Part I: Growing Up
In the Sixth Year of the Reign of King Robert
"C'mon, Jos!" whispered Robb as he led his sister through the narrow passage between tapestry and stone.
"We are going to get in so much trouble!" replied Jocelyn, careful to keep her voice to a whisper as well.
The two siblings crawled further behind the heavy tapestry, to a spot that Robb had found a few days before, where a break in the interior wall led into a storeroom, and from there they could duck under the lintel into another long row of tapestries.
The great castle of Winterfell was full of such hidden passageways; wood built over stone built over older stone, with the fabrics of Lady Stark's dowry hung from the walls and ceilings creating an endless maze of small tunnels. Finding new hidden passageways was a favorite pastime of the highborn children of the castle. Doubly so now, when all of the adults who would usually look after them were busy instead making preparations to march against the rebellious Ironborn.
"Don't you want to hear what Father and Mother are fighting about?" asked Robb. Barely a week ago, Jocelyn remembered, Robb had found the idea that his parents were openly fighting to be terrifying, and spent two days sulking sullenly through his meals and lessons while the castle servants walked on eggshells around their Lord and Lady. Today, though, as if wishing to make up for his earlier shame, Robb had decided to find his parents' disagreements humorous instead of terrifying, and he had determined to drag his siblings around to his point of view as well.
"Your Lady Mother," hissed Jocelyn, "is not like to look kindly on me should she find me sneaking about listening in on her conversations." She left the rest unsaid; that Lady Stark already believed her to be sneaky and untrustworthy, and she was loath to confirm her in her opinion. It wasn't something that Jocelyn could explain. It was just– a feeling, that anytime the children got into trouble, eyes went to her. She had even overheard, by accident, her Lord Father once ask his wife why she had assumed Jocelyn was guilty when some prized embroidery had gone missing one day.
"You know why," had been Lady Stark's response, before she had stormed off, leaving Father looking as sad as Jocelyn had ever seen him.
But Jocelyn did not know why. She suspected that it had something to do with the fact that the Lady Stark was not her mother, as she was Robb's mother, and Sansa's, and presumably the new babe which the castle servants said would be born in another three moons.
But why having a different mother would mean Jocelyn was more likely to steal something, she didn't know. Mayhaps her true mother was a thief? She struggled to understand why it was important at all. Robb, she knew from Lord Cassel, who was Captain of the Guards of Winter and so one of Father's regular companions, was the "heir apparent," which meant that someday he would be the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. Lord Cassel had explained that the rest of the Stark children would get married to different people, based on how much those people could help Robb rule the North.
"So will I marry someone to be helpful to Robb?" Jocelyn had asked.
Lord Cassel had only paused for a second before answering, "Yes, dear, I expect you will."
In Jocelyn's mind then that was all squared away. Lord Stark was her father, Robb would become Lord when he grew up, and she would marry someone to be helpful to Robb, just like Sansa would.
And yet, she felt different.
It was confusing–confusing enough that she now followed Robb, despite the risk that Lady Stark would catch them and be confirmed in her bad opinion of Jocelyn, because listening in on her Lord Father's argument held out some chance that she would hear a bit of information she could use to make sense of her place in the Stark family.
Robb stopped, still hidden behind the tapestry, and gestured for her to implement the next stage of their plan. Just above them, hidden from view on both floors by the long tapestries, was a piece of floorboard that started rotting at one end. Robb had picked and picked at it until it formed a hole just big enough for him to squeeze through. Now he just needed a boost from Jocelyn to get high enough to pull himself up. Jocelyn locked her fingers together and bent down to let Robb step in. With a heave she flung him up to catch the hole in the ceiling. He quickly pulled himself through, then leaned back down through the hole to give her a hand.
Once they were on the upper floor, a window led out onto the rooftop of one of the inner curtain walls. Despite the spring breezes that had recently begun to warm the land around Winterfell, there was still snow in the eaves lining the steeply pitched roof, and Jocelyn took care as they crawled along the peak, making sure not to slide down either side.
