The Princess in the Tower

Zelda had been a child of prophecy from the moment she drew breath. As her first scream pierced the air after her birth, the candles had flared to life and licked threateningly at the ceiling. The world had seemed to shiver. Then the old Sheikah woman had come in and studied the babe from crown to heels, weathered eyes roving over newborn flesh.

"It has been long since a child of this bloodline has born such a destiny, yes, such a destiny," she had muttered. "Already I can feel another grasping for her from beyond the veil, his black hands reaching out for her."

The queen half delirious from blood loss had screamed in anger at the words. "He shall not have her! None shall!" Her frail arms had reached out for her screaming daughter, clutching her to her heaving chest. She knew the doom and destiny of her blood. She knew what awaited her first born as she looked into those violet eyes and the life was stolen from her. The next morning the Sheikah woman followed the queen into the grave under strange circumstances.

So the princess grew up without a mother but under the stern and watchful eyes of her nursemaid Impa. The woman had been assigned to her charge by the king in order to oversee her education and to protect her if need be.

Daphnes had grown into a different man after the death of his wife. His eyes had become darkened and bruised and his skin grew sallow since he had started wandering the halls at night. The king had once been a hearty man who loved nothing more than to hunt and hawk and feast until the sun broke over the horizon. He became less than a shadow of himself as his daughter grew.

Impa noticed these changes and tried to shield Zelda from them as much she could, but the girl was ever curious about her remaining parent. She would attempt to appease him when he was in a foul mood, showing off her newly learned skills on the harp or flute. These little performances never seemed to help though. They only seemed to cause him to sink deeper into madness and melancholy.

The princess was eight when her gifts began to blossom. Impa often was summoned to her room as she struggled in fevered dreams, lashing out at anyone who dared to draw close to her. The Sheikah had tried to quell them with bitter tasting teas or ointments but nothing helped. The dreams became stronger, and Zelda spoke of things she could never have known about. Worse yet, the young girl brought these up to her father, thinking that somehow this talent might please him. The child had taken it into her own head that she was a disappointment to the king and that this unique trait of hers might finally garner his attention.

The king listened on his grand throne, leaning forward with an elbow on his knee and the guttering light of torches reflecting in his eyes. When the girl was done, he had leaned back uneasily and dismissed her but not before telling her that he wished to know more of these visions she was having. The princess could not have been more pleased, but Impa felt worry growing in her heart. Attention from the king always meant ill even if it was towards his daughter.

Then one day the princess said something wrong though she always only spoke the truth. Perhaps that had been the problem. Daphnes surged to his feet and struck her across the face with the back of his hand. Zelda reeled back and hit the floor, her head rebounding with a sharp crack. The nursemaid was at her side in an instant, folding her small body into her arms and crushing the girl to her chest.

The grey-haired woman didn't think before her hand reached for the dagger tucked into her boot and held it ready to throw at her target, the king. It wasn't until the blade was poised between her fingers that she had realized her actions. Daphnes's face grew dark and furious as thunderclouds. She had not meant to draw a weapon on the monarch, but her training had drilled into her the automatic response to protect her charge and take out any threats.

Calmly, she slipped the blade back into her boot and stood with the princess still cradled in her arms. The beginning of a bruise was already forming on her cheek. "Forgive me, Your Highness, I only acted on instinct. I would never-"

She was cutoff midsentence by the king. "I do not care what you intended. You threatened my person and that is an attempted assassination that you simply had not the wits to follow through on." His hand sliced through the air as he called the guards forth that had been waiting in shock at the back of the room.

Zelda began to weep openly, wailing. Impa shifted restlessly from foot to foot unsure of whether to hold the girl tighter to her or put her down. She could not go against the king's orders. The guards formed a circle around her as their wary eyes looked her over for any sign of a fight.

