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Chapter Text

The first thing she does is kill her father. He doesn't see it coming; none of his wives—who are also Gilly's sisters or aunts or mother—see it coming. She is pale and gaunt, merely a slip of a girl, teetering on the precipice of adulthood. Balancing upon the cliff walk of marriage, wondering whether it would be better to fall or to jump. Choices…

Nobody thinks a slim girl of nine has the courage to kill her father; the first fundamental rule of life says that no person was so accursed as the kinslayer. This is a truth, as is the fact that Gilly indeed is not brave enough to plan cold murder. She is a child, pretty and useless as all children are past the Wall. Instead it is the vicious consciousness scratching at the edges of her mind that supplies her with the valor she needs.

This is the first time she figures out how to open the cage. She can picture it with startling clarity. It is a wooden dome, made of thin twigs tied together with twine. Gilly does not dream; instead, when she sleeps, Gilly finds herself locked inside the arena, unwilling to press towards the edges. The shadows swirl around the cage, too hazy to make out.

Gilly is fearful of the eyes that stare back. Blue, green, yellow—some calm, some wicked, others angry. There is so much anger outside those bars.

The dome is full of gaps—it is more empty space than barrier, but the creatures never dare enter. What do they fear?

She is the only source of light in her mind. She is the light within the shadow; there is a torch buried deep behind her ribs where her heart is supposed to sit, but it does not burn her. With this light under her skin, she is safe in the cage, since the cage is predictable. She knows what will happen should she stay, even if she does not prefer it; change is the rumbling of one's reality, the unmaking of the ground beneath your feet, the rupture that fells you into an endless abyss.

But on days Father makes suggestive comments about her prospective wifehood or on nights where Gilly hears her sisters/aunts/mother—she cannot be certain who—cry themselves to sleep, the cage door rattles.

The day before she kills her father, she dares to venture closer to her confines. She realizes with a stab or horror that the cage door is not locked. What has stopped them from entering? What has kept these monsters at bay, Gilly whispers to herself. Her chest hums with a faint light.

A shadow clutches at the wooden gate, wisps of black fog lingering even as it is swept away by the tide of other things. Gilly remembers those eyes; yellow and piercing, filled with a vigor she's never seen before. She does not look away and she gets the impression that the creature is impressed.

The night of the hunt, she sees Ferny taken upon Craster's lap as they eat. He sits at the head of the table and while they eat, he fucks. The women do not find it odd; Craster has always done what he wishes with them. They are his wives, after all. But Gilly, who is old enough to understand and young enough to not yet be wife, blinks at the scene. Ferny is sporting a blooming bruise over her face from Craster accidentally slamming her cheek into their stone dining table. Her shirt is torn at the collar, ripped apart by Craster's indelicate hands. Dyah, who is sitting to Gilly's right, murmurs that one of them will have to take on the extra work to mend it.

Her father's wheezing grunts distract Gilly from her food, and ensure that any comfort she might find in silence does not linger.

This has happened many times before and Gilly is not sure why she remembers this time so vividly. Perhaps it is Ferny's unusual resistance; she had once been a spearwife before she was wed to Craster. All her reticence and fierceness does is earn her is a firm hand upon her neck, pressing her face down onto the table. Each thrust makes Gilly's plate rattle.

Gilly stares down at her meager slab of burnt elk meat.

Even though this is all she will get to eat today, she finds herself without an appetite. Dyah takes her food with a smile when Gilly offers; Dyah is pregnant and needs any nutrients she can get for the babe.

(The act of killing her father is the easiest part. All she does is open the door. That wisp that she had seen the day before darts in, slamming the cage behind it. The other shadows do not seem to notice what has happened but Gilly does. Gilly opens the door wanting it to end, but the shadow sides up to her. It rumbles a harsh purr against her skin, and makes Gilly laugh as it leaps from shoulder to shoulder.)

