A cold wind blows through the green forest as ghostly tendrils of white fog course and clutch about the bases of long and thin stately trunks. The day grows old over this part of Hyrule and the skies overhead thicken into gray soup as the bright light of the sun struggles to shine through, leaving the world under it in a dark and dank shadow-filled time. Drops of dew quiver on the tips of green needles and drop down on broad leafs, a prophetic message of the downpour soon to come. Electricity tingles along the spine and were a nose lifted to the scent, a charged, powerfully burnt smell would pervade.

Through it all and over the tops of the trees a blue jay soars for the very vaults of heaven, trying with all the might of its tiny wings to pierce the gray clouds and reach the peace of blue upon blue. But the beak of the poor bird barely scrapes the clouds before the winds tear it down, and like the men who fail in the act of achieving their dreams, spirals down and down towards the forest canopy. Its wings flap and the brave bird crashes through several layers of thick branches and nearly ruinous sharp needles. It alights raggedly upon the lowest branch 15 feet above a ring of armored women who stand solid and unmoving over a kneeling figure in the center. All is quiet and low fingers of mist curl about the women`s ankles and nearly obscure the body of the kneeling man so that only his head, bowed as it is, seems to float freely.

The ring of women suddenly tightens by one step, each one raising a dull, silver blade in unison. Another step and the circle of points grow tighter. The man, his hands bound together at his back, jerks once, the barest of twitches for his sword which lies still sheathed at his back. A twitch but the women as one jump back as if fearing the worst. All is still again and in the silence the blue jay sings, giving voice to its frustration at flying so close to the sun yet seeing so little. All the women, even the captive turn an eye upwards towards the intrusion of so sweet a voice.

But it is the distraction of a moment and the leader, a grizzled woman with a scar crescenting her eye sneers and steps forward first, bringing her sharp sword up. The sudden movement catches the eye of the bird and it flings itself up, threading through the eye of the forest to try again to soar higher than its nature. The bird`s departure shakes the branch directly overhead the tense scene and its vibration lets loose a single drop of water which plunges downward towards the captive man.

To Link, with his hands bound and about to die, the dew drop seems to hang for an eternity and in that moment a great hollow bell rings out of the forest and echoes in his ear. It slices through his mind and wakes him to the moment of action.

He breaks his bonds to grab and draw his sword, flicking the falling drop with the tip and sending the drop of water into the leader`s eye. The women struggles back, more surprised than blinded. Her reaction gives her the honor of being the last to die. With his sword out Link continues forward with the draw, slicing through the neck of one woman, arm still raised to slash down. He pivots on one foot as another follows, the slash of the second falling short as Link`s blade catches the underside of her jaw. Three left, and Link lets out a yell that freezes them in their tracks. He stands up from a crouch and starts to move his sword in a small circle. His sword catches the first charge high and steps forward into a neck thrust. He bangs the second low to the left and cuts high to cleave the woman in two. The leader, the last, is blocked with such strength that it leaves her sword shattered. Before she can react Link pivots a full turn and cuts clearly from armpit to armpit. The woman, so eager to kill and so quick to die slumps to the misty ground, displacing the white fog only for a moment, the next covered again leaving only the purity of haunting mists to swirl about Link. He heaves and breathes, and a drop of blood plunges from the tip of his sword into the pool of white. Seeing no more movement he plunges his sword into the ground, rummages around for his pack and straps everything on again. He grabs the hilt of his sword as he strides from the bloody scene, entering the dank of the forest again and closer towards the loneliest place a man can know: childhood haunts turned sinister in the years of adulthood.

