SANSA III

"The Kingsroad going up north again was a long, ever so slowly winding way, and it was made even longer and slower by the constant wailing and crying of Rickon. He was homesick, and angry and sad most all of the time. Septa Mordane and Mother had to hold him, or otherwise let him go to Ser Erryk for some time, but even that seemed to have little effect on him. At Castle Darry he had been crying his eyes out, embarassing them in front of the castellan, and after that it had only gotten worse.

Queen Catelyn had told them all of how important it was that they held their spirits raised for as long as they could until they reached Winterfell, which would be in a little over a fortnight. Still, her Mother had not been pleased herself to have to meet and be courteous with old Walder Frey at the Twins for two full days, as Sansa understood it, and neither was she glad after that, when they finally had to enter into the vast land of the Reeds.

After they had reached the Twins, and taken their leave of the huge and motley blue court of the Freys, there was not particularly much joy left to be had on their tour, as the roads became worse, and also the mood of Mother and herself, although she did her best to lift her spirits, reading everything she could, playing her harp, playing games with Jeyne and the others.

The Neck was a grey, foggy eternity which seemed to stretch on and on forever, backward and forward in the greyish white mists, and when they were beginning to approach the middle of it, Sansa had felt that it seemed as if it had no end. They were at least five or six days in, six eternal days behind them on the road echoing back into the hollowness of the swamps behind, and another six or seven to go, looking forward, and seeing only more and more mist, dreary grey bogs and enormous willow trees reaching down with their long swaying pile branches like green bath drapes.

The sounds were strange here, and ever sound that the wheelhouse or the horses made echoed into the mists, and was distorted and came back to them, somehow deformed, ringing from a strange hollowness which was difficult to describe. Sansa definitely did not feel at ease here, she thought.

The first four days she had been playing on her harp with Lady Pellegrara, just as she had planned already back when they had left King's Landing. The harmonious sound of the music was a very welcome one in the ghastly/[ ], slowly maddening silence of the swamps and bogs.

They had their new travelling companions to raise their interests slightly, however. Tyrion Lannister and Joffrey Lannister, formerly Hill, had come all the way from Casterly Rock and joined them along the Kingsroad, just north by the Trident, before they had continued on north after Harrenhal.

And how fascinating that was. Indeed, truly Sansa thought that it was. Lady Cersei's younger brother, Tyrion Lannister, the imp. He was a dwarf, and although Sansa had known and heard about him many times before, she could still not have imagined that he would be quite so small and strange-looking as he was. She was sure and certain that he could not have been further than three feet, but with a large head the size of a melon, and one green and one black eye, as Arya had told her when she had gotten a better look. Still, she was a proper princess, well versed in court etiquette, and so therefore had done her very best to try and not stare nor show her initial fear and disgust of him. Besides, the other companion, a relatively unknown Lannister boy named Joffrey, was far handsome enough to make up for it. He was a bastard of Lord Tywin's brother Gerion, and they were both to be travelling to Winterfell to meet with Lady Cersei and then to take up residence for a short time at court in King's Landing while Lord Tywin was to be made the new Hand after Lord Jon.

Sansa thought that Joffrey was all that a young lord should be in appearance, although he certainly was a bastard, and seemed to have some small manners of a bastard's ways. He was rough in his mannerisms, at least when compared to Robb and Quentyn, and had a certain pride which suited him but still left something of modesty or calm to desire. She supposed that she liked him well enough, though. He always looked on her with a warm smile, and his emerald green eyes and golden shining hair was so beautiful that Sansa almost felt a slight tingle inside her when she looked at him.

The young Lord Joffrey Lannister did not particularly like the Neck either, though, and he was swearing and cursing half of the time she saw him, swatting at mosquitoes and saying foul things about the bogmen and their "useless land" when he did not know that she was looking or hearing. She readily agreed that the land was a wasteland, and even worse than that, but she also knew that a lord or king should never speak lowly about his own dominions, nor did he try and show his dissatisfaction at things as simply as mosquito bites, and so she had seen that as a slight weakness in his bearing. Lord Tyrion and Lord Joffrey spent most of their time in their own column, however, along with their own retinue of guards and bannermen, and so she did not see them much.