(All throughout, Gilly's body sleepwalks to Craster's room. Craster is asleep, secure in the false safety that none of his family would dare hurt him in his own keep. This is a truth; Gilly is not Gilly at this point. Gilly would never hurt him.)

She wakes up to his dead body under her hands. There is no blood, there is no sign of violence. Craster looks peaceful, and if Gilly focuses hard enough she can imagine that he is simply napping. She does not look at the slowly forming bruises on his neck.

Craster is a heavy sleeper.

Gilly runs to her room, packing whatever she thinks she can take with her. Her thick winter coat made of half a bear's pelt, a round water flask, and her spare pair of snow boots. She puts on the coat and tucks the rest into a burlap backpack she steals off the kitchen walls. She also grabs the largest knife she can find; it is the length of her forearm.

This, she tucks into the side of her belt and hopes it will not accidentally cut her.

The sun is rising on a new day, orange glow cast upon the never-ending white glare of week old snow. Gilly takes a deep breath of chilling air and feels it dry the insides of her nose.

The second thing she does is flee the keep. She does not know what to call it; it had been Craster's Keep but now it is only a castle, forlorn and lonely in the cold. In it are Gilly's only family—her sisters, her mother, her aunts. But Gilly cannot stay. Perhaps it is better to say she does not want to stay. There is a string around her heart, pulling her to somewhere unknown and ever tightening with every moment she lingers.

She has been out in the snows for two hours and the Keep has long since faded in the distance. Her feet burn from the cold, nipping in what she imagines the onset of frostbite to feel like. Her nose stings from the battering winds even through her thick hood.

A pang of regret hits her—or is it the hunger?

When she closes her eyes, she is met with the cage as always, now with an additional tenant. The flicker of light in her chest burns bright and yet the shadow seems unaffected and unwilling to leave. It gives off the impression of a drenched cat with big blinking eyes, which makes Gilly laugh. The thing is cute in a strange sort of way.

Gilly passes by a frozen lake and stops to take a break.

Her brown doe-eyes blink at her in the reflection cast by ice. They unsettle her—where she expects to see the sharp yellow eyes of a predator, she finds only the gaze of prey. That thought unsettles her too; when had she become weak? No, that wasn't right either.

When did she begin to think of herself as weak?

The black shadow prowls along, flickering in and out of existence. It lurks and it waits. Gilly does not know what it is waiting for, but as if to match, a sense of anticipation that flutters in her chest. She does not know why.

She keeps walking east. Gilly does not know how she knows it is east, but something as bone deep as the chill around her tells her. Gilly finds that she does not know much at all. She wants to learn more. She wants to understand the world around her nearly as much as she wanted to leave the Keep.

Is this what change feels like?

Gilly runs through undisturbed fields of white, laughing as snowflakes and gentle powder drifts follow in her wake. She leaves behind snow angels as watchful sentinels, as if to prove to the world that she was here. Gilly was here. Gilly made it out. The exhilaration makes her sweat, sticking her coat to her skin in a filmy layer.

But Gilly before now has never been past the confines of the keep—and soon it begins to show. She is still a girl of only nine and being stranded in the winter snows as night falls is a death sentence for even full grown men.

She stares as the sun crawls under the hills, taking its light and warmth and goodness with it. Gilly is left in pitch black and the stars laugh and jeer from their secured places above. What was cold becomes inhospitable. She rubs her hands together, breathing air into them to keep feeling in her fingers.

Is this what change feels like?

She can't feel her toes.

Her eyes droop closed for a minute, bringing her back to that cage. The light in her breast is flickering, a candle under assault by unyielding winds. The black shadow with its yellow eyes is there. She thinks for a moment that they look like two bright suns—or maybe the moon and the sun. The shadow's right eye is slightly paler than the other.

She imagines herself being dragged through something. The soft crunch of snow being compressed follows as she flies. Gilly blearily thinks to herself that even now as she is dying, she is leaving her mark on the world. The thought brings a vindictive smile to her face.

She wins.

