The forest was cold and bleak the night that Impa and her mistress robbed the small grave.
Her muscles, worn from her many years of servitude, strangely ached at the steady rhythm of her actions, the fresh dirt continuously shifting, moving, piling, shifting, crumbling, over and over. The shovel proceeded to pierce the earth once more, its contents continuing to scatter and smudge the beautiful features of her mistress, who was knelt by the grave's side, constantly looking over her shoulder with her stricken, terrified face.
"Hurry, you must hurry!" she begged, scratching at the soil. "Dig faster!"
"Understood," Impa grunted, and she did just that.
When the shovel had finally hit the small coffin, her muscles felt to be on fire. Impa's mistress quickly jumped into the hole, brushing away the remnants of the earth away from the wooden surface. Impa was quick to use her spare jimmy to pry open its hood, where a small, grey bundle rested inside a bed of velvet and dead flowers. Her mistress carefully picked up the bundle, restraining a choked sob and she stroked it. The bundle was so small, so fragile, a delicate existence.
"Quickly, my lady," Impa ushered, helping her mistress out of the hole. She had begun to sob, never removing her eyes from the bundle in her arms. It was a pathetic thing, and Impa's heart shattered at the sight.
This is what we're trying to fix, she thought to herself. Goddesses, please tell me that this is the right thing to do.
Impa quickly grabbed the ropes of her horse nearby, helping her mistress onto its saddle. When she had also gotten onto the horse, she snapped the reins with all her might, and they darted over the gates of the small graveyard and into the forest beyond.
Her mistress saw the faint glow of lanterns behind them. "Impa, please hurry!"
"Understood, my lady." She snapped the reins again, urging the horse to go faster.
The rode off into the night.
As the full moon graced the dark forest in an ethereal light every evening, Zelda von Heilig prayed to the Goddesses for a friend. She begged that in the confines of her room where she always remained, longfully looking up at the moonlit sky, that someone, even an angel or a messenger, would descend down from the heavens, riding on the rays of the moonlight, onto her windowsill to the rest of the world and provide her actual company, for once, besides her sweet, kind, strong Impa. With all her heart, she prayed that she could escape this birdcage, and let her wings flap free in the night sky.
She never really expected her wish to come true, though. At least, until she saw the boy on the windowsill one night.
He was illuminated by the full moon, just as she had hoped for. His golden hair was glinting before the cold white of it, and he had long, slender ears just as she had. His eyes were the most mysterious part, as they almost glowed in the dark in a serene, kind blue that seemed to reflect the very stars that were nestled outside in the night sky.
She was without words, and the sudden feeling sunk in, and Zelda wondered to herself if she even knew what loneliness was before she met this boy.
"Who are you?" she finally asked, her voice light as air.
"Link," he simply stated. He returned her question.
"Zelda," she responded. "Are you an angel?"
"No." He returned her question once more.
She laughed, possibly for the first time in a long while. "I'm just a girl. Just as you are a boy, right?"
"Right." He pouted his rosy lips. "You sure you aren't and angel, though? You look just like one, just how my mutti described it." He gestured to the pool of cream and lavender lace that she was surrounded in.
"I promise I'm not." Her hands reached for her dress, stroking away the folds.
"If you're not, then what are you doing in here?" His eyes, blue and warming, gazed around her simple confines before returning to her.
"Impa says that I have to stay here."
"Why do you have to stay in here?"
"Because she said so."
The angel ― Link was his name ― briefly turned his head towards the woods. "May I come in?" he asked.
Zelda hesitated at first. What would Impa think, letting in a complete stranger into her private quarters? Worse, what would her brother think? Surely it was something illegal, something that has to do with her purity or some other thing that she couldn't remember. She couldn't remember a lot of things when she looked at Link, though.
"You may," she finally said. "But you must be quiet."
He smiled, silently stepping down from her windowsill and sitting crosslegged in front of her. They looked at each other for a long time, both afraid of what to say or do.
"Why are you in here?" He asks again.
"I told you, Impa says so."
"Yes, but why does she say so?"
"Because..." She wasn't sure how to answer. "Because my brother tells her to."
"Your brother?"
"Yes." The very thought of him causes the young girl to shudder, chills coursing through her small frame. "He may be my brother… but I don't like him. He's very scary and big." She widens her arms to emphasize her point. "He's probably this big, maybe bigger."
"Woahhh."
