Hello, dear readers! At last I'm back amongst you all! Anyone remember this story?
*crickets chirping*
Ooookay…anyway, here's a new chapter for you, finally. I've done another estimation and I'm counting twenty-two chapters when the story's done. This of course is subject to change, but it's my best guess right now in case anyone was wondering. The rest of the chapters will likely be out pretty quick. I'm on a roll.
Zelda is advanced two years in this chapter, meaning that she's sixteen when it's over. Forgive me if it seems realistic, but I have to move time along. All the big stuff happens when our dear princess is older and I don't want to write a bunch of filler chapters. So sit tight; from here on in the story's going to build fairly rapidly toward the climax.
Enjoy!
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Chapter 17
Reflection
I was fifteen, and I knew so much.
A horror story came from the castle town: a mother of a three daughters witnessed her youngest, an infant, snatched from her cradle by some kind of horrible creature- like a rotting, emaciated skeleton with a gaze that paralyzed. The mother watched helplessly as the creature made off with her baby girl. The following night the infant returned- tottering on its own two feet, looking like an emaciated skeleton itself, and bearing a long knife, with which it murdered its two sisters while the mother watched, paralyzed again. The mother lost her mind. Night after night, her screaming woke her neighbors, until one of them silenced her at last.
Fifteen. I knew too much. I saw too much, heard too much.
Stories like this, unheard of in the days of my father's rule, were now common. Stories of horror and violence at the hands of the most monstrous creatures imaginable- Ganondorf's minions, no doubt. Rauru picked up all the gossip on his ventures into town and related every story he heard to me. It was important to keep on top of things, he said.
"But relying on gossip..." I said, frowning.
"Mark my words, princess, were you to step outside this temple you'd believe all those stories, too," Rauru replied sorrowfully. "The castle town- it's terrible, what's happened to it. Buildings abandoned or in ruins, people regarding everyone with suspicion, monsters roaming late at night-"
"I want to see it," I interrupted.
"Hm?"
I crossed my arms and looked Rauru squarely in the eye. "I've learned everything you deemed worthy to teach me. I can sneak around. I won't be hurt. So I think I should be allowed outside."
"Hn." Rauru looked at me speculatively for a moment, then showed me what he'd picked up at the market for me during some past visit- a long, hooded cloak and a gleaming silver dagger, encased protectively in a battered sheath.
"I got these the other day," Rauru said casually. "I knew this day would come soon, see, when you took hold of your independence. And that's just fine with me- but if you're to be going out of the temple, you must make me two promises."
"Which are?"
Rauru dumped the cloak into my arms and toyed with the dagger. "Firstly, you wear that cloak and you carry this." He placed the dagger into my open palm. I closed my hand over the hilt, feeling a rush of excitement -and apprehension- at holding such a lovely weapon. "The cloak's to hide you and the dagger's for protection. I know you can sneak around, but you never know what might happen."
I nodded. That made sense.
"Secondly, I want you to look for a disguise."
"A disguise?"
"Yes. Put those down for a minute." He indicated the cloak and dagger. "I need to talk to you about something serious."
Obediently I laid the cloak and dagger at my feet, then stared up expectantly at Rauru.
He knelt down so that our eyes were level. "Zelda," he began, using my real name- now I knew he was being dead serious. "I want you to think about changing your identity."
I gasped sharply. "Changing my- what? Rauru, what are you thinking? Surely we don't have to go that far."
"I'm afraid we do," Rauru said grimly. "Zelda, I can't protect you in this temple forever. And you won't want to stay here forever. You'll leave someday for good, and didn't Ganondorf swear that he'd kill you if you set foot outside?"
"But- but-" I shook my head, aghast. "There's not even a sign of him, Rauru, he's disappeared-"
"He's not disappeared," Rauru said sharply. "Look around you. Look at the castle town, slowly going to ruins. Look at the sky- rainy during the clear season, clear during the rainy season. Look at the monsters wandering around Hyrule. You think this is all some fluke? It's because of his influence. The things I've been hearing-" He hesitated.
"What?" I demanded. "What have you been hearing?"
Rauru sighed. "He goes from place to place. Spreads his evil over every corner of Hyrule. The Gorons, the Zoras, the Kokiri- they've all encountered him, and his darkness is slowly consuming their domains. I've no doubt that when he's finished with the rest of Hyrule, he'll return here to finish what he started.
"And what if you encounter him at some point? Do you really think he won't know you under a simple cloak? You think you'll be able to defend yourself with a dagger?"
I bit my lip. Rauru was right, of course. There was no arguing that.
"You see my point. And that's why I want you to change your identity. It's for your own safety."
My voice must have sounded so listless when I said, "How do I go about it?"
"Find yourself someone else's clothes. That's what I want you to look for, when you venture out." Rauru's sharp eyes watched me carefully. "Just find yourself a disguise, and I'll help with the rest."
