It's no secret that Link's Awakening is my favourite game in the series, not just because it was my first, but also because of what it implies. This is my interpretation of what transpired over the course of the game, and I hope you enjoy it.
Spoilers for Link's Awakening and Phantom Hourglass (at the end).
Once I dreamt I was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with myself and doing as I pleased. I didn't know I was myself. Suddenly I woke up and there I was, solid and unmistakably myself. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
Zhuangzi
A Little Place in the Wilderness
Zelda?
No, she is not Zelda, and this is not Hyrule. There is a feather-lightness in the air that is foreign to him, something so breezy it is almost unreal, and the taste of brine runs deep in his lungs. Vaguely, Link recalls the storm and the ocean and the dead of night, hovering at the edges of a waking calm. He is left with a tugging sensation, as though he has savagely forced himself out of a dream.
Marin helps him out of bed. Tarin hands him his shield. He fumbles with it for a moment, his fingertips oversensitive and his legs shaking. A part of him feels as though he is still out in the ocean, still drowning. But he is not – he's alive, he's alive, he's alive.
("Since you washed ashore, lots of nasty monsters have been in the area…")
As he walks southward he begins seeing the monsters that Marin and Tarin spoke of – nightmarish things but familiar in a way, parodies of monsters he's seen before, a Hylian creature dreaming of itself. They regard him with little interest. The smell of the sea becomes stronger and stronger, until his boots are sinking in the hot sand.
An owl greets him where his sword has followed the waves ashore. It is not the first owl Link has ever seen, nor the first that has ever spoken to him. But that was long, long ago…
And he wonders when it was that he carved his name into his shield and sword.
(These musical instruments were once used by the band of Sirens as they sang to lure sailors to their doom.)
Link remembers caves, and dungeons, and forests – mostly forests. Link remembers the mysterious woods from long ago, places where one could get lost if they didn't keep their bearings straight. Nostalgia hits him just above his heart. He's remembering the sword in the forest, far away in Hyrule, and it makes his breath catch in his throat. This is not Hyrule. This is not where he belongs.
He emerges from Tail Cave with a cello which thrums softly in his hands, radiating a soft red light. Mabe Village is in an uproar – the Moblins attacked while he was gone. He leaves once again in pursuit, not tired even after the battle with the Moldorm.
It doesn't matter, he thinks, as he heads north for Goponga Swamp. I'm alive. I'm on another adventure. Isn't that enough?
The air is cool and still on the eternally sunny island. It's enough.
("I have to admit, at first I did not believe you were real...")
Tarin tells him not to visit the Dream Shrine, claims it's haunted. But Link has been through this before. He must touch every inch of the world if he is to reveal all of its secrets; where there is the most danger, there is the most revealed, and that is why they call him Courage.
The air temperature drops noticeably as he approaches the low stone shrine, moving the rocks aside to reveal the entrance. Inside it is empty, but for a bed and a few torches (why were there boulders in the way? Was someone trying to stop me from getting in? Or were they trying to stop something from getting out?). Compelled by the lull in the air, Link climbs into bed. (It's perfectly his size.) His eyes slide shut.
It's the first time he's fallen asleep since he arrived on the island – in fact, since he arrived, it's yet to be night (and he stumbles about, as if inside a dream, in slowly shrinking circles, spiralling around in claustrophobically tight corridors, filled with a total sense of panic and dread; distantly, he hears the sound of hooves beating, and someone screaming, and the sound of rain, and he feels as though he is drowning; there are things with eyes that copy his motions; his shadow quivers, and laughs softly, and says I'm here because you're here. He finds he's breathing heavily. (He finds he can't breathe.) He wants to scream and knows that he can't. He dives into a crack in the wall, pressing himself through an impossibly small space into the crushing dark. He finds a chest, and opens it to throw a little light into his world. In the chest, sitting on a bed of red velvet so warm he wonders if it's alive he finds a small instrument. He clutches it firmly in both hands, not sure why he's taking it, and) wakes from the nightmare, drowning in sweat. And there is the ocarina clenched in his fists.
("Link, when you hold this Ocarina in your hand... I won't be around anymore... I wanted to wait for you, but I couldn't delay any longer... At least I could leave you the Ocarina and this melody...")
Badly shaken, profoundly disturbed, he stumbles outside for some fresher air. Drawn by a breathy melody he stumbles towards the statue of the Flying Rooster, hearing someone singing a sad little song. He feels as though he's heard the song somewhere before. Somewhere, somewhen – in that same dream?
How, exactly, does one find themselves awake within someone else's dream? And when did he learn to play the ocarina?
("They say the 'Ballad of the Wind Fish' is a song of awakening. I wonder, if the Wind Fish wakes up, will he make my wish come true?")
