Archive of Our Own

“I’m hoping to be back by midnight.” Catelyn Stark tosses her duffel bag into her car. “But I might be later. I’m sure there’s something in the pantry for dinner. You can make mac and cheese if you like. Make sure Arya finishes her math homework before she runs off to the Waters’ house to play with that boy; ask her to show it to you or she’ll lie and won’t finish it.”

“Yes, Mrs. Stark,” Brienne says. “I’m sure we’ll find something to eat. I can make mac and cheese.” It’s drizzling out, and Brienne can feel the shoulders of her hoodie growing damp.”

“Rickon’s bedtime is 8:30, but he’ll try to tell you otherwise, he always does.” Mrs. Stark draws her chore coat around herself to tuck into the front seat of the Starks' sensible minivan.

“Okay,” Brienne says.

“If there’s any problem, call me, and if I don’t answer,” Mrs. Stark pauses. “If I don’t call back within an hour, or if it’s an emergency, call my sister.”

Brienne didn’t know Mrs. Stark had a sister. “I don’t have your sister’s number.”

“It’s on the fridge, with the emergency numbers. Under Lysa Arryn,” Mrs. Stark says as she buckles her seatbelt. “Thank you again, Brienne; I really appreciate this. I’ll let you know if…” she trails off. “I’ll let you know.”

She doesn’t specify what she’ll let Brienne know, and Brienne doesn’t ask, just nods tersely and waves goodbye as Cat turns the key and starts down the driveway.

Brienne watches her vanish down the Starks’ long, winding driveway, and turns to go back inside. The Stark kids are crowded at the door to the brightly-lit house, framed against the gloomy late twilight. They part to let her through. She turns the deadbolt behind her and reaches down to tug off her gym shoes. They have fresh mud around the edges now, thanks to the damp and the piles of leaves at the edges of the Starks’ driveway.

“When is she coming back?” Bran asks. There’s a frown on his already-serious face.

“I don’t know,” Brienne answers. “Soon.” She’s never been very good at comforting kids. “I’ll be here until she gets back.” She hopes she doesn’t have to stay overnight. She’s too tall to sleep well on a couch, and she doesn’t want to be too tired to play well during her basketball game tomorrow. There’s a college scout coming to look at one of the seniors, and maybe, maybe…

“I’m hungry,” Rickon says. “Can we have pizza for dinner? We always have pizza for dinner when mom’s gone.”

“Your mom said mac and cheese,” Brienne says. “Unless you have money to pay for delivery.” She doesn’t want to order delivery; pizza for herself and four kids, plus the extra fee the pizza place in town will charge to drive all the way out to the Starks’ property, seems expensive.

Rickon looks like he’s going to argue for a second, and Brienne holds her breath. She doesn't want to really argue with a kid whose dad might be dead. But mac and cheese must be acceptable, because he turns to Bran and tugs his shirt. “Let’s go play whack-it.”

Bran rolls his eyes. “Fifteen minutes. Then we’re playing Mario Kart.”

The boys disappear into the basement, and Arya moves towards the coat closet.

“Arya,” Brienne calls, “don’t you have math homework to do?”

“I guess,” Arya looks back at her. “Yeah.”

“Where do you usually do your homework?” Brienne asks.

“I dunno,” Arya shrugs. “But it’s not a big deal. I can do it later, after I get back from Gendry’s house. I told him I’d come over.”

“No,” Brienne tries to be stern. “Go get it and do it at the kitchen table while I make dinner."

“Ugh,” Arya says, banging her feet as she goes upstairs, but she comes back a minute later with a backpack so Brienne considers it a victory.

It’s already dark outside as Brienne dumps the noodles from several boxes of mac and cheese into a pot. How many boxes of mac and cheese can the Stark kids eat? Brienne had just gotten home from basketball practice when Mrs. Stark called to ask for emergency babysitting services, so she’s hungry. Four boxes? Four boxes sounds right. She goes to grab another box from the pantry.

“Make one of the dinosaur-shaped ones.” Arya has a math worksheet in front of her but no pencil. “Rickon really likes the dinosaur mac and cheese.”

“Okay.” Brienne grabs a box with noodles shaped like dinosaurs. She adds that box to the pot, then measures out the milk and butter as the noodles cook. She leans back against the counter and stares out the window above the sink. The rain outside has only gotten heavier, and in the light from the kitchen windows Brienne can see that the piles of leaves blown up against the house are flat and slimy with wet.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Arya complains. When Brienne looks over at the table, she is tapping a pencil against her worksheet. Brienne sighs and goes over. She can help with fourth grade math, she supposes.

They get most of the worksheet done before Brienne finishes cooking dinner. She shouts down the basement stairs to call Bran and Rickon up, choosing to ignore the worryingly loud banging noises, then goes upstairs to find Sansa. The first door she peers inside, with metal band and football posters on the walls above neatly-made beds, is clearly Robb and Theon’s room, held in stasis while they’re away at school. The second door is closed, and when she knocks, Sansa’s voice answers. “What?”

Brienne opens the door. The walls are pale pink, and a dresser topped with makeup and jewelry and innumerable mysterious hair products dominates one wall. It’s very different from Brienne’s own bedroom. Sansa is distinctly girly, pretty in a way Brienne has never been and never will be, and Brienne is uncomfortably aware of it. Sansa is several years younger than Brienne, but she is old enough to know what being pretty is, and to know that she is and Brienne isn’t. It makes Brienne feel large and awkward and clumsy in her meagre authority here.

“Dinner,” Brienne says.

Sansa doesn’t look up from where she’s ignoring a textbook lying open in front of her on her bed to poke at a phone. She has a notebook out, too, with some kind of complex geometrical diagram visible on the page. She’s in advanced math, Brienne remembers Mrs. Stark mentioning proudly last week. “Okay,” she looks up to smile at Brienne. “Be down in a minute.”

