As it were, neither of Linkali's parents had given much thought to where their daughter was. When Lin went down to the kitchen to get a small snack, her father merely remarked that he had thought she had gone to bed. That lifted a considerable weight of worry from the youth's heart, and she retreated back up to her room with a little less tension in her stride. Her calm and confidence carried her over to her bed, where she lay down and propped herself up with a wad of blanket and pillow.
Once there, though, Linkali felt a more pressing concern descend upon her. She pulled the hiltless piece of the Master Sword out, leaving the hilted portion and scabbard beneath her bed, and studied the broken blade in the light of the lantern on her bedside table. She swept her fingers over the beveled foible and fuller, stroking the smooth, cold metal gently. The Master Sword did not look impressive, especially not now, when it was snapped in half. It looked dull and dead; Lin wondered if it had ever glowed with energy like the books said it had. At first, she had assumed that it was because it was lacking someone to wield it…but according to Aldez—according to Zelda—Linkali was that wielder.
"I don't doubt her," the girl muttered under her breath. "But why does it have to be me? What do I have that makes me so special that I could survive with the Triforce of Courage inside of me?" She fixed her eyes fiercely on the sword piece in her hand, as if interrogating it. She received no answer, and realized with a tickle of foolishness that she had been half-expecting one. (She didn't know who she expected to deliver the answer, but she had almost felt one coming.)
Linkali sighed and rested the chunk of steel in her lap. "Alde—Zelda said that a lot of other people have been chosen by Courage before me," she murmured distantly. She felt as if she were addressing the broken blade in her lap, and perhaps even the spirit of the Hero of Time. "But none of them survived for long…They couldn't handle it, which makes me wonder what they felt that caused them to make the decisions that lost them their lives. I've never felt immortal—except maybe sometimes when I'm hillboarding—and I've never felt a call to act before. I've never wanted to save Hyrule; if I'd had a choice, I probably wouldn't have joined"—she thought the word HyReCo, rather than saying it aloud—"even if Bartal did. It's not that I'm content with King Ganon's reign…it's just that I don't see the point in fighting him. Everyone who's ever stood against him has been killed; just because the Triforce of Courage hasn't offed me yet doesn't mean he can't."
She let out her breath in a short huff. "I probably wouldn't have believed…Zelda if she hadn't shown me the mark on my hand." The girl studied her bare hand. She had removed her gloves for the night. There was nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary about the back of her left hand; it did not have even the subtlest outline of the Triforce, and it looked identical to her right—well, except for the fact that it was the opposite hand. "I'd wondered about the strange feeling I got when I was around her…I can't imagine why I never thought to look and see what was making me itch like that. Maybe because it wasn't the time for me to know, or something like that." She sounded skeptical, for the idea that her thoughts would be impeded just because it 'wasn't the right time' struck her as strange and very unreal. (1)
Linkali shrugged and picked up the piece of the Master Sword again. "So, I'm the Incarnation of the Hero of Time and the bearer of the Triforce of Courage," she said dully. "Fan-damn-tastic. But what does that actually mean?" She fidgeted with the broken blade in her hands. "Does it mean I'm going to have to do everything he did? Travel around Hyrule and fight off monsters?" She frowned. "I don't like to admit it, but I almost want it to be that way. The Hero…he might have been a fool, but at least he was a pure-hearted fool, and he did have a lot of adventure in his life."
The word adventure reminded her, for no apparent reason, of the evening when she and Ganga had gone out at dusk to find one of the goats. Her heart still throbbed excitedly in her chest when she thought of that night. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the blurred, melting colors as the dying sun sent its final rays of light to streak the night with fire. It was an experience that she was fairly sure no one else in Kokoria Village shared with her, and it had given her a hunger for the world outside the shelter of the village. Of course, nobody would want to see it with her—they were all too afraid of what happened outside the village gates after dark.
