“At it, Rod!”
Ten-year-old Sophie was armed with a wooden sword, dressed in a loose shirt and breeches, battling in the yard with one of the village boys, fresh out of class.
“Sophie, please…” Sansa tried to calm herself down as she watched her daughter swinging the large wooden object and clashing it into the boy’s sword. “You’re going to get hurt…”
“Sansa,” Tyrion chuckled, leaning back contentedly in his wooden lawn chair, “I do believe she’s holding her own.”
“She shouldn’t be doing that, Tyrion,” she chided him. “She’s…she’s too old for it!”
“What? She’s just getting good at it!”
“She’s not a boy, Tyrion! She’s a little girl! She’s supposed to be…learning to be…”
Another loud crack erupted as she blocked another of the boy’s thrusts and wacked him hard across the kneecap.
“Sophie, you’re going to kill somebody!”
“Dear, please relax,” Tyrion sighed, observing her pressing her knuckles to her teeth. “She and Rod do this almost daily, and neither one have managed to kill each other…yet.” There was a twinkle in his eyes.
“She should be learning to embroider, not fence,” Sansa exhaled. “And she really shouldn’t be dressing in breeches, especially in front of boys. It’s most unseemly. She should have started wearing a corset by now. Can’t she try to be just a little more… feminine?”
“I think you cover that field quite thoroughly, Sansa,” he replied. “And you do have your Caitey.”
Sansa blinked at his rather dismissive remark about their smallest daughter, who was sitting not far off from where Sophie and Rod were battling. The six-year-old, as usual, was enraptured by her sister’s exploits which she could not join, her arm wrapped around the now elderly dog Arya’s neck. Her dwarfism still caused her to have a hard time walking, although she had a great deal of determination and always got up when she fell down. Rather like her father…
“Our Caitey, Tyrion,” Sansa reminded him quietly.
“I beat him again, Papa!” Sophie cried triumphantly, rushing over to her father. “I am getting better at it, aren’t I?”
“You are at that, my little wolf,” he affirmed, leaning up in his chair and checking her sword as if it were a knight’s well-worn weapon. “I fear you will have put his manhood to full shame before long.”
“When might I have a real sword?” she inquired eagerly.
“Sophie, you know you’re not getting one, so why must you always ask your father that way?” Sansa exhaled, brushing back her daughter’s wild dark hair that was falling in her smudged face.
“But I am old enough now,” she protested. “When I was little, I played with a toy horse because I would have got hurt on a real one. But now I’m older, and I can ride with the best of them. Why can it not be the same with a sword?”
“Now then, why don’t we talk about it more when we go for our walk?” Tyrion suggested, wanting to break up another quarrel between mother and daughter on the subject.
“Don’t keep her out too long,” Sansa chided. “I have to make sure she’s cleaned up and dressed for his lordship’s feast tonight.”
Sophie rolled her eyes at the thought of having to be dressed according to her mother’s frilly preference. The gathering that evening was to celebrate the harvest as well as the alliance of the villages and the castle, brought together through Tyrion’s deft diplomatic skills. Thus far, although internal factions still existed, it had been for the benefit of all, maintaining the liberty of the village councils yet also recognizing the obligation of Thurandin to use his fortress for the protection of the whole. In exchange for that protection and the use of the open library Tyrion had transformed for teaching purposes, the villagers would help to keep the castle functioning and acknowledge it as the central point of the region.
But all this having been said, Sophie saw little point in celebrating the alliance by dressing up like a doll. She would prefer to be dressed like her father, in a fine crimson and gold tunic, the colors of the lord’s house. She wished, more than anything, that she might have been born a boy. Then she would dress as she pleased, and wear a shiny steel sword strapped round her middle, with blood-red jewels all about the golden hilt.
But at the very least she could go walking with her father before the ordeal. She enjoyed their walks in the woods. They made her feel more alive than all the forced lessons she was made to take, and the stories he often told her would set her mind on fire.
“Papa, why can I not have a sword?” she asked again as they walked.
“And what would you be using it for, little warrior?” he asked indulgently. “Carving roast turkey?”
“Really, Papa, I could be in a real battle someday! I might need a sword!”
“Gods willing, you will never know a battle that needs fighting in this place,” he stated.
