This is part 3 in a multi-part series about our favorite direwolves. The other posts in the series are here:
Part 1: Lady and Sansa, Part 2: Grey Wind and Robb, Part 3: Nymeria and Arya, Part 4: Summer and Bran, Part 5: Shaggydog and Rickon, Part 6: Ghost and Jon
Recall this SSM.
Q: Are all the Stark children wargs/skin changers with their wolves?
GRRM: To a greater or lesser degree, yes, but the amount of control varies widely.
https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Quite_a_Few_Questions
A note about the order of this series: I am doing this analysis in order of what I think is the increasing magical power of the direwolves. We have 4 wolves with eyes of molten gold, so I’ll be focusing on them first and then finishing with our green-eyed and finally our red-eyed direwolf. The order chosen within the group of the first four wolves was chosen in order of the increasing magical strength of their Stark children. Arya, I think is stronger in her magic than Sansa and Robb, for a variety of reasons. Bran, of course seems to be extremely strong. While it’s possible that Arya is equal to him in magical potential, the general consensus is that Bran is exceptional, so we’ll give him the edge, and cover him in part 4.
Speaking of Bran, typically at this point in an essay, we would cover AGoT Bran I. There is no need here with Arya and Nymeria, as we’ve already covered the applicable parts in Robb and Sansa’s parts of the series.
___________
A Game of Thrones – Nymeria with and then Isolated from Arya
Several themes from our prior volumes continue here with Nymeria and her bond to Arya, including:
- Shadowing /protecting
- Fear of the wolves / Savagery of their attacks
- The wolves mirroring their children’s personality
- Obedience / Independence
- Being affectionate when they’re together
- Belonging to the pack / hunting
- Bad things happening when they’re separated
These are all in evidence for the pair while together in AGoT, where they spend such a short time together before being separated. In later volumes, we see that even though they are separated, the bond is still strong between them.
A Game of Thrones – Arya I
We start with Nymeria having been tied up while Arya was with Princess Myrcella. Immediately, we see their affection for each other and their closeness, save when they are forced to be separated as Cat has done here. Mirroring of their personalities is evident even in the wolf’s name, Nymeria, a figure of female empowerment and independence. The scene closes Nymeria shadowing Arya, checking off each of the themes listed above save one which comes later in the chapter. Nymeria’s bond with Arya developed quickly indeed.
Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She bounded to her feet as soon as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did. They went everywhere together, and Nymeria slept in her room, at the foot of her bed. If Mother had not forbidden it, Arya would gladly have taken the wolf with her to needlework. Let Septa Mordane complain about her stitches then.
Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes. When they caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had named her after the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led her people across the narrow sea. That had been a great scandal too. Sansa, of course, had named her pup “Lady.” Arya made a face and hugged the wolfling tight. Nymeria licked her ear, and she giggled.
By now Septa Mordane would certainly have sent word to her lady mother. If she went to her room, they would find her. Arya did not care to be found. She had a better notion. The boys were at practice in the yard. She wanted to see Robb put gallant Prince Joffrey flat on his back. “Come,” she whispered to Nymeria. She got up and ran, the wolf coming hard at her heels.
Next, they encounter Ghost and Jon, and we see pack interaction. Nymeria is wary of the larger Ghost, but they seem to get along. Arya and Jon in turn are of one mind about the unfairness of being outcast. The theme of the call of the pack is evident where Nymeria begins to follow Ghost and / or Jon before realizing that she and Arya are not going along with them. The pack bond/instinct is strong in these wolves.
They arrived, flushed and breathless, to find Jon seated on the sill, one leg drawn up languidly to his chin. He was watching the action, so absorbed that he seemed unaware of her approach until his white wolf moved to meet them. Nymeria stalked closer on wary feet. Ghost, already larger than his litter mates, smelled her, gave her ear a careful nip, and settled back down.
[…]
“Nothing is fair,” Jon said. He messed up her hair again and walked away from her, Ghost moving silently beside him. Nymeria started to follow too, then stopped and came back when she saw that Arya was not coming.
Reluctantly she turned in the other direction.
– A Game of Thrones – Arya I
A Game of Thrones – Jon II
The pair encounter their brothers again when Ghost and Jon visit to make their farewells and to give Needle to Arya. Nymeria seems happy to see Ghost this time, mirroring Arya and Jon’s relationship. Nymeria is also fetching specific items for Arya to pack. Is this an example of them sharing one mind in a near warging? This type of cooperation is reminiscent of Grey Wind and Robb much later in the story. At the end Arya commands Nymeria to guard, and she obeys without issue. The tension between obedience and independence is important to Nymeria’s story. IMHO she does obey but is more independent and questions authority as a mirroring to Arya’s personality.
Arya was in her room, packing a polished ironwood chest that was bigger than she was. Nymeria was helping. Arya would only have to point, and the wolf would bound across the room, snatch up some wisp of silk in her jaws, and fetch it back. But when she smelled Ghost, she sat down on her haunches and yelped at them.
[…]
“I don’t think she’d like Nymeria helping, either.” The she-wolf regarded him silently with her dark golden eyes. “It’s just as well. I have something for you to take with you, and it has to be packed very carefully.”
[…]
Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. “Nymeria, here. Guard.” She left the wolf out there to warn of intruders and closed the door. By then Jon had pulled off the rags he’d wrapped it in. He held it out to her.
Arya’s eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. “A sword,” she said in a small, hushed breath.
– A Game of Thrones – Jon II
A Game of Thrones – Sansa I
We don’t get another Arya POV until they arrive in King’s Landing, so Sansa takes up the Nymeria’s tale while they are on the road. This eventful chapter draws a stark contrast between the sisters as discussed in part I. That contrast is mirrored in the wolves’ obedience / independence. As Arya brushes her, Nymeria struggles, mirroring Arya’s independent streak. She is also mood mirroring Arya; neither seem to enjoy the brushing process. We also see snips of how close the pair are in Arya’s dialogue.
She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold Nymeria still while she brushed dried mud from her fur. The direwolf was not enjoying the process. Arya was wearing the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the day before.
[…]
Arya shrugged. “Hold still,” she snapped at Nymeria, “I’m not hurting you.” Then to Sansa she said, “When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion.”
[…]
Arya was still going on, brushing out Nymeria’s tangles and chattering about things she’d seen on the trek south. “Last week we found this haunted watchtower, and the day before we chased a herd of wild horses. You should have seen them run when they caught a scent of Nymeria.” The wolf wriggled in her grasp and Arya scolded her. “Stop that, I have to do the other side, you’re all muddy.”
[…]
Arya shrugged. “I didn’t go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don’t always go off, either. Sometimes it’s fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to people.”
[…]
Arya ignored her. She gave a hard yank with the brush. Nymeria growled and spun away, affronted. “Come back here!”
“There’s going to be lemon cakes and tea,” Sansa went on, all adult and reasonable. Lady brushed against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat beside her on her haunches, watching Arya chase Nymeria. “Why would you want to ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows and eat cakes with the queen?”
“I don’t like the queen,” Arya said casually. Sansa sucked in her breath, shocked that even Arya would say such a thing, but her sister prattled on, heedless. “She won’t even let me bring Nymeria.” She thrust the brush under her belt and stalked her wolf. Nymeria watched her approach warily.
“A royal wheelhouse is no place for a wolf,” Sansa said. “And Princess Myrcella is afraid of them, you know that.”
“Myrcella is a little baby.” Arya grabbed Nymeria around her neck, but the moment she pulled out the brush again the direwolf wriggled free and bounded off. Frustrated, Arya threw down the brush. “Bad wolf!” she shouted.
[…]
She turned to walk off, but Arya shouted after her, “They won’t let you bring Lady either.” She was gone before Sansa could think of a reply, chasing Nymeria along the river.