What happens, though? Linkali found herself wondering. They all say what they've been told, but has anyone in Hyrule actually been out on the field at night? A burn began in her belly, and her heart picked up speed. Lin started to ponder just what exactly went on outside of villages after sunset. She smirked to herself. She had the Triforce of Courage; why shouldn't that help her to survive when she was out on Hyrule Field after dark, alone, with nobody but the shadows and the rustles, in the darkness, where she couldn't see anything coming, and if she heard something approach she could be sure that it wouldn't be anything friendly because no one would be outside the village after dark, so she would be alone and by herself, and there would only be darkness and night around her, unless a monster came which would be bad because she would be alone and she wouldn't be able to see it because it would be dark, and…
Linkali found her high spirits start to plummet as reason berated her reckless thinking, and wondered if this was what Zelda had meant. Lin might be the bearer of the Triforce of Courage, and it might have some influence over her…but for some reason her common sense could prevail over the Goddess-given power. What good would it do her, though, if she could override the Courage within her? If she could push it aside, could she really be called courageous?
Sighing, the teen began toying with the piece of sword again. Her long fingers danced over the countless chips and nicks along the edge of the blade. It looked dull—not just lusterless, but lacking any kind of sharp edge to it—and the sight of it did not lift Linkali's hopes. Zelda had said that Ganon would not fall to a broken sword; Lin was starting to think that the Master Sword needed to be completely reforged if it was going to stand a chance against anything, much less the King of Evil. "There isn't a smith in Hyrule who would go near this blade, though," Linkali muttered darkly. "Either they'd be terrified of retribution if King Ganon found out about it, or they wouldn't want to contaminate their forge with the metal from such a shameful sword."
Linkali set three of the fingers on her right hand on the chipped edge of the sword. She laughed. "There are so many nicks and chips taken out of this blade," she said softly, "it's almost like someone tried to make a model of Hyrule's topography. I could explore the whole land with my fingers right here, and never have to leave the safety of the village!" And with a laugh, she swept her fingertips down the edge of the blade, hissing and swearing as an uncommonly sharp edge sliced through her skin partway down the length of the sword.
"Lin? Are you asleep?"
Linkali acted quickly, dropping the broken piece of sword behind her bed just before Talina entered the room. The younger Hylian's eyes stretched wide with surprise. "Lin—you're bleeding!" she gasped, pointing at her sister's fingers. Lin, who hadn't really felt much pain from the injury after the initial cut, looked down with mild surprise.
"So I am," she said.
"What happened?"
"Get me a roll of gauze without letting Mom or Dad see," Lin replied calmly. Tali darted off without another word, hurrying down the stairs to fetch the bandages. She returned shortly after and handed the gauze over to her sister. Linkali began wrapping the injured fingers tightly to slow the bleeding, while Talina waited on edge.
"So? What did you do?" she burst out as the older girl was wrapping the last finger.
"You know how people sometimes say that someone is 'so sharp they're going to cut themselves one of these days'?" Linkali asked. Tali nodded, looking a little confused. "Well, as it were, that saying is based on fact. I've just cut myself with my own rapier wit." Lin almost laughed, but she realized that unless she revealed the sword beneath her bed, her sister wouldn't understand the joke. She let out her breath quietly. "Actually, I was…playing with a knife—which is stupid and not something you should do."
"I don't want to end up bleeding through several layers of gauze," Tali responded, pointing to Lin's hand. "So I think I'll avoid messing around with sharp objects." Linkali studied her hand, which still did not hurt, and realized that Tali was right; the bandages were steadily blushing crimson. "Are you going to be all right, Lin? Should I get Mom?"
"No." Halvara would never be content to simply hear that her daughter had cut herself while playing with a knife; she would want to see the knife for herself. "I'll be fine, Tali. Don't worry—you know I'm a quick healer. It's lucky that you came in when you did, though. Why were you poking around in my room, anyway?"
"Dad thought you had already gone to sleep, but it's still pretty early," Talina answered. "I wanted to check and make sure you weren't sick or anything."
"Not sick, just stupid." Lin leaned forward and kissed her sister's forehead. "Thanks for coming in and making sure I was all right, Tali. It's always nice to know that someone cares about you."
