Jon, is that you?

Lyanna felt warmth, she felt the heat, but pain in her head like she just took a stone on the head. A warm touched met her cheek. When she opened her eyes, she saw fire, and cold breeze. She saw Bran by the tree, Hodor sat by the fire and Meera was fed the fire.

Where is Jon? Lyanna wondered, because she didn't see him. She let out a stir as her head pained.

"Lyanna?" Bran said.

Jojen sat near her head, she slowly sat up as she confusedly looked around and hoped her half brother was around. "Where's Jon?" she questioned.

Everyone went silent, no one spoke for a moment, why was her head in pain? She remembered taking a hit on the back of head when she saw Jon.

"Bran," Lyanna looked at her brother, "Where's Jon?"

Bran did not responded for a moment, then he blurted, "If he knew we were there, he wouldn't let us go, he wouldn't let me go to find the three-eyed crow, you know that"

"But this is Jon!" Lyanna exclaimed.

"This is not about Jon," Jojen told her, she glared at him, "nor you. This is about Bran" Lyanna stood up, Jojen tried to took a hold of her arm, "Slow down, you might still be in pain" he told her.

"I am!" She exclaimed, she felt lightheaded for a second, she could feel her brain pounded, "I'm fine--" she suddenly realized something, she glanced down at Jojen who glanced up back at her, "--did you hit me?"

Jojen slowly looked away, turned to the fire, "I had to" he muttered.

Lyanna wanted to yell at him, but she couldn't, she gave a frustrated sigh as she turn away at the forest, sky had been turn dark blue, she hasn't been out all night, maybe only for an hour or less.

"But you can go to Jon," Bran said. Lyanna turned around to look at him, "he might be still there, you can just go straight towards south and you'll find the Keep"

Meera had a worried look on her face, even Jojen looked as though it was a bad idea.

"Jon is still there" Bran said, "but, I don't really want you to go because I need you. I'm not going back because this is my journey, and my choice. So I've made my choice. I'm going to find to the tree-eyed crow. You want to go to Jon, we won't stop you."

I need you, he said, Lyanna thought. Bran was still only a boy, a stubborn boy who wants to make his own choices. Wish mother was here to stop him. But Lyanna was not mother. "I'm not going to Jon without you" she told him, "I hope this crow of yours is real"

*

Are we there yet?

Lyanna never said the words aloud, but they were often on her lips as their ragged company trudged through groves of ancient oaks and towering grey-green sentinels, past gloomy soldier pines and bare brown chestnut trees. She couldn't stay mad at them, but who was she mad at? Doesn't matter now, the cold was too much. How much farther? she would think, as the great elk splashed across a half-frozen stream. How much longer? It's so cold. Where is the three-eyed crow?

The snow was falling again, wet and heavy. Hodor walked with one eye frozen shut, his thick brown beard a tangle of hoarfrost, icicles drooping from the ends of his bushy mustache. One gloved hand still clutched the rusty iron longsword he had taken from the crypts below Winterfell, and from time to time he would lash out at a branch, knocking loose a spray of snow. "Hod-d-d-dor," he would mutter, his teeth chattering. The sound was strangely reassuring. On their journey from Winterfell to the Wall, Lyanna and her companions had made the miles shorter by talking and telling tales, but it was different here. Before the snows began, the north wind would swirl around them and clouds of dead brown leaves would kick up from the ground with a faint small rustling sound that reminded him of roaches scurrying in a cupboard, but now all the leaves were buried under a blanket of white. From time to time a raven would fly overhead, big black wings slapping against the cold air. Elsewise the world was silent. Just ahead, the elk wove between the snowdrifts with his head down, his huge rack of antlers crusted with ice. The ranger sat astride his broad back, grim and silent. Coldhands was the name that the fat boy Sam had given him, for though the ranger's face was pale, his hands were black and hard as iron, and cold as iron too. The rest of him was wrapped in layers of wool and boiled leather and ringmail, his features shadowed by his hooded cloak and a black woolen scarf about the lower half of his face. Behind the ranger, there's Lyanna, then Jojen. Meera Reed wrapped her arms around her brother, to shelter him from the wind and cold with the warmth of her own body, and from time to time he shivered violently. Visenya brought up the rear of their little band. The direwolf's breath frosted the forest air as he padded after them, still limping on the hind leg that had taken the arrow back at Queenscrown. Lyanna slipped into Visenya's skin once a day just to practice.

Sometimes Lyanna could sense the direwolf sniffing after the elk, wondering if she could bring the great beast down. Visenya had grown accustomed to horses at Winterfell, but this was an elk and elk were prey. The direwolf could sense the warm blood coursing beneath the elk's shaggy hide. Just the smell was enough to make the slaver run from between her jaws, and when it did Lyanna's mouth would water at the thought of rich, dark meat.

From a nearby oak a raven quorked, and Lyanna heard the sound of wings as another of the big black birds flapped down to land beside it. By day only half a dozen ravens stayed with them, flitting from tree to tree or riding on the antlers of the elk. The rest of the murder flew ahead or lingered behind. But when the sun sank low they would return, descending from the sky on night-black wings until every branch of every tree was thick with them for yards around. Some would fly to the ranger and mutter at him, and it seemed to Lyanna that he understood their quorks and squawks. They are her eyes and ears. They scout for her, and whisper to her of dangers ahead and behind.

