How Sharra Became the Witch Queen: A Fanfic for a Winter Night
Before returning to analytical posts, I’m taking a welcome leap into the fantastical with a fanfiction screenplay set amongst the smallfolk of Harrenhal. I’m always ready for an eerie tale on a winter night, and as the polar vortex winds are currently screaming around my office, this feels like just the right time for this story. It’s an experiment with using in-world folklore in the way that GRRM does, for both world-building and potential main-story parallels. Sharra the Witch Queen is a legendary Riverlands character from the Age of Heroes who is mentioned, but not otherwise described, in The World of Ice and Fire. Given the parallel with Alys Rivers as the Witch Queen of Harrenhal, this felt like an invitation to play.
Please note that while there is no sexual violence in this story, the threat of emotional/sexual coercion is an underlying theme. Forewarned is forearmed.
Int. Harrenhal. Night.
(The castle people are gathering in Harrenhal’s vast, shadowy kitchen, sitting on the floor rushes and tables and benches around one of the immense hearths, where a fire is blazing. Alys Rivers is silhouetted in front of the fire, with the children of the castle around her feet.)
Cook: Well, Alys, what tale shall we have tonight?
Alys: I don’t know, Cook. Maybe the children know. All right, everyone, tell me: what tale are we to have tonight?
Children: (shouting over one another) Sharra the Witch Queen! Serwyn of the Mirror Shield! Simeon Star-Eyes! The Rat Cook!
Alys: Ah ha, I heard Sharra first. But which tale shall I tell of Sharra the Witch Queen? We have so many!
Child: All of them!
Alys: You have to pick one.
Child: Ahhh…tell how Sharra became the Witch Queen!
Serving Man: (from the back) Yes! Tell us of Sharra and the demon lover!
Serving Woman: (across the room) Sharra and the Other!
Children: Sharra! Sharra!
Alys: Very well. My audience commands. This is the tale of how Sharra became the Witch Queen.
Long ago, when the Children of the Forest were only just withdrawn into their weirwood trees and the Others still stalked the land in deepest winter, a witch woman lived in the woods along the God’s Eye. Her name was Sharra, and she was well-known to all the First Men in her village, for she helped and healed and warned them of dangers small and great. The Children of the Forest knew her well, and respected her for the good sacrifices she made to the gods of river and tree, lake and hedgerow and field. But Sharra was sometimes lonely in her little cottage by the woods, and when winter came, a stranger came with it, watching Sharra at the edge of the icy woods. As pale as snow he was, with skin like polished shells at the bottom of the lake, and eyes that shone a strange, pale blue, like stars in the winter sky. When he moved through the trees it was as though a milky shadow shimmered against the snow-covered bark, and passersby thought there was nothing there. He saw Sharra’s loneliness, and he saw her magic, and he wanted her. When she came out of her cottage one morning, she found the snow swirled in strange, frosty patterns of the utmost beauty, arranged like a tapestry before her door, and she felt a man’s gaze on her from the shadows of the wood. When the first of the village children disappeared at the edge of the forest, everyone thought that the child had been taken by a wolf or by the snows. But Sharra saw more clearly, for that morning she drew up the bucket from her well to find an icy crystal of surpassing beauty, lovelier than any gem, and again she felt the shadow’s gaze watching her from the edge of the woods. And then another of the village children vanished in the night, with not a drop of blood left behind on the snow.
And as the icy wind whistled around the corners of Sharra’s cottage and the snows fell thick and fast, the Other came tapping at the door, his long, cold fingers rattling against it like polished bone. But when he spoke, it was with the voice of a villager she had loved, whose teeth now chattered against the cold:
“Shaaaaara! Let me in, Sharra. Let me in, Mistress! The night is dark and cold, and I will surely freeze out here in the storm. Sharra, save me!”
But Sharra had seen the Other in the steam rising from the cauldron bubbling over her hearth, and she knew his voice.
“Deceive me not, Other! I know who you are. I have seen you in the wood, I have felt your gaze. Be gone, and take no more of our children!”
The wind quieted, and the tapping at the door fell away. But another voice rose in the night, and this time it was the voice of a terrified child whose small hand scrabbled at the door handle:
“Mistress Sharra! Mistress, help me, the Other’s got me, he’ll take me away into the wood! Open the door, Mistress, you are the only one who can save me!”
But Sharra had seen the Other in the coals glowing in the back of her hearth, and she knew who spoke in the night.
“Deceive me not, Other! I feel your cold, I have heard your voice on the wind. Be gone, and take no more of our children!”
The scrabbling and scratching at the door fell away, and only the faint sound of the wind whistled around the corners of the cottage. And then a voice spoke again, but this time, it was a voice as sharp as shattering glass, yet as musical as the sharp trill of a flute:
“Sharra! Shaaaaaaara. Let me in, Sharra. Long have I watched you, and I can no longer resist you. Let me in and I will make you queen of the winter night.”
Sharra had seen the Other in the icy mirror that had formed across the surface of her wash basin, glimmering in the firelight, and she saw that he was beautiful. She rose from her seat by the fire, and she let him in.
And as they lay beside one another in the dark, with his hands cold on her bare skin, Sharra said,
“My love, what is it that Others drink? Do you know thirst, or hunger?”
And the Other said, “We drink ice, and water, and fog. We drink the light of stars, and we drink the blood of mortal men. Fire alone we cannot drink.”
“That is fortunate,” Sharra said. “For I have at least one of those things here to quench your thirst.”
Sharra rose and filled a cup by the fire with blood, full to the brim, and carried it to her icy lover in her own bed, raising the glass in his honor and drinking back half its bloody contents in one gulp.
“Drink with me, my husband of the winter night, and make me your queen for true.”
So the Other took the glass and drank it down in one gulp, his strange blue eyes glittering in the darkness. For a moment he seemed well. Then his body began to tremble, like strings struck by an invisible harper. There was a strange rattling sound like melting ice tumbling off a roof. His blue eyes glowed in desperation and he opened his mouth to gasp,
“Sharra!”
The Other exploded into shards of ice, a thousand times a thousand shards. Sharra threw herself to the earthen floor as the shards fell all around her, piercing the floor, but not a one touched her skin. When she rose from the floor, not a trace of the Other remained, save for a small, gleaming black arrowhead that lay in the middle of Sharra’s bed. The arrowhead was dragon glass, fire made stone, and fire alone the Others cannot drink. So it was that from that day onwards, Sharra herself carried the power of ice, for she could call the winter winds when she willed it, and send the storms away when the weather grew too harsh. The people crowned her their queen and she ruled wisely and well from a castle she raised of the oldest stones in the Riverlands, strong with the power of the old gods.
Child: But you’re forgetting the end part! The best part!
Alys: But her powers did not die with her, for Sharra’s lover left her with a daughter, a witch girl with ice in her veins, and her daughters have lived in this land ever since. In time, folks came to call them woodswitches. And so I am the great, great, great - (she gestures to the children to chant along with her)
All: Great, great, great, great, great-
Alys: - a thousand times a thousand times great-granddaughter of Sharra, the Witch Queen.
As an aside - there is not, to the best of my knowledge, any mention in the books of what the Others can consume or not consume. This is a non-canon detail of my own invention.