"You're my big sister. Of course I care about you." Talina pushed herself up and started towards the door; Linkali was grateful that her sister, like every other Hylian nowadays, asked questions sparingly and did not like to pry. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
Lin was about to answer to the negative, when the conversation she'd been having with herself before Tali's entrance came back to her. She frowned thoughtfully, glancing to the side. "Actually, yes," she said. "Tell me something, Tal: Am I…courageous?" She said the word somewhat hesitantly, and a little skeptically; it sounded like such an old-fashioned word to her ears.
Talina stopped and turned, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms over her chest. She studied Linkali for a few minutes, her dark brown eyes sweeping over her sister with a mock critical glint in them. Then, she laughed. "Well, yeah," she replied. Lin was startled by how dead certain the girl sounded. "Lin, you're not afraid of doing anything for anyone. You go hillboarding with Bartal all the time—I could never do that." The older Hylian smothered a satisfied smirk. "You spend all that time with Aldez—I could never do that either. In fact, I don't really think anyone in Kokoria but you would ever be able to do those things. You always stand up for what you think is right, even when nobody else does." She paused. "Are you asking me if you're courageous, as in Courage, as in Farore, Goddess of? Let me say this: If I had to compare you to a Goddess, I'd pick the Goddess of Awesome…but there isn't one of those, so Courage is the next best fit."
Linkali blinked in silence at the young Hylian standing in front of her. Tali raised an eyebrow. "Anything else you need?" she asked.
"No," Lin replied. "No…Thanks, Tali." Tali nodded and left, closing the door behind her. Linkali sat where she was for a few minutes longer, then slowly pushed herself up and returned to her bed. Once there, she cleaned the thin scrim of blood from the sword piece she had dropped beneath her bed and returned to staring at it. "So Talina thinks I am," she whispered, shaking her head. "Well, if there's anyone whose judgment I trust, it's hers."
Sitting there, Linkali remembered the promise she had made to Zelda earlier that night: that she would be back at the old woman's house at dawn tomorrow. If she wanted to get any sleep, she should probably get it now. Lin had been blessed with an unusually accurate body clock. She could tell herself to sleep for an hour, and would awaken on her own within fifteen minutes of that time. She reasoned that now, at eleven-thirty, it would be about five hours until the eastern sky turned gray. (Zelda had stressed to be there before it grew too light.)
While she laid out her clothes for the next morning, Lin wrote her parents a quick note, which she planned to leave on the kitchen table before she headed out. Mom, Dad, it read. I left earlier this morning to be with Aldez. (The first time she tried to write the note, she accidentally wound up writing "Zelda", and had been forced to scrap it.) I'll probably be back some time later today. Don't worry; I'll be perfectly fine. Love, Lin. It was short and simple, without getting too sentimental; Linkali knew her parents would not think anything was amiss.
She found the flute she had told Zelda about beforehand, and was pleased to see that it looked much the same as when she'd last seen it four years ago. She'd called it a flute, although most people would have referred to it as an ocarina. It was a simple, relatively egg-shaped instrument with a mouthpiece on the longer side of it, as well as two loops on the ends through which a necklace cord was strung. Linkali put it to her lips and blew into it, covering and uncovering the holes deftly. The sounds that issued forth were low, haunting, and seemed to echo over themselves hollowly. Lin smiled as she added it to the pile of things to take with her. She didn't know why Zelda wanted her to bring an instrument, but she was sure the old woman would explain everything to her tomorrow.
Having assembled everything Zelda had asked her to bring, as well as a few of the things she thought it was important to take just in case (such as the lock-picking kit Bartal had given her, a pack of matches, and a small folding knife), the Hylian girl hid the pile behind the closed doors of her wardrobe and flopped down on her bed to sleep. Since rest had not been easy to come by the past two nights, she was already tired, and fell asleep readily despite her excitement over her upcoming visit with her elder friend.
"Hello?"
Linkali listened to the fading echoes of her voice as they slowly died from the hot, still air. She narrowed her eyes against the glare of the blazing, naked sun overhead and lifted a hand to further shield them. She was unused to being anywhere where the sunlight was so bright and direct, or where the land was so hot; she wasn't entirely sure she liked it.
