Arya Tickled (Season 2)

ARYA

She found that she disliked her new companion at first glance, being reminded so much of her sister, Sansa. Pia, or Pretty Pia as she was known around Harrenhal, was long-legged and full-breasted, with clean straight teeth and chestnut brown hair. She had the kind of easy effortless beauty that made Arya feel so very self-conscious about her own boyish appearance.

Yet the tears in Pia’s big brown eyes triggered something in her, and two of them were in this together, trapped in small cell in the Harrenhal dungeons. She was sitting on the straw pallet. She was fidgety with her hands, constantly running her hands through her hair, or hugging herself with her arms.

 Arya walked over and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder. “You okay? How did you end up here?”

“Ser Amory was making some speech in Harrenhal’s Great Hall.” the young girl’s voice was shaky with anxiety. “And this Lannister man-at-arms whispered a jape in my ear and touched me in the side, and I laughed. Ser Amory didn’t like that.”

Arya had met Ser Amory—a cruel, humourless man with a high, pinched voice. She was not surprised.

“He said since I liked laughing so much, he would send me to the Tickler…”

“Seven hells,” Arya swore. “Are we going to die?”

Pia shook her head.

“Then what? Is the Goat going to cut off one of our legs? Our hands?” Maybe you could still be a Braavosi water-dancer with one hand, but Arya wasn’t sure. You certainly couldn’t be one with only one leg, could you? It felt so unfair that she had ended up in here just because she had missed a few spots scrubbing the floors.

“The Tickler isn’t named that just because of that awful rat thing he does. He knows other ways to make people… sing.”

That send chills down Arya’s back. She didn’t want to show her fear in front of this older girl, though Pia seemed fearful enough for the two of them. She was a Stark of Winterfell, a wolf, and wolves weren’t afraid of anything. But she was all by herself now, separated from her pack, with only this shapely, comely girl for company.  

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“He’s going to remind everyone what happens when you don’t do your part. ‘A task for every tool, a tool for every task,’ Lord Tywin likes to say. “We’ll be in the stocks for hours., shrieking till everyone in this castle can hear us.” She gave Arya a brave smile. “I’ve done it once before… it’s pretty bad. But maybe you’ll be okay. Maybe you won’t be ticklish?”

“Ticklish?” Arya repeated, but before she could puzzle out what that meant or ask more questions, the iron gate of the cell crashed open and several guards in crimson cloaks came to march them away.

The guards led them to an elevated wooden platform beside the sparring grounds. Arya shivered at the sight of the pillories, the stockades, the whipping posts. Some were carved out of wood, stained with use, but many were fastened into the ground with metal which had long rusted red from rain. It seemed Harren the Black, the Ironborn who had built this cursed fortress had not been remiss in his implements of torture. She found herself absurdly thinking of Theon, who in his cups had always boasted how the Ironborn were the mightiest sailors, bravest warriors, and most skilled of lovers. She had once seen him with a buxom stable hand in the oft-unused dungeons of Winterfell. He had locked her in a stockade similar to the one Arya was in now, and Arya had thought to rescue her, but the woman had not seemed to mind her situation since she was smiling and kissing him.

But this was so different. She had seen women being put in devices like this to be whipped, or burned, or flayed. Was this what was about to happen next? Fear cuts deeper than swords, she kept reminding herself, but Syrio’s words failed to soothe the dread in her heart as she was forced to bend over as they forced her arms and legs through holds in the wooden stockade. Pia was pleading and begging with the guards, promising them all manner of things in return, but they ignored her. Arya saw the crowd gathering around them—a smirking crowd, where many were ogling or making catcalls. Were the people of Harrenhal really so bloodthirsty?

The guards plucked off her shoes, and then Pia’s and then Arya could do nothing but wait. Her hands and feet were small, but there were several stockades of different sizes, and they had found one which was a snug fit. Pia was in the one beside her, similarly barefoot.

From where she was sitting, her back forcibly bent forward like she was doing some stretch, Arya found herself gazing down at her feet. They were short and a faint shade of pink, with small, round toes. The tops of her feet were a little grubby with dirt, and she presumed her soles were the same. Beside her, Pia’s feet looked much more feminine and attractive. They were slender and thin, with long toes and a birthmark near the big toe of her right foot. But they were all scrunched up in anticipation of what would happen soon.

Then, he came to them. The truth was, had a tall knight with a spiked helmet not walked alongside him, Arya would not have recognised the Tickler. He was of medium height and build—not scrawny, but not muscular. And his face, with brown hair, a small noise, and dark eyes, was so plain and unmarked that Arya couldn’t tell how old he might have been.

