Zelda's favorite thing about birthdays had never been the royal celebrations — not the parades and pageants or the feasts and fireworks. Every year, she spent those festivities waiting eagerly for nightfall, when she would retire to her rooms alone with Impa and Impa would bring out a new story about the princesses Zelda who had come before and about the heroes of Hyrule.
These stories were secret teachings collected and refined by Impa's people, the Sheikah, and intended not even for the king and queen and princes, but for Princess Zelda alone. They took many forms. The first tale she could remember was a simple one about the hero Link defeating the wicked and bestial Ganon and recovering the Triforce, but with each passing year, the tale — the tales, rather — grew and changed. One of her fondest memories was of her eighth birthday, when Impa brought out not a new book but a box filled with grid-covered maps, tokens painted with bombs and bows and other tools, and little wooden heroes in four colors. Zelda had enjoyed the game for years; there was even a little wooden princess who helped the heroes in the final battle. As more birthdays passed and more stories came forth, she found out how much of the game's story was invention or pastiche, but it had taught her the weaknesses of Gohmas and Dodongos, and some of the most fanciful-seeming elements were the ones that turned out to be truthful. She had doubted from the start that the Four Sword could be real, but then Impa had taken her to see it — see but not touch, because the wind mage Vaati's defeat was one of the lies, and for all anyone knew he was still sealed there.
But now, the night she'd delighted in the new game was half her life ago. Princess Zelda was turning sixteen, and while she longed for the magic a new tale had held in her youth, she felt it growing cooler and more distant with each passing year. The story of the Hero of Time had enthralled her. The Hero of the Minish had only charmed her. The story of the hero who descended from the clouds to help the goddess-maiden should have amazed her when she heard it a year ago, but instead it was simply a thing that she knew.
But hope sprang eternal, even if it was seasoned with wistful regret, and she still looked forward all day to the moment when she sat at her own table in her own room and Impa brought out the new old tome. No games now, not for a princess who was a young lady and no longer a girl, and if Zelda was disappointed she would not say so, because she wanted to show graciousness and gratitude.
She still felt a bit like a girl, though, sitting at a teacher's foot, for Impa was tall and stout like an old tree and made a benignly imposing figure in the seat across from her. As Impa opened the thick, heavy book, Zelda saw the inlay on its cover and wondered at the image — a grotesque face with staring eyes and a rim of spikes — and she waited for the words to come down to her from above:
This is a story about the Hero of Time, who saw Hyrule conquered by the evil king Ganondorf and who returned through time itself to set the world right.
But even after the hero and the princess thwarted Ganondorf's plans and prevented the evil future, Link — for as you know, Princess, the hero's name was Link —
"It actually says 'as you know, Princess' in the book," Impa interjected.
That made Zelda feel pleasantly strange. Although she knew that the books had been written specifically for her, to hear one address her directly was vaguely weird and thrilling, like a shadow of her first encounter with a Gossip Stone, albeit a pale shadow. She half wanted to look at the page to see whether it actually said "it actually says…"
Impa smoothed over the wrinkle and continued the story: "Even after they had prevented the evil future, Link…"
…was always disturbed by the ruin he had seen, and by the thought that such ruin and suffering had befallen the kingdom because he himself had been taken in by Ganondorf's tricks. His courageous deeds and the amends he had made did not bring him the comfort they should have, and whenever he was shown any great mark of esteem or any great undertaking lay before him, his thoughts tormented him:
"No one would show me such smiles and respect, if they knew all I know."
"When I tried to do a great thing, it brought calamity. If I try to do great things again, some new calamity may come, and perhaps I could not put it right again."
"I am called a hero, but I am only a boy. I am weak and foolish, and I make mistakes."
Even the fairy Navi who had guided him so long in his quest was not there to guide him in his doubts. She had flown away, and he did not know why.
