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Jon’s first vivid memory of her dated back to the day Arya was born.
He and Robb had finished their lessons early. They’d been learning the Northern heraldry, House names and House words and House lords and soon enough, the lords’ immediate families. That was the day Jon truly understood the name Snow.
Jon had grown sadder as the lesson progressed until Septa Mordane rushed in to announce that Lady Stark was giving birth. Maester Luwin had stopped prodding Jon to enunciate names and darted out of the tower room. Robb had stayed long enough to wordlessly hug Jon before he, too, was scampering off after the maester.
Jon aimlessly and gloomily wandered around Winterfell. Being sad was not very nice. Being sad felt cold. Not like the enveloping cold that he loved, the cold which always made Father gently tug and fuss at Jon’s furs and ask if he was warm enough, but the crushing cold, the cold which sometimes made Jon sneeze and weak with fever.
No one paid him much mind. A lot of Winterfell’s residents were hurrying to the Great Keep where Lady Stark was said to be screaming, and those who were not hurrying to go there were talking amongst themselves that, yes, Lady Stark was said to be screaming.
Lady Stark never screamed at Jon. She also never fussed with his furs, never asked if he was warm enough, never visited him when he was weak with fever. Jon understood it to be because she was not his lady mother. Lady Stark had not screamed for him when he was being born.
Father would not say who Jon’s mother was. Jon hoped that she had not screamed too much for him.
Father had always been warm, though, and he did all the fussing for Jon. When he had been very small, Father used to let him perch on Father’s shoulders during Jon’s namedays. Jon really loved that. By that moment he had already understood that he and Robb weren’t twins.
When Robb had turned five, he and Jon had been playing in the yard when Lady Stark appeared to fetch Robb. Lady Stark had greeted Robb with a warm smile and told him that he had to bathe and that there would be treats. Robb had cheered loudly and charged at Lady Stark, clutching at her skirts and dancing around. Jon had cheerfully run to Lady Stark, too, but she had drawn away her skirts from him like he had been no different from the muck in the yard.
Remembering all of these made Jon sadder.
When Jon looked up from his boots, he saw that his wandering had brought him by the stables. A lady was leaning against a wooden wall, smiling at one of the horses.
There was something about her face that made Jon want to keep looking at her. He looked and looked, and looked, until she noticed him with a start.
“What are you doing out here?” she said as Jon stared up at her. “Why aren’t you at your lessons?”
The lady approached him. She had a bright smile and her grey eyes were friendly. She clasped his smaller hand and gave it a squeeze.
He looked at her cold, gentle hand and then up, and up at her warm eyes, and decided that it was the enveloping sort of cold.
Haltingly, Jon told her about the heraldry lesson and about feeling sad.
*
She was Jon’s friend.
She told him a lot of stories. Sometimes the stories helped because they turned out to be in his lessons with Maester Luwin and Robb. She also knew where to pick the best wolfberries in the glass gardens, the best treat in the world.
Father looked puzzled when Jon mentioned her.
“Do you mean Turnip, Jon?”
“No, Father.” Turnip was Gage the cook’s daughter, of an age with Robb and Jon. Jon’s friend was older, taller, but not as old as Father.
Eventually, Jon heard the mutterings from the other people in the castle: “Poor little lordling. He never knew his mother, that’s why.” So Jon stopped talking about his friend.
“Why won’t you tell me your name?” Jon asked her one day.
They were in one of the corridors, the wintry light slanting in from the diamond paned windows and brushing the tapestry depicting King Jon Stark raising the Wolf’s Den. She was the one who had shown him this corridor, and it quickly became his favourite.
She handed him another blueberry cream cake. Jon’s friend had a knack for sneaking unseen into the kitchens and bringing back fresh treats hours before they were to be served. Father always had first pick during meals, followed by Lady Stark. Then it was Robb’s turn. After Baby Sansa’s birth, she followed Robb even though she’d barely eaten solid cakes. Now Baby Arya would follow Sansa. Jon was always last.
Jon licked the crumbs off his fingers and happily took the next cake from his friend.
Laughing, she rumpled his hair. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
An easy silence enveloped them as they sat on the corridor and gazed at the tapestry. Jon’s back was warm against a Stark banner draped on the wall behind him; according to his friend hot springs was coursing through these walls. She was seated cross-legged beside him now, holding two more cakes.
“Father said the same to me,” Jon heard himself say in a small voice, “when I asked him about my mother.”
Jon’s friend stopped smiling. She gazed at him with her bottom lip between her teeth.
Then she shuffled closer. Her arm was comforting around Jon’s shoulders, and Jon could smell the richness of the blueberry cream cakes on her lap.
“There are some things that are not for little children to hear,” she told Jon. “Little children are still growing.”
Jon hesitated. “Father said I’m growing every day. He said I’m going to grow taller and healthier.”
