The months had crawled like slow roaches, but Sansa Stark was finally home.
She had been granted leave for Winterfell sooner than she thought. She was there on the pretext of the crown, to appease Lyanna Mormont and Wyman Manderly’s now vocal disapproval of Jon Snow’s abandonment of Winterfell. But no feeble threats of war would stop Sansa from meeting her little brother first.
When matters with the northlands would be settled, Sansa would return to King’s Landing. Jon needed her now more than ever. He was increasingly withdrawn, rarely interested in any matters beyond the realm. Even of Bran, Jon did not speak much. “He’s well,” he muttered dully, when Sansa asked of him, his tone worrying her much more than his words.
Sansa was relieved to leave the capital. Littlefinger still haunted her in dreams and day. She worried he had made plans beyond the grave, that Jaime or Brienne would somehow turn on her, that she would be charged with treason. It was only after she was leagues away from the capital did the dreams stop, and worries fade.
She met a woman she did not know in the castle. “You must be Meera Reed,” she said, to which she nodded. “Where is Bran?” She had assumed he would greet her with Meera.
“In the godswood,” she said. Her voice was pacified, mannerisms slow, as if cold winds beyond the Wall had taken away a wild spirit. She turned to take her to the woods, and Sansa Stark suddenly felt wary, as if in the woods hid Littlefinger’s men waiting for revenge.
Sansa wondered if Bran would be taller than her, if the age would make him more Stark or Tully. “How is he?” she asked, as they went deeper into the woods. Meera seemed to struggle with a variety of words in her mind. “I don’t know,” she settled on, before she stopped abruptly in front of the weirwood tree.
When there was no one there, Sansa gave Meera a quizzical look. The woman mutely gestured to the tree, and after Sansa saw, she gave a cry of shock.
He was less a man than some ghastly statue of twisted wood. His hair had grown to his shoulders, turning as red as the leaves. The weirwood tree Sansa Stark once knew was mutilated, and it had taken her brother’s boyhood with it.
“What is this?” she asked, aghast. “What in seven hells happened to him?”
Meera struggled for the right words again. “It’s not a tale I can relate to you in an hour… or a day.”
Sansa looked closer, waiting for signs of life. Bran’s eyes were white, and moving ever so slightly. His lips murmured. She called out his name, but he didn’t seem to hear. “Is he… alive?” she asked Meera. “Can he hear me?”
“I don’t know.”
Sansa tried hard to listen to Bran’s whispering. She could not decipher a word. “What does he mutter?”
“It was clearer before, but in days lost its sense,” Meera said. As Sansa saw fresh sap trickle from where sad weirwood eyes saw, Meera Reed spoke. “He says, he is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”
*
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