One day, Link went to your foremother Princess Zelda and told her that he was departing on a journey to find his lost friend and guide. When the princess asked where he intended to search, he knew of no other place than the Lost Woods. Hearing this, the princess prevailed upon him to take with him the kingdom's treasure, the Ocarina of Time, for she feared that if she did not place such a great obligation upon him, he would never return.
Zelda, listening, drew in her breath. None of the Sheikah's stories had spoken of anything like that before. A hero of Hyrule in grave danger not from monsters or dark magic but from his own self-doubt and sorrow? The idea was terrible and strange.
As the story continued, it only grew more terrible and more strange. In the Lost Woods, a masked Skull Kid robbed Link of the Ocarina of Time, and of his horse, and even of his human shape; he was transformed into a Deku Scrub. He fell into a pit and landed in another country where a grimacing moon was falling from the sky — was falling and did fall. At the end of three days it crashed to earth, and the land was destroyed in fire —
And yet Link woke again. He stood again before the mask peddler he had met three days before the cataclysm.
At that, Impa closed the book, promising another chapter the next evening and leaving Zelda with the mask peddler's words:
"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"
It was as if the story had been written in a fever or a dream. Indeed it kept Zelda tossing feverishly in her bed for much of the night, and when she did sleep, her dreams were weird and unsettling.
In the next evening's chapter, much of what Link had done in the first chapter had to be done again, but this time, at midnight of the last day he was able to confront the Skull Kid and recover the Ocarina of Time. It transformed itself into an instrument that a Deku Scrub could play, and when Link remembered the Song of Time, it took him back to the beginning of the three days again…
And Impa closed the book.
Every evening afterward, Zelda heard another story of those same three days before the moon fell. There was hope; Link quickly recovered his human form, and he heard of the guardians of that land and made ready to summon their aid, but the story meandered that way strangely and slowly. Link would spend chapter after chapter searching temples for the broken bodies of great fairies, only to run out of time and have it all to do again. He spent days merely amusing himself, knowing that he could live those three days as many times as he liked. Once, a chapter was cut short as Link tried to stop a thief and accidentally killed them, and he played the Song of Time at once in a shock of guilt. But at other times, he behaved even with cruelty, knowing that he could reverse time and erase the consequences. He let a girl and her cattle be carried off in the night by strange creatures simply to see what would happen. Again and again, he let the moment of doom come frighteningly near and watched what this or that person would do as they faced the end. And yet, again and again, he raced to help people in matters great or small, whether it lay in his way to do it or not, even knowing that at the end of three days his good deeds would all be lost to time, with no gratitude or even memory left behind in the people he worked so hard for.
All that would be left were the masks. In every part of this story were masks, some of them formed from wounded souls, each of them granting some strange power. Each time Link played the Song of Time, the masks he had collected followed him back to the beginning. Why they should remain when arrows and rupees and stray fairies did not, it was not written.
The story should have been frustrating — and it was frustrating. At times it should have been dull — but it was never dull. Perhaps Zelda was too old to be enthralled by a story as she been when she was a girl, but she was more than ever capable of being disturbed. The story stuck in her mind and irritated her like a thorn, but still she wanted to hear more. It took all the mental disciplines Impa had taught her — the arts of focus and equanimity — to see herself to sleep at night, to resist the desire to steal the book and read it straight through, to be fully present for her duties and lessons throughout each day and not let her mind fly away to the story or let the story infect her mind.
Despite all her efforts, a bit of it did infect her mind. When someone would ask her counsel and she would hesitate, she heard in herself echoes of the hero's doubts:
Surely they would not ask me, if they knew my mind as I know it.
Some calamity may come if my answer is a mistake.
I am called the princess blessed with Wisdom, but I am a young woman, and I make mistakes.
Even her father and mother noticed the pall it cast over her and were anxious about her.
"Sixteen is often a difficult year for a young lady," she overheard Impa telling the king one day. "Give the princess time. She will sort herself out."
