Spinning Slash

by Freezair

I need a good desc. for my weird little slightly-AU-not-actually-slash-standard-Linkspawn-Ganonback-fic, but summing it up is hard. I'll go with this: Vertically challenged five-year-old seeks the secrets of her family's sword technicque. There. Done.

10. Water And Ice

(CAN((Chapterly Author's Note)): Wow, the last chapter got away from me. Originally all of this was going to be a part of the last. Hey! I now have every chapter penned down in its entirety of what it will be, thanks to my last blunder. Hopefully I'll make no more overly-ambitious mistakes like that. For those curious, the singing... oddity that's enjoying tormenting our heroes and anti-hero is indeed what I have named myself, Freezair, after, but I am not one of them. Freezair Mistfield SilverEye is a radically different entity from the Freezair, though the Freezair is also one of my characters. ((Lost? I thought so.)) And no, I did not get Freezair from Freezzards. I could tell you where she originally came from, but you'd probably laugh and point at me and say "Ha ha! YOU used to make up your own POKèMON?")

(Whoops. Never mind that. But hey, bonus points if you catch all three Star Wars refs in this chapter!)

Spinning Slash, Chapter 10: Water and Ice

"Daddy, Daddy," Link felt a nudging at his shoulder. "Daddy... it's time to get up..."

Drowsily he opened one eye and a blurry picture came into focus of a flaxen head with sea-crystal eyes. He opened the other and the blurry image vanished, replaced by a near-perfect one of Posie in her entirety. She was knocking her palms into his shoulder and harking him. She turned to his clearing face and questioned with the same word she'd been repeating like a broken record: "Daddy?"

Link yawned and inhaled a small mouthful of algae, coughed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sought some purchase for his palms on the cold, slippery rock, to shove himself up while still half-asleep. His shoulder grasped a glowing bruise and his skull got a good rattling on the first attempt. Getting the wind knocked out of him wasn't his idea of the perfect start to a day, but it did wake him up. The second time he met with considerably more success and allowed him a nice, full yawn, without the threat of swallowing something slimy. He didn't ask how Posie had managed to climb up the rock that was certainly twice her height, especially when the mesa above it was covered in pond scum, but he was still too overly sleepy to think anything but simply thoughts. He puts his arms around her and drew her in: "Morning, baby. Sleep well?"

"Aside from the floor being cold and moist, and the fact that it was hard as, well, a rock-yes. You?"

"Ah, all well, I guess. I talked to your mother last night. She misses you. So do your best so she can look forward to us coming back, yes?"

"Of course," Posie replied. There were a few seconds of plain silence while Posie simply sat there, gazing out the doorless door while she sat in Link's lap. Then she ticked her face up to look at his and asked, "Do you mind fish for breakfast?"

"Fish?"

"Yeah. The King's got breakfast all ready for us down in his royal hall, though most of it is fish. Or seaweed. Elaine and Miss Naomi are already down there. Bruno came up here to get us, and he helped me up on to your bed. He's still waiting for our answer, so... what should we do?"

"Bruno?" Link rolled the name, putting emphasis on the "R." "Who's Bruno?"

"The little Zora-I got put in his room last night by the... woman with dragon wings is the best thing I can find to call her. I can't pronounce his real, Zoran name, but most folks call him Bruno. He say's his Tony's younger brother, but he's a lot nicer than Tony. Though it could be due to the fact I'm almost sure he's only Tony's half-brother, because he's full Zora."

"Really! I still want to know since when Ruto had one son, let alone two."

"Why?"

Link turned more than a little red. "Well, ah, you see, Ruto's the one who-you remember how I told you about the princess I had to save, and who would only give me the Sacred Stone she held if I-um, agreed to marry her?"

"Oh yeah... I remember that!" Posie giggled. "I can't imagine she was happy when you dumped her."

"Yes, but, I had an excuse. SHE had to go up the Chamber of Sages and help protect Hyrule from there. Now if only she could've stayed there, eh kid?" He laughed and lifted her up into the air before his face, before hugging her tightly and smiling broadly. "That would've solved both our problems!"

"Yup! But you told me that after that Zelda sent you back in time, and turned you back into a little kid, and restored all the Sages-"

"-And so on and so forth. I've taught you too well. You've memorized every tale I've ever told you to the letter."