The third thing she does is wake up—surprisingly not dead. Not even frozen; the compact dirt beneath her is warm to the touch. She tries to stand and hits her head on the low ceiling. Gilly rubs at the spot and looks up.

Nothing. It is then she realizes that it is dark; she can see nothing except the tips of her hands if she holds them directly to her face.

Where is she?

She crawls around, scrambling without vision. She seems to be in a tunnel underground, though she has no clue where she is nor how to get out. The panic sets in; she has been buried alive, she is already dead, Craster's ghost found her and dragged her down to the Hells—

A pair of yellow eyes snaps her out of her thoughts. They blink lazily at her, and the sound of a growl echoes through the tunnel. Gilly flinches backwards as the pair of eyes prowl towards her, one careful step at a time.

She's prey, she's going to die—big predator, scary eyes!

The creature licks her cheek. It feels like a rough brush scraping against her skin, the only note otherwise being the trail of saliva it leaves across her face. She wipes it off.

Then, she looks up at the shadowy figure and recognizes that look.

Gilly closes her eyes, and sees that cage once again. The very same.

She opens them once more, and tentatively places a hand over to feel around in the thick scruff of the shadowcat's mane. Why the beast hasn't attacked and mauled her to death, she does not know—as like with many things.

Gilly does not question her good fortune. She has been saved. She has been looked upon and deemed acceptable.

The shadowcat rumbles under her motions, eyes gleaming with a strangely human-like satisfaction. Gilly speaks for the first time in two days and says, "Hope is a good thing." She heard her mother say that to her years ago when Gilly had only just realized what kind of man Craster was—and had known she would never want to be his wife.

Hope, newly deemed as such, seems to roll its eyes at her and drags her over to a dark corner. Not that Gilly can tell the difference; she still cannot see, but somewhere deep in her bones she trusts this creature with her life.

The shadowcat drops her onto a flattened lump of sticks—something of a makeshift nest, Gilly assumes. She feels around, branches poking at her skin, and stumbles upon smaller, smoother branches. They're small, too small, and cleaned of surface texture.

Bones. Gilly realizes. But as she feels around more, she finds a small skull: too pointed to be a human's and too big and sharp to be prey. She is lying in the nest where this shadowcat's litter died and frantically whips her head back to stare at Hope. Is this okay? 

There is no clear emotion in those eyes. Instead, she hears Hope yawn—she didn't know shadowcats could do that—and feels her warmth curl up beside her. Hope corrals her into a huddled ball and wraps strong muscle and tendon around her like how she might have done to her kits.

How had they died, Gilly wonders. To the cold? Or something darker?

Hope's tail flicks in her face as if telling Gilly not to press further.

A would-be mother and a runaway wife, she thinks with a tinge of hysteria. Gods, what has she gotten herself into?

Sleep, a deep woman's voice rings out in her head. The voice is melodic, and tinged with a thick accent, one that slurs the vowels together in the creation of song and pops the P. Rest for now.

The calm settles over her like a warm blanket, and she feels her eyelids grow heavy. As Gilly closes her eyes, she feels the shadowcat—Hope—begin to purr as she too falls into slumber. For once, the cage does not greet her. Instead, the endless black swallows her whole—and it is here, that for the first time in her life, she feels safe.

Chapter Text

Vellin finds the girl half-frozen and curled up next to a massive shadowcat. She takes a step back, reeling in shock as to what this Gilly has earned. "Well, I'll be damned, the beast is huge!"

"Bigger than any I've seen," Varamyr says, crouching down to look closer at the sleeping shadowcat. His gray eyes flit between the girl and the cat, gleaming with greed. "A beast fit for any good man. A respectable skin."

"And her first skin too, from the looks of things."

"Too young to be anything else," Varamyr says. "A dangerous animal for a child to have."

Vellin rolls her eyes; the younger warg is not subtle. Like he didn't get his wolf at eleven. Like she didn't claim her first falcon even younger. "I'll not have you stealing the first skin of some half-alive cub. I reckon I trained you better than that."

"But if she dies?"