She reminds me of someone, he thinks, as he sits on the beach, listening to Marin. She tells him of coconut trees, and seagulls, and of the nothing beyond the wall of the sea. He wants to tell her that he needs her to make a walrus move, so that he can get into the desert and find his way home. He wants to tell her about where he comes from – about the sword in the forest, and the warmth of the pendants, and the smell of Hyrule covered in an evil dark light, and the dream in the rain when Zelda cried for help. He wants to tell her that he has always been afraid of dreaming. He wants to tell her that he hasn't dreamt, or slept, since he arrived on Koholint – but for the dream of the ocarina in the dark. He wants to tell her that the worst nightmare he has ever had was a dream of a dream of a horse in the rain at night, of the man with the evil eyes flashing in the dark…
("When I discovered you, Link, my heart skipped a beat! I thought, this person has come to give us a message...")
Marin slaps Link's arm; he's lost himself in his thoughts, again. Her cheeks are pink. She mumbles something about wanting to know more about him, but he wouldn't even know where to begin. She agrees to follow him to Animal Village, so he takes her hand in his, and gently pulls her towards Mabe Village.
She comes alive, dragging him to the Trendy Game, convincing him to dig for shells, chasing after cuccos, her eyes sparkling as she takes in Koholint as a whole. The feeling of her small hand in his remains as he trudges through the burning sands of the Yarna Desert, looking for a key, or a way out. She felt so real.
("...Nostalgia... ...unchanged... ...boo hoo... ...Enough...
...cemetery... ...take me... ...my grave...")
Link has learned through experience to not be afraid of ghosts. He watches silently as the ghost weeps in the empty house, more disturbed than frightened. He feels like somewhat of a ghost himself these days, floating from place to place, Koholint becoming a well-worn and well-known island. He finds himself walking through familiar spaces, the same sort of journey he's had before, and before, and before.
Link remembers deep water. As he dives into the Catfish's Maw ("The closer you get to the Wind Fish, the more restless he sleeps"), Link is assaulted by memories of deep water, high mountains, and the breathless, intolerable scent of air. He remembers things he doesn't remember living. Link sees Death Mountain on fire, Zelda dreaming on her way to death, hears a clock chiming midnight, everybody, Stalfos.
But he's alive, on another adventure. Isn't that enough?
("Ssso... you are the outsssider, come to wake the Wind Fisssh...KEEE-HEE-HEEEH! I shall eat you! TSSSK, TSSSK! You don't ssseem to know what kind of island this iss... KEEE-HEE-HEEE! What a fool... KEE-HEE-HEH!")
Compelled by the owl's words and the voice of the siren song, Link finds his way to the Southern Face Shrine. Immediately upon entering he is hearkened to that heavy, oppressive air that he remembers from the Dream Shrine, and knows that he is in a very strange place, even for Koholint. The hair stands on the back of his neck. He is touched by a vague sense of fear, a feeling he has not been able to place for years. But fear is not cowardice, and he pushes on.
The darkness feels safe, but he lights the shrine's torches. He knows that he needs to light torches, because they have always shown him the way. (Link remembers eyes like torches, flashing in the dark.) There's a mural etched into the wall, white and black and red. He steps over to take a closer look.
(TO THE FINDER... THE ISLE OF KOHOLINT, IS BUT AN ILLUSION... HUMAN,
MONSTER, SEA, SKY... A SCENE ON THE LID OF A SLEEPER'S EYE...
AWAKE
THE DREAMER, AND KOHOLINT WILL VANISH MUCH LIKE A BUBBLE ON A
NEEDLE...)
…And the sob breaks through his lips, a long, low sound that startles him. He has never uttered a sound, not since -
Memories of Koholint and Hyrule slide into one another and join the false memories of things he's never done but remembers doing and the sound of his own voice as he sobs is raw and childlike. A hand on the mural, feeling the whale and the sea, he is suddenly reminded that he's exhausted.
("Just as you cannot know if a chest holds treasure until you open it, so you cannot tell if this is a dream until you awaken...")
His eyes roll back into his eyelids and he feels the rough stone as he sinks to the ground.
(CAST-AWAY, YOU SHOULD KNOW THE TRUTH!)
He dreams of rain.
(... ... ... ... What? Illusion?)
Facade is a face in the floor. Link has seen many strange and horrible creatures in his time, but something about the smile cutting through the stone sets his teeth on edge, in a way that he hasn't felt since he was the rabbit, under the lightning, and the wind…
…Something about the battle feels so right, as though he's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing: slashing with his sword, dodging blows, fighting for his life. Living. Living is exactly what he's supposed to be doing. For Koholint, and a far, far away place called Hyrule.
("If the Wind Fish wakes up, everything on this island will be gone forever! And I do mean... EVERYTHING!")
