Hiraeth is nearly fourteen, and his stepmother is right about everything. He eats and eats until his stomach feels like it might burst, but it's never enough. Hunger becomes his closest companion, and he feels strange to look down at nearly everyone in the village. Only his music tutor and his stepmother are measurably taller anymore.

To his enduring shame, every inch makes him clumsier, until half the dishes have to be replaced he's dropped them so many times. He leaves his cittern with his tutor, or 'lets' one of his sisters carry it for him when he must bring it home.

The provincial regiment organizes a kind of parade through all the villages, and Ishi gets caught sneaking out to see them. Their parents try threats and forbidding sweets and grounding from all amusements but nothing persuades her out of her fascination. In despair, Link locks her in her room and goes down to the camp at the next village in hopes of persuading the officers to move on.

Ishi picks the lock, and sneaks out anyway. Three days they hunt for her in the village and the forest, only to find her in a stolen cadet's uniform among the soldiers, making horrendous noises with the regimental bugle.

It is decided that all of the children will have music lessons.

Letters from city academies and temples have never stopped coming, but now there are also couriers in blue tunics bearing red envelopes with gold scrollwork. These messages, Link burns without even opening. Hiraeth wonders where they are from and why they are worse than the other letters.

Then, a week after planting, a royal herald comes to their little village. He rides an elegant gray horse, and the four shining guardsmen with him ride matched chestnut destriers with roached manes and blue barding with thread-of-gold ornament. Link stands on the front steps to open this red-and-white-and-gold envelope, his lips moving as he reads the ornate script.

Hiraeth watches from the garden wall as his father rips the letter into bits and throws it in the herald's face. The guardsmen look at each other like they expect one of the others to know what to do about this insult.

The herald makes the mistake of calling Link a traitor to his face.

Hiraeth will lay awake all night, trying to make sense of what he sees next. Or rather - what he doesn't see. One moment the strangers are standing around his father, and the next the horses have bolted down the street and the strangers are picking themselves up out of the mud and scrambling after their fallen pikes.

Link steps down into the road, raising his voice for half the village to hear his challenge. "Have I broken any rightful law? Have I been tardy even once to pay my tax to the crown? Crawl your way back to the castle and tell him this: I serve Hyrule from my first breath to my last, but I would sooner drown the world than open that door to your bloody empire."