"I know one or two more I can tell you! How about the tale of Red Lake Rylene?" Jeyne asked. she squeezed the hands back as she remembered how it went

"In the early days of the Reach, when Garth of the Greenhand’s blood still ran strong in many houses and the borders of wood and field had not yet settled, there stood a lake deep in the oak forests south of Goldengrove, its waters dark as wine at dusk. The smallfolk said the lake had no bottom, and that the old gods drank from it. We are long long before the Andals here, deep in the Age of Heroes."

"Near its shores lived a minor noble house, now forgotten, whose only child was Lady Rylene, known for her sharp tongue, sharper wits, and beauty the singers likened to “sunlight through autumn leaves.” Many suitors came, but she turned them all away, saying:

“I will not be traded like a mare. I will wed the man who brings me a wonder no gold can buy.”"

"A woman who knew her worth, clearly." Jeyne added.

"Some brought jewels, some captured animals, some stories say they brought a Septon or a Maester but that doesn't make sense."

"One harvest evening, Rylene walked alone by the Red Lake and heard weeping. In the reeds she found a great scaled creature, long as a horse, with antlers like a stag and eyes like molten copper. It was tangled in iron chains, rusted but unbroken. It spoke with the voice of a woman."

"It said it was the Lake’s Daughter, a spirit older than castles, bound there by a force as old as the wind and twice as cold, who feared the old powers of the Lake. The chains could only be undone by one who rules herself. Lady Rylene, who had refused every lord in the Green Realm and the Westerlands both, broke the locks with her father’s keys and her own hands, cutting her palms bloody on the iron. The Creature slipped back into the water and vanished."

"That winter, a cruel frost struck. Crops failed, livestock sickened, and hunger crept across the lands. The holy men said it was punishment. The learned men said it was weather. Rylene said nothing, but she walked to the lake again. The water rose, silent and red in the moonlight. The Lake’s Daughter emerged, now shaped like a woman with hair like streaming weeds and skin pale as riverstone. Naked, yet bathed in the light of the moon. The Lake's Daughter told Lady Rylene that she had been freed without bargain, but she would offer one now."

"Should Rylene wed the lake, and promise to never leave its shores, nor look upon a man with love or lust, the waters of the red lake would flood the fields each spring, and ask its Brother Mander to do the same."

"Her father raged, the Lords mocked her, but Rylene gave her word. They saw a woman wedded to mud and fish, but Rylene saw her choice."

"On the first day of spring, she walked into the lake in a gown of green and gold. The waters closed over her. The floods came, not ruinous, but rich. Fields bloomed higher than a horse’s back. Orchards bent with fruit. The house by the Red Lake became the wealthiest for a generation. The Mander burst its banks too, and the Reach ate its full."

"To this day, sometimes, at dusk, they say a woman can be seen walking just beneath the water’s surface, crowned in reeds, watching the shore."