Arya remembered how he had tortured so many at Harrenhal. She knew all his questions: “Is there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Is there food? Where is Lord Beric Dondarrion? Which of you village folk helped him? Where did he go? How many men did he have with him? How many knights? How many bowmen? How many were horsed? How are they armed? How many wounded? Where did they go, did you say? Is there gold hidden in the village?” What was about to happen to her?

A knight with a spiked helmet moved forward, cleared his throat, and spoke in a loud, ringing voice. “Lord Tywin has been kind enough to show you lot mercy, but some of you continue to disappoint him. Poor service will not be accepted. You lot are lucky to not be hanged for outlaws, as we many of you have been helping Starks and Tullys rebel against your rightful king.”

The mention of those noble houses made Arya sit up a little straighter in her bonds. She would be brave like her father and strong like her mother. She wouldn’t let them break her, no matter what was about to happen.

“But Lord Tywin is not one to waste anything, even the likes of you. Be grateful for that fact.” The knight grunted, nodded to the Tickler, and then stepped aside.

The Tickler eyed the two of them, his eyes flitting to their bare feet. Arya willed herself not to wiggle, not to show her distress, but Pia was squirming and scrunching up her long toes as he looked.

“Clean them, and then we begin,” he said in bored voice.

A pair of pages—young boys who were Arya’s age with Lannister lions on their tunics—ran forward, with pails of water and rags in their hands, not unlike the ones Arya would use during her cleaning duties. They dunked them in the water while Arya looked on, tilting her head quizzically, but then she shuddered and gasped as the cold, sudsy clothes began to rub against her bare feet. This sudden sensation did not hurt, but it did feel rather odd due to the temperature difference. It was the fingers beneath the cool cloth that began to make more of an impact. It was when Pia burst into rapid squeaky laughter that Arya saw what they were trying to do. They, they were… tickling her? It was happening too often for it to by chance. Oh, she should have guessed this was coming, she thought with an angry furrow of her brow at herself, just look at his name! Seven hells, he was called the Tickler! The page in front of her bare feet was quite purposefully scratching and rubbing his fingers along her feet as he cleaned. His fingers would slide and stroke the arches through her cloth, weave between her toes, and circle her heel. The cloth itself was rough and scratchy, and the page too care to snake it through Arya’s small toes to really work on that sensitive nook there.

Cleaning was also clearly the secondary aim of this, for the cloth was spending a great deal of time on the bottoms of her feet and the soles, and sparing scarcely a wipe on the tops of her feet, where Arya was much less sensitive. The same could not be said for Pia, who seemed to be equally ticklish all over those shapely feet.

Arya's feet had gotten tough as leather during her treks across the Riverlands, but her time spent stationary in Harrenhal had allowed her soles to heal and soften. Ser Amory was also forced all workers to bathe regularly, even his men-at-arms, insisting cleanliness would keep away bugs, the flux, and other sickness. Soon, Arya found herself shouting with laughter as cloth and fingers attacked her toes, going between each of them nine of ten times.

“This is how proper cleaning is done,” the Tickler said in a bored voice. “And I hope none of you lot plan on shirking your duties.” He didn’t shout his words to the crowd, but somehow that made his casual nonchalance as he tortured the two females more unnerving.

As the boys continued their work, Arya forced herself to watch him while he stood there with his arms crossed and he plucked a withered red apple from his pocket and bit into it. It was easy to lose track of him or for your attention to dart to other movement. Much of the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle was cheering or jeering. Arya saw wizened old women tut and shake their heads. Young boys whispered to each other chuckle. Scornful women pointed at Pia and smirk. Old men with beards as white as winter watched with sadness in their eyes. Some of the crowd were jostling for a better view, but many more stood in sullen silence with lips twisted in indifference.

Look with your eyes, Arya remembered as she stared at the Tickler through eyes that were beginning to become bleary from forced laughter. He stood with a slouch and his apple crunched as he chomped into it. He was halfway finished, and his eyes were watching the two boys tickling Arya and Pia. He had the eyes of a teacher, and he gave subtle approving nods, quizzical tilts of the head, or disapproving frowns as they plied their craft. He was also watching the two girls trapped in those stocks. His eyes flitted to their feet to their faces and then back again with the eye of the keen observer. Not once did Arya notice his eyes wandering to Pia’s breasts as they bounced in her rough-spun tunic as other men did—the knight with the spiked helmet looked at nothing else. But then again, her eyes squeezed shut every time the boy working her feet with the brush hit that spot on the joint of her middle toe, so perhaps she just missed it. She didn’t think so, though.

“Alright, lads, that’s enough,” the Tickler said. He tossed his apple aside and wiped the juices on his tunic. “Tie their toes back and let's stop mucking about. Brax, you’re doing well on that slattern.” He fixed Pia with a thin smile. “She’s still a mighty ticklish wench, so see if you can get her to make that loud squealing noise that she did last time she was here.” The Tickler tsked and pointed at the other boy. “You, Sarsfield, come sit with me.”

