Chapter 1
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The dilapidated wagon shuddered over the harsh terrain. Trying to keep myself from rolling around the floor with the other cargo, I had braced my back against a heavy box which had startlingly introduced itself during one of the wagon's severer jolts.
"Oh, Nayru, what is it you want of me?" I whispered so softly I could barely hear my own pleading tone. There came no answer, only an irate puttering in the cart's left wheel as it encountered a more than miniscule bump in the dirt road. "Oh, Nayru…" I murmured more urgently. "I have come seeking your favor. Guide me!" Still, no heavenly wisdom was bequeathed.
It was night, and I was not where I belonged. I was a fugitive on a mission to understand a dream which appeared to me every night. While in deep slumber, a beautiful face cloaked in a soft luminescence would appear before me. This spirit would speak to me, demanding that I seek for a lost hero. "Find the one who walked alone…" She'd repeat in her melodious voice.
After this dream had first come to me, I had chosen to ignore it, but every night since, the same godly face, same pleading tone would fill my mind, until I could no longer ignore its prompting. So tonight, I had taken upon myself a journey to find this "one who walked alone" mentioned by the goddess in my dream. After sneaking out of my castle, which was not an easy act, I had hitched a horse and wagon and set off in the direction of the forest. I knew where I was heading, but I was beginning to regret that I'd gone alone.
I closed my eyes. It wasn't fear for my own welfare that caused me to reconsider my actions, but the knowledge of the Castletown dwellers' reaction to my disappearance. Riots could break out—murder and angst. Who knew what the people would consider or perform, but I was sure it wouldn't be kindly or prudent. My innermost wish was that the letter I had left for my nurse Impa would settle the matter and that in the morning, I would return to my home, without having to face any misfortunate consciences.
As the wagon wove its distorted way in a direction I couldn't predict, a vision or vivid dream warped between the darkness of my eyelids. I could see Impa, way back at the castle I felt so distant from. She was entering my room. The cold moonbeams inflowing by the window I had forgotten, in my haste, to draw the curtains across were illuminating the otherwise emptiness of my bed, immediately alerting her of my absence. I suspected she'd straightaway flag the guards and alert the castle, but to my bewilderment she didn't even appear surprised at my untimely disappearance. The light of the window cast an eerie light across Impa's face, twinkling in her eyes, enabling me to read her demeanor—sad and aggrieved. She gazed reflectively at the empty pillow on which my head had once compressed, and I wondered if in her mind she still saw me there, safe and sound.
Breathing in a slow, sorrowful breath, Impa lifted her hands and performed a gesture I had seen only the sages do in times of great sadness and woe. She touched her forehead once with the tips of the index and middle fingers of each hand and then placed her arms crossed over her heart. It was sign to the goddesses to protect their own, like a prayer for divine safety. As Impa did this movement of her fingers, she closed her eyes and her two lips murmured a silent word, "Zelda." My heart plunged into my stomach at the recognition of my own name.
Her standing there with her arms crossed over her heart, eyes closed, glossy tears peeping up from behind her long lashes—this image burned in my mind, and I knew deep in my heart that something was wrong—something worse than our separation pained her. Impa's eyes opened, gazing at me through the vision, grasping at my bleeding heart.
Abruptly, a tremor in the ground brought me to rapid awareness, and I had just enough time to realize the wagon was tipping before the back of my head smacked the curtains now strewn across the firm ground. Bottles and jars scrambled diagonally along the wagon floor, whamming into the same side I had painfully encountered. My sword slid with them, coming up beside me.
My heart beating wildly, I lay there listening, still recovering from the shock of the tipping wagon and the fear of the vision of Impa. There was a strange sense in the air, like a dissipating echo of a deafening explosion, but I couldn't be sure if I had dreamed the noise or simply, in my detached senses, exaggerated its intensity. Whatever the cause for the noise, if there had been one unusual, I wasn't about to find out. I crawled back to an upright position and, grabbing my sword, found my way past the wagon's lopsided entrance.