This cute interaction represents the last time Arya and Sansa get along in the story, something I hope will eventually reverse in their reunion. Unfortunately, our next scene is where Joffrey attacks Arya and Mycah. Note that Arya already mentioned him earlier, as did Sansa with her mention of Arya’s bruises. He was clearly a close friend by this point.
The blame in this encounter is very important, as it determines the future of both wolves and sets the mood for the girls’ interactions for the remainder of this volume. Let’s be clear: Joffrey starts it, attacks Mycah, and sadistically tortures/threatens him. Then Arya hits him with a stick to protect her friend, warranted. She strikes him again as Mycah escapes, also warranted to enable the escape. Then Sansa thinks that Arya threw a rock at Joffrey, which would be taking it too far, but WE DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW IF ARYA WAS AIMING AT JOFFREY. We only get Sansa’s opinion that Arya missed and hit the horse.
She may have been trying to hit the horse to deprive Joff of the ability to chase Mycah. I think this is quite plausible, as the author makes sure to mention it going toward Mycah in the same sentence. Joffrey then “slashes” at her with his sword, a completely shocking act. Arya is truly frightened and retreats, but ends up between Joffrey and a tree. Then and only then does Nymeria act, judiciously, grabbing at Joffrey’s arm, not his throat (which might be warranted). She then immediately obeys Arya when called off. All in all, Nymeria is nothing short of a hero here. Arya again does the right thing, deescalating by removing “Lion’s Tooth” from the equation.
Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands. There was a loud crack as the wood split against the back of the prince’s head, and then everything happened at once before Sansa’s horrified eyes. Joffrey staggered and whirled around, roaring curses. Mycah ran for the trees as fast as his legs would take him. Arya swung at the prince again, but this time Joffrey caught the blow on Lion’s Tooth and sent her broken stick flying from her hands. The back of his head was all bloody and his eyes were on fire. Sansa was shrieking, “No, no, stop it, stop it, both of you, you’re spoiling it,” but no one was listening. Arya scooped up a rock and hurled it at Joffrey’s head. She hit his horse instead, and the blood bay reared and went galloping off after Mycah. “Stop it, don’t, stop it!” Sansa screamed. Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming obscenities, terrible words, filthy words. Arya darted back, frightened now, but Joffrey followed, hounding her toward the woods, backing her up against a tree. Sansa didn’t know what to do. She watched helplessly, almost blind from her tears.
Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria was there, leaping, jaws closing around Joffrey’s sword arm. The steel fell from his fingers as the wolf knocked him off his feet, and they rolled in the grass, the wolf snarling and ripping at him, the prince shrieking in pain. “Get it off,” he screamed. “Get it off!”
Arya’s voice cracked like a whip. “Nymeria!”
The direwolf let go of Joffrey and moved to Arya’s side. The prince lay in the grass, whimpering, cradling his mangled arm. His shirt was soaked in blood. Arya said, “She didn’t hurt you … much.” She picked up Lion’s Tooth where it had fallen, and stood over him, holding the sword with both hands.
“You leave him alone!” Sansa screamed at her sister.
Arya whirled and heaved the sword into the air, putting her whole body into the throw. The blue steel flashed in the sun as the sword spun out over the river. It hit the water and vanished with a splash. Joffrey moaned. Arya ran off to her horse, Nymeria loping at her heels.
A Game of Thrones – Sansa I
The encounter ends with Nymeria, having proven her bonafides as a protector, re-assuming her role as Arya’s shadow. Sadly this is not meant to continue.
A Game of Thrones – Eddard III
In the aftermath of the debacle, Arya calmly tells her tale, but grows angry and wild at Joffrey and then Sansa’s lies. I do wonder if her bond to Nymeria is affecting her behavior here. Arya may even be mirroring Nymeria’s mood here. After Cersei determines that Lady is to be executed, Arya grows wild again in defense of her pack. Sansa, by contrast, throws Nymeria under the bus.
“Lady wasn’t there,” Arya shouted angrily. “You leave her alone!”
“Stop them,” Sansa pleaded, “don’t let them do it, please, please, it wasn’t Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can’t, it wasn’t Lady, don’t let them hurt Lady, I’ll make her be good, I promise, I promise …” She started to cry.
The chapter ends with Lady’s death, but before that Ned sees the hound return with Mycah’s body, while the author cruelly lets us think it was Nymeria.
There was something slung over the back of his destrier, a heavy shape wrapped in a bloody cloak. “No sign of your daughter, Hand,” the Hound rasped down, “but the day was not wholly wasted. We got her little pet.” He reached back and shoved the burden off, and it fell with a thump in front of Ned.
Bending, Ned pulled back the cloak, dreading the words he would have to find for Arya, but it was not Nymeria after all. It was the butcher’s boy, Mycah, his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow struck from above.
– A Game of Thrones – Eddard III
Nymeria’s survival becomes plain when she returns to the story in ACoK. For the remainder of A Game of Thrones, Arya mourns her loss and Mycah’s while Sansa continues to blame Arya and Nymeria for all her woes.
A Game of Thrones – Eddard IV
This is poignant in Ned’s following chapter. The event at the fords split wide the cracks that were in these relationships, while Nymeria was abandoned. We must assume she felt lost, just as Arya is in this chapter.
Outside, wagons and riders were still pouring through the castle gates, and the yard was a chaos of mud and horseflesh and shouting men. The king had not yet arrived, he was told. Since the ugliness on the Trident, the Starks and their household had ridden well ahead of the main column, the better to separate themselves from the Lannisters and the growing tension. Robert had hardly been seen; the talk was he was traveling in the huge wheelhouse, drunk as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he would still be here too soon for Ned’s liking. He had only to look at Sansa’s face to feel the rage twisting inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher’s boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.
– A Game of Thrones – Eddard IV
We can assume that a stretched bond still exists between Nymeria and Arya during the rest of AGoT. Recalling our 5 themes of the wolf bonds, three are torn away during this time. Nymeria is stripped of her role as a protector, can no longer be affectionate with Arya, and is physically isolated from her pack. As to bad things happening when the wolves are separated from their humans, that is obvious with the Starks experiences in King’s Landing. She probably does still mirror Arya’s moods still to some degree.
A Game of Thrones – Arya II
Arya finally has another POV where we get see those moods up close. Nymeria enters her thoughts when she’s angry with Sansa, practicing with Needle and considering running away. Nymeria certainly would want to rejoin Arya at this point as she thinks; all these (shared) thoughts would probably call her to Arya, in fact. This is definitely an indication of the bond. It’s also interesting that Arya’s bond to Jon is recalled when she thinks of Nymeria. The four of them have several happy memories of time spent together at Winterfell.
She went back to the window, Needle in hand, and looked down into the courtyard below. If only she could climb like Bran, she thought; she would go out the window and down the tower, run away from this horrible place, away from Sansa and Septa Mordane and Prince Joffrey, from all of them. Steal some food from the kitchens, take Needle and her good boots and a warm cloak. She could find Nymeria in the wild woods below the Trident, and together they’d return to Winterfell, or run to Jon on the Wall. She found herself wishing that Jon was here with her now. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone.
That last line is particularly heart wrenching. Nymeria must also be extremely lonely at this point. One must wonder when she begins to form her new pack. Our answer may be later this same chapter when Ned then brings Nymeria up again, saying “the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” Surely Nymeria’s pack instinct kicks in and she joins a pack relatively quickly. He can also see, as we do, how close was their bond; how Arya missed Nymeria.
“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?“
Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory promised not to tell.”
“Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile. “There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly.”
“We had to throw rocks,” she said miserably. “I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn’t want her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she’d have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so ‘shamed, but it was right, wasn’t it? The queen would have killed her.”
[…]
“The hard cruel times,” her father said. “We tasted them on the Trident, child, and when Bran fell. You were born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known anything else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the sigil of our House, Arya.”
“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid.
