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Chapter 7: The Girl in the Dream
288 AC, Winterfell, the godswood.
Thick snow blanketed the black earth, and the pale weirwood stood silent amid the wind and snow.
Blood-red leaves stirred gently in the cold wind, snow sliding steadily from the branches, and in the wood there was no sound but the howling wind.
Jon sat on a grey stone beneath the heart tree, quietly studying the ancient face carved into its trunk.
Crimson sap seeped slowly from the hollowed eyes, drying into dark red streaks against the pale, rough bark.
He liked coming here alone.
In the godswood, no one looked at him twice for who he was, and no one troubled to remind him what he ought to do.
Apart from his father, Uncle Benjen, and Robb, there weren’t many in Winterfell who cared to be close to him.
Catelyn especially.
Every time she looked at him, she made no effort to hide the coldness and distance in her eyes.
Jon knew well enough why, and so he held no grudge against her for it.
Any woman, finding her husband had come home with a child born of another woman, would likely find it hard to accept.
So he did his best to keep out of Catelyn’s way.
It was better for them both.
And besides, Jon preferred the quiet here to being inside the castle.
“Jon!”
An urgent shout broke the godswood’s stillness.
Jon turned to see Robb, wrapped in a heavy wolfskin cloak, running toward him quickly.
His small face was flushed red with cold, and in his hands he clutched two finely carved wooden swords.
“I knew you’d be here!”
Robb ran up to him, breath steaming white, grinning.
“The moment Maester Luwin let us out, you’d already vanished!”
Without waiting for a reply, he shoved one of the wooden swords into Jon’s hand, his eyes bright with anticipation.
“Come on, one more round! I spent half the night thinking on it, and this time I’m sure I can break that turning guard of yours!”
Jon took hold of the somewhat heavy wooden sword, an eyebrow raised.
“Are you sure? You said the same thing yesterday, and your sword got knocked out of your hand on the third stroke.”
“That was because my boot slipped yesterday!”
Robb, a little embarrassed, flushed red down his neck and waved his wooden sword.
“This time will be different. Here I come!”
Jon sidestepped him, and with the motion, flicked his wooden sword upward.
Crack!
The sword flew straight out of Robb’s hand.
“Ah, I wasn’t ready! Again!”
Robb snatched up his sword and charged in once more.
The crisp clatter of wooden blades soon echoed through the quiet wood.
Jon’s footwork stayed steady and sure, his movements far quicker than other boys his age, and again and again he turned aside Robb’s young but forceful strikes.
Their laughter and the clash of wooden swords shook snow loose from the branches overhead, chasing away the grim hush of the winter morning.
The next morning.
Jon jerked awake from sleep, his eyes snapping open, his chest heaving, a fine sheen of cold sweat beading at his temples.
Another dream.
Over the past year, these strange, vivid dreams had kept changing.
At first they had been fragments of memory from a past life: a forest of steel towers rising into the clouds, cars racing along paved roads, and thin black slabs glowing faintly in people’s hands.
But as time passed, the dreams grew ever more scattered and fragmented.
He dreamed of an endless wall of ice, tall and unbroken, standing in the wind and snow.
He dreamed of a wasteland beyond the Wall, buried in snow, where countless cold, pale-blue flames flickered slowly to life in the darkness of an endless night.
Thousands upon thousands of dead things, clad in ragged leather and hide, limbs missing or rotted through, gathered into a vast tide, walking across the frozen ground.
Behind that tide of the dead stood a few cold, silent figures, mounted on pale dead horses, their eyes a deep blue like ice crystals, the wind and snow around them seeming to grow colder still.
But most often of all, it was the white dragon, the one that stirred in him that inexplicable sense of closeness.
Some of the dreams he still could not explain, even now.
He had searched through many books, and had sounded out Maester Luwin as best he could without giving himself away, but had found no answer.
But in these past few months, the dreams had begun to change once more.
A girl had appeared in them.
The first time he’d seen her was the year before: at the far end of a howling, endless snowstorm, a small, indistinct shape had stood.
In the months since, whenever he fell into a deep enough sleep, he would find that girl in that world of wind and snow.
With every meeting, the distance between them had drawn a little closer.
He did not know who this girl was, or why she kept appearing in his dreams.
Counting this time, it was the fifth.
The wind and snow in the dream slowly cleared, and at last Jon saw her clearly. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
She was a small girl, close to him in age.
Her long, silver-gold hair whipped in the wild wind, her pale face fine-featured, almost translucent, and a pair of violet eyes gazed quietly at him.
In the instant before the dream broke apart, the girl always lifted her small arm slightly, waving gently to him across the emptiness between them, like a silent greeting, and a silent farewell, both at once.
Jon threw back the heavy wolf-fur blankets, rose from bed, pulled on his fur coat, and walked slowly to the narrow window.
He pushed open half the wooden shutter, letting the bitter, biting Northern wind strike full against his face.
He raised a hand and pressed it to his chest.
His heart was still beating strong and steady.
Looking out at the snow beyond the window, the girl’s image rose in his mind once more.
***
The wind and snow remained pale and colorless, sky and earth alike, and against that lifeless white field, only the pale yellow hem of Daenerys’s little dress stood out at all.
On the other side, the black-haired, grey-eyed boy stood in silence.
Wandering from place to place all her life, she had never had a friend her own age.
Viserys would not let her speak to strangers, nor let her out of his sight.
She was deeply curious about this boy who kept appearing in her dreams, and wanted to ask who he was, and why he was here in her dreams at all.
Full of questions, Daenerys took two steps forward without thinking.
On the other side, the boy came forward too, through the wind and snow, but between them there remained some invisible barrier, and no matter what, neither could come one step closer.
She opened her mouth, trying to ask for his name.
But the words were shredded by the howling wind the instant they left her lips, not even a ripple of sound surviving.
The boy frowned slightly.
He clearly could not make his own voice carry across either.
Boom-
Suddenly, from the far end of the snowfield came a deep, rumbling sound, like distant thunder.
Both of them turned their heads at once.
As far as the eye could see, a black pit in the earth trembled slowly.
The next moment, a pair of enormous, violet, slitted eyes slowly opened within the darkness.
The instant those eyes lit, the wind and snow suddenly weakened, and the howling dimmed along with it.
Daenerys’s heart began to pound.
The massive shape in the darkness shifted forward, and heavy snow crashed down from either side of the pit’s mouth.
But every time its outline was about to break free of the shadows, the dream would begin to shatter, the sky cracking apart in web-like fractures, like breaking glass.
Daenerys reached out her small hand on instinct, and across from her, the boy lifted his own hand toward the emptiness between them.
In the instant before their fingertips could touch, the world sank back into darkness.