The Hylian youth had never in all her life seen a place like the one she was in now. She was standing in the middle of a field of grass with nodding seedheads that rose up higher than her own. She could not see over or through the stems, which were green streaked with yellow-gold and rich brown. From time to time, a breeze—not cool like she was used to, but warm and dry—would sweep the field, and the grass would sway and ripple fluidly as if it were dancing in the eerie silence. (The silence, she was somewhat used to, for Hyrule Field could be very quiet—but the quietude here was more powerful, more absolute, more unsettling.) Linkali did not know of any places in Hyrule where the grass grew taller than she stood, and she had never seen a day where the blue sky was totally cleared of clouds. From this, coupled with the knowledge that she did not remember ever leaving her bed, she realized that she was dreaming.
Lin was startled by the revelation. She rarely dreamed, unlike her sister, who spent every night in a rich and fantastical world where she had many exciting adventures. The young woman remembered having perhaps three complete dreams in her lifetime thus far, and none of them made any sense to her. In the rare even that she did dream, Linkali would only remember seeing a handful of different, seemingly random objects highlighted by some strange, unseen light source; she never really paid much attention to them, anyway. (2) Aside from those few experiences, though, she did not dream. Talina had once asked her older sister if Lin dreamed in color or not, and the girl had been unable to answer. (Tali, apparently, dreamed in vivid, brilliant color that made the waking world horribly drab by comparison.)
"Well," Linkali murmured to herself, unsettled at how even that soft tone of voice seemed to echo out over the strange landscape, "I guess I dream in color." She stroked the hue-streaked stem of one of the stalks of grass near her; it felt strangely cool and sleek beneath her fingers, and when she squeezed it tightly in a pincer grasp, it buckled like any normal stalk of grass would. But why would I dream about a place like this?
Linkali tipped back her chin to gaze up at the vaulting, empty, bleached-blue sky above her, squinting in the sharp, almost painful glare of the bright sunlight. She couldn't recall any of her precious few dreams ever feeling so…real. The sun overhead was shining so brightly that it hurt to turn her eyes towards; the heat that baked the prairie was enough that Lin could feel herself beginning to sweat. She shook her head in confusion and wonder. "Hello?" she called out again, shivering a little at how loudly her voice seemed to ring out in the dead, quiet air. "Is anyone else there?" Stupid, it's a dream. You're aware that it's a dream—you can do anything you want. If you want people here, then make them appear. In fact, why not just change the whole landscape? It's too hot here, anyway.
The girl closed her eyes and tried to imagine a cooler, less bright place. Her mind went first to the small forest outside Kokoria Village; she tried to recall as much about it as she could, in order to paint a more accurate picture. She thought about the slick, dark-barked trees with their hanging beards of gray-green moss, and the yellow toadstools that sprouted around their roots, and the cups of white fungus that clung to their trunks. She envisioned the thin mist that wreathed the spindly, twisting branches after the rain fell, and the cool moss that lined the ground and glistened with beads of moisture. When she opened her eyes, though, the endless field of high grass had not transformed, and the searing sunlight was just as intense as before. Linkali bit her lower lip. What kind of dream was this, that she couldn't change the landscape of it, even when she was aware that she was dreaming? A little afraid of what that might mean, the girl began to walk through the grass, brushing the stalks out of her way and stepping between them.
Up above, in the blinding blue sky, Linkali heard the shrill, distant cry of a hunting hawk. She froze, glancing around for the source of the thin sound, which had had a distinctly different character than any of the hawk-screams she had heard in the waking world. Nothing, no darts of shadow; it was as if the bird only existed when it was making noise. Lin shuddered uncomfortably. She couldn't shake the feeling that unless she figured something out, she was going to be trapped in this dreamscape, unable to waken and return to her life. So she wandered aimlessly, occasionally calling out for someone to speak to her. Her only answers were the rustling of the grass as she parted in before her, and the sporadic calling of the unseen hawk, and—every now and then—the snorting and pawing of an impatient horse. (The horse, like the bird, was never seen, only heard.)
After what she knew had to be hours of walking, Linkali spread apart the high grass and spotted the end of the prairie. Her heart leapt in her chest hopefully. At the edge of the field of grass stood an open clearing, where the ground was covered in scrubby grass that barely reached the top of her boots. The grass there was pure yellow, and massive, smooth rocks were scattered about the area like strange gray fungus. But that was not what had excited Lin. There was someone standing in the middle of the small clearing! She licked her dry lips and picked up the pace, dashing to the stranger's side.
