The Barrier

Link kept himself between Kirali and Ganondorf as they moved, and both pretended not to notice. He still felt uneasy, but he'd adjusted enough to the buzz of anxiety that he could spare attention for the strange folk Ganondorf had been sitting with during their first encounter. There had been four of them at the time, but now there were nearly a dozen. One man was very tall, towering over the others even while he sat and ate. Two others, a man and a woman, were very small, but not in the way of children. They had short, stocky limbs. But these were among the least strange members of this group.

One woman appeared to be missing legs. Another had a face verging on feline—including the whiskers—with spots ranging up and down the exposed parts of her skin. There was a figure so hairy he couldn't be sure if it was man or woman, and there was a pair of girls that were connected at the shoulder and chest. All of them were strange to behold, especially for Earth.

"Oh, you're back!" the small woman called when she saw Link. "We thought Ganon here'd scared you off." She waved a spoon in their direction and grinned.

Kirali made a noise in her throat that was too dark to be amusement. She stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the murals on the two huge car-like things (buses, he remembered) behind Ganondorf's group. Now that he was looking, he noticed that there were faces painted on the mural that came directly from this group. The cat lady, for one. The tall man. A broad-chested man with tattoos and piercings over much of his skin.

"That's right," Ganondorf said. The words startled Link. He glanced over and found that the Gerudo was watching Kirali with his arms crossed over his chest. "I found a place for myself here with a freak show. Where else would someone like me fit in?"

Heat colored Kirali's cheeks, and Link felt his brow wrinkle. He followed their example, speaking in English. "What is a freak show?"

The tattooed man let out a roaring laugh and walked over, slapping his hand against Link's back. Every muscle in Link's body tensed for a moment, but he relaxed when he felt the light humor radiating from this stranger. "I like you already. What's your name, son?"

"Link."

"Nice to meet you, Link. I'm Gareth, and this is the Other Nature Traveling Show of Freaks and Exotics." He made a sweeping gesture to indicate the group of people and the painted buses behind them.

"Nice to meet you," Link echoed, a note of uncertainty in his voice. Was this a common Earth thing? People who looked interesting or different traveling together?

"Come on, kid. I want to show you what I've been working on," Ganondorf said. Impatience lurked beneath his words, but his… friends?... didn't seem to mind.

"Finally found someone interested in your hobby?" the woman without legs called as Link and Kirali followed Ganondorf toward the door to one of the buses.

Ganondorf puffed out a breath of laughter and waved a hand without looking at her. "It's not boring," he told her in a tone that suggested it was a familiar subject between them. "Not my fault you can barely read."

Her chuckle followed them into the bus.

Link was taken aback by what they found when they climbed inside. There was a driver's seat not unlike that in the other vehicles he had seen, though it stood by itself with no passenger seat to match it. Behind it, though, the interior looked more like a house. There was a table pressed against the wall behind the driver's seat, right underneath a window. Chairs stood around the other three sides of the table. Along the same wall were more windows with cabinets above them, and below that there was more seating. On the opposite wall there were two bunk beds near the door, then a TV mounted to the wall over a little stand filled with devices and what looked like thin plastic books, then a small kitchen area. At the back were two doors, and Ganondorf led them to one of these.

Inside the small room he ushered them into, there were two more bunks, two chest of drawers, and a small desk covered in so many books it was a wonder its spindly legs didn't snap. More books were stacked beside it on the floor. All told, the room didn't exactly have room for all three of them to stand. When Ganondorf tried to squeeze in with them, Kirali ducked away from him onto the lower bunk, which at least had a blanket spread over it in a loose attempt at tidiness. The top bunk looked like a particularly messy Stalkid's nest.

Kirali reached down and pulled a book from the floor up into her lap, tracing her fingers over the title carved into the spine and then laying it open in her lap. "Did you find your big answer about Earth magic in the fiction section?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Mythology and ancient religion," Ganondorf said. He started shifting through the books on the desk, dropping one book and then another to the floor with a loud thump that sent up dust. "You're skeptical, but this world doesn't believe in magic anymore. Where would I find my answers, the reference section?"