Something changes in the monsters' habits after Link emerges from the northern Face Shrine. Where they once regarded him as harmless, or a minor annoyance, after Facade's defeat they swarm upon him in greater numbers, and as Link throws them aside with languid sweeps of his sword, he wonders if they care for life or limb, and for what reason they attack him so desperately and so futilely.
Link climbs Tal Tal Heights very slowly. It hearkens him to Death Mountain. The Wind Fish is growing restless. He's growing tired. It's a tiredness that comes from his bones, and tingles in his fingers, and makes his head swim –
(– But he himself is on the island –)
– And the mountain is impassable, regardless. He feels somewhat relieved. With decisiveness and a calm assuredness that unnerves himself he turns for Mabe Village and the grave of the Flying Rooster, where he and Marin had joined in song.
(The red-eyed man stares through him, watching, waiting, and the molten walls pulse in time with his heartbeat, and the sound of the lyre. When did he know? When did he know?)
Resting on a hunch, he pushes aside the gravestone (he's pushed aside many gravestones, in his time) and finds bones, underground. Link fumbles with the Ocarina. He tries for the Frog's Song of Soul but misses, playing a different tune
(and he sees an endless, endless expanse of water)
and before he loses himself completely, he plays the correct notes, and when he opens his eyes it hovers before him. The Rooster's head is cocked as it watches him, waiting for him to move. Link is suddenly aware that the entire time he has been holding his breath.
He decides that he must wake the Wind Fish. He turns for the Eagle's Tower.
("But you will be lost too, if the Wind Fish wakes!
Same as me...
you...are...in...his...
dream...")
He finds Marin clinging for life on a bridge on Tal Tal Heights. When Link rescues her she is cold and shaking, and whispers that a horde of monsters grabbed her and dragged her there, intending to prey on her fear of heights.
("Hoot! That girl sang her song in front of the Egg! Her 'Ballad of the Wind Fish' is a song of awakening! Did she actually intend to wake the Wind Fish?")
And as he hands her off to her father there is a moment, a very brief moment, when he feels sorry for the monsters. He remembers how Marin reminded him of Zelda
("Since you washed ashore, lots of nasty monsters have been in the area…")
and ponders on why the monsters appeared only after he arrived on Koholint, and why they did not become aggressive until he began to threaten to wake the Wind Fish.
They're afraid, he thinks. They know that they're all a part of this big dream, just like me.
And in his own way he is afraid, too.
(Link: embodiment of courage, and of the wind, and of children forced into adulthood before their time, and of fierce secrets whispered in the dark.)
(THE WIND FISH
SLUMBERS LONG...
THE HERO'S LIFE
GONE...)
This is not the Turtle Rock Link remembers from Hyrule; as he plumbs deeper into Koholint's parody of Hyrule's, Link remembers the rock on Death Mountain that had swallowed Princess Zelda. (This one feels the same. It feels final.) He remembers the Dark World, the grey sky arcing lightning; he remembers the mirror; he remembers the Book of Mudora, within whose letters the past and present were outlined, and he is sad that he never translated it. (But even without the book, I think I'm seeing pieces of myself, not from this time.) Koholint's Turtle Rock radiates heat in a way that Hyrule's never did.
(I saved Zelda, and then I defeated Ganon, and then I wanted to sail away…)
He had followed an inexorable call to the sea. Why?
(…To see the world? To see myself? Because of that time, when I was young -)
Link remembers the Pedestal of Time, and the three jewels that unlocked the sword. He remembers it twice: in the grey stone building, and in the forest, after hundreds of years of decay.
A vision: ankle-deep in water, sword-to-sword with his own shadow. (Whenever you travel, you leave a mark.) A boy leaps from a great height, to return to the land he was destined to reclaim. (And was I destined for all of this, too?) The king of thieves, as he is executed for a crime he might have committed. (Am I guilty of things I've never done?) Standing in a grassy field, the mask speaks to him - it says I am the fierce deity, brother of Majora, and I desire a body. (Am I just a shell for something else?) Bleeding and exhausted, a woman stumbles into the faeries' wood, and offers her son to the Deku Tree. (I think that was Link, too. But was it me?)
Hot Head screams as it dies, and Link ascends to claim the last Siren Instrument. I don't know where I am, Link thinks as the Thunder Drum points him to the Egg of the Wind Fish, without quite knowing what that means.
("Why did you come here?
If it weren't for you, nothing would have to change!")
("Round and round, the passageways of the Egg…")
Link is not surprised to find a maze in the belly of the Wind Fish; Koholint has been full of mazes and secrets, just as Hyrule was. He is also not surprised that the passage had been left for him in a book in the Mabe Village library. Something – or someone – wanted him off the island, but wanted the way off to be long, and hard.
But good. He has never been sorry at the end of troubled times, before. He knows, now: there is part of him that does not want to wake up.
