It was after dinner, and Jon and Daenerys were both feeling rather bored. They were at the annual Targaryen family reunion, which was always hosted in the giant and ancient family manor in which Daenerys had grown up. Daenerys, therefore, had endured many family reunions in the house, and Jon had never been to a Targaryen reunion before, but his lack of experience did not stop him from finding it incredibly dull. He'd only come this year because his father (who was not actually his father, but who had raised him) had received an invitation and got it into his head that Jon would do well to meet his (actual) father's side of the family. Any cautious optimism Jon had felt about the whole affair was now long gone: his father had an important meeting tonight, and therefore could not stay, and his half-siblings, Rhaella and Aegon, who he sometimes got along with and were close to his age, had not arrived.
He was, at the moment, trying to find a nice corner to sulk in, so he made his way to the entry-hall: the only room he could find in the often maze-like house that didn't seem to be full of adults talking about unimportant grown-up things. The entry-hall was incredibly tall, imposing, and made of dark stone and wood. Every few feet, various artefacts were set upon the walls: swords, paintings, and other things that made you feel like you were walking into a museum, or great medieval castle. There was even a suit of black armour set at the end of it. Jon had thought he would spend the rest of the reunion admiring the swords and things, and imagining he was a great knight journeying through the castle of an evil sorcerer, and he'd just begun to inspect a black shield-like object upon one wall when a smallish voice said: "What are you doing here?"
The voice came from a young girl, who looked to be younger than Jon by only a year or two (Jon was almost twelve) standing by a glass cabinet full of fancy-looking knick-knacks. Outside of looking very small amongst the grandiosity of the entry-hall, she looked like she belonged in the house, both in appearance―she had the same white-blonde hair and jewel-toned eyes as most Targaryens―and in manner.
Jon, whose black hair, dark eyes, and tan-coloured skin came from his mother, and was tired of people looking at him like he didn't belong here, said, "I was invited ," rather peevishly, and then, even though it felt wrong, "my father is Rhaegar Targaryen."
The girl, who was, of course, Daenerys, came up to inspect him closer. Eyeing him suspiciously, she said, " You're Jon? I'm Daenerys, and my brother is Rhaegar. That would make you my nephew."
Jon immediately stopped feeling awkward. "That's impossible," he said. "You're younger than me!"
In truth, Daenerys (who was often called Dany, because the name Daenerys felt far too grandiose and important for a girl of her age) was only two years younger than him, but when you are almost twelve and someone else is ten, the distance of two years feels very important.
Dany, who was also feeling very out-of-place, even if she didn't look it, found herself glad to have someone else her age to talk to, even if he seemed strange and surly. She said, "That doesn't matter. Your father is my brother, and so I'm your aunt, and you're my nephew."
Jon didn't like the idea that this little girl might have any sort of authority over him, even if he was also secretly enjoying the company. He said, "If you're my aunt, then why are you only nine?"
"I'm actually ten," said Dany, "and if you're so much older than me, then why are you so stupid?" It was a complete non-sequitur, but to the both of them it was an insult of the highest calibre.
Jon didn't have anything to say to that, so he pulled the hood of his black sweatshirt over his head and crossed his arms sullenly. He then turned back to look at the suit of armour. It was very spiky, and quite ominous-looking.
"Do you like the armour?" Dany asked.
"It's alright," answered Jon, who didn't want to let her know how truly impressive he found it.
"Well," said Dany, who had hoped he would find it impressive, since she had often seen her parents impressing guests with their large collection of Artefacts, and hoped to befriend Jon by doing the same, "it's not the coolest thing in the house, not by far."
" Really ?" goaded Jon, who couldn't think of many things as impressive as an entire suit of armour.
Dany struggled for a moment to think of something. She came up with this: "There's the skull of a real dragon in one of the hidden rooms."
"That's impossible," said Jon, "dragons aren't real," though secretly, he thought that if any place had a real dragon skull somewhere inside it, it would be this house.
"They're not real any more ," said Dany, "but I'm not lying. There are real dead ones in this house."
"Prove it," said Jon.
"I will," said Dany, and they were off.
Finding the room with the dragon skull was harder than it looked. There were two reasons for this. First, was that even if you had lived in the Targaryen family manor for ten entire years, like Daenerys had, you would still find it very hard to find any room you didn't go to frequently. The house was very large, and because it had first been built very long ago, and then added to with every generation of Targaryens that lived into it, it was full of nonsensical hallways, hidden rooms, and doors that went to nowhere, not even counting the intentional secret passages.
The second reason was that Dany had only ever seen what she thought of as the Dragon Room once. Her father had been in one of his moods, which meant that her brother, Viserys, was also in a mood, and her mother was hiding. Usually when this happened, she would go out riding, but it was too cold and stormy to even consider it. So, she had been wandering about the house, trying to avoid the general moodiness of her family, when she happened upon a passageway, which led to another passageway, and so-on and so-forth until she was completely lost and in front of her was a very ornate and very imposing door. Behind the door was the Dragon Room, which had been small, and made entirely of a sort of shiny black stone. There were no lights in the room outside the light that seemed to radiate from the bones lining the walls, and at the centre was a skull, so massive and horned and absolutely terrifying that no one who saw it would mistake it for anything other than the skull of a dragon. Ever since, Dany had wanted to find the strange little room again, because even though it scared her very much, it made her far more curious. However, she had never been able to.
At this point, the children had been wandering for about twenty minutes, and they had got nowhere close to a dragon skull. Jon, who thought that Daenerys was probably rather lost, said, "We've been walking for ages, and I haven't seen even one dragon."
