In the Twelfth Year of the Reign of King Robert

Osha had said she would teach Jocelyn to skinchange… if Jocelyn could show her she was ready. And so, after the guardian festival was over, Jocelyn again took her leave of Winterfell to travel with Osha back into the deep wood.

This time they followed the Little Knife. The river was placid between Winterfell and Castle Cerwyn half a day upstream, and farms lined the banks, each field a narrow strip two miles long stretching between the river and the road running parallel to it. Above Cerwyn, however, the land rose, farm gave way to forest, and the Little Knife became a wild thing as it stumbled down one hill after another.

They walked, and climbed, and waded as it suited Osha's whims.

There were lessons, here, but not such ones as the castle maesters or Jocelyn's trueborn siblings would recognize.

The preosthad was charged with keeping the forest. And that, Jocelyn was repeatedly reminded, meant knowing the forest.

She had tried to explain it to Robb once. Knowing, in the common tongue, meant remembering facts. Maester Luwin could no doubt tell her how many moons there were between each seedfall of the pines, or what a fox preferred to eat depending on whether it was in the forest or plains.

But in the old tongue, to know something meant so much more. A master-at-arms could explain how to use a sword, but the armsman didn't know how to use it until it became part of them, flowing through parries and thrusts without conscious thought.

They camped for a night next to a deep pool in the Little Knife, formed between two sets of rapids, and Osha asked Jocelyn to fetch them a fish for dinner. Jocelyn had been an acolyte long enough by this point to know what was being asked. Osha wanted her to know the pool first, and pull out only a fish that would not change the health of the waters.

So Jocelyn shed her hides and spread her awareness as she waded into the water.

She would try to do this first unaided. If she couldn't manage that, which was likely given that the stream was the part of the forest she was least familiar with, then she'd imbibe a bit of the seed paste Osha kept, and if that failed then Osha herself would step in to guide her mind. Jocelyn was determined not to get to that point, though, as she would then be able to feel her mentor's disappointment for days.

Most weirwitches, Jocelyn knew, were happy to use the dark red seed paste — weirwood seeds and soma fibers and blood all mixed up and crushed — and some imbibed small amounts throughout the day as a matter of course, so that they were never fully free of its influence. But Osha insisted that the more difficult task of knowing the forest unaided would stretch Jocelyn's mind in ways that would be needed for her to skinchange.

So she moved into the pool until the water was up to her neck. It was cold but Jocelyn didn't shiver or wrap her arms around herself. She simply felt the cold, acknowledged it seeping into her as just one more facet of the pool.

She felt the swirl of the water around her, heard the burbling from the far end of the pool, and watched the whorls dance across the surface as she moved.

Feel, just feel.

She was desperate to succeed, but she knew from long experience that she could not push.

Just feel.

And then… she knew. The pool — well it wasn't the pool, it was water, river and rain and sea, traveling around and around, egg to tadpole to cloud to frog and back to the ocean again. Circles in circles, orbits spinning all around, throwing flotsam and jetsam, leaves on the ground falling from trees they will be part of.

She lost herself, she couldn't tell for how long. Dimly, she remembered that she had a task here. One of the cycles spun around her, egg to fish that grew to pale striped adult and back to egg again. She saw one tossed out of the cycle, and she knew if she grabbed it the cycle would go on, perhaps even stronger than before.

She reached, and the perch tried to dodge the hand moving through the water, but Jocelyn hadn't reached for where the perch was, she had reached for where it was going to be, which was as obvious to her right now as that a bud would turn into a leaf.

Smooth as if she were plucking a leaf from a branch, Jocelyn pulled the fish from the water and walked back to shore.

Osha gave her a smile, though none but those who knew her well would have recognized it as such, and said, "Well done. Let us eat."

Jocelyn knew better than to push, so she cleaned and prepared the perch, while Osha gathered some berries and dug up a root. She held her tongue as they sat cross-legged to practice tasting the wind and thought that maybe it would rain briefly in the fifth hour of the night. She didn't even groan when Osha decided a little rain wouldn't kill her acolyte, so they would sleep in the open anyways.