That warrants a stern glare directed at Varamyr. "So much as think of it and I promise you a slow death, boy."

Varamyr is a man grown, already nine and twenty, but Vellin still sees him as that gangly runt she picked up off Haggon five years ago as a favor. Well, the old bint treated it like a favor; she was more than happy to help. Every skinchanger's life is a gift to be cherished, as much as you might stockpile arrows in a quiver.

It does not help that Varamyr is still the shortest man she knows, only reaching up to her chest on a good day. He says it's because she's a tall cunt, a freak of nature, but she thinks that's his spite talking.

Vellin crouches down, scooping up the girl in her arms. This cub is different to the others but she can't quite parse out why. She's always felt a tether between the little ones she senses—the children who have the gift. That's how she finds them. She jostles their hearts a little, makes it easier for them to access the possibility of warging.

She tells her tribe that's all it is.

What makes this cub so different? The tether feels like a chain, linking them together inexplicably. She's never felt anything like this in her fifty-two years.

The movement wakes the shadowcat. All of a sudden Vellin has a face full of angry predator. In that moment, Vellin looks it in the eye and jumps in. Skinchanging to her is akin to diving into a frigid pool; there's a time where the unfamiliar mind is inhospitable, jarring each of her limbs with a striking cold. It passes quickly as it always does with animals that have, for lack of a better word, been broken in.

Someone has already made themselves welcome. Vellin dips past the first layer and reaches deep, enough to communicate but shallow enough to not get trapped in a new skin. It's the equivalent of dipping your toes into a puddle.

Not threat, she sends over. Friend. Help.

She gets a vague sense of exasperation and worry thrown back to her. There's enough amusement in the collection of thoughts that she feels safe standing back up, relatively sure the beast won't harm her. You can never be certain with cats.

Vellin pulls herself out, tugging at one of the four tethers in her mind. Hermes answers her call—oh, bug off, it was one of the few things she'd allowed herself to keep from her previous life. The gyrfalcon circles above their heads and Vellin catches glimpses of the snow-capped forest, the expanse of trees stretching onwards until they reach the clearing of Storrold's Point. He always flies above her, ensuring that she is never caught off guard. Not again.

She rubs at an old burn scar on her forearm.

They're closer to camp than she thought. Much farther from Craster's at least. Yes, she knows the girl is Craster's get—not from knowledge but from slivers of memories shared between minds. She doesn't blame the cub for it. What choice did she have in being born?

She also knows the rest of her group, should they ever figure it out, will not see it that way. Abominations of incest don't live past the wall. They are put down to restore order with the Gods. Once they find out that Craster's Keep is up for taking, she knows at least a handful of tribes will seek to claim it for their own.

Vellin smiles at Varamyr and says, "Back we go. The cub needs a good sleep under warm furs."

Built on the tip of the horn known as Storrold's Point, her tribe is located exactly where Hardhome once stood. It sits on a sheltered bay beneath a great cliff pocketed with cave mouths. The small city's wooden walls reach out like a half moon, bordered by the flat cliff side on one edge.

She lives up in the caves with the more talented skinchangers and wargs; it is here that the nurseries and hatcheries for cubs and chicks are also kept, along with the food stores and barracks in a facsimile of a Southern castle. Her castle, she supposes, even though Free Folk have no lords nor kings.

Most of the huts are made of wooden planks, but the ones closest to the cliff wall are made of stone. They are the oldest—they are the first few families who chose to join her all those years ago. The newest members are assigned to the edges of the city; to get better accommodation, they have to prove themselves first. After all, the tribe has their traditions.

Speaking of, living on a cursed site is an ill omen for any Free Folk; they live there only because her group trusts her well enough to listen to her words. That and the ghouls and demons who haunt the site happen to be very scared of Vellin's snow bear. Any foul creatures keep well away from their small settlement built from the old ruins and caves.

Perhaps because of that, outsiders call her tribe the Haunted. Or maybe it's because you have to pass through the Haunted Forest to reach them. She doesn't know.