Instead she sat reading, playing her harp, again and again, and playing the same game with Jeyne and Wynafryda and Marla and all the rest... Haelda was surprisingly good at what-do-I-have-in-my-sack and the other clapping games. Arya became bored of them quickly.

On already their second day passing through the Neck, Sansa had asked her Father if they would be passing by the keep of the Reeds on their way, but he did not seem to think so. Father's oldest friend was called Howland Reed, the lord of House Reed, but he had not seen him in many years. The castle was called Greywater Watch and it was said to be one that moved everywhere it went. She did not understand how a castle could move, but neither had her Father ever lied to her as far as she knew, and whether or not there was something strange or even magical about the castle, she did not doubt in the slightest that the poor bogmen of House Reed would not have enough of a castle to keep all close to four hundred of their company accommodated and fed. Instead they ate from the food they had brought with them, making their winding way slowly forward, the wheels creaking and rolling, as the frogs croaked from the waters on either side.

Sansa saw many frogs, toads and even watersnakes slingering along the road as fast as anyone could see, and the brewing sounds of lizard-lions far away into the distance, as she prayed that they would stay, and even once a great bee-eating wrauk fowel sitting on a tree log staring right at them from only a feet away. It could have reached forward and pecked her eyes out if it wanted to. Instead, it had only sat there, watching them with a stern, immoveable face, the yellow and black eyes looking even more human-like in intelligence than most men, as they passed slowly by it. Sansa almost wanted to excuse themselves in front of its presence for their passing through here. She could tell that the bird saw itself as as much a king over the swamp as her Father was the King over King's Landing down south.

She peeked her head back into the wheelhouse once again, lowering and drawing for the red velvet curtains. Her Mother and all the rest sat beside her, with Sansa having the seat second closest to the window on the back row, the one facing forward in the right direction along the road, between little Lady Haelda and her Mother, and further out Jeyne Poole. In front of her sat Arya, Septa Mordane and all the rest of them. Her Mother was sewing in silence, just as usual. Just as typical.

"Mother?"

"Yes, Sansa?"

"When will we be at Winterfell?"

She asked again, a tenth or eleventh or perhaps twelfth time, even though she knew the answer.

"At least for another four or five days, before we reach Moat Cailin, and then after that perhaps another four or five days after that until we reach far enough up, high into the heart of the North. There lies Winterfell, close to Long Lake and the great expanse of northerly forest that is called the Wolfswood."

Sansa shuddered at the thought. She was scared of wolves, though she had never seen one for real.

"Will it be cold as in winter there already now, for true?"

She had already sensed the strange swallor of the Neck, as had they all, and it was surely several degrees under what was usual at home in the capital at the Red Keep.

"Yes, Sansa. It is still summer, even up there, but all the same... It is a much colder summer than ours. They have summer snows up in the North. I suspect we will have to be wrapped in furs for the most part of the stay there."

"How dreadful", Sansa said. Then she sat silent, thinking.

"Don't you recall how cold you were last time we were here?" her Mother asked. "You were shivering so badly that we thought you were going to be sick. You almost got a fever."

"I did? I don't remember. I only remember that I sat in that room playing with Lady Myrcella's dolls."

"And why did you do that, inside on a sunny day? Because you were sick, my dear."

Sansa had to smile a little at that, as she guessed that her Mother was right, as she most often was.

"All right. I suppose I might have been a little sick."

...

And sick also soon became a good twoge and a dozen of the men in their retinue, for the air of the Neck was thick and poisonous with disease hanging in the mists. It only took a day before an entire section of the line behind them had taken ill.

The closest man to catch it was only perhaps six or seven rows from them, and Sansa was terrified of becoming ill herself, so they only came out of the wheelhouse once or twice a day to do their natural deeds after that.

She had not even seen Father, Robb and all the others at the front in almost two full days. Maester Frenken had a terrible trouble with running and tending to the sick men, who were sick with vomiting and sunken hollow faces, some of them too weak to stand.