“But what if I leave here in years to come? What if I go to the city?”
“Then you will surely sustain yourself by a sharper sword,” he offered. “You have my mind, child, and your mother’s heart. They have always served me better than the keenest weapons.”
“I don’t think I have anything from mother,” she mumbled lowly.
Tyrion paused. “That’s not true, not true at all…”
“Will you tell me more about the war, papa? Tell me about the battles you saw?”
He sighed. “Perhaps I have made them too…romantic for you already.”
“It’s not that,” she sighed. “It’s just…they’re exciting.”
He turned his eyes down, realizing how similar they really were. “Yes, thrilling,” he admitted. “And…and we wanted to be away from them, Sophie. We would have done anything to get away from the wars. It was not…a noble sport.”
“I think I might have been good at it, though,” she said unflinchingly, “like you were.”
He smiled almost grimly. “Yes, I think you would have been.”
“What were they like, Papa, the banners that were raised against the sky? What was it like to see them, and to lead men?”
“It was…all awe, my girl. And to me, it was all the more so behind the battle lines, the crafting of destiny, as I saw it. But the morning, however bright it dawned, always bled out in the end, and the banners bled out.”
She looked down dismally. “You just don’t think I am good enough for it because I’m a girl,” she mumbled. “Because of mother. She’s not like us; she just doesn’t understand…”
“Your mother is the strongest woman I have ever known,” he stated, and his voice grew hard. “She has been through more than I pray the gods will ever keep you to bear, and come out still unbroken. You know nothing if you think her desire to protect you is a show of weakness. She has more courage than I have had a right to deserve in a wife. You must remember that, Sophie. Hear me?”
Chastened by the lecture, she nodded solemnly.
“Alright then. You’d best get back. Your mother will be waiting for you to try on your new dress…”
“The dress? Oh, Papa…”
“Sophie.” He gave her a look of authority and she exhaled. He smiled a little. “Now, really, it can’t be ever so bad as all that. It’s for one night.”
“The boys will make terrible fun of me if they catch me all frilled and fancied up,” she lamented.
“Believe me, that’ll change in a few years’ time,” he assured with a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “Now off to the castle with you!”
Sophie reluctantly did as she was told, and found herself going through a multi-hour ordeal of being bathed and dressed in a purple and white saffron gown. She was tall for her age, and was already beginning to need additional material added, which her mother saw to with a great deal of personal attention. She also had help to implement her instructions.
“Stand still, or you’ll get pricked!” Sauriel muttered through the pins held in her mouth, as Sophie stood on a stool being forced into her dress. The old healer was accustomed to dealing with Sophie’s rebellious streak and moods, but she was being particularly frustrating today, even for a seasoned veteran of powers and personalities such as her.
“Sophie, stop giving Sauriel such a hard time of it,” her mother scolded. “She’s almost through with you now, anyway.”
“Why must I wear this, Mother, why?” she blurted. “I’ve never had to go to the gatherings before in such things…”
“Because you’re grown up now,” she stated. “You’re meant to look and act respectably in spite of yourself.”
“Grown up,” Sauriel repeated, rolling her eyes. “Grown wild, like the storm in her eyes and the raven in her hair.”
It was true that Sophie’s once blue eyes had turned more gray as she grew older, and her once brown hair had darkened. The old woman had taken it for an omen more than once. She called them “sword eyes”. Sansa had been understandably unnerved by the suggestion of her child’s fate, and always tried to change the subject whenever Sauriel introduced it.
“Well, we’re going to tame that wildness,” Sansa huffed, working Sophie’s hair into a tight, ladylike bun.
Caitey was watching from a seat in the corner, looking at a picture book, a favorite pastime of hers. “Sophie, I know it may be scratchy,” the little girl tried to sympathize, “but you look so pretty in it. If I were pretty like you, I’d wear any dress Mama chose. They’re always so beautiful…”
“Of course you would,” Sophie shot back lowly. “You’d do anything mother wanted, wouldn’t you, even if it did make you look silly?”