Arya grimaced as the Tickler walked towards her with a slow, unhurried gait. Sarsfield, the young page, gave up his stool to let the Tickler sit down. The boy had his head down and chewed on his lower lip. “Don’t look so glum, lad. You’re not in trouble. Just watch and see how I go about me business. I’m sure you’ll learn much and more.” 

The Tickler sat down gave the lad a pat on the shoulder and pulled out a pair of smaller brushes—ones about the size of her finger. They were used for getting particularly small nooks and crannies, and Arya had a powerful dread at exactly what kind of spaces they would be cleaning next. Sure enough, this little brush was dipped in a pail of soapy water and after a theatrical flourish for the crowd, he started in right between her toes. Arya shook and rattled the stocks with her all her wiry strength, but there was nothing to do but shout and blubber with laughter as the bristles slowly, ever so slowly explored everywhere between her big and second toe. She was laughing like some stupid little girl, like the serving wenches who gossiped too loudly and would have earned her mother’s ire back in Winterfell.

At her right side, Pia wasn’t doing much better, based on her shrieks and begging. When the brush moved away, Arya thought it was finally over, but he was only dipping the brush into the water to rewet it before it dipped back between another pair of toes.

“Seven hells, you’ve got to keep your toes clean, girl. I might have to give them another wash after.”

When the Tickler was satisfied the gaps were as clean as could be, the base of her toes—that ridge where the joint met the rest of the foot—were next. When the brush began to work along that spot, Arya’s toes strained so hard against them that she actually broke the string tying her toes back, and she curled her toes, sighing and huffing with victory. But her victory was not a lasting one. “The coin for new string will be coming out of your food rations, girl,” the Tickler said, though he sounded more amused than displeased. Thicker string was brought out to force her toes back and keep the foot taut, and then he scrubbed even harder in that area.

“Alright, now that she’s warmed up,” the Tickler said, putting the brush away and using his fingers for a moment. Since the soles of her softened feet were all wet and soapy, his cruel, wicked fingertips slipped, stroked, slid, and scratched about with devilish effectiveness. And Arya couldn’t even curl or wiggle her toes a little, either. “You have a go, lad,” the Tickler stood up and the boy took over again.

Arya welcomed the change as she panted for breath. His tickling was hurried and sloppy. He kept going at the same sweet spots again and again, which consequently, meant they were no longer sweet spots. Any man grows sick of the same dish served day after day, no matter how good it is the first time.

After a while, the tickling didn’t seem quite so bad. It was almost like someone was giving her a massage, like the one Winterfell’s maester had once given her after she strained her leg from running too much. Her laughter had subsided to a few boyish splutters and chuckles, but nowhere near the guffawing and roaring it had been with the master at the helm. Thankfully, Pia was still chortling up a storm, so they might not notice.

It was for this reason that Arya jolted upright when she felt a pair of hands begin working on her foot in addition to the Sarsfield boy. The Tickler was attacking her right foot while the boy kept up his undisciplined assault on her left! That quickly ramped up her laugher. His touch was delicate. He had sharp nails for a man, as sharp as the ones Sansa had—her sister had once, in revenge for a prank Arya had pulled, snuck into Arya’s room during the hour of the owl, rolled her little sister up in the deerskin covers till she was cocooned, and woke her sister up with a thorough foot tickling on her bare feet. Of course, Arya had gotten back at her for that, borrowing their mother’s hairbrush for a similar ploy, but that playful tickling was completely different from this ordeal. All these people watching her thrashing and convulsing with laughter were not great, too.

“You got to watch the face, lad,” the Tickler said to Sarsfield. “Lookie here, you see this? You see how she howls with laughter when I do this?” Arya would very much have liked to defy him, to prove him wrong, but she couldn’t stop the scream of laughter from bursting from her lips when he used both his index fingers to rapidly scratch at a small, particular spot right on the centre of her arch.  “There’s no need to be so bloody timid! If you fancy the wench, you can have her brought up to your bedchambers in a few years.”

The thought of that made Arya sick, and she so badly wished she had Needle in her hand to show them all who she really was. That would show them that she was no mouse, no serving wench to be bullied and abused. She was a direwolf. Though she didn’t feel like one, right now. What wolf was ticklish? She thrashed her body everywhere to try to escape, leaning forward as far as she could go so her forehead almost coming into contact with the stocks, but all she achieved was letting people know she was being tickled to insanity.

“Remember, there’s no need to hold her feet in place. She ain’t going anywhere. Start just under her toes—see if she likes that.” Arya did not like that, nor his new aggressiveness.