“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa … Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you … and I need both of you, gods help me.”
– A Game of Thrones – Arya II
When Arya suddenly feels afraid after thinking of direwolves, is this possibly mirroring fear from Nymeria? Could Nymeria be fearful because she knows she cannot get into the city to protect Arya?
I also find Ned’s discussion of the importance of pack to be quite an endearing parenting moment. One must wander how different Sansa’s road may have been if he’d taken the time to give her the same advice.
A Game of Thrones – Arya III
Nymeria only comes up once more in AGoT when Arya was following Varys and Illyrio. I’d suggest this is an example of the bond as well. She needed her protector, but she also needed confidence, which Nymeria seemed to provide.
She must have crept after them for miles. Finally they were gone, but there was no place to go but forward. She found the wall again and followed, blind and lost, pretending that Nymeria was padding along beside her in the darkness. At the end she was knee-deep in foul-smelling water, wishing she could dance upon it as Syrio might have, and wondering if she’d ever see light again. It was full dark when finally Arya emerged into the night air.
– A Game of Thrones – Arya III
And, perhaps Nymeria was there with her, their minds partially mingled, set off by Arya’s sensory deprivation in that dark place. We know that their connection gets much stronger during the sensory deprivation of the Blind Beth chapter later, just as Bran and Summer’s connection strengthens when he hides in the darkness of the crypts of Winterfell.
A Clash of Kings – The Great She-Wolf and The Shapechanger Survivor
A Clash of Kings continues our warg bond themes and introduces wolf dreams to Nymeria and Arya’s story, cementing for us that their separation has not broken their bond, though the danger to Arya remains heightened by the distance. Their personalities continue to mirror, even if they never have the opportunity to be affectionate to each other. Arya doesn’t have Nymeria close to her as her protector, but Nymeria seems to be shadowing Arya’s path throughout the volume, and she has formed a new pack.
A Clash of Kings – Bran I
Speaking of pack, our author reminds us of her original pack early in the volume. In Bran I, Nymeria and the rest of the pack are mentioned. We must wonder how much Nymeria can sense her siblings, as Summer seems have the power to do here. Perhaps we’ll get an indication of this in TWoW?
Summer’s howls were long and sad, full of grief and longing. Shaggydog’s were more savage. Their voices echoed through the yards and halls until the castle rang and it seemed as though some great pack of direwolves haunted Winterfell, instead of only two . . . two where there had once been six. Do they miss their brothers and sisters too? Bran wondered. Are they calling to Grey Wind and Ghost, to Nymeria and Lady’s Shade? Do they want them to come home and be a pack together?
A Clash of Kings – Bran I
There is wolf symbolism and imagery all across the ACoK Arya chapters. The word “wolf” is used 28 times. The word “wolves” is used 30 times. Of these mentions, the following categorizations can be made (see table below).
| Young Wolf (mention or description) | 6 |
| Nymeria (mention or description) | 4 |
| Eddard (mention or description) | 1 |
| Arya see a pack | 1 |
| Mention a pack | 14 |
| Dream | 2 |
| Stark banner | 1 |
| Heard howls | 7 |
| Lady (mention or description) | 2 |
| Arya (mention or description) | 6 |
| Total Mentions | 43 |
A Clash of Kings – Arya II
GRRM certainly wants us not to forget that Nymeria is running wild in the Riverlands. The tales indicate that her great pack is running rampant, terrorizing some in the Riverlands. Arya knows immediately that it is Nymeria, but she’s still ashamed of having thrown stones at her, so no reunion is forthcoming.
“I heard the same thing from my cousin, and she’s not the sort to lie,” an old woman said. “She says there’s this great pack, hundreds of them, mankillers. The one that leads them is a she-wolf, a bitch from the seventh hell.”
A she-wolf. Arya sloshed her beer, wondering. Was the Gods Eye near the Trident? She wished she had a map. It had been near the Trident that she’d left Nymeria. She hadn’t wanted to, but Jory said they had no choice, that if the wolf came back with them she’d be killed for biting Joffrey, even though he’d deserved it. They’d had to shout and scream and throw stones, and it wasn’t until a few of Arya’s stones struck home that the direwolf had finally stopped following them. She probably wouldn’t even know me now, Arya thought. Or if she did, she’d hate me.
The man in the green cloak said, “I heard how this hellbitch walked into a village one day . . . a market day, people everywhere, and she walks in bold as you please and tears a baby from his mother’s arms. When the tale reached Lord Mooton, him and his sons swore they’d put an end to her. They tracked her to her lair with a pack of wolfhounds, and barely escaped with their skins. Not one of those dogs came back, not one.”
A Clash of Kings – Arya II
That last tall tale had drawn Arya’s ire, and she was soon thrown out of the inn by Yoren before she unmasked herself.
A Clash of Kings – Arya III
To contrast the villagers’ tales, Arya is not harmed when encountering wolves face to face in the next chapter, probably indicating that Nymeria is exercising some protection over her still. Nymeria herself is not seen, but could she have somehow signaled to the other wolf that Arya and her companions were not to be attacked? I think it possible. The only other explanation would be that Arya herself unwittingly exercised some small amount of telepathic communication with this wolf. The result is the same, though; the bond / warging ability is still there and beginning to strengthen, though Arya still seems to think Nymeria is “gone” as she discusses with Yoren.
One of them came padding out from under the trees. He stared at her, and bared his teeth, and all she could think was how stupid she’d been and how Hot Pie would gloat when they found her half-eaten body the next morning. But the wolf turned and raced back into the darkness, and quick as that the eyes were gone. Trembling, she cleaned herself and laced up and followed a distant scraping sound back to camp, and to Yoren. Arya climbed up into the wagon beside him, shaken. “Wolves,” she whispered hoarsely. “In the woods.”
“Aye. They would be.” He never looked at her.
“They scared me.”
“Did they?” He spat. “Seems to me your kind was fond o’ wolves.”
“Nymeria was a direwolf.” Arya hugged herself. “That’s different. Anyhow, she’s gone. Jory and I threw rocks at her until she ran off, or else the queen would have killed her.” It made her sad to talk about it. “I bet if she’d been in the city, she wouldn’t have let them cut off Father’s head.”
A Clash of Kings – Arya III
A Clash of Kings – Arya IV
Next, in her sleep Arya is warned by wolves howling of Lorch’s men arriving; could it be Nymeria pack? Probably, because she dreamt the howl that woke her. This is our first concrete example of mind mingling in their story, although it’s probably not a full-blown wolf dream. I think Nymeria was trying to warn Arya of the coming danger, fulfilling her role as protector through the bond.
She must have slept, though she never remembered closing her eyes. She dreamed a wolf was howling, and the sound was so terrible that it woke her at once. Arya sat up on her pallet with her heart thumping. “Hot Pie, wake up.” She scrambled to her feet. “Woth, Gendry, didn’t you hear?” She pulled on a boot.
All around her, men and boys stirred and crawled from their pallets. “What’s wrong?” Hot Pie asked. “Hear what?” Gendry wanted to know. “Arry had a bad dream,” someone else said.
“No, I heard it,” she insisted. “A wolf.”
“Arry has wolves in his head,” sneered Lommy. “Let them howl,” Gerren said, “they’re out there, we’re in here.” Woth agreed. “Never saw no wolf could storm a holdfast.” Hot Pie was saying, “I never heard nothing.”
“It was a wolf,” she shouted at them as she yanked on her second boot. “Something’s wrong, someone’s coming, get up!”
A Clash of Kings – Arya IV
Lommy really came up with a doozy there. Arya has wolves in her head, indeed. He had no idea how right he was, but GRRM was hiding that clue in plain sight! Arya says it herself at the end “someone’s coming.” Now where could she get that idea but directly from Nymeria’s mind, through the bond?
