"What in Din's name happened here?!"
Eugh. Why did she have to wake me? Couldn't she let me lie here andheal for a month?
I felt arms lift me up. I staggered as the blood rushed to my head, and grabbed a post for support.
My entire bodyfelt likea mass of bruises. My eyes were almost too swollen to open and when I did they ran so much that everything became a blur. Checking my lip gingerly, I found it was split. When I touched it, it began to bleed openly again.
"Nabooru?"
"I'm right here. Here, I found your clothes."
"Is this because of my dad?" I asked.
"It's possible. I think it's much more likely that this was done by somebody with very little money who wants you cheap at auction. They left your face pretty much intact, see? And there will be no scarring."
"How nice of her," I growled.
My back felt like it had been whipped. I parted my bloated eyelids and discovered tiny, red bite marks on my calves, my chest and my neck.
A bundle that certainly wasn't my clothes was pushed into my arms. It was armour, made up of soft overlapping pieces ofwhite leather. It seemed mainly ornamental and showy.
"I have to wear this?"
"Only for today and a few certain festivals. You'll get used to it."
Her voice was growing ever more distant as she spoke. I opened my eyes to see her marching away down the stalls.Later, as I dressed, it seemed she had found one of the night guards and the air was turned black with cursing.
It was agony putting on the close-fitting, knobbly armour over my tender skin. It was torture to move too and, on top of that, I felt so stupid. There was something about the cheap fakery of proper warrior clothing thatinsulted some part of me. You couldn't turn in the damn thing, and it was stiff and difficult to even move in, let alone fight.
Nabooru was returning, looking proud with herself.
"Good news," she smiled. "I've had words with the head guardswoman and she says it'll be possible to explain your condition during sale. She is even willing to liken your natural beauty to that of a desert flower and your stamina to wild oxen."
"What?!"
"I know. I wanted the suppleness of a well soaked reed but I guess you can't have it all. Are you ready? You may find the heat a little striking, by the way."
Yet another incredible understatement. The sun roared down out of a cloudless sky, ripping the moisture out of everything, tearing away any shade. I staggered under the weight of light suddenly pounding on my shoulders.
Nabooru's arm tugged me swiftly across the parched ground to where a tent had been erected. It was relatively cooler inside and I wasordered to stay whilst she went to get some people.
The tent was largely empty; there was a table on which stood an urn of the very weak orange juice that always turns up in tents on hot summer days at some sort of gathering of people (sports day for example). I poured myself a drink and poured the rest over my head.
Outside, the pre-auction entertainment was just starting. The men had been lined up against a wall and milling around them were about 100 Gerudos. The women kept doing things like kicking them in the shins to observe the reaction or hitting them with buckets of freezing cold water. One man had broken down into tears and the other Gerudo were now ignoring him.
There was a feel that this was as much a social gathering as a business one. I spotted a Gerudo selling rats-on-a-stick from a trailer and a group of Gerudo children sat on one of the ledges of Gerudo fortress, giggling and throwing rats feet down onto the men below.
Nabooru moved among them, tapping shoulders, announcing something, and then pointing out my tent. And steadily a trail of Gerudos were breaking away and advancing on the tent.
They were likethe old womenwe used to get around Hyrule Castlereally; with their sole aim of pinching and pulling the skin off me. They kept giving orders. "Run on the spot" was one of them. Also "jump thrice" and, worst of all, "sing your favourite song". They also kept pawing greedily at my hair like brain hungry re-dead which unnerved me somewhat.
"What's your favourite colour, man?
"I dunno....green?"
"Favourite food?"
"Forest larvae." That was met with a number of puzzled looks.
"Stewed," I added.
"Which would you rather own: the rose or the dirt that grew it?"
"That's easy. The rose, of course."
"But could the dirt not bear an infinite number of roses? Would that not be better?"
I admitted that I'd never grown a rose in my life and wouldn't know how. This apparently wasn't the desired answer.
"Do you like tomato soup?"
"Yes."
"Chicken soup?"
"Yes."
"Oysters?"
"Not really."
"On a journey you are met with a mountain. Do you go around, over, under or through the obstacle?"
"Do these questions have any relevance to-?"
"Just answer."
"Ok, then. I'd probably go over. It'd depend on-"
"If we're having sex, how long do you last?"
Silence. Well, not exactly silence; a faint murmur of disgust and a shuffle of feet as everybody backed off from the speaker. I knew immediately that this was a question a Gerudo just didn't ask.
This quiet migration away from the speaker eventually revealed her. There she stood, in the doorway, smirking gently at the crowd around her.
"What? You're all thinking it."
She was the first teenage Gerudo I'd seen. Shewas abouthalf a foot shorter than the others. Yet she owned the room. One could feel the power radiating off her, see the fire that raged in her eyes.
The eyes....dark and violet, like holes cut out of the world. One could almost think one could loose yourself in them, fall into them and keep on falling. For eternity.
I shook myself mentally.
"Well?"
How do you answer a question like that?
"I...don't know."
"Give me an estimate. What, a day? Two days? A week?"
A few Gerudo laughed. Was she mocking me?
"A-aslong as you want."
The girl smiled and nodded.
"Thanks. That's good. See you at auction then."
She gave a last glance of something a lot like contempt to the crowd, turned on her heel and left.
The crowd surged in once more. The noise returned in a second.
Just then, a bell rang and a voice, strangely amplified, said, "Ladies! Ladies! If you please, we have an auction to get through today so, if you'd just like to put them down and take your places, we can begin handing them out! Auction will begin in ten minutes!"