Chapter 4

I woke up to the pain. My back ached as though the bones had been crushed along with my leg and my head throbbed along with it. I groaned, wondering when I had ever gotten on a ship, for the world rocked and swayed.

You will die.

Oh yeah. That's right. No wonder I felt like crap.

Something cool brushed across my hot forehead. Where the flying raptor had clawed at my shoulder felt puffy and itchy, but otherwise was the least of all the pains on my body. I groaned, wishing that whatever coolness was on my head would be all over me. I burned. I ached. And yet somehow, through it all, I found my eyelids and propped them open. My vision was blurry, but soon cleared.

"Well, you're still a bit warm, but not nearly as bad as you were."

I had to blink hard to see again. A girl with a kind, round face and almond-shaped green eyes smiled back at me. She had the most peculiar white-blond hair, akin to the color of sun-bleached straw.

"Hi." she said.

I just stared at her, not really trusting my throat to work if I tried to talk. Not that I had much of anything to say.

She turned around to pull up a book-sized case, which she laid next to me. I could feel the cool, hard surface pressing against my arm through the blankets. With a light snap she unfastened the case and started fiddling around in the piles of bandages and bottles within.

"I hope you have a good story for running out in a storm like that, and on a horse that could have died beneath you on the way, nonetheless."

Probably would have made my life easier if he had. Crushed to death by horse. Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, however much I had left.

Asking for permission with her eyes first, she reached over and slid down the sleeve of a huge nightshirt I didn't remember wearing before.

"You've been out for a few days." she said. "Your leg's fractured, though it looks a lot worse than that. I stitched up your shoulder while you were asleep, and it looks like it hasn't bled to much, but we should change your bandages just to be sure."

Sitting up was like moving a mountain, even with her help. Piles of pillows had been set up behind me, and I took that moment to feverishly squint around at the rest of the room. It was round, with sturdy, wood walls, simple wooden furniture, and a set of banister-less stairs curving down to the right. I took in the pink bedspread, the obviously girlish, personal touches, and came to the conclusion that this had to be her room.

The girl in question had gentle hands as she tugged the bandages away from my shoulder.

"I'm Ilia, by the way, and I've been so excited to meet you—while you're awake, that is. I've always wanted another girl in the village, since I'm guessing you can't very well go back from where you ran from."

I tried not to look too suspicious at that. I guess what else could she assume? I couldn't be traveling, because I didn't have any provisions and only that cloak as any sort of cover. Not to mention no one in their right mind would force a horse as old as mine to take them anywhere far away. Speaking of which, where is that old man?

I hardly felt her fingers as she cleaned the three gashes across my shoulder and reapplied some green smelling goop.

"So, what's the story?" Her smile had turned from a 'u' to a 'v'. "Arranged marriage? Fell in love with someone forbidden? Did some jerk break your heart?"

I stared. "Uh, no." As expected, I sounded like I had gargled sand before talking. "Didn't have anything to do with love, actually." Which wasn't too big of a lie. It wasn't like imprinting was the same as falling in love, right? Just my body zooming in a baby-making partner...

Goddesses, that maked it sound so much worse.

Ilia deflated. "Really? Then what happened? It's got to be drama to the extreme to bring you all the way here. I mean, I'm guessing you came from far away."

"Uh, yeah," I twitched a bit beneath her hands.

"Well?"

"Um," My mother couldn't stand watching me die before my eyes, so she kicked me out of the house to go die in the arms of the man who ruined it all for us in the first place. "My mom sort of...told me to leave."

"What?! You mean she made you leave that night? In the storm? On that skin and bones horse?"

"She was a little stressed."

"What did you do?" her face twitched, as though to be ashamed, but instead curved into another one of her 'v' shaped smiles. "Did you fall in bed with a guy? Sell yourself to prostitution?"

I just looked at her blankly. What a strange girl. I liked her.

Her jaw dropped. "You didn't."

I flinched. "What?"

"You know," she wiggled her almost invisible eyebrows.

It took longer than I would have liked for my muddled, too hot brain to get that she had just called me a prostitute.

"No!" I got a little too loud and ended up in a fit of coughing. She patted my back and pushed a glass of water into my hand.

"Then what was that goopy smile for?"

"Can't you give a sick person a break?" But I felt that said goopy smile coming on again as I tasted a hint of lemon in the water. "You're...you're really sweet, that's all. I sort of thought I'd just...die."

"What, did you think we'd just let you?"