After all the kids have been corralled into the kitchen and served bowls of mac and cheese, she sits down at the silent table and starts eating herself. The dinosaur-shaped pieces feel a little overcooked, but it’s fine. None of the kids care. Probably.

Bran pulls out a book and starts reading it at the table, moving mac and cheese from his bowl to his mouth without even looking, and Brienne decides not to comment.

Arya has shoved her homework to the side, but she manages to get a piece of mac and cheese on it anyways, and Sansa frowns at Arya as she picks it off and pokes at the greasy stain it leaves.

Sansa politely asks Brienne about how the basketball season is going (fine; she’s trying out point forward), and together they manage to cajole Rickon into talking about how school was (good; he traded a pokemon card for the naming rights to an imaginary pet turtle). The talk peters out, though, until the loudest noise is the wind outside as Brienne serves the last of the mac and cheese.

Eventually, Sansa clears her throat and says, “I’m going upstairs to call my boyfriend,” as she neatly crosses her silverware on her empty plate.

“Your boyyyyfriend,” Arya mocks.

“Arya,” Brienne tries to sound stern.

“I don’t think he’s real,” Arya says petulantly.

“He is real.” Sansa takes her plate to the sink. “His name’s Joffrey and he’s in high school, that’s why you don’t know him. Because you’re a baby and you go to elementary school.”

“I’m not a baby,” Arya says. “You’re a baby.”

“Arya,” Brienne says again. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if the kids don’t behave. Sansa in particular, she remembers, has a penchant for cutting words, and Arya isn’t above physically fighting any of her siblings.

Sansa seems a little young for a boyfriend in high school, but Brienne supposes that several of her own peers in eighth grade dated high school freshmen. Not Brienne, of course; Brienne was too awkward and ugly to have ever dated anyone. Sansa's family seems aware of her boyfriend, so they must be fine with it. It’s none of Brienne’s business.

Sansa sticks her tongue out at Arya as she leaves. Rickon is stuffing his third serving of mac and cheese into his mouth at an impressive rate, and Bran is ignoring everyone to continue reading as he slowly eats.

“How far away is Gendry’s house, Arya?” Brienne asks, peering outside. The rain has picked up, and she’s not sure Arya should be out by herself in the wet and the dark.

“It’s close,” Arya says. “Super close. Three blocks.”

Brienne side-eyes her. This far from town, a “block” doesn’t have much meaning. It could be a long distance. “Let’s see what the weather’s like once you’re done with that math worksheet.”

Arya huffs loudly, but pushes her dishes aside to scratch at her homework again. Bran and Rickon disappear again, bickering about something.

Brienne is piling the rest of the kids’ dishes into the sink when she realizes that she doesn’t know how to use the Starks’ dishwasher. It’s silver and looks much, much newer than her dad’s. There are too many buttons, and none of them say “run.” Hopefully Mrs. Stark won’t mind coming home to dirty dishes in the sink too much. Or, Brienne supposes, she could do them by hand.

Brienne sighs and reaches for the dish soap. She can’t leave the dishes dirty. What if Mr. Stark is dead? Mrs. Stark won’t have time to do dishes.

She’s just plugged the sink and squirted some soap in when there’s a giant thunderclap, so loud it rattles the house. One of the kids shrieks from somewhere else in the house.

“Did you hear that!” Rickon yells as he runs into the kitchen. “Did you hear that, Brienne? That was the loudest thunder ever!”

Bran follows him. “It was just thunder.”

There’s a bang from upstairs, a flash of light through all the windows at once, and then a crack of thunder that is louder than anything Brienne has ever heard before.

The children scream and the lights go out. Then everything is strangely still, even the wind gone for the moment. One of the kids whimpers. Someone moves, then a drawer opens and shuts and a light clicks on: Bran holding a flashlight.

“Woah,” Arya says from where she’s still sitting at the kitchen table.

“Woah,” Rickon agrees.

The lights don’t come back on.

Brienne takes the flashlight from Bran. “Wait here, I’ll get Sansa.”

As she walks down the upstairs hallway towards Sansa’s room, the lights flicker back on. She would be relieved, but there’s a strange smell up here, like the air after a summer rainstorm but intensified. It’s not right, and it makes Brienne uneasy.

Sansa’s door is slightly open. Brienne pushes it wide as she says, “Sansa?”

Sansa’s room smells floral, like perfume or a summer rose garden, and floating above the pink shag rug is a slowly-rotating circle of golden light. It’s the size of a frisbee, revolving slowly like a top in midair, and it’s shrinking; as Brienne watches it shrinks to the size of a saucer, then a penny, then it vanishes with a sizzle.

There’s a scorch mark on the rug that had not been there before, a pink ceramic bowl with a cheery slogan about nail polish on it lying off to the side, water sloshed out over the top of it onto the rug, and a brass candlestick without a candle in it that Brienne recognizes from the Starks’ dining room table. This tableau is surrounded by a circle of red thread laid on the floor.

“Sansa?” Brienne asks again, uselessly. Somehow, she knows Sansa’s not under the bed or hiding in a closet. “Sansa?” She looks through the open bathroom door and in Theon and Robb’s room, checking even the master bedroom with Mrs. Stark’s things strewn messily on the neatly-made bed.

Sansa’s not there.

***

Once, when Brienne was little, before Galladon died, he’d “rescued” her from a tree. Galladon had been deemed old enough to go about by himself, and Brienne had begged him to go to the park. Or so he argued later. She doesn’t remember that part. What she does remember is that she had been searching through the woods at the edge of the park for particularly good sticks when something had caught her eye: a remarkably large old tree, spotted with mushrooms, its trunk partially rotted out. She’d taken a closer look and found a perfectly toddler-sized hole among the roots, something sparkling deep inside it.

