Absent

Two weeks raining non-stop.

I thought the rain would be a passing thing, that what we'd experienced was one of those late-summer storms. Not really. Here it was autumn, a cold, wet autumn. It had nothing to do with the early autumn in the castle, where the warm days lasted a little longer, lazy, as if summer didn't want to leave.

That morning I woke up like all the other mornings, in the midst of darkness and the sound of the rains against the tower. I'd gotten used to fending for myself, of course I missed my myriad of comforts (who doesn't?), but I had won something I didn't have in the castle: independence. Independence, not to be confused with solitude, I enjoyed both in huge quantities, and although at first I felt strange and out of place… it wasn't so bad.

Two nights ago, I thought I'd try something different, and it wouldn't hurt to repeat. While Frea was preparing dinner, I asked Manroy to light the wood-burning boiler that heated the goron baths. He and his family left me alone for dinner, I asked them to do so, because sometimes they feel sorry for me and I feel sorry for them and we end up having dinner together in a kind of collective comfort session, but that night I insisted that I wanted to be alone. Then, after dinner, I took an eternal bath, let the whole room fill with steam and walk naked and free around the room. All the baths in my life had been a real tedium, Amy rubbing my back to hurt me, the other girls pouring water too hot, too cold, pulls in my hair, strong perfumes that made me sneeze and most importantly: I was never, ever, alone. Now I could be happy, alone, and naked. There was only one thing that failed in the whole plan: without the hands of Mel, my hair had become a real pain, so I decided to remedy it for myself. Hells, it was a little catastrophic, I cut it in a fit with some rusty scissors that Manroy used to prune the rose bushes and that I found in the greenhouse, but since I got rid of the tedium of the daily tangles, I'm happier, that's the reality.

Nobody cared about that change in me, not too much. When Frea saw me, she smiled and told me that the girls in the mountains wear it that way. She helped me to even it out and that's all. She didn't tell me it was unladylike, or that princesses don't wear it that way, or that it's an attack on the goddesses, things I could imagine from Amy's mouth without any problem. Manroy didn't even realise I had cut it off and he made me laugh so hard I went to give him a hug (he's the sweetest man I've ever met). As for Mabet... we crossed our paths very little in the fortress. I think he's developed a kind of infatuation with me and his shyness prevents him from being more friendly, he's not able to look me in the eye and every time he talks to me his ears turn red. Manroy growls at him and tells him he has a head full of clouds, I think he's a good boy, he's only a year older than Gae and he reminds me a bit of him.

My husband was still away. In fact, he had been leaving the castle for almost four days and had not yet returned. But he'd been away longer, it was like he's never really been here. I admit I had a kind of initial panic when I got to the Nest, panic that he might want to touch me, that he might want to take advantage of our situation, and he still wouldn't be taking advantage because he's my husband and I had to accept that once for all. He doesn't seem to be that kind of man, now I know more certainly, but that's normal in a marriage, and as hard or shocking as it was to me, I would have had to give in to him. He, however, stayed in other quarters. He woke up and went to bed at other times, he roamed areas of the fortress that did not coincide with me, he often rode out at dawn and I don't even know when (if ever) he returned.

At first I was asking Manroy. "Where's Link?" "I think he went to get logs for firewood" or "there's a sick horse, has taken him to Nightfall" or "visiting Fort Hawk" or "I don't know." I don't know was the most common answer, and when I saw poor Manroy uncomfortable not being able to give me a more accurate answer, I stopped asking.

That morning, like many others, Link wasn't there when I came down for breakfast. I ate often in the kitchens; it wasn't worth sitting in one of the halls because there I felt lonely and missed Gae. And the kitchens were warm and nice thanks to the bread oven.

"A letter has arrived for you, Zelda," Manroy left it on the table while I enjoyed Frea's fresh bread and peach jam.

"Thank you, do you think it's going to stop raining today?"

"For Or's sake, I hope so, I'm sick of this bone pain."

"You're a softie, always complaining" Frea intervened, "I got up two hours before you, you hear me complain? Well, that's it." Then she looked at me, softening her mood "Honey, try this cider, it's the first of this fall's apple harvest."

"Have you made it?" I tried a long drink; it was refreshing and fruity —oh wow, it's great! Next time ask me to help you with the apples.

"You're so sweet, I didn't know you liked to help with this kind of things," she smiled.

Not that I especially liked it, but I liked learning and having something useful to do. I also really liked that they got easily used to leave behind my title and protocols, they were almost always wrong when referring to me and I asked them to forget all that court and protocol stuff.

