The Farewell of a Queen
Disclaimer: I don't own anything of Legend of Zelda. I do own Prince Nykin and Mesoel, but they're just for story's sake. Thanks for reading and for the kind reviews on my earlier works!
The Zora prince and the Hylian ranch hand stood in the Zora sanctuary, hidden at the back of the Kakariko graveyard. The afternoon light flashed back from the water onto the walls, filling the place with brightness. Prince Ralis, with damp fingers, delicately took the sketch that Link offered him. As the prince studied it, Midna hid in the crevices of the late Zora king's grave. The sun cast countless little shadows into the rough stone, and Midna hopped from shadow to shadow, preferring to be a mere listener in this conversation.
"This drawing – it's the beast from the mountains, is it not?" Ralis held out the paper to Link.
Link nodded. Ralis peered at the drawing again.
"It appears to be holding a reekfish –" he paused. "I am one of the few Zoras who are able to catch them." He tilted his head to the right and his right hand went to his earlobe, where Link saw an ornate, spiral shaped piece of shell hanging. "I use this lure, my coral earring, and then I can catch them easily," the Prince continued. With a slight motion, he had pinched the earring out of his lobe and had it in his hand.
"You want to catch a reekfish, don't you?" With an impulsive motion, he offered the earring to Link. "Here, take it."
Link picked up the coral gingerly. "Thank you – this is a greater help than you realize."
"My –" Ralis began, but changed his mind, "you can find the reekfish easily enough in the basin of the waterfall by my village, near what we call the Mother and Child rocks."
"Again, thank you." Link sat down on the edge of the water, and took out his fishing rod.
"My mother gave me that earring," Ralis said, almost offhandedly. Link put down his work and looked at the prince. "She came to me last night in a dream, and showed me what you looked like. That's how I knew I could trust you." The young Zora turned his head and looked at the ripples on the shifting face of the water. "Looking at you, I get a sense of what my mother wanted from me – to be brave, and not mourn for her, but to be a strong leader to my people."
Now Midna took an interest. She heard something in the prince's voice – a restraint, a quality of speaking what ought to be said. Midna recognized that quality. She supposed it was common to all royalty, in every world. She slid to the side of the gravestone facing the prince, trying to get a look at his face.
He was smiling, to be certain, but his smile seemed to be hitched up at the corners, like curtains before a puppet show. There was a moment where neither he nor Link spoke, filled with a tense silence.
Then Link said, "Could you show me how to attach this earring to the fishing line? I don't quite get it –"
"Oh, it's easy," in a moment Ralis was sitting beside Link and taking the fishing line away from him, "All you need to remember is the square knot…"
Midna kept watching the boy, a recollection gradually occurring to her – he had not gotten the chance to say goodbye to his mother. He had gone to Castle Town to seek help, and she was executed before he saw her again. After that – one dream visit? How much can you say in a dream?
Midna recalled the last time she and Link had been at this gravesite, and the tender last words spoken by Rutelia's ghost. Midna remembered this with a simultaneous mixture of sympathy and – jealousy.
There had been no goodbye words for Midna.
Her mother had not faced brutal execution, but had been caught by a vicious disease, one that took away the victim's strength and speech quite rapidly.
(An Abridged History of the Twili, Part One: the sickness of Midna's mother was one of the first in a series of strange and disturbing incidents affecting the Twilian royal family, culminating, eventually, in the madness of Zant.)
The healers were baffled by this disease, but their failure was not through lack of effort in trying to save the patient, who was, after all, the sister to the Twilian Prince, Nykin.
Nykin was a ruler perpetually slow to judgment, but esteemed as wise in all decisions. In some cases, perhaps, he relied on the judgment of his elder sister Mesoel too much, such as in the all-important question of whom he should appoint his successor. Certain members of court would rather he took their advice over hers, but even Mesoel's worst enemy had to admit her unmatched, almost intuitively accurate judgment of character.
So her illness, while Nykin was still in the prime of his health, and had not yet chosen a successor, caused considerable panic. When the most powerful healers had given up, but declared her condition incommunicable, Mesoel's chamber was closed off and guarded. Nykin and the other highest nobility clamored by her bedside, trying to receive the name of her suggestion for successor to the Twili sovereign.
(An Abridged History of the Twili, Part Two: The Twili's sovereigns are expressly forbidden from ever taking the title of "King" or "Queen." This is to remind them of their arrogance in defying the Queens of Heaven, Din, Nayru, and Farore.)