And yet, finally, he falls through a hole into the deepest part of the mind, where the Nightmare waits for him.
("If the Wind Fish doesn't wake up, this island will never disappear!")
The first nightmare is an ooze that hops about. Link thinks he remembers Giant Bots from the Great Temple, where the Triforce of Courage slept in a different time. The second nightmare takes the form of Agahnim, a nightmare from Link's past. The third is a Moldorm from the Tail Cave on Koholint. The fourth nightmare is Ganon himself. By that point Link is sweating and breathing heavily and bleeding from new wounds, and his muscles ache with new bruises. The battle is good and he's enjoying himself.
Finally, Dethl shows itself. It is a thing with swinging arms. Link, in his exhaustion, whispers Vaati – a name he does not recognize – and Link remembers the Dark Mirror, which created shadow versions of himself. He faced himself then, and when he was ankle-deep in water, and once in the Black Tower at the heart of time, and as facades of the Interlopers -
(All my life, he thinks. All my life, I've fought with myself.)
The memories consume him; distracted, he fails to dodge an arm that smashes into his chest and throws him into the wall. His vision is going white, and he knows he is close to death. But he grits his teeth and grips his blade and jumps back up, and he is not dead yet, and jumps for his life, and drives the blade home.
("Our world is going to disappear... Our world... Our... world...")
And suddenly, savagely, as the nightmare dies, the weight of the words everything and same and our world dawn on Link, and he understands: these were not the Wind Fish's nightmares, he realizes. They were mine.
(The Wind Fish speaks in the voice of the Deku Tree, and takes the form of an owl, as did the Sage of Light. Link remembers the Sages; Link remembers the Faeries; Link remembers the stones; Link remembers the maidens; Link remembers Zelda, and Saria, and Marin, who longed to become a seagull; Link remembers the Dark Mirror, and the Mirror of Twilight, and the Magic Mirror, and the Lens of Truth, and the Song of Storms, bringer of rain…)
("THAT MEMORY MUST BE THE REAL DREAM WORLD...")
…He plays the song of awakening on the ocarina, the instrument that transcended time to be with him again. Koholint begins to crumble in a gust of water and wind, and Link is sorry to see it go…
("COME, LINK... LET US AWAKEN... TOGETHER!")
…And wakes to the ocean, and the blue sky, and the Wind Fish, and the sound of seagulls calling, flying to a place far beyond reach…
(He was not meant to die, then; things happen that even the Goddesses had not planned.)
("BUT, VERILY, IT BE THE NATURE OF DREAMS TO END!")
…And wakes to the black, black bottom of the ocean. His lungs are filled with water, his brain is swimming light, his limbs heavy, the Master Sword and shield on the ocean floor beside him.
And he remembers, then, that he had drowned. It was his last fight, to prevent his own awakening.
(He is the first Link to smile as he dies.)
That's the thing about heroes, Ravio thinks, setting up shop. You blow all this time and money on killing something, and it leaves you so messed up that the best you can do is sail off and drown.
"This has happened before," Oshus says, the voice coming from his entire being rather than from one distinct source. On the other side of the ruined plank of wood, Linebeck examines his newly resurrected ship, and Tetra is leaning over to wash the sand out of her hair, or perhaps to admire her reflection in the sea. Link sits. His eyes are wide, and blue, and reflect a soul that is very, very old.
"Yes, this meeting was fated to occur," Oshus repeats, at once the great whale and the old man. Link gives his reply with neither spoken word nor a movement of his body.
"I dreamt of a stone," he murmurs, thoughtfully. "But there was a nightmare…yes, washed up on the beach with a sword and shield – was it there before, or after you woke? Had I been sleeping, or was I fighting to keep myself from waking?"
Link cocks his head, naively, knowingly.
"Koholint. That is what we named it – Koholint Island. And I am the Wind Fish, and you are the Hero of Winds…"
Somewhere, at some time, a Link is riding off into the woods, or sailing off into the horizon, or setting off out of the day, never to return. Somewhere, somewhen, the Hero's Spirit is fighting with Link to beat into their body the skills that link them to their past, across the river of time, flowing on, ever cruel. The Hero's Spirit pauses to lift its ugly head, hearing the sound of a very distant lullaby, or a ballad, or the softly beating sound of Hyrule bathed in gold, born of twilight or in the realm of spirits, or both, or neither. (I was once a rabbit, it thinks. I am now a wolf.)
"…But was I the Wind Fish, dreaming of Link?" Oshus frowns. "Or was I Link, dreaming of the Wind Fish?"
Oshus feels an emotion rush up and out, and it manifests itself in two hundred seagulls bursting from beneath the waves, rushing up and up and up and up, into the sky, where Skyloft is only a ruined home for terrible things. The sun begins to sink, setting the ocean on fire. And then it is night, glorious night.