I finished breakfast and entered the small living room next to the kitchens. The letter was from Gae. I had received few letters from him, if you compare it to all the letters I sent him. In them he told me some disconcerting things, such as that there were many allegations of "kidnappings" in the kingdom, which looting had increased. And there were monsters, many more than usual. He didn't come to any conclusions in his reflections, except that it was dangerous to go out on the roads and that Father had limited his sheikah trainings around the castle and citadel, until things calmed down. Then he apologized for not being able to come and see me... you know, it's dangerous... it's rainy season... it's a long road...

After the rainy season the snow season would come, and it would be even more impossible to receive visitors or try to travel to Hyrule. Had my family forgotten about me? Didn't they care enough?

I finished Frea's cider in a single drink. Then I went up to the library for a while. I had already reordered and classified everything that was there, it wasn't much, but there were two or three very old books, of folk tales, which I found attractive and that I decided to read in the first place. But I was also fascinated by the number of maps there were. Someone had bothered to map the mountains of the west with great passion, they were old and sometimes incomprehensible documents, but my spirit of excavator was fed by this new source of information.

That day the sky opened up a little, and after lunch the afternoon went grey, but it didn't rain. In the few moments the weather allowed it, I'd taken the opportunity to investigate the surroundings. I wasn't too far away, but Manroy would open the gate of the wall for me, and I would go for a run in the forest. Exercise is something I had internalised from my sheikah training, and I find it hard to give it up completely. Mabet always accompanied me, "for safety", according to Manroy. At first it was hard for him to keep up with me, but in a few days we managed to run almost at the same pace. He enjoys these moments of intimacy between the two of us and has started to open up a bit more. He tells me about a place where blueberries grow, or the lake Link had told me about. Sometimes we just go for a walk and I show him which mushrooms are edible, as it rains so much there are many and of many kinds.

That day, as soon as we entered the forest path, we found an unexpected company.

"You! What the hell are you doing here?"

It was the unfriendly barbarian, this Fridd. Link sometimes sent his friends to patrol the perimeter (I guess, that's what he said in the rare three times we've coincided), but it was the first time I'd run into one of them.

"Taking a walk," I replied, without stopping.

"It's dangerous. Return immediately to the Nest."

"It's not, Fridd. We go out here almost every day, even if it rains," I grinned, he soured his face.

"I'll escort you back right now."

"Dear Gods... all right. I see we have no choice…" I gave in. He was so stubborn that fighting him was a waste of energy. But in the future he'd have to learn I can choose where to walk if I want to.

We turned around and walked on par with Fridd, who frowned, he always had a frown in his face.

"Where's Link? Will he be back soon?"

"He'll be back when needed, no earlier than that. He's the Lord of the Nest."

"Yes, the absent Lord of the Nest," I teased.

"He has important matters to solve."

"Sure, very important matters."

Fridd's jaw clenched, and I felt like laughing, it was easy to get him on his nerves.

"You have no idea..." he mumbled.

"I would have any idea if any of you told me anything."

"You better not know anything."

"Better for whom?"

"Women don't understand. "

"Dear Hylia... if I had a rupee every time I heard that…"

"Your husband will inform you of what he deems appropriate."

"He should, if it occurs to him to return from such important matters."

"You shouldn't even be here, a foreigner..."

"Here we go... Mabet, cover your ears, now all the insults will start," I joked. Mabet turned red up to his ears.

"You think you're so funny and you shouldn't even be here."

"And yet here I am," I grinned ear to ear. If we carried on like this he would fall off the horse because of the accumulated rage.

"Do you want to know why your husband is never here? Why does he spend countless days away from you?"

"Yes, please, if that's not too much to ask…"

"He's with another woman."

That answer caught me off guard. Link didn't look like that kind of... It may be him... But no. Nobody's ever said anything like that to me. Would it be true? Fridd smiled when he saw my bewilderment face.

"That's why he travels so much to Nightfall, she's from there."

"Nightfall?"

"Yes. If you think I'm lying about it, it was the first place he went back to, even before he visited his own family."

It was true. I remembered his men's insistence that he should go to Nightfall as soon as possible. I remembered he went there the same morning after our arrival. And... that might explain so many absences, if there was another woman in his life when I broke out of nowhere it was logical for that relationship to keep him busy and far away.

"Not laughing anymore?" he said, triumphantly.

"Not at all," I smiled at him again, "I know my husband and I haven't married out of love. He can be with that one and as many women as he wants."

"Indeed, he will, there's no doubt about it."