A Clash of Kings – Arya VII
In Harrenhal, when Jaqen approached her about her 3 deaths-owed, he wakes her from a full wolf dream. I do wonder if she was howling in this dream, and this is part of how Jaqen learned of her identity. This is the first full wolf dream in her story, but certainly not the last.
Arya was dreaming of wolves running wild through the wood when a strong hand clamped down over her mouth like smooth warm stone, solid and unyielding. She woke at once, squirming and struggling. “A girl says nothing,” a voice whispered close behind her ear. “A girl keeps her lips closed, no one hears, and friends may talk in secret. Yes?”
A Clash of Kings – Arya VII
A Clash of Kings – Arya VIII
Nymeria doesn’t come up in this chapter but recall that Arya took courage in this chapter from the stories of Robb and Grey Wind fighting in the Westerlands. She embraces her identity as a warg thinking this iconic line:
all of you better run or my brother will kill you, he’s a Stark, he’s more wolf than man, and so am I.
A Clash of Kings – Arya VIII
Nymeria is certainly leaving a piece of herself in Arya through the bond as the wolf dreams become a reality in their story.
A Clash of Kings – Arya IX
When the Boltons take over Harrenhal, she reminds us all of her bond with Nymeria by taking her name. She also prays to the old gods to make her strong like a wolf. Like Dany in the Dothraki sea, Arya’s wolf identity and wold bond is giving her confidence, making her fierce. It should be noted that this acquired ferocity takes a dark turn at the conclusion of the volume when she kills a guard.
She bit her lip, groping for another name. Lommy had called her Lumpyhead, Sansa used Horseface, and her father’s men once dubbed her Arya Underfoot, but she did not think any of those were the sort of name he wanted.
“Nymeria,” she said. “Only she called me Nan for short.”
[…]
Arya went to her knees. She wasn’t sure how she should begin. She clasped her hands together. Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Help me get those men out of the dungeon so we can kill Ser Amory, and bring me home to Winterfell. Make me a water dancer and a wolf and not afraid again, ever.
A Clash of Kings – Arya IX
A Clash of Kings – Arya X
The next time she prays to the old gods for guidance, she hears what is likely Nymeria’s howl and remembers her father’s advice about being with your pack. This is a strong indication of their bond. Might she be hearing this howl only in her mind as well? Either way, it gives her the courage to take Gendry and Hot Pie as her own new pack to go seeking for her family at Riverrun.
For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.
“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”
A Clash of Kings – Arya X
After listening to that passage again, It seems to me that she was getting her father’s advice from the old gods … very eerie indeed. Could it be that Bloodraven was watching? Or perhaps some green men from the Isle of Faces?
A Clash of Kings Jon VIII
That concludes Nymeria’s story in ACoK, save for a reminder from Jon about the pack while he contemplates his own imminent death by wildling.
His questions about how the wolves sense each other foreshadow the exploration of the pack bond coming next in ASoS.
Ghost sat on his haunches watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I’m dead, as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria, wherever they might be?
– A Clash of Kings Jon VIII
I do wonder when and if Arya will sense the rest of the pack through Nymeria as Jon and Bran do through their wolves. Right now, she’s completely unaware of the fates of the rest of her siblings.
In closing, Arya and Nymeria’s bond remains relatively strong through ACoK, which was somewhat unexpected. Arya’s physical proximity allows it to grow, while Nymeria still is trying to fulfill her role as protector at a distance.
A Storm of Swords – The Shadow Pack Leader and the Lone Wolf
Our direwolf themes continue in this volume. In the ASoS Riverlands chapters (Arya, Cat, Jaime), we get a second helping of mentions of Nymeria’s wolf pack. This is coupled with discussion of Hot Pie and Gendry being her pack now, reminding us that even though Arya is now several times a killer, she is still also a lost little girl searching for her family.
The word “wolf” is used 52 times (“direwolf” 18 times) and the word “wolves” is used 57 times. Of these mentions the following categorizations can be made. Note: Multiple mentions of the same subject in a paragraph or in consecutive paragraphs not counted multiple times.
| Young Wolf (mention or description) | 13 |
| Arya (mention or description) | 21 |
| Nymeria Mention (or description) | 1 |
| Grey Wind (mention or description) | 10 |
| Other Stark Wolves (mention or description) | 5 |
| Northmen (mention or description) | 20 |
| See A pack | 4 |
| Mention A pack | 7 |
| Dream | 9 |
| Stark’s described as Wolves/Skinchangers | 8 |
| Stark banner / sigil | 7 |
| Heard howls | 8 |
Arya thinks of herself as a wolf a lot in this volume. Direct mentions of Nymeria are sparse, but we do get many mentions of her pack, and we get Nymeria/Arya’s first POV wolf dream in her first chapter, followed by many more wolf dreams. Several dreams are described to us in the chapters, but at one point she mentions dreaming of wolves every night.
A Storm of Swords – Bran I
Speaking of Nymeria’s pack, the concept of the pack bond continues to be explored in ASoS as the magic of the wolves is further explained. We get to see through Summer’s eyes how he senses his packmates. Summer has a close enough bond to Shaggy that he knows he’s near, but he could only sense the others “sometimes”. I speculate that this may be partly because Jon and Ghost are beyond the wall. Still, he knows Lady is dead (the only one who has died at this point). His “sister” is mentioned as well in the end, though it’s unclear if he meant Lady or Nymeria. In other parts of the series I’ll discuss the idea that some of the direwolves may have more magic than others.
He had a pack as well, once. Five they had been, and a sixth who stood aside. Somewhere down inside him were the sounds the men had given them to tell one from the other, but it was not by their sounds he knew them. He remembered their scents, his brothers and his sisters. They all had smelled alike, had smelled of pack, but each was different too.
His angry brother with the hot green eyes was near, the prince felt, though he had not seen him for many hunts. Yet with every sun that set he grew more distant, and he had been the last. The others were far scattered, like leaves blown by the wild wind.
Sometimes he could sense them, though, as if they were still with him, only hidden from his sight by a boulder or a stand of trees. He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back . . . all but the sister they had lost. His tail drooped when he remembered her. Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice.
These woods belonged to them, the snowy slopes and stony hills, the great green pines and the golden leaf oaks, the rushing streams and blue lakes fringed with fingers of white frost. But his sister had left the wilds, to walk in the halls of man-rock where other hunters ruled, and once within those halls it was hard to find the path back out. The wolf prince remembered.
A Storm of Swords – Bran I
A Storm of Swords – Arya I
The first dream is foreshadowed by Arya, Hot Pie and Gendry encountering parts of Nymeria’s pack during their escape from Harrenhal, but being left unmolested by them. It is so eerie. How does Nymeria control these wolves and stop them from attacking Arya’s party? Is this part of the pack bond like with summer and the other direwolves? Can Nymeria somehow sense her normal wolf pack mates and exercise some control? Or is it Arya herself that is warding them by using warg magic?
Gendry’s mare lost her footing in the mud once, going down hard on her hindquarters and spilling him from the saddle, but neither horse nor rider was hurt, and Gendry got that stubborn look on his face and mounted right up again. Not long after, they came upon three wolves devouring the corpse of a fawn. When Hot Pie’s horse caught the scent, he shied and bolted. Two of the wolves fled as well, but the third raised his head and bared his teeth, prepared to defend his kill. “Back off,” Arya told Gendry. “Slow, so you don’t spook him.” They edged their mounts away, until the wolf and his feast were no longer in sight. Only then did she swing about to ride after Hot Pie, who was clinging desperately to the saddle as he crashed through the trees.
[…]
From time to time she sent Hot Pie and Gendry on while she doubled back to try to confuse their trail, listening all the while for the first sign of pursuit. Too slow, she thought to herself, chewing her lip, we’re going too slow, they’ll catch us for certain. Once, from the crest of a ridge, she spied dark shapes crossing a stream in the valley behind them, and for half a heartbeat she feared that Roose Bolton’s riders were on them, but when she looked again, she realized they were only a pack of wolves. She cupped her hands around her mouth and howled down at them, “Ahooooooooo, ahooooooooo.” When the largest of the wolves lifted its head and howled back, the sound made Arya shiver.