The maw that flicks with the fireflies of cursed people and the moans of trapped spirits; that is Link`s goal. Once nothing more than a single green seed growing between the fingers of a small child rocked with grief. It grew and grew, sticking it`s great crown above its lesser children. When Gannon turned his eye and roving hand upon the beautiful land, the great Deku Tree retreated deep within itself, pulling and protecting certain creatures and animals. Over the years the great darkness raged around the tree, infecting the land and forcing the Deku to become a bastion of good, a temple of the forest. The rumors of the wild children, mad howls at night, told of an elegant melody that came out of the tree in the deepest of the darkest nights. This maw, this wooded castle of the forest is Link`s destination and before the mists swallow him up again a slight glow of some kind from a jar hanging at his waist can be seen. Now there is nothing, only the swirling dragons of mists and fog that chase each around in the silent dreams of the forest.

…..

On an ash-covered ridge in the Hyrule forest; on a day when the sky wars with itself, knife cuts in the clouds sending shafts of illuminated gold down on the landscape, Sheik sits, gazing out at the land that was once so beautiful. When small breezes chance to blow around her they send swirls of ash into the air. "Like falling snow" she thinks sadly as the bits of gray drift down on the white and blue leather of her outfit. It leaves smudges between her fingers as she catches them and she tries to imagine snowflakes in their cold symmetry.

But ash is ash and is nothing but the reminder of what once was and all thoughts of winter weather, white and pure, dissolve at the sight before her. Sheik once heard the tales of these forests, some from short conversations with Link. Whole, unbroken stretches of forests used to cover this land and beneath their canopies lived many happy natives of the trees.

When she thinks upon the time before she was Sheik, though it is hard and slashed with painful streaks of red, certain memories of her father surface. He used to sit her on his lap in sun-drenched courtyards and tell her tales of the kingdom and the lands she would one day command. He would always say the Kokiri and their hidden vales and glades held the innocence of Hyrule.

"Daughter," he would tell her, looking down with the great weight of the crown upon his head, "as much as it is honorable and right to govern this kingdom it has its fair share of heavy responsibility. None of our ancestors have grown to love it so much that they delight in the power they wield. Sometimes the burden grows wearisome and that is when I wish I could be a faceless servant with no care for the thousands of souls living in this land. When that feeling comes I sometimes walk the forests to the West and see the innocence and the youthful joy in which the people live their lives there. And that, my dear sweet daughter, is why some of us must bear this heavy burden: so that others may live so free."

A hard conversation, lost on the young girl at the time, but which is all too sadly understood by Sheik as she gazes at the land below her. From the ridge the whole world could be ash. The mountains in the distance rise up, cradling this large valley, and where once an unbroken plain of tree tops blew in the breeze, now only twisting tornadoes of dust and ash blow across the barren land. Blackened and jagged poles jut above the plains of ash; here and there the skeletal remains of a canopy sticking up, like the hand of some buried body in the last moments before death, clawing upwards through soil towards the sky, in fear, grasping and twisting for life. In the middle of all this nothingness is a small patch of green; a circular bit of forests several miles wide. Rising from this oasis of green is a single large Deku tree. It towers above the rest and looks to be several times larger than the rumored Great Deku she had been told about. But that one had died and this new one had been nothing more than a seedling only seven years ago. "But that is where the last sage is," thinks Sheik and knows that she must reach the spot before Link.

But still she hesitates and thinks and these are the thoughts that travel through her mind:

"One flower. That is all there is in this waste, one yellow flower. Here things diverge and I can see myself leaving it be and this land remaining desolate and I see my body lying deep in a ditch under shovelfuls of ash. But were I to pick it, scattering the seeds to the wind, the visions then come to me of green grass and trees growing and these yellow flowers poking up everywhere. Oh, why does the future change so much on these little events? And it shifts so often! Every moment, every action the landscape of the future changes and I can only try to blindly thread my way through it all. Great mountains rise up and the earth drops away to deep crevasses and these are obstacles I cannot see past. How many times have I seen Link dead and myself a captive of Gannon? How many times equally have I seen my own death and nothing past that but blackness? Oh! Such knowledge is a curse! I must choose between a thousand paths, never knowing more than what lies before the horizon. I know I must reach the forest temple before Link, for my power shows him finding the sage if I do. But my future lies blurred in that direction. What does that mean?"

