I don't own Zelda. I don't own Impa or Sheik or Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, or Link. But I write about them anyway...
IMPA'S DREAM
"Sage of Shadow." That is what they call me, these days, and to my ears it sounds wrong and strange. My grandmother saw the portents and understood them, the day I was born--I would in turn give birth to the child that would grow to be the Sage. One of our people had not filled that role in a hundred years--it was unnecessary, for though there were wars, they were wars of men. There was no great creeping evil to defend against.
Knowing that I would be the first teacher of the next Sage, my family raised me well. They taught me the old songs and the new sciences, the ways of every people in the land and hiding places in every corner of our world. They hoped that it would be enough--many times, I would be woken in the night to visit with some brief traveller who thought that he or she had some knowledge that would be of benefit to my someday child. Those were good times, surrounded by my people before they went away, in a family full of warmth and strength. We were happy. I grew up, strong in learning, and found a husband to my liking, and together we had a child.
My son.
My Sheik.
He was all that I could have hoped for in a son, quick to learn and slow to anger. His hair was the gold of his father's, his eyes were the color of pomegranate, a richer shade than mine. His ways were deep and wise, and he saw things that my poor thoughts never would have understood--he saw the world from a distance, though he was not distant for it. He was not as loud as other children, but he was kind. He was never one to close his eyes against what he saw--for all that that is the main trait of my people, even we were surprised sometimes by his unflinching grasp of the truth.
When he was seven, my husband, his father, died in battle. Those were bad days, full of war and fire--the King of Hyrule betrayed us in his jealousy, and in his passing madness condemned many who were innocent to death. The King of the Gerudo folk was yet a boy, not even twenty, and no threat to us--we thought that perhaps the Evil King we had been warned of was Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, and we turned our thoughts to him instead of the growing darkness in the desert.
When I told Sheik of his father's death, he reacted as any little boy would. He wept, and took ill in his unhappiness, but in time he healed, though there was more of sadness in him than there had been before. If such a thing is possible, he was even slower to raise his hand or voice against another--perhaps he knew, even then, what would happen. Often I would walk to his bedside at night, as mothers do, to find him staring into the dark. I asked him once why he spent so much time awake--he told me only that it was time he would not waste, and that he had little need for sleep. I worried for a while, but he was healthier by then than he had been since his father died. In the next years, he grew strong and brave and beautiful, and no few of the girls--and ladies!--of my people followed him with their eyes and with their thoughts.
He was so bright, my son. I taught him all that I could, all that my people had taught me, and I was proud to have borne one as quick of thought and good of deed. I could think of no better person to perform the task that he would be called to undertake, for never had I known one with such endless compassion. I told him of that, too, when he was old enough--of all the Sages, he was to be the one who knew from the start what he was. It would bring balance, we thought, to have one who was aware before he was awake.
And then.
The war grew worse, and my people began to fade from the world. It was all we could do--we are not made for madness, nor for reckless hate. Families vanished in the night, leaving for a place that I could not describe to you. They did not die, merely left. Soon, my village was half of what it had been, and the other races began to look at us sidewise, wondering. We are above all a closemouthed people: we told them nothing.
Still, when we could, we helped the others. We hired on as bodyguards for caravans of families, which was safe enough--helping people to the border of Termina, where, strangely, there was no war. There are other Goddesses than my own, after all, and they protect their own holds. Many Hylians fled to these safe places, and were not followed by shadow or fear. One such caravan, my son travelled with, he and many of our warriors. He had proven himself in battle half a dozen times, and though he was slow to anger, my son, he was not slow to mete out justice. Fear good men, for when they kill you, it is quick. A bad man will rave and make the time before the falling stroke longer, because they need the fear in your eyes. A good man never even needs to see it. Sheik was making a name for himself in more ways than one, and before long the caravaners began to ask for him by name, or by the names they had heard. They asked for the boy who shone with light when he fought, the one who smiled from the heart. And he did not turn them down.
Our own borders crawled with shadows in those days. Some of it was Ganon, waking to evil. Some of it was Nohansen, with his ruthless soldiery and merciless anger. I still remember clearly the day that the King of Hyrule sentenced his wife to death--she fled, aided by the last true squadron of the Guard, who all fell protecting her. She made it to the forest, my people knew, but after that moment there was no more information.