Daenerys, who was only half-lost, and thought that you probably needed to be fully-lost to find things like the Dragon Room that the manor wanted to keep secret, said, "It hasn't even been half an hour! Anyway, the house won't just show these things to anyone, you've got to be patient."
"I haven't got to be anything," said Jon. "It's a house, it can't show you things."
"Maybe your house can't," said Dany, feeling a bit put-out. Jon was about to make another sceptical remark, but he then got the very distinct sense that if any house could show you things, this one could.
After about twenty more minutes, during which Jon followed Daenerys through multiple hidden doorways, and a few passages that looked like no one had walked in them for years, he felt that she was absolutely and truly lost.
"You're lost !" he told her, accusingly.
"I was lost the first time I found it," said Dany, which made no sense to Jon, who said just that.
"You've never been here before; you don't understand," Dany replied.
"I'll say!" exclaimed Jon. "Telling me there's dragons in here for no reason, I definitely don't understand, and then getting lost in your own house! Now you just look stupid."
Dany, who had to deal with people calling her rude things in her own house quite often, became rather angry. "This house is older than you could even imagine! It's got all sorts of secret things in it that even father doesn't know about!"
Jon said, "Well, that's not surprising, your father's crazy! He doesn't know anything!"
He was getting a bit worried about being lost, and being worried made him irritable.
Dany thought that Jon wasn't wrong about her father, but only she was allowed to think that about him. "I think you forget that my father is your grandfather, so you might as well be more respectful!"
"My grandfather is Brandon Stark," said Jon, " and all of your family are fools!"
Dany was just about at her wits' end. She threw her arms up, and said, "Alright, if you're so smart, show me the way back!"
"I will!" declared Jon, and began walking in a direction he thought they had come from, but was not really.
Jon led them into one passageway, and then another, and he almost thought he was getting somewhere when they found themselves in a very long hallway that kept twisting and turning, but never revealed any doors. After a few turns, Jon felt quite sorry, and though he didn't say it, Dany understood that they were now both lost together.
The passageway had many cross-sections and twists and turns, not unlike a maze, and the children both thought (quite logically) that if they only took left turns they might eventually end up where they started and manage to find their way back. This, of course, would have worked in an ordinary house, but as it should now be very clear, they were in no ordinary house.
As they walked on, it began to seem like every turn revealed a hallway that was older than the last. They had begun in hallways with walls of panelled wood and carpeted floors lit by electric lamps, but as they went on, the carpeted floors became wood, and the wood became stone, and the electric lamps became gas lamps, until they found the hall in front of them stretching far and straight ahead with walls and floors of old dark stone and actual honest torches lining the walls.
"Maybe we should go back," said Jon, even though he wasn't sure at all how to get back, or where 'back' was. The hall was very long, and very dark, and looking at it gave him a strange feeling, as if getting to the end of it would result in something great and terrible, though he didn't know what.
Dany, who was just as worried, but still twice as stubborn, said, "Are you too scared to go on?"
"Absolutely not," Jon lied. "I was just worried about you, since you're a little girl."
"A little girl ?" Dany exclaimed with incredulity. "I've lived in this house my entire life; if anyone should be worried, it should be me, about you!"
"Alright then, go on," said Jon.
"I will," said Dany, but she waited a second, and they continued forwards at the same time.
As they walked down the hallway, the strange feeling got stronger and stronger. Though they had not been talking much before, both children became even quieter. The air around them felt a way which could only be described as important , as if each echo of their steps on the cobbled floor held an incredible weight, and the flickering torch-light was expectant of something grand.
They walked for a long way that way, silent and almost perfectly in step with each other. If you asked them later, they'd say that the whole thing felt like no time at all, but also a lifetime. That's what it feels like, when you're walking a very long way but nothing seems to change. Ages and ages could've passed between those endless torches and worn-down stone bricks, and you wouldn't have noticed at all. As Jon and Dany walked on, however, they felt, very distinctly, that a change had taken place, that they were not where they had been before.
At the end of the hallway was a door.
It was not a very notable door, except that it looked so old, just as old as everything else in the passage did, made of large, heavy-looking planks of wood held together by thick bars of iron. It had no handle; it must've been the sort of door that you pushed open. Both children stopped at the door, not yet opening it. They didn't know how, but somehow they both understood that opening the door would lead to something great, and they didn't know if that thing would be wonderful or terrible, only that once they got there they would never be quite the same. They were also, as all children are, wild with curiosity.
"What are you waiting for?" asked Daenerys.
"It's your house," said Jon, "you should open it."
Dany wasn't entirely sure it was her house any more.
"What, are you scared to open it?" she said, despite being very scared to open the door herself.
"No," lied Jon. "Are you?"
"Not at all," lied Dany, and then, "Why don't we do it together?"
That seemed like a fair idea to both of them, so they put their hands upon the iron bar holding the door together at the same time, and pushed. It took quite a lot of pushing, because it was a very heavy door, even heavier than it looked (which was already pretty heavy). It felt like by pushing the door open they were also pushing aside something else heavy, not in weight, but in importance―a great shoving of heavy air and the sort of decisive substance you feel in the atmosphere just before a thunderstorm, or when you are about to make a very large decision.
Once the door was fully open, and they stepped through it, they were hit with the blinding sort of light that you only feel when you've spent a very long time in a very dark place, and then find yourself in a place that is quite bright. It took a few moments and a lot of blinking for them to be able to see anything, but once they could, they realized they were standing in a snow-covered wood.