Her thoughts run in circles inside of circles and nothing is resolved, and she thinks bitterly of the saying her mentor once taught her, "To know one`s future brings uncertainty, for we ever rebel against destiny."

Finally Sheik rises and sets off at a trot towards the still living forest, but not before pausing to pluck the yellow flower and send it drifting off on the wind.

….

The sun grows brighter as gaps in the trees appear in the distance. Link`s senses, stretched already to the limit, grow harried as he tries to see past the green foliage out past where the trees end. The bare wind, trapped as it is by the close growing trunks, blows past his shoulder, bringing a touch of relief. Thirty feet from the edge of the forest he halts, sheathes his sword and eases the tension from his shoulders. "Fairly there," he thinks. Bits of gray begin to fill the air between the brown trunks, looking like dancing motes in the afternoon sun. Near the edge Link reaches up to grab one and his fingers come away sooty.

"Strange," he mutters and emerges into the open. It is blinding at first, the sun, but when his eyes clear he gasps and sinks to his knees.

….

Sheik pulls out her harp and runs lightly over the strings, watching them vibrate and hearing the notes echo out into the lonely clearing. She sits cross-legged on a narrow island of rock that juts out next to the great tree, dwarfed under the immense presence of its towering height; sitting and waiting for the man that must arrive.

A song appears out of the random plucking and soon the scene is filled with a melody of ascending notes that crescendo and waterfall down to skip lightly over the heart like the wind that touches upon a lake and leaves only ripples.

It is a song made in the solitary parts of the word, where she wondered sight out of mind, mourning her lost kingdom. Made during a time when the future looked bleak and she felt cut adrift from all that had meant something to her once. The misery and desperation of her heart had poured out into the strings of her harp and been transformed into this amazing song.

As she plays the harp the wrinkles around her mouth fade and the drifting paths of myriad futures are forgotten. She closes her eyes and loses her self to the rhythm of the song and the power that is and has always been comes forth. Hidden in each and every descendant of the royal line is the power to inspire; to truly transcend belief and inspire the best, the truth, the core of goodness that lies at the depths of the hearts of men and women. Few of the noble line ever needed it and fewer even ever discovered it. It manifests itself as a blazing harmony of music that reached the ears of its listeners and turned their thoughts and hearts upon the truth that exists within them. It can destroy those whose selves are built on lies or lift up the saddened soul whose doubts bury them under a mountain.

For Link, as he parts the boughs of a tree and emerges into the clearing, it is the clearest breath of air he has had since; and here he pauses trying to remember ever a time of such certainty and peace. There is only the dimmest of recollections of some far-off island and solitude so deep that all troubles fade at the touch it makes upon his mind. But he stops trying and stands in the small clearing, looking up at Sheik strumming and behind her, the massive trunk that is the Great Deku Tree. Small bugs flit about in the rays of the sun and beyond the music there is the deep silence that only a forest can afford.

The song ends, her eyes open and they lock gazes, and for the moment there is only the two of them. Then Link brushes away the hair from his eyes and smiles. Sheik returns it with a smile of her own so soft and bright with life that Link`s heart skips a beat at the memory of another who once smiled at him so.

"Hello Link. Good to see you again."

"Hello Sheik, it`s good to see a friendly face." But his face hardens again and he asks her with a passionless voice, "Are you to be the final sage?"

"No! I`m not ready to leave this world yet, but I believe you will find who you seek inside."

"Any news from our friends?"

"The resistance rejoices with every report of your success. They are few but our ranks swell every day. Even the Zora emerge from their frozen lakes to help us again."

"Success? It feels like I stumble from one scene of madness to the other, extinguishing life only to do so again and again. Can you tell me Sheik, what good am I doing? I used to believe, used to struggle for something. Her name was Zelda and she meant so much to so many people. But she is gone and I find my purpose weakening with every blow of my sword."

