Chapter Twenty-Two

Alone

I wind up in a forest up the mountain from Karkariko Village, past an odd, dark stone structure, seated on a fallen log beside the strangest and largest flower I've ever seen. Its petals are fat and orange amongst the green trees, and a massive bulb rises from the center of the ring, as well as the surrounding trees. The glade is calm, peaceful, filled with flowers, and I think I can hear soft singing emanating from the bulb.

I sigh. This whole Hero Chosen by the Gods thing is a rank deal. Every so often, on the whim of a goddess, or the fates, or whatever, two kids are consigned to a tremendous fate of blood and death and struggle—and we know they're kids, too; there's never been a Link who was over eighteen when they were "called up to duty."

Would I mind it so much if I'd had a choice? I've travelled to more places than I ever would have on my own—Lake Hylia and its sunken temple, the Gerudo Desert, the past; I've learned things about myself; I've maybe even fallen in love, but everything else—the monsters and the danger and the death—I was thrown into it without…

Except I did choose, didn't I? I didn't have to climb on that horse and chase after Tall Link and Sheik. I didn't have to spy on their meeting with Princess Zelda. I didn't have to train with my knives or travel to the lake or even make the jump to the desert. So yes. I chose this. And maybe it's time I chose again.

I stand up from my log, glad for the firm earth and grass beneath my feet rather than the ever shifting sand of the desert. My leg, wounded by a tiny skeleton and forgotten in the chaos of traveling through time, aches dully as I begin to move again, and I rub it through the fabric of my pants. There's a cliffside just past that odd old building near the village, so I head back that way, following the gently sloping path through the trees.

The slate on my hip hums as I pass the strange structure, but I ignore it, more intent on the cliff's edge and the sprawl of land beyond it. Excitement grows in my stomach—though maybe that's also the hunger—as I jog towards the edge.

"Sleepy Link!" Sheik shouts as I prepare to unfurl the paraglider, and I slow, stumbling, turning to see his head appear over the hill just behind me.

"I'm going," I say. "I don't care about screwing up the timeline. It's my choice."

"Sleepy Link," Sheik begins, no doubt prepped with some logical yet rousing speech, but I cut him off before he can get any further.

"See ya, Sheik." And I turn, run, and leap, the paraglider snapping open as it fills with wind. Then I'm soaring, flying, and Sheik's yelling something after me, but I can't hear it over the wind.

I carve an arc through the sky, hair fluttering about my ears, and I let out a whoop even as I refuse to look behind me at the spot where Sheik no doubt stands, staring out at me but unable to follow. I think I may need a bit of time alone—I feel like I've always just gone along with what everyone else says to do, even who they say I am. Ordon Village said I was sleepy, lazy, even, and Sheik and Tall Link, then Sheik and Tetra called all the shots while I agreed and followed along like a child on a lead rope.

I think I want to figure out how I'd do things on my own.

I touch down lightly, feet settling into the ground, a slight twinge in my left leg. There are two straps on the paraglider, one to tie the pieces together, and the other to sling the entire bundle over the shoulder, and I feel very adventurous once I've done that, with all the gear on my belt and the sun on my head. I feel like I can do anything.

It's then that I remember that I have no map, no supplies, and no idea of what's waiting for me in this unfamiliar and apocalyptic landscape.

But I shrug, and I start walking because there's a dirt path about two hundred yards to my left, and that will take me somewhere or to someone, and I need to put distance between myself and Kakariko Village. The paraglider may have taken me a long ways, but Sheik and Tetra will have horses. If I remember correctly, Hyrule Castle is east and a little north of Kakariko Village. The path takes me directly north, even as it meanders, if I'm rightly judging the position of the sun—and I could very easily be totally wrong about that.

I hum as I walk along, and my fingers take the Ocarina of Time from the cloth pouch that hangs from my belt and bumps lightly against my hip. I'm too nervous to play it, though—I don't want to wind up on the moon or in some new and even scarier time zone. I lightly thumb the holes, the melody playing in my head, something light and sprightly. It matches the sun-dappled landscape and the gently waving grass, broken by softened rock and the occasional thick-leafed tree.

Maybe apocalyptic is the wrong word. Apocalyptic implies torn ad savaged, burnt and broken, and maybe this world was like that once, but it's begun to heal now. Well, the landscape is, anyways; maybe not the people. I didn't see anyone from the air, and we hardly passed a soul on our carriage ride aside from the stable outpost and the village itself. Will we always be afraid of the dark? Will there always be something there, pushing us back to our rings of firelight each time we seek to step outside into the wide, old world? Was it even ours to begin with?