They call their city Eagle's Rock. Rolls off the tongue better.

When they reach the city gates, one of the four sentries glances down at them from his post in the wooden watchtower. The man's bloodhound perks up from where it lies, sniffing the air with its nose pointed upwards. He winches open the doors when he sees Varamyr's three wolves—One-Eye, Stalker, and Sly.

There is a crowd of tens of people there to see what (or who) Vellin has brought back with her; they yell out greetings and pleasantries and Vellin responds in kind. Some have their skins with them—eagles perched upon leather shoulder guards, dogs held in peoples' arms, and one person with a snake wrapped around his neck to keep the cold-blooded serpent warm, amongst others.

The tribe's healer is also there with them to meet both Vellin and Varamyr. He too is a skinchanger; almost everybody in her burgeoning camp is.

Varamyr excuses himself and his three wolves, claiming to be going for a rest up in the caves. That leaves Vellin and Marand standing in the small camp square once most of the crowd has dispersed.

"Is this a new one?" Marand squints at the patient Vellin is entrusting to his care. He wears an eyepatch, half-blind with his left eye gouged out by sharp talons. Rather ironically, the wound is from his only skin—a speckled peregrine he wrestled into submission eight years ago.

Vellin passes the girl over. "Found her wandering in the Haunted Forest."

"Alone?" the healer asks.

Vellin shrugs.

Marand's one good eye widens when he catches sight of the shadowcat slinking behind her. He jerks his head at the cat. "Gods be damned. That hers?"

"First skin too," Vellin says, unable to resist the urge to brag. After all, the cub will be joining them; where else can Gilly really go?

"How soon do you want her joining the classes?" Marand asks.

"How soon can you get her up for them? Shadowcats are dangerous beasts, especially under an untrained warg's influence. We don't need the cub going feral."

The healer purses his lips. "A week if you want her healthy. She's got mild frostbite on her fingers and toes. Best if she stays under bedrest."

"We could have her attend classes in a chair." Vellin knows she sounds desperate, but Marand doesn't seem like he understands what's at stake here. He thinks it's just about the shadowcat—which does need to be controlled before it starts to get rowdy—but Vellin's got her own motives.

Every person has their own innate potential for skinchanging. Most people have no more than a thimble; utterly useless in truth. Marand is more like a goblet of water, filled to the brim with one skin. Varamyr, on the other hand, is a lake, his power rippling across the mirror surface in perfect circles. He has three skins to his name and she knows he can take at least one more—and perhaps even more after that.

In comparison, Gilly feels like a deep but empty pit that seems to stretch on forever, surely as wide as the Sunset Sea. But there's only about a pond's worth of water there. Vellin's never seen anything like it, and she especially doesn't like finding things she doesn't know how to deal with. In her experience, those tend to be dangerous.

"Learning to skinchange is taxing, Chief." Marand sighs. "But that could work."

"Well, then make it work."

Vellin leaves the cub with him, trailing through her growing city almost aimlessly. She likes to consider Eagle's Rock a city at the very least.

It is the product of decades of her work finally starting to pay off; the city numbers six or so hundred people, aggregated over two decades of searching and following any spark she could find. Her clan hardly compares to the bigger tribes like Rattleshirt's or the Dogshead's, but she does not care. Each one of her wargs is worth ten of the Lord of Bones' raiders.

The roaring bonfire in the center of the city square crackles as new timber is thrown in by a child no older than seven with a huff. Vellin stares at the child. It is Frewa, Marand's healer apprentice. Frewa's first skin— a snow hare—sniffs at the dirt huddled beside her feet. But that doesn't matter. Frewa is one of tens of children born to her tribe; they have known nothing but Eagle's Rock.

If Vellin gets her way, she hopes they will never have to know anything else.

In her old age, she cannot help but wonder about what will happen once she is gone. Varamyr knows what her plan is, but it is so woefully incomplete and he is so woefully stubborn. Despite the fact that he is her chosen heir, announced as such and accepted by the entire clan, he never seems to rest.

