AFFC Reread Project - Arya

[Jon Targaryen]

Arya has added all the Freys to her list. Not good for Bradamar Frey who lives in Braavos.

I guess when they see a priest that means they want someone dead.

Maybe the Stranger is the Many-Faced God. I think I remember seeing speculation along these lines on the board awhile ago.

George continues to write about food.

I guess the candles smell like what people long for most.

Maybe the Faceless Men take the dead men downstairs so they can assume their identities.

"No one can do both." Does this mean Arya will not have children if she becomes a Faceless? Hard to do if she dies too.

It seems to me that the Faceless Men may be responsible for the Doom though maybe not. The kindly old man says "he" brought the gift to the masters and the Doom is relatively recent.

Arya still has her wolf dreams. It appears the theories about distance dampening it were wrong.

[rpthomps]

Is there a theory about who hired the FM to kill Balon Greyjoy? (Melisandre?, Tywin?)

[A wilding]

Maybe the Stranger is the Many-Faced God. I think I remember seeing speculation along these lines on the board awhile ago.

It seems that the FM believe that the Stranger is just one of the faces of the Many-Faced God. Of course this is likely not what the Faith think.

"No one can do both." Does this mean Arya will not have children if she becomes a Faceless? Hard to do if she dies too.

It is likely, given that he tells her she will have to give up everything, starting with her eyes, to become an FM.

There is a possible connection here with Qyburn saying that women were more suitable for his experiment than men.

Is there a theory about who hired the FM to kill Balon Greyjoy? (Melisandre?, Tywin?)

The front runner is Euron, possibly paying from his spoils from reaving.

[QuietFootsteps]

This is an excellent thread, and an excellent forum! So many things I hadn't thought of or paid attention to.

1) 12 foot tall woman with a bowl, crying

2) A man with a Lion’s head, sitting on a throne, carved of ebony

3) Horse of bronze and iron

4) Stone face

5) Pale infant with a sword

6) Huge Shaggy black goat

7) Hooded man leaning on a staff

I'm not sure where this leads, and I'm probably off base here, but some of these listed items seemed to strike a chord with me as being similar or analogous to characters in the book.

(2) Tommen [Lion's head a reference to his Lannister roots, and sitting on a throne as him being King]

(5) Robert Arryn [He is a pale child, in name at least ruler of the Vale at this point]

If it's not just a coincidence and my overactive imagination, I'm sure people here who seem to be generally more well versed in all of this might spot something.

[The Adequate Jon]

I'm not sure where this leads, and I'm probably off base here, but some of these listed items seemed to strike a chord with me as being similar or analogous to characters in the book.

3) Could refer to the Dothraki

4) Uncat?

5) I thought of Arya before Robert just because it's a kid with a sword

6) Shaggydog?

7) The Hound at the Quiet Isle

[sh_wulff]

7) The Hound at the Quiet Isle

or Barristan Selmy..he has a staff and wears a hooded cape

5) Pale infant with a sword

could that be Aemon Battleborn.... or another of Cratsre's sons

4) Stone face

Stannis??

[Grant Dempsey]

Maybe I'm mistaking your intent here, but I think those statues were merely meant to represent the many "gods of death" of the various religions around the world, not characters in the story. The "huge shaggy black goat" being the Black Goat of Qohor, for instance.

[overcomebyfumes]

Or the Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! Ai! Ai! Ai!

[Jon Targaryen]

Cat of the Canals

It seems most of us on the board were wrong. The distance does not matter. Arya still wargs Nymeria at night.

GRRM has said Braavos is the odd duck among the Free Cities.

It seems Saan is pirating near the Stepstones.

SPOILER: ADWD

Saan mentions going to the Stepstones in the first Davos chapter.

Could the Black Pearl be descended from Aerion? He went to Lys I know but he could have stopped in Braavos.

It seems to me Lanna could be a distant relation to the Lannisters with the golden hair and name.

We learn about sweetsleep here so we can see how little Robert’s end will come.

[Happy Ent]

It seems to me Lanna could be a distant relation to the Lannisters with the golden hair and name.

Here is a whole thread about her (one of quite a few). People even speculate that the sailor's wife is Tysha.

[Happy Ent]

Timeline

Lots of good information here. Arya visits the temple three days of every thirty, when the "moon is black" (a new moon). So we finally have confirmation about the lunar orbit; so far we deduced it from the term "moon's blood". So we know: a lunar orbit is roughly thirty days, and the female menstrual cycle is, too. Just as on Earth.

With each of her visits, Arya tells three secrets. These include

• three new words of Braavosi
  
• wonderous tales: wars, rains of toads, dragons hatching
  
• three new japes
  
• three new riddles (given as "three new japes or three new riddles", so this could be the same month because a jape might be a riddle. But let's count them twice)
  
• tricks of this trade or the other
  
• stories about Blind Beqqo, mummers at the Blue Lantern, Lotho Lornel
  
• story about Little Narbo, Quence and Alequo, Daeron the singer
  

Counting parsimoniously, Arya comes with these stories only once. (Though the text gives "sometimes she would learn three new words, or ...", so these types of information might even be repeated). This gives us a 7 months of story time. Seven months! And we even know the phase of the moon!

