THE LEGEND OF ZELDA:
SHADOW DAWN

Foreword

This is the first of a very sparse number of author's notes that I intend to place at the beginning of each Part of The Legend of Zelda: Shadow Dawn.

If you're new to the story, let it be known that you're starting in the middle of things. I encourage you to click on my profile and open The Amber Twilight, which contains Part I of the story. Don't worry. It won't bite. You can also just keep reading, and allow your inevitable intrigued confusion to guide you back down that suggested path.

If you must forge ahead right now, keep in mind that this tale isn't really about The Legend of Zelda. Except that it is – and there's the rub. Part I – "The Amber Twilight" – concerns Linus Olsen, a stoner, lifelong Legend of Zelda fan, and resident of the storied city of Los Angeles. Linus is not a happy man. Consumed by a sense of hopeless inertia and growing depression, he wiles his days away with an empty job, cheap drugs, and video games. After a show of drunken bravado leaves him bruised and even more depressed than usual, Linus wakes up in hellish dream world of endless forests, lunatic beasts, and haunted ruins. Only after escaping to the waking world does Linus realize that these incredible dreams have put him into possession of the fabled, entirely fictional Master Sword.

The sword's arrival heralds a period of paranoia and dread for Linus. Convinced that increasingly terrifying hallucinations are being caused by this impossible sword, Linus sets out to get rid of it. Even that quest goes awry, as once again Linus steps headlong into an all-too-familiar fantasy world. Now, Linus sits in the aftermath of a great battle – one that he's won by using only his wits and the damnable Master Sword. It's a long way to Los Angeles, and it doesn't look like there's any going back.

Before we begin, let me thank all of the diehard fans who have put up with my lugubrious pacing and infuriatingly lazy update schedule – especially those who have hung on from the beginning. Your enthusiasm and support have buoyed me as I undertook this madly overambitious project. Thank you.

PART II:
THE GREEN HORIZON

1

This is how the world ended:

Not with a bang, and not with a whimper.

Oh sure, there was some blubbering involved on my part. And if you want to get technical, a brawl with otherworldly monsters might count as a "bang." All the same, the world – my world, and all the things in it –did not truly end with those things.

No.

My world ended on a bed of grass, while I stared into the blue, blue sky.

I was Linus Aaron Olsen, and I had gone insane. My body buzzed with the fading memory of adrenaline. My face was on fire. Tears flowed into an open wound on my cheek and mixed, stinging, with my blood. A streamer of runny snot trickled from a nostril and pooled over my upper lip.

I'm not as good with dates as I used to be. The past can sometimes blur together in a single brushstroke of images layered upon one another. But, as far as I can tell, the date was August 22, 2007. Or was it the 23rd? Truth be told, the old days – those days before the sky spilled out over me like a peerless seascape – seem just as unreal as everything that came after them. The concept of dates and years has turned elastic in my mind. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't 2008 or 2009 when I stepped into the yawning alleyway and abandoned my old life forever. Like the moments just after waking from a disturbingly vivid dream, what was real and what was an amorphous fantasy blend together in a storm of whimsy and confusion.

And that . . . that was how my world actually ended. It ended like waking from a dream. A dream in which I was Linus Olsen, born in St. Paul, Minnesota and raised in Los Angeles, California. A dream of empty streets and hollow lives; of endless wandering and slow emotional decay. It was a dream that I had believed was immutable. And now – as I lay bloody, bruised, and full of mad joy – I couldn't help but wonder if all that had been some bizarre lie. Had I been dreaming? Had I dreamed everything about my life to that point? Was everything that I believed in an illusion?

And what had I wakened to?

I was Linus Olsen, and if I hadn't already gone insane, the questions that spun through my mind would eventually take me there.

And so I lay in the tall grass of a great and windswept prairie. I hurt. Face, shoulders, ribs, abdomen, legs, feet . . . Everything hurt. I tried to focus on the part that pained me the most, but it didn't work. My brain swarmed with static. I couldn't focus. I had been sitting up, hadn't I? Yes, that would make sense. And now I was on my back, eyes to the few clouds tracing faint paths across the sky. I didn't remember falling backwards. Curious.

How much time had passed, then? I squinted. The laceration on my face filled with magma. My breath hissed through clenched teeth. A numb tingle spread across my lips and the tip of my nose.

The sky. The sky was momentous. So blue. What was a good word for it? What was a good word for "blue?" I blinked. Azure? Yes. Azure might do. Sapphire. That sky was fucking sapphire. When was the last time I had seen a sky so clean and pretty? God, what a question. When was the last time I had been out of the city?