She had knelt down to see better, peering inside, and the light was frustratingly far away. She had stuck her head inside the tree, wiggling forward to see better. A knot in the trunk had rotted through, like a small window. That was where the light was coming from. When she pressed her eye to it, she had gasped; she was looking out at a large, glimmering room, filled with people in brightly-colored outfits dancing. They seemed tiny, like Brienne could reach out a chubby toddler fist and grasp one in her hand like a doll. There were adults, and children, and even pets gallivanting about the ballroom. Brienne watched, entranced, as song after song played and the people danced through elaborate formations. One child, appearing to be about her age, caught her eye. They ran up to where Brienne was behind the wall of the tree, giggling, then tilted their head and closed one eye like she had. They beckoned, and Brienne was confused—how could she get through to them? The tree-wall was very solid—but when she took her eye away from the glowing window and looked up and down, she could see that the space she was in was not so small after all, and in fact the tree-wall even had a doorknob in it, a fancy one like at her grandma’s house, and she had been reaching out to pull it when something instead pulled her.

It was Galladon, pulling at her ankles. He had come looking for her, and had seen her light-up gym shoes poking out of the trunk. She’d seemed very stuck but “not at all worried about it,” as Galladon put it later. He’d yanked on her toddler legs to free her.

She’d told him about the dancing people in the tree on the way home, and Galladon had laughed at her and sarcastically asked if she’d seen piles of gold and a dog with eyes the size of mill-stones, too, when she’d crawled under there.

Galladon hadn’t taken her seriously, but when she’d repeated her story to their father, he had asked her careful questions. Had they seen her? She had for sure not opened the door? She hadn’t eaten anything from the tree, had she? (Of course not, she knew not to eat sticks and leaves, Dad.)

When she asked the next day, she and Galladon had not been permitted to go back to that park by themselves.

***

Brienne goes back downstairs. “Arya,” she says seriously, “You are not allowed to go to Gendry’s house. The weather is too bad.”

Arya opens her mouth like she’s going to argue, but Brienne continues talking. “I want the three of you to go in the family room and find something to watch on TV, okay?”

“Okay,” Bran eyes her warily. “Why?”

“Sansa is gone.” Brienne takes a deep breath. “And I need to go get her back.”

“Gone where?” Bran says, at the same time that Arya says, “She snuck out again?!” and Rickon asks, “Who gets to pick what we watch on TV?”

“I don’t know exactly where,” Brienne answers, “But I think I know how to find her. I need the three of you to stay together while I’m gone, okay? Don’t answer the door, don’t—try and use the stove or play with matches or anything. Stick together. And don’t let anyone inside the house.”

Bran nods seriously. “Okay,” he says, and grabs Rickon’s hand. “You can pick what we watch, Rickon,” he says, walking towards the family room.

Brienne goes back upstairs to Sansa’s room. She picks up the notebook on the bed and flips it open to the diagram she saw earlier. It’s a circle within a circle, spaces along the edge marked out, algebra and some trigonometry scrawled in the margins. Sansa takes excellent notes, and every part of it is clearly labeled. The steps of a ritual labeled “Calling a Door” are written out on the facing page. She needs water, a candlestick, herbs…

Brienne runs downstairs and grabs the other, matching bronze candlestick. She refills the pink ceramic bowl with water, and sets it at the edge of the circle where the diagram is labelled “water (normal).” There’s a protractor that’s been knocked under the bed, and Brienne fishes it out and uses it to copy the angles in Sansa’s diagram. She rearranges the scattered bundles of herbs, tied with red thread. She finds a cigarette lighter on the dresser and she grabs it, bringing it to the candle as she takes a deep breath, and then she pauses.

She shouldn’t go into this unprepared.

She races back downstairs to the basement. One corner of the room is set up with leather chairs and old-fashioned lamps, but there’s a workbench in the corner, buried under junk that someone at some point meant to fix. A scorched lightbulb, an ice skate with the plastic blade-holder come unscrewed from the boot, a plank of wood splintered and broken on one end, a set of hooks for hanging coats. She spots a handful of rusty-looking old nails and puts them in her hoodie pocket; they might be iron.

There’s a pile of old sporting gear along one wall. She digs through it, looking for anything that could plausibly be iron. Field hockey stick, figure skates, all too modern to contain iron. But—across the room, mounted on the wall above a painting of a bucolic Scottish countryside, is an antique set of golf clubs. She grabs one, testing the weight of the head. It’s weighty enough it could be made of iron.

She peeks into the family room—the kids are arrayed in front of the TV, watching a movie—and goes back to Sansa’s room. She kneels in the center of the circle of thread, clutching the golf club, and lights the candle, trying to “imbue the action with intent” like Sansa's notes said.

The revolving circle of light from before appears, starting as a spark above the candle and growing until it almost touches the ceiling. Through it, Brienne can see indistinct figures moving about a large, brightly-lit space. It’s blurry, as though through a camera lens smeared with too much Vaseline or a foggy window. The view vanishes as it turns, appearing and disappearing as the circle revolves.

Brienne takes a deep breath and steps through.

***

Brienne is standing in a glittering space, somehow simultaneously indoors and yet outdoors, great columns holding up the sky and chandeliers hanging from clouds. The space is filled with creatures of all types: not the music-box figures dancing in ball gowns she’d seen as a child, but a wild variety of beings. Some seem to be made of trees or flowers or growing things, and others’ skin is scaled and brightly patterned like iridescent lizards, and more seem human at a glance but sharply, almost scarily beautiful, with impossibly long hair or shimmering skin. Brienne wasn’t sure what she’d expected the fae folk to look like, but this was beyond anything she had imagined.