In the previous Arya chapter, we had "the moon had turned and turned again". I assume that the moon "turning" means it going through a full moon. So I guess Arya is sent on her apprenticeship with Brusco at the next new moon after that.

I currently have the last Arya chapter ending in late April, but I will be pushing that back, to middle or early of April. So my current guess is that somewhere in April is a new moon and Cat of the Canals takes the following 7 months. That's November, folks!

[Seventh Pup]

I thought the Lunar cycles where different. Arya says that returns to the temple when the moon is dark, and stays three days. I took this to mean that the moon is dark for a full three days. I could be wrong though.

[sh_wulff]

I took this to mean that the moon is dark for a full three days. I could be wrong though

it's pretty close to that on Earth

[A wilding]

Yes, I get the impression that a long time has passed for Arya. I have not joined in any of the timeline work, mostly because I suspect that it is not going to add up, and may find myself after later books wanting to imagine that AFfC covers a longer timespan than a close investigation will support.

Picking up on an earlier thread, in this chapter we learn about the Waif's history (assuming that the Waif did not just make the whole thing up to test Arya). So the Waif, at least, is not "no one", even if she does seem to have stopped using her original name.

I would speculate that this means that the Waif is not a full Faceless Man, or not yet one anyway. I note that she did not choose to join the cult but was given to them as a gift, so perhaps either the effect of the poisoning or something in her personality makes her unsuitable for undergoing the final stages of the training.

[Lupigis]

I currently have the last Arya chapter ending in late April, but I will be pushing that back, to middle or early of April. So my current guess is that somewhere in April is a new moon and Cat of the Canals takes the following 7 months. That's November, folks!

I agree that the chapter indicates that Arya spends several months as Cat of the Canals. However, in view of this, I think that Daeron's reply to Arya when she asks him about Sam sounds a bit odd. The current timeline has Sam III (where he meets Xhondo) at May 7. If Cat of the Canals takes place in November, why doesn't Daeron simply tell Arya "Oh, they found a ship half a year ago", instead of something vague about "It's too late now."?

Another thing I'm curious about is the significance of Arya's last wolf dream:

That night she dreamt that 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 the canal, stalking shadows through the fog.

IMO this indicates that Arya's connection to Nymeria has been severed. In the previous dreams, Arya is warging and experiencing what Nymeria is experincing. In this one she isn't. Instead, Arya's "wolf-self" is lost and confused in Braavos. This is a very serious development for Arya, since her connection with Nymeria has clearly been an important factor in allowing her to keep her identity as a Stark. The more I think of this dream, the more I worried for Arya's future I become.

[Seventh Pup]

Another thing I'm curious about is the significance of Arya's last wolf dream:

IMO this indicates that Arya's connection to Nymeria has been severed. In the previous dreams, Arya is warging and experiencing what Nymeria is experincing. In this one she isn't. Instead, Arya's "wolf-self" is lost and confused in Braavos. This is a very serious development for Arya, since her connection with Nymeria has clearly been an important factor in allowing her to keep her identity as a Stark. The more I think of this dream, the more I worried for Arya's future I become.

I might well be crazy, but I think her wolf dream (i.e. warging) she might have accidentally warged into a cat instead of Nymeria. I think this shows her powers are growing as a warg, though not the point of Bran's yet. Yes I realize this may be a total crack pot theory.

[Mauvka]

Cats liked the smell of Cat. Some days she would have a dozen trailing after her before the sun went down.

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.

Could it be that Arya is warging with the city's cats? We know Bran momentarily warged into Hodor, so the Starks aren't limited to their direwolves. Arya is still alone and still reaching for a pack. As she strives to identify with herself a Cat, she may have formed some connection to the felines. While she does say she sometimes feeds them, is it truly normal to have a dozen cats trailing you? It's not like they couldn't find food at the fish market. Pigeons and gulls will mob you if you feed them, but it seems strange for cats to do that.

Edit: you beat me to it, Seventh Pup.

I think the possibility is more than likely. We know that Arya is a warg. Her lingering connection accross the Narrow Sea with Nymeria is stranger than her finding a new bond. What better than a cat for a Cat?

[Lupigis]

Seventh Pup and Etulftune: Interesting idea about Arya warging into the cats of Braavos. I'm not quite convinced, however, since the paragraph in question begins:

That night she dreamed she was a wolf again...

Arya also dreams that she bounds over rooftops, something cats don't normally do.

To me it sounds more like her soul/spirit is unable to connect with Nymeria as usual, and roams Braavos by night instead.

[Errant Bard]

Arya also dreams that she bounds over rooftops, something cats don't normally do.

Rooftops are one of the favorite places for town cats, even Disney knows that.

Also, for Happy Ent, about the timeline, Arya says the Kindly Man agreed the "finger knife" skill she learned from Red Roggo was useful, and at another point, she tells him the Real name of the black pearl.

That would at least add one more month of her aimless Braavos wandering, then you forgot to add the last month, the one which ends with the murder of Dareon.

This gives us 9 months, at the very minimum, but considering the way it's written and how she does not list everything she reported when she describes what she learns, I would think it could be even longer.

[Lupigis]

Rooftops are one of the favorite places for town cats, even Disney knows that.

Sure, but only in a Disney movie can a cat bound over a rooftop.