Half the year had passed when Link, in the story, was finally ready to summon the guardians, and still he spent chapter after chapter helping the townspeople. It was as if he had resolved to leave nothing undone, although of course, in the final version of those three days, nearly everything would be left undone.
Zelda, listening, felt her heart pulled one way and another as the thickness of the pages remaining in the book dwindled more and more quickly. The end could come at any time — it felt so close, it stoked her eagerness for satisfaction, but still it was denied her. And yet at the same time, she clung to every word and half-wished that the story would never end. When finally, after several attempts throughout his quest, Link was able to help a betrothed couple celebrate their marriage before the hour of doom, Zelda held her breath waiting to hear whether the groom would arrive in time, and as the two of them resolved to face the end together, the princess wept, touched by their love and courage.
That night as Impa shut the book, she told the princess to prepare herself, for the next chapter would be the last.
Zelda did not sleep that night. In the morning, she pleaded illness and remained in her bed. When Impa came to care for her, the princess dismissed the other servants.
"Please, read me the last chapter," she said. "I can't begin to recover until I've heard it."
Impa understood very well. She nodded, bolted the doors of Zelda's rooms, and took out the book, turning to the thin sheaf of pages still remaining…
One last time, the three days passed and the moon descended. At midnight on the last day, Link confronted the Skull Kid again, and this time he summoned the four guardians, who caught the moon before it could destroy the land. But even as Zelda breathed in relief, the story took another strange turn. The Skull Kid's mask discarded its wearer and spoke; the true villain was not the Skull Kid, but the spirit of the mask — Majora.
Majora refused to be denied victory and possessed the moon itself. The four guardians trembled as it bore down on them with renewed fury. Rather than flee back in time, Link pursued Majora into the heart of the moon…
There, Link found himself in a brilliant green meadow beneath a clear blue sky. All that lay before him was a single great tree with spreading branches in full leaf, and as he drew nearer, he saw children frolicking in its shade. Each child wore as a mask the remains of one of the monsters Link had defeated to free the four guardians.
He approached the first child, who wore the remains of the monster in the swamp.
"You have many masks," the child said. "If you give me some of them, I will play with you." They led Link in a game, and when they asked for masks, Link handed over a few that he no longer needed.
When the child was satisfied, they asked Link a question:
"Your friends… What kind of people are they? I wonder… Do those people think of you as a friend?"
The question was terrible, for it echoed Link's own doubts. Often he had wondered if those who smiled at him and esteemed him would turn away, if only they knew of his mistake and the evil future it had brought. He had wondered if he was a friend whom they would forgive, or a hero only worthy because of his success.
But Link put his thoughts aside and pressed forward.
The second child and the third also led Link in games and asked him for some of his masks. They wanted more than the first child had wanted, and it was more difficult to choose which to hand over, but in the end each one was satisfied, and each one asked Link a question:
The second child asked, "What makes you happy? I wonder… What makes you happy… Does it make others happy, too?"
And the third child asked, "The right thing… What is it? I wonder… If you do the right thing, does it really make everyone happy?"
Again, the questions were terrible, for they echoed Link's own doubts. Once, he had felt excitement and pride in doing what he believed was right, and the result had been the evil future full of ruin and suffering.
But Link put his thoughts aside and pressed forward.
The fourth child also led Link in a game, and this child also demanded that Link give them masks, one after another. Link kept the ones he liked best until the last, the Bunny Hood and the Couple's Mask, but in the end, even these he handed over —
— Even Zelda felt a twinge at letting them go —
— until he had nothing but the masks of the healed souls, which he could not part with. But at last the child was satisfied, and they asked Link a question:
"Your true face… What kind of face is it? I wonder… The face under the mask… Is that your true face?"
And the question was terrible, but Link put his thoughts aside and pressed forward.