I frowned and furrowed my brow. The movement called forth another rush of raw pain from my cheek.

All about me, blades of grass tickled my hands and explored between my spread fingers. Beneath the back of my head, the ground felt cool and just barely moist. The wind picked up, and my view was obscured by swaying fronds of greenery.

Out in the shady depths of the meadow, insects clicked and buzzed as if in soft conversation.

Swish. Swish.

I heard movement. Grass parting as someone – or something – moved through it. It was joined by hushed voices, muted at first and then rising to an excited babble. I couldn't make out any of the words. Slowly and by turns, I caught pieces of a harried, approaching conversation.

". . . don't know. Just do not – ah, my head!"

A low, nasal male voice, with an accent thick as porridge. Long and lyrical vowels.

"Father, he –"

"Oh, my skull . . ."

"He saved us. He fought 'em off himself!"

The second voice belonged to a girl. The girl, probably. The one that, for better or worse, had gotten me into this mess. A stiff smile crossed my lips. All this for a girl I hadn't even seen face to face. Bravo, Don Quixote.

A third distinct voice sluiced past my ears. "Don't like it. Don't like it at all. Fellow had a queer way about him." Rough and blunt and growling. Even though the accent wasn't quite Irish or quite English, that third man's vocal pattern brought to mind dark pubs, rainy days, and mugs of . . . mugs of . . . what the fuck did Irishmen drink? Guinness?

Jesus, the places my mind wandered. When it came back to that strange lilting accent, I realized that it wasn't quite like anything I had heard before. It was a limbo-speech, familiar but undeniably foreign.

"Easy, man. He's probably a soldier away from his garrison, or one of those, you know, 'contractuals,' come up from Great Bay to make himself a few rupees." The owner of the first voice had evidently stopped moving, as his words didn't come noticeably closer.

The third man spat audibly. "Bloody godsdamn mercenary scum. In times past, they'd get what came to 'em, eh? Really came to 'em, right? Pissing buzzards, the lot of them. Why ol' Daphnes hasn't issued a decree o' conscription . . ."

"Now, now . . ." the first voice sighed.

With further parting of the grass, the girl whispered, "Does it matter? If he hadn't come along, what do you think would have happened to us?" I felt the stalks just beyond my feet begin to stir. "Do you think he's dead?"

"You said that he took a mob spear to the face?" the first man asked. His voice was full of pained incredulity.

"That's what I saw," the girl chirped. She couldn't have been more than ten feet away.

I managed to turn my head. To my right, the thin rays of the sun played through shoots of grass and dappled the blade of the Master Sword. When I got down to it, it hadn't been the girl at all that was the root of my problems. It was that damnable sword. Ever since I had found it, my life had become a nightmare carnival ride. With it, I had cut away the dream of Los Angeles and woken up in the hills of –

Don't say it. Don't even think it. It's ridiculous.

My eyes moved back to the immaculate sky. A grimace pulled at my lips.

The third, unseen man chuffed, "Ingo could have handled it. Ingo took the shanks to that rider, didn't he?"

I felt a gut-twisting sense of sour déjà vu. Must have misheard. Had to have. My unacknowledged assumptions were getting in the way of my senses. Completely ridiculous.

Waking. Waking from a dream, to a dream.

I realized that I couldn't just lie there for much longer. As terrible and exhausted as I felt, I was far from unconscious. These people (whoever they were) were looking for me. They probably wanted answers. One of them was less than a hop from the tips of my shoes.

"Ooooh – my head!" the first man moaned. "Can you see him, dear?"

I clenched my eyes shut and attempted to rise. Pain rippled through my body – torn flesh, bruised skin, cracked ribs, and knotted muscles. Despite everything, I succeeded in sitting up.

The vision of that wonderful, world-ending sky blurred into a haze of green. A dizzy rush overtook my head. The colors of the world bled together. For a moment, I saw everything as a series of blurred shapes, lines, and shadows.

Out in the field, a squat figure jumped back and raised its arms in defense. "Yikes!" he shouted. At least, I thought he shouted that – it was pronounced more like yoikz.

A slim silhouette bent forward to inspect me. Blue eyes ran over my form with wide curiosity.

"Are you all right, stranger?"

Her voice was soft and concerned. As my eyes adjusted and my head cleared, the light caught her red hair. Fire, paprika, garnets, blood.

She was young, but ambiguously so. Short and petite, with a round and lineless face. Freckles dotted her cheekbones. At this angle, I had a full and unapologetic view of her small breasts as they pressed against the fabric of her dress.

