For a time-who can say how long precisely-Saria and I were locked in tender embrace, somehow both there together and also alone in our thoughts. Then she drew away abruptly, a look of panicked revelation painted on her face. "Oh no."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Your...your wife... I've got to stop him!" With no further explanation she took off down a side hall. I followed immediately, and in spite of having legs twice as long as Saria's I could only barely keep up.
We traced a breathless course through dimly lit and moss-strewn passageways, in silence but for urgent breathing and strident footfalls. Before long we were heading down a long hallway towards a closed door, from behind which emanated a male Kokiri's voice.
"I've had enough. TALK!"
Saria practically crashed through the door, turning the knob and flinging it open in a fluid motion. Within was a sight that stopped my heart for one terrible instant, only to jolt it back to life from shock.
Shackles from the ceiling bound Zelda's hands together over her head, while she rested like I had on her knees, wearing a blindfold like mine. Elegant blond locks of her hair flowed down her bare back, and the tips had been soaked crimson from the blood that oozed from where the whip had kissed. More angry red lash marks scored her naked breasts, collar and shoulders. Blood was trickling from the corners of her mouth and I could only pray that it was a wound in her mouth, and not a product of internal bleeding.
A cold nausea gripped me in the guts concurrent with a crackling rage welling up behind my eyes.
"TALK!" Screamed the Kokiri again, and in a crowning horror lashed out with a sharp knife-it could have been a razorblade-across her right cheek. Left behind was a bloody gash disfiguring her cheek and upper lip.
All rational thought left me and the red mist came down. Even though I'm sure I had been expecting to find Zelda in pain, seeing the scene before me brushed past my expectations and cast off all my own pain and weariness in a tidal wave of fury.
I leapt across the room in a single bound and grasped the wrist of the Kokiri holding the knife. He shouted in pain and surprise when I crushed his slim wrist, making him drop the razor. Then my foot came down hard on the back of his calf to crush his leg and bring him to one knee. I was on the verge of completing the takedown and nearly followed through with catching his head and snapping his neck. Instead I kicked him to the side. His crushed shin would keep him busy while I did what needed to be done.
Zelda was silent. She hadn't made a noise even when the blade cut across her beatific face, even when I shouted, even at the sounds of violence. I picked the knife off of the floor and used it to cut the leather thongs around her wrists. But rather than letting her hands fall from above her head, I supported them where they had been.
"I've got to lower your arms slowly," I said as calmly and reassuringly as I could. "If I let them down too fast the pain will be even worse as your circulation returns."
Zelda lifted her blindfolded head up towards the source of my voice, but still she didn't speak.
"Zelda...Princess..." I said nervously and pleadingly. Her only reply was a pathetic sputtering cough that served to clear her mouth of blood.
Keeping her arms stable with one hand I yanked off the blindfold with the other. Her eyes were closed and damp with moisture welling up from beneath the lids. For a moment she hesitated to open them. At first her eyes were glazed with blindness and pain but they slowly regained their lucid quality. Her blood-smeared lips croaked my name.
"Shhh, you're okay." I held her trembling hands with both of my own and gradually let them rest in her lap. She was shaking badly as I tried to take stock of her injuries and their severity.
I could only peripherally hear the conversation between Saria and the male Kokiri torturer.
"B-Boss!" He gasped, clutching his battered leg. "What the hell is the other one doing free?"
Saria did not answer so he nervously continued. "I thought by the second round this one would be ready to talk. But I still haven't gotten a word out of..."
"Get. Out." Saria said each word distinctly and with equal coldness. "Get the doctors." She spoke with a slow and repressed tone.
"As-as you wish, uh..." The male Kokiri trailed off and staggered out the door.
Zelda slumped forward into my waiting arms, still shaking like a leaf. She acted like she was too weak to take any action but speak and I was amazed she could do even that.
"Didn't tell..." she moaned. Her face was pressed on my bare chest. "Not...a word."
I stroked her hair reassuringly and then took a look at the blindfold. It looked clean, so with one hand I held the back of her head and with the other I pressed the strip of cloth onto her face, where the torturer's knife had slashed her. She whimpered at the firmness with which I held it in place. When blood soaked through and moistened my palm, I folded the cloth over and reapplied it.
It was then that I caught a glimpse, beyond Zelda back in the doorway that had brought us here, of Saria. She was standing like a pillar of regret looking not at me or at Zelda but at both of us, at the spectacle. Her cheeks were stained with dried-up tears but no more were forthcoming from her wide, pale, haunted eyes. All three of us had no more tears to shed.
