REELING AND WRITHING XXIV: NOT TODAY!

REELING AND WRITHING
or,
Miss Dermark's 2015 Advent Calendar

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

NOT TODAY!

This Christmas's Westeros AU story

Twilight on the docks of King's Landing, a busy day of hustle and bustle, of sellers calling out their ware on the streets and sailors, both Westerosi and foreign, sauntering on and off the docks, as night falls and the stars appear.
Through the motley throng runs a young girl in rags, nimble as a stray cat, barefoot and with tangled dark hair. Both her skin and rags are filthy, and she leaves a trail of blood in her wake, from a glass shard she has trod on, and she still feels the pain. Once she had worn a dirty kerchief on her head, but a wistful breeze has carried it away. Once she had worn a belt, and a rapier thin and hard as a needle, to stick it into whoever stood in her way with the pointy end, but Lord Tywin's men have taken them away, saying that it is best for a child like her. In spite of all the suffering that she is going through, she is beautiful beneath the mess and the filth, yet she only cares for her own life.
She limps with her left foot, still sore and red from the pain that racks her from that point up to her narrow hips. And she carries bundles of liquorice roots in her dirty frock. Still as many as when she left, for no one has ever cared to buy her ware. Yet she won't give up, nimble yet limping, racked with pain and starving yet still young and able to move. She is reeling, yet still alive.
More stars appear in the night sky. The crews return to their ships, the landlubbers to their homes, and poor Arya has not earned a single copper half-penny. She runs as fast as she can, as if her feet had wings, in spite of the pain and the weakness. Dare she return to the orphanage? A twinge of fear has cut through her mind, like a summer storm. If she ever returns empty-handed, Lord Tywin's men will beat her. Or even do more terrible things to her, like they did to so many women and maidens during the war.
No, no, no. Never in her short life. She will live like a stray cat on the banks of the Blackwater tonight, feeding on some of the liquorice she hasn't been able to sell. But she'll save at least two thirds of her ware to try her luck the next day.
The pain is now too much for her. It extends at least to her chest, and throbs like a drum on the battlefield. Crouching in the shadow of a barrel by a shady tavern, she unties one of the bundles of liquorice and puts one of the roots to her lips. In the light that comes through the clouded window panes, she notices a silvery twinkle, which fills her steel-coloured eyes and her heart and her mind with joy as she swallows her first liquorice root, her first meal since the morning, and feels contented.
A silver stag on the ground, so close to her? The thought lights up Arya's mind and banishes all the demons to the depths of her subconscious. For a while, she feels that both her parents are still alive, and that she is in the warm and cozy, vast Great Hall of Winterfell. Picking up the twinkling piece into her filthy left hand, she sighs in disappointment. It is square, and its shine is more like that of steel or iron. A foreign coin, discarded for being as out of place on the streets of King's Landing as she is herself. Still, it might be of some use, by giving it as a gift to the cabin boy of some foreign ship the next day.
The shouts and songs of drunken crew members, in both the Common Tongue and Valyrian, echo from inside the tavern. The warmth of the scene indoors and the cheers of these unknown men cause Arya's mind to drift away. Slowly shutting her grey eyes, she suddenly finds herself well-dressed at a finely furnished supper table, in a Great Hall somewhere in the North. Her mother and father are there, Lord Ned and Lady Catelyn with their honest smiles, and so are Robb, Theon, and Jon Snow, talking older boys' things like warfare as Arya listens, sitting by her dark-haired and serious stepbrother's side. Next to Lady Mother sits Arya's older sister, the bronze-haired Sansa, cutting her roast with as much refinement and politeness as a court lady. Even though the little girl found her sister annoying and tiresome, now she misses Sansa more than ever, how ironic it might sound. The younger boys are sitting at the other end of the table, Old Nan, the nanny of Winterfell for generations, so elderly that her age was unknown to Arya and her life shrouded in mystery, is feeding Rickon, then still a baby. Healths go round, everyone sings, and glasses clink, and Arya is allowed to take more than just a sip of warm mulled Reach wine, which sears her throat and makes her feel all warm and cozy inside. Then the warmth under her waist turns to heat, to pain, to the worst of sufferings. To the pain in the wound tainted by the glass shard. The Great Hall and the loved ones have vanished into thin air, and she is still curled up beside a barrel outside a tavern on the banks of the dying Blackwater. Awakened, startled, frightened. What if only those happy days could return!
Taking up what is now her fourth liquorice root, Arya barely notices that she is holding her square coin in the same left hand. After a while, when she swallows, she notices that something hard and cold is falling down her throat. Looking among the bundles of liquorice, she tries to find her treasure in vain, to finally realize what she has done. No matter, she thinks, that coin is hard and tomorrow it will come out the other way.
No matter if her rapier has been taken by Lord Tywin's men, she needs no weapons to survive. Even if wasted sailors, in a fit of rage, lunge at her. Arya is quicker, and she will kick them where it hurts the most.
Weary and racked with pain, though still treasuring that faint hope, she looks up to the shred of sky above. A shooting star leaves a long trail of silvery fire. Feverishly struggling for her life, Arya quietly whispers to herself: "Someone is about to die."
According to Northern lore, whenever a star falls, it is to make place for the star that is the spirit of a new deceased person. Thus had Old Nan told her and the rest of her siblings the first time she saw one. Will the next star be Arya Stark? The pain begins to fade and her eyelids slowly close, and whom does she see before her eyes?
