Divine Intervention
If you ask him how old he was when he received his first rupee, Link would say fifteen. And he would be right, in a sense. It had been a week after he started working on the ranch proper, and following the traditional Ordon method of emolument, Hanch had presented him with a shiny green rupee after the last of his thirty-hour workweek had ended. Link had promptly bought a bottle of milk with it.
And if the question had been a question in one of those game shows that are all the rage in Castle Town these days, there would have been a giant buzz and a chorus of groans from the audience as Link walked dejectedly off the stage. For that rupee would be the first rupee he remembers receiving, but the question, of course, had not asked him what he remembers as the first but simply the first. And then his answer would be wrong. The green rupee he got from Hanch when he was fifteen was actually his second. Link got his first rupee when he was seven years old.
Here is how it began: seven-year old Link, short and plump, thinks he sees a monkey. He strays off the forest path for a brief second while his guardians, Rusl and Uli, are preoccupied for a single moment by the harsh cries of their newborn baby. When they look back again, Link is gone. They do not worry, for they are still near the village and far from the dangerous woods. They begin calling his name.
Link does not hear them as he tracks the monkey's footsteps with all the expertise in his seven-year old brain. The grass is taller than he is, but he hears a rustle here, a rustle there, sees some faint shapes in the dirt – excitement swells in his heart like a balloon. He would catch a monkey and show it to Ilia, he tells himself, and they'll teach it how to eat from his hand, how to perform a perfect sword thrust, how to sing a horribly out-of-tune version Saria's Song. His imagination has already gotten the better of him when the grass around him starts to thin out and he suddenly finds himself in an open space. Before him stands a creature, blue-skinned and scraggly, with golden eyes and monstrously large teeth. It holds a heavy mace in its hand.
"Hello," Link said. "Are you a monkey?"
The Bulbin's eyes narrow at this strange intruder, but understanding quickly dawns over its stupid features. It grins, revealing a long row of neat, pointed fangs. A pot-roast has just fallen into its lap. Slowly, not wanting to scare him away, it advances towards the boy (still obliviously smiling) with the mace in its hand. When it is a pace away it brings it down in a crushing blow.
Here is how it ended: there is a bright flash of light and the Bulbin suddenly finds itself on its back, mace torn out of its hand. It blinks slowly and wonders what had happened. Before it could get up again, a cold beam of steel has already pierced through its leather armor into the supple flesh beneath. It twitches for a moment and then is still.
Before its blackening corpse stands the boy Link. The sword in his hand has a purple hilt and an ivory blade and is much, much too big for him. It glows gently under the light of the sun. Then, like the pieces of a neatly arranged jigsaw puzzle floating upwards, the sword disintegrates by bits and pieces into the air, vanishing as suddenly as it had come. The boy's eyes glow like Poe's lanterns, but that too, starts to fade, and he is back to himself just in time to see the last puff of smoke from the Bublin's carcass vanish into the air. Link stares at the ground around him. Somewhere, far away, he hears voices calling. He could've sworn he had seen a monkey mere moments ago – and his attention is suddenly arrested by a bright green jewel in front of him.
They find him twenty minutes later, scouring the grass for more rupees. Rusl shakes his head and scolds him for wandering off while Uli heaves a great sigh of relief. Ashamed, Link presents the rupee to Rusl like a peace offering, but the old man merely shakes his head and tells him to keep it. Link sticks it in his pocket where it would later, when Uli washes his clothes, fall out and be forgotten forever.
In the days that follow, the residents of Ordon village begin to notice the strange triangle-shaped scar that has appeared in Link's hand. Ilia is the first to remark on its appearance to Bo over dinner, who tells Rusl, who tells Fad, who tells Sera, and once Sera knew, of course, the whole village immediately knew. Everyone wonders how any freak accident of nature could give a young boy such a perfect, well-defined, almost drawn-on scar as the one on his hand. They would not find out for another ten years.