Eventually Saria took a few, hesitant steps towards us but she could do nothing else nor say anything to either of us. I looked at her emotionlessly. At that moment I didn't hate her or pity her or wish she was gone.
"L...k..." Zelda sputtered. Between the blood and the muffling of the rag I could barely hear her. She looked up, straight at Saria, so suddenly I nearly lost my grip on the makeshift bandage. Zelda spoke to her and said only this.
"...why?"
With the cloth and my hand covering the right half of Zelda's face, I turned to look at Saria as well. There was a look of poignant despair there that rent my heart to see, and I realized that now we were a grim pair with whose faces bore mirrored calamities-the eyepatch hid the mark of my agony and the tattered cloth hid Zelda's.
"Don't try to talk. Just nod your head a little if this cut is the worst of what's wrong with you."
She nodded ever so slightly. "Good, is the bleeding in your mouth..."
She stirred and twitched her arms, trying to get blood back in them, nursing them back to function. She murmured, "Bit m...lip."
"Okay, okay. Did he cut you anywhere else?" I could feel strength returning to her in my arms, and the twinge of panic crept out of my voice. "Just nod, don't move your lips or your face."
She gently shook her head no. "You'll be all right. There are doctors coming. Your wounds aren't fatal by themselves." I tried to be reassuring but I felt as though I were only trying to reassure myself. "Is there anything else that's the matter, are you sick, sleep derived, thirsty..."
"Link, give her a moment. Rest." Saria's voice broke into my mind with startling presence, considering she had only spoken in a hollow flat tone.
"Drug..." Zelda mumbled. She was being careful to keep her face, and especially her lips, still. Good girl.
"What..." I began.
"He would have used a powdered herbal mixture, a sedative. It's worn off by now, it's harmless." Saria said.
I sat in silence a moment more. Then the clamor of many approaching Kokiri grew in the distance. At least six Kokiri arrived including some of the medics that had treated me earlier.
"We're here, can't have them dying before we get some ans-" came the voice that emerged from down the hall. It was the same orange-haired girl who had saved me from frostbite.
"YOU?" she cried out as she saw me.
"Tend to them, NOW!" Saria shouted with a pitch wavering on hysteria.
Medics came in and examined each of us. I let them separate Zelda and I, but Zelda clung to me when they did so. I squeezed her hand and she let go gradually.
"They're..." The orange-haired one hesitated at the prospect of re-healing me. Perhaps the irony was too strong for her.
"What." Saria's reply was barely inflected as a question as she watched the doctors attend to Zelda, applying salves and bandages to her whip-scarred form.
"Well, they're fine," the orange-haired medic said.
"They've been tortured," Saria snapped. "Ease their pain."
"I thought she'd be bleeding out because Rynoff screwed up. We patch them up when a round of torture fails but t...They can endure more, is my point. We don't need to administer..."
"Seeliya!" Saria barked. "They are NOT being tortured ever again. Fix. THEM. NOW!"
Seeliya, the orange haired medic, gave Saria a hard look and left to prepare bandages for Zelda. "That guy broke Rynoff's leg," she muttered. I felt guilty about that, realizing I had applied the sort of force I would have used on a fully grown human man.
"See to him when you're done here."
The doctors looked me over and assessed the beating Saria had given me. A mass of bruises but nothing more was my diagnosis, aside from a few cuts where the riding crop had bit deep. I waved them off. "Save it. Save it for her."
One of the healers, the one now holding the blindfold-bandage in place, reached into a bag with his other hand and pulled out moving things. They were small, black and scuttling. Eventually I worked out that they were large ants. They had huge, oversized heads with even larger, twitching jaws. I watched in confusion as he grasped the squirming insect by the head, taking care to not let the thing's jaws latch on to his thumb. He brought the insect to Zelda's face and removed the cloth.
The knife wound on her cheek and lip was clean, but deep. The medico pinched the gash tightly shut with one hand and thrust the ant's mandibles onto the wound. Zelda displayed great resilience and barely twitched as the creature bit down frantically with great force, pinching the wound shut.
Dextrously the medic pinched the creature's body and twisted it off. In the grip of death its head and jaws remained locked onto Zelda's skin. In quick succession the medic applied three more ants to the cut. By the time he was done the wound was barely bleeding and held firmly shut. All the while other doctors had been patching her up elsewhere.