When she looks behind her, there is a large arched doorway, not set into any wall. Through it she can see Sansa’s bedroom, although the view is distorting, like changing the focus length on a camera, the image melting and stretching and then vanishing. She sets her mouth and turns back to the fairy realm before her.

The crowd around her stirs, their attention eddying and swirling around her, and she feels conspicuous in her basketball shorts and ancient hoodie. She shoves down her self-consciousness and starts looking for Sansa. A human must stick out here.

“Have you seen a human girl?” she asks the crowd. “Young, with red hair, wearing a blue shirt?”

None of the creatures respond to her. She shakes her head and moves on.

The crowd seems concentrated in one area, around a raised dais. Brienne pushes towards it, past a fairy wearing clothing that looks like water made into fabric, and another creature that—she shudders—is either entirely crawling with insects or is, in fact, one solid mass of swarming bugs. There is a large, ornate chair constructed of gold and twined with flowering vines in the center of the dais, and on it is a creature who looks disconcertingly like a human man wearing a golden crown.

She spots Sansa, then, and feels a rush of relief. Sansa is here, Brienne has found her! Sansa is sitting on a much less elaborate chair next to the throne, a crown made of glimmering dewdrops on her head, laughing at something the creature sitting on the throne says. He smiles at Sansa. His teeth are too sharp and his smile is too wide, and Brienne is absolutely sure that however much he may look it, he is not human.

“Hello,” Brienne calls as she reaches the dais.

The court ignores her.

“Hello,” she says again. “Sansa?”

Sansa doesn’t respond either, still smiling prettily at the courtiers crowded around the throne.

“My prince,” a fae with hair made of fire, flames licking down its back motions to the creature. “My prince, there is another mortal here.”

The prince on his throne turns, and his attention is on Brienne for the first time. “Another mortal? How did it get here?”

“I copied Sansa’s ritual,” Brienne explains.

“Oh,” he grimaces. “I should have made that one-use-only, I suppose.”

“Poor security,” a humanlike creature with antlers and a voice as rough as tree bark mutters.

Sansa continues to ignore Brienne, engaged in conversation with a fae creature whose exact form is hidden behind veils of golden light.

The prince waves his hand, looking bored. “What do you want? I have no use for another mortal girl, especially not,” he looks her up and down, “one as ugly as you.”

Brienne colors and clutches her golf club tighter, determined to ignore the insult. “I’m here to take Sansa home.”

He looks confused. “She is home.”

“Home to the human world,” Brienne says.

The fae prince laughs. “She called me herself,” he says. “She opened the door herself. She belongs here now, with us. You can’t take her back.”

“Sansa!” she calls again, watching Sansa for any reaction. There is none. It’s as though she can’t hear Brienne. The golden fae talking to Sansa turns, and Brienne can see that it is two fae. Or maybe not; maybe it is one creature with two faces. Its golden limbs are intertwined and shifting, uncountable.

Brienne re-settles her grip on her golf club. “I’m not leaving until I get her back.”

“And I’m not giving her back,” the fae prince tilts his head. "So what will you do?"

Fairies make deals, don’t they? Making a deal with the fair folk rarely works out well for humans in stories, but Brienne has no other ideas. She can’t force them to give Sansa back; there are dozens of fae and she has only a golf club and a handful of nails. “Can we make a deal for her?” Brienne asks.

The golden fae is watching her, now, as are the rest of the creatures crowded around the prince on his throne. All except for Sansa, in her dewdrop crown and her jeans and school t-shirt. She is still staring at the prince.

“Fine,” the fae prince says, waving his hand. “Bring me something else, then, mortal.”

“Bring you what?” she asks steadily.

“I don’t know,” he sounds irritated. “Something I don’t already have. Something special.”

“Special?” She asks. His answer is so vague. How is she to know what a fairy prince does or doesn’t have?

“I already have the most beautiful girl in the world.” He smiles at Sansa and conjures a flower out of nowhere to tuck behind her ear. Sansa giggles and doesn’t look at Brienne. "My gardens have the loveliest flowers. My coffers have the largest gems. What more could I want? What could you bring me that I don’t already have?"

He looks over to Brienne, in her old sneakers, wielding her golf club. His gaze lands on her makeshift weapon.

"I know," he says. "I've never had the sharpest thing in the world. Find the sharpest thing in the world, mortal, and bring it to me." He laughs. "Bring me something new. Then you can have your Sansa back."

***

The crowd seems infinite as Brienne walks back towards the archway she entered through.

She stumbles back through the door, but she does not find herself back in Sansa’s bedroom. Part of her is concerned about what that means for after she gets Sansa back and needs to bring her home, but she ignores that. She’s in what appears to be a forest, pine trees towering around her.

She barely has time to get her bearings before a voice says “Human,” from behind her. Brienne jumps.

It’s the golden fae from before. Or, Brienne realizes, perhaps only half of it. This creature has only one face, and seems smaller, with fewer limbs. It’s standing in front of the doorway Brienne just came through—an archway made of trees woven together, the faerie court visible through it.

“Where are you going?” the fae creature asks.

“To find the sharpest thing in the world,” Brienne says.

“How will you do that?” it asks, moving—half-floating, half-walking—along beside her.

“I don’t know.” She stares straight ahead. “But I’m going to find it.”

“We will accompany you,” it says.

Brienne almost trips over a tree root. “Why?” she asks, incredulous.

“We find you interesting,” it says. Brienne wonders where its twin is. Earlier, their golden forms had seemed inseparably intertwined. “It has been a while since a mortal made a deal on behalf of someone else.”

The fae is entirely golden, its skin glowing. Its hair is like a lion’s mane around its head. Brienne can’t tell its expression; she can’t see its face as anything more than a vague impression through the veils of light shimmering around it.

“Well,” she says, “do you know where to find the sharpest thing in the world? Or, to start with, do you know where we are?”