From the other end of the curtain wall they could tiptoe along a ledge around the outside of the Lady's Tower and overhear what was being said in the solar.
"I would have thought you would be happy, my Lady," came their Lord Father's voice. He sounded angry. "Is this not what you wanted? A place for her outside of our family?"
"I wanted her married off," snarled Lady Catelyn. From the hoarseness in her voice, they had been trading hard words for some time now. "Betrothed to some landed knight sworn to Bear Island for a minor favor. But this? The witches are in and out of Winterfell with each feast! You'd have her at Robb's side for the rest of my life."
"And you would have her never see her family again, is that it? Your anger at me is so great you would punish a child for it?" blazed Father.
"Don't pretend you are doing this out of kindness! You know–you know what they do to those children. The rituals–I hear the whispers, my Lord. And you wish to inflict that upon your own daughter?"
"Aye, whispers," Father shot back. "I hear whispers as well. Whispers that Domeric Bolton has no blood but the North's in his veins. Whispers that the Boltons do not allow the written word in their lands, that the Dreadfort knows only the speech of the old tongue, that Domeric is being raised in the weirwood. Whispers that a Bolton would not keep drawing the North into Robert's wars."
"Are you saying they would–" began Lady Catelyn, but her Lord Husband cut her off.
"If I do not make some significant concession to the gods, I do not trust that Winterfell will still be mine when I return. Certainly not enough to leave you in such a situation with our child on the way."
Lady Catelyn's voice was thick with contempt. "So my Lord Husband caters to these savages out of fear–"
"I am one of those savages," Father thundered, "and the gods we speak of are the gods of the Starks. And may I remind you, my Lady, that she is my daughter, and her disposition is my decision."
Robb almost lost his grip at that, startled by hearing their Father shout louder than they had ever heard him. Then their Father's heavy footsteps moved across the room and out the door.
The escape was, fortunately, much easier than getting up had been. The two children simply jumped off into the snow drift that still lingered against the tower wall, and after they regained their feet and brushed off their clothes, nobody could say they were not simply walking about on some errand or another.
Robb looked troubled as they walked. "Was Father talking about you?" he asked Jocelyn.
"He must have been," replied Jocelyn.
"He seemed frightened," said Robb after a long silence.
Jocelyn had no comfort to give. She too thought Father had seemed frightened, and it shook her to her core. Father was the most powerful man in the North. He was friends with the King, and Great Lord Arryn in the Vale, and his goodfather ruled the Riverlands. It didn't even bear thinking about what could frighten Father.
"What do you think he meant," Jocelyn said slowly, "about Winterfell not being his when he gets back?"
"I don't know," said Robb, clearly troubled by the same thoughts. "Maybe the ironborn are going to attack us?"
"Master Hullen said they had attacked the Westerlands," Jocelyn offered.
"I don't know, Jos!" said Robb. Jocelyn was taken aback at his sudden anger.
"Why are you shouting at me," she asked, trying to fight the tears that threatened to come.
"I don't– I don't– just go be a bastard somewhere else!" he screamed, before stomping off into the Main Keep, rubbing at his eyes.
Father came to her room that night, shortly before she was to be asleep. He dismissed the servants, and then sat for a time on her bed. Jocelyn didn't dare break the silence.
"Where did your wanderings behind the tapestries take you today?" he asked eventually.
"Nowhere!" exclaimed Jocelyn, too quickly. "I mean, we weren't– that is, Robb wasn't– we weren't–"
"As clever as you two think yourselves, the bulge of two children running behind a hanging is hard to miss."
Now indignation overtook Jocelyn's nervousness at getting caught out. "It is too hard to miss!" she cried. "We've been all over the castle and nobody ever spots us!"
"Nobody ever says anything to you," her Father corrected gently, "because the servants allow their Lord's children their play, so long as there is no harm being done."
Jocelyn could hardly form words. They had been so quiet! She had been sure nobody else knew about their secret passages.