"...Now that I think about it... if the Sages had remained in the Chamber, it would have only solved your problem. Because if I recall what she told me correctly, Mommy-"

"Oh yeah." Link turned slightly more passive. "Ah, but thinking about that sort of stuff is for the philosophers and prophets, neither of which am I or you. Breakfast does the King offer? Then I say, to breakfast!" He stood up while Posie slid down the side of the stone bed, pantomiming holding out his sword and pointing in the direction of their next path.

Waiting for them was the little Bruno, an aquatic child of about three with green-blue freckles all over his skin, which was white and yet blue in the same way the faintest wisps of clouds were transparent, and let through a little of the sky. Oddly for a Zora, he wore a red-gold robe that looked to be well waterproof, but faded as the dyes in it slowly leaked. His eyes took on a little milky fade to them every once in a while when his third eyelid blinked, out of sync with his foremost two.

Posie swaggered up to him in the familiar way a friend might, but then actually curtsied, and when she stood straight up she boomed, "Downward to the dining chambers, Your Highness!" The kid returned with a bow, less deep of one, and led her off with a forward kick. So just which one of them was in charge? Link laughed scratching his head in bewilderment. He set off behind them.

Bruno took the two of them down a series of low-hanging stone halls, their ceilings sparkling and painted with a magic mural. It mimicked the way light toyed around on water, dissolving in it to make an entirely different liquid substance. There was no water up here and that came as bit of a shock to Link, but he figured that the amphibious Zoras could probably go through the night not bathed in the pure sea below. He skipped his fingers over the beaded walls and the enchantments drifted from the barriers to his body, netting him in the sparkly web a lake diver wore. He took away his hand and was land-bound again. He teased the enchantments, poking them for a second, withdrawing, and then stabbing again to strobe their ocean-borne fires over his body.

"Please don' pway wiv da espements," Bruno sweetly chided. It hit every nerve Link's mouth possessed. He was way, way, WAY too cute.

"Yeah," Posie agreed. "It'll get stuck on you, and you'll have to wander around like that."

Silently Link stopped. He hadn't even seen either of them turn around. And people thought adults had eyes on the backs of their heads?

In sharp contrast to the almost tunnel-short passageways they'd been burrowing through, Bruno led them out into a magnificent corridor with a top higher than the roof of Lord Jabu-Jabu's mouth and teeth to match. It didn't need a chandelier, because an array of gorgeous plump limestone stalactites grew down for decoration. One of the few pieces of actual furniture Link had ever encountered in Zora's Domain (admittedly, the first and only one so far) sat in here, a sturdy hardwood table with red velvet tablecloth that had miraculously stood the test of mildew. The King Zora had his spot at the head, while Ruto was just a seat to his left. There was a break immediately after her, and then Tony, wearing only a pair of hilarious pink swim trunks. He was scarfing his breakfast with an unusual expedience. Until Link remembered-it was Monday. He would have school. Good thing he'd told Saria the night before they left to explain to Miss Claire their situation.

Naomi took a fork to a green sushi roll(a pair of abused chopsticks discarded on the floor by her chair), beckoning Link and Posie with her mouth full. "Mmm! Mmm!" was the noise she made. Painfully she swallowed without chewing much. "Hey! Over here, guys!" With her fingers she picked up a dried, light pink and stiff strip covered in flecks of pepper. She took a bite out of the chewy, salted fish. "Food is amazing!"

"Agreed. Try some of the little seaweed crackers; they look kinda gross but I think they're pretty good. They have an odd tang to them. But yummy." Elaine had a plate heaped high with an assortment of foreign and fishy looking foods.

Bruno ushered Link into a seat by Elaine; Posie was taken to a raised chair that had not but mismatched purposefully, but now its oddity was a convenience. He offered them to help themselves and skittered off to his own little niche by Ruto. Link wondered a tad why Bruno sat closer to the King than Tony and why he was the only one wearing a robe, but there was a delightfully seafaring waft cloistering the table that deserved his immediate investigation.

Now that all his breakfast guests gad arrived the Zora King tried to strum up some friendly conversation. "So, Link, your friends here tell me you're going to Mount Ipanajou. Can't fathom why, it's a dreadfully cold place. But you've gotten a bit detoured, have you?"

"Yeah, crazy, isn't it?" Link shrugged. He was really more interested in devouring a few of those little squares of salmon, speared on toothpicks with slices of avocado. "Your hospitality's been Goddess-sent, but soon as we leave here we've got to backtrack quite a ways up the river- "

"I'm a generous fellow, you know. I can help you reach the mountain and you won't have to retrace your steps."

