"You mount strangely. Has anyone ever told you you mount strangely?"
Zelda asked Link. It was the next morning. They were just outside of the
Lost Woods, in full view of the morning sun, preparing for the short trip
to Kakariko. It wouldn't be too long of a day's ride; maybe ten hours,
tops.
"I mount wonderfully," Link replied. "How do YOU mount, your majesty?"
Zelda climbed onto the back of Odin calmly.
"I say you mount strangely," he concluded.
"I learned at the palace. This is the traditional method."
"Well, this is my method."
"Where did you learn it from?"
Link grinned sheepishly. "Malon."
"Yes, because she is just the utmost expert on the mounting of horses."
"She's not terrible…."
"What else did she 'teach' you?"
"What do you mean?"
Zelda cast about for an idea. "Umm…show me Epona's gallop."
"Okay…." Link got onto the dirt road and had Epona gallop for about 200 feet. "Well?"
"Look at your arm. You should be holding the mane."
"Thanks for the advice, your majesty. I will now attempt to rethink everything I have learned."
"You do that," Zelda said with a nod, and started down the path.
"You know, I bet I could teach you a few things," Link commented, catching up with her.
"I know you could," Zelda said honestly. "I can't swordfight, I can't use a bow...."
"What, they didn't teach you that in finishing school?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Do you want to learn?"
"Well, yeah. Okay, but why?"
"Why what?"
"Why teach me?"
"So that you can be an asset to this expedition, instead of a burden."
"Gee, thanks," she said.
"Of course," he smiled. "What would you like to learn?"
"Everything."
"You mean you don't know ANY fighting techniques?"
"Except for the Sheikah arts, no."
"Well, I say Sheikah arts are a force to be reckoned with, but, all right, I'll teach you what I can. First lesson begins now." He tossed her his old Hookshot. "I've got two of these. I'll use my Longshot to fire at a target, and then you try."
He halted Epona and aimed for a spot about midway up the trunk of one of the trees just outside the Lost Woods. He let lose his hook, and it caught on its target, knocking loose a chink of wood. Instead of pulling himself towards the tree, he let the Longshot come back in to his extended arm. "You try now," he told the princess.
Zelda raised the Hookshot. She aimed the red laser pointer as best she could over the niche in the bark, and fired. It hit a spot about a centimeter to the left of the original mark. "Well, there may be hope for you yet," Link approved. "Try again." He took out his Longshot and aimed for a different spot on the same tree. This time, Zelda matched his mark.
After she did it three more times, Link stopped her. "I think you've passed lesson one. Now we've got to hurry, or we won't make it to Kakariko before sunset." He put away the Hookshot and the Longshot, and then turned Epona back towards the trail. "Come, my student, and when we get to Kakariko I can borrow a spare bow from the Shooting Gallery and teach you how to use it."
"But I don't even have a bow of my own. So does it make sense that I should learn to use one?"
"Of course! What if I'm dead and you need to defend yourself? You use my bow, your majesty! And someday I'll teach you swordplay, but that"—he winked—"is advanced."
"I can hardly wait," she said.
It went on like that for pretty much the rest of the ride—not quite just conversation, it was more like constantly teetering on the brink of argument. In this fashion they chewed over the weather, Link's childhood (which Zelda took an interest in, since she found it much more interesting than her own), and the care of horses, whom they both apparently had strong opinions on, and only sometimes agreed. When the sun had risen to the 12:00 position, they stopped for the noon meal under the shade of a tree.
The horses hobbled nearby, Link and Zelda seated themselves on the grass, and from his saddlebags the hero produced several strange items that Zelda had never seen, let alone eaten, before. He sat back down, divided the food into two portions, and started hungrily into his own.
"What is this?" Zelda asked as she picked up something that looked rather like a roll and bit into it. It was very good.
"Specially prepared travel-ready dishes from the desert of the Gerudo," Link said in between bites.
Zelda fought the urge to spit out the delicious roll. "WHAT?" She exclaimed, pulling back. "GERUDO food, did you say? Don't eat that, it may be poisoned!"
"Would you relax? —Hey!" He yelled as she snatched the fruit he had been eating away from his hands. "Calm down! Why would the Gerudo want to poison us?!"
Zelda just stared at him. "Ganondorf?" She said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Revenge? Hello!"
"Okay, just listen for a second!" He stood up and fished around in a pocket for something. He smiled, took out a slip of paper, and handed it to Zelda. Her eyes widened when she saw it. "You're one….of them!?" She cried.