She sighed in gratitude when the Tickler moved over to Pretty Pia to make her really screech with laughter, but she found herself ashamed at her selfishness. Pia didn’t deserve this. None of them did. But that wasn’t the sort of thing that matter in Harrenhal, not with Lord Tywin in charge.

“Pleheheehehease stahahahap! I’ll dohohoho anythihihing!” Pia shrieked, her brown hair a tangled mess as she threw her head from side to side.

This was a proposition that might’ve intrigued many men in Harrenal, Arya knew, but it seemed the Tickler was not one of them. “Is there gold hidden in the village?” he asked. “Do you know where’s Lord Beric?”

“Nohohoho! I dohohohon’t!”

“Well, ain’t that a crying shame,” he said. “I reckon you’ll just have to sit there and laugh, then, eh?”

This must have continued for another hour or two, but Arya wasn’t sure. She closed her eyes and lost herself in a flood of relentless, hammering ticklish sensations from her soft, pink soles. She laughed and shouted and cursed till her throat was raw with noise, her uncouth boyish cackles intermingling with Pia’s high-pitched squeaks and squeals. But when she opened her eyes, the crowd had thinned by more than a half, with many of the folk at Harrenhal sent back to their duties—they had been marched into the stockades during the time designated for the smallfolk to eat and rest before their next bout of labour, she knew. The sun also seemed much lower in the sky, her stomach was starting to growl, and the desire to make her water in the nearest privy was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

“Alright, boys, let’s finish here,” the Tickler said. He had abstained from the tickling to sit back and watch the two lads at work. He was chewing on another apple. “Ser Gregor is sending us to visit some inn keep near the Trident.”

“Thank the Gods it’s over,” Arya muttered as they pulled away.

“It’s not,” Pia said in a soft voice.

Arya frowned, looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and was about to ask her what she meant when a new feeling on her foot made her yelp. Sarsfield was at her right foot with a wooden bucket and a wide scrub brush in his hand. The bucket wasn’t the one from before, nor was the brush one of the ones that had been involving in the ‘cleaning’. Arya craned her neck and saw the bucket was filled with a thick whitish-grey paste that looked a bit like mushroom soup from the kitchens that had congealed disgustingly. Sarsfield began applying the paste to her soles, and although it wasn’t quite as horrendously hellish as the fingers or the brush from before, as it wasn’t applied with quite as much force, it still twisted Arya’s face into a ticklish grimace.

“Wha-what is this?” she asked him.

“Food,” was all he said as he continued to coat Arya’s feet in the substance, making sure that her small toes and the webbing between were slathered in it too. As further layers were applied, she smelled water, flour, and salt.

“For whohohoho?”

“Theehehe gohohohoats!” Pia said in between giggles as her own feet were caked in the paste.

But her words didn’t make any sense. There were no goats here aside from the banners flying above Harrenhal. All the livestock were kept in the stables and grazing pasture away from here. The answer came as four of bleating goats were lead in.

“No,” Pia cried at their sight. “Please no!”

“Calm as still water,” Arya repeated over and over under her breath as she tried to steady her breathing. After the paste dried, the boys applied two more layers to each of their feet until they were caked in it. The small horned brown and grey goats were as harmless as creatures could be, and it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

Her world was once more engulfed in the furiously fiery sensation of blazing laughter when those rough tongues made contact with her soles—she had two goats on her, one for each foot. She shuddered and her entire leg twitched and shook as the tongues quickly lapped up and down.

“The goats are hungry today,” she heard someone say, but her eyes were squeezed shut from the roaring sensations so she couldn’t have said who. The bristly, scratchy tongues were firmly pressed against her foot, always hitting the same spots with the same up and down motion from heel to toes, yet so maddeningly effective.

It felt like the goats had been at this for hours, but when she forced her eyes open to glance down at her feet, they had barely made any kind of noticeable dent in the goopy paste. And her feet were still tingling so much from the insistent licking… She should have been grateful that it was the goats, and not the Tickler or his boys. The Tickler was cunning and the boys were earnest and hard-working, while the goats just… licked and licked. Yet that was all that was needed to set both girls to screaming in hysterical laughter. 

The knight with the spiked helmet wandered close to them, and Arya gritted her teeth as Pia whimpered and pleased with him to stop. But he simply reached for the brush and applied more food on their feet despite their screams of “no more!” “What, you think it’s over? You’ve got hours to go, wenches!”

Once Arya found out his name, she would add him to her list of nightly prayers, the list of all the men who needed to suffer, needed to die. She focused on the names as forced laughter continue to bubble out of her. Joffrey, Cersei, she thought, clenching her fists, Ilyn Payne, The Hound, The Tickler… She had to remember. She had to remember despite the tickle torture of rough tongues endlessly slurping away at her bare soles…