Sheik`s hand comes up, an involuntary act, to reach out to the wounded soul. But her hand, the one concealing the tattoo of their triforce, suddenly burns and she snatches back her hand. Link too suddenly gasps in pain as his tattoo flares with a golden brilliance.

Hahahahaahhaha," laughter rings around the open clearing, deep and rich with malevolent enjoyment. Link`s eyes go wide and he draws his sword, looking past the shoulder of Sheik. She turns and looming dark and large behind her is Gannon, in all his glory. His hair, a flaming orange and his grin, sharp and sadistic. And he chuckles through white teeth and looks down at the two figures with mad glee in his eyes. He raises his hand, the triforce of power so bright it leaves a trail of light in the eyes, and squeezes his hand into a fist, uttering only three words, ".Mine!"

A keening wail grows as if the voices of all Gannon`s victims screamed at once. It rises so loud that Sheik and Link both cover their ears in agony. But it stops and when it does the lights of the world go out. Not just dark or the blackness of night but the total smothering of all color. The voice of Gannon comes to Link, a whisper of death into his ear, "Now you die, boy!"

Link has faced death many times, but always with an adversary he could see and fight. This smothering blankness sinks him to his knees under the weight of despair, Gannon`s power bringing out all the doubts and self-hatreds that Link tried to keep down. He feels the grass under his fingers and thinks, "at least I die in the forest."

"Link!" Sheik`s voice cuts through the void. "Link!" But he doesn`t answer, only sinks slowly towards the ground.

The first notes are hopelessly lost in the blackness, but then they come again and again, growing stronger with every desperate strum. Eventually they grow into a melody that falls into Link`s ears like the soothing voice of his lost mother, and it beckons him back from the edge of death. The melody becomes a glorious song and suddenly Link can rise and suddenly his heart is filled with the desire to live and know a time of peace that is not corrupted by all that the man before him touches. The song abruptly ends and Link hears a frightened "No!" and that is enough. He thrusts a blazing hand forward, streaking the clearing with arcs of light and revealing Gannon holding Sheik in a tight grip.

"Let her go!" he yells and throws his sword through the air. It tumbles pommel over point and it pierces Gannon`s shoulder, throwing him back against the bank and into the shadows. There is a wordless howl of rage and the darkness around Gannon is suddenly gone as his fist glows with dripping flame. He casts the ball of fire towards Link, and it flies fast, leaving a streak of light and shadow in its wake. Link, his tattoo burning fiercely, grabs the first thing at his belt, and apologizing silently to Navi, swings the glass jar at the tumbling fireball. Fire and glass meet in a tremendous crash and, amazingly, the ball of tumbling flame is deflected. It flies back to strike a surprised Gannon full in the chest, sending him tumbling head over heels back into the shadows.

Light and color return to the world. Link springs forward to climb the bank and check on Sheik. He looser her to view as he starts to climb the rocky wall, but he soon reaches the lip and puts his hand over to pull himself up. "No," he whispers, for while his head is clear, he is still on the rock wall and can do nothing as Gannon strides towards a silent Sheik. He finally reaches his feet, but when he does it is too late. Gannon stands behind Sheik, large and fierce and mouth curled downwards in rage. Sheik only smiles sadly as she removes the wrapped headband she always wears. It comes undone in a second and as the white wrap falls away her blond hair tumbles down around her shoulders. Gannon scowls once more, narrowing his eyes and saying "Another time boy," and before Link can move a step, he wraps the woman in his cape and disappears.

Link stumbles, arm outstretched to where the two vanished, his face frozen in disbelief. In the quiet of the clearing one word escapes from his lips and that word is his hope both raised exceedingly high and dashed hopelessly low at once. And it escapes from his lips as he grasps at stalks of grass and falls to the ground staring up at the gray sky, "Zelda!"