The singing of crickets, the hooting of owls, the snapping of twigs – she heard them all as if they were only feet away from her face, her hearing enhanced by the blanket of darkness that shrouded the forest as completely as though there were a blindfold on her face. Zelda clenched her jaw, determined not to cry. She was more afraid than she had ever been. She hadn't been able to stop the damn horse until the road was far behind them; she'd tried to turn back to the road but as the sun set and the moon hid behind thick clouds she was forced to admit that she was completely, hopelessly lost. She wanted to at least whisper to the horse to try keep him calm – he had already tried to throw her off once - but she could feel eyes and movement everywhere around her, and instead could only bring herself to pray silently that they would not notice her.

A wolf howled somewhere to the left of her.

The horse was shifting again. The crackling of dry leaves beneath his hooves seemed unbearably loud. Zelda sniffed. "Impa," she breathed. The horse grunted and she reached down to pat him but a nearby growling stopped her. It sounded like something big. She froze, but that was useless with all the horse's noise.

Another wolf howl. This one was a little closer.

She turned her head back and forth, trying to pick out some kind of movement in the darkness, but the moment she thought she saw something the horse beneath her gave a whinny almost like a scream, and threw her off his back. Her head hit the ground in a flash of pain and before she could even sit up she heard the gallop of his hooves as he ran, far away.

She tried to stand up, but had scraped her knee badly when she landed. It buckled beneath her. Probing it carefully, she was sure it was bleeding a lot. Her head was bleeding too, and there was a horrible pain in her arm that felt like it was swelling already. She tried once more to step up, fell again, and finally gave in to tears. It was like the bursting of a dam; within moments great sobs were racking her and she hugged herself as she rocked back and forth, gasping for breath while the tears ran down her face. At the third wolf's howl she snatched up a rock from the ground and threw it as hard as she could in the direction of the noise. "I don't care anymore," she hissed, and then, whimpering, "Impa…" The moon slid out from behind the clouds. Zelda looked up.

A wolf was watching her.

As her eyes adjusted to the sudden break in the darkness she realised that several wolves were watching her. In fact they had her surrounded, but the one directly ahead of her was easily the biggest of the pack, a huge mass of shaggy white fur barely covering enormous muscles. The others growled and shifted and swished their tails back and forth, but the leader of the pack was perfectly still, watching her hungrily with his great yellow eyes. She met them and found she could not look away. I do care, she chided herself sternly. I care a lot. She took one more shuddering breath and forced herself onto her feet. Her knee screamed in complaint, but this time she ignored it and, never breaking eye contact with the wolves' leader, carefully reached down and pulled the cheap knife Impa had given her out of her boot. She remained in a half-crouch out of instinct and some half-remembered self-defence lesson. She'd learned a few tricks on how to fight off men, not giant clawed and fanged beasts, and she'd never been much good even then. She could hear the other wolves drawing closer behind her, but was certain they would not attack until their leader had, and their leader would not attack until she broke eye contact.

Taking another deep breath to steady herself, she adjusted her stance and her grip on the knife. My father is dead, she thought. I am all that's left. Hyrule needs me to live. She was unsure of what to do; something had to give, and the pressure in the air felt so thick it was practically crushing. She winced as the pain in her knee pulsed again, and realised she was about to die. The thought granted her a strange kind of comfort, and she suddenly understood the calm confidence which every Sheikah seemed to carry with them. Death was a certainty. Pride was a choice. She would die with pride.

As if the goddesses themselves had heard her resolve, lightning flashed, a great clap of thunder sounded and the skies opened, spilling such a deluge of rain that it obscured every sight and sound more than a few feet away. Perhaps the goddesses intended to save her life, for in that instant when the wolf-leader leapt he was blinded by the lightning, and when he knocked her to the ground he stumbled on the slick wet forest floor and rolled away.

The other wolves howled as Zelda scrambled to regain her knife, but did not have time to get up before the head of the pack jumped at her again. This time he knocked her fully onto her back, but she kept hold of her knife, and before he had a chance to close his jaws around her neck she stabbed him in the side, underneath where his muscles were thinner. His deep growl turned into a loud yelp as the blood began to flow; Zelda could barely see through the rain and the darkness, but she kept hold of the wolf's mane even as it clawed and scraped at her, and in the next flash of lightning she saw him clearly – silver-white coat now streaked with rain and blood – and plunged the knife into his neck. In one last frantic attempt he wrenched his head free of her grip and closed his teeth around her arm, but was already too weak to leave anything but a few shallow cuts before collapsing onto her, his last growl obscured by the crash of thunder.

The moon re-appeared, and Zelda remembered the other wolves. She tried frantically to wriggle out from beneath the giant corpse but all her strength was gone. One wolf growled at her, another snapped its jaws, and then one sat back on its haunches and howled. The thin, mournful sound defeated wind, rain and even thunder, and one by one every other wolf joined it. Then, without a second glance back at their dead leader or the young girl who had defeated him, they turned and sped away. With a gasp of relief, Zelda lay back and all of the pain that had been numbed by adrenaline returned to her. She tried again to climb out from under the wolf, but failed again, and in so doing spent the last of her strength. She did not know whether the fast-spreading darkness in her eyes was the moon's hiding back behind a cloud or the loss of consciousness, nor whether the human scream that sounded once all light had vanished was imagined. When arms closed around her and dragged her out from under the weight of the beast she was sure she dreamed it, and the last thing she heard before yielding to the darkness – "My child, my child, my child-" felt more like the long-ceased dreams of her departed mother than any worldly voice.