A Time for Wolves

Rickon

Rickon

He walked into the forest and the trees' canopies covered him almost completely from the sunlight, which had long since started to fade as the evening passed by. The forest was dark, and it had a mysterious look that excited Rickon, even though his mission there was only an uninteresting daily task. Reddy, the woman who was in charge of making the fires, had asked him to go there to fetch firewood. That was the reason why he was in that place. His 'mother' allowed him to go there alone, as long as he did not go far away and on condition that he came back before dark.

Osha had looked after Rickon ever since they parted from Bran, Hodor and the Reeds. She was the only person Rickon had trusted at the beginning, when they first got to the town where they lived now. She was kind with him, and protective, but she let him do practically everything he wanted, provided that there was no danger in it. He took a liking to climbing, both rocks and trees, and Osha allowed him to do so as she watched him attentively. If she believed he was about to fall, she would just give him a warning, but that was all. He also liked to go hunting with Shaggydog, but he could only do that when he entered its skin in his sleep. Osha had made a spear for him and Rickon was learning to use it, but he was not yet invited in the hunting parties of the adults.

Rickon had lost all his family. All of them had left. Every single one of them had promised to come back and, no matter how much Rickon had screamed, shrieked and complained, they had still gone away. None of them returned as they had promised. Osha was the only one he had left, together with the people who had been living with them for some months, and Rickon had only just started to befriend them.

But now that he had learnt to speak with those people, it did not seem so hard for him to get used to them, and now he knew that place as well as he knew himself. Not even the forest in which he was now picking up firewood could scare him. Rickon himself had offered to fetch it, because it was the most amusing thing he could do until after two days, when the punishment Osha had given him for fighting with another boy ended, and thus he was allowed to play again.

His new home was a little town of 'Free Folk' in Skagos. Osha had told him about it while they traveled there from Winterfell, after he had asked her where they were going. "We are going to a town in Skagos. That's the place where my mother was born. She decided to go beyond the Wall when she was young, and that's where I was born. But she came back to her hometown after I grew up, so we're going to meet her."

And so they had. Keylie, Osha's mother, was considered to be an old woman, at least by the Free Folk's standards. She must be at least forty years old. She was also thought to be wise because she knew how to speak and read in the Common Tongue, while most of the Skagosi only spoke the Old Tongue. She had also learned some healing treatments that were common between the wildlings, and she was charged with aiding the sick and wounded of the village.

When she had learned that her daughter had come to live with her, she had been thrilled and had hugged her tightly. But after that she had seen Rickon, and asked who he was. Osha lied, saying he was her son, because half of the village's inhabitants were there, looking with curiosity at the newcomers. It was not until they were in the privacy of Keylie's tent that Osha had told her mother the whole story. And the whole story did not begin when they parted from Bran, or with Theon's attack. Not even when Osha had come to Winterfell. For her mother to understand why her daughter was taking care of him, she had to tell her things that not even Rickon knew, such as the Others' attacks beyond the Wall which had driven her and her group south, where she had known the deserters of the Night's Watch with whom she went south of the Wall and traveled stealthily for almost a year, until they found Bran.

After hearing the whole story, Keylie stayed quiet for some time, thinking what to do about it. In the end, she said she would raise Rickon by herself, and teach him the Old Tongue. If anybody asked, Rickon was Osha's child by a northern lord. Nobody was likely to ask for his father, because most of the Skagosi did not know the names of the lords.

After he learned to speak in the Old Tongue, Rickon started playing with the other children in the town. There were only four families there, besides his own (Osha and Keylie) and there were not many kids (twelve-year-olds were already considered adults there.) The ones that spent more time with Rickon were Keit, Lyra and Deiro. They were siblings, and they were older than him, but they took him in almost all their games.