Some days she thinks Varamyr will kill her for the power he might gain. She is old with her brittle bones and creaking joints. Memories of any past world have been buried under over fifty years of snow. In truth, he could easily overpower her physically and they both know it. Vellin likes to think she is safe because he holds some level of sentiment, but he's probably just worried she'll essentially lobotomize him out of spite with her dying breath.

(Vellin would though, so perhaps it's not an entirely irrational fear. She wants as many skinchangers as she can get but values her life infinitely more. She does what must be done.)

Someone will have to take up her place; the future she wants to build needs to outlive her. (Vellin does not think about her second life.) She refuses to leave any warg she can save under the heels of fearful tribesmen like Rattleshirt—they can't understand them.

He'd hurt her enough to teach her the most crucial lesson to skinchangers beyond the Wall.

Nobody but one of them will ever understand. She's sure of that.

And Gilly? The cub is interesting, to say the least. A shadowcat for a first skin? If nothing else, that is a promising sign.

Time will tell if Gilly will suit.

Chapter Text

Gilly wakes up in a cave. The problem is that it's not the same cave she fell asleep in. She sits up in the fur-lined cot she's lying upon. For one, this room is lit by a small candle placed upon a stone table—enough so that Gilly can actually see, but small enough to still have numb fingers. She presses her hands to her cheeks, feeling the chill in both.

"Hello?" she calls out, glancing around. But no one save the echo of her own voice responds, mellow and fraught with uncertainty.

The cave itself is filled with empty cots; she is the only one here.

Except, no. That isn't quite right.

Gilly closes her eyes and draws herself back into that cage, shrinking inwards to a different sort of darkness. There it—she?—is. Gilly taps the shadow(cat) upon the head and watches as bleary feline eyes blink at her. A sense of contentment and the warm feeling of well rested sleep wash over her, and Gilly yawns at the sensation. Her stomach is heavy, stuffed with what must be a recent meal.

They aren't her emotions, not really—she can tell that much at least. But they feel real enough. She almost wants to go back to bed, curl up under the cover of a thick blanket and doze for years.

A footstep scuff jolts Gilly back awake—her mind filled with a panic. Who? Prey? Back! Attack! She barely has time to think about why she's so tightstrung before—

"Calm," an unfamiliar man's voice drawls. Just the sound of a man's voice sends her into a separate spiral of fear. The only man she'd ever talked to was Craster. Craster! The squelch of wet meat slapping against the stone floor sounds in the cave. "I bring food as a peace offering."

Strangely, Gilly feels herself calm at that—even though some part of her brain is still tensed in fight-or-flight. The dissonance is uncomfortable, grating on her mind like a fork screeching across a plate. It makes her pull further back inwards, burying herself into the  cage with her shadow and formless beasts locked outside where they can't get to her. In real life, she is vulnerable. She is prey there. What can a girl do against a grown man? Only in the dark does she have the courage to do anything.

"Oh, you can't be slipping!" Gilly flinches back from a pair of hands jostling her arms. She scoots away, back pressed fully against the cold stone wall, leeching her warmth through her shirt.

"No!" She slaps away the hand reaching towards her. She digs her fingers into the meat of her palms, biting into the skin to keep her present. Hope growls from where she lies at the foot of her cot, baring her fangs in a snarl.

The one-eyed man raises his hands in a nonthreatening gesture, which only makes Gilly more angry-nervous-worried-annoyed. "I'll go get the chieftess. Just…hold on."

It is only once he leaves the room that Gilly feels that abrasive anger dim. She takes the moment to stare at Hope with furrowed eyebrows. Now that she is calmer, she can tell that the emotion isn't quite hers. It's the same feeling as with the contentment; in the cage, it is a wisp of cotton carried by a strong gust of wind, battering at her face but still other.