"He's really weird, too. He insists that I call him 'Father.'"
"Why does he do that?"
"I don't know. But he punishes me if I don't."
Link places his chin in his hand and leaned on his side, blowing a stray hair out of his eyesight. "That's not nice."
Zelda quietly hums in agreement, casting her eyes to the side. "He doesn't see me often, but when he does…. I get scared."
Link has not removed his sight on her. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright."
The room grows silent again. A owl sings its song to the forest.
"Why does he keep you in here?" Link finally speaks up.
"I don't know… but I've been here for as long as I can remember."
"But… doesn't it get lonely?"
She pauses. "... Yes."
"And you don't have any friends?"
She pauses again. "... No."
Link stares at her again, unblinking, for the longest time. He finally stands up, brushing off his knickers. "I don't have any friends, either." He stretches his hand towards her. It is covered in grime and cuts, and Zelda wonders how hard it was to climb to her room. "I can be your friend, though. Will you be mine?"
When Zelda takes his hand, she wonders if this was all a dream, and that none of this would happen if she were to sleep and wake up in the morning tomorrow.
The next night, Link returns, and she knows it wasn't a dream.
He returns again. She asks, and he finally explains how he found her, that he was travelling with his mutti through the woods, and found the mysterious mansion, and saw a girl his age looking out the window on the second floor, and how sad she looked.
Zelda hugs him this time when they say goodbye.
Another night. Link talks about his mutti, and how she helps other people through herbs and homemade medicine, and how the two of them had to move a lot. Zelda describes her own mother, or what she could remember of her based on what Impa had told her.
One night, he brings her a flower he found in the woods. She's never actually seen one before in real life, only from the pictures in her storybooks, and the lily white petals are the softest things she's ever felt. It smells divine, too, just as she imagined it but better.
He promises to bring a lot more flowers next time.
He does just that. Zelda almost screamed when she found a bug in the foliage.
One night, Link says he wants to take her to the woods. There's a meadow in the center filled with lots of flowers, of different shapes and colors.
Her heart skips a beat. She wants to, she so desperately wants to. And the woods are right there, right outside her reach beyond her windowsill, and Link could be with her right there, but all she could see was her brother and his cruel, cold, callous hand.
Link takes her hand into his own. His voice is calming, and his eyes speak earnestly.
"It's alright. I promise I won't let anything happen to you."
They plan for them to travel during the next night.
When he reaches for her hand again, he is at the windowsill, the moon beckoning to the young girl.
Her heart feels like it's stuck in her throat, and she can barely breathe as she clutches her porcelain doll that bears her face, but she is so excited. She turns to her room one last time, the barren confinements she has called home, and turns to Link, her angel in every sense of the word, and the heavenly light that he basks in, and in the young life of Zelda she takes a chance and grabs his hand.
She exits her birdcage, and for the first time in Zelda von Heilig's life, the world around her explodes in color and light and scents and it is beautiful.
It was a bit of a struggle to get down from the second floor ledge, and Link asks if it's alright to bring along her doll, the one that resembles her face and hair so much, but she insists. Eventually, he gets down first and opens his arms to her, asking her to jump. She hesitates again, but Goddesses, she was already so far and it would be a shame to turn back now. She lets the fresh air hiss through her nostrils, and she jumps. He catches her, and she is surprised how strong he was for a small boy, and how light she had become. She feels the dirt below her crumple and shift under her weight, and she's tempted to kick off her slippers right here and play in the mud. She'll save it for later, though. The woods are right there, just within arm's reach, and there isn't a moment to lose.
Link smiles and takes her hand again. She returns the gesture, hugging her doll close to her chest because she feels like her heart is going to burst. The two are like school children, off on an adventure like in the fairy tales she has read, and they enter the forest.
Every sight is a new experience for her. The moon reaching its fingers through the balcony of trees, the dust and bugs that float through the air, and the colors. Everything was bathed in moonlight, and it was just like a painting. She was living through it.
And the stars. Oh, how wonderful the stars were. They were like jewels encrusted into the blanket of the sky, sparkling and shining in their brightest way just for her.
Link knew the forest well, even without a lantern, and had answered all of Zelda's curious questions, like what the calls of the animals in the trees meant, or what kind of flower was nestling next to a bush. He made sure not to get her dress too dirty, and took the most careful path, but Zelda swore that she would climb those moss-covered rocks and the rotting, fallen trunks another time. She had a taste of this freedom, and even though she still fears her brother, she will never let this feeling in her chest go.