The Sheikah sighed and let her grasp on the princess loosen until Zelda's feet touched the cold marble floor. She could take the girl and spirit her away and have them be hunted for the rest of their days until one or both of them was dead. It was no life for a young girl even one as curious and bright as her charge.

Impa knelt down in front of the child and cupped her face between rough, weathered hands. "Zelda, be good."

"Where are you going?" the girl whispered, so softly that only the Sheikah's keen ears caught it.

"Away," she answered, licking her lips uncertainly. "Away. You must watch out for yourself. Be careful and remember that I love you."

The princess only nodded with tears streaming down her cheeks and clutched tightly to the warrior before the grey-haired woman straightened to her full height.

The warrior stared down the ring of guards around her with naked steel shining in their hands, eager to fulfill their king's commands. They had never liked her presence in their castle. It was queer and unnatural that such a woman would care for the heir to the throne. It made them uneasy, and men will kill what they fear if they cannot run from it.

She palmed three deku nuts and threw with all the strength of her arm. A blinding flash of light and smoke arose. When the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the girl's nursemaid. It was like she had never been there at all.

That instance haunted the minds of the servants and courtiers. They spoke of that moment in whispers behind their white-gloved hands and delicate fans. It was something to keep their minds entertained as the court waned and grew dull with boredom. Once, King Daphnes court had been bright and full of youthful beauty. He had reinvigorated the castle with new blood and ideas, but that had all stopped with the death of the queen. There were no more parties or games or tourneys. There was only a disturbing stillness that seemed to creep like the vines over the crumbling ruins of Hyrule Castle. Soon it too passed out of their collective memory but not Zelda's.

She learned a lesson that day. She saw in a terrifying matter of minutes what her father thought of her visions and prophecies. They did not please him, only intrigued him, and the king's interest was a dangerous beast to stir at the best of times. So Zelda kept them to herself. She dared not even write them down in a journal. She secreted them to a corner of her mind like the treasures of a bird hidden away in its nest.

After that, there were a string of more traditional nannies and governesses and tutors who taught her the necessary skills. She learned languages and poetry and music. She learned how to sew and dance and sing and how to conduct herself amongst her courtiers and run a kingdom.

Daphnes became more gaunt and pale with each passing year. When a man's eye landed upon his flowering daughter, who grew to look more like her dead mother with each passing day, he would fly into a rage, calling for floggings and imprisonment. She was his blood and his child.

One night when Zelda's blood came upon her, she dreamed something different. The clouds were there as they always were, black as ink and boiling. The ray of light split them open, and she could still make out that distant and familiar figure, but it came no closer. The clouds though dripped dark tendrils that touched the earth and scorched it. Fire and smoke swirled up from the contact and took the shape of a man, and he came striding forward as if he owned this plane of her dreams. He was tall, so tall that his head seemed to brush the bruised and thunder-struck sky. A single gem on his brow caught the golden and winked with it. His smile was nothing more than a curling of thin lips and a slice of white teeth. A great hand extended towards, beckoning and questioning. Without hesitation, she took it.

Those dreams became more frequent and vivid. The hand became flesh and covered with calluses and scars against a dark palm. It was warm when she let it envelope her own. Its grip was certain and without pause or fear.

Words came after that. Vague and guttural of an old and lost language. In time, she came to understand their intent if not their exact meaning. They were asking things of her. They were offering things to her. She simply did not know what exactly yet, but she wanted to find out.

As the dreams grew starker and more vivid, Daphnes chose to find a solution to those men's predatory gazes by cloistering his beautiful daughter away in an old crumbling wing of the castle. That was his excuse anyway, but there were other murmurings. Rumors of a prophecy bubbled beneath the surface of the shadowed court. They whispered of a fate predicted by an old Sheikah woman years ago at the young girl's birth, a darkness that would take her and steal her away.

