AN: I wrote this piece for the BOTW Fairytale Zine, (Tales from Hyrule) in collaboration with doc hollibee ( narcisseart), who illustrated the lovely piece you will find as the cover of this story and also at this link: /NarcisseArt/status/1469426192113709062 .
It was a real pleasure to work with everyone on this team, but especially Doc, to come up with this concept and bring it to life on the page. I'm proud to have contributed and am happy to share my work, The Grimm of Hyrule Field, with the public.
I also want to dedicate this piece to my mother, who liked the messaging of this story when it was in the development stages and who would be proud to see my words in print.
(This work has been posted on AO3 for some time so you can also see the art imbedded in it over there)
The Grimm of Hyrule Field
Inspired by Scandinavian folktales of Church Grimms, the guides and guards of graveyards
Up ahead, one of the hounds bays into the dawn.
Link slows his horse from a trot to a walk and his mist catches up, clouding everything over so that all that remains is here and now.
He doesn't need to hear the bells, the sound of something dead still stirring, to know what is waiting for him. The overturned wagon, half-sunken into the dirt at the bend of the road, is yet another aged tragedy left to rot in the land of Hyrule. The dog sniffing at the fractured wheel axle looks up and yips as Link swings out of the saddle to plant his boots on the ground.
Things grow quieter then, dampened beneath the cool coils of mist that pool around his ankles. It washes over the half buried cobbles, the tall weeds, and then the edge of a wagon wheel. If Link strains his ears he can hear distant yelling, alongside the muffled echoes of weapons clashing and bokoblin war cries. Soon the fog swallows that too.
The mist flows over the rubble till it reveals something unseen. It's the curve of a back and arms clutched over someone's head. A person, whose edges are defined only by mist, crouched in the shadow of the centuries old wagon-wreck.
Link lets out a soft whistle. The shape startles at the sharp sound in the dampened silence.
"Who are you?" they demand. "What are you doing in this place?"
"I'm Link," Link signs. " I'm here to help ." The person has no detailed features, just the vague indents and outward jut of facial features, but the confusion mixed with comprehension is plain all the same. Most people he rescues seem confused; the living because they cannot speak sign, and the dead because lost spirits roused from a century's mourning are easily flustered.
"How…" the person starts but shakes their question away. Bells twinkle sadly. "You should run!" They look around, staring at things that aren't there, wincing at sounds that are distant echoes to Link. "We're all going to die!"
"You're already dead," Link signs. It is perhaps a callous thing to say, but it's the sort of honesty that Link would have appreciated when he first opened his eyes. " It's been a long time since the calamity. I know it doesn't feel true, but it is."
"But… but…" they stutter and turn to look for something only they can see. "I can't leave. My sister… she's still fighting."
"I'll help your sister too, " Link promises.
"Help how?"
"I'll show you the way to somewhere safe, " Link says. "I'll guide you. "
He's been doing this for a while now, ever since Rhoam had thanked him for finally arriving and sent him forth into a world where silent bells had been ringing for a hundred years. They were constant during his first few weeks in this world, a desperate bid for attention from something no one else could see. It was just him, and the two hunting hounds that met him outside the shrine of resurrection, wandering in search of spirits to shepherd home.
Purah had a more scientific understanding.
"You've been spiritually reassigned, Hero!" She'd beamed. "That shrine was part of an ancient ritual used in times of great loss. Robbie and I thought it was a metaphorical sort of 'return peace to the land' buuuuuut it looks like you're part of two legends now, Linky."
Legend of the Goddess's Hero. Legend of Hyrule's Steward.
And what else is there for a steward to do in a time of great loss, except to sweep up the lost souls?
"Excuse me." The mist reaches out again and Link leads the first spirit over as their sister's foggy form materializes beneath a deathblow that had lasted a hundred years. She startles, as though he'd spoken and not signed his interjection, and lowers her fluid fog axe to the ground. "I'm Link. I'm here to help you get where you need to go."
The sheikah slate is programmed with the tools he needs to be the hero- but the shrine of resurrection added protocols for serving as steward. The blue warp light swallows the two lost souls just as eagerly as it dissolves Link into fractals, and deposits all three of them at the doorstep of the Magnesis shrine on the Great Plateau. The Temple of Time looms up above and Link looks to it with resignation.
The destination of a hundred journeys now, but likely never his own. At least not until he delivers Zelda and her champions all safely home.
The two misty souls chase each other, laughing, up the steps and dissolve as they cross the threshold into the sunlight streaming through the holes in the roof. Bells, rich and harmonized, greet them to their new home. Link turns from one task to the next, watching the castle's smoke and malice churn.
If anyone in this kingdom deserves an eternal rest, it's the princess who's battled evil incarnate for a hundred years. And if Link must collect every soul not given burial rights between the farthest corner of the desert and the sea cliffs of Akkala, then it's only a matter of time.
The Steward works in the dark, shrouded in shadows and mist and death. But the first time he sees her in a hundred years reminds him of a certain, undeniable truth. Zelda is a creature of light.
She reaches out a hand to him, the yellow light from her final sealing still radiating off her skin in an afterglow. Link takes her silk smooth palm in his (that's not right, she always had calloused hands from scrabbling at sheikah ruins) and raises her knuckles to his lips.