Though there was one of us who had known the Silver Queen in her youth, and this one told of her death, a short time later. She had been wounded in her flight, but rode on for the care of her baby son. I remember feeling fear for her child, alone in the forest--but the wisest of our oracles said that his was another path, and I did not search for him. By this point there was too much happening in my own land, and the day came that the borders were overrun.
My son, who was as righteous as he was beautiful, took his turn against the strange creatures that had been slipping in. He was quick in battle, but no woman's son could have been fast enough to do what he would have needed to do to survive that fight. Of a party of thirty of our strongest warriors, two came limping home to the heart of our land--and neither of them was my son. Those two only survived because the raiders believed them dead, and the warriors feigned death even as they wept into the earth. My son stood his ground, and dispatched more monsters than should ever be asked of a single person, but in the end he fell, torn through by a barbed spear.
There are no words for the pain. I knew him dead before the others ever made it home. The Sage of Shadow, dead before he could be chosen! The best of us, the most shining and most good, taken by a cruel blade before he ever reached his twentieth year. There was no justice in that, no hope for hope. There was only darkness and misery and pain, and anger at the Goddesses that they would mark one for choosing and then not let him survive to fill out his dream. I turned my back on them, and joined the hunts. I was death--and I was dying inside. My husband's loss, all those years ago, tore into me as nothing else, but I continued and allowed myself happiness for Sheik's sake. Now...he was the light, and all fell into shadow.
Dreams are pernicious things, and dangerous. When I dream, my dreams are filled with my dead love, and my shining son, the hope of our people. Sometimes I imagine what it would have been, if I were allowed to grow old and eventually die, knowing that my son would be a strong young man forever, removed from the cycle to protect it. Those dreams are not always good, for it is true that one grows accustomed to power and youth. But it would be worth it, to give all of this up to him. I was not meant for this.
At the last, the few remaining Sheikah who had not fled to Other places or died at the hands of monsters or of men rallied together to make their way to the heart of Hyrule. We crept in the dark and hid in the day, and none saw us as anything but whispers of mist. We had learned very well how to hide, in the last few years. We came to Hyrule Castle itself, and to the suite of royalty--empty, now, but for the King.
Or so I thought.
We had some desire to kill Daphnes Nohansen while he slept. It would be only meet, however, to wake him instead, and let him know why we did what we did. Together--since every guard in the Palace slept, bound by sorcery--we opened the door to his bedchamber.
What I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life.
The King of Hyrule did not sleep. His eyes were wide and white, and in them, for a moment, I saw an echo of what my son must have felt betimes, staring into the darkness. Quiet noises of unrest came from the man's mouth, and his robes were stained and filthy. His hands turned in on themselves, twitching.
He was mad.
The jealousy in him had overridden everything. By letting his common sense succumb, he had opened himself to lose everything, himself included. "Help." he whimpered, not knowing that there was anyone to hear him. "I can't. All the dark. All the hurt. I can't."
"You can't what, Hyrule King?" I did not recognize my own voice, and my long-knife's hilt bit into my hand. "What is it that you fear doing?" He turned over in his bed, and his eyes sought mine. He could not see in the dark, as my people can, but he still found me with some measure of accuracy. "I am all rotten. Like an apple." His voice was like a child's. "I killed her. I killed him. Was he my son? I won't ever know now. He was a baby. The Gerudo are killing my people, and my guards are killing everyone. I can't stop it now."
My eyes were narrow. I wanted someone to blame for my son's death, but this poor shell was worthy of nothing but pity and disgust. In that instant, my anger burned itself out and left nothing behind it. "You began this madness, Hyrule King." One of those behind me said in a low and dangerous tone. "This is your fault."
"I KNOW!" the King screamed. He leapt to his feet in a tangle of bedclothing, and as one my people drew their weapons, more than willing to end his life. But what he did, none of us expected. He fell to his knees before us, sobbing. "I can not hear my own mind! I can not taste the world anymore! While the sun is high, I am all lost in fog--and at night, I am too afraid of myself to do anything about it. But Goddesses, I can say that I am sorry! I am more sorry for what I have done to you, the chosen people, than even what I did to my wife. I am a murderer of children. I am abhorrent. I must die." He bent his head before us, and whispered "Kill me."