Over the ant-head sutures the doctor placed a bandage around Zelda's face. The part of the bandage that touched the wound had been treated with green gel made from medicinal plants. He used strips of linen to hold the medicated bandage in place on her cheek, skillfully putting the strips over and under Zelda's eyes to avoid obscuring her vision.
I was engrossed in watching them work. Primarily out of concern for Zelda, but also in curiosity at the Kokiri medical techniques. Some of what I noticed the medics doing was basic first aid, and some of their techniques were old Kokiri tricks I was familiar with from childhood, but most of their repertoire was unfamiliar to me. Presumably I was witnessing medical techniques newly developed in the crucible of the Gerudo war. Their skill was easily a match for that of the Gorons who had hospitalled me after the battle of Death Mountain.
Saria interrupted my observation. She was at my side but she had been acting as though she was afraid to touch me, to even look at me. But she needed to speak to me.
"I finally understand," she said morosely.
"I don't hate you. You're no monster." I looked over to her, then back to Zelda. "You did what you had to."
"I finally understand why you left," she said, as though she had not heard me respond.
"What?"
"It was her. She's why you left."
I didn't know precisely what she meant. She wasn't wrong, but I suspected she was not interpreting the true complexity of the situation.
Saria put her hand gently on my hip in a gesture of compassion. "That's who those letters were from."
"Yes."
"You ran away to marry her. I can't believe I didn't understand that until now." The satisfaction of her falsely revelatory moment seemed to be brightening her mood and I did not want to correct her.
Saria noticed my silence, looked to me to respond, then spoke questioningly, "Am I right?"
"I did leave because of her. But she isn't my wife." I had to to tell Saria the truth, or at least, as much of the truth as needed immediate telling. Goddesses willing her true enlightenment would come in time.
She didn't look at all crestfallen, as I feared she might have. "Well, when I said 'wife'...You don't have to have to grovel before a judge of the Crown or seek the blessing of the Goddesses. That's not what makes a wife, that's not what's important. What matters is that you went to her. That you're together."
"That's true, Saria." I looked at her. I couldn't smile, although I wanted to, but I couldn't. Not in the torture chamber. But I nodded to her.
Her eyes narrowed, though. "Is that the whole story?"
There was no hiding anything from my only childhood friend. She always could read me like no other. Even if I were capable of lying to her she could tell that simple elopement wouldn't explain why I did what I did. "No."
"Don't tell me now."
The doctors were nearly done. "She's all right," said the ant doctor. "She was in shock from the treatment she'd endured but physically she's all there. She can stand." Zelda was indeed on her feet. The medics had tied some of their linen around her chest and waist for modesty, not that Zelda was or is in general uncomfortable about her body. I went to her, took her hands, but she did not need my support, though she held me nonetheless.
"Link..." she spoke haltingly around her bandages. "Is that-"
"Yes. That's Saria."
"You said...her hair was green." Zelda looked rather downcast. I couldn't help but feel the same dejection. Saria had changed with the forest.
Strangely, Saria smiled. Perhaps the reminder of her past was welcome and not painful. "It was. Back when he was sending you those letters. It..." She looked into the middle distance in reminiscence of those better days. "The green will come back someday."
Saria approached Zelda and shook her hand. Zelda bent down courteously to accommodate Saria's height. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you, my name is..." She hesitated, then went on: "In his letters Link must have told you I am Saria. But I abandoned that name when the Gerudo struck. It was too dangerous for me to hold on to that identity in public view."
She looked at the medics with some nervousness. They weren't eavesdropping, just talking softly to each other about medical matters. Even so Saria lowered her voice.
"The situation here is complex. I am not the only one here who could claim leadership over the stronghold. The power structure you knew is gone, Link. So few of the Kokiri you knew survived. Those few who did are the only ones who might recognize the name Saria, and I've kept close tabs on them. Some of them actually think I'm dead."
Saria wiped her face with her sleeves. "This bastion is composed mostly of Kokiri from other parts of the forest. You wouldn't know them. Not all of them accept my voice as the voice that speaks for us all." She looked at us sadly. "Not all here will accept you."
I had nothing to say, so Saria offered, "We should go to my chambers to commiserate."
"Agreed," I said. Zelda nodded her agreement. The three of us set off at a generously slow pace. For me the torture had been nothing-the wounds would quickly heal, and I deal easily with temporal pain by recalling the agony of lava smeared across my flesh, Skulltulas eating me alive, or any of the other disasters that had befallen me in my life of adventure. For Zelda, however, the experience had been-must have been-shattering. She was having trouble keeping up at anything but a slow pace.