Keit, a tall and dark-haired ten-years-old boy, was the oldest of the three. He taught him how to use the spear Osha had given him and he told him things about the Free Folk, but it was still hard for Rickon to understand him. He seemed older than he was, and in Skagos he was considered 'almost a man grown'. Sometimes, he reminded him of his older brothers: Robb, always the role model, so strong and smart, or Bran, always close to him, willing to help him and teach him things, answering his questions when no one else would.

Lyra was an eight-year-old girl, tall for her age, but shorter than Keit. Her hair was curly and brown, and her big and shiny eyes were the same color. She could speak the Common Tongue, because Keylie had decided to teach her after noticing her interest in her studies (she was the only one in the village who enjoyed having lessons.) Thanks to that, she was the first of the three siblings who ever spoke to Rickon and played with him. She had to teach him the games that Skagosi children played, because the games he knew (Come-into-my-Castle, Monsters-and-Maidens and The-Lord-of-the-Crossing) were utterly impossible for them to understand.

Deiro was the youngest one: he was of Rickon's age. He was smaller than him, but he could climb, run and fight just as well as Rickon could. Deiro did not know how to use a spear, so Keit trained both Rickon and him together. Rickon had never had a 'peer' before; he had always been the youngest, the smallest, the one everyone spoiled and whose worst frustration was not being able to do whatever his older siblings did. Now he had a rival, someone who did not lose on purpose when he played with him, and who could do the same as him. This made Rickon angry, and sometimes they fought and beat each other, until one day when Shaggydog went forth to defend him. The direwolf had taken two fingers from Deiro's right hand, and the boy avoided Rickon for the following three days. When he did dare come near him him again he was still afraid of him, and he hardly talked to him again.

The children would be playing right now, running among the houses and chasing after each other. He had been invited to play with them, but he had had to turn down their invitation because he was grounded. It had been five days now since his incident with Deiro, but Osha had not lifted his punishment yet. He had two days left before he could play with his friends again. In the meanwhile, he could only watch them from the distance, attend to his classes and help the adults with their jobs, as he was doing now.

The other children in the town were either very old or very young (for Rickon, anyone under four years old was too young, because he had never played with a younger child.) The adults sometimes watched them play, sang songs to them or told them stories. Each of them had a different main job, but they helped with everything when it was needed. The children's father was the chief hunter, and his main responsibility was to provide meat to feed the people. Their mother, Reddy, was in charge of lighting the fires, cooking dinner in them and keeping them burning during the night to light up the place. Osha had decided to look after the children, and Keyllie was the healer. The other ones had jobs as collectors, weavers, builders and many more.

He found in his way many fallen branches. He examined them carefully and picked among them the ones that were larger and dryer. He took his time in doing so and, when he considered he had got enough, he started back.

Rickon was getting used to his new home, but he was not sure if he should call it that. After losing everything he had, which had seemed so safe, how could he be certain that the town would not be destroyed? Or that the people who lived there would not vanish one night, leaving him and Osha behind? Or even worse, what would Rickon do if Osha left him too? He trusted her, who always seemed to care for him for real, but his other mother had also loved him, and she was not by his side anymore. The same could be said about Robb. Probably he would never see them again. And he also doubted he would ever meet Bran again, because nor Rickon nor Bran knew where the other was.

He got to the village, where his friends played together and the adults helped prepare dinner. He handed the firewood to Reddy, who thanked him for his help. Then he sat on the ground, waiting for them to finish cooking the meat and to serve him his ration in his small wooden plate.

He looked around, to the small dwellings of the Free Folk, to his new friends who were running and playing, and to the men and women, who were gathered around the fire they had lit up to cook that night's dinner. That town was everything Rickon had now. Just as Winterfell had been once everything he had and knew.

Then, Rickon decided that it did not matter if they abandoned him, or if the town was destroyed, or if, for any reason, that village stopped being his home. Winterfell had been his House, for the time it had lasted, and Skagos was his home now, for as long as it would last. If it was taken from him, it would not mean that it had not been his home. And if he was forced to leave Skagos behind in the future, he would probably find another place where he could live; a new place to call home.