They finally arrive after some time, with the curtain of trees thinning into a clearing and the full moon gracing the skies once more, directly above them and smiling down at the children. There's grass outstretched, and in the center was a vast meadow, filled with every kind of flower Zelda could imagine and so much more. Their colors were vibrant even under the dark shadow of night, and they beckoned to her intoxicatingly, calling to her and wishing for her to be by their side.
Link runs forward to the meadow, a bewildered Zelda following close behind, before picking a bundle of dandelions that stood proudly before the meadow.
"Watch this," he tells her, and cautions her to stand back. She does so and watches in anticipation. Link kneels before the patch of meadow, as a peasant were to ask forgiveness from the Goddesses, and blows gently onto the dandelions, scattering their fibers with his wind. They glide through the flowers carefully, and as if some miracle of the Goddesses had rained down on these children that night, areas of the petals begin to glow an unearthly moss yellow. The balls of light floated towards the sky, and more and more of them appeared throughout the meadow until the entire clearing was illuminated in their million lights.
Link turns to Zelda again, a content smile on his soft face. "They're fireflies," he says.
It's only until Link points it out with worry when she notices the wetness that has begun streaming down her cheeks. He asks her why she is crying. She responds quietly that she doesn't know.
They sit and watch the fireflies for a while in the flowers.
Link visits Zelda's room almost every night, but they make it a habit to venture out into the woods once a week, whether it be to the meadows once more or another, entirely new area for an adventure. He even begins to bring her snacks, cooked fresh from his mutti.
She asks him one time why he does this, what she had done to deserve such kindness from him. He smiles at her with his beautiful blue eyes and says that everyone deserves happiness sometime in their lives. Even her. Even him.
One of the nights, he comes far earlier in the evening than normal and tells her that his mutti wants to meet Zelda and cook her dinner. She is frightened, since almost all the adults in her life terrify her, but she trusts Link and obliges.
The trek through the woods is much farther than normal, and she wonders to herself how far Link had to venture every visit to meet her. He pays no mind to it, however, but gives her a dark cloak to keep her warm. It was likely more than an hour, the last remnants of twilight long since faded away and the moon just shy of gracing over the world, that they reach a village with very few inhabitants. In fact, it looked almost completely abandoned. There was far more dirt than she expected, and the houses were made of mud and sticks rather than the pristine stone and plaster walls she was accustomed to at her home. Animals of all sorts were fenced in with wood, and there was an odor resonating throughout that Zelda cared not to think about. She thinks about the dress she wears with lilac and lace, and she feels dreadfully out of place.
As the approach a hut with a lit torch beside its doorstep, a woman clothed in turquoise waits for them. She wears a white veil over her face like a bride, and while it obscures part of her expression, there was an immediate familiarity to her strikingly blue eyes and long, golden hair. Link runs to her, enveloping his little arms around the woman in a hug, and the woman returns the gesture before gazing upon the other guest.
"So you must be the girl my little Link talks about," she cooes, and while Zelda is tentative to step forward, there is an undeniable air of nurture and warmth that the woman carries that brings the girl's guard down. "I am Rosalina von Sterne, Link's mother. Thank you for taking care of him." She gestures to the door of the rickety old hut, where Zelda can see a pillar of smoke rise from the chimney with a homely waft of meal. "Come. I've prepared Link's favorite meal for the occasion: pumpkin soup! I hope you enjoy it as much as he does."
Zelda thanks her lucky stars for her small meal previously, because the delicious scent of soup that filled the entire inside of the simple, poor house made her mouth water in anticipation. They sit at the crooked wooden table before the fireplace and eat one of the most delicious soups she has ever had, better than anything her servants could serve her. Frau Rosalina was kind with open ears as they chat, occasionally placing delicate kisses on Link's cheeks during conversation. Zelda discovers that the woman was some sort of wise woman residing in the woods, an expert of herbs and medicine, and has traveled throughout the country, healing people and curing various illnesses. A strange sort of emotion glazes over Frau Rosalina's visible eye when she speaks about it, how it is a thankless job, but she is happy to do some sort of good in the world, and expresses her hope for Link to be as good. They return to the joyous dinner, filled with laughs and smiles. Link is the happiest Zelda has ever seen him.