Something about that dress gave me pause. It was a one-piece, practical garment stitched from a white, heavy material. On its sleeves, shoulders, and hem were embroidered bright blue, angular designs. Something . . . something familiar . . .

"Stranger?" she asked again, leaning closer. The girl absently brushed loose strands of long hair away from her neck. Only a very small, diminishing part of me was surprised to see that her ears curved back into high elfin points.

After a long moment, I realized that I was staring. Christ. I shook my head and my vision swam like a soaked watercolor. "I'm okay," I groaned.

The girl cocked her head to the side and screwed up her forehead in confusion. "O-kay? Is that," she paused, "is that your name? Oh-Kay?" Her accent was the same as the others'. Her lips seemed to draw every vowel out like a tiny song.

"I mean," I said, my voice raspy, "that I am . . . I'm o –" she doesn't know that word, jackass, "I'm all right. I'm g-good."

She stood full height, giving me a better view of the meadow and the two other figures standing behind her. Placing her hands on her hips, she looked down at me with an expression that was part incredulity and part bemusement. "You don't look all right, mister. You look like something a cat drug home in the morning."

I couldn't help but smile. I broke eye contact with the redhead and looked past her, to the two men standing some yards off amidst the grass. Each of them gazed in my direction as if studying a particularly venomous insect.

One of them was a plump, middle-aged guy wearing a gray tunic and a visible sheen of sweat. He had a round, flushed face like an under-ripe tomato. A bird's nest of thick brown hair surrounded the smooth dome of a bald pate. Dark, worried eyes and an upper lip dominated by a bristling push-broom mustache. A small gash stood out on one of his temples, caked with drying blood. It came to me that this must have been the man that I startled when I woke up. As he watched me, he wrung his big hands together in clear apprehension

The other was a tall, gangly fellow who glowered at me like a scarecrow. He crossed his arms over a pair of suspenders and waited, as if expecting something. Like his comrade, his face was obscured by dark facial hair – iron-streaked sideburns that careened down the side of his face and blended into an impressive mutton chop mustache. He looked as if he had just stepped out of some silvery-gray photograph taken in the 1800s. One of those presidents whose names I could never remember.

Both men had ears exactly like the girl's. Long, slung back, and sharply tapered.

The girl was still looking at me with that awkward mix of curiosity and pity. Suddenly, her expression vanished. Her eyes grew as wide as I had first seen them, back when she had been hiding from raiders beneath a wagon. Realization dawned in them. Her teeth appeared in a delighted smile.

"You have round ears!" she laughed. "You have round ears! I never thought – oh! Let me help you up – please!" The girl swept down and grasped my wrist. Her fingers were calloused and her grip was surprisingly strong.

"What?" I sputtered. "I, uh."

She hauled up with a force that belied her pixie frame. The sudden movement pulled the muscles in my shoulder and seemed to spill acid across my ribs. I winced. No time to waste an opportunity, though. Using her overeager gesture as leverage, I flexed my legs and stood up. Another nauseous moment of disorientation slammed though my head. My entire skull seemed to toll like an obscene bell.

Taking a step back, the girl giggled excitedly. "I always heard stories, but I never thought I'd see one – much less meet one." She grinned. It was a warm, guileless expression. "Or be saved by one!"

"Dear, is everything all right?" the stout man called out.

"Yes, father! Better than all right! Look! He has round ears! He must be an outerlander!"

Up this close, I couldn't help but see the smudges of dirt and grass on the girl's dress. Sweat slicked the skin of her neck and her hands trembled slightly as she talked. I noticed that her left shoulder was spackled with drying blood.

She's still in shock from the attack, I realized. Were it not for whatever it is that she's so worked up over, she might be on the edge of hysteria by now.

Were my ears really as strange to them as theirs were to me?

I swayed. My legs felt like they were shaped from wet plaster.

The plump man – this girl's father – squinted at me and ran a hand over his shining forehead. "Well," he said, "I'll be buggered! He does have round ears!" Growing a gap-toothed smile, he started walking across the meadow. "What do you say, stranger? Are you really an outerlander? I mean," his own excitement seemed to increase, "we hear stories while we're growing up, but – zounds!"

"Outerlander?" I managed. It was if I had stepped onto the stage of a surrealist farce. My brain kept trying to piece every scrap of information together, only to end up failing.

Having crossed the divide between us, the plump man sauntered up to me with a grin like a long-lost relative. "I think that we owe you our lives, mister," he said. "That was nasty business back there –"

"Yeah," I said absently.