Sansa gave Sophie a harsh look as Caitey’s face fell at the rebuke. She smiled softly at her smallest, shyest daughter with whom she spent so many hours, helping her in whatever way she could think, to stand and to walk, to read and sew. It was the saddest thing in the world that her own dream had come true in Caitey, for here she had a daughter after her own heart, a true lady…and yet she knew the world would never treat her as she deserved. All the same, Sansa assured her, “Sweetheart, when you’re old enough to go to parties, you may wear whatever beautiful dress you wish.”
Sophie huffed impatiently. “Are we done yet?”
“Careful with your tone,” her mother warned, her teeth set on edge by Sophie’s insensibility to just how much her sister looked up to her.
“Thankfully for all, I believe the strife is o’er,” Sauriel declared, standing away as Sophie jumped down from the stool.
Sansa turned back to Caitey, who still looked stung by her sister’s comment, and asked softly, “Will you…be alright here for a little while?”
Caitey nodded sadly but obligingly, and Sansa kissed her daughter on the forehead before leaving with Sophie to go to the great hall.
But Sauriel was still standing there, gazing at Caitey. “Are you really alright, my quiet one?”
The little girl swallowed. “Yes, alright…”
Sauriel sat down next to her, and saw that her fist was clenched. “What is it that you are thinking about so hard? It comes through you in ways other than the voice, you know.”
“I’m…weak,” she whispered. “And…ugly. No matter what Mama says, I know I am.”
“Oh, child,” Sauriel soothed her, stroking back her blonde hair. “How could you ever be weak or ugly? No one with your kindness or patience could be either.”
“But…but I can’t keep up with Sophie,” she insisted. “I can’t play like she does…and she never wants me around…” The little girl bit back a sob.
“But you don’t have to be Sophie,” Sauriel countered. “Nor indeed should you be. You also don’t have to be your mother or your father. It matters not what other people want you to be. You just have to be you. And that’s when you’ll find a strength all your own.”
“But all of them are very strong,” she protested. “Mama is so pretty, and so like a queen. Papa is so smart and proud. And Sophie…” Her eyes sparkled with hero-worship.
“She’s just…Sophie,” Sauriel exhaled. “And you’re Caitey. You may not be devouring books on politics nor swinging wooden swords around, but those are not the only shows of strength.”
“What…what could I ever do? I’m ever so dull to be around, Sauriel.”
Sauriel opened the book she’d picked up. The page had a picture of a unicorn with a rose wrapped around its horn. “How much strength do you think it took for one to create this image?”
“I…I don’t know,” she stammered. “Not very much, I suppose.”
“Really now? Do you think anyone can make it?”
Caitey looked more closely at the image. “I don’t know about anyone. But I think I can.”
“Can you?”
“Yes, yes, I…can do it.”
Sauriel smiled. “Yes, you can.”
***
The evening’s events had unfolded with lots of speeches from longwinded people, including Lord Thurandin who, under Tyrion’s counsel, had made more public appearances that had been his wont previously. Sophie had only been interested in her father when it was his turn. Afterward, she had moodily begun stabbing at her meal with a fork, but she had little appetite.
She felt stiff and scratchy in her dress, and would have given anything to be out of it. She glared enviously at the councilman’s son sitting across from her, and his handsome jerkin and leggings. She even found herself obsessing over his fine boots, catching glimpses of them under the table. She loved the way boots made her feel, the sound they made when she walked in them. And her own pathetically ladylike slippers were starting to pinch and suffocate her feet.
But as for the boy himself, she didn’t like him much at all. He was staring at her glibly, with a crooked-toothed grin that unnerved her, and a taunting look in his hazel eyes. She knew his father had been one of the village councilmen to oppose to alliance, and was jealous of Tyrion for rising so quickly in his position at the castle. Now was his opportunity to play with her.
“Your father, he’s only half a man,” the boy sneered under his breath.
Her eyes darted to the cynical smile on his face, and then narrowed angrily, but she held herself from responding. She did not want to give him any unnecessary pleasure, but her blood was boiling inside.
How dare he, how dare he mock Papa, the hand of the lord, the most important man in the mountains! Why, he was smarter than all of these petty councilmen put together, and of better blood, and higher rank, and could have this nasty urchin’s head on a platter surely, and Sophie decided she just might ask for it, especially for her…
“My mother always said crooked eyes are a sure sign of a demon hid inside,” the boy continued. “How did he win your mother, hmm? Juggle on a stool?”