Now, Mesoel had lost her voice in her illness. Absolute quiet was needed to hear the hoarse whispers which were all she could manage – and she was fading fast. In this moment requiring silence, a god-defying scream sounded from somewhere close outside Mesoel's chamber. Mesoel's only child, having plunged herself into the crowd surrounding the door, and having met with indifference for her pleas to be let in, was now being restrained by the guards, and retaliating by screaming and squalling like one possessed.
"Let me in! You curs! You brutes! Let me in!" Her cries could be heard all over the Palace of Twilight, and echoes reached even the courtyard outside.
The crowd around her covered their ears collectively and glared at her.
"Let me through – let me through, please, she'll listen to me –" a petite, soft-spoken figure wormed his way through the crowd. As he finally approached Midna, she turned and saw him.
She scowled. "You," she snarled. "Sealing away my magic when I wasn't looking!"
"I have done no wrong," the bearded scholar replied firmly. "You brought it upon yourself, acting as you –"
"Gimme my magic back this instant!" Midna shrieked.
His voice rose and drowned hers out. "Acting as you have been, like an immature, spoiled baby, it is my responsibility as your teacher to protect yourself and those around you!"
Midna, unable to say anything to that, glowered at the floor. The scholar took this opportunity to whisper to the guards, "You may let her go – I'm her tutor – she'll listen to me."
The guards let the child go, but eyed her warily. The tutor took a good look at her. Her hair, usually tidily restrained, was hanging in limp orange tendrils about her face. The color flared in her cheeks, and her entire frame shook as she breathed in a wearied panting. He also noticed that her eyes were shining with tears, and sympathized.
"Midna," he crouched down so that he was on her eye level, "believe me, I am sorry that events have fallen in this way, and I know your hurt, but you must understand… there are more important things than you and how you feel. You cannot have things your own way. You have to act your age."
Midna looked to the floor. She took in a shuddering breah. "But you're not listening to me…"
"But Midna, you're the one who is not listening to me, you're the one acting like—"
"You're selfish!" The last word turned into a scream – the tutor covered his ears when, just as suddenly as it had started, the scream stopped again.
The door to Mesoel's chamber had been thrown opened. The whole crowd gathered closer to see who stood in the doorway – it was no healer, however, but Zant, a few years older than Midna. Though he normally wore a charming smile, showing off his even white teeth, now he was looking at Midna with nothing short of disgust. She tried to run past him into the room, but he grabbed her wrist and snarled, "You selfish brat, do you realize that we can hear your infernal screams in there?"
"But I –"
"Your mother is dying, do you realize that? Do you comprehend any of this in your greedy little mind? Do you understand that you are filling her last moments, when far better Twili than you need her guidance, with your howling?"
"Let me go!" Midna tried now to pull her hand away, but Zant twisted it in his grip. "You are," he continued, "a heartless, wild little demon, and –"
"Zant! Stop!" Midna's tutor now stepped forward and tried to prize Midna away from Zant. "You have said enough –"
"Stay out of this, you –" Zant began, but stopped, because someone else now stood in the doorway. Swathed in a light yellow cloak, a healer looked at them wordlessly, and then extended his hand to Midna. "Mesoel wishes to see the child," he said to Zant.
Midna didn't need telling twice: she raced into the room, and therefore didn't see either Zant's expression of incredulity, or the increased muttering of the surrounding crowd.
All the nobles gathered around the bed looked aghast at the small figure rushing into the chamber, calling, "Mama! Mama!"
Mesoel turned her head to look at Midna, and the child stopped in her tracks. A stark light flickered on the scene from an overhead torch. The Twilian nobles around her bed looked like dark and forbidding creatures, except for Nykin, in his glowing cloak, who looked at Midna as she came in. The light also enhanced the wasted features of Midna's mother, making her look like one come back from the dead – and there is nothing in the world so terrifying to a Twili.
(An Abridged History of the Twili, Part Two: the Twili, upon death, dissolve into equal parts light and dark particles, which scatter into their world with the faintest wind, ready to be reshaped into new life. For this reason, the Twili fear ghosts and corpses above all else – for what horrible unrest would keep a spirit from the peace and restfulness of simple dissolution?)
Mesoel's body was propped up into a semi-reclined position, her skeletal hands hanging limp by her side. She made no sound, but merely looked at Midna (reproachfully? Or sadly? Mesoel's face was never easy to read) through filmy eyes. Midna stood where she was, about four feet from the edge of the bed, staring at her mother, filled with shame and shyness. Finally she lowered her head and her shoulders began to shake.
