Chapter Three:

Memories, Myranda, and the Mumbling Man.

Prompt: She was no longer made of substance, but something more like smoke.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep ~ Robert Frost.

Roose Bolton's P.O.V

Roose Bolton recalled the first time he met his twin bastards. Clustered in the Great hall of the Dreadfort, the Miller's wife, for her name always escaped him, stood, sodden from the snow, shivering in the chill air before him and his men-at-arms.

She was once a tall and willowy woman, Roose remembered, with long legs and firm breasts, and fair, in that common sort of way, flushed, with filled flank. That day, she was nothing of the sort. Brittle and broken and bruised.

A withered flower picked too soon.

He had originally come across her solely on mishap. A young bride of ten-and-five, she had wed the old Miller of the Weeping Waters, twice her age and twice her girth. Soon after her marriage, Roose had been on a hunting tour, where a fox, with a good pelt, had led him to the Weeping Water streams.

Her husbands Mill was not far from the craggy banks, and that day, by luck or misfortune, she had taken to washing the laundry in the fresh waters. The frigid waters had soaked her skirts, fabric sliding and fusing to skin, and the moment Roose saw her there, glistening and gleaming, he desired her.

And so, he would have her.

By the custom of First Night, though forbidden by another tiresome Targaryen king before his birth, it was his, Roose Bolton's, right to bed his vassals new brides, and the Miller had not gained Roose's permission before seizing such a jewel for himself.

Roose did not weather well when he believed himself cheated.

He was merely, as any good Lord was ought to do, upholding the ancient laws of their land when, that evening, he had the Miller hung on the edge tree of his mill.

He took the Miller's wife under his swinging corpse.

He left her there, still as stone and as cold as it too, gazing at the body of her dead husband, and was gone by sunrise.

Twelve moon turns later, she came to the Dreadfort, stooped over the two bundles in each crooked arm, too slender and too gaunt, with watery eyes, begged audience, and Roose greeted the bastards conceived under a swinging corpse.

Roose, upon hearing her frail assertion that these were, in truth, his children, had first considered having her whipped for her impudence, and the babes taken out back to be left in the cold to the old Gods mercy, for he had none to give.

But then she fell to her knees, this Miller's wife of ruin and rot, and held them out to him with trembling arms.

"See, me Lord! See! I lie not! Please, me Lord… Please…"

The smaller one caught his gaze initially. A girl if he was not mistaken. A girl of dark hair and moon hue eye, and so much like himself, like his own dear dead mother, there could be no refuting of her blood. The larger babe, a boy, Ramsay the Miller's wife had called him, though she had not named the girl, was equally Bolton in appearance, though there was a bulk, already at this young age, that was not common in Roose's kinfolk.

The little girl seemed, in contrast, made from wisps of smoke next to her brother.

Roose Bolton was a man of many faces, most not pretty, but he was not a Kin slayer.

He took the child into his own arms, settled her weight into the crux of his elbow, and simply stared down as the Miller's wife hobbled to her feet, stole Ramsay close to her own quivering, breathless breast, and raved. She told of a good-brother, her late husbands, who had seen the babes eyes, beaten her and sent her away from the mill to never return for her dalliance with Lord Bolton while her husband had not yet grown cold.

She had no shelter, no food, no hope, apart from that her liege Lord would give her.

"Wilhelmina."

He had told the Miller's wife. She had blinked at him, mouth agape, baffled.

"Her name will be Wilhelmina."

After his own mother.

The Miller's wife had no quarrel.

Unlike the rest of the Lords of the North, who prayed for sons and nothing else, Roose had…

Roose had always sought a daughter.

A Bolton, if nothing else, was pragmatic. A son, for now Roose possessed two, even if one was of less desirable legitimacy, was a knot of their own ambition. A son, Roose knew, as he once had with his own father, would rise and take their father's seat one day. You see, sons were like roses. Desired but thorny.

They grew into men. Men with their own soaring pride, their own lofty thoughts, and their own fervent opinions on how ones House should be run. If not handled correctly, often times, anew, as Roose with his own sire, they would clash with the father. You needed sons to carry on the family name, yet with daughters…

It was different.