It laughs. “We’re in a forest to the north. Which is fortuitous, since we believe that the sharpest thing can be found at the very north of the world.”

“It can?” Brienne asks. “What is it?” She’s not sure she trusts this fae creature, but she has no idea what else to do. She could go home and research the sharpest knives and blades humans have manufactured, but somehow she feels like that won’t impress the prince of fairyland.

“The witches of the north create knives made of magical, unmelting ice.” The fae's golden aura is bright against the shadowed light of the forest. “They are so sharp they can cut through sunlight. Surely those are the sharpest weapon in the world.”

“How do I know you are telling the truth?” she asks, suspicious.

“Clever mortal,” it says, smiling. “We could trade. A truth for a truth.”

“Okay,” Brienne says. “Deal. Here is a truth: I am the best player on my basketball team.”

It chuckles. “We have no idea what that means.”

“But it’s true,” Brienne says. “I did not say it would make sense.” But she should be cooperative, if this fairy wants to help her. “Basketball is a team sport where players work together to throw a ball through a hoop. I am the best at it, of all the players on my team.”

“Hmm. Interesting." It sounds like it might even mean that. "Our truth is the same as before: we believe the sharpest weapon in the world is an ice knife made by the witches of the far north.”

Brienne nods. “I believe you.”

“We are trying to help you, mortal,” it says. Brienne is tired of being condescended to.

“My name is Brienne,” she snaps. “Not mortal.” She tries to stomp away angrily in a different direction, but she doesn’t get very far. The fae follows leisurely behind her.

“What difference does it make?” It asks, seeming genuinely confused.

“It’s polite to call people by their names,” she says.

"Polite," it echoes, laughing.

"Yes." She crosses her arms over her chest. "To be polite, you ask someone what their name is when you meet them. Like this." She holds out her hand. "We shake hands and I say, 'My name is Brienne. It's nice to meet you. What's your name?' And then you answer."

“Tell you our name?” It laughs. “We are not giving you our name, mortal. We are not that foolish.”

Brienne blushes. “Oh. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not trying to—to trap you, or anything.”

It laughs. “Why not? You don’t want a fairy servant?”

Brienne shakes her head. “No, thank you.”

It hisses, recoiling. “Do not thank us,” it says. “Are you trying to anger us?”

“I’m sorry,” Brienne says, desperately. This creature is the only real link she has back to Sansa, and she can’t lose it. “I—appreciate your company. I did not mean to hurt you. Did that hurt you?” she asks.

“Yes,” it says. “But we will forgive you, we think. You are a mortal, and you don’t know anything. One does not thank a fairy.” Its manner is prim, in a way that reminds Brienne of Sansa, and she almost wants to smile.

It points through a stand of pine trees, and Brienne follows its directions.

They walk together through the forest. Brienne is too occupied with worrying about Sansa—is she safe? Will the fae hurt her, intentionally or otherwise?

“You’re very ugly.” Its tone is conversational. “Even uglier than most mortals.”

Brienne flinches. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” she recites angrily. How does this creature even have any conception of mortal beauty standards? It’s unfair.

“On the inside? What, the meat and bones mortals are made of?” the creature asks, incredulous.

“No,” she says. “Kindness. Integrity. Intentions. Honesty. Those sorts of things.”

It doesn’t respond, but its mien looks almost thoughtful, as well as Brienne can tell its intentions. It is silent again for a while, until Brienne decides to ask a follow-up question. “You said ‘the meat and bones humans are made of,” she says. “What are you made of, if not meat and bones?”

“We’re not made of flesh. Well, not most of us. But we are not made of flesh and blood and bone like you are. We are made of elements of the natural world.”

“Elements of the natural world…” Brienne muses, almost tripping as she steps on a pinecone. “Are you made of light, then?”

“We’re made of summer afternoon sunshine,” it answers promptly, sounding proud, “And the scent of a meadow in August, and the gold glimmering at the bottom of a shallow river.”

Brienne eyes the creature. She believes it: its light is golden and, when it comes close to her, she can feel a gentle warmth.

They’ve been walking for what seems like a very long time when Brienne sees the first snow on the ground, dusted over the pine litter. Soon after, they reach the end of the trees, the light growing brighter.

Standing at the edge of the forest, Brienne can see nothing ahead of them but a vast, snow-covered tundra, tufts of grass sticking up through gently rolling drifts of snow. It seems infinite.

“Which way now?” she asks. It points straight ahead. Brienne steps onto the snow.

She walks across the snowy landscape for an uncountable amount of time, stopping intermittently to sleep curled up in the warmth of the golden fae. The sun moves in slow circles overhead, dipping towards the horizon but never coming close to it. Despite the snow, her gym shoes never soak through, and she is merely chilly in her hoodie and shorts, not unbearably cold. She doesn’t know how many days have passed, although the golden fae assures her that time will pass differently here than it will back in court, where the days are moving much, much more slowly for Sansa.

“Are you sure these ice knives are the sharpest things in the world?” She asks at one point.

“The sharpest weapons, certainly."

“But the absolute sharpest thing?” Brienne presses.

“Whatever you bring needn’t actually be—what’s the word—empirically the sharpest object in the universe." It gestures with one of its glowing limbs. “You merely need to convince the prince that it is. It’s the same thing.”

“No it isn’t,” Brienne says.

“Yes it is,” the fae says.

She decides not to argue—it certainly knows the rules of the fae court better than she does—and continues walking over the snow, the sun circling in the sky overhead.

A few minutes or hours later, the golden fae speaks again. “Why are you doing this?” it asks, while Brienne is busy wondering why she hasn’t felt hungry.

“I promised Sansa’s mom I’d take care of her,” she says. “I can’t break that promise.” That, at least, the fairy ought to understand.

“Why not?” it asks. “I thought mortals were unbound, free to give oaths without keeping them.”

