The Rights to the Zelda Franchise belong to Nintendo, not me.

The Hero's Sickness

By Dragonmastriss

"I remember the day that I first learned something was terribly wrong. Link was a young man then, a stable boy at the ranch, and a delivery boy for anyone in Hyrule. In those days, he stayed at the Hyrule Market Inn, an offshoot of the Stock Pot Inn. He paid for his stay in chores and work, always helping to prepare breakfast and carrying bags for the customers. But that morning, Link didn't get up for breakfast, in fact; he hadn't gotten up at all.

I pounded my small fist on the door of the Inn, a bit impatient. I was expecting Link to deliver a package to me that morning, but he never showed.

'Oh, he-hello…' Anju, the owner of the Inn, answered the door. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave it locked…'

'No, no, that's okay. I was looking for Link?'

'Oh, I see… well he… ah, he hasn't come downstairs yet…'

'Really? That's odd…'

'Could you…If you don't mind…check on him? He came in rather late last night…' Anju explained nervously. She always seemed nervous and unsure of herself around me, perhaps because I was always cloaked when I came by. I didn't want to be spotted by people in the Marketplace who would rat me out. The last thing I needed was to be caught sneaking around while I still had work to do.

'Yes, of course.' She let me through the door and proceeded to straighten up, leaving me be. As I walked toward the stairwell I could hear Kafei in the kitchen cooking and assigning the various workers their duties for the day.

I waved politely, but wasn't noticed. Embarrassed, I pulled my hand back under the large sleeve of my cloak before I was seen. Not that my hand was actually identifiable in any way. I sighed softly to myself, if my father hadn't become such a controlling workaholic of person I wouldn't have to be worrying about being seen this early in the morning.

I climbed to the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway. It was completely empty, and completely silent.

The third door on the left belonged to Link. It was the smallest room in the Inn, but it was bigger than the place in the forest he called home.

'Link? Are you awake?' I asked, knocking lightly on the door. I paused before entering, feeling the familiar stab of nerves in my stomach that I got whenever I approached him. Everyone was nervous to disturb Link. He was a great person, friendly and quiet, but it was no secret that he had experienced more than his fair share of battles in his life. People were afraid of him because of the rumors it spread. People ignorantly gossiped that he was part of the King's personal guard. It didn't help that no one knew anything about him, in fact, to most people, that was what made him dangerous.

I almost had to laugh, my nerves were caused by an entirely different emotion.

'Link?' I knocked again. 'I'm coming in.'

When I opened the door fully and stepped inside the room, several things struck me. The table that had stood in the center of the room had been knocked over. His equipment was scattered all over the room and his hat was thrown carelessly on the floor. It looked like a cyclone had swept through. But none of that shocked me more than the sight of Link, still asleep in his bed, with the sun shining brightly on his face.

I maneuvered myself around the chaos and knelt beside his bed to try and wake him up. I pulled back my hood so that I wouldn't startle him, and prodded him lightly on the shoulder. He didn't respond.

For a moment, I felt guilty for trying to wake him up. While he slept, he looked so peaceful, and there was just the slightest trace of a smile on his lips. I felt the heat rise in my face as I stared at him and was glad he couldn't see me for the moment.

Taking a deep breath, I prodded him again, this time harder, and I bent over and whispered into his pointed ear, 'Wake up sleepyhead.'

Slowly, he turned his face toward mine and opened his eyes. He mumbled something that sounded roughly like my name than closed his eyes again.

'How late were you out last night?'

From the sound of his mumbles, I deciphered that he had no idea.

My eyes wandered over to the small rectangular table at the foot of his bed on which lay several packages. One of them was mine. 'Don't you have a delivery today?'

That got him up.

I gave an inward sigh of relief when he turned over and sat up in bed. He rubbed his crystal blue eyes sleepily and yawned. Running one of his hands through his messy straw brown hair, he pulled the blankets off his feet.

'Sorry…' he mumbled softly as he climbed out of bed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him wince. For a moment I thought he had stepped on one of the many items strewn across the floor, but then I saw the blood stained bandage on his foot.

'What happened?!' I asked, failing to stay calm.

'I was really tired when I got in,' he explained with an amused little smirk. 'I must have knocked it over when I came in.'

'To your foot,' I emphasized, knowing already that he wasn't going to give me a straight answer.

'Hm…' he sat back down on the bed and rubbed his ankle as if pondering what had caused his injury, but he never said anything more.

Outside the window, the bells of the Temple were suddenly clanging, telling me that it was time to head back home.