Interestingly, it could be Arya and Nymeria both protecting Arya’s party through the pack bond, given how Arya is strongly thinking about how the two boys are now her new pack, Just as Nymeria is now bonded to her own new pack. When their minds are mingled through he warg bond, it could be that both packs feel as one pack together in their collective mind/
She would make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. They were her pack, her friends, the only living friends that remained to her, and if not for her they would still be safe at Harrenhal, Gendry sweating at his forge and Hot Pie in the kitchens.
The wolf dream in this chapter is introduced in such a way that many don’t initially realize it to be a real events, but it is real, and Arya is in Nymeria’s mind for the entirety. Nymeria and her pack kill all the Brave Companions that Bolton had sent after Arya and her friends. Once this fact is understood we see it for the bloody and decisive battle that it is. Another thing to notice, at the beginning Arya seems somewhat aware of what is going on (knowing the names of the mummers, for example) and perhaps able to exercise some control, but once the fighting begins, it is clearly Nymeria in control, considering all the wolfish thoughts (mantalk, dark one, belled man, for example).
Her dreams were red and savage. The Mummers were in them, four at least, a pale Lyseni and a dark brutal axeman from Ib, the scarred Dothraki horse lord called Iggo and a Dornishman whose name she never knew. On and on they came, riding through the rain in rusting mail and wet leather, swords and axe clanking against their saddles. They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them.
She was no little girl in the dream; she was a wolf, huge and powerful, and when she emerged from beneath the trees in front of them and bared her teeth in a low rumbling growl, she could smell the rank stench of fear from horse and man alike. The Lyseni’s mount reared and screamed in terror, and the others shouted at one another in mantalk, but before they could act the other wolves came hurtling from the darkness and the rain, a great pack of them, gaunt and wet and silent.
The fight was short but bloody. The hairy man went down as he unslung his axe, the dark one died stringing an arrow, and the pale man from Lys tried to bolt. Her brothers and sisters ran him down, turning him again and again, coming at him from all sides, snapping at the legs of his horse and tearing the throat from the rider when he came crashing to the earth.
Only the belled man stood his ground. His horse kicked in the head of one of her sisters, and he cut another almost in half with his curved silvery claw as his hair tinkled softly.
Filled with rage, she leapt onto his back, knocking him head-first from his saddle. Her jaws locked on his arm as they fell, her teeth sinking through the leather and wool and soft flesh. When they landed she gave a savage jerk with her head and ripped the limb loose from his shoulder. Exulting, she shook it back and forth in her mouth, scattering the warm red droplets amidst the cold black rain.
A Storm of Swords – Arya I
So, Nymeria kills the bloody mummers who were sent to track Arya, directly protecting her new pack. This dream sets a pattern for future Arya/Nymeria wolf dreams in the story and for the behavior of Nymeria’s pack in general going forward. Those who threaten Arya and the Starks are hunted mercilessly and savagely by the pack. It’s savage indeed; score one for the wolves!
Let’s take special note of the line “she knew with all the strange, sharp certainty of dreams. I wonder what kind of clue this is. Is he asking the reader to consider their own dream and the level of certainty in them, or is this specifically about the magical dreams in our story, is he hinting that there is a lot of certainty in the dreams he is presenting us? I think yes.
A Storm of Swords – Arya III
Once she falls in with the brotherhood, we again get callbacks to Arya’s identity as a wolf, one direct mention of Nymeria, and another dream with wolves. This wolf dream is not 100% certain, but is probable, given the “taste of blood” memory.
“Aye.” Harwin grinned. “One of our lads keeps the meanest dogs you’d ever want to see.”
“I wish I had a good mean dog,” said Arya wistfully. “A lion-killing dog.” She’d had a direwolf once, Nymeria, but she’d thrown rocks at her until she fled, to keep the queen from killing her. Could a direwolf kill a lion? she wondered.
[…]
Warm and dry in a corner between Gendry and Harwin, Arya listened to the singing for a time, then closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. She dreamt of home; not Riverrun, but Winterfell. It was not a good dream, though. She was alone outside the castle, up to her knees in mud. She could see the grey walls ahead of her, but when she tried to reach the gates every step seemed harder than the one before, and the castle faded before her, until it looked more like smoke than granite. And there were wolves as well, gaunt grey shapes stalking through the trees all around her, their eyes shining. Whenever she looked at them, she remembered the taste of blood.
A Storm of Swords – Arya III
It seems that the main truth of this dream is foreshadowing that she will never reach the goal she is aiming for, to be reunited with Robb (RIP). However, I would say that the wolves all around her were Nymeria’s pack. Arya seems to be half dreaming her Winterfell dream, and half in Nymeria;s mind. That is why she tasted blood.
A Storm of Swords – Arya IV
The encounter with lady Smallwood shows how she is embracing her wolf identity, never the identity of a high-born lady.
“In times like these, we all must make do as best we can.” Lady Smallwood fussed at the bodice of the gown. “Now you look a proper young lady.”
I’m not a lady, Arya wanted to tell her, I’m a wolf.
A Storm of Swords – Arya IV
So, with the help of the wolf dreams, she is embracing her identity as a wolf and gaining confidence, although that waxes and wanes, given that she spends most of the book as a captive.
A Storm of Swords – Arya V
Regardless, her confidence is growing, as further illustrated in the next chapter where get another snippet of a wolf dream. The dreams are getting more and more vivid. The bond is clearly strengthening.
Sleep came as quick as she closed her eyes. She dreamed of wolves that night, stalking through a wet wood with the smell of rain and rot and blood thick in the air. Only they were good smells in the dream, and Arya knew she had nothing to fear. She was strong and swift and fierce, and her pack was all around her, her brothers and her sisters. They ran down a frightened horse together, tore its throat out, and feasted. And when the moon broke through the clouds, she threw back her head and howled.
A Storm of Swords – Arya V
Take note of the parallel between this dream and Daenerys’s second dragon dream from A Game of Thrones. In that dream, Dany “felt strong and new and fierce” while in this dream, Arya “was strong and swift and fierce.” It is also a callback to Arya’s training from Syrio, Strong as a bear, swift as a wolverine. Dany has her own bear, too. The parallels abound!
A Storm of Swords – Arya XI
During the Red Wedding, Arya hears a wolf howling, and it affects her to her core. Arya could be hearing Grey Wind with her own ears or even Nymeria, if the sister direwolf howled, sensing Grey Wind’s unease through the pack bond. Another possibility is that Arya is hearing the howl through the bond, sharing senses with Nymeria.
Somewhere far off she heard a wolf howling. It wasn’t very loud compared to the camp noise and the music and the low ominous growl of the river running wild, but she heard it all the same. Only maybe it wasn’t her ears that heard it. The sound shivered through Arya like a knife, sharp with rage and grief.
– A Storm of Swords – Arya XI
A Storm of Swords – Arya XII
As they retreat from the twins we get 2 wolf dreams. In the first, Arya/Nymeria takes solace in her pack. They all follow her and respect her. She is the biggest and the strongest and the fastest, unstoppable. It is a solace from her reality that all of her family is either dead and gone or out of her reach.
And dreamed. That was the best part, the dreaming. She dreamed of wolves most every night. A great pack of wolves, with her at the head. She was bigger than any of them, stronger, swifter, faster. She could outrun horses and outfight lions. When she bared her teeth even men would run from her, her belly was never empty long, and her fur kept her warm even when the wind was blowing cold. And her brothers and sisters were with her, many and more of them, fierce and terrible and hers. They would never leave her.