With the moon well into the night sky, she is ready to return to her home, but Frau Rosalina leans down to the young girl and whispers in her ear before bidding the children a safe travel:
"Remember, do not tell anyone about this place, or that we reside here. It's a secret to everyone. I hope you can do this much for Link and I."
The nights continue like this and are filled with happy memories that would have lasted her a lifetime. She expected this to last forever, but she should have expected otherwise. After all, all good things must eventually end, and no matter how happy an encounter is, there will always be a departure.
This is what she thinks when Link visits her at the end of the day at her windowsill, wearing a expression of sadness and regret in the setting sun, and tells her that he and his mutti have to move away.
"Why…" she asks quietly. She can't cease the trembling in her voice.
"The things she does…" He steps down from the windowsill and takes her hands into his. "They help people, but they're also scared of her because of it. That's what she told me." He locks eyes with hers. "We were supposed to leave today, but Mutti let me see you before we left. I had to see you before we left."
Her hands shake, even in the grasp of his own, even when he strokes her hands with his small fingers to try to calm her.
But I didn't tell anyone. I promised.
"If you're going to leave…" she breaks away and gravitates towards her bed, where the porcelain doll that bears her face rests and stares into empty space. There was no way she could leave, not with Impa and her brother here. They would find her if she left, and she wasn't even sure what would happen to her after, but she could only imagine.
She picks up the doll like a newborn babe and returns to Link, tears threatening to spill over with every passing second. Even if she had to break her heart in two and give a half away, she'd never want to leave him. She wanted to be by his side forever, even if she had to wait a few years for him.
"Please," she choked as she held the doll towards him, "take this with you in my place."
His own heart shattered in two as well, he takes the doll into his own hands, nodding, knowingly, understandably, like no one else could. "Promise you'll come back for me one day," she continues, "okay?"
He nods again, tears brimming his own eyes, clutching the doll as if it were his own child. "When I'm all grown up, I'll come back to take you away from here, and I'll marry you! It's a promise!"
Just like a knight from a fairytale. She wraps her arms around him and plants a slow, deep kiss on his cheek as the sun sets behind them.
The days fly by. Nights turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and soon, Zelda gets a little bit older before she hears the news about the witch burning. How Rosalina von Sterne, the alleged Witch of the Forest, was burned at the stake for her heretic crimes against the Goddesses, and how her young son had fallen into a well and perished upon her capture.
She doesn't cry for him. Instead, she waits at the windowsill.
She thinks about him every day, but the beautiful, pale woman named Zelda von Heilig only acknowledges and reflects on her thoughts on few occasions. As she stands before her window, a pillar of melancholy and solidarity, gazing upon the full moon with her little strip of the outside, she allows it to be one of these times.
The beautiful angel that gave her wings in her youth, that allowed her to fly, if only briefly, away from the birdcage that she resides in to this day. She humored herself: he was a pretty little thing back then, but she imagined how handsome he would have been now, all grown up. If only she could see it outside of the confines of her mind. If only he could see her now, a young woman, fair as the moon and beautiful as the sunset. Even if she was trapped in her room, she grew into her body well, with long, graceful features and fine, chestnut hair. Only her eyes remained droopy, her grey irises reflecting a deep sorrow that others mistook for indifference. Yes, perhaps he would've been the one to appreciate her, instead of proudly boasting her as a trophy like the many suitors her father had presented to her.
She wish she could go back in time somehow, perhaps to warn him, or to go with him instead of remaining in her prison. If nothing else, she wish she could tell her younger, ignorant self, the name of the burning feeling in her heart whenever she looked upon him or squeezed his hand. The heat in her chest continues to curse her even still.
Even if he was long gone, dead at the bottom of a well, and there wasn't ever a chance to see his beautiful face again, she would still wait for him under the moonlight by her windowsill.
Yes, the boy that gave her flight, she still loved him with all her being, and she would never love another.
The door creaks open. Impa, old and weary, steps into the room. "Come now," she beckons, "your father is waiting for you."
Zelda looks up at the moon one last time, then turns towards the older woman, her footsteps slow and deliberate as she exits the room. The door shuts behind her.
AN: The live performance of Marchen was taken down because of copyright :((((( you have to trust me on the story now kids
As children, Link is eight years old, while Zelda is barely seven. As a young woman, Zelda is just shy of twenty, and Link would've been twenty-one.