"Excuse me," she said when she reached them, holding up her hand in greeting. "Can you tell me where I am?"
The stranger turned slowly to face her. Linkali judged from their build that they were a grown man, though it was hard to be perfectly certain, for much of his body was hidden. The man wore a long green cap on his head, as well as a gold-colored headguard with strange decorative pieces coming off the sides that gave the appearance of a stylized bird's wing in flight (3); a visor covered his face. Lin could see that he wore a green tunic, with a white undershirt and leggings and a chainmail tunic beneath, though he also had on several pieces of light body armor: Two forest-green painted shoulder guards that connected to a breastplate of the same color, and two green hip-plates that connected with a guard in the front. There was little decoration on the armor, save for the gold-toned edging; though it glowed brightly in the sunlight, Linkali could see that there were more than a few dings in the plates. The man wore thick leather gauntlets and boots, both of which had gleaming gold plating on them, and had a large sword and shield strapped to his back.
"You are in a distant place," the man told her. Lin shivered at the sound of his rich voice. It was deep, but not ridiculously so; he sounded like he was in his mid-thirties. But what had caused her to shiver was not the timbre of his voice, but the eerie sensation of familiarity it brought her. "I am glad you've made it to my side, Linkali."
The Hylian girl balked, wondering how exactly it was that he knew her name. It's a dream, she told herself after a few seconds, although that sentence was quickly starting to lose meaning when applied to the strange world she was in. Of course he knows my name; he's part of the dream. I…I guess I could say that I created him. "I…I prefer 'Lin'," she pointed out, pondering the reason why, if he was the product of her own mind, he didn't already know that. The armored man nodded.
"Lin…I will remember that," he murmured, nodding once. "Will you come with me, Lin?"
"Sure," Lin replied, figuring that it was better to be wandering with someone else than totally alone. (Especially if that 'someone else' had a sword like the one currently strapped to the man's back; it looked big enough to be a two-handed weapon.) "Look, this is probably going to sound really stupid, but…Do you know how to get out of here?"
The man turned to look at her. He stood perhaps a head higher than she did—taller than Bartal, but not quite as tall as Lin's father. "Yes," he said calmly. Linkali found that there was so much peace, so much gentle certainty, in his voice, that she quite forgot her anxiety about being trapped in the world of her dreams. He rested a hand on the teen's shoulder. "Perhaps you have noticed already, but this dream is not of the normal sort."
"I couldn't change anything," Lin said, spreading her hands in confusion as she walked beside the man. "And I can't wake up from it."
"When the dream has served its purpose, you will enter a sleep from which you may then awaken," she heard the armored man say comfortingly. He indicated the forest that stood ahead of them, which Linkali hadn't even seen before; in fact, she was fairly sure it hadn't even existed until just now. She wondered if this person, whoever he was, was somehow in control of her dream. "Come, we will speak in here, where it is cooler and darker."
The man was right; the woods were much more pleasant than the sunny plains. There was no glaring sunlight here. The thick growth of the forest seemed to have filtered out much of the harshness of the golden light, and the warm luminance around the two wanderers seemed to glow emerald green. The air was cool and somewhat moist, and was heavy with the rich scents of decomposing plant life and something fresh—something with which Lin was unfamiliar: green, growing leaves in the warm sunlight. The trees of the forest were massive, great-grandfathers of trees, with girths so wide that the youth knew that if she and the armored man were to stand on opposite sides and embrace the trunk, their fingers would not meet on the sides. Warblers and songbirds trilled their songs unseen, and invisible crickets chirred in the hedgerows; their voices, though pleasant, sounded as distant and strange as the crying hawk on the prairie had.