The road curves and dips, and I spot that poofy-haired man in the too-short shirt laboring up the shallow hill under the weight of his massive pack. I hail him, lifting one arm, and he jumps, almost tipping over, though once he regains his balance, his face breaks out in a wide, excited grin. He pulls out a board; suspended from his shoulders, it lies flat like a table, and claps his hands over it. "Hello! Welcome to Beedle's Traveling Shop! I haven't seen your face around here before. How are you? What can I do for you?" His voice is high and warbling, kind of like the beetle from which he probably takes his name.

"Hi," I say as I approach. "Do you have a map?"

"Yes, sir, I do." Without taking off his sack, or even seeming to rifle through any of the pouches on the outside, Beedle produces a roll of parchment tied with a leather thong. "Twenty-five rupees."

I have a pouch of money on my belt, but they're all future rupees, and again, I have to wonder if I'm about to cause some kind of weird inflation. But I have no other choice, so I fork over the colorful gems in exchange for the map. Beedle pushes a scrap of paper with a crude drawing of his face on it my way.

"Here's your Beedle Club Membership Card! Earn enough points to reach a Silver Membership, and you'll get great discounts! You currently have twenty-five points."

"Thanks," I say, and he toddles off, swaying under the weight of his pack.

I find a nice flat rock and unroll the map, weighing the corners down with small stones. The runes are archaic, like the signs Past Link uses, but I can still make them out. I locate Kakariko Village and Hyrule Castle in the very center of the country, surrounded by Castle Town. I'm not very good at reading maps, but I guess that I'm three days away, if I can find a horse. There are stables sprinkled around the countryside, and it looks like there's one I can reach by nightfall, on the other side of a river.

And so it's back to walking. There's a rhythm to it, one I fall into easily, and the land rolls by beneath my boots. The guilt creeps in then, just the tiniest smidge, now that there's nothing but the ceaseless steps to occupy my mind. Even if I need some time on my own, I still bailed on my friends, left them behind with nary a word for why or a simple goodbye.

Will they forgive me when I return? Or will I have broken something that can't be fixed?"

A man waits for me at the top of the next hill, as the sun begins to tip towards the horizon. He leans against a tree with a pack at his feet, dressed in sturdy traveling clothes—olive tunic, scuffed boots, though no weapons that I can see. He pushes off the tree trunk when I draw near, raising a hand to greet me, and practically bounds across the short space between us. His face is a little bland, but off in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It's something about the eyes—sunk a little too deep in their sockets, spaced just a bit too far apart, the color of the irises shifting in the sun too quickly to track.

"Hi, there!" the man cries in a voice that I immediately don't trust.

I pause, hoping he will, too, but he keeps moving towards me. "Hi."

"Say, friend, there's a face we haven't seen around these parts in a while." The stranger grins—the sort of grin that splits the face right in two, revealing too-white teeth, and I take a step back. He takes a step forward.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not from around here. You must be thinking of someone else."

One eye twitches. "You don't remember us? Oh, how that hurts my heart." The man speaks like someone out of a play—each word over enunciated, the consonants clipped, the vowels long. The grin grows sharper as he speaks, and he clenches one fist. "Well, I shall just have to remind you."

The man snaps his fingers, and a deep, purple smoke envelops him, a low hum making my ears ache. He leaps out of the smoke, flipping backwards and arcing through the air, and when he lands, he's dressed in a red and black version of the Sheikah's skin-tight suit, a white mask bearing an inverted Sheikah eye hiding his face, two curved blades in hand. He points one of the swords at my chest. "The boss will be so pleased if I take you out for good."

"Look, buddy, I don't know who—"

But it's too late. The stranger lunges towards me, moving so fast he leaves an afterimage of himself blurred into the air. One blade slashes at my face, and I yelp as I stagger back, feeling the wind of its passing on my nose. I draw my daggers as I struggle to regain my balance, barely raising one blade in time to block an oncoming sickle sword, though the stranger flicks his wrist, and suddenly, my knife is flying from my hand, spinning end over end until it buries itself in the earth.

I dive to the side, roll, hoping to gain a little breathing room, but the stranger is still at my back, hand on my shoulder as I finish the somersault, the curved blade cupping my throat, so I drive my head back into his stomach, hearing the air whoosh from his lungs. I hook my fingers around his wrist and shove it away from me, ducking and twisting, my dagger slashing towards ribs. I miss by an inch, and the stranger falls on top of me, crushing the air from my lungs, his white mask pushed up against my face, and I realize I can't hear him breathing. I'm rasping, panting, but the stranger hasn't made a whisper since he stopped talking. Except that now I can hear him giggle—a cold, wheezing sound that strikes my spine right in the sweet spot.