Now only one child remained in the meadow, standing at the foot of the great tree. This child wore Majora's Mask. When Link approached them at last, the child said to him, "Will you play with me? Yes, let's play heroes against villains. You don't have any masks left for this game, so I will give one to you." And they presented Link with a new mask.
The mask the child offered him was a face very much like his own — like the face he had worn in the evil future. It was the face of the Hero of Hyrule in the fullness of his power, more so than even Link had ever known: the hero clad in armor and in white, his face painted with patterns of red and blue as though he were not human at all, but a Fierce Deity.
As Link looked upon it, he knew that this mask held a most fearsome and dangerous power, a power that in a single thoughtless moment could destroy an entire kingdom.
For Link knew that this mask's power was his own.
The terrible questions he had pushed aside descended upon him in a single moment. "This is your true face," that mask told him: the face of a being who would bring destruction in one false move of a flawed, human hand.
"Are you ready?" the child asked him from behind Majora's Mask. "In this game, you are the villain. And in this game, the villain runs away."
Link's own doubt and guilt were a weapon Majora wielded against his spirit, and it struck him deeply where he was most vulnerable. He recoiled from the pain of it, from the reminder and the danger of the Fierce Deity's Mask.
Link cast the mask aside and ran.
Zelda caught her breath. She leaned forward in her bed to listen, with her knees drawn up and her fingers in her teeth.
The child shed his disguise. The meadow shed its disguise. Link was trapped in a dungeon arena, its walls shimmering with the colors of magic. Majora's Mask pursued him, and there was nowhere to escape.
But the fairy Tatl pursued him also, telling him to remember his previous battles, to remember how he had succeeded before.
With her encouragement, Link turned and fought, but as he struck at Majora's Mask, it grew and changed until it became a beast that had the shape of a human but no hands, only long, cruel whips where hands should have been. With these it lashed out at Link, and as they struck him, he felt their sting not only in his flesh but in his mind. They stung him with his own thoughts, the thoughts that tormented him when he was deepest in his doubts:
"No one would call you a hero or welcome you if they knew the truth about you," the blows told him.
"Power in your hands is sure to bring calamity."
"You are weak. You are foolish. You should disappear before your mistakes bring greater misfortune."
Then Link understood: Majora's power was the power of despair.
Zelda's eyes and mouth widened. Without another word from Impa, she saw the dark connecting thread running through the story. If Majora had only wished to destroy, it could have brought destruction in many ways, but it chose to bring down the moon — to create a looming, seemingly unstoppable catastrophe that would fill the land with despair. She remembered the first chapter, when the moon had crashed to earth but still Link had awakened again; even without the Ocarina of Time, the three days had begun again, and perhaps that was Majora's doing, so that the people would be trapped in those days of helpless fear and sorrow forever. Majora had possessed the Skull Kid by stoking his despair, feeding his hopeless loneliness and telling him that never again would anyone be his friend, tempting him to lash out at the world and the people who had rejected him.
Even the image of Majora's Mask, which Zelda had all along seen inlaid upon the book's cover — it was the image of a heart pierced and corrupted.
And now the Hero of Hyrule had fallen into the path of this enemy in his time of self-doubt, when he was most vulnerable.
Even as Link trembled under such cruel blows, the fairy Tatl guided him. She brought him to the place where the Fierce Deity's Mask had fallen when he cast it aside, and she pressed him to use its power.
Link saw that only in this way could he defeat Majora, but he feared the mask and its dangers — the destruction that he himself could wreak in the fullness of his power. It took all his strength to look into its carven face as the lashes of Majora's Wrath rained down upon him and to know that each of his doubts touched truth:
Surely there were people who would turn away from him if they saw that their hero was liable to err. It tempted him to turn away even from himself.
Great power in his hands would indeed bring danger.
It would bring danger because he was flawed and human, and could always make a mistake.
But as he looked upon the mask, the last guardian's words also returned to him:
"Forgive your friend."