Only after their furs had been arranged did Jocelyn broach the subject.

"I knew the river, today, without assistance."

"Yes, you did," replied Osha, and though the dark had fallen by this point, Jocelyn thought she could hear the small smile in her mentor's voice.

"And you said that when I was ready, you would teach me skinchanging."

Osha sighed. "I suppose I did at that."

Jocelyn sat up in the dark. "So I can learn? Truly?"

Osha responded to this with her own question. "Tell me, what do you know about skinchanging?"

Jocelyn laid back down.

"You share the body of an animal. See through its eyes." Jocelyn paused, weighing her next words. "The townsfolk,"she said slowly, "they believe skinchangers are a myth."

"It is true that the talent was gone from the north for a long time. It would seem it is starting to return."

"But why?" asked Jocelyn. "Why would a gift disappear, and then reappear?"

Osha paused, as if considering how much to say. Around them, the dark forest teemed with sounds, insects and birds and even a wolf far in the distance, as the steady burbling of the river provided a rhythm to it all.

At last Osha spoke. "We don't know, for sure. But the tales passed down tell us that in the days of Torrhen Stark's father's father's father, a great wasting swept across the land. Skinchangers fell to the ground where they stood, screaming, and some never got up. Soothsayers felt their vision cloud, and the patterns in smoke and bone and entrails turned to nonsense. The weather itself turned strange, and shook off the weatherworkers as a wild horse might shake off a rider. The herds and fish broke the great pattern and fled hither and yon. And from that great wasting on, each generation saw fewer and fewer of those gifted by the gods, until some gifts died out completely and passed into legend."

Jocelyn was deep in thought. "The maesters in their castles speak of the Doom of Valyria…" she mused, "was this at the same time?"

"Perhaps," agreed Osha. "It seems unlikely to be coincidence. The whole world is connected, even if we cannot see all the connections. But did the dragonlords in their hubris give some insult so great the gods turned their backs on the world of men? Or was there some other cataclysm in a land more distant yet, to which the Doom was mere corollary? Or it may have had nothing to do with men at all; the gods have their own concerns, and to believe that every action they take is in response to some mortal prayer or insult would make us as arrogant as the dragonlords."

Jocelyn could see stars now through the gaps in the canopy above them. She wondered if the Valyrians looked up at the same stars from their palaces in the Freehold. Some girl her age, perhaps, looking up and dreaming of her life ahead, never knowing that her whole world was about to be wiped out. It felt painful to think about, but it was a strange sort of pain that made Jocelyn want to keep thinking about it more.

"I suspect the truth will never be known," Osha went on. "Valyria and all its works are ash, the sons of the sons of the sons of any alive then are long since dead, and the gods keep their own counsel."

"How did you learn to skinchange then, if the gift was lost?"

"Lost in the North," said Osha, "but not lost beyond the Wall."

This made Jocelyn sit up again. "Beyond the Wall? But you never said…"

"Did we ever discuss it, child?"

Jocelyn lay back down, embarrassed. It was true that she'd never asked her mentor about her childhood. She'd never really thought about Osha having a childhood, and if she had thought about it she would have assumed she was another second or third daughter from the lands around Winterfell, like Ossian and many of their fellow acolytes were.

"But yes," Osha continued, "I was born across the Wall. When I was not much older than you, and coming into my gifts, there was a skinchanger who wished to live like one of your southron Lords. Varamyr, his name was. He sought out skinchangers in the lands my tribe roamed, and there were dark whispers of what he did to those he found. So my mother took me, and we left my father and siblings and tribe, and traveled to the Wall. There my mother sold herself for a time to a black brother there in exchange for passage. Once we were across, we lived off the woods, for that was all we knew, until we met up with some of the preosthad.

"We lived with them, serving the gods, until I was a woman grown. When I came of age and it was time for my skjoldmada, I chose to read my future."