What is happening to me? Gilly bites her lip hard enough to break the skin. The taste of blood on her tongue is sharp, but the smell is more distracting. Blood used to smell of a faint iron tang—barely anything at all. But she feels her mouth water and runs her tongue hard over her upper teeth, leaving behind a throbbing sting.

"What is happening to me?"

"You're a skinchanger," a woman's voice drawls. "Perfectly normal when you're young to get lost in your head."

"Wha?"

The woman bows. Her feathered headdress rattles as she dips her head, old dried bones clinking like windchimes. Upon her head sits the main piece: the top half of a bear's skull, fangs gleaming sharp and embedded with crude quartzes to match her milkglass eyes. She smirks, matching the bloodthirst of her headpiece. "Chieftess Vellin Skyseye. Welcome to Eagle's Rock."

Gilly blinks back, bewildered beyond compare. "I—chieftess?"

The chieftess shakes her head, a lone strand of gray hair coming lose in front of her forehead. "Free Folk do not bow. Call me Vellin." She takes a step closer and where Hope had bristled at the man's presence, she seems uncaring about Vellin at all. Gilly shoots her a betrayed look—how could you?

Hope licks at her paws and chuffs.

"Feeling prickly? Swept away in a tide of emotions? Awash in the storm?" Vellin asks.

"I—"

"Ah, never mind. I can sense it." What does that mean? "I'll just fish you out a bit and then…"

The invasion of emotion disappears, leaving an empty pit in her stomach quickly filled by nothing. Detachment, as if she is floating away from herself before being tied back to her own body.

"What did you do?" she pulls back into the cage and sees nothing. The shadow is gone; Hope is gone. Missing. No, taken! "What did you do?" She jumps up and scrabbles at Vellin's arms, scratching at skin and leather and anything she can get her hands on. She draws blood with a few cuts, but she smells nothing at all.

"I—fine," Vellin says, and then the feelings rush back. "I didn't expect that, but I suppose you aren't like the other cubs anyways."

Gilly is too preoccupied with gulping heaving breaths down. The air swells in her lungs, leaving her chest aching to burst. It fills her as surely as Hope's presence does—she needs it to live, surely. Surely! It feels as such.

"Are you alright?" Vellin asks. "Are you calm?"

"I—" Gilly takes another deep breath. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"What did you do?"

Vellin runs a hand through her headdress, rattling bones like whispered secrets. "New skinchangers often dip too far into their skins." Skins? "Dangerous for them if they sink into prey. Dangerous for everybody else if they sink into a predator."

Gilly closes her eyes, checking that the shadow is back. It is, but the winds carrying stray emotions are gone. Now those too swirl outside the cage, hissing and rattling but never coming close. She is safe? Were they a threat to her?

"Skinchanger?"

"You've never heard of one, have you. Craster doesn't let his wives leave."

How does she know? Gilly's eyes widen. She shouldn't know. She can't! "I don't know who you're talking about."

"We've shared a deeper connection than you might imagine, Gilly." She didn't tell Vellin her name either…what is going on? But better not to play dumb when Vellin clearly knows who she is.

"I was never a wife."

Vellin looks relieved. "And thank the Gods for that. May Craster rot in the Hells. No lessling deserves to hurt a skinchanger."

Gilly can't agree more, and spares a brief thought for her aunts and sisters and mother who are now alone in the Keep. There is no one there to protect them, and even the spearwives have long since dulled their blades under the yolk of motherhood. Under the leash of Craster. They will be helpless and afraid.

"I—what did you mean?"

"Well, we're the ones blessed with the ability to slip into other skins. Our special bonds with our skins allow it. That's what you have with Hope."

"No, I mean lessling." Gilly runs the unfamiliar word over her tongue.

"Unimportant," Vellin says, and does not elaborate. "You are safe now. This is a city of skinchangers for skinchangers, and I promise you nobody will ever hurt you again."

That statement of protection jolts her out of her fugue state. She stares at the cuts she made on the Chieftess' arm, and only then does she panic. "What will happen to me?" This is the chieftess of a tribe; she's going to be punished in one way or another. Gilly only hopes it's not as bad as what Craster would have dreamed up. Else there had been no point in running anyways.