He heard those words in his mind again and again, and he heard in them the echo of another word:
"Forgive…"
"Forgive…"
"Forgive… your…"
The other word was not written, but Zelda heard its echo as well:
Forgive your friend.
Forgive your self.
Link held the mask to his breast and wept. He shed tears of compassion for the boy he had been, who had done the best thing he knew in a strange whirl of events and had fought so hard to put right when went wrong.
The fairy Tatl scolded him. Tears were not enough, she said.
And he knew that she guided him truly. Compassion was not forgiveness if he still refused to take that power into himself again. It was not forgiveness if he chose Majora's despair over the Fierce Deity's danger.
If this moment had come when he first arrived in the land of Termina, or if he had hastened to summon the guardians without a thought for the people of that land, he would surely have been lost. But now, though all he had done was lost to time, the memories of it remained with him and strengthened him. He had seen what it meant to face destruction with fear, and what it meant to face it with love and courage. He had hurt others in many ways and helped them in many ways, and in so doing had come to understand them deeply and to understand himself more deeply than ever before. He knew that his true desire was to help the people, to bring upon this land the dawn of a new day, even if no one would thank him, even if he must face a risk more fearful to him than death itself.
After his long journey, Link could at last begin to trust in himself again. This trust was no illusion that the Fierce Deity's power would be anything less than terrible and dangerous in his hands, but in his heart, he found again a small, trembling flame of faith that he was worthy to bear and to face the danger.
His hands shook as he turned the mask and raised it to his face. It demanded of him the greatest courage, deeper than that which had seen him through Ganondorf's castle, but he called to it, and Courage answered him.
The mask touched him, embraced him. Its power flowing through his body filled him with agony even greater than the desires of the wounded souls, and he cried out in pain, but he embraced it.
And then, he stood before Majora as the Fierce Deity, the unbreakable soul descended from the sky, against whom neither Demise nor the wind mage Vaati nor the evil king Ganondorf could stand. Link stood as the Hero of Hyrule clad in armor and in white, gripping a sword with a swirling blade forged from his own spirit, a sword more powerful even than the Master Sword.
When Majora struck at him again, with one sweep of the spirit blade he brushed the whips of despair aside. The cruel words of their sting fell aside as foolish bleatings. With each swing of his sword, Link cast swirling beams of power that stunned his foe, and when he struck with the blade itself, Majora could not stand against it. With a final scream of defeat, the mask-beast dissolved into ash.
The moon itself dissolved into the colors of the rainbow, and Link descended back to the land. As he did so, he removed the Fierce Deity's mask and returned to the shape of an ordinary Hylian child. As he had found the Courage to don the mask and the Power to wield it, so too he found the Wisdom to reserve it only for great need, and now the great need had passed.
Indeed it had. The danger had passed. The story was all but over.
There was more to be told, and a good deal of it was written:
The Skull Kid faced the guardians trembling with shame, but found that even when they were far away, and even when they could not tolerate his behavior, they still thought of him as a friend, and it eased his heart. Link too could forgive the Skull Kid, for he somehow felt that the little imp was not so unlike himself.
The mask peddler recovered the shell of Majora's Mask and said that the evil power had gone out of it. Now he left Link with more hopeful words, saying that the masks Link still carried, the healed souls, were filled with happiness.
A new day dawned. The people were freed from the three days of doom to celebrate their festival and the young couple's wedding…
But Link did not stay for the festivities. He bid goodbye to the fairy Tatl who had guided him, mounted his horse, and rode away from the land of Termina. Whether he meant to return to Hyrule or to continue his search for Navi or to find some new adventure, it was not written.
Impa closed the book for the last time. When she put it away after this, it would be in a different place than before, with the stories from previous years in a chest that Zelda had the key to, and it would be for the princess herself to read the book again as she chose.
Zelda settled back into her pillows at last. As morning light had shone on the land of Termina at the end of the story, so it was also morning light shining over her bed. It took her some time to settle herself, but at last she fell asleep and slept soundly until the evening.