Even when they wedded into another House, switched their cloak and name for different colours, their blood ran true and their home, their real home, always came first. One need only look to Eddard Stark and his Tully bride, see the Sept of the Seven freshly erected in their lands, by their ancient Godswoods of all places, to see how persistent a wife could be.

Roose had heard their children had been blessed in the light of the Seven, the first to be done so in the Stark's long history.

Sons may make certain the name carried on, but it was daughters who ensured the families survival.

There was no threat with a daughter.

No one-day-soon-betrayal.

A daughter was something you could hold close and not fear a knife in the back.

A would-be first in Roose's life.

And perhaps, with the one in his arms, staring so bravely and boldly right at him, Roose was struck with a sudden sense of… Sentimentality. She did, even at this tender age, look so much like his mother, the one person Roose was sure he had ever felt anything remotely like love for.

Perhaps he was getting old.

"And she will stay with me, here, at the Dreadfort."

Again, this brokered no fight from the Miller's wife. No doubt, as many did, she preferred her son. A son who would one day grow old and strong enough to aid her at the Mill, where a daughter would only be another mouth to feed.

Fools.

Not to Roose.

By nightfall, the Miller's wife was back in custody of the Mill, her son Ramsay at her breast, and the old Miller's brother was missing his tongue, and a few other superfluous body parts. The twins were gifted one thing and one thing only, to know each other by.

A pair of earrings.

Ruby.

One to each bastard.

A pair that had belonged to Roose's mother.

Domeric had embraced a sister well, eager as most only children were…

For the full three days she had remained at the Dreadfort.

By the moon turns end, a storm had rolled over their land.

Roose did not know, until this day, what had transpired. He had been engaged in his personal chambers, examining the letter with his Maester he was dispatching to the Crown, requesting dispensation for legitimacy over his newly obtained daughter, when the tousled squire came dashing in, red faced and panting.

"It's your daughter, my Lord. She's… She's gone."

The guards had been knocked unaware. Limp bodies at her door. Her bedchamber, which had been placed so close to his own, was barren. Domeric had been inside, having likely been playing with the babe, he too in an unnatural sleep.

There was only a note left, on torn parchment, perched between the ruffled, empty furs of her cradle.

I am sorry, but needs must. She will return. A.D

When Domeric awoken, he had spoken of a tall bearded man with a pointy bonnet and strange robes and a stick that shone like a shooting star. Pink and blue with embroidered moons, and a warm smile.

Nothing but a childish fevered dream.

Roose searched, but it was to no avail.

She was… Gone.

No sign or hair or scrap or scent to track.

Gone.

There was nothing to be done.

Roose, even still, kept to his deal with the Miller's wife. Every year he would send the woman piglets and chickens, and a bag of stars, on the understanding she would never tell Ramsay his roots.

She did not listen.

She soaked the boys head with notions of lordship and wealth and rightful rank. She came back once more, indifferent that her daughter was missing, insisting Roose provide a servant to the boy, who was growing more wild and unruly by the day.

He did.

Only in jest.

Reek, a foul-smelling servant who lurked in the shadows around the Dreadfort, who was as depraved and wrenched as a man could be, was sent post haste.

The jest was on Roose.

Ramsay and Reek became inseparable.

Perhaps the beast of a man filled the hole his twin left, whether the boy knew it or not, whether his mother had thought it important to inform him of his sibling as she clearly found significance in notifying the boy of his Lordly father and brother.

Roose thought he may, perhaps, hate her a little for that.

Worst of all, Domeric, as soon as he came back from being fostered in the Vale of Arryn by House Redfort, a good match for a Firstborn Heir, he began to ponder where the yearly shipments of piglets were going, and from under Roose's clever eye, followed the cart one day.

He unearthed the brother of his missing sister at the trails end.

Along with conceptions of dignity, jousting, and knightly talents Domeric had brought with him back from the Vale, he too brought a notion of family entirely too Southron.

He didn't understand something was… Wrong with the boy.

Not the way Roose had when he initially glimpsed him.

And perhaps, perchance, beneath it all, a certain seed rooted Roose's resentment of the child. A seed he could not control.

The wrong child had lived.

My daughter was gone while this one frolicked in the woods.

Why?

Life, as Roose loathed, had cheated him.