“We are not bound to our promises, that’s true.” Brienne isn't sure how to explain. “But we choose to keep them, for the sake of being an honest person. For the sake of being a person with integrity.”

“Because,” the fae says, “that’s what counts, to you. Not beauty but integrity, honesty.”

“Aren’t those beautiful?” Brienne asks. It doesn’t answer.

Eventually, she speaks up again. “What happens, if you make a promise but don’t keep it?”

It cocks its head at her, its golden light glimmering against the snow. “If you give an oath but don’t keep it,” it says, “the oath will take you instead.”

What does that mean? Brienne is too tired to ask more questions and hear more incomprehensible answers. They keep walking.

Eventually, Brienne sees a shape in the landscape up ahead. It’s the same color as the snow, but it’s definitely taller. As they get closer she can tell it’s a building, made of blocks of snow.

It seems to take hours before they reach it, the building seeming to only grow larger, never closer. But finally, they are there.

The golden fae strides up to the tall carved ice-door in its strange, half-floating fashion and reaches out a limb to bang the knocker. The sound reverberates over the snowy landscape.

The door creaks open, and a human-looking woman wearing glittering white robes opens it.

“Hello,” she says. “What brings a human and one of the fair folk to our door together?”

“We need the sharpest thing in the world,” Brienne starts confidently, “And we heard that that is one of your, um, ice knives?” She trails off.

The woman smiles. “We do indeed make knives with the sharpest cutting edge of any weapon. Please, come with me.” She leads them inside, then, and down a hallway to a room lined with cabinets and drawers and shelves, carved out of snow and filled with containers made of glass or, Brienne supposes, more likely ice. Objects of every color, glowing and pulsing and occasionally writhing, fill the ice jars, their shapes distorted by the imperfect surfaces.

Brienne presses a hand to the snowy wall, but it doesn’t melt. The witch, for she must be a witch, approaches a cabinet.

“This is our sharpest knife,” the witch says, turning back to them with a dagger. It’s the length of Brienne’s forearm, and made of clear, translucent ice.

“Now,” she sets it on the table in front of them, “what do you have to trade for it?”

Brienne hadn’t even thought about payment. “I don’t have any money.”

The witch tilts her head. “I don’t want money. How about a memory of childhood happiness, or the scent of your second-favorite flower?”

The golden fae steps forward. “May I offer the sensation of resting in a meadow on a summer’s day?”

“Hmmmm,” the witch says, looking unconvinced.

“A soft breeze in your hair,” the fae continues, “the smell of flowers.” Its meadow-scent intensifies.

“Deal.” The witch reaches a hand forward. The golden fae takes it, and a swathe of golden light swirls up its arm. The witch catches it and draws away, cradling it in her palms. “Lovely,” she breathes.

The witch moves to the wall and takes down a container made of what could be glass or could be ice, and the strand of golden light settles inside it. “I’ll treasure this in midwinter."

The golden fae carefully lifts the knife from the table, offering it hilt-first to Brienne. She takes it. It’s cold, but not unbearably so, and she clutches it to her chest.

Now she just has to get back to Sansa.

“Can I thank you?” She asks the witch.

The witch smiles. “Yes."

“Thank you,” Brienne says. “We appreciate your help.”

“You’re welcome,” the witch says.

Now she just has to walk back across the snowy landscape in reverse, and find her way back through that forest to the arched doorway in the trees.

Then she can present her knife to the fae prince and he’ll give her Sansa back.

***

"No," the fairy prince says from where he is sitting on his throne.

Brienne stares. "What do you mean, no?"

"I mean no," he says, hardly looking at her. "I have one of those already. Boring."

"You said to 'bring me the sharpest thing in the world,'" Brienne accuses. "So I did."

"I said," the prince answers impatiently, "to bring me something new. A knife made of ice by the witches of the north isn't new. I have one of those lying around somewhere. The frost trolls brought it as tribute.”

"It's the sharpest knife in the world." Brienne knows she sounds desperate. "It's so sharp it can cut light." Sansa is right there, behind the fairy prince, close enough Brienne could run and grab her if they weren’t surrounded. But Sansa isn’t looking at Brienne, or even at the fairy prince. She’s dressed in an elaborate pink dress, long and shimmery, and a fairy with a halo of leaves around their head and an apple-green dress identical to Sansa’s is braiding flowers into her hair and whispering into her ear.

"Yes, yes, sharpest knife in the world,” the prince says, bored. "I know. Like I said, I have one. Take it away, mortal. Go away from here."

“Our liege." Brienne's golden creature steps forward. “The mortal followed the terms of the bargain. You are bound to—“

“I am not bound to do anything,” the prince snaps. “I said I wanted something new. This isn’t new. My mortal girl is new, and I like her much better than I like that knife. It’s not complicated.” Another fae brings him a tray of fruit, like berries but not like any berries Brienne has ever seen before, and the prince becomes occupied with picking through the tray. He bites delicately into a berry, and it seems inordinately juicy, red dripping over his lips.

“How much entertainment can that mortal girl bring you?” Brienne’s golden fae asks.

“She’s entertaining enough,” the fairy prince says. “Less boring than other mortals. And stupid, but that can’t be helped. I am very fond of watching her.” He gestures for the fairy with the tray of berries to take them over to Sansa and watches closely while Sansa takes one and eats it.

The golden fae tries again. “You have a reputation for unique generosity, our liege—“

“Be quiet,” the fairy prince says. “I don’t care.” He turns away from them completely, towards Sansa. The prince throws a berry at her, and she hardly seems to notice. He throws another, and it bursts open, staining her dress with a burst of red juice. The drops of juice turn into little squirming red worms that wriggle away over Sansa’s dress, and she finally seems to notice, shrieking a little and holding her dress away from herself as the prince chuckles. The court echoes him.