"We?"

"Link and I, we found collapsed in front of his house in the middle of the night in a storm. Your horse was making quite the racket."

"Where is he, anyways?"

"Oh, with Epona. Don't worry, he's been a complete sweetheart. I've never met a more mild mannered horse."

I took another swallow of the lemon tinted water. It tasted pleasantly cool on my burning throat, and even as I felt it run down to my belly, the pain in my head eased. I sighed in relief.

She leaned down. "Feel better?"

"What is this?"

"Water from Ordon spring. I don't know what it is about it, but it tends to ease pain and help wounds heal quicker. Not, like, super quick, but quicker than normal."

I just nodded sleepily and drank some more.

Ilia stayed by my side the whole time I managed to stay conscious. Even though I didn't much feel like it, she coaxed me into eating some brothy soup that made me even more sleepy, and before I could thank her, I was out.

While I slept I dreamed, or remembered, I didn't know. But in them there was a man who had wings like mother, except a beautiful silver gray, almost like my horse's coat. He stood tall as a tree, broad as a bear, but had a quiet, almost nonexistent laugh. In my dreams he grab me, large hands swallowing up my waist, and throw a me in the air with that gentle laugh of his.

"You look like your mother," he would always say. "Why couldn't you look more like me?"

And I had wanted to look more like him. Mother was just black. Father, though, had strands of white and silver all throughout his hair, beard, and feathers. The white would gleam in the sunlight, but glow in the moonlight.

He almost buckled over with mirth when I had told him he was beautiful.

That's what he had been like. Happy. Easy to laugh.

Each memory was spaced apart with moments of consciousness, which were either filled with Ilia, soup, and healing spring water, or an empty room that ticked with the sound of an unseen clock.

"I don't know what's wrong. Her shoulder and leg have healed already—in only a week, can you believe it?-But the fever won't leave and she complains about her back in her sleep."

The back of my eyelids were dark and soft. They fought against being opened, so it was through my lashes that I found Ilia speaking to a young man I knew all too well.

"How did she heal so fast?" she asked.

"Sometimes the spirit of the spring influences it," he said, and the tenor of his voice made my blood hum in happiness. Why had I never noticed how sweet he sounded? You could just hear his heart in the way he said his words.

"But we should call for a doctor or something," Ilia looked honestly concerned. "I'm able to get her to eat when she wakes up, but she can't stay awake."

"Have you checked her back?"

"What?"

"You said she keeps complaining about it. Maybe there's a clue there."

Ilia blushed lightly. "Well, yes, but it only looks like a weird rash."

"That weird rash is probably what's giving her the fever."

"I know that! But then how do we get rid of it?"

"Beats me."

"Ugh! You're so unhelpful!"

I didn't want them to know I was awake. Then they'd be asking all sorts of questions that I wouldn't know how to answer. Also, it made me feel strange that they were so worried about keeping me alive when I was going to die soon. Besides, like this, through my lashes, hidden like this, I could examine the man who ruined my life as much as I wanted—although he had done so unknowingly. If anything, it was my stupid hormones that had done me in.

"Do you know where she's from yet?" he asked. "Maybe we can get a hold of this mother of hers."

"Don't you go sticking your nose into her business!"

Link lifted his hands up in defense. "Woa, hold on, we don't know what went on between them. For all we know it could've just been a big misunderstanding or-"

"A misunderstanding doesn't make mothers send their children out in a storm across a monster infested field on a dying horse!"

"The horse isn't dying," said Link quietly, but I could see a strange shadow flitter across his eyes. I remembered the wolf of my dreams. "Is that what she said?"

"That's what happened." said Ilia with her fists on her hips.

"So, that's what she says."

"Oh, bother, just go away. You've checked in and all that, so go herd goats or something."

I felt my chest warm at her defense of me. She didn't even know me, but had complete trust in my word. Something within me, maybe an old memory, told me that was a dangerous virtue, one that might get her killed one day, but it only made me like her all the more.

When Link left, I allowed my eyes to open all the way and struggled to sit up on my own. My back hurt, but without the shoulder and leg pain joining in, I found it somewhat manageable.

Instantly, Ilia was at my side. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Yeah," I said, as brightly as I could. "Look, you don't have to try so hard." I was, after all, going to die soon.

"Who says I'm trying hard? Anyways, do you feel up for a little walk? Not far, but my mom always told me that some fresh air can do a lot in helping someone feel better. We'll just go to the porch."

