His good companions—Meera, Osha, Hodor...
Just as Bran wanted to ask more, they came—the little women.
At first, he mistook them for little girls, but their voices were those of grown women, high and sweet, carrying an unfamiliar rhythm he had never heard before, and a thread of sorrow that broke his heart.
They were shorter than Arya, with wilted flowers tucked into their tangled brown, red, and golden hair. Their eyes were strangely large, clear and bright, just like a cat's.
Their skin was dappled like a doe's, and they wore cloaks woven from leaves.
Then they said they were the Children of the Forest. The First Men called them children, while the giants called them squirrelfolk, because they were small, nimble, and fond of the woods.
One of the Children of the Forest told him that "Children of the Forest" meant those who sang praises to the earth in their original language. They had been singing for tens of thousands of years before the ancient tongue of the First Men appeared.
Another Child of the Forest told him that she had been born in the age of dragons and had wandered the human world for two hundred years.
Only later, when her legs ached and her heart had grown weary, did she turn back home.
She was over two hundred years old?!
Bran remembered trembling all over when he heard that—not only from the cold, but even more from shock.
It felt as though he were witnessing one of Old Nan's bedtime stories...
The Three-Eyed Crow seemed immersed in a dream. Unable to contain his curiosity, Bran quietly asked, "How many of you are there? How come I haven't seen anyone else?"
A Child of the Forest answered, "The others went deep into the earth, into the