The princess cared not for these slithering words. The nobles would talk as they pleased with little regard for facts or accuracy. They would merely select the most choice piece and infuse it with their own fanciful ideas. She knew that they did not see her as a real person, not anymore. She was a puzzle, an enigma to be pondered over and discussed in secrecy. She had become just another thing to entertain them and keep their minds from growing dim in the constant stagnation that seemed to grip the castle too tightly.

All Zelda knew was that suddenly she was no longer allowed to roam the hallways and secret corridors that had been her whole world. She was now confined to the ruined Western Wing and her chambers were moved to a tall, thin spire that pierced the sky like a lance. It was so tall that it seemed to be constantly enshrouded in a heavy fog that made the world below hazy and only half-seen. A constant chill lingered in the air and a damp weighed down on everything. The curtains hung in tatters from the windows and the furniture creaked and reeked of mildew. Cobwebs covered the sconces and spiders and rats were her new companions except for the occasional kitchen cat that managed to somehow find its way there, gone astray on a hunt for a meal.

It was in that small, hidden space that she grew from a girl into a young woman. In that grey world, her hair grew long and golden down her back and her body found the symmetry and grace that her father had feared it would.

The dreams came, and the words the towering figure spoke boomed louder in her ears until her blood hummed with them. It was much to her delight and fortune that she discovered an ancient and forgotten library full of crumbling, moldy books. Their pages were of thin parchment and smooth vellum that sometimes disintegrated as her fingers brushed them. They were bound in leather or sometimes in the form of scrolls. All of these she read and read until her eyes grew tired and heavy. Many nights she did not even make it to her bed but fell asleep slumped against a table. Slowly and painfully with those innumerable hours of studying, she began to piece together the words the man was saying. Sometimes she would have to back and retranslate for his dialect was older than she had suspected, and it both frightened and thrilled her.

"Wait for me, sweet girl," he said.

"I will grow you wings," he promised.

"Have you ever seen the endless oceans or the sun cresting the dunes of the Desert?" he asked.

So it was within that isolated place that was meant to be a prison for her safekeeping that Zelda grew her own universe. It was amongst shadows and dust and spider silk that she cultivated her private world and nurtured that strange friendship. She was not exactly sure how well the word "friendship" fit what she had with this stranger, but it was the only thing she could come up. Acquaintance was far too detached for her liking, and he was certainly not a family member or lover though she sometimes lingered overly long on that particular idea.

Night after night he came to her in dreams and sometimes during the day in the gaps between her thoughts. He was most real during those fleeting moments between waking and dreaming. His eyes snapped with fire at her then, and she could feel the heat of his breath and smell the scents of leather and foreign spices about him.

Zelda could not sleep one night for there was restlessness in her that she could not dispel. Those in-between moments were buzzing in her mind like a hive of aggravated hornets. They pricked and stung her until she was forced to stand up and pace the length of her bedchamber. Her hands curled and uncurled into fists. She went to the desk and picked up a quill to write and promptly put it back down. The princess flipped futilely through the pages of her favorite history with no greater success before setting it back on the shelf.

Wait for me, come to me, the words drifted unbidden into her mind and her feet turned her towards the door. Looking out of her single, narrow window, she saw nothing but a never ending field of grey mist and muted stars. The moon was the only thing visible to her.

I have been in this tower for years, she realized. I have lived my whole life in this castle, and I have never seen the sun rise or set on Hyrule Field. I have never seen the things I have read about. A ball of lead formed in her stomach and her mouth went dry. The door in front of her seemed to grow and warp into a ghastly shape, threatening to fly off its hinges and reveal a black, gaping maw that would swallow her whole if she came too close. There was safety and certainty in those thick, stone walls. There were hours and hours of reading and playing and writing ingrained into them. There were years and years of loneliness and curiosity staining them as well.

The first step was hesitant, the second stumbling, and the third was a head long rush towards that terrifying door that was both guardian and gatekeeper right now. Her hand gripped the handle, almost expecting it to be white-hot, and flung it open. On the other side was nothing but the same stairway she had seen hundreds of times. A wind stirred and moaned within the tower's throat. Her heart pounded as she flew up it, fingers skipping along the individual blocks of granite as if bidding farewell to friends.