And because I didn't want her to waste any more worry, and because I really did like her, I nodded and allowed her to wrap me up in a blanket and sling an arm around her shoulders. When my back protested, I clenched my jaw shut.

The ground floor of the house was built much the same as the top floor. Well made, well lived in, and furnished simply. A smoldering of embers burned in the fireplace on the other end of the large room. I could see a door in the back, leading down into what had to be another room.

Ilia threw the front door open. I blinked in the setting sunlight. The first thing I saw were the hills of trees, painted half gold by a sun hugged in the crook of two mountains. I could hear the laughter of children and the tinkling of water.

"Here we are, easy go."

She sat me down in a padded chair, which could have been placed there just for me. I found the source of the laughter in three kids, two boys and a girl, next to a stream that ran through the little village. A waterwheel creaked somewhere, and at a little round cottage across the way I could see a blond woman rocking in her chair, a bundle held carefully in her arms.

I breathed in deep. Pine. Grass. Something cool, like the lemon spring water made into air.

Ilia smiled at me, as though something on my face pleased her, and she sat herself down next to me, feet hanging off of the porch. As she chatted about the children at the stream, things about the village, what the people were like, I listened to my own breathing and tasted the air. I could almost feel the fever melting off of me, leaving me with an almost comfortable ache.

I wanted to freeze time and live in the moment forever. This would do just fine. I didn't need a purpose, I didn't need to be wanted. Just for now, in these trees, listening to Ilia talk, watching one boy push at the other one playfully while the girl snapped at them, and waiting for the gold paint of the trees to run off with the sun.

I closed my eyes.

"You think you can eat anything?"

I smiled. "Actually, I'm starving."

"Really? Oh, good, I hope that means you're getting better."

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Oh, no problem, really."

But I don't know if she heard me correctly—heard the real depth to my gratitude.

I fingered the soft pants she had given me and the coarser weave of the oversized nightshirt and figured I must have bled all over my old ones. Pity. I liked that blouse.

"Hey! Look who's up!"

My head snapped to them. Somehow, while I had been staring out across the village, Link had appeared in front of Ilia's house. He looked even more handsome than when we had first met, with his face and bare arms glistening with a fine sheen of sweat and his hair dusted with dirt.

For the first time, I saw what Donna and Christine saw. The curve of muscle, the shape of his shoulders, the strength of his chin.

And I wasn't prepared for what it did to my insides.

I bolted.

Or, at least, I tried to, forgetting that I had been bedridden for more than a week.

My legs wobbled from the unexpected weight and my knees buckled. The edge of the porch came up for my face. I heard him shout. Then his hands caught my shoulders, leaving my knees to thwack against the worn wood. I could smell his sweat, and his touch sent shivers of fire down my spine.

Oh goddesses, this man was going to kill me.

"What's the ru—hey!"

I had shoved him away, pushing myself back onto the porch at the same time. I didn't wait to see his face, but scuttled backwards like a crab until I could force my stupid lame body to its feet and slip back into the safety of the house.

Ilia looked back when she heard the door slam. I must have looked something awful, for she dropped the bowl she was holding. Thankfully, it had been empty.

"Din, what happened?"

My knees were shaking horribly. We blinked at each other for a moment before I realized just how much of a freak I had just acted like, and tried to give her the most casual smile I could muster.

"It's nothing," I said. Then, to further my claim, I tried to walk to the chair at the table and just managed it. "Your mom was right, fresh air does wonders!"

"Doesn't it? Oh, and do you feel like one scoop or two scoops?"

"One. Let's not push it." Yeah, I'd already done too much of that. Sure I was going to die, but I didn't want to have my body torturing me till then. As little suffering as possible would be nice.

Link didn't come knocking on the door to ask what the crap was up wrong with me, for which I thanked his gods for. Had to count my blessings where I could get them.

After dinner, I accidentally passed out on the kitchen table and woke up to Ilia wrapping my arm around her shoulders again and taking me back upstairs.

"Isn't there a couch or something I could take?" I mumbled. "I mean, that's your bed, isn't it?"

"Oh, don't worry about it."

"But-"

Then she gave me such a stern look, one which I had just seen her give Link earlier, that whatever protest I had died on my tongue. She'd make a most formidable mother one day.

The thought, however, made me feel slightly ill. Her and Link seemed to be good friends. Surely he must see that in her. If there was any girl he loved, it was probably the strong, kind-hearted Ilia.