"– and I don't think we simple ranch folk could have handled it. I'm glad to see that even a foreign boy like yourself is willing to lend a hand to a stranger in these dark times."

And at once, he shot out his left hand like a cannonball and grasped my right forearm just below the elbow. He smiled, obviously waiting.

Open-mouthed and feeling like a mongoloid, I made a snap decision. Without a further thought, I reached out my hand and took his elbow in the same manner. The material of his sleeve felt stiff, rough, and hot against my fingers. The girl's father nodded amiably and pumped my arm up and down in greeting. Apparently, I had weathered that bit of culture shock unscathed.

"Goddesses praised!" he crooned. His big eyes sparkled happily. "Who can I thank for saving me and mine?"

Dim coals seemed to flare somewhere inside my skull. Numbly, I muttered, "I, um . . . I mean. My name?"

"Oh-Kay?" the girl suggested. Her impish grin indicated that she full well knew that wasn't my name.

"No," I said. "No. I am – I mean, my name is, it, it's Linus."

The man before me never missed a beat. "Well, Linus – my name is Lon. Tash Lon." He waved a hand back to the girl. "This is my daughter, Malora. If you prefer," he winked conspiratorially, "you can use my wife's monikers – Malon and Talon!"

"Father!" The indignant tone and reddening cheeks of an embarrassed daughter.

Malon and Talon. Yes. Of course. Why not?

I laughed. I laughed out loud, harsh and staccato, and felt like I might pass out.

The fit passed quickly, and when I opened my eyes I saw Talon – Tash, Tash – looking at me oddly, his smile half-melted into a frown. "Did I say something funny, stranger?"

Out past Tash Lon's shoulder, the tall man stared at me with cold eyes.

I raised a hand to my cheek and gingerly probed the edge of the spear wound. Grinding pain shot away from the spot that I poked. "No. No. Sorry. I – I just," think, dammit, "I'm just light-headed. And those names remind me of, of someone I know."

Tash's eyebrows rose quizzically. "Oh?"

"I told you that you don't look all right," Malon – Malora – said triumphantly.

I felt Tash Lon's meaty hand land on my shoulder. "You should come back to our wagon. We have plenty of supplies. A bit o' the Red and some stitches and you ought to be right as a river." That honest, infectious smile curved his features. "It's the least we can do."

Tash turned and trotted off toward the distant wagon. Suddenly, he stopped. "Oh gods," he muttered. "Where are my manners?" He swung around and indicated the third man, still standing like a judgmental statue. "This here is Ingo, my right-hand man, so to speak! Ingo, meet Linus."

Ingo nodded curtly and said, "Pleased to meet you." He unfolded like a spider and followed Tash back toward the white hulk of the wagon.

Foreboding.

"Aren't you coming?" Malora smiled.

A genuinely debilitating kind of fog had descended over me. I saw but did not really see; I heard but did not really hear; I smelled but did not really smell. Everything felt muted and detached. My skin felt cold and my tongue slid dryly against the back of my teeth.

I answered, "Yes. Just let me gather my things." The words felt like they squeaked from a doll's mouth.

"Don't dally," Malora chided. "You really do look terrible." She spun about in order to hurry after her father.

I slipped an absent hand down into the grass and picked up the Master Sword. Its presence in my fist felt strangely reassuring. Looking after Malora, I blurted, "Wait!"

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder in puzzlement.

I said, "This may . . ." I blinked with a wave of dizziness, ". . . this may sound crazy, but where am I?"

It seemed to take a moment for her to fully process the question. When she did, a sly smile perked the corners of her mouth. "Linus, is it?"

I nodded.

"You don't know? Really? I mean, you must have come through the border at some point. You must have –"

I just shook my head.

Still holding her vixen's smile, Malora said, "You're standing in the Eldin Plains, of the great Kingdom of Hyrule. Does that narrow it down enough?"

I let that soak in – as much as it could in my state – and lumbered out further into the meadow to retrieve my duffle bag. I found it a dozen yards from where I had fallen to my knees, resting in a patch of scruffy yellow wildflowers.

Hyrule. Fucking Hyrule!

I wiped gooey blood off the blade and onto a pair of boxers from the bag. I regarded the gobs of congealing plasma on the underwear's fabric, and then tossed the ruined garment behind me in disgust. As if tucking in a child, I carefully slipped the sword into the duffle, zipped it shut, and hefted it over a shoulder.

Malora watched the entire operation in silence. When I was done, she waved and took off toward the wagon with a bounce in her stride.

I followed, tracing Malora's playfully bobbing steps. As I did, I couldn't help but wonder: Was I the dreamer, or the dreamed?