The middle of the chapter shows her arguing with the hound that they should go back and save her mother. Perhaps the hardest blow comes in the second dream, where she finds Cat’s body; it’s heartbreaking. The bond themes, especially pack, loom large in this scene. As she goes to sleep, she is thinking of her mother, and how she can “almost smell her.” This is an indication that their bond is so strong at this point that Nymeria is almost able to share her sense of smell with Arya while waking, or at least in the space between being awake and being asleep. Either way, it’s a big step.
I’ll include the entire wolf dream here so we get fully immersed in Nymeria’s thoughts. There is savagery, pack coordination, mirroring of thoughts and emotions, and the protective instinct; this dream is a wolf bond theme bonanza.
That night she went to sleep thinking of her mother, and wondering if she should kill the Hound in his sleep and rescue Lady Catelyn herself. When she closed her eyes she saw her mother’s face against the back of her eyelids. She’s so close I could almost smell her . . .
. . . and then she could smell her. The scent was faint beneath the other smells, beneath moss and mud and water, and the stench of rotting reeds and rotting men. She padded slowly through the soft ground to the river’s edge, lapped up a drink, then lifted her head to sniff. The sky was grey and thick with cloud, the river green and full of floating things. Dead men clogged the shallows, some still moving as the water pushed them, others washed up on the banks. Her brothers and sisters swarmed around them, tearing at the rich ripe flesh.
The crows were there too, screaming at the wolves and filling the air with feathers. Their blood was hotter, and one of her sisters had snapped at one as it took flight and caught it by the wing. It made her want a crow herself. She wanted to taste the blood, to hear the bones crunch between her teeth, to fill her belly with warm flesh instead of cold. She was hungry and the meat was all around, but she knew she could not eat.
The scent was stronger now. She pricked her ears up and listened to the grumbles of her pack, the shriek of angry crows, the whirr of wings and sound of running water. Somewhere far off she could hear horses and the calls of living men, but they were not what mattered. Only the scent mattered. She sniffed the air again. There it was, and now she saw it too, something pale and white drifting down the river, turning where it brushed against a snag. The reeds bowed down before it.
She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat. Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us.
The sound of horses turned her head. Men. They were coming from downwind, so she had not smelled them, but now they were almost here. Men on horses, with flapping black and yellow and pink wings and long shiny claws in hand. Some of her younger brothers bared their teeth to defend the food they’d found, but she snapped at them until they scattered. That was the way of the wild. Deer and hares and crows fled before wolves, and wolves fled from men. She abandoned the cold white prize in the mud where she had dragged it, and ran, and felt no shame.
A Storm of Swords – Arya XII
So, she tries to save her mother herself, succeeds in rescuing her from the river, but Lady Catelyn is past saving for a direwolf; although, for the men who approached, it is another matter entirely. Still, there is a theory that Arya and Nymeria were really the ones to revive Lady Catelyn. While I don’t think the text wholly supports this, I do think that Arya’s heart was fully engaged in Nymeria trying to wake her, so Arya and Nymeria may have left some “stray magic” around, thus playing a part in Beric’s act. Or perhaps Arya’s emotions lingered at the scene, were telepathically sensed by the fire-wight, and her anguish was part of what motivated him in his decisions to revive LSH. Ceratinly Arya and Nymeria’s warg magic played some part, but I think that Beric’s own magical act was primarily responsible for the resurrection.
A Storm of Swords – Arya XIII
Her final wolf dream of this volume is just before she abandons the hound and quits the Riverlands. It is typical of what Arya is experiencing every night.
But when the pale dawn light came filtering through the trees, it was him who woke her with the toe of his boot. She had dreamed she was a wolf again, chasing a riderless horse up a hill with a pack behind her, but his foot brought her back just as they were closing for the kill.
A Storm of Swords – Arya XIII
We’ll close with that thought. The bond is strong, and it gets stronger still as Arya heads off to Braavos. We’ll cover all the published chapters, including the sample chapter from TWoW next time. I can’t wait!
A Feast for Crows / A Dance with Dragons –
The Hellbitch of the Trident and a Cat
Arya’s wolf dreams continue in this combined volume despite her being across the narrow sea in Braavos, far from Nymeria in the Riverlands. Her bond to Nymeria is strong indeed, even though her name only comes up directly in her thoughts once. Given the physical separation Nymeria can no longer provide any physical protection, but their bond may be helping Arya to maintain her personal identity as the faceless try to reform her into “no one.”
Nymeria still looms large in the story. In the AFfC Riverlands chapters (Arya – dreams, Brienne, Jaime), statistically, the word “wolf” is used 38 times; the word “direwolf” is used 12 times; the word “wolves” is used 33 times. Of these mentions the following categorizations can be made. Multiple mentions of the same subject in a paragraph or in consecutive paragraphs not counted multiple times.
| Young Wolf (mention or description) | 4 |
| Arya (mention or description) | 6 |
| Nymeria Mention (or description) | 5 |
| Other Stark Direwolves (mention or description) | 4 |
| Northmen (mention or description) | 9 |
| See a Pack | 3 |
| Secondhand Mention of a Pack | 13 |
| Dreams | 7 |
| Stark’s as Wolves/Skinchangers | 3 |
| Stark Banner / Sigil | 6 |
| Heard Howls | 2 |
| Hour of the Wolf | 1 |
| Lone Wolf Dies, Pack Survives | 2 |
| Wolfed as a Verb | 3 |
As seen in Jaime and Brienne’s chapters, the pack seem to be selectively attacking enemies of house Stark, which makes sense, if Nymeria is telepathically linked with Arya, who is very aware of the enemies to her house because, you know, she recites her “people to kill” list nightly as a prayer. Suffice to say, that this is also a good indication of Nymeria’s intelligence. She can discern basic friend / foe info through the bond, possibly even to recognize sigils?
The pack and the emotional / personal bond remain the most important concepts in in their story going forward, both by the numbers and thematically. After not having a wolf dream in her first AFfC chapter, there are wolf dreams in every one of Arya’s following chapters.
A Dance with Dragons – Jon I
To start these final volumes (chronologically, not by publishing order), her brothers wolf dreams introduce more details about their own bond to Nymeria. We start with Ghost’s perspective.
Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat’s long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister’s pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.
– A Dance with Dragons – Jon I
Notice that Ghost’s images of his sister and brothers seems to be much more descriptive than what we got from Summer in ASoS. Could Ghost be stronger in the magic/telepathic connection that forms this bond? i think yes. At a minimum, his pack bond connection to Nymeria is strong.
A Dance with Dragons – Bran I
By contrast to Ghost, Bran needs to remind Summer of his real pack.
No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady’s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there’s still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost?
– A Dance with Dragons – Bran I
Summer is beyond the wall and cannot sense the rest of his pack, so Summer’s inability to sense his real pack may not be a clue about Summer’s power but a commentary on the magical barrier that is innate to the magic of the wall. Note that Ghost could not sense Summer either back in ACoK/ASoS when he was beyond the wall. We’ll bookmark these concepts for later essays.
A Feast for Crows – Arya I
In Arya’s chapter at the beginning of this volume, the “lone wolf” theme comes up again as so many of her pack are reportedly dead. She muses that perhaps Ned had had it backward. Might she be mistaken in adopting this attitude?
They are not my Seven. They were my mother’s gods, and they let the Freys murder her at the Twins. She wondered whether she would find a godswood in Braavos, with a weirwood at its heart. Denyo might know, but she could not ask him. Salty was from Saltpans, and what would a girl from Saltpans know about the old gods of the north? The old gods are dead, she told herself, with Mother and Father and Robb and Bran and Rickon, all dead. A long time ago, she remembered her father saying that when the cold winds blow the lone wolf dies and the pack survives. He had it all backwards. Arya, the lone wolf, still lived, but the wolves of the pack had been taken and slain and skinned.
