They are here, Coldhands announces. The white walkers step lightly and leave no impression in the snow, yet Coldhands senses their presence. It has been twelve days since the elk has died. Jojen is too weak to walk unaided and shivers violently in Meera’s arms. Icicles hang from Hodor’s beard. The wolves are close as well, Bran warns; inside Summer’s skin, he can smell an approaching pack. The group is standing at the foot of an incline. Less than a thousand yards away, halfway up the stony hill, a cleft in the rock marks the entrance to a cave. According to Coldhands the cave is warded – the Others cannot pass. There is also a backdoor to the cave three leagues north, down a sinkhole. In his weakened state Jojen is unable to make the ascent and Meera refuses to leave his side. She instructs Bran and Hodor to go on ahead. Hodor, with Bran strapped to his back, plows through the snowdrifts up the hill and toward the concealed cave. Coldhands and Summer follow. Behind, Meera struggles up the hill, half-dragging and half-carrying her brother.
Sixty yards from the cave’s entrance Summer stops suddenly and sniffs the air. His fur bristles. Bran can see a fire in the stone cleft – a flickering, ruddy light. Without warning Hodor screams, twists, stumbles and falls, pinning Bran beneath him; something has grabbed hold of his leg. A wight comes bursting from beneath the snow. Hodor grapples with the wight, punching and clawing the creature, sliding down the hill. Bran is thrown from his basket and sprawled upon the hillside. More wights appear from beneath the snow. Bran smashes the snow with his fists and shouts out a warning to Meera and Jojen down below. A wight grabs at Bran’s face, but Summer leaps between them and tears into the assailant. Bran notices the wight is dressed in black – he was one of the Watch. Dismembered by Summer, the wight’s severed hand is still moving toward Bran. Bran rolls away and crawls in the direction of the fire, fifty yards away now.
Bran hears Hodor screaming and without thinking he leaps into the skin of the seven-foot man. Bran is now Hodor. He lurches to his feet and rips the long sword from his belt. He raises the sword and brings it down on the wights. Meera is close, driving back the creatures with her frog spear. Rushing to help, Hodor drops the long sword and gathers Jojen into his arms; Meera, Hodor, and Jojen race up the hill. Higher up a little girl has emerged from the cave. She is waving a torch, keeping the wights at bay. Bran loses control over Hodor and returns to his own body. He is still buried in the snow, where a burning wight looms over him. Before he can react the snow-laden branches of a nearby tree shake, burying Bran.
Bran wakes to find himself lying on a bed of pine needles beneath a dark stone roof. I’m in the cave, Bran thinks to himself. A fire is burning and he is surrounded by his friends, as well as the little girl with the torch. Coldhands is absent, however. The girl’s voice is high and sweet, with a strange music in it. She is like nothing Bran has ever seen: her skin is dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves; her eyes, gold and green, are slit like a cat’s eyes; her hair is a tangle of autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it. Who are you, Meera asks. Before the girl can answer, Bran declares she is a child of the forest. In truth, she is not a child. The First Men named her people children and the giants call them who dak nag gran, the squirrel people, but in the True Tongue, their name means those who sing the song of earth. She belongs to an ancient race, ten thousand years old. She herself is two hundred years old, born in the time of the dragon. The ancient woman tells Bran the greenseer is waiting for him.
The woman leads them through a series of cramped and twisty tunnels. Weirwood roots are everywhere, weaving in and out of the walls, holding up the roofs. They emerge in a dark chamber. The woman is waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness Bran can hear the sound of rushing water. The woman tells them to turn around. She lifts her torch higher, illuminating the cavern. Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sits dreaming in a tangled nest of roots; a woven weirwood throne embraces his withered limbs. His skin is white, save for a bloody blotch that creeps up his neck onto his cheek. Are you the three-eyed crow, Bran asks. Once I was a crow, the pale lord replies, black of garb and black of blood. He has been watching Bran the boy’s entire life, with a thousand eyes and one. Will you fix me, Bran asks. No, you will never walk again, he answers, but you will fly.
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