"This is the curse of the bogmen", Catelyn said. "They do not want us to pass through their land, and so they do what they can to steer us quickly on our way. I doubt Howland Reed has control of all his people, be he still a good and loyal friend of your father or no."

"It hardly goes any quicker when we have to stop every few miles to take care of everyone", Sansa said. "Maester Frenken is beginning to look ill himself."

"Take ease, my dear. There are some who wish us harm, but I am sure that the Crone will watch over us, and shine her light forward on our path. Perhaps we can take a ship back after we leave Winterfell again. I had suggested as much to your father at first, but he said that he did not wish to brave the famed storms around the Bite. Though I would much rather have a storm right now than this twisted place and all its bad omens."

Maester Frenken did indeed look sick. Sometimes Sansa thought he looked almost as grey and green in his face as the men he was treating. He was running back and forth, fetching buckets and making poultices and mushing leaves in wooden buckets, and then giving them to some helper boys to clean the buckets, though they had to clean it with strongwine, or else use the dirty swamp water, which would most like make them even more sick. Most of them had lived on ale since the Twins. The Green Fork was not particularly clean in its waters, Sansa thought. And now they were past even that river's reach. Here there were only the stinking, suspiciously green still water of the bogs.

When even Lollys Stokeworth and her mother Lady Tanda had fallen ill, in the backer wheelhouse, Sansa became worried for true. Lollys stood hulking at the side of the pathway, her enormous figure turned forward, her massive broad arms turned up above the lacing of her dress and out to her sides and holding her long braids apart to grawl out a thick stream of green vomit into the ditch of the swamp. Her mother Lady Tanda stood beside her, a panicked and worried look on her old, gaunt and greying face. Sansa shuddered, and turned down the curtains again.

Mother sat knitting, only knitting, trying not to think on it, nor look back at the mess of it all that surrounded them in almost every direction except their front. At least Father and the men at the front had not fallen ill as of yet, Sansa thought. But that was best not to think too much about either, for else that might happen soon as well. And she could not let that happen, at least. The gods had to save Father and Robb, and Ser Erryk, and little Rickon too, even though he was so young and screaming.

Jeyne was sewing, Marla was reading, and Wynafryda was mending her lute, smoothening it over and over again with her oilcloth after it had fallen out of the packing and gotten run over and cracked slightly by one of the great wooden wheels the day before. They were all quiet, save for the sounds they heard from the outside, the clanking of metals and the gross hawling of Lollys still coming from behind. She sounded like a giant barrel being emptied.

"What if Lollys dies of the sickness?" Arya said after a while.

"I am sure that Lollys will be fine. It is mostly the scrawny, weak and undernourished who fall ill from sickness of the stomach, and Lollys is a buxom and sturdy girl. She has a lot to take from, even if the sickness would like to claim her."

"She is certainly weak though", Arya said. "She has always been. Weak and crying. And fat."

"Silence, Arya", Septa Mordane chastised.

"I'm just telling the truth", Arya insisted. "I don't want her to die for it."

"I am sure that Lady Lollys will be fine", her Mother said once again. "We will just need to be on our way as soon as possible, and then we can move this dreadful place behind."

"Tell her to hop into the wheelhouse, then", Arya said, rolling with her eyes. "She's been standing there hulking for an hour. It's only now that some's come out of her. Otherwise she's stopping up the entire line for nothing with her gawkishness. The sick men don't do that. Put her on a stretcher."

A big one, a huge stretcher made of oak, Sansa thought, secretly, somewhere deep down. For Lollys was practically the size of a young cow, and it was hard to imagine anything else sufficing to hold up her weight, even with two or four strong men carrying it. But she said nothing of the sort.

"I only pray that we do not suffer from it, or else I am sure you would do much the same", her Mother said to Arya, a deep tone of alware in her voice.

By the eveningfall, the men had taken to cutting down as many hard branches as they could fine, which was not easy in a place mostly made of tall, slippery alder trees, bushes, willow trees and reeds. Still, they had gathered what they could find and laid the truly sick twoge of men on simple branch stretchers. Then they carried on, riding throughout the night as Sansa laid back on her simple mattress bed on the floor, trying her best to get some sleep.