'Take care,' I told him softly. He looked up at me, and flashed one of his beautiful smiles.

'You be careful too,' he ordered.

I smiled back, and headed for the door.

On the way home, I reviewed Link's behavior in my head. It worried me. It worried me that he wouldn't tell me about his injury. It worried me that he was so tired. It worried me that he'd forgotten what he was supposed to do this morning.

In the ten years that I'd known Link, he'd NEVER slept in before. Not unless he was sick. The fact that he had been out late worried me too. What had he been doing? He'd always been responsible enough to make the deliveries early if he knew he wasn't going to be able to do them in the morning. He'd never missed them without explanation.

Over the next few days, I never got a chance to go back and really talk to him. I often saw him in passing but never for more than a few seconds before he was off again. I figured that was why he was looking so drained, the constant activity and lack of sleep was finally starting to add up, but that was before I saw the Doctor.

It was a casual exchange at first, which soon proved deadly.

I was in the market, listening to some gossip about the local happenings. The most recent piece of news that I could gather was that there was a large snake in the area that was threatening people. I thought nothing of it until the Doctor came in on the conversation.

'Ah. A snake eh? I had a patient come to me recently, about a snake bite,' he nodded to himself. 'That young Link fellow. Got him right on the heel it did. Good day,' and off he went. The villagers all burst into a frenzy of conversation fueled by this new bit of information, but I didn't join them. I tightened the grip I had on my hood and scurried after the doctor as fast as I could through the crowd.

'Doc! Wait!' For a little old guy, he sure was fast. 'Doc! I have to ask you something!'

He stopped and turned around waiting for me to catch up.

'Yes m'dear, what is it? I hope you know you're not fooling me with that silly disguise.'

I turned bright red but ignored his comment.

'Was that snake poisonous?!'

He froze in his tracks and sighed, shaking his head. 'Yes little one. It is. If Link doesn't get me a sample of that venom soon…'

'Will he die?' I asked breathlessly.

He nodded softly. 'He'll fall asleep, and never wake up again. Quite literally I'm afraid.'

I spun on my heel and ran off. Blood pounded heavily in my ears drowning out all sound as I ran. Link. He knew. He'd known the whole time that he was dying and he didn't tell me. That wound I saw was the snake bite that would kill him unless he found the snake again.

I shook the dark thoughts away, I wasn't ready to sort through the consequences.

Outside the walls of Castle Town, I found a horse waiting for its master. I apologized to it profusely as I mounted it and rode off toward Lon Lon Ranch.

'INGO!' I shouted, jumping down and running into the barn. He was brushing off one of the horses and didn't look my way when he grumbled a 'What'd'ya want?'

'Did Link come by?!'

'Yeah, 'bout an hour ago…' he grumbled. 'Stupid girl, Talon's gonna fire me if I don't pick up her slack. …" he continued to grumble on about something, but I wasn't listening. I grabbed my 'stolen horse', and took off toward the forest.

'That's where it was last seen!' I remembered one of the villagers muttering.

'Are you sure? I thought it was here in town…'

'Oh no! No, no. The dogs would scare it away. It was off near the forest last time anyone saw it.'

So to the forest was where I went, and it was where I was sure I'd find Link.

I decided to head to the only part of the forest I hadn't ventured into, the only part where an adult was more unwelcome than a child, the Lost Woods.

When I was a kid, perhaps I would have been a welcome stranger in these dark woods, but when I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark. Stepping into the shade of the trees now felt just as ominous. The air was thick and the trees close, stifling me. In the distance, I thought I could hear voices, echoing faintly, taunting me, and telling me to go back. I ran across the wooden bridge nervously, throwing back my hood so I could see everything. I cursed myself for not bringing a weapon with me, but I hadn't been planning to running through these hostile woods.

As I stumbled into the Kokiri Village I was relieved to see that the child village hadn't changed at all from the pictures Link had taken of it.

'Thank the Goddesses,' I chimed.

Beside the entrance a young blonde Kokiri boy sat staring at me, his eyes wide with fright. 'Um… hi?' deciding that he was too afraid to answer me, I skipped right to the point. 'Have you seen Link?' I asked as nice and polite as I could. He responded by pointing toward the path through the Lost Woods on the hill above one of the quaint little houses. 'Thank you.' I started to walk in that direction, anxious to find Link, when the boy spoke to me.

'Y-you're not going to hurt him, are you?' he asked, softly at first. 'b-because he's the strongest, and he'll beat you. You and the snake thing, all on his own!' he ended with a shout.

