Jojen Reed

As a boy, Jojen nearly died of a fever at Greywater Watch. While he hovered near death, the three-eyed crow came to him and left him with a strange gift: ever since, he dreams things before they happen.

One dream kept coming back, of a chained wolf the crow was trying to free. When he told his father about it, Lord Howland decided he and his sister Meera should set out for Winterfell.

Jojen and Meera arrive at Winterfell during the harvest feast, sent by their father to pay respects to House Stark after Lord Eddard's death and renew the old alliance with the crannogmen. Before Bran, they speak the old oath of Greywater Watch, ending together with 'We swear it by ice and fire,' and pledge their swords, spears and arrows to Robb, the new lord of Winterfell.

That's when people at the castle first take notice of him: small, thin, barely more than a boy, yet carrying himself with a gravity that makes him seem much older. Old Nan nicknames him 'Little Grandfather.' He always dresses in green, and his eyes are an unusually deep shade of it, even among his own people.

Jojen is the first to understand what's really happening to Bran: that he can slip into Summer's skin and see through his eyes. He takes it on himself to teach Bran to control the power instead of losing himself in it, and once he learns of Bran's dream about the three-eyed crow, he pushes for them to cross the Wall and find him.

When Theon Greyjoy takes Winterfell, the group — Bran, Meera, Jojen, Rickon, Osha and Hodor — hides in the castle crypts. They hold out there until Winterfell is sacked and burned. Once they see what's left of the castle, the Stark children split up: Jojen goes on with Meera, Hodor and Bran, heading north.

The group keeps off the Kingsroad and sticks to hill paths to avoid running into anyone. Jojen takes the lead; the others listen to him, though he admits himself that what he knows has limits and that it won't be enough to guide Bran much further.

A green dream points the way: the Nightfort, he says, has a gate they can use to cross the Wall. Before reaching it, they stop at Queenscrown, where they spot wildlings and, among them, Jon Snow, Bran's half-brother. Jojen wants nothing to do with following him.

At the Nightfort they find nothing but rats and a sealed gate. That night they run into Samwell Tarly of the Night's Watch, along with the wildling Gilly and her newborn son. Sam knows a hidden passage through the base of the Wall itself and leads them to the other side.

Coldhands is waiting there, a figure as strange as he is unwilling to explain himself. Before parting ways with Sam, Jojen makes him swear he won't tell anyone that Bran is alive.

Coldhands leads the group further north, looking for the three-eyed crow's cave. Just short of it, wights ambush them; Jojen is too weak to go on, and Meera has to carry him on her back the rest of the way.

Inside the cave they find the last of the Children of the Forest, and finally the three-eyed crow himself. But Jojen can't shake it off — he wants to go home, and sinks into a gloom he doesn't climb out of. He tells Bran something like, 'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.' Afterward, Meera lets it slip to Bran that her brother already knows, from his own dreams, how this ends for him — and that it isn't good.