Jocelyn desperately wanted to interrupt her mentor to ask for more details. The skjoldmada, the ceremony in which an acolyte gave herself fully to the gods and emerged a weirwitch, was cloaked in mystery. Jocelyn traded whispers with other acolytes whenever they traveled in a group about the clues they had heard from their mentors, trying to piece together this ritual they would all face someday. But tonight Jocelyn held her tongue. She had more important things to get to than even a new clue about the skjoldmada.

"The message that came out of the entrails was clearer than the weirwitches who observed me had ever seen. I was needed, the gods told me, further south. I was to travel through the woods until I came near to Winterfell, and there I would meet a girl in need of my guidance."

"Who was that?" asked Jocelyn.

"Who indeed?" replied Osha. Jocelyn was confused for a moment, then the realization came.

"Oh. Right." She suddenly felt uncomfortable. The idea that before she even knew she would go to the weirwitches, possibly before Father had even decided so, people hundreds of miles away were talking about her, discussing her future — she didn't like that idea at all. She was so lost in her thoughts that she had completely forgotten what had started this conversation, at least until Osha brought it up again.

"Since you asked, Jocelyn, and I have taken an extremely long time to answer: yes, I will start training you in skinchanging. Tomorrow, that is. Right now it is time for sleep."

Jocelyn laid in her furs, looking up at the stars through the trees, and wondered how her mentor, who was so wise, could possibly think she would be able to sleep after that discussion.

The next morning, they began.

And the morning after that, and the morning after that.

Not all day, of course. Or even most of the days, and some days not at all. Balance in all things was the way of the gods, and no weirwitch had the ability to devote herself to one thing at the expense of all else. They traveled each day, and hunted. Osha continued to make Jocelyn stop and know the forest around her, knowing the elk and the tree, the insect and the flower.

And they continued to learn the poems and rituals of the North. Jocelyn wouldn't have skipped that even if Osha would have allowed it; listening to the older woman sing soothed something deep inside her, reassured her, whenever she doubted, of her place in the forest and the preosthad.

They did not always travel alone. The preosthad were many, and groups of mentors and acolytes roamed the wolfswood from the barrows to the wall, following the patterns of the gods and knowing the forest in all its ways.

They stopped in villages and holdfasts, bringing elk or rabbit or boar, whatever game would, like the perch Jocelyn had pulled out of the pool, feed the people of the North without harming the Wolfswood. They would teach as well, declaiming the songs of the North and leading festivals each in their cycle through the warm summer nights. In exchange, the villagers gave what they had. Repairs to furs or hides, or sharpening tools or blades. Shelter while they stayed in the village. One cropper took Jocelyn's makeshift spear and gave her a well-formed one with a steel tip in exchange. Sometimes a man or woman of the village would take Osha to bed while they stayed, as a blessing from the gods on an upcoming marriage or a plea for children from one who had been unable to conceive.

So there were many, many things to do, but in the spaces between them all, Jocelyn learned to skinchange.

Osha insisted before each lesson that they first pray and offer sacrifice at a weirwood tree. It did not need to be a large sacrifice, Osha said: a sweetcake Jocelyn had been saving since the last holdfast or a wooden figure she spent time carving would do. Even a small sacrifice, though, took time or food or something useful, and as they took their toll Jocelyn voiced her doubt that they were really necessary.

"They may not be," Osha admitted, "but the elders of the preosthad do not want to take any chances. Nobody knows why the gods turned their backs on us, or why they are now showing their gifts again. And no god was ever offended by too much sacrifice."

They started with ravens, which Osha said were the most common animal to skinchange into, and the ancient poems spoke of skinchangers who never wore any other skins, just ravens and crows.

"And they are not to be underestimated," she had told Jocelyn. "A raven cannot kill a man, that's true, but it has sharp eyes and strong wings. Ravenwargs used to hold the north together."