A Feast for Crows – Arya I
A Feast for Crows – Arya II
In Arya’s next chapter, a lot happens to remind her us of how deep Arya’s true identity is tied to Nymeria. First, she thinks of Nymeria when questioned about the smell of special candles that share properties with the weirwood paste and shade of the evening. These substances seem to conjure feelings of the most important things / memories to those who affected.
Winterfell, she might have said. I smell snow and smoke and pine needles. I smell the stables. I smell Hodor laughing, and Jon and Robb battling in the yard, and Sansa singing about some stupid lady fair. I smell the crypts where the stone kings sit, I smell hot bread baking, I smell the godswood. I smell my wolf, I smell her fur, almost as if she were still beside me. “I don’t smell anything,” she said, to see what he would say.
If not for the later wolf dreams, we might take that bit about Nymeria being beside her at face value, just a metaphor, but knowing that later Arya manifests the ability to dream inside Nymeria an ocean away, I assume that this is actually meant to suggest that she is truly smelling Nymeria, with Nymeria’s own nose, just as Ghost had heard with Nymeria’s ears in the prior Jon chapter.
Later, when the priests ask her to shed her possessions, symbolically to shed her identity, she justifies it because she’s a lone wolf. However, she can’t discard Needle, which, like the wolf bond, binds her to her identity as a Stark, as a direwolf, binds her to her pack. It’s actually interesting that GRRM has not had Nymeria sense the other direwolves through the bond, like happens with Jon and Ghost. I wonder why this is?
In the black of night she rose again, donned the clothes she’d worn from Westeros, and buckled on her swordbelt. Needle hung from one hip, her dagger from the other. With her floppy hat on her head, her fingerless gloves tucked into her belt, and her silver fork in one hand, she went stealing up the steps. There is no place here for Arya of House Stark, she was thinking. Arya’s place was Winterfell, only Winterfell was gone. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. She had no pack, though. They had killed her pack, Ser Ilyn and Ser Meryn and the queen, and when she tried to make a new one all of them ran off, Hot Pie and Gendry and Yoren and Lommy Greenhands, even Harwin, who had been her father’s man. She shoved through the doors, out into the night.
As we know, she doesn’t discard Needle, she hides it for safekeeping, and perhaps she thinks she also hides her bond to Nymeria; au contraire! We get a description of her first wolf dream of this volume, the dreams being another anchor to her true identity. These nightly reminders and the bond that brings them make it impossible for her to shed the identity. This wolf dream is especially fascinating as she has it while standing on her feet in front of a crowd of faceless men. It is highly likely that ALL THE PRIESTS heard her howling in her dream, so they’d know of her warg bond and that it won’t be broken. The whole concept of her shedding her identity could be a charade in Arya’s case because they want to make use of her powers.
Arya heard much and more that night, but almost all of it was in the tongue of Braavos, and she hardly understood one word in ten. Still as stone, she told herself. The hardest part was struggling not to yawn. Before the night was done, her wits were wandering. Standing there with the flagon in her hands, she dreamed she was a wolf, running free through a moonlit forest with a great pack howling at her heels.
Finally, Nymeria comes up again when she is thinking about her true identity and a second time in her choice to name the ship she sailed on in her Cat-of-the-Canals backstory.
“No one,” she would answer, she who had been Arya of House Stark, Arya Underfoot, Arya Horseface. She had been Arry and Weasel too, and Squab and Salty, Nan the cupbearer, a grey mouse, a sheep, the ghost of Harrenhal . . . but not for true, not in her heart of hearts. In there she was Arya of Winterfell, the daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn, who had once had brothers named Robb and Bran and Rickon, a sister named Sansa, a direwolf called Nymeria, a half-brother named Jon Snow. In there she was someone . . . but that was not the answer that he wanted.
[…]
“Just so. Your father was oarmaster on a galley. When your mother died, he took you off to sea with him. Then he died as well, and his captain had no use for you, so he put you off the ship in Braavos. And what was the name of the ship?”
“Nymeria,” she said at once.
A Feast for Crows – Arya II
Notice that she said the name “at once.” The Cat of the Canals identity features her mother’s and her wolf’s names. No one… a charade indeed. She may tell herself that she is shedding her identity, but subconsciously it’s an impossible task.
A Feast for Crows – Cat of the Canals
The dreams continue once she has assumed the identity of “Cat of the Canals.” The next wolf dream is quite rich from sensory perspective. She seems to be fully sharing in Nymeria’s sense of smell especially. This is an indication that the bond is deepening. We see a similar progression in Jon and Ghost later. Given that she says the dreams “haunt her,” I wonder how much she consciously realizes that her dreams are actually true experiences through Nymeria.
Her “other dream”, nightmare really, is a heartbreaking obsession over not being able to save her mother. What will she think when she realizes that her mother actually was resurrected, at least in part due to her own efforts inside Nymeria at the end of the last book? Might she be happy that her mother was brought back, or might she see that little of her mother is actually left and give her the gift?
When they reached the broad straight waterway that was the Long Canal, they turned south for the fishmarket. Cat sat with her legs crossed, fighting a yawn and trying to recall the details of her dream. I dreamed I was a wolf again. She could remember the smells best of all: trees and earth, her pack brothers, the scents of horse and deer and man, each different from the others, and the sharp acrid tang of fear, always the same. Some nights the wolf dreams were so vivid that she could hear her brothers howling even as she woke, and once Brea had claimed that she was growling in her sleep as she thrashed beneath the covers. She thought that was some stupid lie till Talea said it too.
I should not be dreaming wolf dreams, the girl told herself. I am a cat now, not a wolf. I am Cat of the Canals. The wolf dreams belonged to Arya of House Stark. Try as she might, though, she could not rid herself of Arya. It made no difference whether she slept beneath the temple or in the little room beneath the eaves with Brusco’s daughters, the wolf dreams still haunted her by night . . . and sometimes other dreams as well.
The wolf dreams were the good ones. In the wolf dreams she was swift and strong, running down her prey with her pack at her heels. It was the other dream she hated, the one where she had two feet instead of four. In that one she was always looking for her mother, stumbling through a wasted land of mud and blood and fire. It was always raining in that dream, and she could hear her mother screaming, but a monster with a dog’s head would not let her go save her. In that dream she was always weeping, like a frightened little girl. Cats never weep, she told herself, no more than wolves do. It’s just a stupid dream.
This last bit shows how important pack is to her identity, no matter how much she tries to delude herself otherwise. She needs her pack. She’s Lord Eddard’s daughter indeed. I expect it to be very satisfying for her to be reunited with her brothers and sister.
The final dream of the chapter is different. She dreams she is a “wolf” in Braavos. However, it seems she was actually skinchanging a Braavosi cat in this dream, something she’d had the idea that she should be doing earlier in the chapter.
That night she dreamed she was a wolf again, but it was different from the other dreams. In this dream she had no pack. She prowled alone, bounding over rooftops and padding silently beside the banks of a canal, stalking shadows through the fog.
A Feast for Crows – Cat of the Canals
So now Arya has learned to skinchange other beasts. Her power will continue to grow as we move further into the story.
Here I must take an aside and mention that Cat-of-the-Canals’ fishmonger’s call of “Oysters, clams, and cockles” is almost certainly an homage to the traditional Irish folk song “Molly Malone” where the Chorus ends with the line “Crying Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive-o!” This of course is where my own reddit handle and flair come from. I’ve done a recording of this song with my own alternate lyrics in honor of Cat. The entire track follows:
A Dance with Dragons / The Winds of Winter
The Night Wolf and the Shadow Pack
We conclude Arya and Nymeria’s story, with Arya’s chapters in A Dance with Dragons and her pre-released chapter from the Winds of Winter, “Mercy.”