Saria asked her, "I think Link mentioned your name in passing...but it has escaped me, madam."
Zelda's lip twitched in a brief smile but her wound prohibited a true gesture of friendliness. "I'm Zelda."
"Zelda..." Saria repeated. I was not sure what she might have been contemplating.
We reached a large courtyard, open to the slate-gray sky, and crossed it. "Over there is our greenhouse, behind the double doors. You can visit there soon, it will help you recover.
"What's a greenhouse?" I asked. Zelda made a noise as though she could explain, being a woman of exceptional wisdom. Saria of course could as well but she waved Zelda off. "It's easiest to just show. But it's busy right now with gardeners so I will give you the tour later. For now, we'll talk in private."
Saria approached a statue. In a macabre twist a stone copy of a Deku Baba loomed from the snowy ground. Why a sculpture of one of those horrid things was here eluded me, unless perhaps a live one had somehow here been petrified. Saria reached into its mouth and pushed a tooth.
What had looked like a snow-filled empty fountain bed to our left rumbled. The floor of the fountain dropped concentrically in lockstep to form a spiral staircase down to a secret door. Saria led us there and, after climbing a ladder down a central shaft, we were in her study.
Once we were all in, the door closed and more rumbling told us that the stairs were retracting. "There are many secrets in this place," Saria said. "This is the one I'm taking advantage of."
The chamber was full of shelves of books, writing desks and chairs, a cupboard and some dishes, all sized for Kokiri. But the room itself was not sized for one of Kokiri stature, being as it was a room in the ancient Forest Temple. Zelda and I had plenty of room here, with the ceiling several inches above my head. Neither of us could easily use her writing desk or sleep in the Kokiri-sized bed in the corner of the room, however.
"You two are free to come and go as you please, but it may not be safe. Here is the safest place I can offer you," she said with an apologetic tone.
"How not safe?" I asked.
"Let's not get into that now. Link, you have to tell me...everything, what's happened in these seven years to you. I..."
"You've every right," I answered her. "I can start at the very beginning..."
"No, first tell me...Zelda is not a common name. I can think of only one woman of note with that name. That being the infamous Princess who-"
"-disappeared," said the Princess in question, "along with a mysterious assassin and kidnapper, the day that the Gerudo emissary was slain, seven years ago."
A cold silence fell as both Saria and I looked at the other woman in the room. In my mind Zelda's tone had not betrayed the truth. She had delivered the conclusion to Saria's speculation with the tone of a report, and not a confession.
"Yes, that's right," Saria said. I was not sure but I thought suspicion might have been lurking on the fringe of her words. "It is an uncommon name but then again, mothers across the kingdom might well name their baby daughters after a princess. But Link...on the very day you left to meet this woman, the Zelda that you knew through letters..."
"Yes," I said heavily. "The same day I left you, the Gerudo leader was stabbed in the back. The Gerudo were thrown into chaos from which arose Verletz the Archon, who would not allow the insult to go unpunished. And from that day's events sprang the whole of the present state of war and ruin."
Saria had seated us on cushions in the round in a sort of small shallow circular pit, which made a nice sort of den in the center of the chamber. Zelda was lying propped up on many cushions, relaxing. She seemed weak and exhausted, but clearly the restful arrangement was doing her good.
"Both of you know your history," Saria said.
"Yes," said Zelda with tremendous weariness and just a bit sardonically, "Our history."
Saria did not fail to pick up on her implication. "What are you..."
"Saria," I said. She looked at me. "I had to leave you that day because this woman, Zelda, sent me a letter. She asked me to come and I knew it was the right thing to do. Zelda is the Princess of Hyrule."
"Yes, she was, but-" Saria was saying, when realization dawned. "No."
"I am the one who went to the castle, Saria. I killed Ganondorf."
Saria's face went blank with shock staring at me.
"I killed him and I escaped, but Zelda followed me. She came with me."
Zelda put a hand atop mine and murmured, "You came with me. We went, together."
Saria's lips parted slowly. "What." As it was when she said it to Seeliya, she spoke the word not as a question. This time it was a statement of dull disbelief.
"Have you heard..." Zelda said, raising her arm. "Of the Triforce? The mark upon the back of the hand..."