Domeric brought the dishevelled, filthy boy back. Told him of the sister he never knew he had. Promised him hearth and home, and food and brotherhood. Perhaps, he too, his heir, was trying to fill the hole.

Roose had ordered he take the boy back to where he belonged.

Domeric, keenly, had countered.

"Wilhelmina would have wanted him here. If not for the boy, if not for me, if only for her memory… Let him stay."

He did.

Begrudgingly.

An heir and a spare was customary, after all.

Or so he said to those who asked for the reasoning of his sudden shift of opinion.

The boy, Ramsay, was reckless and ruthless and cruel. A Bolton of old, where Red Kings reigned and direwolves cowered. Perfect… If born centuries ago. Yet, they lived through more nuanced and unique times than their ancestors. Times that called for subtlety and restraint.

Virtues Ramsay profoundly lacked in all regard.

His… Hunts, Roose would call them politely, were beginning to draw attention from the Smallfolk. Rumours of his hounds and chases simmering in taverns of the Weeping Waters, and when the Smallfolk talked, the Lords would listen… Lord Stark would listen, and that was not a fight Roose wanted to pick.

Yet.

A Bolton always knew when, or when not to, strike.

A lesson he was trying to teach his sons as he took them for that morning hunt.

If they were to be a family, they were both to act like true Boltons.

Not a mad-dog and flowery knight of Highgarden.

A morning hunt that was disturbed by a half-carved man wailing in their stables. Bloodied and beaten and broken, like the Miller's wife of old. Who laughed and snickered and hooted and sang and said one name.

Wilhelmina.

Roose saw his hand.

His flayed hand, clutched to his chest, fingers blackened and brutally bent.

Only a Bolton, Roose knew, would have the skill to leave the bottom most layer of skin intact while peeling, where the sense and feeling came from.

The hunt was abandoned.

A new hunt began.

Myranda's P.O.V

The kennel master's daughter despised going into town. It was dank and dark and dirty. Smallfolk pressing together, hocking their wears, haggling over flanks of meat with little coin. She much preferred it in the Dreadfort, in the kennels with her father, tending to the hounds, in the warmth, where she could watch, as had come to be her new favoured leisure, watching the Bolton bastard Ramsay Snow.

She heard what they said of him.

Of course she had.

Everyone knew, though no one spoke of it in fear of Lord Bolton's wrath.

Yet, listen she did. Listen and watch, and bit by bit, inch by inch, she was irrevocably devoured.

There was something in the bastards gaze, something that reminded Myranda of the hounds in the kennel the day before a hunt, where they had been starved for a few turns to ensure they tracked well.

A ravenous hunger.

A boundless greed.

A bloody thirst.

It called to something deep inside her, a tangled gnarly bind of reckless desire.

And he never, not once, looked her way.

She hated that most.

Myranda had always been a cruel girl. Cruel and mean and callous. When she wanted something, she wanted it with everything she had, every ache and hunger and need. The kitchen maid who had that lovely ribbon in her pretty blonde hair could tell you so.

If you could still find her bloated carcass in the bottom of the well and it had not been fished out.

And she wanted the bastard with his own hungry eyes.

She wanted and wanted and wanted.

Myranda was good at getting what she wanted, because, unlike others, she knew when to act. She hung back and she watched, and she waited, and she wanted. One day, he would look at her. One day, he would see.

One day, he would know she was just like him.

Only she could ever really understand him.

Only she.

And it came.

Her one chance.

A man came lurching into the Bolton's stable and the Dreadfort was sent into a flurry. She watched as their intended hunt was swiftly abandoned in favour of the broken man, as Domeric, the handsome heir, was instructed by his father to take the man inside, as Lord Bolton took Ramsay's shoulder and urged him too, strangely, inside.

She eavesdropped by the door, hearing Lord Bolton probing the mumbling man about where Wilhelmina was? Where had he come from? Where was she now?

His questions had fallen on crazed ears.

The man only ever spoke a poem, asking if Mina, whoever this girl was, was happy with him now that he remembered it. It was her favourite, after all, he assured them in a sloppy slur.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. I remember now, Mina. I remember. Do I get to go home now? Mina promised if I remembered, I could go home."

Lord Bolton scoffed.