A Dance with Dragons – The Blind Girl
This chapter, wolf dreams are mentioned 3 times. We are also reminded of Arya’s death list, another thing about her that the faceless are aware. Could they actually want her to follow through on some of the names on the list (Raff comes into play in the Mercy chapter)?
She opened her eyes and stared up blind at the black that shrouded her, her dream already fading. So beautiful. She licked her lips, remembering. The bleating of the sheep, the terror in the shepherd’s eyes, the sound the dogs had made as she killed them one by one, the snarling of her pack. Game had become scarcer since the snows began to fall, but last night they had feasted. Lamb and dog and mutton and the flesh of man. Some of her little grey cousins were afraid of men, even dead men, but not her. Meat was meat, and men were prey. She was the night wolf. But only when she dreamed.
The blind girl rolled onto her side, sat up, sprang to her feet, stretched. Her bed was a rag-stuffed mattress on a shelf of cold stone, and she was always stiff and tight when she awakened. She padded to her basin on small, bare, callused feet, silent as a shadow, splashed cool water on her face, patted herself dry.
She thinks of herself as the night wolf. Her identity as a Stark seems not to be getting weaker, but stronger. She just needs to hide her nature until night, not that it is any true secret to the house of black and white. They hear her reciting the names of these enemies of house Stark, no doubt, no doubt. The phrase “night wolf” is a mini theme appearing across this chapter and the next, and it is highly connected to her identity, her Stark identity, deny it though she may try.
The next passage shows that her sensory deprivation of blindness is not only enhancing her warging ability, but it also enhances her other sense, smell in this case.
She knew the way to the kitchens, but her nose would have led her there even if she hadn’t. Hot peppers and fried fish, she decided, sniffing down the hall, and bread fresh from Umma’s oven. The smells made her belly rumble. The night wolf had feasted, but that would not fill the blind girl’s belly. Dream meat could not nourish her, she had learned that early on.
It is good that she learned that she could not nourish by eating inside the wolf; it seems that Bran had a tougher time with this lesson.
The next section is less about Nymeria, though. It becomes clear that she is definitely skinchanging a cat at this point, and has developed the ability to do it consciously and not just while sleeping.
“Yes. I know that you’re the one who has been hitting me.” Her stick flashed out, and cracked against his fingers, sending his own stick clattering to the floor.
The priest winced and snatched his hand back. “And how could a blind girl know that?”
I saw you. “I gave you three. I don’t need to give you four.” Maybe on the morrow she would tell him about the cat that had followed her home last night from Pynto’s, the cat that was hiding in the rafters, looking down on them. Or maybe not. If he could have secrets, so could she.
[…]
And come the morning, when the night wolf left her and she opened her eyes, she saw a tallow candle burning where no candle had been the night before, its uncertain flame swaying back and forth like a whore at the Happy Port. She had never seen anything so beautiful.
A Dance with Dragons – The Blind Girl
The sensory deprivation, possibly aided by whatever substance / drug is in those scented candles, allowed her to develop this skinchanging skill quite quickly, similar to how Bran developed his warging skills while hiding in the crypts.
After she unmasks her tormentor, they give her vision back, so one might assume that the main point of the blinding was to drive or at least accelerate her development of this skill.
While she has been skinchanging a cat at least part of the time, being the “night wolf” seems also to indicate that the nightly dreams are becoming an integral part of the fabric of her identity. While she is pretending to be “no one”, she is actually becoming more a skinchanger and clinging to her identity as a Stark and a warg. How many dreams is she having with Nymeria, and how many with the cat(s)? We have no reference to answer this question.
A Dance with Dragons – The Ugly Little Girl
“Night wolf” comes up twice again in this chapter, indicating that she is continuing to have the dreams and to consciously skinchange cats, even though dreams are not specifically mentioned.
The blow left her cheek stinging, but she knew that she had earned it. “Thank you.” Enough slaps, and she might stop chewing on her lip. Arya did that, not the night wolf. “I do deny it.”
[…]
“You lie. I can see the truth in your eyes. You have the eyes of a wolf and a taste for blood.”
[…]
Arya bit her lip. She did not know what she wanted. If I leave, where will I go? She had washed and stripped a hundred corpses, dead things did not frighten her. They carry them down here and slice their faces off, so what? She was the night wolf, no scraps of skin could frighten her. Leather hoods, that’s all they are, they cannot hurt me. “Do it,” she blurted out.
A Dance with Dragons – The Ugly Little Girl
In that passage we got a direct reference to her warging, mentioning her taste for blood and the eyes of a wolf in the same sentence. I take this as clear evidence of my prior supposition that they have definitely taken notice of her nightly dreams. I dare say that they actually want her for this ability.
The Winds of Winter – Mercy
The faceless pretend to insist she become no one in an attempt to exert control over her while they actually want her for her ability as a warg, something we know to be intrinsically tied to her identity as a Stark. They may even want her for her “people-to-kill” list. It seems that they knew of Raff’s visit and put her in the Mercy identity specifically to kill Raff and mess up the negotiations with the Iron throne and the Iron Bank! She’s oblivious to this possibility though, obviously.
Further, she is seemingly taught to use glamour and masks to hide her identity in this chapter. I believe that her skinchanging power can be used to help her develop the magic of glamour as well. With the Mercy identity a lot of things change for Arya. She is in a much more grown-up scenario and uses sex appeal to kill Rafford. Given that he might have recognized her face, glamour was probably critical to this mission, and working in a mummers troupe is probably the best place to practice such. Further, the idea of using a mask alone is highly questionable, certainly the magic of glamour aids her transformation into Mercy.
That transformation does not affect her wolf identity though, as we get one final mention of a wolf dream in this sample chapter.
She woke with a gasp, not knowing who she was, or where.
The smell of blood was heavy in her nostrils…or was that her nightmare, lingering? She had dreamed of wolves again, of running through some dark pine forest with a great pack at her heels, hard on the scent of prey.
The Winds of Winter – Mercy
This is definitely a dream of Nymeria. She is a Stark, no doubt, no doubt. This is a fact no one can doubt.
The bond of Arya and Nymeria is extremely strong, despite their physical separation since early in the first book. Even when separated by the narrow sea, Arya constantly has wolf dreams of Nymeria’s movements. Thematically, their bond is similar to that of their brothers’ and sister’s. Their personalities still mirror each other. Nymeria has proven to still embody her role as Arya’s protector from afar, yet Arya was put into many unsafe situations, so this separation is not ideal. Hopefully it does not come back to haunt the pair. It has caused Arya to be a lone wolf, but also to strengthen her body and her supernatural abilities.
In the Riverlands, Arya began having wolf dreams and to exercise some control of Nymeria’s actions therein (Cat’s “rescue”). In Braavos, partially because of sensory deprivation, she has developed the ability to skinchange other beasts and to use glamour magic. Nymeria, for her part has become the leader of an enormous, bold pack of wolves in the Riverlands. The pack protected Arya throughout her travels in the Riverlands. Later, with Arya in Braavos, they seem to be selectively attacking enemies of house Stark, as evidenced in Jaime and Brienne’s chapters. When Arya returns to Westeros, look for Arya’s power and Nymeria’s pack to be major movers in how the story unfolds.
Shout-out and attribution as always goes to those who’ve gone before me with some of the theories that I am probably building upon here, including:
u/RockyRockington who posted https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/aivijc/spoilers_extended_a_theory_about_ghost_and/
u/PrestonJacobs and all his videos related to this topic.
Also Thanks so much to my daughter and wife for the voice-over and art talent that they shared with us! And thanks to all the great ASoIaF artists whose contributions I use in these videos.
I have a lot of original thought here, but I am certainly synthesizing a few of their ideas, as well.
Also, Thanks GRRM!
TL;DR Whatddya want it’s 12,000 words? I can’t summarize this for you in a paragraph. Get to it or don’t. It’s worth it; I promise. Actually look at the summary above the shout-outs.
The Green Bard 