"Really?" Link squeezed a rice-stuffed piece of sushi and added it to his plate. Another went straight to his mouth. "Huh do we do thathf?"

"By doing us a favor," grinned the Zora king.

"Ah, there's the catch," whistled Navi, who had followed behind Link for most of his journey through the Zoran catacombs and now floated innocuously around his head.

"Well, you won't believe what we here at the Domain have gotten ourselves into now," the King filled them it. He was significantly better with his chopsticks and elegantly lifted a piece of raw fish to his mouth. "Strangest thing. One morning I'm sitting at my throne and my grandson Bruno here informs me that someone is waiting for my calling. I ask who those who are wishing for my audience name themselves, and who do you think it is?"

"Can I make a guess?" asked Posie. "Was it a pair of witches named Twinrova?"

"Yes! Such a bright little girl. How did you know?"

"Well, the same hags were bugging the Gorons earlier, we learned. Bribed 'em so they could make a flyby in their city. And they sent a team of Lizafos on us. What trouble did they have for you?"

"Oh, that was exactly what they did to us! They claimed they had made an adjustment to good, and wanted to prove that they were no longer a threat by zooming around Zora's Domain for the day. I didn't buy that-mumbo- jumbo for one second. Waved them away like a couple of Keese."

Elaine put down something she was just about to stuff to ask, "Were they OK with that?"

"Are you kidding? They wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, no matter how many times I gave it to them! For the rest of the afternoon I saw them puttering about our home, scudding it up-I didn't actually see them do anything harmful, and all of my people confirmed they were clean-but I can't shake the feeling they were up to something evil."

"And that was all?" Were those waffles Naomi spotted among that sea(no pun intended) of delicacies? Something considered vaguely normal? Heaven help her poor heart. She hadn't had waffles in an eternity. "Did they just leave after that?" No, they were some sort of kelp wafer-but they smelled honeyed. She took a few to crumble on her crab salad. She hadn't had crab salad in quite a while, either.

"We thought so. Then reports came back the next day of an unusual happening in the Fountain Cavern-the very deepest recesses of it were starting to crystallize again; they were turning back into ice. No one could find the source of the chill. All of the blue fires were still contained. Slowly more of the cave became incased in snow. Three days later, it appeared-the Phantom."

That one caught all four patrons off guard. With a mirroring you could set your watch by, they exclaimed: 'The Phantom?"

"Nobody knows what the Phantom is. Nobody dares to find out." The King failed to see the shine appearing in his grandson's eyes, a bad sign in most small children but especially treacherous in Tony. "But every night it sings. Horribly off-key. The rudest songs, too. All about..." he leaned toward Naomi's ear, she being closest, and mumbled, "...Prostitutes and drunkards." The Gerudo didn't look shocked, though when she passed this message on to Link, he did. The King didn't have to remind Ruto. She already knew. Too well.

"We can't get to sleep at night because of the Phantom, and we all worry about the things our children will pick up out of its songs. We all pray at our bedsides it'll go away. Quickly. Already it's taught most of the young Zoralings a dreadful new song, some horrendous mockery of the national anthem it made up."

"I know that one!" interrupted Tony, with a hint of cheerfulness that got a dirty look from his mother. "Errm, but I won't sing it, ever, because Mom and Grandpa told me not to. Yes."

Posie had a right to note him with skeptic's eyebrows. Tony Ba- Doubon obeying rules was an unheard of phenomena.

"So," the King tried, "Here's my deal. You and yours can enter the cave and get rid of that atrocity in there. I'll send one of my personal best men-or in this case, women-off with you into the forest around the Fountain. There are booby traps in there that you'll need her help to skirt around. Once you get past that line of fire, so to speak, she'll leave you, but you merely need to make it through the springs and the Nymph's territory, and I think maybe a bramble crowding, and then you'll come to a small lake. In that lake is a colony of Zoras even older than our own, and they have expert geographers. They can take you to Ipanajou. Normally they demand their privacy, and if you just approach them without tact they'll maul you, but before leaving my guard Knashi will give you the gift that will make you recognizable as allies to the Zoras. Even your little... tan friend here..."

"I heard that," whipped Naomi, her eyes catching the King as he sized her up.

