Chapter Text
It’s a sticky-crawly feeling, like a million spiders are running across her body. Arya wonders if it’s the Red Woman’s doing – if she cursed her when she tried to stop her taking Gendry away. The night feels ominous now and it isn’t safe, not like darkness should be. Arya stumbles away from where the Hound sleeps, past Stranger and her vision twists.
Eight places, eight hells. Arya sees them and wonders why people say there are seven. Then, she forgets and her body plunges into icy water. The shock to her system jolts her awake and she looks around frantically, the water burning her hot eyes but finding the light above her. Swim! She orders herself, terrified and confused with stabbing pins and needles all across her body, but not willing to die at the bottom of some hidden pool in the woods.
Arya breaches the surface and the cloudy sky above shows her a walled city – dark and gloomy, with snow twisting its way through the howling wind. Her head dips back under as she feels more confusion and only some clarity; I’m not in the woods any longer.
“Oi! Oi, there’s a child!” she hears a rough voice shout, before she dips back under, feeling a coldness seep into her bones. Her clothes are more of a hindrance than a help, now and Needle is a weight she doesn’t need. “Fjolti, get that rope!”
She dips under and floats up, over and over, the waves crashing over her head and not all of it is just water. Sleet and chunks of ice scratch against her cheeks and then there’s a rope.
“Child, put your arm through the loop,” a voice says, a shadow rising past her. Arya struggles, but somehow manages to raise her numbing arm through the hole, happy to feel it already around her neck. It tightens, pulling under her left arm and around the right of her neck, then she’s being pulled through, up and out of the water, into a boat. She’s rested in between someones legs, quick hands tugging at her shirt and jerkin, pulling them off without abandon.
“My name’s Fjolti,” the person in front of her says, as Arya begins to regain sense of her surroundings. There’s a girl there, with straw-coloured hair and a long face, a sea-shell necklace on a chain of gold resting on top of her fur coat. Arya feels movement behind her, before her bare back meets a warm, hairy chest. “My father is going to help warm you up.”
The girl – Fjolti – reaches under her bench for a bundle, unwrapping it from twine as a man – her father? – barks at her, “Get the blanket, Fjolti, no time for chatter.”
“I’ve got it, give me but a moment,” Fjolti replies in an irritated voice and Arya shivers as a freezing wind blows across her already-numb skin.
“We’re going to be in the rocks in a moment,” he replies urgently, before she practically throws the unwrapped blanket at them. The man wraps the blanket around Arya and himself and she’s closed off from the wind. Arya sinks into the warmth the man emits, ignoring her cold feet as she tucks her hands loosely in her armpits. “Get us into harbour, Fjolti.”
“Yes, father,” Fjolti says, before unshipping her oars, rowing them across icy water, getting closer and closer to the walled-off city Arya had glimpsed beforehand. “Be my eyes?”
“Aye, Fjolti,” the man says, “gentle on the port-side…aye, there we go, straight onwards.”
Arya slips into sleep at some point, listening to the father-daughter pair navigate rocky waters to harbour. She wakes in front of a fire, wrapped up in furs. The warmth is comforting, but eventually she feels an ache from sleeping on her side so long and she moves, trying to sit up and realising quickly that she’s only in her underwear under all the furs.
“Awake, are we?” comes an unfamiliar voice from a surprisingly close distance. Arya looks around sharply, eyes wide as she sees a common woman sitting at a chair by her head, sewing mittens out of what looks like rabbit hide. “My girl Fjolti didn’t trust you’d live, but she’s not versed in ways of the sea. Torsten knew you’d be well once you started to warm. What’s your name, girl?”
“Not a girl,” Arya immediately replies. “My name’s Arry.”
The woman wrinkles her nose. “Girl, you were dunked in the sea and stripped. You’re lucky enough to be alive. Don’t lie to me. What’s your name?”
“…Arya,” Arya grumbles, sitting up and pulling the furs around her. “Who’re you?”
“Hillevi, Lady of Clan Cruel-Sea. My husband, Torsten, was the one to save your life. My daughter, Fjolti, rowed you all back on her own, something she’s never done before. It deserves praise, too.” Hillevi states, almost lecturing her. “There’s a bowl of potato soup sitting there by the fire for you.”
Arya looks, stomach gurgling at the reminder of food. It sits there: a bowl of thick, steaming soup and Arya salivates at the sight, used to the Hound’s meagre rations and over-cooked hare. She lunges for it, only slowing when she goes to pick it up, uncaring of the loosening blankets as she carefully sips.
“There are spoons, whelp,” Hillevi then mutters, reaching out to a small tabletop, hand digging into a woven basket. The spoon nearly goes flying into the fire when Arya struggles to catch it, barely keeping a grip on it. She eats her soup in silence, looking around the Cruel-Sea’s home.
It’s made of stone, clearly and there aren’t any windows. They’re situated in some kind of kitchen and dining room, a rectangular table on one side with six chairs and an open larder on the other, with a few benches for food preparation. A door is open and if Arya squints, she can see a staircase.
“Good soup,” Arya mutters in appreciation, once she’s finished. “Where do I put my bowl?”
“You can wash it up in that cauldron, there,” Hillevi says, pointing at where it sits by the fireplace and making no move to get up. Arya feels slightly uncomfortable, then, but she nods and goes over to scrub her bowl in what turns out to be gently warm water. Probably why they keep it by the fire, she thinks. “Fjolti has some things you can wear, for the time being. You’re a little small, but it’s nothing some sewing on your part can’t fix.”
My part, Arya thinks, brain going in all different directions. She’s not taking responsibility for me.
“Lady Hillevi,” she addresses carefully, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Where are your parents?” Hillevi bluntly questions, in turn.
Arya swallows, remembering the noise of the axe that swung down to take off Ned Stark’s head, the roar of the crowds at a good beheading.
“My father is dead,” she says, wondering where she is – if she can make it to the Twins for her brother’s wedding. “I don’t know where I am.”
“You’re in Windhelm,” Hillevi says, gruff and far from kind. “Jarl Ulfric rules here and we are his loyal subjects. Are you a commoner?”
“No,” Arya says, the word feeling strange in her mouth. For the past year, almost, she’d been calling herself Arry, Weasel, Nan and pretending to be one of the smallfolk. “My father was Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North.”
Hillevi eyes her sceptically. “There is no warden of the North, here, girl.”
“Yes, there is,” Arya frowns, brow furrowing. “I don’t even know how I got here. One minute, I was running away from the Hound and then, I was in the water.”
“Hound? You’re speaking in riddles. The cold must have got you,” Hillevi finally stands, discarding her mittens on the nearby table, reaching to take Arya’s shoulder, tugging her to her feet. Arya grabs one of the falling furs as she does, wrapping it around her body. “Come. We’ll get you dressed, then take you to see the Jarl. He’ll decide your fate.”
“What’s a jarl?” Arya asks, wondering if it is like a Lord.
Hillevi purses her lips. “The Jarl rules a Hold and there are nine Holds in Skyrim.”
“What’s Skyrim?” Arya then asks, swallowing nervously. “I hail from Westeros!”
The Lady of Clan Cruel-Sea looks at her with pity, then, shaking her head and leading her out of the kitchen.
“Young Arya, my husband has sailed the seas of Tamriel for his entire life and in all his stories, in all his maps and journals,” Hillevi states, “not once, have I ever, ever heard of a land named Westeros.”