Lucky for me, I fell asleep before the strange feeling I felt at that thought made me throw up.

From then on I felt stronger each time I woke up. The pain in my back didn't go away completely, but I found was more able to move past the pain. One evening I was able to meet Ilia's horn-mustached father, whose sheer bulk reminded me so much of the vague memories I was getting back of my father that I instantly warmed up to him. It amused me to no ends how such a huge man would cower before the dragon-mother look (as I had christened it), of his much smaller daughter. He also didn't ask too many questions, which I liked. Like Ilia, he didn't see the need to pester someone who obviously had a painful past.

Whenever I complained about being a burden, the most stern of frowns would come on his face. After the initial protest against using her bed, Ilia had just adopted a roll of her eyes.

"When you get feeling better I'll put you to work for you keep, but that ain't going to be much use if you keep up with that sad look on your face." said her father.

I blinked. I hadn't even noticed my face was doing anything.

Illia nodded. "Yeah, we're trying so hard because we want to help you. Whatever happened back home, it's behind you now. You can start fresh here."

I could feel my eyes burning and fought against it. I knew, once I started crying, I wouldn't be able to stop.

"Why...why are you being so nice?" And I honestly wondered it. I may look like a Hylian now, but shouldn't they be sensing it by now? Shouldn't they be aggravated with me as much as their gods?

"Cause we like you, Hanna." said Ilia simply, and her father nodded gravely.

"Stop worrying," he said. "You can do your part when you're better."

Sleep was hard to come by after that. I had been caught in the crossfires of being touched by their compassion and dismayed that it didn't matter anyways.

Moved by a new found need to repay them with what little time I had, I told Ilia I was going to try and take a walk. The sooner I got well the better. I checked to make sure Link was nowhere in sight before I headed up a hill to the left of her house that looked especially inviting. Though I liked the village people well enough, I wasn't feeling too social, and the stares the kids had sent me the one time they had spotted me on the porch wasn't exactly inviting.

Up the hill I found a pasture filled with goat, but strange goats at that. They were almost the size of cows and with heavy horns that met up at the tips. I leaned heavily on the gate to rest my knees and watched them lazily eat grass. Maybe it would have been better if I had been born a goat. Then I could stay up here in this beautiful village in the forest, watching the sun paint the trees gold and listening to the water.

At some point I turned around a slipped down to sit with my back against one of the posts of the gate. I fingered the green grass and was almost surprised to find it soft and waxy against my fingers. In fact, I got so delighted by the difference from my dreams that I got caught up in yanking out grass strands and weaving them together. Maybe I could make a ring for Ilia and we could have a laugh over it. I could make up some story about how a witch had given it to me, or something else ridiculous. Making her smile was one of the few ways I felt like I had done some good.

"Hey, Hanna."

I dropped the ring. Instantly I could feel the strange squirm in my stomach again.

On the other side of the gate, Link leaned with his arms folded across the top. He smiled gently at me with a strand of grass sticking out of his mouth. His dark gold hair had a windswept look to them, and I thought I could make out a smug of ink on his face.

I didn't think. Ignoring the protest of my popping knees, I leaped up into a run.

"Wait! What did I do?"

This time, when I ran through Ilia's front door, I collapsed onto the floor, my energy spent. Lucky for me Ilia had gone to take a bath and hadn't heard me panting.

That night, this time in my own bed under the stairs, the sprint seemed to have spent what strength I had and the pain in my back made me toss and turn restlessly. I kept seeing Link's dismay as I ran from him, and somehow it carried over to the dead eyes my mother had when she told me to go and die. I didn't doubt my mother's love for me, and logically I knew I had done nothing wrong, but a little child within me still wondered. I had dreamed every night of her screaming at the sky, of father throwing me in the air, of the way her hands shook as she put the money into my hand and pushed me out the door.

When I finally did fall asleep, it was only to open my eyes to a pile of fighting, scabbling leathery wings in the middle of a wide field. I didn't have to see to know what the monstrous birds pecked at. And if I had had any doubt, specks of silvery feathers fluttered down from where they had been kicked up into the air.

I woke up with a retch, and before my body could even decide if it wanted to throw up or not, I was out the door and into the moonlit night.

I walked, not caring where I ended up. Ilia's spare, old night gown only came to my knees and I could feel the cold dew on the grass making my legs itch. The village was asleep. No children played in the stream, no candle lit the windows, and no Link walked the roads with fine, sun-kissed arms.

