In the yard below, Rickon ran with the wolves.

Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, Grey Wind was there first, lopingahead to cut him off, until Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and went pelting¹ off in anotherdirection. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves came too close. Hisfur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran’s Summer came last. Hewas silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold that saw all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind,and more wary². Bran thought he was the smartest of the litter. He could hear his brother’s breathlesslaughter as Rickon dashed across the hard-packed earth on little baby legs.

His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and running. Angry at the thought, Branknuckled away the tears before they could fall. His eighth name day had come and gone. He wasalmost a man grown now, too old to cry.

“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly, remembering the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I can’t evenrun.”

“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. “Iknow a story about a crow.”

“I don’t want any more stories,” Bran snapped, his voice petulant³. He had liked Old Nan and herstories once. Before. But it was different now. They left her with him all day now, to watch over himand clean him and keep him from being lonely, but she just made it worse. “I hate your stupidstories.”

The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. “My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The storiesare, before me and after me, before you too.”

She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled, almost blind, tooweak to climb stairs, with only a few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No onereally knew how old she was, but his father said she’d been called Old Nan even when he was a boy.

She was the oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven Kingdoms.

Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark⁴ whose mother had died birthing him.

He had been an older brother of Lord Rickard, Bran’s grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or abrother to Lord Rickard’s father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In allthe stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell with herown children. She had lost both her sons to the war when King Robert won the throne, and hergrandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion. Her daughters had longago married and moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor, thesimpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just lived on and on, doing herneedlework and telling her stories.

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