“He’s right.” After a beat she said, “What kind of swords are you using in your lessons?”
“Wooden ones.”
“Your master-at-arms won’t let you use steel, yes? Because you’re still growing children.”
Jon considered this, and after some moments he thought he understood what she was trying to say. Steel was dangerous for children. “My mother, knowing her name is like a steel sword? Yours as well?” he ventured, and tipped back his head to look at her face.
Sometimes she strongly reminded him of Father.
She was smiling now. “That’s right. You are such a clever darling.”
She lifted her hand from Jon’s shoulder and cradled the side of Jon’s head. She brought his head very close to her and then she was kissing him on the forehead, like he had seen Lady Stark do to Robb countless times. For a moment, the dark fall of her hair shielded him from the world, from the cold light streaming from the windows, from Jon’s favourite tapestry of King Jon Stark. For a moment during his friend’s kiss everything was dark and warm and oddly safe that Jon wished, earnestly and hopelessly, that she were his mother instead.
*
One day, when Jon was eight, Lord Tully sent a chest of gifts for Bran’s first nameday. Lord Tully also had gifts for his other grandchildren, and since Jon was not Lady Stark’s child, he had not received a gift.
Lady Stark’s brother, Ser Edmure Tully, had arrived with a small party. All of them told Robb that he made them proud, and then they would send Jon polite and fleeting smiles. It was all because of the heraldry, Jon knew it. It was because Jon was Father’s bastard boy of an age with Robb the heir.
But Robb wanted Jon by his side throughout the visit. He clutched at Jon’s arm and said that Jon need not worry: they would share the toys. Jon loved him for that.
So Jon stuck by Robb, like he always did. Sometimes one of the Tully party would ask Robb about his lessons to see how he was doing.
Maester Luwin taught Jon and Robb details before he taught them the significance of the details. Jon thought of those lessons as flakes of snow details piling and piling and piling until there was a snowball. Or until there was Winterfell.
One morning, Ser Edmure asked Robb about Aegon V.
Robb was better at details, but Jon was better at significance.
“That’s why Aegon V was popular with the smallfolk,” Jon muttered to Robb. “Aegon V put forth laws for the rights of smallfolk because he’d spent time with them as Ser Duncan’s squire. The nobles didn’t like the laws.”
Ser Edmure was not keen on Jon interrupting but he was pleased with Robb’s answer all the same. Ser Edmure told Lady Stark so, and Lady Stark let Robb have another berry tart at lunch.
That made Jon droop. Robb might share his toys with Jon and love Jon well, like Jon loved him, but Robb still had many new toys and people even from outside Winterfell praised him at lessons.
To cheer him up, his friend suggested that they play with Jon’s toys. She sat on a carved chair by the ironwood table and watched as Jon knelt on the fur rug. He opened the chest with all the toys he owned and carefully laid them on the rug.
Most of them were from Father and some were from Uncle Benjen. As he looked at them Jon decided that they were enough.
He also decided something else.
Jon sat by his friend’s feet, by now comfortable with her and secure in the knowledge that she would never turn him away, and leaned against her skirts. He loved the rasp of the crushed grey velvet near the hem and the white brocade with pearls.
“This is Edrick the Snowy Horse,” Jon said of the polished wooden horse which he had always referred to as the white horse.
Of the other horse, the jet black one with inlaid copper, he said, “This is Cregan the Black Horse.” He set it beside Edrick the Snowy Horse for the two horses were to have adventures.
On and on he named his toys: Torrhen the Rattle, Arrana the Boat, Berena the Ship, Artos the Knight, Barthogan the Ceramic Horse amongst them. They were his toys, and names were important. These names, Jon could give, Jon could wield.
His friend made approving noises for each name, and played with his toys with him.
“I don’t know what to call you,” Jon shyly told her at one point.
She smiled down at him, rumpling his hair. “When you’re older,” she reminded him. “For now, what do you want to call me?”
Jon peered up at his friend and wondered what he should call her. She’d always been His Friend in his head. The names he’d given his toys were from long-ago Starks, though, and those were the best names to Jon. And she was his friend, a person, not a wooden horse or a boat. She’d had her own name before he came along.
“You’re so quiet I can never hear you approach,” Jon mused out loud. “And you can sneak in the kitchens. And sneak everywhere. And I don’t know your name. No one knows.”
She laughed. It was a loud and open laugh, a kind laugh. She spread her legs under her skirts as a man would sit, so that she could lean her elbow on her other thigh whilst keeping her other leg still for Jon to continue leaning on. And then she was leaning down and rumpling his hair again and pinching his cheek.
“So which is it, lad? What will you call me?”
Jon clutched at her skirts and peered up at her. “Ghost.”
*
Ghost was gracious with Jon’s decision. She had laughed out loud like it was the most amusing thing.