"Perhaps we should send her back out –" Prince Nykin began, but Mesoel stopped him with a gesture. She raised her hand with an effort, and beckoned with her fingers for Midna to come to her. Midna rushed right to the edge of her mother's bedside – the nobles all shifted and scooted to make a little room for her. Mesoel lifted her hand and placed it on Midna's orange head. Midna looked up, and found that she had stopped crying.
Midna did not know how long she lay there on her mother's arm. Now and again, in response to a question, Mesoel would nod, or whisper a faint thread of words, then she would sink again into silence. Only the hand that stroked Midna's hair continued to move, strumming the orange threads like harp strings in a wordless lullaby.
Midna had listened to the harmony between her mother's slow heartbeat and difficult breathing and had clung to her, until the moment when her mother convulsed suddenly.
She looked into her mother's once-beautiful face as Prince Nykin said, hoarsely, "This is the end… Mesoel, Mesoel, my successor. What should I seek in him? Whom should I name? What should he be?"
Mesoel clung to her only daughter with one arm and opened her mouth, but only a small, searing cough escaped her.
"Mama…" Midna hugged her mother tightly, trying to loan her a bit of strength without hurting her.
"Get away from her, you –" Zant moved as if to grab Midna's hair, but Mesoel turned and fixed a look upon him which set Zant quailing. Mesoel then leaned back into the pillows and, looking at Nykin, whispered, "Beware…"
"What? Beware what? Mesoel!"
For that word was to be Mesoel's last. With a rattling sigh, she dissolved – first the blankets over her legs collapsed, then her thin frame, and then the arm that held Midna. Midna looked up to see a look of perfect peace cross her mother's face before that, too, dissolved.
"Mama!" Midna sprang up onto the bed. "Mama, don't leave me!"
The flecks of light and darkness hovered in the air, the last remnants of Mesoel's body. They surrounded Midna and clustered around her, gently brushing away her tears. She could smile a little bit, and the fragments seemed to dance a bit in happiness at the sight.
She did not see what Prince Nykin and Zant and their advisors saw: that the remainder of particles that had been Mesoel had formed themselves into a cloak, a double of the one that Prince Nykin wore now. The cloak hovered in the air, held only together by Mesoel's last wish, and they settled themselves on Midna's shoulders.
"Impossible…" Zant breathed.
"Mesoel," Nykin whispered, "is this truly your last wish?"
The cloak only became more solid, before it dispersed gently until there was nothing left.
"I… I understand," Prince Nykin said.
Midna turned around, but she was wiping her tears and saying nothing.
"What is there to understand?" Zant turned to Prince Nykin with fury in his eyes. "Obviously Mesoel's last moments were delirious – she just showed maternal weakness right there, and you should forget everything that…"
"My sister's mind was working as keenly as ever in her last moment," Prince Nykin cut him off, "and she was one who truly would never let her emotions of a person get in the way of justice – or mercy." Nykin's eyes were stern. "My sister's will is understood. Come, Midna." He took her hand. "She is at peace now."
Midna's tutor was waiting at the door, along with the Healers and the rest of the Twili.
"Don't cry, Midna. We have to… we have to think of your education now. Yes… your education and your future."
Midna had not thought of that day in years. The memory took her away from the Zora grave in Kakariko Village for a short time. When she came back to herself, the sunbeams had slanted to a late afternoon glow. Prince Ralis had shown Link how to attach the coral earring to the fishing rod, and Link was thanking Ralis one more time, and promising to carry a message along to the Zoras in the basin. Midna did not follow Link as he dived into the water, but rather hung behind, watching the Prince on the bank. Ralis' pleasant smile was starting to collapse on his face. Midna watched him for a moment. She wanted to speak to him, but – what on earth would she say to him, anyway?
'I'd probably give him a heart attack,' she thought idly, 'A disembodied voice coming out of nowhere. That wouldn't be very good. I should just scram.' But she couldn't just him like that, staring sadly at his reflection –
Suddenly Midna's face brightened – or would have, if anyone could see her. As Ralis turned back to the gravestone, Midna surreptitiously swooped to his right ear and cupped her hands by it. Into her hands, she imitated as best she could Rutelia's voice, and the overwhelming sense of peace as the queen had faded into the morning twilight: "Tell my son that his mother did not want him to grieve –"
Ralis looked around, startled. Midna, unperturbed, went on:
"— that she wanted him to be a brave hero and lead his people."
Ralis turned to the heavens, to the serenity of the endless sky.
"Tell him his mother loves him without end. Tell him –"
Midna paused for a moment, remembering her mother, and his mother, and the patterns of life and death in all worlds. Then, before she could see Prince Ralis' reaction, or he could see her, she sped away from the grotto, and into the graveyard of Kakariko, where Link was looking for her.