"The Princess was born with it," Saria said. "They said it was a mark of wisdom." As Zelda raised her hand, the faint mark was visible in the soft lamplight.
"By the spirits." Saria drew back, the proof there. "You...are truly Princess Zelda. Who was lost seven years ago."
"And I'm the man who took her away."
Saria sat silently for a while, taking it all in. Surprisingly, she addressed Zelda, not me. Anger was seeping into her voice as shock wore off. "Why did you summon him to assassinate your Gerudo rival? Why...why him? He was a child in the forest, it's nonsensical."
"Saria, I can explain..." I tried to intervene.
"NO!" Saria yelped. She had abruptly begun to percieve a threat. "I'm talking to this so-called Princess of Hyrule. She's accountable for..." Saria paused. Zelda was too worn out to do more than raise her head. She was resting feebly on the pillows and Saria was drawing closer, aggressively.
"...She took you away! WHY? Why'd you want Ganondorf dead, why did you manipulate Link into being your hitman?! You were colluding the whole time. All those letters..." I was afraid at this point she was going to physically threaten Zelda.
"Saria please!" I tried to grasp her by the shoulders but she whipped her head around and shot me a look of supreme, frigid resentment. The wildness in her cold blue eyes was terrifying to me knowing that they belonged to the warm and vibrant friend of my youth. It shook me and I backed off.
"I get the sense you've read the letters I wrote to him," Zelda said by way of answer.
"I left them behind," I followed up. "Not in plain sight, but not hidden either."
The sudden look of guilt that tempered the anger on Saria's face answered Zelda's question. She murmured sadly, "I just wanted to know..."
"...the truth," Zelda finished. "Of course. I'm sure Link doesn't begrudge you your curiosity."
I nodded.
"The truth you seek," Zelda went on, "is that I turned to Link because no one else could possibly help me. But since you have read my missives, and my last missive, you know that I only summoned him. Link did what he had to, I did not make him do it. I didn't put the blade in his hand."
Saria turned to me, becoming riled up again. "Is...that...true?"
"Yes," I said firmly. "Zelda warned me of what would happen if I went through with it, but I did it anyway. I asked her to stay behind. She chose not to."
Saria shook her head, trying to understand it all. "Why in the name of all Hyrule would the Princess collude with a fairy child to murder the Gerudo ambassador and start a ruinous war?"
I offered my hand to Saria rather than trying to touch her again. Hesitantly, she put her much smaller hand in mine.
I said to her, "I want you to try and keep an open mind about what I, we, are telling you, what we're going to tell you. I'm your childhood friend and I want to try and impress on you that I'm not insane or being manipulated by Zelda or anyone else. She's the Princess, she too is sane and trustworthy."
"Link our relationship is worth a lot, but you have to admit that murdering the Gerudo made you look crazy," Saria said, flustered.
"I did it because of what had happened before I left. The full story."
"I know what you WERE doing, I want to hear about what happened AFTER you left," Saria complained. "It's been seven years..."
"That's the thing," Zelda said. "We weren't exactly continuously on the run for seven years. In fact there's no story to tell there."
"What do you-"
"Let me explain from the beginning," I offered, "and then you might understand why my sanity warning was justified. There's a legend in Hyrule that speaks of an evil so great that it transcends time, and a hero for all time that must rise to keep this evil in check."
"I'm not familiar with many Hyrulian legends," Saria mentioned.
"That's all right, just remember that this legend has very serious implications. This Hero of Time is fated to fight the great recurrent evil for control of the greatest prize, the Triforce."
"The Triforce?" Saria queried. "I have heard of that. And the three Goddesses it symbolizes."
"Like the mark on my hand," Zelda added.
"So what does this hero have to do with your childhood in Kokiri?"
"Saria, please believe me when I say that-" I started.
"He is that hero. Link is the Hero of Time," Zelda said for me, bluntly. Her saying it was perhaps better than me.
"What do you mean? Legends are just legends."
"No, legends are my life. Think back to the day I left. Imagine that instead of leaving as I did, the circumstances had been somewhat different. I still left, but it wasn't as abrupt."
"Okay. But you didn't..."
"I did. From that departure I embarked on an entirely different adventure from what I have endured now. I crossed all over Hyrule and eventually crossed time, growing seven years older in a sort of stasis."
"What? This was after you killed the Gerudo with the Princess?"