Sophie clutched her napkin. “You keep your bleedin’ tongue in your head, bullock-brain.”
“It’s in my head, alright, and I’ll be using it, too,” he retorted haughtily. “See, we know all about your people. You’re exiles from the land across the sea. You’re not part of us, and you’ll be taken on back there sooner or later. You’ll remember this when they cut your father’s ugly head off his little body…”
“I hope you bite your tongue off,” she snarled. “I hope you choke to death on it.”
“Well, isn’t that sweet?” he mocked her. “Seems you have a little bit of demon in you, too…”
The next thing the boy knew, Sophie had lunged across the table and had him by the collar. The boy, in a chokehold, responded by yanking her halfway over, knocking plates of food everywhere. Sophie decided it best to take advantage of the situation, and forcefully pulled herself the rest of the way across, staining her dress with gravy and cranberry sauce, and pounced on him on the other side. She then proceeded to punch him right smack in the jaw.
“Sophie, by the gods! Enough!” Sansa was swooped down on her daughter like an owl, tearing her daughter off the boy. “Look at you, look at what you’ve done, shaming your father and disgracing your guests! Have you no sense at all?”
For the first time, Sophie realized that the entire room, consisting of two long tables full of guests, were staring at her. Some were starting to upbraid his lordship for the disturbance. Tyrion was trying to quiet them, assuring, rather halfheartedly that children will be children, and should be sent off to bed as opposed to disrupting the rest of the feast over it, especially after such an eventful harvest.
Then he made his way from his seat to the other table, and harshly whispered to Sophie, “Get out of here, get to your room this instant. Do you see what level of damage you almost caused with your out-of-control antics?”
“But Papa…”
“Go to your room now, young lady, and do not presume to speak back to me again. I’ll decide on your fuller punishment later. I’ve let you fly too high; your wings must be clipped, for all our sakes. Now go!”
***
Sansa came into Sophie’s room later that night, and found her daughter in bed, but obviously still awake. She sat down on a stool near the end table. “I brought you some bread and butter,” Sansa said softly.
“I’m not hungry,” Sophie declined.
“Dear, you really must try to eat something. You barely had a bite down in the hall…”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered.
“Just because you act like a hooligan, it doesn’t mean you need starve yourself,” her mother huffed. “But I do find it exceedingly hard to believe even you would take it to such lengths at a public gathering. You knew how important it was to your father and me, and to all the people of these mountains….”
“It wasn’t…for nothing,” Sophie blurted.
And somehow her mother sensed that this was true at a deeper level. Seeing Sophie looking so dejected, she hesitantly stroked her arm. “Now can’t you tell me what all that was about? With you and councilor’s son tearing each other’s hair out?”
“He just…said things I didn’t like.”
Sansa sighed. “As I’m sure your father has told you many times, wit is superior to brawn in combating such things. And a lady should be able to silence wagging tongues through noble bearing.”
“But I’m not…a lady,” she retorted.
“Oh, Sophie,” Sansa sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Send me back, I suppose,” the child shot back bitterly. “And…and get another little girl, more like Caitey…” Her frustration soon gave way to tears filling her eyes.
Sansa suddenly felt shot through with guilt, realizing just how deeply her disapproving attitude was affecting her daughter. Sophie hardly ever cried, or at least never in front of anyone.
“Oh, Sophie…please understand…I’ve never wanted to send you back, never ever…dear, please don’t cry, please…”
She found herself lying alongside her young daughter in bed as Sophie cried into her bosom. “Tell Mama what’s wrong,” she whispered, running her fingers gently through her daughter’s soft brown hair. “Tell Mama what happened…”
“They just said awful…awful things…”
Something finally clicked in Sansa’s mind.
“Were they…about Papa?”
Sophie tightened. “Don’t tell him! You mustn’t tell him!”
“If he knew, he’d no doubt go easier on you over it.”
“I don’t care,” she choked. “I don’t want him to know.”
“Dear Sophie, your father has been called every name imaginable, but that’s only served to strengthen him. Calling people names doesn’t take intelligence, but learning to temper oneself takes prudence.”
“It was more than names.” The little girl squinted. “He said…said they’d take Papa back to the land across the sea, and cut off his head.”