She didn't need to say more, for Jocelyn was familiar with the stories. In ages past, the preosthad had gained unity and knowledge from ravens that flew between distant forests, passing messages between tribes. Now they depended on the slow turn of herds and hunt, or if the need was desperate, the writings of a maester. It was a dependence that rankled. But if the old powers were truly coming back…

Then Jocelyn thought of something. "And an army with ravens would know the entire disposition of their enemy's forces, without risking any scouts!" She'd heard enough of Robb's lessons to know how much the outcome of battles depended on who had the most accurate information.

Osha only sighed. "Yes, I'm sure it would be useful for battle. But do not ever forget that the gods give their gifts for their own designs, not ours."

Jocelyn privately thought that if the gods wanted her to follow their designs, they could be a little clearer as to what those were. But she knew better than to say that out loud.

So Jocelyn practiced on ravens. First from a trance: Jocelyn would sink into herself, knowing the forest around her, after taking a healthy amount of seed paste to help her open her mind. Then Osha would bring a raven close to her, close enough for Jocelyn to reach out and touch it. Osha would guide her mind, a sort of bridge, until Jocelyn could feel herself in the raven.

Jocelyn did not slip into the raven the first time she tried, nor for many days after.

It took two moons before Jocelyn noticed a change. Her wanderings with Osha had taken them north, beyond the Last River. The nights were cooler in this part of the country, though Osha insisted they keep their summer furs.

"Warm your blood too much," she had warned, "and it won't make the heat you need come winter."

She still could not slip into the raven's skin when she was trying to, but for a sennight she found herself waking up, chilled, from strange dreams in which she moved through the tops of trees that were painted in strange colors, while birds called to her with words she could not quite make out.

It was only after she described one such dream to Osha, who quizzed her on her dreams regularly, that she realized what was happening.

"It was as if I were… I were… oh gods," Jocelyn said. "I was the raven. I was sharing the raven's skin. I was doing it!"

Osha simply smiled. "Dreamchanging is often the first step," she said. "It is a sign that the gift is ready, if you are ready to take it."

The gift may have been ready, but another moon passed in the woods north of Last Hearth before Jocelyn finally slipped into a raven on purpose. She was so shocked by the sudden change in sensation that she promptly fell out of the tree the raven had been perched in. The impact of a branch below, though much less forceful than Jocelyn's human instincts would have expected, was enough to force her back into her own body.

"I did it!" she shouted to Osha, even as she clutched at her temples at the sharp headache that gripped her. "I — ow — did it!"

"Indeed," agreed Osha. "And now we can begin your training."

"Begin?"

"Opening your mind is the first step. But you will find that, in the beginning, you will be completely in the bird, and completely absent from your own body. And that limits you, because you will never be as graceful a flier as a raven."

Jocelyn learned the truth of that the next time she slipped into the raven's skin. With the sensations less of a shock, she held on longer. But when she tried to fly a short distance, she realized that watching birds was poor practice for being one. She flapped her wings awkwardly as she half glided, half fell to the ground.

"I'll fly better after I've practiced," she told Osha.

"You might," Osha agreed. "And yet no amount of practice will ever make you as adept as the creature that lives and breathes on the wing from the time it hatches, heir to a hundred hundred generations of flight. In any case, there is a better way. A way to use the animal's instincts instead of overruling them."

"How?" asked Jocelyn.

"Subtlety is where the mastery of skinchanging lies. If a master skinchanger needs a raven to be in that tree instead of this one, she does not inhabit the bird and fly from one place to another. With the gentlest whisper, she makes the raven believe it wants to fly to that tree, and so it does. The skinchanger takes the raven's eyes — just the eyes — for an instant, and knows what is in the valley beyond, all without ever missing a step as she walks the forest."

"That's— that's— is that possible?"

Osha smiled. "You will learn." She reached out to grasp Jocelyn's shoulder. "But you will learn best if you learn together. I am taking on a new acolyte. She is about your age, and I believe you two have much in common.

"We turn south, towards the Weeping Water."

They crossed the Last River and traveled for another fortnight through the forested hills. The cold spell that had gripped the lands had broken, and it had instead become unusually hot, even for summer. Several afternoons it rained so hard that even Osha agreed it was better to stop and wait it out. Every few days, Osha would toss bones and read them, and adjust their course.