"No, before. Well, sort of before. After. Look..." It was so hard to explain my double life, my return to the past. "Imagine that on the day I departed I were to have a daydream, about departing. In that daydream, the Gerudo lord, Ganondorf, was scheming to overthrow the rule of law and fill the land with monstrous darkness. Princess Zelda reached out to me to help stop his evil ambition. I had a grand adventure and grew to adulthood, passing great trials."
"You met Zelda...in a daydream?"
I looked at Zelda and she smiled. "It might as well be a daydream now."
"I met Zelda again after the final battle," I continued. "By the time our war was won I was a grown man, sculpted by hardship. She offered me innocence. She sent us both back in time, with memories intact. We went back to our childhoods and began again, carrying the secret of that alternate, potential history of Hyrule away with us and undoing it. It's as if the daydream ended, and I picked up with my life's true story."
"Link..." Saria looked very skeptical. "You and the Princess both had some kind of hallucination...together? You lived a vicarious lifetime in which you met, conveniently ending with you being sent back to he beginning, then woke up unchanged but still somehow connected?"
"That's why we were corresponding. I believe that I truly did experience my first quest. That it is the true narrative of my life, that it adds to my mental age and the age of my soul, even if my body became that of a child once more and cannot remember by itself. I remember it as clearly and chronologically as all my other experiences, just like you or I remember yesterday and the day before. Time travel is difficult for us to reconcile."
"The Hero of Time..." Saria said. Her look of skepticism softened. "You always were special."
"He is," Zelda said.
"Zelda used the limitless power of the Triforce to send us back to childhood. She sent me back home to you."
Saria looked from me to Zelda, her body language making her gratitude evident.
"But as I said, it was back in time. Back up the river," I went on. "And if you go back upriver, the river still flows. It will still carry you inexorably back to where you wanted to escape from, if you don't change your course."
"Are you saying..." Saria began. "I...I don't understand."
"The same series of events that led to the disaster began anew, the same warning signs that once failed to warn us in time. We thought that Ganondorf had been sealed away forever. But he rose again. We had reversed time but it was playing out again, unchanged, the wicked man we had sealed away now unsealed. I could not let it happen: I couldn't make the same mistakes again, I couldn't let the tragedy play out the same way."
Saria was deep in thought. I continued, "The first time through, when events were playing out, I did not slay Ganondorf while he knelt before the King. Only a pane of colored glass stood between us, and he lived, to commit deeds of the blackest evil and ruin the land. So when he threatened the world again, I did not take that chance. I killed him in cold blood."
"You...Ganondorf was an evil mastermind?" Saria said quizzically. We both nodded. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. Here in this...timeline...he's a martyr. Your unprovoked attack was impossible for Hyrule to explain. The security breach was unforgivable. And the Princess's disappearance further threw the court into chaos."
"You must believe us," Zelda said. "Ganondorf is a monster the likes of which the world has never seen. Not even Verletz's sorcerous power is equal to his destructive capability. The world now, riven as it is by war, is still not as devastated as it had been when Ganondorf ruled it from his dark throne."
"This alternate future, this Ganondorf doomsday..." Saria mused.
"That's how I became the Hero of Time. That doomsday came to pass."
"Alright, so after this first quest you had to act to prevent it happening again. You and the Princess fled. But you said seven years passed uneventfully. How is that possible?"
I looked to Zelda, with her erudition and (I must admit) greater eloquence, to answer and she obliged. "At the holy Temple of Time, behind a Door guarded by three Spiritual Stones, is the pedestal in whose slot rests the sacred Master Sword, the Blade of Evil's Bane. It is forged for the Hero of Time and none other, a blade of light to cut down the darkness." As Zelda spoke these words I drew the blade from its scabbard with a sustained metallic scraping sound. Its blue-gray steel, still chill from the cold of the outside air, shimmered in the soft candlelight. I held it near Saria hilt-first.
"That sword..." Saria was genuinely impressed. "The workmanship, the details in the hilt and the pommel, the engravings on the blade, its edge...its caftsmanship's incredible. Superhuman."
"Does it help you to believe our story?" I asked hopefully.
"Well, maybe parts of your story," she answered, "What about the sword and the pedestal?"
"The sword is a key and the pedestal is a lock," spoke Zelda. "They unlock a conduit."
"To where?"
"To when," I said. "It took me seven years into the future. As it had before, in my first quest. That's how I survived unscathed when the world was plunged into Ganondorf's mad dystopia. But then for the second pass, that is how the princess and I escaped detection for seven years."