"Relax! Look, none of them really liked Ganondorf in the first place. This membership was given to me by Nabooru's number one assistant! This food is completely safe."
"Okay…." Zelda, still very cautious, sat back down and picked up her roll again. It certainly didn't taste like poison. And she wanted to believe him, if for no other reason than that it was really good.
"And anyway," Link grinned, "if this food was poisoned, all that jumping around would have sent it directly to your brain."
Zelda smiled in spite of herself. He was right, of course, but for some reason she hadn't thought of that. She giggled. Now that she thought about it she really had been acting like a maroon.
"Something funny?" Link asked.
Zelda tried to imagine what he would think of her giggling for no apparent reason, and burst into laughter. Link shook his head and went back to his fruit, muttering about insanity.
They got into Kakariko late, just as the sun was setting. It was more or less their expected time of arrival, and their entrance had been harried by a pushy clock soldier at the town entrance who refused to believe that Zelda was the princess until she showed him the Triforce mark on her right hand. After she did this, he next demanded to see Link's mark, which he displayed with a sigh. When the clock soldier was satisfied, he made no apology; instead, he stood up straight and said with pride, "Ding dong, ding dong, the current time is 17:24. Please enjoy your stay in Kakariko Village." Link and Zelda hurried through the wooden gate before the guard could come up with any other princess-hero criteria.
"So," the princess began as they reined in their horses near the tree in the center of town, "where exactly are we sleeping tonight?"
"Over there," Link told her, pointing to a house just to the right of them on a low bluff. "I've got some friends there."
When they stepped inside the house, though, Zelda could find nothing even slightly friendly about it except for a bald man of medium height standing in the very center of the roomless house with a broad smile on his face. In the shadows, she thought she could see some more figures moving, but decided to ignore it.
"Link!" The bald man exclaimed jovially.
"Torin," Link answered, shaking the man's hand. "How have you been?"
"Far better, thanks to you!" The man called Torin said. "Is there anything at all I can be of assistance to you with?"
"Um, room and board," Link said sheepishly.
"But of course! You may stay here for as long as you like, so long as you don't mind the cobwebs." Torin turned and strode toward the back wall of the house, opened a dusty box, and drew out some blankets and pillows, which, in spite of the state of the building, were made of the finest materials. "There are two of us," Link added. Torin nodded and started digging again. With the help of his sons (who had been the shapes Zelda had seen moving in the background) he had soon set up two sleeping areas for the hero and the princess.
"Just out of curiosity, Torin, where do you sleep?"
"Sleep? I don't sleep! Must be a side effect of the spell, I suppose, but I haven't needed to for weeks!"
"Oh," Link said.
Zelda wanting to get a better look around, stepped further into the dusty building. In doing this she also managed to catch the attention of Torin, who hadn't seen her before. "Oh, and who's this? The second one of you, I presume?"
"She's the pr—"
"Zelda," the princess told him with a gracious smile. But despite her best efforts to stop it, Torin's eyes went wide and he swept into a low bow. "Your highness! What an honor to make your acquaintance!" He said, without bothering to lift his head.
"Thank you for letting us stay here," she said, indicating for him to rise.
"Of course, anything for his majesty's own daughter!"
Zelda smiled pleasantly, though inside she wished he would stop calling her "highness." Link, sensing her discomfort, excused them with a "Thank you very much, Torin, but I believe we have an archery lesson to get to now," and he pulled her out.
"Thanks," she told him outside. "Um, not to be rude, but what's the story behind that man? Why is his house in shambles, and yet he just keeps on giving?" She reflected briefly on her own comment. "He's very admirable."
"It's a long story," Link said.
"Tell it to me," Zelda answered.
"Okay. Well, sit down." He let her seat herself leaning against the wall of the house, and then followed suit. "Now, I'm no storyteller, but here's what happened. And don't interrupt. A long time ago, long before Ganondorf, Torin's family was very rich. Very rich. I think they had the second most rupees in the nation, after the castle, of course. Anyway, the family lived happily together, Torin, his wife Ane, and their five sons, Reeve, Tevis, Lape, Pome, and Rent. They were, as I said, incredibly prosperous, and they always had everything they needed. And wanted. Well, one day, and I never found out how, but Ane died. After her death, Torin kind of, well, lost it. He became incredibly greedy. And greed, as you know, is a very bad thing to the goddesses. Well, they smiled down upon him, and instead of just giving him eternal punishment after he got around to dying, they put a curse on his family. Torin, Reeve, Tevis, Lape, Pome, and Rent were turned into hideous, monstrous spiders. Around Hyrule were placed one hundred gold skulltulas, so that the only way to break the curse on Torin's family would be to destroy all of the gold skulltulas. The goddesses' aim, you see, was for Torin to have to wait and beg for years before finally someone came along and broke the curse, and then he would hopefully be shamed and impressed by that person's generosity and become a more giving sort himself. Their plan worked, and after lying in wait for nearly a hundred years someone finally saved them, and now Torin is practically giving away his money."