Jon couldn’t understand how she managed to be sneaky because what he had seen of Ghost looked anything but quiet.
Ghost’s laughter was always loud and wolfish, not at all like the highborn ladies that Jon had met during Ser Edmure’s visit and during Father’s visits to the bannermen. Not at all like Lady Stark’s. Jon suspected that Ghost was not of the smallfolk either because her gown looked really costly.
She always wore the same gown, though, so perhaps she had lost her fortune.
Whenever he and Ghost played by King Jon Stark’s tapestry, Ghost’s strides were wide and brusque, her boots boldly clacking on the stones. Ghost liked to run a lot as well.
Sometimes Ghost said unkind things about some people. Jon didn’t know most of those people, but he recognised some names from his lessons. Ghost could be swift with her words, especially her sharp and unkind words. Rash, Jon thought. Along with the fact that Ghost could be impatient, too.
If Ghost had been a toddler, Jon would have called her a toddling terror like Arya.
Ghost always liked to see what’s by the hot springs, or what’s hanging on a branch, or what’s growing in the glass gardens, or what would happen when the rabid puppy in the kennels met the mad pony in the stables. Jon always had to caution her. That was all right for Jon used to caution Robb a lot.
When Jon was ten, shortly before Father’s thirtieth nameday, it struck him that it had been silly to wish that Ghost were his mother. Ghost was only a young lady, after all. Jon had met her when he was five. Had she always looked this young? Had he seen her wearing any other thing besides her old gown? Nowadays, she looked the like a young lady only a handful of years older than Jon’s ten years. And Jon was nearly of height with her shoulders.
“He likes strawberry to drink,” Ghost advised Jon on Father’s nameday gift. “Only the old gods know why, strawberries are too sweet. Now where was I? Crush the strawberries to a pulp, then put some dried wolfberries in it. He’d love that.”
Jon wrinkled his nose. He saw that Ghost was also wrinkling her nose, but she was smiling, too, her eyes lost in the distance.
“It’s an awful flavour, too sweet, too sour, too tart, by the old gods! But it’s his dark secret.”
Ghost sneaked around a lot and so she must have heard a lot of things. Jon decided to follow her advice.
He and Ghost worked on the strawberries in the kitchen yard as the rest of Winterfell bustled about to prepare for the coming bannermen. All nameday feasts were special, but this one was supposed to be more special, Jon had heard. Of his siblings, Father was a second son and a secondborn child and the first to reach thirty. Uncle Brandon and Aunt Lyanna would never be thirty.
After they had poured the thick strawberry drink into an iron and copper goblet, Ghost instructed Jon to add thirty pieces of dried wolfberries.
Jon decided to give Father the goblet as soon as it was prepared. He did not wait for the feast, where everything would be noisy and a lot would be going on and it would be easy to feel lost in the merriment.
He asked to enter Father’s study.
When he saw the drink, Father’s face went through a variety of expressions until it froze on a distant one as he stared at Jon’s face. Jon had Father’s face. He Father’s grey eyes and dark hair.
Then a wide smile gently swept across Father’s long solemn face. It strongly reminded Jon of Ghost’s smiles which were often wide and sometimes, wildly gleeful.
“My sincerest thanks, Jon,” said Father. “Why don’t you sit with me?”
Jon gladly sat by his lord father for the rest of the morning. Father was writing letters and consulting books whilst sharing the drink with Jon. This was enough. This was all that mattered today, on Father’s nameday. Even when Jon was last in picking choice meat or treats later during the feast, spending alone time with Father was all that mattered.
Jon treasured these moments the most, along with his secret careful pride that he looked very much like Father as he had heard people say countless times. He and Baby Arya were the only ones who took after Father.
The wind outside was cold as Jon skipped out of the Great Keep, but it was the enveloping cold, the best kind of cold. It was too great a day. It felt like nothing could make Jon sad today, he thought as he looked for Ghost.
He found her chasing birds near the crypts.
Ghost saw him and beckoned him over. Jon cheerfully ran towards her.
When Jon was near enough, Ghost bent forward and swiftly scooped up Jon. Jon gasped out, clutching hard at her deceptively delicate arms. Ghost’s laughter was nearly a howl. Jon started laughing, too.
“You were right about the drink,” Jon giggled. He was airborne. He felt like he was one with the lightly falling snow.
“Of course I am,” said Ghost, full of her usual confidence.
Then she set him down and handed him wolfberries. She always gave him treats between meals, and Ghost always knew how to pick the best wolfberries for Jon.
“Let us visit the godswood,” said Ghost as she took his hand.
Jon bit into a wolfberry and nodded, beaming up at her. He huddled closer to her. Ghost might not be his mother because Ghost was only a girl, but she was his friend. Jon always felt an enveloping cold whenever he was with her, the best kind of cold, and that was all that mattered.
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