The rowboat rocked as Dacey pulled the last heavy strokes, her shoulders straining. Water slapped against the hull, the lake stretching gray and endless behind them. At last the keel grated on mud, and the boat slid forward until it lodged among the reeds.
For a long moment, no one moved. Fog pressed close, muffling even the lapping of the God's Eye.
Lyanna stood first, her legs stiff from the hours of rowing. Her boots sank into wet earth as she climbed over the side. Dacey followed with a grunt, then Howland, careful and deliberate. Together, they dragged the boat higher onto the bank until it sat firm above the waterline.
Winter and the marsh-pony scrambled out last, hooves squelching in mud. Both animals tossed their heads uneasily, ears flicking at the unnatural silence.
Then came the sound — a faint rustle, like branches shifting though there was no wind.
A figure stepped out from the pale roots. She was small, no taller than a human child, but not human. Her skin was pale as birch bark, her ears long and sharp as a fox's, and her hands ended in four clawlike fingers. Her hair was a crown of scarlet leaves, each one trembling with its own breath of life.
"You came," she said. Her voice was soft but clear, each word carrying the strange cadence of someone who had learned Common late in life.
"You… speak our tongue?" Lyanna asked.
The child tilted her head, leaves shifting in her crown of hair. "I am Maple. The youngest. The others never learned the new tongue, you will need to speak with them using the old one."
Lyanna swallowed, heart quickening. "You've been waiting for us?"
Maple tilted her head, the leaves in her hair whispering faintly. "Not us. You. The wolf-daughter. The gods spoke of you."
Howland's breath caught, reverent. "The singers…"
But before he could say more, Lyanna's eyes picked out movement in the mist. Shapes crouched low among the roots and undergrowth, watching. More of them. Larger. Their eyes glowed faint green or amber in the fog, their sharp ears pricking forward, their clawed hands braced on the earth. None spoke. The air itself seemed to hum faintly with their inhuman presence.
Maple paid them no mind. She turned, gesturing with a hand pale as driftwood. "Come. The Grandmother waits. She has been rooted for 20,000 years. She wishes to see you."
The shadows shifted as she walked back into the trees, and though the other children of the forest did not follow, their gazes trailed the travelers like arrows from hidden bows.
Lyanna glanced at Dacey and Howland, both tense, both watchful. But when Winter tossed her mane and stepped forward, Lyanna followed.
The path wound inward, roots coiling like ropes across the earth. Lyanna had to hop from one foot to another to avoid slipping on the slick roots. Some of them were as thick as a man's waist. Above, pale trunks pressed so tightly together that the canopy of red leaves seemed almost to block out the sky.
Every tree had a face. Some smiled faintly, some frowned, others wept long red tears. Each face was unique, distinct as the people in a crowded market.
Lyanna slowed. "They're all… different."
Maple turned her leaf-crowned head back, her scarlet hair rustling. "Because they are different. Each was one of us once. We are born mobile, with arms and legs, as I am. But when our songs grow too heavy, we plant ourselves. Our feet root, our bodies change into the wood, and we join the forest. Then we stand watch for as long as the world will let us."
Dacey's mouth fell open. "You mean every one of these trees… was alive like you?"
Maple nodded, calm as if describing the turn of seasons. "Still alive. Still themselves. Men called us children, even though no singer on the island is younger than a century, and so the name stuck. But the truth is simple: we are developed, just in a different stage of life. We do not grow old — only grow into trees. Each face you see is a life that chose its roots. That is what it means to be a singer."
Howland bowed his head low, whispering, "A forest of ancestors."
Lyanna's hand found the rough bark of a nearby trunk. The face was long-nosed, stern, its eyes half-shut in thought. The bark was cold, but under her palm she swore she felt a pulse — faint, patient, impossibly old.
Maple's small voice carried on. "Once, we had space to wander. But when the Andals came with their axes, most of our kin were felled. We lost too many fighting the First Men to fight another war. Those who remain fear to leave this isle. So we crowd together, more and more. Some of us dread the day when there will be no room left to root at all."
Lyanna pulled her hand back, her chest tight. To stand in such a forest was not to walk among trees, but through a throng of watching souls.
The forest thickened until even Maple grew hushed. The roots here rose waist-high, forcing them to climb and weave their way forward. The air smelled green and heavy, as if every leaf exhaled together.
And then the trees parted.
At the heart of the Isle of Faces stood the Grandmother. She was taller than any tower Lyanna had ever seen, her pale trunk so broad that a dozen men could not have linked arms around it. Her red canopy spread vast and shadowed, blotting out half the sky. The face carved into her bark was ancient and strange, its lines too deep and weathered to have been made by mortal hands.
Maple dropped to one knee, pressing her clawed fingers into the soil. "Grandmother," she whispered in the Old Tongue, a word that vibrated like a plucked string.
Lyanna felt it before she heard it: the breath of the Grandmother. The leaves stirred though no breeze moved. A sound rose, not words but a kind of song made of wind and hollow wood, like a pipe organ in a storm. It resonated through her chest, through her teeth, through the marrow of her bones.
Howland bent his head low, murmuring prayers in his soft voice. Dacey shifted uneasily, her hand tightening on the mace at her belt, though even she bowed her head before the sound.
Lyanna could not bow. She stood transfixed, the Grandmother's voice pouring over her like waves. The song was neither kind nor cruel, but vast. It carried impressions rather than sentences — welcome, sorrow, warning. She caught glimpses of memory: forests aflame, axes biting deep, a thousand faces screaming and falling silent.
Her knees trembled. She pressed her palm into the roots for balance, and the instant her skin touched the bark she felt it: a mind. Not like hers, not like any human's, but aware. A myriad years of patience, watching, remembering. The Grandmother did not ask, but simply was, and through her presence Lyanna understood: every tree around her had once walked and sung as Maple did. This was what they became, and this was what she was standing inside of now: not a forest, but a people.
Maple's young voice floated into Common again. "She says… she knows you. From another tree. From another song." Maple's leaf-hair shivered in the unnatural air. "Her son at Harrenhal. He remembers you. He loves you."
Lyanna's throat tightened. She thought of the carved face she had hidden behind, the night Rhaegar had found her. Of its red tears.
The song swelled, leaves whispering like a thousand voices. It was not language, not truly, but Lyanna felt the intent of it. We see you. You are chosen. You must learn.
She knelt at last, breath ragged, not out of courtesy but because her legs would no longer hold her against the storm of that voice.