"That's a great story," Zelda said. "Who saved them?"
"Me," he said quietly.
"Link!" Zelda grinned. "That's amazing! I don't know what to say!"
"Don't say anything," he said. "And don't give me anything. Torin insists on 'rewarding' me with a gold rupee every time I visit. I'm running out of space in my house."
Zelda laughed. "And now," Link said, "I believe we had an archery lesson to get to."
"This late?"
"We're not going to do it outside, silly. The shooting gallery has a great training program." He helped her up and led her to the red brick shooting gallery at the top of a flight of stairs overseeing the village. When they entered, Link went straight over to the counter to talk to the big, muscular, and somewhat hairy man who ran the shop; Zelda was more interested in the targets. They weren't your average bull's-eye, that was for sure. They looked more like rupees.
Link finished his dealings and walked back over to her. "Okay, he's gonna put it on 'easy,'" he said. "Follow me on this." The shopkeeper, who had disappeared into a back room, reappeared with a spare bow and quiver. Link took out his own Fairy Bow. "And now," he said, "I will teach you to string it." He took the coiled bowstring from her hand and stretched it to its full length. He showed her how it looped over the bottom end, and how you had to tie the top end, and thus get your personally desired tightness. When the bow was strung, he took the string back off and let the princess do it herself. "You're gonna have to play around a little bit to figure out what tightness you like it," he told her. She nodded. "And now, let's have an arrow." He took one from his own quiver, and set it on his bowstring, showing her the notch at the end of the shaft that fitted onto the string. She took one from her own quiver, and after a moment or two managed to fit it. "And when all that's ready," he continued, "you can shoot." He took his own bow and aimed for one of the giant rupees. Link loosed his arrow, and in another second the rupee had shattered. "Now you try," he said.
Zelda fit an arrow onto her bowstring. Slowly, she aimed, and was about to fire when a very loud something burst through the door.
"I mount wonderfully," Link replied. "How do YOU mount, your majesty?"
Zelda climbed onto the back of Odin calmly.
"I say you mount strangely," he concluded.
"I learned at the palace. This is the traditional method."
"Well, this is my method."
"Where did you learn it from?"
Link grinned sheepishly. "Malon."
"Yes, because she is just the utmost expert on the mounting of horses."
"She's not terrible…."
"What else did she 'teach' you?"
"What do you mean?"
Zelda cast about for an idea. "Umm…show me Epona's gallop."
"Okay…." Link got onto the dirt road and had Epona gallop for about 200 feet. "Well?"
"Look at your arm. You should be holding the mane."
"Thanks for the advice, your majesty. I will now attempt to rethink everything I have learned."
"You do that," Zelda said with a nod, and started down the path.
"You know, I bet I could teach you a few things," Link commented, catching up with her.
"I know you could," Zelda said honestly. "I can't swordfight, I can't use a bow...."
"What, they didn't teach you that in finishing school?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Do you want to learn?"
"Well, yeah. Okay, but why?"
"Why what?"
"Why teach me?"
"So that you can be an asset to this expedition, instead of a burden."
"Gee, thanks," she said.
"Of course," he smiled. "What would you like to learn?"
"Everything."
"You mean you don't know ANY fighting techniques?"
"Except for the Sheikah arts, no."
"Well, I say Sheikah arts are a force to be reckoned with, but, all right, I'll teach you what I can. First lesson begins now." He tossed her his old Hookshot. "I've got two of these. I'll use my Longshot to fire at a target, and then you try."
He halted Epona and aimed for a spot about midway up the trunk of one of the trees just outside the Lost Woods. He let lose his hook, and it caught on its target, knocking loose a chink of wood. Instead of pulling himself towards the tree, he let the Longshot come back in to his extended arm. "You try now," he told the princess.
Zelda raised the Hookshot. She aimed the red laser pointer as best she could over the niche in the bark, and fired. It hit a spot about a centimeter to the left of the original mark. "Well, there may be hope for you yet," Link approved. "Try again." He took out his Longshot and aimed for a different spot on the same tree. This time, Zelda matched his mark.