"And yet I think there may have been harm done today," her father continued, his voice grave, "should you have managed your way to my Lady's solar and overheard our discussion."
Jocelyn simply looked down, unable to meet her father's eyes.
"Ah, Jocelyn," said father, "your aunt and uncles and I were like you once, running through the castle, finding secrets we thought were ours alone."
Jocelyn looked up at this. She had a hard time imagining that her father was ever quite like her, even though she knew, at some level, that he must have been a young child once, a very long time ago.
"Is Winterfell truly in danger?" she asked.
Her father took a breath. "It is always in danger, my love. And yet, House Stark has held it through the years in their hundreds and their thousands, against the North, against the Andals, against the dragons."
Jocelyn frowned. "I don't understand."
"As winter ends, should I throw a feast at first thaw?"
Jocelyn was nonplussed by the change in topic, but she knew the answer. Every child in the North knew the answer. "No. Sometimes there's a thaw but it's not truly spring."
Her father nodded. "We would be in danger of the stores running out, if we did not carefully ration them. Just as with our stores, our position in the North would be in danger… if the Starks did not take steps to forestall it."
"Steps… like sending me to the weirwitches?"
"Like sending you to the preosthad, yes," her father corrected gently. "It shows the people that we honor the gods."
"Oh," said Jocelyn. So her father did mean to send her away. "Will it be… Lady Stark said it would be for the rest of her life."
"It is not so momentous a decision at the moment," her father said. "There are many lessons to learn, many tests to undergo, before you are ready to commit your life to the gods. And you must be a woman grown before the gods will accept a lifelong vow."
That Jocelyn already knew; several moons ago, after learning about the Kingsguard and sworn shields, she tried to convince Robb to swear a lifelong sacred vow in the godswood that he would always give her the first pick of the fritters if she agreed to show him the new litter of kittens she'd found. Lady Stark had been furious, but father had merely laughed and told her that the gods did not accept sacred oaths from children.
"So if the weirwitches are cruel to me, I can come home?"
"Yes, child. I do not think they will be, though. And you will come to Winterfell often enough in any case. The gods of the North do not require seclusion of their acolytes."
Jocelyn wasn't sure what an acolyte was, what seclusion was, or why gods in other places would require such a thing, but it sounded like she could visit home. As long as she could keep her family, Jocelyn was content.
"Okay," she said. "I can become a weirwitch if you want me to."
The next week was one of goodbyes. More and more men gathered at Winterfell, only to turn around and march to an assigned camp in the hills outside of Wintertown. The women had sewn hundreds of banners and hung them everywhere, so that each man sworn to Tallhart or Glover, to Mollen or Hayward or Poole or Cassel or any of the others Jocelyn couldn't remember could find their way to the right camp.
"I never knew there were so many people in the whole North!" Jocelyn had exclaimed, as she stood atop the battlements of the Main Keep, looking south where the land fell from the wooded hills of the Wolfswood to the rolling plains that stretch from Winterfell to the coast far beyond the horizon.
"Pardon m'lady," said the guard next to her, "but this is just the gathering at Winterfell. Umber, Karstark, Mormont, all the other Great Houses, they'll each be gathering their own levies. Only they'll meet up closer to the coast so as not to pick the land clean."
Jocelyn looked out over the masses of men, sure that there was no possibility there could be no greater gathering anywhere, sure that if Father had this mighty host around him he could not possibly come to harm.
She said as much to Robb when, two days after he shouted at her, he sheepishly approached her at breakfast to apologize.
"Did you see how many men are gathered?" she asked, for the third time. "And that's just the levies from around Winterfell, you know. More are gathering at Karhold and Last Hearth and the Dreadfort and–"
"And the North is just one of the Kingdoms sending troops!" Robb added, as if she had not been the one to tell him this a minute before. Jocelyn paid no mind. She was too happy to have her brother back.
Before the men would march away, though, Jocelyn would.
