
His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. “Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. “He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon said. The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said … but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god.

When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The most famous weirwood tree in Westeros is the one in the godswood of Winterfell: It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true they had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them. They were old, those eyes older than Winterfell itself.

A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. The weirwood’s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. The weirwood tree is also called the heart tree:Īt the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the trees helped him think.

The gods were looking over him, he told himself the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First Men and the children of the forest, his father’s gods. The deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he took comfort from that now. Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.īran had always liked the godswood, even before, but of late he found himself drawn to it more and more. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. The weirwood tree is always watchful and silent: Weirwoods are considered sacred to the followers of the old gods, and children of the forest believe weirwoods are the gods. A weirwood will live forever if undisturbed. In some cases sap has collected in the crevices of the carved faces, giving the trees red eyes which have been known to drip sap as if the trees were weeping.
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This was done by the children of the forest in ancient days, and is now done by the free folk as well as other descendants of the First Men, such as followers of the old gods in the Seven Kingdoms praying to heart trees in godswoods. Most weirwoods have faces carved into their trunks. The five-pointed leaves and the sap of weirwoods are blood-red, while the smooth bark on their wide trunks and wood are bone white. The weirwood is a species of deciduous trees found in Westeros, now found most commonly in the north and beyond the Wall. Have you ever stopped to think about how Ghost, Jon’s direwolf, is always described as the weirwood tree? An exploration.Ī/N: This composition in no way denies the connection of the other Stark children, Robb, Arya, Bran, and Rickon, with the north, Winterfell, the weirwood tree, and the old gods, but focuses primarily on Jon and Sansa. cummings) Jon Snow, Sansa Stark & Winterfell.