I headbutt him right in the mask. I immediately regret it. Pain explodes across my face—the white mask harder than expected—and colors wink and whirl across my vision. I close my eyes, since the dancing colors are just too distracting, and by feel alone, I turn my blade and slip it right between two ribs. The point parts flesh easier than I expect until it hits the heart with a squelch that makes me shiver. The stranger stiffens, shudders, and then collapses on top of me, a limp weight, like a sodden towel draped across the torso, slowly dampening my shirt.

I grunt, get both hands in place, and shove the body off me where it hits the ground with a thump. My dagger sticks straight out of his chest, though the red of his stealth suit hides the spreading pool of blood which also darkens my own breastplate and tunic.

I pull up a handful of grass and start trying to wipe the blood away as I regard the body. Wouldn't it be so much more convenient if these things just went up in a puff of smoke once you killed them? Instead, the body lies in the grass, just waiting for someone to come along and find it. I pull the mask off before I do anything else. Or I try. It refuses to come off—stuck to the face, fused, even, or perhaps it is his true face, the other, sharply grinning one just an illusion.

I free my knife and clean it off with another fistful of grass, and then I grab the corpse under the arms and drag it over to a thicket of bushes, tucking it deep inside. Perhaps the nighttime monsters will dispose of it for me. It's a nasty thought, and one I wish gave me greater pause. But if this stranger has a boss, then there are others like him, and I certainly don't want them finding out I killed one of their own, especially since they seem to know my face; that means they knew Past Link and certainly didn't like them.

As I retrieve my other knife, my hand begins to shake, the adrenaline draining from my system all at once. This is what the stories don't tell you. That after a battle, you have to keep moving, even though all you want to do is sit down and take a breather. My boots drag, but I get them moving, tracing the dirt path away from the body hidden in the bushes.

I reach the stable just as the sun begins to set, straining the horizon a deep, blood orange. A couple of kids run around the stacked crates and barrels, one chasing the other with a stick, and a fluffy, black and white dog bounds up to me, wagging her tail happily, so I give her a scratch behind the ear. I pay for one of the low beds, and it worries me that I feel guiltier about possibly causing inflation with my future money than I do about killing a man and leaving him in the bushes for the monsters to eat.

"Who are the people in the red and black outfits?" I ask the woman as she's putting my money away. "With the upside down Sheikah eye?"

She scowls. "The Yiga Clan."

"And they are?"

"Dissenters. They broke from the Sheikah, joined with Calamity Ganon. They mostly stay in their desert hideout, but they still like to come out and cause trouble from time to time."

"Dicks," I say, and the woman nods in agreement. "There any food I can buy?"

"There's some fruit in the barrels outside. Help yourself."

I thank her and snag a few apples for my dinner and settle onto my rented bed, laden belt piled on the floor in easy reach. I pick up the Sheikah slate while I crunch into the apple. It responds to my fingertip, flipping through pages that mostly seem to be non-functioning—covered in broken blue symbols.

Then pictures fill the screen. Most of them are landscapes—locations no doubt scattered across this olden Hyrule, but one pictograph stands out to me—the only one with people in it—all smashed together by the wide arms of a grinning Goron. I recognize myself in it—Past Link, really—clad in that blue Champion's tunic. Crammed right up next to them is a woman who can only be Princess Zelda. She has softer, rounder features and blonder hair than the Zelda I met, but there's something in the eyes that marks them as the same. A tall, muscled, red-haired woman grins behind her, beside a squawking, black-feathered bird person, a species I don't recognize, and by Past Link, a Zora almost falls out of the frame, her scales bright red, a glimmering net of silver and jewels hanging from her neck.

I smile and touch my fingers to the glass screen. They all look shocked, surprised, by the Goron's sudden bear hug and the sideways tumble into each other, but they are undeniably a unit. It's not just the matching light blue color that they wear. It's the way they touch, that shit-eating grin on the Goron's face, the laughter behind their eyes. What happened to these other four? Zelda is trapped in the castle, Past Link was in a coma, so does that leave the others somewhere worse?

Disconcerted, I set the slate down and try to go to sleep. Guilt tumbles over anxiety tumbles over guilt again as I wonder if I abandoned my friends, and if I'm protecting them or ultimately dooming them. I remind myself that I need some alone time, and that it's okay to want that, despite the wriggle of guilt in my stomach that won't go away.