That's when I realized what I was doing. I was going, unarmed, into a deadly snake invested forest after a man who was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.

'I, I was going to help him…' I stammered.

'You were?! That's great! I'll go tell Mido!'

'N-no wait,' but the boy had already run off.

It wasn't long before all of the young residents of the Kokiri forest were encircling me, pulling and pushing me further into the village, and farther away from my goal. They all stared at me with a strange sense of wonder and fear, and it struck me that Link was the only adult that they trusted here. Mido soon came. He was the self-proclaimed leader of the village and explained to me, as he lead the entire group past the village and onto another path outside it, that Link had gotten bitten by the snake when he was trying to drive it away from the village. They had been trying to think of a way to help him, but they were all too frightened. They continued to question me until we were standing at the edge of a large circular meadow, in the center of which was a giant, withered tree, and a much smaller sapling was growing at the base of its roots.

'Hello,' a deep, cheerful, and life filled voice called me away from my anxious thoughts. It was the voice of the spirit of the forest – the Great Deku Tree. 'If you are planning on helping Link, you're going to need to defend yourself.'

'She knows him?!' Mido asked suspiciously.

'Of course! Now Mido, give her your slingshot, take your Deku Staff, and show her how to find Link.'

'What, why me?!'

'Because you're the only one who knows his way through the forest!' Chimed the tree.

'And you're the leader…' someone else whispered.

'And bravest…' a third, female voice echoed.

Mido's little ears turned red as he blushed. He grumbled to himself, but did as he was told, and we were soon trudging through the darkness of the Lost Woods. He led me deep into the woods, but after some time, we came across a small pool of water and he left me.

I knew where to go, but as I stared down the path toward the Forest Temple, I felt anxious. So many things could go wrong now, and all I had was a slingshot to defend myself with. 'He went that way,' Mido had pointed. 'Only Link and Saria go that way, it's too dangerous for anyone else. The snake went that way too,' and he ran off like the snake was already on his heels.

I squinted, trying to see into the trees, but I couldn't see any farther. I hesitated, and gripped the slingshot tightly. Taking a deep breath, I ran forward, determined to outrun anything I came across.

'LINK!?' I shouted as I ran between towering trees and vine covered remnants of buildings. 'Can you hear me!?' I reached a break in the trees where a long corridor and two flights of stairs led to the main entrance of the temple. That would be the end of my search.

Gulping down my stomach and my nerves, I vaulted up the stairs, relieved to find Link at the top.

He was lying peacefully in the grass, a smile on his face as he sang softly to himself in his sweet, mellow voice. I fell to his side exhausted, but he didn't react to my presence.

'Link?' I breathed. He looked bad. His skin was pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He responded to me slowly, as if it took all his energy to do so.

'Hello,' he whispered with an uncalled for smile.

'What are you doing?! It's too dangerous for you to be here!'

'Mm… I'm waiting.'

'For what, death?'

'The snakes.'

That's when I heard it. The sickening rattle of a snake that was much too large to be normal. I froze in place, scared out of my mind, Link sat up slowly, and his eyes focused behind me as the sound got louder.

'Link,' I whispered. 'Don't move.' It was just a snake after all, and if I could hit it with my slingshot, it might be stunned just long enough to be captured.

I spun around as fast as I could and fired. I gasped in shock at the sea of red before me. There wasn't just one giant snake, there were hundreds of little poisonous fiends swarming toward us.

On of the red serpents jumped at me and I raised my hand to cover my face. It latched onto my arm and I fell to the ground in pain, the fangs digging past my clothes and into my skin--"

"NO! Dad's home!" In the living room of a little house, a young girl cried in disappointment. She sat up from her pillowed seat on the floor to see her father outside the window.

The woman in the rocking chair closed her book softly.

"You know what that means, time for bed," she ushered her three children upstairs and amidst all their arguing and frantic running about she heard her husband come in.

He walked into the room and laid his green cap on the table smiling.

"You're reading that story to them again?!" He asked, eyeing the book on her chair.

"They love it, and I do too," she pouted at him.

He took her hand and touched the fanged scar on her arm.

"Isn't it a bit… dark for them?"

"No, the boys love the fight with the snake, and you know Lilon, she can't get enough of those stories, besides, it has a happy ending."

He smiled at her softly, and tucked a loose strand of red hair behind her pointed ear.

"That it does my love, that it does."

Author's Notes: This story was entered in a contest (word limit 3000) on Zelda Legends and Adventures website. I didn't win the contest, but I plan on re-writing this story in an extended format some time in the future. I hope you enjoyed it!