"Not until you tell me where Wilhelmina is."

"Wrong! Wrong! Wrong question for a wrong man! It's never where Wilhelmina is, but where isn't she? I told you! Her favourite… I told you… The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. I remember! I remember!"

"I will ask graciously one last time. Where is Wilhelmina?"

Myranda's mother had much been like the mumbling man, from the few memories she had of the older woman before she passed when Miranda was only nine. She saw ghosts, her father said, but could only speak in riddles.

The Smallfolk called her Mad Marleen.

It made her angry.

It made her sad.

It made her violent.

Sometimes, rarely, her father looked at Myranda as if she too, could see ghosts.

Perhaps she could, because she could understand the man.

He had told them.

The woods were lovely, dark and deep…

The woods.

If she brought Lord Bolton this Wilhelmina, whoever she was, if she brought the girl right to Ramsay's father, dropped her at his feet, Ramsay must look to her then.

He simply must, and he would see, and Myranda's want would be filled and-

No one missed the kennel masters daughter as she dipped out the castle through the servants entrance round back.

The Weeping Water Woods was easy to find, and easier to get lost in. Many a traveller's bones strewing the sodden ground, as salt white as the woods, where branch and bone could be mistaken for one and the other.

Myranda was safe.

She had grown up traversing these very looming bare-branched trees and winding, hazy trails that had slain many a braver, but denser, man. The sun, blanketed by the thick northern cloudfall, was high in the sky, near time for midday meal, when the branch behind her snapped underfoot.

She whirled around.

Nobody was there.

She went to carry on-

Another branch snapped behind her.

She swivelled.

Again, nothing-

A snicker, as light and thick as smoke.

Off in the skeletal trees.

"Who is there?"

The wind blew.

She took another step.

Something tugged on a lock of her brown hair harshly, yanking her head back, making her stumble.

Once More, she turned, once more, nothing.

The chuckle was louder now.

"Show yourself!"

Myranda could see no one, nothing, but a voice did come, as misty and murky as the laughter still chiming in the wind.

"You're from that castle on the cliff, aren't you? The big mean looking one?"

They sounded youthful, with the raspy tones of leaves rustling in the breeze, or bones shifting under dirt, all the mischievousness of a forest sprite or a pitiless spirit on the flip of a coin, a chance of mood and time of day.

"The Dreadfort?"

Something darted out the corner of her eye, a wisp of colour blinking, and Myranda spun. Nothing.

A giggle.

"I'll take that as a yes."

Suddenly, she felt someone one behind her, looming. Abruptly, her heart shot into her throat, lodging. Unexpectedly, there was a very keen, cutting knife's edge pressing dangerously into the soft skin of her delicately thin throat.

A hand wrapped into the hair at the nape of her neck, wrapped and twisted and wrenched. Her head shot backwards, baring her throat, gaze trapped to the colourless sky.

Myranda fell still.

She had a dagger in her boot, she was not so naive to come into the lawless woods with no weapon to guard herself with, but she couldn't bend, not with the hand in her hair and-

The voice came, brushing hotly against the shell of her ear.

"A man, Dolohov, came rushing to it a few hours ago, didn't he?"

Myranda swallowed and winced as the ripple of her throat pushed tighter to the blade burrowing into it. Something hot and thick dribbled down to her neck, dipping into her collar bone.

Blood.

Her blood.

"The mumbling man?"

She dared not wiggle, in fear the knife would slice. She needed to be smart. Swift and smart and sly. She would keep the woman behind her talking, and when her chance came, for it would, her chances always came, she would strike. Yet, Myranda was not swift. She was not smart. And she was not sly. Not as much as she arrogantly believed she was.

Myranda was a cruel, and mean, and callous girl.

And such girls never really knew when to stop talking.

The chuckle was as cold as the voice, as raspy as it too, and yes, it did hum more like the clatter of bones.

"The mumbling man… I like that. I like that a lot."

"Who are you? Are you… Are you Wilhelmina?"

The tutting came slow. Taunting. The knife pressed in deeper.

"I see the mumbling man has been talking. Shame, really. I was going to let you go."

There was no mistaking that dry and wry tone.

Myranda knew what was coming.