As now. The elk stopped suddenly, and the ranger vaulted lightly from his back to land in knee-deep snow. Summer and Visenya growled at him, their fur bristling. The direwolves did not like the way that Coldhands smelled. Dead meat, dry blood, a faint whiff of rot. And cold. Cold over all.

"What is it?" Meera wanted to know.

"Behind us," Coldhands announced, his voice muffled by the black wool scarf across his nose and mouth.

"Wolves?" Lyanna asked. They had known for days that they were being followed. Every night they heard the mournful howling of the pack, and every night the wolves seemed a little closer. Hunters, and hungry. They can smell how weak we are. Often Lyanna woke shivering hours before the dawn, listening to the sound of them calling to one another in the distance as she waited for the sun to rise. If there are wolves, there must be prey, she used to think, until it came to her that they were the prey.

The ranger shook his head. "Men. The wolves still keep their distance. These men are not so shy."

Meera Reed pushed back her hood. The wet snow that had covered it tumbled to the ground with a soft thump. "How many men? Who are they?"

"Foes. I'll deal with them."

"I'll come with you." Lyanna said.

"You'll stay. The boy must be protected. There is a lake ahead, hard frozen. When you come on it, turn north and follow the shoreline. You'll come to a fishing village. Take refuge there until I can catch up with you."

Lyanna meant to argue until her Jojen said, "Do as he says. He knows this land." Jojen's eyes were a dark green, the color of moss, but heavy with a weariness that Lyanna had never seen in them before. The little grandfather. South of the Wall, the boy from the crannogs had seemed to be wise beyond his years, but up here he was as lost and frightened as the rest of them. Even so, Meera always listened to him. That was still true. Coldhands slipped between the trees, back the way they'd come, with four ravens flapping after him. Meera and Lyanna watched him go, Meera's cheeks red with cold, breath puffing from her nostrils. She pulled her hood back up and gave the elk a nudge, and their trek resumed.

Before they had gone twenty yards, though, she turned to glance behind them and said, "Men, he says. What men? Does he mean wildlings? Why won't he say?"

"He said he'd go and deal with them," said Bran.

"He said, aye. He said he would take us to this three-eyed crow too. That river we crossed this morning is the same one we crossed four days ago, I swear. We're going in circles."

"Rivers turn and twist," Bran said uncertainly, "and where there's lakes and hills, you need to go around."

"There's been too much going around, " Meera insisted, "and too many secrets. I don't like it. I don't like him. And I don't trust him. Those hands of his are bad enough. He hides his face, and will not speak a name. Who is he? What is he? Anyone can put on a black cloak. Anyone, or any thing. He does not eat, he never drinks, he does not seem to feel the cold."

It's true. Lyanna had been afraid to speak of it, but she had noticed. Whenever they took shelter for the night, while Lyanna, Bran and Hodor and the Reeds huddled together for warmth, the ranger kept apart. Sometimes Coldhands closed his eyes, but Lyanna did not think he slept. And there was something else ...

"The scarf." Lyanna glanced about uneasily, but there was not a raven to be seen. All the big black birds had left them when the ranger did. No one was listening. Even so, she kept her voice low. "The scarf over his mouth, it never gets all hard with ice, like Hodor's beard. Not even when he talks."

Meera gave her a sharp look. "You're right. We've never seen his breath, have we?"

"No." A puff of white heralded each of Hodor's hodor s. When Jojen or his sister spoke, their words could be seen too. Even the elk left a warm fog upon the air when he exhaled.

"If he does not breathe ..."

Lyanna found herself remembering the tales Old Nan had told her when she was a babe. Beyond the Wall the monsters live, the giants and the ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk, she would say, tucking Lyanna in beneath her scratchy woolen blanket, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night' s Watch are true. So go to sleep, my little Lyanna, my baby girl, and dream sweet dreams. There are no monsters here. The ranger wore the black of the Night's Watch, but what if he was not a man at all? What if he was some monster, taking them to the other monsters to be devoured?

"The ranger saved Sam and the girl from the wights," Bran said, hesitantly, "and he's taking me to the three-eyed crow."

"Why won't this three-eyed crow come to us? Why couldn't he meet us at the Wall? Crows have wings. My brother grows weaker every day. How long can we go on?"

Jojen coughed. "Until we get there."

They came upon the promised lake not long after, and turned north as the ranger had bid them. That was the easy part.

The water was frozen, and the snow had been falling for so long that Lyanna had lost count of the days, turning the lake into a vast white wilderness. Where the ice was flat and the ground was bumpy, the going was easy, but where the wind had pushed the snow up into ridges, sometimes it was hard to tell where the lake ended and the shore began. Even the trees were not as infallible a guide as they might have hoped, for there were wooded islands in the lake, and wide areas ashore where no trees grew.

The elk went where he would, regardless of the wishes of Lyanna, Meera and Jojen on his back. Mostly he stayed beneath the trees, but where the shore curved away westward he would take the more direct path across the frozen lake, shouldering through snowdrifts taller than Lyanna as the ice crackled underneath her hooves. Out there the wind was stronger, a cold north wind that howled across the lake, knifed through their layers of wool and leather, and set them all to shivering. When it blew into their faces, it would drive the snow into their eyes and leave them as good as blind.