Up and up she climbed, her breath clawing raggedly from her throat and her lungs wheezing like bellows. Her legs ached, but she mounted each step as quickly as she could manage. Something drove her on doggedly. Any fatigue she felt was ignored and forgotten. An unfulfilled promise hung around her and weaved itself into the air that she drew into her lungs. It grew heavier with each passing moment, almost words fluttered in the dome of skull, a soundless voice that tolled like bells.

Is this the prophecy they all spoke of? She mused dreamily. Had their airy words actually held some weighty truth she had disregarded for all of these years? A fey smile curled her lips. The irony of the situation pleased her.

That lone strand of reason became lost in a tide of wild thoughts. Images of nameless deserts that spread and rolled out before her in vast golden carpets and impossibly wide seas that seemed to fall off the edge of the world swirled together in a heady mixture. All of those things that she had only read about and never seen formed a strong, salty taste on her tongue and filled her nose with the scent of roses and the spray of the sea. She had wanted these things, all of these things, but the possibility of them had been denied to her so long she had ceased to dream of their reality. They were figments and fairy tales. Her reality had been dust motes dancing in sunlight and the fraying threads of musty tapestries. Now, she thought she might actually be able to attain those dream phantoms. Yet, she knew that there was still something greater than all of those other things still awaiting her once she reached the top of the tower.

So she continued to climb until it seemed as if that was all she had ever been doing. She was like some legendary figure trapped in the underworld whose punishment was to ceaselessly push on and up with no end in sight.

Then at last, she came to the top. A door stood before her, warped and gray with age and rot. The handle was wrapped in a thick shroud of spider webs that she knocked aside without a care for the white satin of her gloves. She gripped it and a spark flew from the bronze into her palm and up her arm straight into her heart. The organ stopped pumping for a moment and left her breathless. Then it started again, and she pushed the door with a loud shriek.

The stale air made her cough and when she finally managed to stop; she found the room flooded with moonlight. Thick silver beams cut through the fog that lay thick as a wool blanket across the floor. It shifted and stirred around her ankles as she walked slowly through the forgotten chamber. It had been a parlor once she imagined. Paintings and portraits hung crookedly on the wall and once-fine tapestries sat in rumpled heaps on the floor. The furniture was even in worse disrepair than what was in her rooms, leaning lopsided on only two or three legs.

Moths danced in the shadows searching for the fires that had not been lit in a century or more. Zelda took a deep breath and tasted the damp air as it coiled down her throat and into her belly, making her cold from the inside out.

Not even of all these sad, lost things could subdue the rush in her veins though. She gave them only a quick glance before she was drawn to the window at the other end. That was where the moonlight was coming from, pouring through the tall glass doors that had been thrown carelessly open. The ragged curtains blew in the breeze.

She wrung her hands and crossed the distance, her steps ringing hollowly in her ears. There was no one here. There was nothing here. She panicked and stopped where she stood. Had it all been a delusion? Had her father's madness come to her?

The princess turned to leave, hot tears threatening to spill over. She had been wrong. Her dreams had been nothing but a child's fantasies. Her blood was tainted and now its stain had risen to the surface at last.

Her ears pricked as they caught a sound she could not identify. Spine stiffening with fear and anticipation, she turned back around slowly. A hand was grasping the balustrade of the balcony beyond the glass doors.

Pressing a hand to her chest, she moved forward warily. An arm joined the hand, gripping something long and slender, as the top of a head crested over the banister. Zelda thought she saw dark red hair. A few more steps and the stranger had effortlessly pulled himself onto the balcony. He stood and watched her, his dark armor glinting in the light, before taking a cautious step forward as if afraid she might run if he approached her too quickly.

Her heart was beating so fast in her chest she thought it would burst. Despite that, her fear had evaporated and been replaced with only a sense of rapture.