As they travelled, Jocelyn practiced, but the subtle touch that Osha spoke of proved hard to grasp.

The day they were to meet the new acolyte, Osha found Jocelyn face first in a pile of soft, wet leaves.

"We will meet up with the other acolyte today."

"That's good," said Jocelyn, voice muffled by the mulch around her head.

"Were you trying to wear the raven's skin while you walked?"

"… yes," came the muffled response.

Osha nodded. "It is not a bad idea, I suppose, to attempt to force yourself to stay in your own body even as you share the raven's. A shame it did not seem to work. In any case, come. I am sure you don't want to greet your fellow acolyte from the dirt."

They met the small group of weirwitches the next day. It was raining again, the drops making a steady dull drumbeat on the leaves and mulch.

The weirwitch who spoke with them was old; as old as any person Jocelyn had seen in the deep forest.

"I don't stand on ceremony, you know that Oshaya. So here's the acolyte. Best of luck with her."

Oshaya? Jocelyn wondered. She had never heard anyone speak so familiarly to her mentor before.

Beneath her amusement, though, Jocelyn couldn't help but notice that the older weirwitch seemed to be glad to be rid of her acolyte. She'd never heard a weirwitch talk about an acolyte that way, and she wondered if there was something wrong with the girl or the old woman just had an acid tongue. Probably the latter, Jocelyn thought. Old Nan was like that back at Winterfell, always talking about the children as if they were troublesome hassles, even as she willingly chose to spend all her time looking after them with story and song.

Then the acolyte came closer, and Jocelyn could finally make her out through rain and mist.

For all that Osha said they were of an age, Jocelyn thought the other girl might be a name day older than her. She had a similar coloring to Jocelyn, dark hair and light skin, but her eyes were pale, like chips of ice. She was smiling, a confident smile as if she knew a secret that nobody else there was party to, but would one day be the key to everything.

She walked up to them without hesitation, and addressed Jocelyn directly.

"You're Jocelyn?"

Jocelyn cautiously nodded.

The other girl smiled again. "I thought so. I'm Ramsay Snow. You and me, Jos, we're going to be good friends."

Osha was right about one thing, Jocelyn reflected two moons later. Having Ramsay join them had certainly sped up her learning.

The older girl pushed . She didn't want to learn how to wear a crow's skin, she wanted to learn how to fight with a crow, how to use one in combat to attack an opponent.

"Can a crow's beak punch through boiled leather? I don't think it would make it through mail. Do you have any boiled leather so we can test it?"

"How far can a raven fly while I share its skin? If I sat here and you kept me safe and fed, could I fly this one to King's Landing and tell you what the King is saying right now?"

"Can you skinchange into a tree?"

That last question stumped Osha. "That," she declared, "is an uncharacteristically placid request from you, Ramsay."

"Well, I was thinking, if you could become a tree and then fall on someone, nobody would ever suspect foul play."

Osha merely closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

Most of the time, Jocelyn thought Ramsay was making sport. But sometimes, the look in the older girl's eye made her question.

"How did you know my name, when we first met?" Jocelyn asked Ramsay on night as they lay in their furs.

"Oh, I spied on you the night before."

"What?" Jocelyn sat up.

"We can share skin with ravens, Jos, we're basically the best spies in all the north. Are you telling me you've never thought of using it to spy on people?"

"No!" protested Jocelyn.

"Your loss," said Ramsay amicably. "That's how I knew about you. The old lady said you were less than a day away, so I laid in my furs and 'skinned a crow perched above your camp. Crows can understand speech enough for me to make out what you were saying."

"That's… that's… " Jocelyn didn't exactly know what to think. It wasn't as if Ramsay had heard anything terribly private, and she was about to join them anyway at that point, but it still somehow felt invasive.

Jocelyn also quickly learned what Osha had meant when she said the two of them had much in common. Ramsay herself was a bastard of a great Lord, Roose Bolton. The Bolton's were perhaps the second greatest name in the North, after the Starks.