After she did it three more times, Link stopped her. "I think you've passed lesson one. Now we've got to hurry, or we won't make it to Kakariko before sunset." He put away the Hookshot and the Longshot, and then turned Epona back towards the trail. "Come, my student, and when we get to Kakariko I can borrow a spare bow from the Shooting Gallery and teach you how to use it."
"But I don't even have a bow of my own. So does it make sense that I should learn to use one?"
"Of course! What if I'm dead and you need to defend yourself? You use my bow, your majesty! And someday I'll teach you swordplay, but that"—he winked—"is advanced."
"I can hardly wait," she said.
It went on like that for pretty much the rest of the ride—not quite just conversation, it was more like constantly teetering on the brink of argument. In this fashion they chewed over the weather, Link's childhood (which Zelda took an interest in, since she found it much more interesting than her own), and the care of horses, whom they both apparently had strong opinions on, and only sometimes agreed. When the sun had risen to the 12:00 position, they stopped for the noon meal under the shade of a tree.
The horses hobbled nearby, Link and Zelda seated themselves on the grass, and from his saddlebags the hero produced several strange items that Zelda had never seen, let alone eaten, before. He sat back down, divided the food into two portions, and started hungrily into his own.
"What is this?" Zelda asked as she picked up something that looked rather like a roll and bit into it. It was very good.
"Specially prepared travel-ready dishes from the desert of the Gerudo," Link said in between bites.
Zelda fought the urge to spit out the delicious roll. "WHAT?" She exclaimed, pulling back. "GERUDO food, did you say? Don't eat that, it may be poisoned!"
"Would you relax? —Hey!" He yelled as she snatched the fruit he had been eating away from his hands. "Calm down! Why would the Gerudo want to poison us?!"
Zelda just stared at him. "Ganondorf?" She said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Revenge? Hello!"
"Okay, just listen for a second!" He stood up and fished around in a pocket for something. He smiled, took out a slip of paper, and handed it to Zelda. Her eyes widened when she saw it. "You're one….of them!?" She cried.
"Relax! Look, none of them really liked Ganondorf in the first place. This membership was given to me by Nabooru's number one assistant! This food is completely safe."
"Okay…." Zelda, still very cautious, sat back down and picked up her roll again. It certainly didn't taste like poison. And she wanted to believe him, if for no other reason than that it was really good.
"And anyway," Link grinned, "if this food was poisoned, all that jumping around would have sent it directly to your brain."
Zelda smiled in spite of herself. He was right, of course, but for some reason she hadn't thought of that. She giggled. Now that she thought about it she really had been acting like a maroon.
"Something funny?" Link asked.
Zelda tried to imagine what he would think of her giggling for no apparent reason, and burst into laughter. Link shook his head and went back to his fruit, muttering about insanity.
They got into Kakariko late, just as the sun was setting. It was more or less their expected time of arrival, and their entrance had been harried by a pushy clock soldier at the town entrance who refused to believe that Zelda was the princess until she showed him the Triforce mark on her right hand. After she did this, he next demanded to see Link's mark, which he displayed with a sigh. When the clock soldier was satisfied, he made no apology; instead, he stood up straight and said with pride, "Ding dong, ding dong, the current time is 17:24. Please enjoy your stay in Kakariko Village." Link and Zelda hurried through the wooden gate before the guard could come up with any other princess-hero criteria.
"So," the princess began as they reined in their horses near the tree in the center of town, "where exactly are we sleeping tonight?"
"Over there," Link told her, pointing to a house just to the right of them on a low bluff. "I've got some friends there."
When they stepped inside the house, though, Zelda could find nothing even slightly friendly about it except for a bald man of medium height standing in the very center of the roomless house with a broad smile on his face. In the shadows, she thought she could see some more figures moving, but decided to ignore it.
"Link!" The bald man exclaimed jovially.
"Torin," Link answered, shaking the man's hand. "How have you been?"
"Far better, thanks to you!" The man called Torin said. "Is there anything at all I can be of assistance to you with?"
"Um, room and board," Link said sheepishly.
"But of course! You may stay here for as long as you like, so long as you don't mind the cobwebs." Torin turned and strode toward the back wall of the house, opened a dusty box, and drew out some blankets and pillows, which, in spite of the state of the building, were made of the finest materials. "There are two of us," Link added. Torin nodded and started digging again. With the help of his sons (who had been the shapes Zelda had seen moving in the background) he had soon set up two sleeping areas for the hero and the princess.