The owls were hooing loudly in the night, the sound of lizard-lions or snapper turtles were somewhere far away, growling, but still close enough for there to be thoughts of peril, and she heard the kreeing of strange birds, the lonesome pining song of fowls – hegrets, storks and what else – as she gradually steadied herself to sleep.

Once we reach Winterfell, I am never going back through the Neck ever again. If Father told me to marry the son of Lord Reed, and live out my life here, I would rather hop into the mouth of a dragon. At least there I would be warm, she thought.

She could not sleep in the wheelhouse. Truly, she could not. She would have a better time sleeping upright tomorrow, sitting on the benches all day long and snoozing to and fro, if the white and grey mists came back to the road again, covering them in dimness and decay. She scratched her mosquito bites, scratched them time and time again, turning and tossing on the floor, looking to her side at Jeyne, who slept beautifully like a doll on the floor, barely even snoring, with her long dark hair and beautiful eyelashes closed towards her smooth pale and slender cheekbones, and she became jealous of her friend. How could Jeyne sleep so smoothly, without a care in the world? And she did not snore either, though Arya had said that Sansa herself snored. She was most likely just lying, as usual, to fret her, but Sansa worried at times. She did not want to be a snoring lady. That was not befitting of a princess. But Jeyne never snored. She did not see any mosquito bites on Jeyne's arms either, when she looked, though she had said that she had many earlier during the day.

She suddenly turned up at the benches as she noticed that Arya was not sleeping either. She was sitting by the window to the right, by the entrance door, staring up intensely at the sky outside.

"What are you doing?" Sansa whispered, as silently as she could.

"It's a full moon out. Almost. At least I think so."

"How can you think that? Don't you see?"

"I only see it behind the clouds. There's a veil of clouds in the way. Look."

She did not whisper; only spoke silently. Noone else seemed to wake. All right, fine... I'll listen to stupid Arya. She was not getting any sleep out of the night so far anyway. She might as well see what she was talking about.

Sansa sat up slowly, steadying herself on her dainty and gaunt elbow. Why could I not have stronger elbows? She complained to herself and the gods in her mind. If I grow sick, I will die here, in this hellish swamp, she thought, next to Lollys and Lady Tanda in the ditch. Please Father, don't let me die here. Don't bury me here if I should die... Take me back to King's Landing, Winterfell... Bury me in the crypt like Aunt Lyanna... Anywhere but here... Or else ride to meet with Lord Howland and command him to take us in. What good is a bannerman if he cannot even house the king on his passing through the lands?

She shuddered again. It was cold, and a strange sensation, as ever here. Arya only stood completely silent, leaning on the windowsill in fascination, only staring out at the sky without a word.

"What are you staring at?" She asked again. "It can't possibly be anything better than what we've already seen previous nights."

"Look.", Arya said.

Sansa looked up, standing next to her sister. And then she saw that it indeed was.

The moon was glowing white and transluscent behind the misty veil of clouds, full or at least close enough to seem like it, dancing like a giant lazy firefly resting behind a silk dress, resting in the caressing confines, the cradle of the fabric of the clouds which swept around it like waves, swirling smoke or the soft skin of some wonderful spiral-shelled sea creature from one of her dreams... She could only look at it, and see precisely what her sister saw now, but it was still not possible to describe it in full.

"It's... It's..."

"Ghastly", Arya finished for her. "Spooky. Like a fanthom moon. Only as the ghost of the moon."

"...Beautiful", Sansa said finally.

And the two Stark sisters stood watching the sky high above, nestled behind the green leafwork of willows and aldens and aspens and all else, leaning on eachother's shoulders in the relative comfort of the wheelhouse with the entirety of the croaking, buzzing, howling Neck just outside the glass of the windows, five hundred miles from the safety of The Red Keep and still five hundred miles from Father and Uncle Benjen's cold, awaiting Winterfell, as they slowly gave up the thought of being any rested for the coming night at all."