"I wasn't aware you'd visited such a wide spectrum outside your own kingdom, Your Majesty," awed Link while taking the last shard of a seaweed wafer from his plate. "I always though you were a bit of a homebody."

"Well, for diplomatic purposes I had to make the long trek from here to the colony in the forest. And it was harsh, let me tell you! Such an ugly, dry land until you get to the lake. Even the springs you encounter are disgustingly warm. My daughter and I were hoping to arrange a migration from parts of our somewhat crowded homes to the open waters of the lake, called Lake Lolita. It's almost twice the size of Hylia, but they're sister lakes."

"After you got to the lake," Link laughed, finding the name of Lolita somewhat familiar, "was it a nice trip?"

"It was atrocious!" Link shrunk back like wet wool, sorry he'd asked. "The bargains didn't go over at all. I got sick from eating an under-ripe Auraberry there and to top it all off, Ruto met a shady old Octorok shaman there who specialized in disguise charms. She purchased some half-rate transformation pendant-"-Ruto was already biting in with a "Father!" but it was too late to stop the old fish-"-and used it to turn herself into some vampy-looking young human girl with black hair, dark black eyes, near perfect skin-you can bet how quickly she was out seducing human boys! I think to get over her loss of you, Link," the King made a piteous nod.

Naomi gazed from Ruto to the boy farthest from her, Tony. "I can guess."

"Oh yeah? What about him, then?" Elaine made out Bruno with her fork.

"Toranteya is not full Zora; therefore he is not a legitimate heir. I allowed my daughter to keep him, but only because I did not want to see her upset if I were to remove him. For a while she had a coupling with a man of my picking that resulted in Brunilla, but that didn't last long... I can't complain really, I now have my heir. I can't do anything about the fact that my people are more enamored with Prince Toranteya than they are the rightful Prince Brunilla, but even a king's power has its limits, you know?"

"Where is the little scumball, anyway?" Posie surveyed the table curiously. He and his brother seemed to have taken off.

Ruto stunned and confused them all for a moment by leaping up like a frog, slamming her palms into the table and cutting her gaze to the door. "Goddesses, I should have learned by now not to let them out of my sight," she crowed quickly. "I hope they haven't gone off to try and fight the Phantom again-"

"I think he's just jealous that we don't have to go to school today," wondered Posie, standing up in her chair to catch the view over the table-top.

Link summed up the Zora King in his high seat at the table. "Sir, you've got yourself a deal. Now, show us the way!"



A few breaths of the slightly stale air in the Fountain Cavern were enough to deter even the steadiest adventurer.

It was a very brown, muddy place, where water rained from the ceiling in a constant stream and the fragile soda straw cave formations were prone to falling and causing concussions upon the unwary. Too loud of a noise could cause the clotted walls to crumble and slide, or a battering of needle-sharp pieces of limestone to puncture backs. In days past, whenever Ganon had strapped his saddle to Hyrule's back, the cave froze over to indicate his evil presence, and it earned the nickname Ice Cavern. In a few parts within the cave there lay corrupt magic zones, places where power went haywire and its effects became totally random. This could jolt- start everything from sudden apparitions of many mismatched socks to ten- year leaps to the past. Within the cave, it created and influx of raw energy that sprung into life as magical, cold blue fire. Though it was believed that these zones were originally put in place by Ganon himself, they provided a useful and infinite source of temperature and light to the Zoras.

Navi was having a hard time staying airborne in front of Link's face. Dewdrops kept dripping from the roof and knocking into her wings, sending her cartwheeling over in the air and careening into hanging calcium creations. Nervous cracks jettisoned from the areas where she impacted, but it wasn't enough to make anything break.

"Perhaps we oughta let whatever it is stay. If it can tolerate this place, it deserves some merit."

Naomi shaded her eyes as she looked around-from what, Goddesses knew. The world was sucked into vacuum black barely ten feet in the cave. "Strange as it's gonna sound comin' from a Gerudo, I gotta side with the Zoras in this case. I dunno how quickly you fell asleep last night, Linky Boy-hopefully I can get by on all of the three hours I got. That Phantom's a menace! Sooner we oust it, sooner we get out of here."

"The ground here is permanent muck. How long will this take?" Elaine seemed to be fighting herself upward. Everything below her ankles had disappeared.