"Just out of curiosity, Torin, where do you sleep?"
"Sleep? I don't sleep! Must be a side effect of the spell, I suppose, but I haven't needed to for weeks!"
"Oh," Link said.
Zelda wanting to get a better look around, stepped further into the dusty building. In doing this she also managed to catch the attention of Torin, who hadn't seen her before. "Oh, and who's this? The second one of you, I presume?"
"She's the pr—"
"Zelda," the princess told him with a gracious smile. But despite her best efforts to stop it, Torin's eyes went wide and he swept into a low bow. "Your highness! What an honor to make your acquaintance!" He said, without bothering to lift his head.
"Thank you for letting us stay here," she said, indicating for him to rise.
"Of course, anything for his majesty's own daughter!"
Zelda smiled pleasantly, though inside she wished he would stop calling her "highness." Link, sensing her discomfort, excused them with a "Thank you very much, Torin, but I believe we have an archery lesson to get to now," and he pulled her out.
"Thanks," she told him outside. "Um, not to be rude, but what's the story behind that man? Why is his house in shambles, and yet he just keeps on giving?" She reflected briefly on her own comment. "He's very admirable."
"It's a long story," Link said.
"Tell it to me," Zelda answered.
"Okay. Well, sit down." He let her seat herself leaning against the wall of the house, and then followed suit. "Now, I'm no storyteller, but here's what happened. And don't interrupt. A long time ago, long before Ganondorf, Torin's family was very rich. Very rich. I think they had the second most rupees in the nation, after the castle, of course. Anyway, the family lived happily together, Torin, his wife Ane, and their five sons, Reeve, Tevis, Lape, Pome, and Rent. They were, as I said, incredibly prosperous, and they always had everything they needed. And wanted. Well, one day, and I never found out how, but Ane died. After her death, Torin kind of, well, lost it. He became incredibly greedy. And greed, as you know, is a very bad thing to the goddesses. Well, they smiled down upon him, and instead of just giving him eternal punishment after he got around to dying, they put a curse on his family. Torin, Reeve, Tevis, Lape, Pome, and Rent were turned into hideous, monstrous spiders. Around Hyrule were placed one hundred gold skulltulas, so that the only way to break the curse on Torin's family would be to destroy all of the gold skulltulas. The goddesses' aim, you see, was for Torin to have to wait and beg for years before finally someone came along and broke the curse, and then he would hopefully be shamed and impressed by that person's generosity and become a more giving sort himself. Their plan worked, and after lying in wait for nearly a hundred years someone finally saved them, and now Torin is practically giving away his money."
"That's a great story," Zelda said. "Who saved them?"
"Me," he said quietly.
"Link!" Zelda grinned. "That's amazing! I don't know what to say!"
"Don't say anything," he said. "And don't give me anything. Torin insists on 'rewarding' me with a gold rupee every time I visit. I'm running out of space in my house."
Zelda laughed. "And now," Link said, "I believe we had an archery lesson to get to."
"This late?"
"We're not going to do it outside, silly. The shooting gallery has a great training program." He helped her up and led her to the red brick shooting gallery at the top of a flight of stairs overseeing the village. When they entered, Link went straight over to the counter to talk to the big, muscular, and somewhat hairy man who ran the shop; Zelda was more interested in the targets. They weren't your average bull's-eye, that was for sure. They looked more like rupees.
Link finished his dealings and walked back over to her. "Okay, he's gonna put it on 'easy,'" he said. "Follow me on this." The shopkeeper, who had disappeared into a back room, reappeared with a spare bow and quiver. Link took out his own Fairy Bow. "And now," he said, "I will teach you to string it." He took the coiled bowstring from her hand and stretched it to its full length. He showed her how it looped over the bottom end, and how you had to tie the top end, and thus get your personally desired tightness. When the bow was strung, he took the string back off and let the princess do it herself. "You're gonna have to play around a little bit to figure out what tightness you like it," he told her. She nodded. "And now, let's have an arrow." He took one from his own quiver, and set it on his bowstring, showing her the notch at the end of the shaft that fitted onto the string. She took one from her own quiver, and after a moment or two managed to fit it. "And when all that's ready," he continued, "you can shoot." He took his own bow and aimed for one of the giant rupees. Link loosed his arrow, and in another second the rupee had shattered. "Now you try," he said.
Zelda fit an arrow onto her bowstring. Slowly, she aimed, and was about to fire when a very loud something burst through the door.