The idea worried me. I didn't expect any kind of fidelity on his part, but I didn't like the idea of him walking around the western taverns groping as many women as he wanted. It was unworthy of someone of the position he held among his people. And... somehow that humiliated me a little bit and my position as princess of Hyrule... if I meant anything in all this (which I doubted, at least not for the people of the West). Perhaps among the barbarians it wasn't frowned upon to sleep with many women outside of marriage, but in Hyrule, even if it was a marriage of convenience, it was frowned upon to break vows as if it meant nothing, and worse if someone of my position was involved, it would be a kind of scandal, it might even be seen as an offence to the crown. On the other hand, I couldn't help it if he wanted to be with other women, I just hoped he knew what the word discretion meant. It was all debatable within reasonable terms; we would have to discuss the matter when I saw him again.

I kept smiling at Fridd to his chagrin, and I said goodbye to him with a singing voice, wishing him well, and to finish driving him crazy, I promised to pray to the goddess Hylia to protect him. He left in a huff and ruminating curses.

"What's so funny?" Mabet asked me when he saw I couldn't disguise laughter by remembering Fridd's face.

"Nothing, girl stuff," I winked at him and he still didn't understand, but he smiled happy.

"That Fridd is an idiot. He shouldn't have said all that crap."

"And you're a little charmer."

"I'm not that little," he frowned, "you're only three years older, we're just like you and Link."

"Oh, of course. It's not so much," I admitted, he was really right, and I didn't want him to be offended.

"When I'm eighteen, you'll be twenty-one and there won't be a difference."

"True."

We reached the cabin and the entrance of the fortress. There was smoke from the chimneys and kitchens, and I saw that Manroy had also started to heat the goron baths, a white smoke came out of there.

"If... if Captain Link has done everything Fridd said, he's also an idiot," Mabet said, clenching his fists.

"Don't worry, I'll talk to him. Now go to your grandparents and tell them I've decided to take the bath before dinner. I'll see you later."

Mabet trotted away, he was too cute trying to defend my honour. At least someone in the West wanted to do it.

The sun had already gone down and it had started to drizzle, one of those rains you hardly notice, but I was feeling a bit soaked and thought I'd warm up a bit before dinner. When I walked into the goron baths, there was steam everywhere. Did Manroy prepare it? It was weird, the steam had to be provoked by releasing droplets of water into a huge brazier and the other times I did it myself, once I was alone in the baths. I took off my boots and shirt and was struggling with my belt when he appeared out of nowhere, like a ghost, sword raised high.

"For Din's sake!" I exclaimed, and I thought it would be the last thing I would say in my life until I found out it was Link. He was as surprised as I was, so much so that he stepped back and slipped with the edge of the pile and fell to the bottom, splashing all around.

Then I suffered another of my laugh attacks, unstoppable, like a torrent.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He grumbled. He sank into the water up to his neck, his long hair stuck on his head and that made his ears look bigger. I couldn't look at him without laughing my head off.

"I was coming to take a bath just like you! I had no idea you were back."

"Well, put something on," he said, grumpy, turning his back on me.

"I haven't seen anything, I swear, there's too much steam," I managed to say, in a laugh— have you hurt yourself? That pile isn't too deep.

"I haven't hurt myself," he growled.

"I've already dressed," I jumped on one foot to wrap my boot.

"Great," he said, speaking to the wall. He was quite angry, he looked too funny to me, but I had to get serious and take advantage of his presence there as it was or would be days (or weeks) without hearing about him again.

"Link, I'm going to have dinner in a little while," he just moved a bit in the water, under the steam cloud, "would you mind joining me?"

"For dinner?"

"Yes, for dinner."

... "All right," he murmured, after taking a few seconds to answer me.

Manroy and his family were surprised to learn that "the Lord of the Nest" had arrived unannounced, silently. They thought he would have come back to leave again, quiet and fast, as he used to do most of the time. They were even more surprised when I told them that we would have dinner together and alone in the fortress, and it was better for them to retreat to the cabin. Manroy quickly helped me to move our dinner from the small living room to the big hall, then he left me alone, waiting for Link. It didn't take him long to show up, his beard had grown a little and he looked tired. If he came from being with that woman, he didn't seem very happy. He poured himself a glass of Frea's cider and drank it whole.

"I'm sorry about before," I said, sitting near him at the table, "I asked Manroy to prepare my bath, I didn't expect you to be there."

"I didn't know you used those bathrooms, there are a lot more bathrooms in the fortress," he said, starting to eat staring at me.

"Well, I use them a lot. They're actually my favourites."

"What if someone comes in? They could see you there."

"No one ever comes in. You see, there's something I'd like to talk to you about, Link. Well, it's a lot of things, actually."

He stared at me for a while, inspecting me in detail, made me feel a little nervous with so much fixation.