The apple-green fae rolls her eyes and picks the worms off Sansa's dress, tossing them away.

“Please,” Brienne says, one last time, but the court ignores her. The prince moves away from her. Her ice knife is left in front of the throne, abandoned.

Brienne turns around, walking away numbly, her mind racing in pointless circles. Could she argue her case better? She has never been any good at debate, at speaking convincingly. She does not have a clever tongue.

She pauses.

Then she turns back towards Sansa. “Sansa!” She calls.

The court ignores her.

“Sansa!” She bellows.

Sansa blinks. She turns toward Brienne.

“Sansa!” Brienne shouts again.

Sansa’s gaze focuses on Brienne. “Brienne?” she says slowly.

“Prince,” Brienne starts, then realizes she doesn’t know how to address him. He is not her liege. What had Sansa called him earlier, at dinner that night? “Prince Joffrey,” she says.

He whirls back around to look at Brienne, hissing. “You again, mortal.”

“Sansa,” Brienne says desperately, “You don’t want to stay here forever, do you?”

“No.” Sansa's voice is clear. “I want to go home.”

“You don’t like it here, do you?” Brienne asks. “What do you think of Prince Joffrey?”

Sansa grimaces. “Not as advertised,” she says.

“Why don’t you tell him what you think?” Brienne says.

Sansa turns to the prince. “You’re cruel, and not even in an interesting way,” Sansa says. “I mean, worms? Are you in kindergarten? Are you going to pull my pigtails next? Boring.”

“Boring?” The fairy prince sputters.

“Cliché.” Sansa rolls her eyes. “And making me dance for you earlier? Extremely typical powerful monarch abducts young woman move. Come on. You’re the most powerful fae in your court,” she says, voice mocking, “and you’ve had thousands of years of life to get creative and you couldn’t come up with something better?”

“What are you saying,” the prince says.

“Thanks,” Sansa says, and the fairy prince recoils with a wail, the word landing like a physical blow, “But no thanks. I’m leaving.”

Brienne smiles. “The sharpest thing in the world,” she levels her words at the prince. “The tongue of a teenage girl as she rejects you.”

Her golden fae begins laughing, a burbling sound.

“No,” the prince says.

“Yes,” Brienne replies. “Sansa, come on. Let’s go.”

“That was the sharpest thing we have ever seen.” Brienne's golden creature floats up behind her. “And it was certainly new. The mortal has won, our liege.”

“Fine. Maybe I have to let Sansa go,” the fairy prince narrows his eyes, “but I didn’t say anything about you,” he says, pointing at Brienne.

Sansa grabs Brienne by the wrist. “Run!” she says, tugging. Her golden fae follows them, and they stumble together through the crowd of glimmering creatures, towards the door at the end of the hall.

Brienne pushes fairies aside, brandishing her golf club. They titter and screech but none try to stop them.

Until something grabs Brienne by the hair and she is yanked to a stop with a pained scream. A familiar golden arm closes around her front and a familiar golden hand holds a knife to her throat. The ice knife. With a sick weight in her stomach, she berates herself for being stupid enough to trust one of these creatures. It has betrayed her in the end. Its limbs are painfully hot around her, scorching like a sunburn. She swings wildly behind her with the golf club but can’t connect.

Sansa is screaming at it, shouting “Let her go! Let her go!” and Brienne can hear its chuckle like a summer stream burbling over rocks in her ear. It’s no longer comforting.

Then, suddenly, her golden creature is in front of her again, its golden shimmer no longer passing over and around itself in gentle waves but stirred up, furious, like the sea in a storm. Brienne blinks, confused.

“What are we doing?!” It demands, enraged, and suddenly Brienne remembers—its twin. Its twin has grabbed her and is holding a knife to her throat.

“We would LEAVE us?!” It shrieks. Its voice stings Brienne somehow, and she winces.

“Please,” her creature begs, “Let her go. Let us go! We will come back. We can be apart for a little while. We just want to see what the mortals are like. We like this one. She has her own mortal honor. ”

“Honor? What does a mortal possibly know of honor?”

“Mortals can choose honor,” her creature pleads, “and she has chosen honor every time. We will see—come with us, we will see. She is wondrous.”

“She is a dying thing,” the one holding Brienne seethes. “And she is ugly besides. We don’t like her. What could we possibly want with her?”

Brienne’s golden creature’s glow snaps, then holds still, a strange intensity coming over it. “I like her,” it says.

The creature holding Brienne wails, then takes the icy knife and slashes, not into Brienne’s flesh but through the air in front of it.

Her ears fill with twin screams, as bright and overwhelming as lightning in a summer storm, and Brienne is no longer restrained. She stumbles forward. Her creature is lying on the grass in front of her, convulsing. Her shoe skids in a puddle of gold liquid.

Sansa reaches out for Brienne, screaming “Come on, come on!” in her high-pitched thirteen-year-old voice.

The other golden creature gets up, lunging towards them. Brienne shoves her hand into her pocket and grabs the nails, tossing them at it. It recoils with a shriek.

Brienne hands Sansa the golf club and scoops her creature, which is heavier than she’d expect for a being allegedly made of sunlight, up in her arms and staggers towards the door.

“Take us home,” Sansa shouts at the door, and jumps through. Brienne jumps after her.

***

They crash back into Sansa’s bedroom, a noise that might be thunder or might be the slamming shut of a door echoing in Brienne’s ears.

The creature is hunched over, its limbs pressed to its midsection. Its golden glow is whiplashing around itself. It is fainter than before, and its edges are rough now, sparks dripping off it. It is making a high-pitched sound Brienne doesn’t know how to describe. It is clenching its eyes shut, and Brienne realizes with a start that she can see its face clearly now.

“Are you okay?” she asks worriedly.