It seems like the right thing to do, but Zelda's face crumples up and she bursts into tears, throwing herself into his arms.
"It's okay," he signs against her back. "It's okay. It's over now."
She shakes, breathing raspily into his shoulder. He's never touched one of the spirits before. He didn't know she would feel so alive.
Familiar bells jingle merrily and Link looks up to find the champions waiting, the luminescent green hue of their spirits more familiar than Zelda's gold. One of the hounds pads up to their side and Daruk crouches down to give them a pat.
"You've done well, hero," Urbosa tells him. "And I hate to be impatient, but I'm anxious to see your job as Steward completed."
Link nods, something in his chest loosening at the unspoken encouragement. Of all the lost souls in Hyrule, the Champions had been the only ones he had waited to ferry home. Rationally, he needed them piloting the divine beasts, but mostly, the fragmented memories he had of them were too precious to risk abandoning to an underwhelming grief.
But the waiting was done. The fragments of spirit they had loaned him are heavier than anything else in his slate- a boulder's shell, the sky's own breath, an ounce of oceanic vitality, and a storm's reprimand.
And now, in his hands, a shard of heaven's light.
"Zelda," His hands fit into the shape of her name with startling familiarity. He's never spoken her name before. " It's time to go. "
"Go?" she laughs and pulls out of his arms, swiping at her tears. "Link, why do you never stand still … oh." She's turned and found the Champions waiting. Mipha raises one hand to wave, and the movement rings out in a wind bell chime. "Your stewardship… it's not done."
"Almost," he assures her.
Link personally collects and delivers all human souls to the Temple of Time, while the hounds shepherd the fragmented monster spirits when they respawn each blood moon. But the champions have more agency than most souls, and Zelda deserves a few hours in the sun after a century of shadows. He doesn't mind walking across Hyrule Field instead of teleporting to the final destination.
They make a motley funeral parade, winding along the road and through the ruins. Zelda talks to them. She is still shaky in her thin dress and sandals but she soaks in everything they say. Revali informs her that Medoh is still fully functional, despite Link's careless destruction of its turrets, and Daruk reminds her where the royal rupee mine is, now left untouched for decades. The group is more lively than a stable at dawn, and Link waits until they reach the dilapidated steps of the plateau before opening the teleportation rune.
Link is grateful that his final delivery will have closure. Even if, for once, he is uncertain if he's ready to let go.
"I suppose I'll have to set an example," Revali sighs when no one moves to step off the shrine's platform. He takes a few bold strides, brass bells clanging in time, and then looks pointedly down his beak at them. "I've gotten this far with all of you, and I intend to finish it together too. Let's go."
They troop up the hill and it is only when they are ten steps away from the doors to death that things sink in. This is the end.
Revali, familiar with the heavens as he is, steps forward first and gives them all just a half salute as his bells join the chorus and his shadow is turned into sun. Urbosa crouches by Zelda's side only for a hushed moment of exchanged words before striding through the temple's doorway and adding her crotal bells to the chorus. Daruk raises his arms above his head and bellows, a long gong bolstering his voice as he wishes them farewell and rolls, immaterial, into the next plane.
Mipha lingers long enough to wrap him in a wispy hug.
"Take care of yourself," she says and dissolves as she meets his chest, drifting through him while her chimes ring upwards. "And take care of her, too."
The only one left is Zelda now. Her glow has dimmed and her face is tight, clutching the glimmering triforce on her hand. But she lifts her chin stubbornly and nods.
"You've done a good job, Link." She laughs wetly. "And you're much more punctual than myself."
"I'm a hundred years late, Princess," he dismisses and holds out a hand to her. "But I think we've finally found a happy end."
He's not sure if this will work. The light might spit him right back out, most stewardships are lifelong. But he holds his breath and guides Zelda forward the next few steps anyhow.
The light is blindingly bright, and they step into the temple's grassy atrium.
There are bells, bright and shining, pealing through the cathedral's broken windows and toppling walls. But they remain distant, and all the aches and worries and the gnawing sense of purpose remains fisted in Link's gut. He wilts, realizing at once that the afterlife has not accepted him.
"I think they'll be happy there," Zelda says, and he startles to find her beside him. "They've certainly waited long enough."
"So have you, " he says, confused. Why hadn't she gone with them? Not to wait for him, surely. He was less a lost soul and more a cursed one. She turns her patient smile on him.
"I've waited a long time, Link. But certainly not to die." She takes his hands. "I know you're a caretaker of the dead, but perhaps you can make an exception, and help a living princess find her way?"
He looks down at her hands in his. Her skin still glows faintly, but he sees now it is only a side effect of liquid sunshine pouring through temple windows. The ethereal afterglow has left behind something real, physical, and human. He squeezes her hands and meets her eyes. They are so piercing with certainty and understanding that he feels immaterial, like a faded spirit finally offered direction. He feels found.
Something inside of him is certain, his tales as the hero and the steward are complete, but perhaps that leaves space for a new story.
"Of course Princess."
He's not dead yet.
AN: Please comment to let me know what you think, and check out my other botw fic on ao3 or coming soon to ff net, Respite about Link and the concept of rest.