Leaf
One of the Children of the Forest, the small, ancient, golden-eyed first people of Westeros, keepers of secrets older than the First Men.
A soul born at Beyond the Wall, sworn to The Children & the Others.
The fuller tale
Season Six
The dead pour in. Summer dies, the Raven dies, Leaf dies ÔÇö and Hodor holds the door as a boy's whole life collapses into one word.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell defending the cave (S6┬ÀE5)
One of the last children of the forest, who made the first White Walker in a desperate age and spent ten thousand years regretting it. She died buying seconds in the tunnel, a fire-bomb in her fist, swallowed by wights.
The show gives the last of the first people a rearguardÔÇÖs death. When the Night KingÔÇÖs host breaches the greenseerÔÇÖs hollow hill, Leaf and her remaining kin hold the tunnels with fire and obsidian while Bran is dragged toward the daylight ÔÇö a speciesÔÇÖ final battle fought in a corridor, buying seconds apiece. Cornered at the last with the wights closing from every side, Leaf lets them come: she waits until the dead are on her, a fire-charge clenched in her fist, and vanishes in the blast, spending the last of herself to seal the passage behind the survivors. The creature that made the first White Walker dies unmaking a few of his soldiers ÔÇö ten thousand years of regret discharged in a single light. She is alive in the published books.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Book-Leaf carries the same elegy with different particulars. On the page she has walked in the lands of men ÔÇö sent out young into the world beyond the cave, which is why her Common Tongue is fluent where her kin sing only the True Tongue ÔÇö and she is emphatic that the children do not call themselves children at all; the name is menÔÇÖs, and their own means those who sing the song of earth. Above all, the books never make her a weaponsmith: the OthersÔÇÖ origin remains a genuine mystery in the published novels, with no scene of dragonglass and no confession, and many readers doubt the showÔÇÖs creation story reflects the booksÔÇÖ eventual answer. Book-Leaf is alive in the published story, still keeping the cave with her dwindling kin; her death in the tunnel, like the raid that causes it, is the screenÔÇÖs invention.