Linkali strode beside the man through the forest, her gaze shifting up and down and all around. She had never seen a place like this either, and she found that she rather liked it. Forests in Hyrule were either twisted and unwelcoming or dark and brooding. These woods, though, were bright and warm, and seemed to pulse with life itself. As the two of them walked along the dark, loamy floor, Lin realized that the trees were starting to thin out, becoming more widely spaced. The man beside her took a few strides ahead and gently pulled aside the branches of a leaning tree, revealing a gap in the forest. He motioned for the girl to walk ahead, holding the leafy limbs aside like a gentleman holding a door. Linkali stepped through and gasped in wonder.
The forest opened up to a wide clearing whose ground was sloped and peaked smoothly. The floor of it was covered in soft, green grass, dotted with sporadic patches of colorful wildflowers and clusters of small, egg-shaped, pale gray stones. A few large rocks, their uneven faces worn partially smooth but still spattered with chinks, stood around the far end of the clearing. Golden sunlight, warm and much less intense than on the plains, bathed the meadow and made it glow; it painted yellow the trunks of the trees that ringed the area. The man coming up behind Linkali rested his hand on her shoulder. "Here is where I would speak with you," he said. "That is, if you enjoy this place."
"Y-yes," Lin stammered, a little startled by the sound of his voice. She'd been so taken aback by the vividness of the area that she'd quite forgotten he was there. She heard a soft chuckle from under his visor.
"Then let us make our way to those stones, and we will sit there."
The Hylian youth followed the armored man like an affectionate puppy. Already, she was starting to like him; he seemed to be a very patient and indulgent person, almost like Zelda. She sat down on the sun-warmed surface of one of the rectangular stones that had fallen on its side; the man settled down across from her, unclipping his sword and shield and setting them on the ground at his feet. A contented sigh hissed out from behind his visor. "It is a wonderful place, isn't it?" he asked. "I do love it here."
"I do, too," Linkali murmured. The man nodded his approval.
"Now, Lin, I would like to speak to you," he said. Lin motioned with her open hands that he was free to do so. He nodded. "The path that lies before you is a difficult one, and one that not many in your land can face. Your quest is not an easy one, but it is by no means beyond your power to complete. You have within you what is needed to undertake the challenge and succeed. You have great courage—Courage like a Goddess—and the spirit of a Hero within you."
"How do you know about that?" the girl interrupted, and promptly clapped her own hand over her mouth. She felt heat rise shamefully in her face at how rudely she'd cut in. The man did not seem ruffled at all by her sudden speech.
"I can sense these things about you," he replied calmly and evenly, leaning back on his hands as he spoke. "You have a great destiny before you, and though the battle will be difficult, you will triumph in the end if you try." He shifted his weight forward and sat up straight again. "Have courage, and do not fear the way that lies ahead. You can do whatever you set your mind and heart to doing." He laughed once, softly, and Lin imagined him smiling under his faceguard. "After all…you can always do better than the Hero of Time did. Am I right?"
"Yes, I guess so," Linkali answered. She'd felt a little uncomfortable when he'd first mentioned the Hero, but it seems that he was not comparing her to him, but rather contrasting them. "Say, who are you, anyway? What's your name, if you don't mind me asking?"
The armored man shrugged lightly. "My name is of little importance," he told her. "I am but a wandering spirit who roams the dreams of those who have been chosen by the Triforce of Courage. And you are, to date, the most capable-looking bearer I have ever laid eyes on." Lin grinned at the praise. "I am a gentle guide, a helpful voice; I am the Warrior's Spirit, and I have said all that must be said tonight." He rose to his feet and began strapping his sword across his back once more. When all of his possessions were in order, he took a few steps towards Linkali, who had also left her seat atop the stone, and gripped her hand in both of his. "Remember what I have told you, Lin; we shall meet again another night."
No sooner had he said those words of farewell than did the forest disappear, replaced by a gentle blackness. The Spirit released Linkali's hand, and the young woman felt herself falling back into the darkness. She was not afraid, though; she knew that sleep was wrapping its quiet arms around her, and she snuggled down comfortably into its dark embrace.
(1) I feel the same way. But I write it anyway.
(2) I used to dream like this, but for some reason, as I've gotten older, I've started to dream more completely and more like Tali. I have no idea why that would be.
(3) Think of the bird on the Hylian Shield—those kind of bird wings. There's a reason why I didn't expressly describe them with those words in the story, which you'll find out soon enough.