“We stabbed us,” it says, grasping at the air and staring at its own hands as though watching water flow out of them. “We cut us apart. We cut ourselves!”

It seems to be in shock. Brienne kneels down next to it, then reaches out a hand to tentatively stroke over its back. Is its magic injured? Is that severe? She has no idea.

Across the room, Sansa wobbles to her feet. She holds her hand over her mouth and says “I think I’m going to be sick,” and then lunges out the door to the hallway and the bathroom.

Brienne will deal with Sansa, and—she shoves down panic—with the other Stark children later. Her creature might be seriously injured. She can’t tell. She still doesn’t know anything about magic.

“It stabbed me,” it says, dully. “It… cut me.” Brienne leans forward tentatively captures it in a hug. They stay like that for long minutes,

“Something is wrong,” it says, anguished.

“What can I do to help?” Brienne asks. She has no idea how to administer first aid to a creature made of sunlight and gold.

It looks up at her with eyes dripping tears like liquid gold and says, “Kiss me.”

“What?” Brienne asks, shocked. “What?”

“You like me,” it says.

“Yes,” Brienne nods. She does.

“But you don’t like… it.”

“Your… twin?” she asks. “The other you?”

“Yes,” it says. “You don’t like it.”

“Definitely not,” Brienne says. “It hurt you.”

It nods decisively. “Think of how you like me and kiss me, then. Help me be me, and only me.”

Brienne has never kissed anyone before. She had thought that maybe, if she went away for college, she would find some boy who liked her enough to ignore her size and her appearance, who would kiss her goodnight after their first date. Maybe not a boy, although she had firmly chosen to think about that complication later. She had not pictured herself sitting on the rug in Sansa Stark’s pink-painted, frilly bedroom, wearing her oldest pair of basketball shorts, magical blood staining her gym shoes.

She leans in, closing her eyes. Touching her lips to the creature’s tingles pleasantly, like goosebumps from a warm breeze.

Her creature smiles against her lips, breaking the kiss, and Brienne draws away. Its glow is steadier now. Brienne touches its face. “Are you… okay?” the word seems so inadequate.

“I am hurt, and I am healed, all at once,” her creature says. “I am half of what I was, but… I am whole.”

“Okay,” Brienne says slowly. “Can I… help somehow?”

“No,” it says. “Although I would like to stay near you, Brienne Tarth. I like you.”

Brienne almost says thanks, but stops herself in time.

They’re still kneeling together on the rug when Sansa tumbles back into the room. “Brienne! Are you okay? Are you both okay?”

“Yes,” Brienne says, getting to her feet and reaching out a hand to the creature. It extends a limb—still shifting and imprecise, though fewer now—and lets Brienne pull it to its feet.

“Do you need… um… a magical bandaid?” Sansa asks the creature.

It laughs, the meadowbrook sound again. “You have my appreciation, Sansa Stark, but you cannot help me. Nobody can. Do not fear; my wound will not fester like a mortal wound. I must become accustomed to my new shape of self.”

Brienne nods. She’s not sure how to respond to that. But Sansa is nodding too, so it works.

“Arya and Bran and Rickon are watching TV downstairs,” Sansa supplies. “They seem fine. I told them you need a minute. And that I was hiding but you found me and then we climbed back in through the window. I don’t think Arya bought it, though.”

Brienne groans. The other Stark kids. “I was supposed to have Rickon in bed by 8:30,” she says.

“I mean,” Sansa says, grabbing a hairbrush and starting on the end of her tangled ponytail, “If you let them stay up really late and tell them not to tell Mom we disappeared, they won’t tell.”

Brienne nods. What's one more dubious deal with capricious creatures, after all that?

“What should we call you?” she asks the golden creature.

“I… don’t know,” it says. “I have never needed my own name before. I will have to discover my new name. I must have one.”

“In the meantime,” Sansa says, “would you like a mortal name?”

The creature brightens. Literally. “Yes, I would. Do you have a suggestion?”

"Um,” Brienne thinks. “Duncan? Tanselle? Jon?” Sansa makes a noise, and Brienne remembers the estranged half-brother. “Not Jon.”

“J’aime,” Sansa supplies. “It means ‘I love’ in French.”

“Gem?” Brienne says, “like a fancy rock?”

“No,” Sansa rolls her eyes. “J-apostrophe-A-I-M-E. I’ve been saving that name to give to my daughter someday, but you can use it if you want. It’s very elegant.”

The creature raises one eyebrow. “I don’t know if I’m anyone’s daughter."

“That’s okay,” Sansa says considerately, “It’s a gender-neutral name. And you can always leave out the apostrophe and pronounce it like Jamie, if you want. It’s versatile.”

“Hmmm,” it tilts its head. “Elegant. J’aime. Jaime? J’aime.”

“You can’t be seen like that in the human world, though.” Brienne gestures to its golden-glowing skin. Fairies in stories always have glamours, and she hopes her creature can do something similar.

“Oh,” it says. “I suppose not.” It trembles, and its golden sunlit skin seems to fall away, delicately crashing against the floor and shattering into nothingness. It rolls its shoulders and tips its head back, then shakes its head like a dog shaking water out of its fur. It smiles at them, a human smile in a human face, and Brienne gawps. It holds out its hand to them.

“Holy shit,” Sansa says. “You’re so hot. Hooooly shit.”

It draws its hand back. Brienne notes that it is shirtless. It is, in fact, not wearing any clothing at all. “Hot?” It asks, frowning. “What temperature—”

“No,” Sansa says. “No, you’re fine, you’re fine. Great job. Wow.”

It nods, its golden curls bouncing a little around its face. “Hello,” it says, holding out its hand to shake. Its left hand, Brienne notices—its right hand is missing, a fresh but healed-over wound. “Call me Jaime.”