"What have you done to yourself?"

"I've just cut my hair, it'll grow back," I said. He had the gift of making me lose my patience, "I'm sorry you don't like it."

"I didn't say that" he growled and took a huge piece of bread to his mouth.

"Great, because I haven't cut it to please anyone but myself."

"I didn't say I don't like it, I didn't say anything but what the hell have you done to yourself?"

"Goddess, it's okay. Let's start from the beginning," I said, taking a breath. I drank a shot of cider to clear my throat a little bit. He kept looking at me in his style.

"Are you pregnant?"

"What? No!"

"How do you know? You're paler than usual."

As if he knew what "usual" is, someone who's barely seen me since we met.

"I'm not pregnant." I insisted.

In fact, it was something that had tortured me until I could rule it out, but... of course, he hadn't been present so I could tell him.

"You could be."

"I... a Blood Moon has passed, Link."

He widened his eyes a lot and became muted. Goddess, I was heading to another of those embarrassing moments, like the day I had to ask him to stop to pee and he couldn't read between the lines.

"I've bled, so I'm not expecting a baby," I clarified. And my cheeks burned a little.

"Oh, I see" he looked away (also awkwardly) and kept eating, "that's what you wanted to tell me?"

"No... well, I wanted to talk to you about it too, but it's something else."

He growled, so I understood that he wanted me to say it at once.

"You're not around here often, and I think I know the reasons," I said. He dropped the fork on the plate.

"Have you heard?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," he snorted, "believe me if I tell you I've tried to fix it."

"You should have told me. I'm your wife, we're strangers, I know, but how are we going to get along better if you don't tell me anything?"

"How did you know?" He raised an eyebrow with suspicion.

"Fridd told me."

"Fridd? Has he come to the fortress? I told him to keep an eye on the forest."

"I know, we meet him in the forest when-

"Did you meet Fridd in the forest? What the hell were you doing in the forest?" He raised the tone more with each question.

"I went out to... to go for a walk. I felt atrophy to be in here so long," I justified, also raising my tone.

I hadn't told him about my sheikah workouts yet. I hadn't told him much about anything, actually.

"I can't believe it," he flashed a wry grin, "I'm out there, and... and you were in the forest. I can't believe it..."

"I wasn't alone, I went out with Mabet."

'Safety', Manroy said. I didn't tell him about Manroy's safety rules. He was being a moron.

"Wow, Mabet, that fixes everything," he ironized.

"I don't know why you get like this, Link, you told me yourself this is my home, that I'm not a prisoner, but you're acting like I am."

"Listen to me, it's very dangerous for you to go out now, even if it's in the Eagle Forest. I forbid you to get out of the fortress until things work out."

I hit the table and stood up.

"You forbid me? You, who spend the day out there, hanging out with that woman from Nightfall, going in and out as much as you want while you humiliate my house and family name, will you forbid me anything?"

"What woman? What are you saying?"

"You know what? I don't care if you disappear forever next time. I'm not your prisoner, and I'll do what I see fit."

"I forbid you to put a single foot out of the wall and that's all I have to say," he roared.

"I don't want to hear that word again."

"What word?" He also stood up.

"Forbid! I can't hear it, you understand? You can yell it at me if you want and I won't hear anything!"

"Damn it, don't you understand that if you disobey me you're in danger? I'm trying to protec-

"I will not put up any more humiliation. If this goes on I'll write to my Father," I threatened.

"So how? You are crazy!"

"Enjoy alone your beloved dinner, for sure you know well how to do it. Good night."

I climbed the steps of the tower so fast that I felt my heart leap out of my mouth. I didn't understand my husband, it was contradictory, if only he'd talk to me, if only he'd tell me what the hell was on his mind, then maybe, maybe, we could save ourselves this mutual unpleasantness.

I couldn't understand the connection between the sensitive, shy man he seemed to be at times, with the tough, monosyllabic barbarian who intended to lock me up without explanation. I wasn't going to run away; I wasn't going to! I think I've made it very clear from our wedding night that I understand what my duty is, that I keep my promises. I was just demanding the same thing in return, I was even willing to let him be with that woman from Nightfall, he just had to ask me! I would rather live knowing that he's with someone else than to hear about it from one of the barbarians and be mocked and humiliated by them.

No. Zelda of the Eagle's Nest wasn't going to be a prisoner.

Notes:

Firework741, gracias por la reseña! Wow, tres veces! Me alegra que también te esté gustando la traducción. La verdad, me está sirviendo aún más para depurar el texto original y hay algunas cosas que las he cambiado ligeramente para corregir errores :)