We stared at him in disbelief. He was truly lost in madness, and who could tell when it might have begun? Perhaps with his advisors, whispering and conniving? Perhaps earlier, in the crèche as he grew. None of us would ever know. I felt something in him, though, some part that might be saved, and as if struck by lightning I knew my path. My entire body resounded to a note that only I could hear.
Heal him, daughter. A threefold voice murmured. My anger at the Goddesses had trickled away with my anger at men, and I closed my eyes. There was no other sound but the weeping of the King. My people watched me, and when I opened my eyes and sheathed my blade, they knew what would be done.
I knelt and grasped him by the shoulders. "Rise, King of Hyrule. Your duty is not yet done." He looked up at me without understanding. "There are those among us who can mend a diseased mind, King. There are those among us trained to mend a diseased country, as well. We shall do both, and perhaps we will be strong enough to stand in the coming darkness."
It was my mouth that spoke, but they were not my words. All the same, I accepted them. Half my men found and captured the captains of the brutal guard, and the untrustworthy advisors--I say captured, but binding a sleeping man is easy enough. And we turned our minds to the King in something resembling compassion, though he knew as well as we that we would never again be to the royal line what we had been. As I left his bedchamber, with the sun already high in the sky, I heard the weeping of a child.
Many of the maids and manservants had fled in the night, for my people are intimidating in visage. It was obvious that no one would assist the little one, not in any near hour. Though I was tired, I followed the sound down the hall, and into a low bedroom lushly furnished in the colors that appeal to little children. In one corner, by the tight-closed window, was a tiny bed. And in the bed was a child no more than two or three years old. She looked up at me through tangled hair and wiped her face with a grubby hand, and I felt a burst of anger toward her maid. Children should never suffer filth--the dirt of play is one thing, but this child was a mess. Without thinking, I scooped her up and took her to the closest washbasin I could find, and scrubbed her clean. When I stepped back to survey my work, it was a shot to the heart.
She looked so much like my Sheik that she could have been his sister...but her eyes were a clear, dark blue. "Who are you, anyway, little one?" I asked, now that her tears had gone. She watched me warily. "Do you have a name?" I asked. "Zelda." She said. And again, for the second time in a day, I felt that resounding note sound through my body. Yes. This was a right thing. I couldn't tell how, but I knew it was.
The next years were strange ones. I stayed a decade in the house of the King--my people left one by one, and I did not realize what that meant until it was almost too late. Raising Zelda took much time and imagination, for she--unlike my dead son--was a normal child. She squalled and screamed and made messes, she made trouble, she played tricks. She was my joy and my irritation, and I loved her as much as I ever loved my Sheik.
Almost.
There was a similar sense of destiny around her as had been around him. She wore it like a shift that she never noticed, though those around her were pulled to and changed by it. I had grown adept in recognizing Sages, having lived with one so long, and I soon saw that she too would be something of that role.
And that is what made me understand.
My people were gone, each and all of them, but for me.
So who would take up the mantle of Sage of Shadow? Who had been taught enough and was enough part of the world to become that one?
I thought that perhaps one would come back from the shadows to take on the role. But none did. And there are none more of us left to take on the burden but me. Mine are the People of Shadow, and in shadows now they walk, waiting for the day when the world is strong and forgiving enough to take them back again. That day might never come--but my loyalty now is to more than my lost race, it is to my world. Against kings and the parliaments of kings, regardless of whether it be the King of Evil, or the King of Hyrule; my loyalty is to their people. As Sheik's would have been, were he living, were I dead. Perhaps the Goddesses found it more meet to take the teacher than the student, or perhaps they gave him mercy in letting him die before his people were lost and his loyalty forced to turn. It is not for me to debate the wisdom of those I worship, only those I serve.
And serve I shall.
Now all those years are done. Zelda is a woman and beautiful. She is an adult and a Sage herself, and ruler of Hyrule. Link--her brother, in his own way also very like my son--has gone away, as is his right. And I rest here, protecting as I might, in communion with my Goddesses and with the world. I am...I am not happy. I had my happy years, and spent them well, as a child and a young woman, a wife and a mother. I have had my days of fiery love for husband and for three different children, and I find that the fire is cooling. I have a task, and a deep love for this place, and I serve both equally. I am not a happy person now...
But I am content.