The next morning the preosthad of the Great Wolf arrived at the gates of the castle just as they opened.
There were four of them; three weirwitches and a goði named Veran who seemed to be their leader.
Words were spoken, formalities exchanged. They spent most of the morning in the godswood of Winterfell, honoring Father as the Chosen of the Wolf with ceremony and sacrifice and receiving honors and gifts from him in return. It all passed in a blur for Jocelyn, and she felt as if between one breath and the next she had shed her home and was walking into the Wolfswood with a group of strangers.
"We serve throughout these lands," explained Veran as they walked, "and we will return to Wintertown within a moon's turn. But the important rituals, such as the blessing of new acolytes, always take place in the deep woods."
He spoke in the old tongue, with an accent distinct from the one Jocelyn heard around the castle. His words tumbled over each other like a brook over a boulder, a cadence that seemed at once more wild and more natural than what she heard from Father's servants.
"Are there other acolytes?" Jocelyn asked.
"There are," Veran replied with a nod. "But they were gathered a moon's turn ago. You are a late arrival."
"Oh," said Jocelyn. Veran didn't look upset with her, exactly, but it seemed she was already set apart from the group.
"Do not worry," Veran reassured her. "This has all happened in the gods' own time. And truly, a turn of a moon is a little thing, compared to a life."
That did not make Jocelyn feel any better, but there didn't seem to be any more to say on the subject.
They travelled for three days into the depths of the Wolfwood. All on foot; at first Jocelyn had assumed that the group had horses stables somewhere in town, but when she asked Veran where they were he only laughed.
"We keep very few horses, we who serve the gods."
"Why not?" Jocelyn had asked.
"Horses, sheep, cows, chickens—you will see few such animals among the preosthad. There is honor in hunting the stag, or convincing the wolf that you are a worthy companion. But southron animals, bred to have broken spirits and to know nothing but the pen—there is no honor there."
Jocelyn frowned at this, while Veran leaned closer to speak conspiratorially. "And, in truth, horses are very expensive. The gods bless their faithful with many things, but gold coins are not often among them."
It explained their garb. Jocelyn realized as they walked that none of her new companions wore wool, or even the types of leather she was familiar with. Instead they wore finely worked hides, with thick hempen stitching combining with the natural color variation in the hide to create decorations of fantastically shaped animals.
The first day they walked along a well-maintained road, the forest thick to either side but frequently broken by paths leading off or small cottages for woodcutters and gamesmen. By the time they camped for the night, Jocelyn was as sore as she could ever remember. The road was gentle, and the distance they managed not far in truth, but the daughter of Lord Stark had not had cause to walk so far on her own feet before.
So tired she was that she sat by the small fire and ate for some time before she realized what was missing in their camp.
"Do we have some shelter to erect?" she asked Veran.
At this the goði merely smiled. "No shelter. We have furs to sleep under, which will suffice for tonight."
"But what if it rains? Or snows?"
Veran turned to one of his companions, a woman who, to Jocelyn's eye, looked to be the youngest of the weirwitches.
She breathed in deeply, her eyes strangely unfocused. "It will not rain, nor snow, tonight. Not tomorrow night, either."
"There," said Veran, "you have nothing to worry about."
Jocelyn wanted to argue the point, but she quickly realized that if they had no shelter there was nothing to be done about it now in any case. She hoped the weirwitch knew what she was about.
It did not rain that night, and the party was moving as soon as it was light enough to do so. The second day the forest was even thicker, and the road thinner, narrowing until it was little more than a path itself. There was still the occasional cottage, though the construction grew meaner, with stone buildings giving way to wattle and daub huts with steep thatched roofs.
Jocelyn barely noticed any of it. Everything that had been sore the night before was even worse in the morning, and the day was quite a bit longer. At the end of it she was so tired she didn't care if a blizzard was coming. She laid down under her fur and was asleep almost instantly.
The third day, they entered the old wood, which according to Veran had never been cut by men. Here the trees were even larger, towering monsters whose trunks rose straight a hundred feet into the air before even the first branches appeared.