In a few hours, I slip back into that black dreamscape. It's different every time. Tonight, cracks spiderweb through the ground, glowing grass pushing through the surrounding darkness, and each step I take sends specks like pollen wheeling through the air. "Zelda?" I call because I don't want to be alone in here, though I know that might also call whatever creepy crawly also lurks about in here.

"You need to stop coming here," Zelda whispers; she's just a disembodied voice.

"I'd love to, but I can't help it."

"No, I mean to Hyrule Castle."

"How'd did you know I was coming?" I kneel down to examine a ghostly dandelion, but I get a little too close, and it puffs pollen in my face, and I sneeze.

"You're a Link. Of course you're coming."

That's fair. Apparently, we're all idiots.

"Why shouldn't I come?" I sit down. It's weird talking to a disembodied voice.

"You'll never make it without the Master Sword. Calamity Ganon has too strong a hold on the castle."

That's just great. Another version of the Master Sword for me to lose to a great and powerful evil. "Where can I find it?"

"It was damaged when my Link…fell. I brought it back to the Lost Woods to the Great Deku Tree's care."

Well, it's good to know I'm not the only one who's broken a Master Sword.

"Will you be okay?" I ask.

"I've been okay this long. I'm sure I can manage a little longer."

Great. Now, if I can just wake up. That feels like a thing I should be able to do since it's not like I'm getting any rest wandering around this nowhere-scape all night. I slap myself once, twice, three times, but it does nothing but make my cheek sting. Weird that I can feel pain when I'm asleep.

This is not my dream. I don't think I can just take control and rip myself free. I prod one of the cracks in the black ground, waving the glowing pollen away from my face because who knows what that shit would do to me if I inhaled it, and I wonder what might happen if I peel back the skin of this world.

I don't want to find out. I leave it alone.

And wait.

Eventually, I wake up. It happens in an instant. One moment, I'm sitting amongst the glowing green cracks, and the next, I'm opening my eyes in bed, completely unrested and definitely not ready to get a move on. But Tetra and Sheik have probably been up for at least an hour since they're both so much better at this heroing thing than me. I get up and gather my things—great job packing supplies for a journey, buddy—and make my way up to the counter.

"Do you rent out horses at all?" I ask. I saw a few in the open stable on the side of the building when I arrived last night.

But the woman shakes her head. "We just board them for people. But if you catch a wild horse, I'll sell you a bridle and saddle."

"Catch…a wild horse?" I repeat, eyebrow raised.

"Yep. There's herds of them wandering around everywhere." She nods as if that's the sort of thing people just run around doing. Catching wild horses. Easy as snagging a firefly in a jar.

"Good to know. Bye."

I find an empty burlap sack just outside the stable and snag it as I pass by so I can stuff a few apples in it for the journey. I pull out the map as I walk and almost drop it as a particularly sharp wind gusts by, but I turn my back until I get it settled out. There's a giant forest exactly north of here, if I follow the river until it bends and then find a way across It's labeled the Great Hyrule Forest, but it's so large and sprawling that it can only be the Lost Woods.

I hope.

I really have no idea.

But I head thataways anyway, because it seems much closer to my current location than Hyrule Castle. And if Tetra and Sheik think I'm headed to the castle, they won't think to come after me in the forest. It's quite perfect and also rather guilt-provoking, but I'm trying not to think about that.

Once again, I fall into the ease of walking, not so fast as to be unmaintainable but a pace that still eats up the grass beneath my feet. If only my parents could see me now, huh? They never thought I'd amount to much. That doesn't bother me as much as it once did. I guess I've learned to value my own opinion more than theirs. Is that what people call growth?

I walk all day, snacking on the apples I took from the stable, replenishing my supplies with nuts and other fruits on the wildly growing trees that I pass. If I had a bow (and was good with one) I would hunt some of the game scurrying, carefree, across my path. Sheik could probably take one of my knives or even a stupid pebble and take a critter down, but I have to make do with the vegetarian diet. Sans the honey. I drop that bit of sweetness after I get stung five times trying to steal from a courser bee hive. Thank Din Sheik isn't around to see it because it is not attractive. There's one right on my nose. It makes me look like a horrifying clown.

I'm still poking at the weal when I come to the crest of the final hill, just above the curve of the river, and my hand drops limply to my side when I see what's spread out below. The Great Hyrule Forest is an ocean of deepest, darkest green. I can't even see the far end of it. The forest consumes the land, the horizon, even reaches hungry fingers towards the setting sun. It's utterly silent. Even from all the way up here, I should be able to hear animal life or the rustle of the branches, but it's like the whole thing is petrified but for the white mist pooled on the ground. Shivers slid down my spine, and my blood goes cold. How the ever-loving fuck am I going to find a single sword in all that?