And yet, while Jocelyn would happily regale her companions with stories of Robb and Arya and even Sansa, Ramsay never had anything to say about the Dreadfort. The one time that Jocelyn asked her directly what Lord Bolton was like, Ramsay's face went completely still. "He's cold," was all Ramsay was willing to say.

Ramsay was like a stream around a dam, pushing and probing until she found a way through.

"I think you were on to something, walking and skinchanging at the same time," she remarked one day.

"It didn't work, though," Jocelyn reminded her.

"It didn't work then," said Ramsay, "but maybe you just hadn't given yourself enough motivation."

Ramsay grinned at Jocelyn, a wild look that Jocelyn was learning to be wary of. "What do you think would be enough motivation?"

This was how, later that afternoon, Jocelyn found herself standing on a large tree branch, ten feet above the forest floor.

"Now," said Ramsay, "balance right there, and reach out to the raven without leaving yourself completely."

"And you'll catch me if I start to fall?" asked Jocelyn.

"Absolutely. I promise I will keep you from falling."

Jocelyn frowned. Ramsay looked far too gleeful. Still, she didn't think the other girl would straight out lie to her.

Jocelyn stretched her thought out, into the raven's skin. She tried to keep hold of her own body at the same time, but she could feel herself sliding, one way and then the other. Into the raven, into herself. It seemed impossible to keep the balance. Just one little tip and she fell into the raven, her vision shifting to see the forest all around her.

Not again , she thought dimly. As a raven it was hard to feel too emotional about something as abstract as success in skinchanging, and she—

—she was yanked back into her body even as she felt like a giant fist slammed into her, forcing the air from her lungs. She lay there, trying to breathe, trying to get a bearing on her surroundings. She was on her back, looking up. She saw Ramsay's face looking down at her from where the other girl clung to a branch ten feet above.

Finally the disorientation resolved itself and Jocelyn put together what had happened.

"You were supposed to catch me if I started to fall," Jocelyn grumbled.

"But I didn't!"

"What—" Jocelyn was caught off guard by Ramsay's easy admission. "You gave your word."

"I know! And now the next time we do this, I'll promise you I won't let you fall, but there will be a tiny part of your mind that knows that I might let you fall anyway, and so it'll work so much better."

Jocelyn lay on the ground, bruises up and down her side pulsing as they made their complaints. She wondered if she'd broken anything.

"You're insane," she spat up at Ramsay.

"I know, right?" the other girl replied, as she jumped down to help Jocelyn up.

It took a week before Ramsay convinced Jocelyn to try again.

"Don't worry," said Ramsay, "I promise I won't let you fall. For real this time."

Liar, thought Jocelyn. But she tried it anyways.

A moment later, she watched herself from a raven's eyes, staying perfectly balanced on a tree branch.

"I knew you could do it!" exclaimed Ramsay, once Jocelyn had returned fully to herself. "Now you have to do for me. Go on, promise me you won't let me fall."

"Ramsay, I'm not going to let you fall," said Jocelyn, with some exasperation.

"But that's no good, you actually mean it," replied Ramsay.

"Of course I mean it! Oh, wait," said Jocelyn, realizing what Ramsay asking for. "I mean, I solemnly promise, under no circumstances will I let you fall, oh friend of mine."

"You're terrible at this!" laughed Ramsay. "Still, you were brilliant at skinchanging so I think you deserve a reward."

Ramsay grabbed Jocelyn's face and kissed her, hard. Then she jumped off the branch, ten feet to the ground, and skipped back towards their camp, laughing.

"Hey," she called over her shoulder. "Do you think we could warg into a bear?"

Author Note: Enter Ramsay Snow! Who will be a bit different this time around.

And a note on the timeline: Jon Arryn is not going to die until Jocelyn and Robb are 18-ish. Because, honestly, there's a lot more scope for story (that I'm comfortable with) if those two are inexperienced but reaching adulthood than if they're 14.