The second life

The second life is a form of existence after death available to skinchangers, those gifted with the ability to enter the minds of animals and control their bodies. It is not a resurrection or a return to human life, but a continuation of consciousness within a beast, a fading echo of the person who once was. The concept is central to the understanding of the wargs of the far north, and its rules and consequences are laid out most clearly by the hunter Haggon, who taught the powerful skinchanger Varamyr Sixskins.

Nature and Mechanism of the Second Life

According to Haggon, the second life is the fate that awaits a skinchanger after their true death. "You will die a dozen deaths, boy, and every one will hurt," he told the young Varamyr, "but when your true death comes, you will live again. The second life is simpler and sweeter, they say." This transition is not a choice but an inevitability for a skinchanger of sufficient power. When the human flesh dies, the spirit does not depart for whatever afterlife exists but instead leaps into the bonded animal. The process is not a seamless continuation of the self, however. Haggon warned of a crucial degradation: "When the man's flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less a warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains." The second life is thus a slow dissolution of the human identity into the animal's instincts and nature.

Varamyr Sixskins and the Price of the Second Life

Varamyr Sixskins, a powerful warg who had bonded with a snow bear, a shadowcat, and three wolves, provides the most detailed illustration of the second life's mechanics and its moral weight. Having died nine times before in the bodies of his beasts, he faces his true death in a freezing hut, his body failing from a wound and exposure. As he dies, he attempts to seize the body of the spearwife Thistle, a desperate act he knows is an "abomination" according to Haggon's teachings. The attempt fails catastrophically; Thistle's spirit fights him, and she mutilates herself to expel him. Varamyr's consciousness is then cast out, experiencing a moment of dissolution where he becomes the wood and everything in it before finding his pack of wolves. His last thought as a man is that his wolves will save him. He enters the body of One Eye, the oldest and fiercest of his pack, beginning his second life as a true wolf. The narrative then shows the consequence of this transition: the part of him that was Varamyr grieves for what he has lost and what he has done, but he is now a wolf, running with his pack, and the world of men is already receding.

The Second Life as a Narrative and Thematic Device

The concept of the second life serves as a crucial narrative and thematic element, particularly in relation to the Stark children and their direwolves. The bond between a skinchanger and their animal is described as a marriage, a permanent and transformative union. Haggon taught that "Wolves and women wed for life. You take one, that's a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you're part of him. Both of you will change." This bond creates the potential for a second life. Jon Snow, whose wolf dreams grow stronger, reflects on the fate of his brother Robb, whose direwolf Grey Wind died with him. He wonders if some part of his dead brothers lives on inside their wolves, a thought that directly invokes the principle of the second life. Bran Stark, who is being trained by the Three-Eyed Crow to become a greenseer, also learns to slip into the skin of his direwolf Summer and even Hodor. The greenseer's power is a deeper, more permanent form of this bond, with the potential to live on within the weirwood trees themselves, a fate that echoes the second life but on a vastly different scale. The second life thus frames the deep, magical connection between the Starks and their direwolves not merely as a companion bond, but as a potential path to a strange and fading immortality, a shadow of the self that persists in the wild, a fate that is both a gift and a slow, inevitable loss.