The ground was less thickly covered here than it had been in the forest closer to Winterfell. The path all but disappeared as well, until Jocelyn felt like they were walking along the floor of a great hall, the trees around her columns supporting an enormous ceiling higher than any castle in the world.
In the middle of the third day of walking they came upon the camp.
Even at six name days, Jocelyn knew better than to give voice to her thoughts, given her present company. Yet as she looked on the camp below them, she couldn't help but think that it was no wonder the folk of the town and castle called the preosthad of the old gods savages.
The camp held no buildings, not of stone and not even the daub and wattle huts they had seen the day before. Instead the camp was made up of giant tents, each a patchwork of animal skins, some scraped bare, some with fur still present. Perhaps a hundred people milled about the site, talking and laughing, tending to the large fire in the center of the hollow or one of the smaller fires that ringed the site. They looked to be preparing the midday meal, and as the wind shifted Jocelyn could smell meat cooking.
The group was dressed much as her escorts were, hides wrapped around men and women alike, except for a few who were wearing some sort of very tight–
Jocelyn blushed and looked away as she realized those few people had painted their bodies but were wearing nothing at all.
The gesture was not missed by Veran.
"They prepare for the trial of the cold," he said by way of explanation. "They must survive a snowfall with nothing but the Wolf's favor to protect them."
Jocelyn's eyes went wide. "Will I have to–"
"All in good time, young one. You have much to learn before then."
Jocelyn felt both relieved at the confirmation that she would not be expected to strip down in the middle of camp immediately, and terrified at the implication that she would have to give up her clothes eventually. But there was nothing to do except keep walking forward.
As they entered the camp the chatter of the old tongue washed over her–the only tongue she'd spoken or heard since leaving Winterfell. Her escorts were greeted with words and clasped arms, but they did not stop until they reached the bonfire at the center of the camp.
The group escorting her came to a clear space on the ground, a short distance from the central bonfire. There were no chairs that Jocelyn could see, but the preosthad didn't seem to need them. The people around her leaned against any convenient tree trunk, chatted while they stood, or simply sat down on the ground as they felt like it.
Jocelyn turned to Veran. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Now," he replied, "it is time for your first lesson."
Jocelyn spent the afternoon sitting on the ground, cross-legged, though Veran told her the exact position did not matter much. What mattered was that she emptied her mind of thoughts and simply felt. The cool air on her skin; the weight of her hair gently tugging at her scalp; the wool cloth against her shoulders and arms and legs; the pressure of the ground on her bum; the dirt beneath her feet. All things that, Veran explained, she had become accustomed to ignoring, she was now expected to deliberately focus on.
Or, not exactly focus on, rather just be aware of. It was all very confusing.
At one point, a spider crawled across her foot. Jocelyn reacted instinctively, reaching down to brush it off, but Veran stopped her.
"Do not react," he admonished gently. "Your task for today is just to feel."
"And if an adder was on my foot instead of a spider?" Jocelyn shot back.
"Is there an adder on your foot?" asked Veran.
Jocelyn merely glared at him.
"Just feel," Veran repeated.
"For how long?" Jocelyn asked.
Veran merely shrugged.
It was hard for Jocelyn to tell how much time had passed; the canopy above was thick, so that the hollow they occupied was in a permanent twilight and she couldn't make out the position of the sun. She fell asleep more than once; the deep breathing and feeling Veran required acting as a soporific. He didn't seem to mind, though, and made some comment that the "line between dreams and waking is a fruitful one." Jocelyn had no idea what was meant by that.
She thought it must have been close to sunset when Veran finally gave further instruction.
"Eat this," he said, handing her a sliver of food. Jocelyn opened her eyes and saw he was holding a large mushroom with a bright red cap, out of which he had cut a small slice.
"What is it?" Jocelyn asked.
"It will help you feel," said Veran.
With no other explanation forthcoming, Jocelyn took the sliver of mushroom from Veran and ate it.