"Wait. Wait." Saria simply thought quietly for a moment and her confusion was understandable. "You're saying that for seven years you were hiding in some kind of temple?"
"Yes," Zelda said, quickly. I got the sense that she wanted to preempt me trying to explain anything further or in more detail. Whether it was a security concern of hers, or whether she simply thought Saria's brain could use a rest, I'm not sure.
We sat quietly for about a minute before Saria spoke again. "All right. So when did you come out of hiding?"
"A few months ago. Half a year maybe," I replied. I honestly couldn't remember with more precision.
"That would have been..." Saria paused to think. "Just a bit before the Battle of Death Mountain. Is that right?" I nodded.
Saria approached me. "Link, I want to hear all the details of what you've been doing since you emerged from hiding. But first..." I was seated and so my face was on her shoulder level; she put one of her hands on my left cheek, her fingers just below the bottom of my eyepatch. "I have to know how...this happened."
I blinked. "Oh." Strange as it seems I had nearly forgotten about the missing eye. "You mentioned the Battle of Death Mountain, you recall?"
Saira looked flabbergasted. "You don't mean..."
"We were there, fighting," Zelda said. "He was hit by an arrow. By the grace of the Goddesses he lived, but..."
"...No..." Saria was dumbfounded. She shook her head. "You fought alongside the Princess of Hyrule in a pitched battle against the Gerudo on the slopes of Death Mountain. And you lost an eye to an arrow."
"Yes," I said. "Bombs, swords, maces, exploding Dodongos."
Saria's mouth hung agape and there was really nothing more to say. Eventually she went on, "I know how horrible it was, we were there."
"You mean Sylvan Liberators?" I asked. "There were a smattering of men dressed in the same type of clothes that people say they wear. Archers, rangers, scouts mostly."
"There were some of the humans who claim to be Liberators there," Saria said. "But I meant us, the Kokiri. The real Sylvan Liberators."
"Real?" I repeated.
"Yes, real. I don't know what your dealings with them have been...how much you know...I will have to explain things in greater detail later. First though, bring me up to the present. You actually fought alongside the Gorons? As an auxiliary?"
Zelda interrupted. "Hold on, explain in what capacity the actual Kokiri participated in the battle."
"Didn't the Gorons have detailed knowledge of how many Gerudo were encamped there, how prepared they were, when their patrols came and went?" Saria reeled off with a gleam in her eye. "That was me, and mine. The best the Kokiri have to offer." Her pride was obvious.
"I see," I said to her.
"If you're looking for more grisly details, we were knives out during the siege itself."
"You personally were at that battle?!" I exclaimed.
"No, no, by that point I had to withdraw for security. My operatives remained. Not all of them came back."
"We never saw..." Zelda began.
Saria looked at her hard and steady. "Of course not." She left it at that and said to me, "Continue, you were Goron auxiliaries..."
"We'd gotten in good with a Goron lieutenant," I explained. "We had sought shelter among their kind and then the Gerudo provoked the battle. We had to fight, there was no choice."
"I see. But Link, only weeks later there was a terrible catastrophe..."
"The earthquake, Verletz's doing, and the dragon," Zelda said. "Volvagia. A monster from the past. In fact, it was a monster than Link had faced before, in our first quest. The Gerudo summoned it, woke it up."
"What?" exclaimed Saria. "I thought the dragon was a guardian of the mountain. The Geurdo claimed that the Gorons awakened it recklessly."
"And you believed them?" asked Zelda.
"Of course I didn't believe Gerudo high command, but that's just what they said." Saria started suddenly as though she had made a revelation. "Then...wait. My scouts reported that three people-a Goron and two Hylians..."
"That was us," I said. "And the lieutenant."
"YOU fought and slew the dragon Volvagia?" asked Saria incredulously.
"Yes."
"Your story is more and more incredible by the moment," she said. "Next you'll tell me that..."
"...We traveled from the battleground where Volvagia fell directly to the besieged city of Kakariko, where we infiltrated the blockade and assisted in repelling the Gerudo assault that took place days later?" Zelda said, with the small snort of a repressed giggle at the end. It did sound pretty hilariously improbable.
"You..." Saria looked at our faces. It was clear Zelda had giggled at the outrageousness of the truth, and not because of deception. "You're serious. Weeks after losing your eye to the Gerudo and then slaying a monster of legend, you survived a city assault in which the dead rose from their graves?!" she shrieked.
"I have had quite the life," I said blithely.