Sansa blanched. “Did he really?”
Sophie nodded.
Her mother exhaled to calm herself, then responded quietly, “That…won’t happen, dear. It was a very empty threat.”
“I’m still glad I punched that boy though. He had it come…”
“Sophie…” Sansa exhaled. Then to Sophie’s surprise, she saw her mother smile just a touch. “I cannot condone your action, but I can agree…he sounds like a perfectly vile boy.”
“He is, Mama,” she assured. “A groping mangy son of a…”
“Language,” her mother cautioned. “I will not have you swearing like a Dornish sailor.”
“Well, Papa talks like that sometimes.”
“But you are not Papa.”
“Sophie sighed. “Alright…but that boy’s still no good, any way you say it.”
Sansa shook her head, then indulgently kissed her daughter on the forehead. “Strange, strange girl you are, like your Aunt Arya when she was your age…”
“Mama?”
“Mmmh?”
“You miss them very much, don’t you? Your family in the land across the sea?”
Sansa went quiet and gazed down at the coverlet. “When you give your heart, you can never take it back,” she whispered. “Even transplanting flowers inevitably brings some old soil to a new patch. But…” She paused, and touched her daughter’s hair. “I’m quite happy with my little patch. Yes, yes, I…I like it better than anywhere else I could have been planted.”
“Even without all your family?”
She smiled. “I have all my family, Sophie. They are either here, in these rooms, or outside, beyond the tree’s portal, or buried deep inside me, like seeds. I am not afraid; I believe that someday the seeds will sprout open, and we will all be together again.”
“But not for a very long time, Mama!” Sophie countered concernedly.
“Right you are, my dear,” Sansa assured. “I should never leave you without getting properly adjusted to wearing stays.” This caused both mother and daughter to giggle. “Now, you should get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning, alright?”
Sophie nodded. “Goodnight, Mama.”
“Goodnight, my girl.”
***
Tyrion was lying in bed when Sansa came in. He was obviously brooding over what he had been made to do. Punishing his children always ran against the grain with him, especially when it came to his beloved Sophie. This lack of enforced discipline was one reason she had been allowed to show her wild side in its fullness.
But he couldn’t help himself. The mere fact that he had won his daughter’s affection after he had been so fearful she would be disturbed by his deformities made him hesitant to jeopardize anything, in addition to the pressure he had placed on Sansa to terminate a difficult pregnancy.
He loved Sophie very deeply, and was now suffering over the evening’s strife. He wondered if she’d ever view him as her confidante again. He wondered if she were not simply demonstrating too much of himself, and that he had allowed her to harbor notions of combat that were altogether too appealing for someone of her blood.
But he noted that his wife had a sympathetic rather than scolding look in her eyes. This was unusual when it came to dealing with Sophie. Still she said nothing as she brushed out her hair and undressed. He wondered what was running through her mind. Surely she was pleased with his decision to finally discipline their daughter, and yet she also seemed to feel sorry for everyone involved. He knew Sansa had a gentle heart, even if she hid it sometimes.
As she slipped into bed next to him, he heard her whisper in his ear, “She’s a good girl at heart, Tyrion. A special girl.”
He turned and looked at her. “Is special always a good thing, love?”
“Yes,” she assured, and kissed him warmly on the lips. “When it’s your kind of special, it’s always more than a good thing.”
“But what if I have passed something on to her that I never wanted to, something even more terrible than I passed onto Caitey…?”
“And who’s to say it’s not just as much a part of the wolf in her that makes her love her freedom so much?” Sansa retorted. “And who’s to say the other side of that is not…honor, courage, loyalty?”
“Yet it is always in question, everything is always so uncertain…what the end result will be…”
“I wouldn’t worry about Sophie or Caitey overly much. I believe I’ve done too much worrying over the years. But I think…no, I know…they’ll be alright.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you how. But they will. And we’ll be here to help guide them in the meantime.”
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, and he drew something out from under his pillow. It was a folded piece of paper which he gave Sansa to open. It was a little girl’s sketch of a unicorn with a rose tied around its horn. It was impressive, even in its imperfect simplicity. But what brought tears to Sansa’s eyes was how it was signed, in the nicest lettering a six-year-old can muster: “For Papa.”