Stark, not an Umber." Bran said, Howland gaping at him uncomprehendingly while the women laughed, Jojen fussing before he peeked up over Meera's shoulder. Jyana looked into his eyes, wondered at how bright they were. He may grow to know me for a Reed, she thought, he may grow to know me for a Dayne. Or he may grow to know I'm both, unbothered by the prospect as he asks me for a sweet. I should take to carrying them… As she thought on that, she caught Meera's eye.
"You took your first breath with my hand upon your back, grew into womanhood beneath my gaze, birthed a son with mine own aid. Never mind names or wombs or blood. You are my daughter, now and always." Jyana saw the ghost of Jojen in Meera's face when her eyes grew watery. Her hand found Jyana's.
"And you, my mother. Now, and always."