Arya and the Ghost of High Heart (Spoilers Extended)
The end portion of the second meeting that the Brotherhood without Banners has with the Ghost of High Heart has always intrigued me:
The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. "I see you," she whispered. "I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death . . ." She began to sob, her little body shaking. "You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!" -Arya VIII
What is the Ghost of High Heart afraid of Arya?
#Background
While the Brotherhood only encounters the Lady of the Leaves once, they encounter the Ghost of High Heart twice and receive numerous visions from her:
Beside the embers of their campfire, she saw Tom, Lem, and Greenbeard talking to a tiny little woman, a foot shorter than Arya and older than Old Nan, all stooped and wrinkled and leaning on a gnarled black cane. Her white hair was so long it came almost to the ground. When the wind gusted it blew about her head in a fine cloud. Her flesh was whiter, the color of milk, and it seemed to Arya that her eyes were red, though it was hard to tell from the bushes. "The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. Do you have gifts for me, to pay me for my dreams?" -ASOS, Arya IV
and:
"I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief," the dwarf woman was saying. "I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now." -ASOS, Arya VIII
In these visions the Ghost of High Heart sees the following (with the aid of the old gods):
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Renly's death via shadowbaby/Stannis
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Balons death via Faceless Man/Euron
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Catelyns Tully's death via the Freys and subsequent resurrection via R'hllor/Beric
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Grey Wind's warning of the upcoming Red Wedding and the death of Jinglebell
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The Purple Wedding
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Sansa slaying a giant (likely Littlefinger) in a castle made of snow (obviously we have the situation with Sweetrobin but that doesn't fit the visions of the GoHH)
We get a few others too that aren't mention in the groupings such as Vargo/The Mountain, etc.
#Thoughts/Theories
So an albino dwarf woman who experienced Summerhall, gives visions of death, meets up with murderers/outlaws/resurrected characters but happens to be afraid of Arya. This has always stood out to me. Why?
Arya and the GoHH share the same gods, and so "technically they should be on the same team". So lets list out some possible reasons for that fear.
Foreshadowing Arya joining the Faceless Men
Arya smells of death. And we do get this quote from the GoHH so maybe she sees Arya's future as an assassin:
"She will leave on the morrow, with us," Lord Beric assured the little woman. "We're taking her to Riverrun, to her mother."
"Nay," said the dwarf. "You're not. The black fish holds the rivers now. If it's the mother you want, seek her at the Twins. For there's to be a wedding." She cackled again. "Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you'll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists." She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. "I'll have my payment now. I'll have the song you promised me." -ASOS, Arya VIII
Something will happen in the future between Arya and/or Nymeria and High Heart/the Ghost
We know that Arya's direwolf is current at the head of Chekov's wolfpack in the riverlands. And while its possible they are involved in the prologue of TWOW, its also possible that they could be involved in other areas as well. For instance:
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 **hills88 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. -ADWD, Jon I
and later:
Except in dreams. She took a breath to quiet the howling in her heart, trying to remember more of what she'd dreamt, but most of it had gone already. There had been blood in it, though, and a full moon overhead, and a tree that watched her as she ran. -TWOW, Mercy I
And at the same time it should be noted that the Andals cut down on all the weirwoods atop high heart (31) and High Heart is a solo hill.
If you are interested list of accessible weirwood/heart trees.
Faceless Men and Summerhall
It could be just GRRM tying her to Jenny of Oldstones/Jenny's Song and the Tragedy of Summerhall. But its also possible that the GoHH is seeing Arya's future as a Faceless Man and if they were involved in why Summerhall failed, this could be an interesting thing to look at. This is probably a little tinfoily and could deserve a post of its own, so I won't dive into the detail too much except to note that (in addition to tying Arya/death to the grief/Summerhall -again could be perfectly just her grieving):
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The Faceless Men aren't big fans of dragons (Jaqen aka Pate in the Citadel after The Death of Dragons)
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We get numerous hints about people hiring FM to kill dragonlords/valyrians
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The Faceless Men likely have a dragon egg
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Egg had numerous enemies at the time the tragedy happened (angry lords who lost their power due to his reforms, his children married for love ruining betrothals, Blackfyre supporters, Blackfyres)
So it wouldn't be too far out of the question for a FM to have ruined the Summerhall ritual. (Seriously they have ALMOST everything else necessary for a "hatching/summoning".
Dark Heart
The GoHH gives Arya several of her nicknames/aliases in the series.
It could just be the number of deaths that Arya has been associated with so far and her previous use of the Faceless Men's magical power.
Idk why I chose the name dark heart for this section (other than its badass and was a nice segway for a shameless self promotion) but to me this is the most likely. A "magic practitioner" of the old gods (earth/gaia magic) feels/sees the deaths that have been performed via another type of magic which is used by the Faceless Men.
That said she doesn't seem to mind that Thoros/Beric are there:
"Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you'll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists." -ASOS, Arya VIII
Which is interesting to note, especially since the First Men helped defend High Heart:
The great hill called High Heart was especially holy to the First Men, as it had been to the children of the forest before them. Crowned by a grove of giant weirwoods, ancient as any that had been seen in the Seven Kingdoms, High Heart was still the abode of the children and their greenseers. When the Andal king Erreg the Kinslayer surrounded the hill, the children emerged to defend it, calling down clouds of ravens and armies of wolves...or so the legend tells us. Yet neither tooth nor talon was a match for the steel axes of the Andals, who slaughtered the greenseers, the beasts, and the First Men alike, and raised beside the High Heart a hill of corpses half again as high...or so the singers would have us believe.
True History suggests otherwise, insisting that the children had abandoned the riverlands long before the Andals crossed the narrow sea. But however it happened, the grove was destroyed. Today only stumps remain where once the weirwoods stood. -TWOIAF, The Riverlands
I will also bring up the fact again that in addition to not caring about Thoros being there, she has an undead lord ("lord who smelled of death") who she doesn't seem to mind either.
At this point Beric has already died numerous times and been resurrected by R'hllor/Thoros and yet besides Arya the only other thing that she seems afraid of in her visions is: Lady Stoneheart.
I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. -ASOS, Arya IV
It might not mean anything, but again the GoHH is an ageless old witch who uses the power of the old gods, and constantly meets with outlaws/undead characters to give visions. Yet she is terrified of a little girl and her mother.
Some Big Unknown Event in the Future
Header says it all.
If you enjoy posts about witches in the series, here is a post about wood witches and another about Alys Rivers aka the Witch Queen of Harrenhal and another Comparing how Mel and the Ghost of High Heart see the same vision.
As I mentioned its likely just GRRM foreshadowing Arya joining the FM or the number of deaths surrounding her, but I thought that this passage stood out with what else is going on around it.
TLDR: Thoughts and theories on the Ghost of High Heart's reaction to seeing Arya.
Posted Oct 24, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC · edited