My first step onto solid ground was a shaky one. My head still careened from the unexpected blow I had taken. My vision was wobbly and blurred, and in fear lest someone or something might spot me out in the openness of what I thought was Hyrule Field, I fled toward the forest without stopping a moment to glance behind me.
The trees were bending in unnatural ways, seemingly of their own accord, wriggling like slimy serpents before my eyes, and I figured my head must have been jolted worse than I had first assumed. Stopping to close my eyes and rest my body, I leaned against a tree. The inside of my throbbing head rolled around as if it were not attached to anything. Gripping my temples, I released a pained moan. The intensity of my own lament startled me. I hadn't noticed the muteness of the forest until the volume of my own quiet voice articulated rather loudly by comparison.
I found that blinking helped to cure the distortion of my vision, and so I blinked continuously until the world around began to take shape and form. I could vaguely decipher a distant, flickering light in the gloom of the evening and alteration of my senses. Each time I blinked, it became more distinct. Abruptly, my eyes focused, and I realized it was candle, flickering through a windowpane. I glanced around. Although the darkness prohibited my ability of establishing any distinct details about my location, the layout of the cabins was familiar. To my disbelief, I had somehow managed to get myself exactly where I was heading—the Ordon Village.
Across the small bridge, winding my way between cabins, I happened upon my sought-after destination. Because I was never out past ten-o-clock, perhaps it wasn't so strange that I had never before noticed how diverse and mysterious familiar things appear when covered in night's shroud. I recognized Link's house, the only treehouse in the village and perhaps the whole of Hyrule, but something felt oddly unfamiliar. So many times in my younger days I had climbed the ladder leading into his house without hesitation, free and smiling and happy, but now I realized how distant those memories felt, how far I'd let myself stray from my friend. In the old days, soon after the Ordon Village was built, I had always considered it a second home to me. Yet, I hadn't visited it in years, and a home cannot be classified as a home by anyone until that person feels comfortable being there. I didn't fit that description. Rather, I felt like a stranger who had wandered in unawares.
The imposing silhouette of Link's house glowered down at me as though it were a monster awakened in its sleep by an unwanted visitor. Could that be how Link would address me, as if I were a bothersome disturbance?
No, I could not do it. I couldn't climb those steps into the past and reacquaint myself with a person I had acted as if didn't exist for four years. But perhaps the barrier that posed the greatest threat of keeping he and I apart was not so much that we had grown distant during the passing of years but that there was a certain self-conviction sizzling in my heart, a feeling akin to shame, as my self-conscious reflected on our last parting. Link had risked everything he had to save my life, my kingdom, and the world, but when he completed this incredible task, I awarded him with nothing. No banquet, no celebration, not even recognition for all he had done. The townsfolk never knew what brave soul had conquered the enemy and restored life to those morphed into oblivious ghosts during the evil Zant's attempt to merge light and twilight. Link was forced to go back to his simple way of living, unrecognized as the hero he was.
Why would he accept and forgive me when I had left him to wallow in obscurity all this time? We hadn't even had correspondence. I had treated him as though he had dropped off the edge of the world, and there I was at his doorstep, seeking his help. No, I couldn't just use him as a broom sweeping away the mess I had made. Not this time. If I couldn't go to him seeking friendship and nothing else, I wouldn't go to him at all.
I had made up my mind, but what were the options? If not to his house, where would I go? The forest behind the treehouse, even dark and spooky, seemed more amicable than the old memories appearing around me. One memory was more prominent in my recollection than the others. It was of my first meeting with Link when I was six and he was seven, back in the old castle before it had been destroyed. He had somehow managed to find his way to me by sneaking between the guards, which were far less agile and perceptive than the ones I hired myself for the castle later in life.