She began to bargain. If the person behind her was a man, it would have been easy. Simple. Men like supple, young flesh, and Myranda was used to doing what she must to survive. They would have never finished, anyhow. She would have had the knife off them, embedded in their own throat, their coins in her own pouch, long before then.

Some women too.

However, there was no wily grope to her breast, no pelvis pushing into her hip, not even a skim of knuckles against her waist. Whatever this woman wanted; it was not her body. Her coin pouch was still tied to the belt around her waist, not so much thumbed. She did not want her money.

You're from that castle on the cliff, aren't you?

"I can take you to the castle. I can bring you inside. The guards won't let a stranger in-"

"Oh, I know. I spied them earlier. Whoever owns that castle runs a tight ship. But I won't be a stranger. Not really."

"I can help-"

"I don't need your help. Only your face."

"I don't understand. I will not tell Lord Bolton you are here if-"

"Of course you won't. You won't have the chance. Now, undress."

"Please, I can-"

The knife carved, cutting, raking, warning.

"Now."

Myranda's tongue fell lifeless, as her hands came up to the laces at her back, unravelling and tugging. She pulled the sleeves off her slim shoulders, the inexpensive material pooling at her feet. She kicked herself out her leather shoes.

She wore no small clothes.

Bare as the day she was born.

Bare and cold and crying.

Perhaps the woman behind her did like her body. Perhaps there was a chance to-

The dress was tugged from out under her feat, a ruffling behind her, cloth thrown, strange cloth, light blue and thick, like a hide of some kind, a jerkin of white, slim, and shoes with strange soles and patches and laces up the front.

The knife moved, slipped to a lock of her hair and lopped.

The hair was snatched away before it could flutter to the ground.

The knife was gone, so was the presence at her back, and Myranda took her chance.

She span, wide-eyed, and saw the girl not a few strides away, already in her dress and shoes and-

Dark coiled hair the colour of night, skin the shade of fresh milk and eyes, large, the shade of moonlight.

Myranda faltered.

She knew those eyes. Knew that infinite hunger and voracious greed, that keen smile and keener gaze. She knew that ruby earring, hanging from lobe, shiny like a drop of blood. She knew and she wanted and she-

The girl dipped a hand into her own pouch hanging at her hip, pulled free a flask, and tossed a lock of hair into it, before shoving the rest not used back into the pouch. She shook the bottle once, twice, three times and-

She drank it.

Tipped her head right back and gulped it down in one swallow.

"You… You… You look just like-"

Myranda would never get to finish that thought as she watched, impossibly, as the woman rippled like a reflection, like a reflection disturbed in a pond, flowing and swelling, Bolton eyes spinning smaller, tight, amber. Dark hair lifting to muddy brown. Hips narrowing, thinning, breasts growing, size inching smaller and-

Myranda was abruptly gaping back at herself, right down to the tiny scar on her cheekbone from a childhood mishap.

Myranda grinned back at Myranda.

Myranda had never been a girl of much faith, never once taking comfort in the Godswood, but she, then, faced with such impossibility, found herself speaking without ever really meaning to.

"Are you an old God?"

The woman with her face winked at her.

"Not quite, but close."

Then, there was a stick in her hand, knobbed and long, and aimed right at her and-

She was trussed and bound, resolutely, rope around her wrists and ankles, snaking around her legs and chest, and she was falling to the floor, unbalanced, pebbles and twigs digging into her naked flesh unforgivingly, cutting and scraping.

"Please, do not kill me. I can-"

"I'm not going to kill you. We're going to have a little wager. I'm going to leave you right here, and if you manage to get out of your binds, outrun that pack of wolves I saw earlier, and make it back to the castle before you freeze to death, you're free to go. If not… Well, I win the bet then, don't I?"

Myranda could not see the woman from her cowered form on the floor. Yet, she heard the steps residing.

"Hold! Please! I can…Please!"

Her pleas, just as with the mumbling man, as her mother with her father, fell on crazed ears.

A wolf howled in the distance.

Thoughts?

A.N: So what did you think? I hope you liked it! I would just like to say a quick Thank you to all the follows and favourites, and of course, reviews. All the kindness this crazy fic has brought is actually quite mind blowing, so, really, thank you all.

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