Premonition
I spent so much time in my grandmother's room as a child I could probably recite the names of half the books on her shelves. She had half a library's worth in there, after being bedridden with illness for so long. The room was later cleaned out and repurposed, and I've avoided it ever since. Still, it's hard to forget after…
"But… but what's going to happen to you?"
Her voice was feeble, but it was strong enough for goodbyes. Mine was not.
"I don't know," she said. "No one knows."
"I don't want you to…"
Die.
She rested her soft hands on my little ones, balled up tightly in her blankets. "I don't want to go either. I'll miss you most of all. I've been crying every night lately because I know I won't be able to see you again."
"But you never cry," I said.
"Yes, I do. I cried when your mother died. I cry whenever I think about her."
My mother, the late queen, her daughter-in-law. I was too young to remember.
"Sometimes I cry because I know other people are sad. And I cry for my old friends, even many years later." She pried my hands open and held them gently. "It's good to cry, as much as you want, as long as you want. Everyone feels sadness."
I wondered sometimes why she encouraged me to cry. Eventually I realized it was so that I wouldn't feel weak because I was still crying years later.
The door clicked softly as my father entered. He squeezed my shoulders in reassurance.
"What will I do?" I asked.
My grandmother smiled. "Why don't you go get the lyre I gave you? I would like to hear how much better you've gotten."
"You'll still be here when I get back?"
"Of course."
I rushed through the castle halls with an urgency I don't think I've ever felt since. My father must have said his goodbyes while I fetched the lyre, for there was no time for them afterward.
When I returned he helped me up onto the bed. I did not ask what song my grandmother wanted because I already knew. The notes came out wrong – I shook too much to play it properly.
"Remember what I taught you," she said.
I breathed in deeply, trying to clear my thoughts. She had trained me to shut out my emotions, to think only about physical sensations – the feeling of my nightgown, of the blankets, the weight of my body, my eyelids falling over my burning eyes, tears sliding down my cheeks, my heartbeat, the rhythm of my breathing, the cool air rushing in and out, the tension in my arms, the wood and the gold of the ancient lyre, the resistance of the strings, and finally the unique sound of each individual note of the centuries-old lullaby.
When I finished playing my father was halfway through a prayer.
I hadn't even noticed when my grandmother died.
She left me an envelope I was not allowed to open until I turned seventeen. It contained three items. The first was a partial genealogy, a single branch of my family tree, tracing my ancestry back to one specific woman ten generations ago. The second was a message from that woman, very faded, in old language I struggled to read. Lastly there was a copy of that message, translated by my great-great-grandmother into a more recognizable form of Hylian. The author called herself "Anselma Ylixandrin Zelda, Sage of Time, Sheikah Warrior-Queen of Restored Hyrule and Her Dependent Territories."
It was quite strange to read a centuries-old legend as a first-person account. She chronicled the fall of Old Hyrule to the usurper Ganondorf, his defeat seven years later by the mythical figure known as the Hero of Time, the nature of the Triforce, and how the Triforce of Wisdom had been passed down through my bloodline, generation after generation, to me.
I don't know why I'm thinking about this now. It's just…
She said that Ganondorf would return.