Now there is light all around her, and in the light stand the Seven Gods, bright and radiant, all of them except the hooded Stranger with such expressions of love. And the Mother is warm and auburn, with eyes like blue lakes, just like her own, Lady Catelyn, and the Father is stern and serious yet able to listen, with her own dark hair and eyes of steel like the Lord of Winterfell. The Warrior, tall and bold, with his hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword and bravery in his blue eyes, could as well be Robb, her eldest brother, the leader of her childhood games. The fire-haired and sapphire-eyed Maiden is lovely, sweet and demure, and she curtsies, just like her older sister Sansa. The sooty and sturdy Smith, his trusty sledgehammer in hand, is a bearded old craftsman in his sixties or seventies, confident and strong like Mikken in the forge of Winterfell: the one who made Arya's own Needle. And the Crone, the oldest and wisest of them all, with her silver hair and countless wrinkles, and those clever eyes, might as well be Old Nan, so full of lore and of tales. Only the Stranger's face is not seen, but hidden beneath the cowl of his raven-black cloak. Arya pictures herself a non-human face, like that of a wild beast, like the little she had seen of the Stranger's face in the sept of Winterfell.
The other gods suddenly make way for the Stranger as Arya shudders. The male gods to the right, the goddesses to the left, and the ominous hooded figure slowly advances towards the little one. Could this mean that the Stranger is coming for her? Is she going to die tonight? "Valar morghulis," everyone must die. Thus said her Braavosi fencing master. And he had also told her what to say face to face to Death: two simple words that weighed more than the powers that rule our lives. Two words that are now in Arya's throat, eager to spring, like bolts from a fired crossbow, through her parted lips.
The air is cold and the Stranger is face to face with her, towering above her little frame.
"Not today!"
The Stranger's hands are those of a young man, five-fingered and pale, yet they look surprisingly healthy. Putting them to the crown of his head, he slowly takes his cowl off, and what Arya Stark beholds makes her resolve falter for a while.
The face of the god of death is not that of any beast. His hair, eyebrows, and stubble are black as the darkest midnight. His features are fine and well-arranged, more than those of the other six. And there are sparkles of both mischief and sorrow in his dark grey eyes. The Stranger is a likeness of Arya's favourite sibling, her stepbrother Jon Snow, who left Winterfell for the Night's Watch right before she moved to the capital. Ever since, Jon had always been in her dreams, both before and after the dreadful day of the execution, but even more after it. And there he is, so bright and radiant, so mild, with such an expression of love... Never formerly had he been so dashing and so tall. And the light is now as bright as if it were noonday.
"Come with me, I will take you with me, where there is no want, or fear, or pain, or wickedness. You will be with the Stranger, in the Stranger's Heaven high above the other six, and see beautiful things very few have ever beheld." And he takes the little maiden in his strong arms, taking her to soar higher and higher in brightness and in joy, but something inside her still resists. Arya still wants the life she leads, with its sorrows and its worries, with the constant fear of Tywin's men and of drunken scoundrels, and the neverending longing for those days long gone. Though the Stranger takes after her beloved stepbrother, though he offers her a world devoid of sorrows, which is but half a world, she will rather keep her painful life on Earth, a suffering that no one will ever envy in their lives.
Thus, she looks with tearful steel eyes at the god of death. And, as he loosens his grip around her waist, the little girl shouts once more, this time so loud that all of Westeros can hear it:
"Not today!"
And, as the Stranger loosens his grip and fades away, and the light around her gives way to utter darkness, she falls, falling deeper and deeper into the void, into uncertainty, hoping that she will fall into life. Then, everything is liquid around her, and she feels the taste of both fresh and salty water at once. She draws the mixed waters deep into her chest, into her lungs, as the wound on the sole of her left foot is seared and gives away a mixture of both pain and burning, making Arya feel alive.
In the end, she opens her eyes, to find herself unexpectedly on the deck of a foreign merchant ship as its sails have already unfurled. Slowly rising up, she can merely see the heights of the Red Keep and the Great Sept as they disappear into the horizon. King's Landing is far away, and, for the first time in ages, she feels happy.
The day sky is sapphire blue, not obscured even by a single cloud, and the golden sun shines warmly upon her. Yet, shaken by the motion of the ship on the waves, which she has never encountered before, Arya suddenly feels her entrails twist and turn and writhe inside her, making her retch and throw up what she had swallowed during the night: a mess of liquorice fibers in which the square iron coin shines brighter than any star. The cabin boy picks up the coin and leads Arya to the captain's cabin, where she is dressed in a fine shirt and puffy satin breeches. The captain, a sharply-dressed Braavosi who reminds Arya of her fencing master, is kind and clever, and he gets the coin. He explains that the coin Arya had once swallowed came from Braavos, just like the crew itself, and that the secret order of the Faceless Men employ it as a token. The Faceless had hitherto merely been stories, but the captain's tales about them encourage Arya to dream of a new life in which she can be any person she wishes.
The surgeon on board tends to Arya's wounded foot, which is now cleaned and stitched. And her heart becomes more joyful for each day spent helping the cabin boy. Thus, when the lookout announces that the crown of the Titan's helmet can be seen, the young girl raises her eyes and thanks the Stranger for having paid heed to her request, as her heart and mind fill completely, for the first time in years, with hope.

THE END.

PS.

WINTER SEASON'S GREETINGS TO ALL OF YOU, DEAR READERS!!!
THANK YOU FOR YET ANOTHER WARMING WINTER CELEBRATION ONLINE!!