By the time he had made his way to her, she was standing just at the edge of the doorway. A shredded curtain was all that remained between them at he stared down at her with eyes like burning coals. She drank in the sight of him, all of him. He had been in many of her dreams for years, but never like this. He had always been half-shadowed and formed of smoke. She had felt him and smelled him and heard him, but never truly seen him until now. She had only ever been able to catch glimpses and flashes from his eyes or teeth or the jewel on his brow.

His face was harsh and coarse with eyes far too sharp and cunning and a beak for a nose. He was not handsome in the way that princes or knights were, but that did not matter. It never had. Now that they were face to face, Zelda found she did not know what do with herself. She did not remember how to speak. And he was just staring at her and piercing straight into her heart like it was made of clay and he could mold it however he liked. There were other things in that long look as well, deep things that had passed between them in her visions. I am here, he seemed to be silently saying, I have come and you have waited. I am yours, and you are mine.

The pressure seemed to be so much that Zelda feared that if she did not do something the world would break and unravel around her, and she would wake up in her room alone to find that the whole thing had been a hallucination. Language remained lost to her, there were no words left for her tongue to use, but she supposed there was no more need for them. The princess lifted her hands and reached out to him, to touch him, to draw him down and into her.

He raised his free hand, gripped the moth eaten curtain, and tore it away.

Her fingers grazed his cheekbones and her palms his chin. She had to stand on tiptoe and crane her neck to stare up at him until he bent his knees to accommodate her.

"You," she finally sighed, the only word coming to her.

"Ganondorf," he whispered, "My name is Ganondorf."

She gave a breathy laugh and smoothed her thumbs over his cheeks. "Yes, I think somehow I knew that." She licked her lips. "And I am-"

"Zelda," he answered, and he turned his face to kiss the inside of her palm. "You told me that once long ago though you may not remember."

She nodded. "I think I do, but that seems like centuries ago." Her hands moved from his face to his neck and down to his armor-plated shoulders. He felt solid and steady like the pillars of the castle. His skin was warmer than it had been in her visions. It almost burned.

"You may call yourself whatever you like now," he said as he straightened to his full height and tightened his grip on his trident. He offered her his hand and nodded his head towards the veranda.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she slipped her palm across his and entwined his fingers with hers.

"Wherever we like," he told her.

"And what will we do?"

"Anything. Perhaps we will come back someday and reclaim your kingdom." He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze as her heart danced in her chest.

She walked to the railing and looked down at her mist covered kingdom. She had never truly seen it from beyond the castle walls. "I would like that. I think it is time for a new beginning for everyone."

"Good, but if you are going to have a new beginning you will need a new name."

The woman glanced up at him and then back down at the blanketed world below her. She had never thought of what she would like to be called. She had always just been Princess Zelda. The only people who had ever even called her Zelda were her father and her nursemaid Impa, and they had both been lost to her years ago in different ways. She thought long and hard until a name came to her. She'd heard it in a book about Sheikah lore ages ago. She had liked the sound of it then, and the heroine it was attached to. "I think I would like to be called . . . Tetra."

"Tetra," he rumbled, rolling the word around on his tongue. He studied her once again. "Yes, that suits you well. Where would you like to go then, Tetra?"

She smiled up at him and swung their hands between like they were children. This time the answer came easily to her. "The ocean."

A knowing look came to his face. "I thought you might say that. Perhaps we shall be pirates together."

"I think I would like that."

After that, they spoke no more. Tetra allowed herself to be scooped into his arms as they fled into the night and did not stop until she could smell the sale of the ocean in the air.

This was inspired by a fanart I saw of them on Tumblr.

Here is the address if you would like to view it:

member_ ?mode=medium&illust_id=32853626

I'm kind of torn about how this turned out. Was this too much? I'm always afraid I over do it on the purple prose. Feedback and constructive criticism are appreciated.