The pain in my back had become maddening. I stumbled across the bridge and threw up over the side, almost tipping over and falling head-first in the process. I just got up and kept walking though, heart pounding, mind whirling.

I'm going to be torn apart just like Father. I passed the last of the houses and saw the waterwheel cranking away. I went up a gentle hill framed by familiar short cliffs, up and up into a clearing. The warm instinct from that night jabbed at me, urging me to go up the ladder and the curious tree house set in the old oak. But I walked on. I saw two horses standing to the side of it and recognized the bony rump of my horse next to another almost twice his size. I wanted to stop and thank the old stallion, maybe see how he was doing, but another flare of white-hot pain from my back and twist of my heart pushed me on.

Go and die already. I can't look at your face any longer.

I tripped on a stone and fell to my knees. The forest had gladly swallowed me whole and moonlight only broke in to the ground in diamonds. I retched, but managed not to throw up again, and got back on my feet. I could hear the soft hush of water up ahead and it called to me. I felt hot and cold all at once, but the sound was gentle on my ears and soothing. I wanted to die to the sound of it, in peace. I didn't want to hurt anymore.

I turned into an ornate gate I hardly noticed. When my feet hit sand, I almost gasped in surprise.

A beautiful scene met my eyes, one I couldn't have imagined. A gorgeous spring, fed by a low waterfall that spanned the length of it and kicked up rainbows in the moonlight. Green branches hung over it like a gently sloping roof, and tall, smooth stones covered in moss framed the mouth of the cliff that fed the spring.

And somehow, that's what finally broke me.

The sob I had been holding down from day one was not gentle coming out. I stumbled into the waters and happily fell to my knees, holding my throbbing, hurting, burning body.

"Stupid gods, why did you leave us here? Hell, why did you even make us? You bastards. You fucking bastards."

I slapped the water, suddenly in a fury. Furious at the gods who left us behind, furious at my mother for snapping like that, furious at her for kicking me out before explaining a thing just because she couldn't handle her stupid plan failing, furious at the fact that I hadn't questioned her once because I just knew what she said was true, furious for hurting so god damn much and not having a freaking clue why, furious at Link for being so fucking beautiful, furious at the world, furious at everything!

I tipped my head back and just started screaming every profanity I could think of. As the pain grew to a blinding intensity in my back I fought back against it by going deeper into the spring, belting every last screech I could at the stupid night sky that dared to be so damn beautiful for no reason other than to mock me.

"I hate you!" I shouted, hoping those uncaring bitch goddesses heard me. "What did I ever do to you!?"

Then the pain won over and my angry screams turned into screams of agony. I was forced to my knees as my back tore apart with a sound like tearing cloth and leather. Blood turned the water red about me, and through it I could see my pale hands clutching the sandy bottom.

And just as suddenly, it was over.

I laid in the waters, half floating, with my legs and butt on the bottom. The cold water soothed my back, just as it had soothed my aching head earlier, and my chest felt hollow and numb. It felt good. I hadn't remembered just how good it felt to not constantly be in horrible pain. Guess I hadn't been dying.

Black feathers brushed against my fingertips. I grasped a handful of them and held on for a moment, breathing heavily.

I didn't know how long I laid there, drifting and staring up at the stars. Almost without a thought I let my fingers trail down the mass of feathers that had torn from my back. My wings must be long, because I never even came close to the end, though I found a knob the elbow of it. With each brush of feathers I remembered, faintly, brushing my feathers just like this in a bathtub. Mother had told me to rub the ends with a special shampoo she made in an ugly pot that looked like a duck with its head chopped off. I had loved the smell, though. It had been sweet and earthy.

I guess now there'd be no hiding it. I couldn't go back to Ilia's. These wings must be the traits my mother had talked about that would mark me for slaughter. Feeling somewhat disconnected, I wryly wondered if I should start a bet with myself on when the first monster would show up.

A slight breeze brushed over me and I shivered. Gingerly, I sat up, felt out my feet, and slowly stood, testing how my legs would handle the new weight on my back. My waterlogged wings hung limply into the water. I lifted one up first, just as slow as before, wary that I was still surrounded by dissipating blood and wondering what kind of state my back must be in.

Water dribbled off the ends of my black feathers and tinkled back into the water.

"Hanna..."

My heart stopped.

I turned, my mouth suddenly very dry.

Behind me, in the gateway, stood Link.