When Impa brought a supper of stew and calming tea, Zelda had taken the book from its new resting place and was idly turning over its pages. She did not mean to re-read it seriously, although a passage caught at her here and there. She only meant to savor the sensation of having it in her own hands at last.
(She found that the first page did not actually say "it actually says," but there was an unusually long space between the words just there, and she suspected it had been a signal to Impa to remark on it.)
Zelda put the book away and sat with Impa and ate. By morning she would be ready to go back to her duties, although it would take some time to feel entirely normal again — if normal would ever be what it had been before. For now, she had one more evening of reprieve to mull over all she had heard.
"How did your people come to know this story?" she asked.
"It is not written," Impa said.
Zelda had expected no more answer than that, but she had long since found that thinking aloud to Impa could be more profitable than thinking silently to herself. "Well," she reasoned, "we do have the Ocarina of Time, so Link must have returned to Hyrule eventually. Probably he told the story himself." —Or wrote it; Hyrule's heroes, while always clever and seldom shy, were notoriously clumsy and reluctant speakers.
"Was it a story that really happened, though, or was it a vision?" Zelda mused. "So many things in this story are so strange. Did Link really carry the Deku Princess in a bottle?"
"It is written that he did," Impa replied, but she said it with a rare, mysterious smile.
Zelda didn't fully doubt it; she knew that the most fanciful parts of these stories could turn out to be the truthful ones. But somehow, she also knew better than to ask where the Fierce Deity's Mask was kept, or to go to the Lost Woods and look for the pit that would lead to the land of Termina.
"If I needed to know, it would be written whether it was real or not, I suppose. Maybe it's better that I wonder."
"Perhaps."
The princess ate her stew in silence for some time, still pondering, and it came to her that this was not the first story she had heard about what became of the Hero of Time.
"I wonder," she said at last. "In the end… Did Link really win?"
"I believe that he did," Impa said — not it is written, but I believe.
And Zelda believed it as well, but if Link had won the battle against Majora — against despair — surely it should have brought him peace. But then, if the true battle was against despair, maybe it had never really ended. Maybe it never really ended for anyone.
These thoughts resisted speech, and Zelda instead returned to the root from which they'd sprung. "At my fencing lessons, the older students say that when a swordsperson reaches a certain level of skill, the Hero of Time appears to them as a shade. They say he can't rest in peace until someone defeats him, and they all pledge to do it, but no one ever has."
"Is that what they say these days?" Impa replied. "When I was learning the sword, the old masters also spoke of the Hero's Shade, but they said he couldn't rest until he learned every sword technique a person could possibly know. They told it as a sad tale and a caution to us, because no matter how far you progress, there will always be more to know. At least the new story gives us hope for him; even a swordsman who did know every possible technique would make a mistake now and again."
"That is true, isn't it?" Zelda said. Every human soul was imperfect and liable to err, even a legendary hero or a Wisdom princess. That the very inevitability of mistakes could be a source of hope was a new idea and one she wanted to reflect on further, but she was already learning to make her own peace with it.
After all, that was one of the lessons of this year's story, the most difficult story she had heard yet. That was the lesson of the Fierce Deity's Mask:
You are powerful, and you are imperfect. Therefore, you are dangerous. You must not turn away from this truth, not treat the danger lightly or flee from it. You must look into into its face and not abandon it in despair.
You must be willing to wear your fearsome power.
It was a lesson she would not have understood when she was a little girl, but now it was a lesson well worth every sleepless night, every prick and scratch from the sweetened thorns of disturbance and distraction.
Already, Zelda was eager to know what story her next birthday would bring.
The End
Author's Note:
This story is set before Twilight Princess, and as per that game, the truth about the Hero's Shade is less depressing than either of the stories this Zelda and Impa have heard. At this point he actually just wants keep in practice so he'll be ready to help the next hero.