* * *
I went out that very day. Swathed head to toe in the long, hooded cloak, bearing the dagger sheathed on my belt, I left the temple to ghost through the streets of the castle town and set foot in the market square for the first time in five years.
It was not the same place I remembered. The air seemed to thicken as I stepped into the square; the sky grew dark with clouds, and a light rain drizzled down. It was as though all the gaiety and life had seeped away- where once the laughter of children punctuated the animated noise of vendors hawking and customers bartering, there was now only a silence so heavy that I felt it pressing on my chest. The few remaining residents of the castle town trudged to and fro, shadowed eyes staring out of the depths of worn, tired faces. Pointed looks were directed at me; people turned to one another and began to mutter. I remembered what Rauru had said about them regarding everyone with suspicion. Self-consciously, I tugged the hood lower to further hide my face.
I was skirting the edges of the square, trying to avoid meeting the uninhibited stares, when a scream rang out from a corner of the square behind me. I whirled -as did everyone else- just in time to see a monster come stumbling out of the shadows of an alley.
I swallowed hard, fighting down the urge to vomit. It was one of the skeleton creatures Rauru had described- it had to be. Stooped over, half-rotted, with leathery skin shriveled so tightly on its form that every bone was visible, the monster staggered toward the center of the square, its eyeless face swinging blindly left to right. I saw market goers freeze in their tracks, rigid as stone, wide-eyed gazes locked on the skeleton, and remembered that the creature's eyeless stare could paralyze.
It began to turn its face toward me, and I reacted without thinking. Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, I threw the cloak off, crouched down, and sprang up neatly into a back flip that landed me onto the edge of something- a building ledge, I saw as I opened my eyes for just a fraction of a second. For a moment I merely teetered, marveling at how wonderfully acrobatic my body had become through the years of Rauru's teaching.
The skeleton moaned, a horrible, mindless sound that sent icy chills up my spine. I risked a glance down and saw that it had chosen easier prey, staggering toward a gaunt young woman frozen in the middle of the market square.
There was only one thing I could do. I slid my dagger from its sheath, gripping it tightly by the hilt, and whispered a quick prayer to the goddesses. Then I fixed my eyes on the skeleton below and threw the dagger.
The creature shrieked once as the dagger embedded itself into the back of its neck, then slid to the ground, dead. The shocked cries of the freed townspeople reached my ears as I merely stood there, stunned by my own accuracy.
My reverie was broken by the townspeople's voices, wondering loudly who could have thrown the dagger. No one had though to look to the roofs. I slid away from the ledge before anyone did and made my way to the back end of the building, where I climbed down the drainage pipe. I skirted the back alleys on my way to the Temple of Time, feeling something between elation and shock, my heart drumming in my chest. So lost was I that I barely noticed when I took a turn onto a dirt road.
The shrieking of the wind brought me back to my senses as it whipped through my hair, sending a chill across the back of my neck. A great shadow had befallen me. Oddly calm, I looked up.
It was the castle. But not the castle I remembered, no, this monstrosity was a menacing fortress, dark and cold as ice, its peaked tower reaching to the heavens. Angry storm clouds swirled in the sky above it; a pool of molten fire boiled beneath it. Terror seized at me, swept through me and clutched at my heart. I thought I saw eyes staring at me through one of the distant windows.
I turned. I walked from the castle like a person gone mindless, and when I found myself again in the Temple of Time, three weeks had past.
* * *
I was lying on a cloak in the room that contained the door to the Sacred Realm. Link slept next to me, his face scant inches from mine, his hair so golden that it dazzled me for a moment. I stared at him, reached out a hand and touched his hair. He was fifteen, like me, and growing out of his clothes. Many of the seams had already torn. He was very handsome and already a few inches taller than me. I could tell when I stretched myself out next to him so that our feet were level but our heads were not.
I looked at him sadly, wishing I could see his eyes. They were surely beautiful. His mouth was beautiful. I pressed two fingers to his lips, and they were warm.
"Princess?"
I stiffened and withdrew my hand immediately, then looked to the door, my cheeks stained crimson. Rauru was there, looking so relieved to see me that he probably hadn't even noticed what I was doing.
"Hello," I mumbled.
"Hello?" Rauru stepped into the room, looking rather cross. "Three weeks ago you come wandering in here like a girl possessed and now, hey, I get a hello. Farore, Din, and Nayru!"
I stared at him, aghast. "Three weeks?"
"Yes, three weeks. What in the world were you doing that made you lose yourself for three weeks?" Rauru squatted before us, Link and I, and fixed me with his penetrating stare.
I thought about lying and decided against it. "I saw the castle."
Rauru sat back on his heels, exhaling very slowly. "Oh."
I hesitated, then said, "I don't know what happened after that."