Kirali sighed and returned the book to the floor at the foot of the bed. "Fair enough. But what have you found, then?"

Link heard a weak jangle that ripped him out of the conversation. Tatl's weak voice sounded, just barely loud enough to make out against the backdrop of Ganondorf's rumbling voice. "Something is different here."

It was the most she'd spoken since they got here. His pulse sped, throbbing in his chest and neck. "What is it?" he whispered.

"Magic." Her voice was a weak chime, but it was something. It was enough to hope. "I feel… more here."

Link looked over to Kirali and found her staring at him, her hand held toward Ganondorf in a gesture that urged a stop. When their eyes met, she asked, "Tatl?"

"She feels magic here," Link said.

"Yes," Ganondorf said, then paused with an expectant glance toward Kirali's raised hand. She let out a guttural breath and dropped her arm, raising an eyebrow. Ganondorf grinned and spun the desk chair around. When he sat, the wood groaned a threat under the weight of him. His knees backed Link up against the chest of drawers in an effort not to touch him. "I've managed to weaken the barrier in this room somewhat. It's not enough to do anything useful with, but it's a work in progress."

"I would lead with that in the future," Kirali said, though the pitch of her voice belied the flippant words. "How?"

"I've determined it was a binding spell," Ganondorf said, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "But a massive one, enough to lock away all the power in this world. The seal is almost perfect, but it couldn't be total. To cast a spell like this, the old timers who did it needed access to the magic. The magic weaned away from them toward the end, but they weren't able to create an impermeable barrier." He lifted an eyebrow. "And why is that?"

Link glanced between Ganondorf and Kirali, confused. Was he supposed to answer that? But he could see Kirali's mind working in the cast of her expression, the way her eyes got a faraway look and her lips parted, and a moment later she was murmuring, "As the magic left, they lost the power to complete the seal."

"You got it, kid." Ganondorf clapped a hand against his thigh and chuckled. "Little good it does me. A spell that size takes more juice than I can muster to unravel. Even if I could find the focal point, the place where this all went down, it would be too much for me alone, and the locals don't exactly do much magic anymore so they're not a huge help."

Then he leaned forward, draping his forearms over his knees, and cast an intense stare between the two of them. "But with you… maybe we stand a chance." His eyes drifted down toward Link's middle. "Particularly with that."

Link looked down, his eyebrows drawn together. It took a bit to connect, but then he remembered that he'd been playing the ocarina when he ran into Ganondorf. His hand moved to cover the spot where the instrument rested within his pocket. "Playing it helped strengthen Tatl," he admitted.

"I'm no expert on fairies," Ganondorf said, leaning back again, "but I'd call that a good sign. Wouldn't you?"

Link nodded, pulling the ocarina from his pocket and rolling it in his fingers. "What do we do next?"

"Link." Kirali's voice was soft but urgent. When Link met her eyes, everything about her mannerisms screamed that she was uncomfortable with talking to him there, in front of the Gerudo king. "A word?"

"What is it?" he asked. Impatience made his heel bounce. This was it, this was what he was looking for. This was his way home. Their way home. She'd been the one to push working with Ganondorf!

She held his gaze a moment, her eyes flickering as she studied his face. Finally she sighed, her shoulders dropping, and looked over at Ganondorf instead. "Let's see your research first. How did you learn what happened? Why was the magic locked away? What else do you know about all this?"

Ganondorf grinned and stood, turning to the books he'd laid open on his desk. "I thought you might ask," he said, dumping a book unceremoniously into Kirali's arms. He grabbed another for Link, then one for himself. "Big surprise: it started with gods."

Officially on to new content! Finally. I typically keep a few chapters ahead of what I'm actually posting, so there's definitely more to come. Stay tuned!