"Now what?"
"Now, you continue your exercise."
Jocelyn sighed and closed her eyes again.
As she fell back into her breathing and cleared her mind, however, she began to notice something different. The smell of the clearing became sharper, somehow. The murmurs of people speaking in tents or around the smaller fires became clear, and yet somehow she couldn't make out what was being said.
And then she could see, though she had no memory of opening her eyes. Her vision was strange. She could see too much; she was looking into the fire but also the dark spaces under the trees.
She could see one of the young weirwitches who wore nothing but paint, and she could somehow see her back and sides and belly all at the same time, circled by a painting of a crow chasing an owl chasing a crow chasing an owl, as day turned to night and back again over and over.
She could see a small girl sitting cross-legged near the bonfire, which was strange, how had she not noticed before, the girl must be sitting quite close to her…
An unkindness of ravens gathered in the trees above her. They darted in and out, leaving streaks of black across her vision like a painter haphazardly filling in a space.
One raven, though, simply stood on a branch above Jocelyn and watched. Its stillness caught the eye amongst the feathers and flapping around it. Jocelyn looked at it, and was caught in its gaze, the pitiless black eye expanding, until it encompassed the whole world and all she could see was blackness.
Jocelyn came to herself with a start. She sat up, confused, as she looked around the tent made of hides.
Slowly the day before came back to her. She must have fallen asleep during her exercises, and somebody must have carried her into a tent and laid her down on the ground. She recognized the sleeping forms around her as the weirwitches who had escorted from Winterfell.
The dim light of the clearing hadn't changed, but from the people emerging from tents and tending to banked fires, she realized she must have slept through the night, and it was now the dim light of early morning instead of evening.
"Come," said Veran, emerging from the tent behind her, "there is someone you must meet." He led Jocelyn back to the bonfire they had sat in front of last night, which seemed to be burning as high as ever.
In front of the fire stood a woman Jocelyn thought must be the leader here, if only because she looked more terrifying than anyone else she'd seen thus far. Jocelyn thought she must be older than her father, from the wrinkles on her face, but her hair was inky black with no hint of silver. She had forgone any braid or styling of her hair, leaving it instead to cascade long and straight all the way to her ankles. She was wrapped in plain skins, much like her companions, but all over her body were—well Jocelyn wasn't sure what they were called or what their purpose was—but there were trinkets of bone and wood tied into her hair at intervals, and tied around her arms and legs and neck. Strangest of all were the small pieces of metal stuck into her body.
"This is the girl?" She nodded towards Jocelyn.
Veran nodded. "This is the Chosen's daughter."
The woman stared at her for a moment, tilting her head the way Hullen might over a horse he was considering purchasing for his Lord's herd. Jocelyn looked up at her and realized that her irises were pure black. Either that or she had none, just enormous pupils that drank in the light and gave nothing back.
Something about her face struck Jocelyn as bird-like. The way she turned her head, perhaps. As Jocely met her eye, she realized she recognized that bottomless black.
"Tell me," the woman said at last, "do you fear the wolf?"
There was a test here, Jocelyn could tell, but she had no idea what it was. And yet, unbidden, the words came to her lips.
"The wolf, yes. But you look more like a raven."
At this the woman smiled for the first time.
"Clever girl," she said. "I think you'll do well here."
Author Note: This is a story of a female Jon Snow (along with many other characters both canon and OC). The story will cover the main plot of A Game of Thrones, but with a bigger focus on the Northern culture and religion and the movement towards Northern separatism. Oh, and I changed a lot of things from canon because I felt like it.
I'm cross-posting this story from where I started it on ao3. There's fourteen chapters up there already, so I'll be posting a chapter here on ffn every day or so until we're caught up. If you want to read ahead, I'm also thauliturgy on ao3 so you can easily find me there.
The first few chapters are probably T rated, but once the characters have grown up a bit we'll be into canon levels of violence, language, and sex, including major character deaths and discussion of sexual assault.