"Well, you came back here in only your dress, looking positively frozen. You went in this room, lay down next to Link, and went to sleep. I didn't know what to think." Rauru shook his head, sweat dotting his forehead. His matter-of-fact tone and attitude aside, I realized he really had been worried about me. "I've seen this kind of thing happen after a traumatic event. People go into a catatonic state. They don't want to deal with what they've seen or done."
"I suppose that's what happened to me, then." Odd how calm I felt, but then Link's presence always seemed to have that effect on me.
"Apparently." Rauru's voice quieted some as he looked at me again. "The castle, Zelda- it's terrible what happened to it, but it'll be reconciled. Everything will, once Link wakes up. He'll to put an end to Ganondorf's evil."
"I know he will," I replied softly.
Rauru frowned at Link. "Farore's mercy, but isn't this boy growing like a beanpole? Any day now his clothes'll rip right off him." He sighed and shook his head. "I have to get new clothes for him. I don't know where I'm going to find any like the ones he has on, though."
"Does it really matter?" I asked.
"I think it does," Rauru said gravely. "Imagine if you were Link- a ten year old stuck in the body of a goddesses-know-how-old man, not knowing anything, not remembering anything except pulling a sword from a pedestal. I'm sure that's how he'll feel. It would be best if there was something familiar to him around, even if it's just his clothes."
"I see your point." I thought for a moment, then brightened. "I can make clothes for him."
Rauru's eyebrows rose. "Can you, now?"
"Sure. I just need some green cloth and the pattern of his current outfit, which is right here." I shrugged. "I'm not the best seamstress in the world, but I'm not terrible, either."
"It's going to take an awful long time without a loom," Rauru pointed out.
"It's not like I have little time on my hands," I said dryly.
Rauru grinned. "Good point. All right, then. I'll get the cloth and you can sew."
It did take a long time without a loom. Many months, in fact. I made a tunic and skirt, copying the design of Link's clothes, a cap like the one he already wore, and white hose. Rauru went to the market and brought back boots for Link and a mirror for me.
"So you can see yourself," he said frankly, when I asked about the mirror. "Link's not the only one around here who's grown up."
By that time I cared little about my own appearance, so Rauru propped the mirror against the wall in the room where Link slept, in case I ever decided to make use of it. I was too busy sewing to look. I was just past my sixteenth birthday when Link's clothes were finally finished. Rauru changed him while I waited outside, fidgeting.
Rauru walked out when he was done with a cloak around his shoulders. "To the market again," he said to my questioning look. "We're low on food. Honestly, princess, you eat more than the soldiers in my old squad combined."
I scowled at him. "By the goddesses, I'm still growing, aren't I?"
"You certainly are," Rauru said dryly, and left.
I tiptoed to Link's side to see how he looked. In clothes that actually fit he looked splendid, like the white knights that had once served my father, handsome and pure. A true hero.
It made me wonder. What would Link see when he woke up and met me? Would he like what he saw? Suddenly worried about his opinion, I glanced around for the mirror and saw it standing to my left below one of the high windows. I went to it and peered at myself.
Rauru was right- Link wasn't the only one who'd grown up. A pale but unmistakably pretty girl -young woman, really- stared back at me. My hair, golden like Link's but paler, fell like silk across my shoulders and tumbled halfway down my back. My eyes were large and round, the deepest midnight blue, framed by long lashes. My body was like that of a young woman's, with a small waist and wider hips, my breasts just large enough to be noticed. I had developed late- my monthly cycle of bleeding had begun just a year ago.
I smiled, and my reflection smiled back. I liked the way I looked. Surely Link would as well.
The vision hit me then with such force that I staggered back a step. Suddenly I was frozen in place, my gaze locked on my reflection's. A white halo burned around me- I could see it around my form in the mirror and around my own self through the corners of my eyes. Then blood was pouring down, raining from the ceiling, soaking me. My hair dripped with blood. Scarlet streamed down my face, down my shoulders and arms, staining my clothes. I tasted it on my lips. It ran into my unblinking eyes, tainting them crimson.
I stared into the bloodstained eyes of my reflection, and watched in horror as its mouth opened.
"Soon."
The voice that emitted from its mouth was male.
"Soon."
Scarlet tears streamed from my eyes as blood pooled around my ankles. My reflection smiled.
Then with another staggering shock, I was myself again, my eyes blue, my hair and clothes and body free of blood, my reflection my own. A surge of nausea welled from the pit of my stomach. I tore from the temple and out onto the grounds, just barely making it before I fell to my knees and vomited in the grass. When I was done I climbed slowly to my feet again, shaking and shivering from a cold sweat, and went back inside. I staggered to the mirror and looked into it again.
Midnight eyes stared at me from a pale, gaunt face. Haunted eyes. I did not know myself.
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Continued in Chapter 18.