"Nothing. It's not like you've committed a crime by any means."

"But those…"

"These?" Vellin laughs. "Hardly a scratch. You should see the scars I have from Hades." When Gilly doesn't respond, she clarifies. "Snow bear."

"And you're alive?" Gilly can't contain the careful wonder in her voice.

"You have Hope, don't you? You're still kicking."

"You can control it?" Just the thought makes Gilly's fingertips tingle; if she had that power, nobody could ever touch her again. No man would dare attack a woman with a shadowcat at her feet. She would be safe from all the Crasters in the world.

"The dips—slipping skins, yes. The animal, no. It's more of a partnership. I help them and they help me."

Gilly looks down at her fingers. "And I'm a skinchanger?" She almost does not dare to hope that she might be special. That she might have the power too. But she must, if only because Hope being there means something's different about her. She's never heard of shadowcats so tame and friendly to humans before.

Vellin places both hands on Gilly's shoulders, leaning over to speak closer. "If I know my stuff, you're special. More special than you think. And I know my stuff."

"Special how?"

"We'll see once you start to learn to control it." Vellin smirks again. "But first, how about a tour of your new home?"

Gilly licks at her chapped lips. "I'd…like that. Can Hope come with us?" It's not like she has a choice really. If Vellin says they go, does she really have the power to refuse?

"Dear, you'll never have to be parted again."

Gilly stops at a small window when she catches a glimpse of the city on their way down. It is her first sliver of sunlight since waking up, and it is only then that she realizes how far up they are from the ground.

Within the half-moon walls, the city of Eagle's Rock piles on top of itself, cleaved in two by a wide and straight road from the city gates directly to the base of the mountain. On both sides, butchers, tailors, taverns, and merchant stalls all huddle together for warmth, growing upwards and not outwards. And on every corner shines a bright glasshouse, sparkling like dew under the blinding sun.

From this high up, Gilly can see over the walls and eastern gate to spot the grand harbor. Dozens of wooden canoes tied against sprawling dockyards, and tiny people looking like ants below sailing off into the sea.

There are parts where Gilly can see old Hardhome, ancient stone ruins and rubble yet undisturbed by the borders of the walls. Massive uneven boulders from those centuries ago stick out of the ground like wicked knives, almost as a second layer of city walls.

Beyond stretches the Haunted Forest.

And beyond that lies Craster's Keep. The Keep.

"Impressed?" Vellin asks.

Gilly swivels to look at her. "How many people are here?"

"Eagle's Rock is the proud home of five hundred and seventy five skinchangers and wargs. Seventy six, now that you're here."

"Where do all the animals stay?"

"Heh. We make do."

Gilly and Vellin walk through cave tunnels, winding and sloping downwards. The rough walls are covered with frescos painted from some kind of red clay paste. Galloping deer and direwolves chasing on their heels, fanged smiles and giddy eyes, with a snow bear rearing on its hind legs with three eagles circling around its head. All animals.

They exit the cave through a stone door guarded by four people, all with their own skins. An eagle and two wolves and a ram. The light from the outside blinds her once the gate swings open; her eyes had gotten used to the darkness and torchlight.

From ground level, the buildings tower over her like a canopy, two or three stories tall. The city is bustling, people mingling—an echoing bark of laughter carrying its merriment into the world. The settlement is crowded and yet pristine, with no stink expected from so many people. Only the crisp smell of cold carried on the wind.

"On we go," Vellin says, before walking ahead.

Gilly stumbles trying to keep up, Hope not far behind her. She catches up and grips Vellin's hand tightly, worried that letting go means she'll be swept away into the crowd. She pulls herself inwards, tethering onto that familiar presence.

"Where are we going?"

Vellin laughs, shaking her head, bones clacking against each other again. "I've got a class to teach and you've got school. Welcome to Eagle's Rock, cub."