"Once you find the Phantom, get rid of it and my father will make sure you're seen off. And while you're at it, could you drag out Toranteya and Brunilla for me? Tony's managed to avoid school for the day, I daresay, but I'd like them back in time for lunch?"

"Sure thing, Ruto," Link answered chipperly.

"This is soooooo disgusting," whined Posie, who took a step forward and fell in up to her knees in swirling pink mud. "I think I'd rather see this place when it's frozen. At least you don't have to get all slimy."

"Oooooh no you don't," advised Navi. "I came in here with your dad the first time it turned to ice, and lemmie tell ya something! Freezzards, everywhere. Keese swooping in and out of blue fires and biting at the arms of passerby. Icicles thick as Elaine's body and sharp as swords plummeting from the ceiling. And right in the center of everything, an enchanted stalagmite outfitted with spinning blades. If that's your idea of a good time, you're welcome to it! Just don't bring me."

"Nobody asked you to come, if you recall," retaliated Elaine as she dragged on through the sludgy floor.

Link ducked beneath a low crystal. His shoes were noticeably clean. A pair of clownishly large golden devices he'd stocked on his boots clicked and whirred in a peaceful, magical way. Metal wings spasmed slightly by his ankles. He'd never been into the cave when it was its normal temperature, but the instant the Zora king described the mud sloughs inside, he'd reached into his backpack and snapped the curious-looking footwear into place. "Ooh, Mr. Fancy Hover-Shoes," Naomi had mocked. "Tell me, do you sing when you fly, like a little birdie? Tweet tweet! Ha ha ha!"

He called her a desert-dwelling sand worm. She reported by calling him a pointy-eared, pallid-faced, primly-decorated and purely Hylean punk. Posie noted that Naomi had some particularly fine alliteration, and then called them both nuts.

The four of them quickly descended into an artificial night so thick it could choke. The still air had a smell upon it, of mushrooms and mold. Link reached for something and held it up-a clear crystal containing a sphere of rabid fire. That alone could not provide enough light to show them their way, so he grouped back and took out a twig surrounded by the salty-warm odor of Deku wood. He touched the tip of the triangular crystal to the twig's-a thin thread of fire from the center streamed along one of the crystals' inner facets and spewed out as a red, hungry flame that gave light and heat on more levels than one. In its light the slowly flowing cavern ground looked like a shiny river of blood. The sticky, warm way it wrapped around didn't help reassure those closest to it that it wasn't.

"Wow," marveled Link, looking around. "I never remember it getting dark in here so quickly. Still here everyone?"

Four voices chorused to fill the roll.

"Good." He nodded and gave his nod of appreciation. Navi by his shoulder bobbed to add her little bit of glow to the cave, otherwise dressed in black and now crimson.

"Where are we?" asked Naomi, backing up to get closer. It was probably wiser, when it was so hard to see, for everyone to remain tightly together-

"I think we're getting close to the first big clearing, right up this way. Used to be filled with all sorts of nasty stuff, when this place was cold, but I don't think this floor could support any of the gunk I knew." His torch switched hands. The cave burrowed under quickly. The rumors you'd here from the postman and an occasional Gossip Stone would make the cave out as being rather level, a sort of silly prospect when you through about the real nature of caves. He was thinking now, and he thought about the entrance to the first room. If his memory wasn't failing him, there was going to be a severe drop soon...

"Hey, Posie," he called out to his daughter in front, "keep an eye out. The ground's gonna drop away soon..."

"Gotcha," she acknowledged.

Hearing what Link had said, Posie carefully lifted up her feet and found them the nearest purchase she could. She knelt there, and slowly fell to her stomach. She was going to get slop all over the front of her tunic, but it wasn't like she hadn't already shown her penchant for getting messy. No, the floor here wasn't quite of quicksand consistency, so she couldn't swim it. But it seemed to be becoming shallower, and it was slippery, no doubt. She would slide along on her stomach.

"Posie, what are you doing?" Elaine asked disbelievingly. "You look like a mud-skipper."

"You heard my daddy," she explained as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "If we're going to have to slide down, might as well make it fun."

Elaine shrugged. Why resist? She went down too. Now how did one move in this position? She set up her arms in a crooked, spidery way by her head, like a Tektite's. She scrunched up one foot behind her and dug it in, scooting herself forward. Her arms climbed along and tried to stay upright. Posie was doing a sort of frog stroke to shalom onward.