At first, I hadn't known who he was or why one such as he, in foreign clothes, would seek me out, but when I saw his fairy, the prophecy foretold to me by the wise old Sages became dreadfully clear. One from the forest would one day save Hyrule from a terrible evil—this was the prophecy, and it corresponded with Link's forest attire and the awful dreams I had been having every night. Believing Link to be the hero of legend, I told him what I had been dreaming, how every night in my sleep I'd see a mass of dark storm clouds overlay all of Hyrule, but in their midst a magnificent bright beam of light, spouting from the forest, would penetrated through the darkness, illuminating the ground and causing the clouds to disperse. The light would then transform into a figure followed by a fairy—one I supposed was Link. Also, I explained to Link who exactly I thought the dark clouds represented. "That man, in there," I had said, pointing through the window I had been spying through before Link disturbed me. The man bowing to my father, one known as Ganondorf, the leader of the Gerudos of the Western Desert, had evil eyes; and I was sure that, although he swore allegiance to my father, he was not at all sincere. There was no other person the dark clouds in my dream could have symbolized. I sent my new acquaintance, the little Korirki boy in a green tunic assisted by a fairy, on a mission that seemed impossible, but he had to stop this evil man before it was too late.
I still remember pleading with my father, but he had most verbally disregarded my concerns about Ganondorf, refusing to believe my dream was in any way connected to the olden prophecy. Still, I was sure Ganondorf wasn't there to serve my father, but to steal the royal family's most prized possession. My family's treasure was a gift, called the Triforce, given to us by the golden goddesses before they left our world for the heavens. The Triforce has one very unique power—the power to grant the wish of the one who holds it in his hand. If one with a righteous heart were to make the right wish, the world would be rewarded with a golden age of prosperity, but if one with an evil mind had his wish granted, the world would be consumed by a wicked and bloodthirsty evil. Knowing this, the Sages erected the Temple of Time around the Triforce to protect it from evil ones. Link, though but a boy, had to make sure that Ganondorf didn't steal the Triforce and with it, the life of all that was good.
The gravity of the mission I had given Link didn't occur to me until a few days later, when Impa and I were fleeing the castle on horseback, my father's dead body lying limply in the courtyard. Ganondorf sat on the back of his midnight-black horse, clutching his bloody sword, and chasing us away from our home. As we passed the drawbridge, I had the instant to glance back at Link who stood petrified near the moat, his face painted with horror at the sight of our pursuer. In that moment, time stood still. He and I, though fearful and uncertain what we, as mindless children could accomplish, were willing to try anything-do anything for each other and our little world suddenly in danger. I needed him, and he knew it. That trivial instant was the most important moment of my life, but also the most painful. In it, he and I shared a silent agreement and matured more than most people do in a lifetime. Forgetting our childish world of fun and light, he and I grasped the weight of life and death and understood that to keep the latter at bay, we'd have to fight, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice. With all the strength left in my waning body, I flung my little blue ocarina in his direction, hoping-knowing he would understand. Then I fainted, remembering only the warmth of Impa's body against my back and the dissipating image of Link's bright, boyish eyes transforming into those of a reality-stricken adult finally leaving his toy-box for a sword and shield. From that point on, he was never the same.
I quickly shook my head, freeing myself from the horrible flashback. I needed to rid myself of these toilsome memories. Quickly, I fled into the forest behind Link's house.
My legs, which ran not only because I commanded them to, but because they seemed to fear what lurked behind, stumbled deeper into the undergrowth. Coming to a tree, I bowed myself before it and slid into a pile of leaves. It was so dark now, I couldn't see my own hand inches from my face. I hugged my knees into my chest as tears twinkled on the ends of my eyelashes. I didn't have any idea why I was crying, but in no way could I convince myself to stop. My fingers tingled with cold, and my body was so frozen, no longer did I feel pain, but a sore numbness in my limbs.
Here I will die—I thought to myself—Here in the solitude of the forest they will find my body. What we lose because of our thoughtlessness! I closed my eyes for what I supposed was the last time.
Almost the instant my eyelids touched, a rumble deep in the earth seethed over the surface, and my eyes flicked wide open.