Naomi chuckled and held her face. "What a bunch of weird kids," she breathed. Specifically to them she said, "Not the most effective mode of transportation, now is it, girls?"

"We'll make do," replied Elaine.

Link lifted his torch forward and laughed when he saw the kids slinking along in their strange, wormy fashion. It actually looked... kind of fun. Were he not in his Hover Boots, he would have tried it. But as it was, his feet would float up a few inches behind him. Actually, he'd never tried laying down wearing Hover Boots... would his whole body float? An experiment for another day.

Posie tobogganed ahead through the sluicing floor, chin coated with mud and hair dimmed to a messy brown. Mostly, she pushed off with her feet. Her hands were preoccupied swimming around on the floor, detecting the upcoming slope. The ground was suddenly heading southward, it was obvious, but there wasn't quite yet the great fall into the cavern she was looking out for. An unwelcome familiar shape settled on top of her head, settling in the center of her cowlick.

"Thanks, Navi, I really needed a head lamp," she moaned, voice frosted with sarcasm.

"I don't need any of your smart talk now," Navi replied with an equal amount of facetiousness. "I can't fly in this place. It's way too humid. If you don't mind, I'm going to rest on your heard for a little while."

"Pick a different caravan, Glowball. Caravan. Caravan. Run in fear from the little girl using big words!"

"Sorry, but you're the sloppiest of the bunch. No one else wants me getting them all wet."

"That doesn't mean I..." She groped forward. There was nothing there. Her elbow flexed downward... a swiftly running declivity. A marathon of mud. She silenced herself and managed a small snicker. "Y'know, on second thought, go ahead, Navi. I don't mind."

"Thank you," the fairy soughed. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Change of level," Posie cryptically replied.

"Change of-"

Navi's reward was a mouthful of goop and shrill cry of excitement from her amused steed. At just the moment she'd made her reply, Posie took what grip on the floor she could and propelled herself forward on her belly down the hill. Navi screeched in the shock of sudden movement and the prospect of being splattered, and tried to snatch handfuls of Posie's hair. It was too slippery and, being a featherweight, Navi slid backwards and went sailing off behind. She pinwheeled like she was trapped in a miniature hurricane and skidded over Elaine's head completely. She came to rest face up at the head of the drop, where Naomi had carefully and sure-footedly begun her decent. She tried a stop on a Rupee to avoid stepping on the pixie, but her momentum caught up with her. She tumbled backward into an unwilling luge. Navi was churned up with heaps of glop at the end of Naomi's feet.

The three(four, with Navi) of them came resting in a messy heap at the bottom of the inclination, piled up in what we'd liken to a car wreck. Slimy like a slug, Posie wriggled herself out from the middle of the stack and managed to stand. Naomi felt like she'd twisted her ankle. But her back throbbed even worse. Gingerly she nursed herself into a sitting position, so Elaine could get up. Noticing a twitching piece of lace embedded in the earth as well, she yanked up Navi. Her wings were knotted up something awful. She felt a rare surge of pity for the creature who'd destroyed so much of her and Posie's fun on numerous occasions, and passed her up to Naomi.

Naomi carefully took Navi into her own hands and set Navi to pant her stress off on a friendly shoulder. Holding no prejudgments against her, Naomi stroked her wings in an attempt to flatten them.

A big jet of mud leapt out of nowhere and greased the entire right side of her body.

Her gross hair whip-cracked around as she spiraled to stare down Link. He held his Hover-attachments and grinned sheepishly. He stowed them behind his back in an attempt to look innocent. For reasons unfathomable, he'd chosen to surf down the entire yucky flow.

"Tell me, Link, is it your goal to make me MORE miserable?"

"No, but admittedly it's fun to try," he wittingly rebuked.

Rather than even begin to try, she let it go with an "Uugh."

Posie experimentally tried the ground down here now that they'd fallen. She found this way that all of the mud coating them now came strictly from the top of the hill-out of the emptying radius of the first hill, the land beneath her feet was hard and it felt very cold. It had iced over into permafrost. She shuddered without meaning too. The zephyrs kissing her from deep down in the mazelike caverns did not bring warmth. It was a wholeheartedly eerie breeze, cold enough down to its core that it almost made one's heart feel like stopping. It was scented with a matted, drenched odor halfway between the smoky caverns of Death Mountain and a wet dog.

"Well, at least the ground's walkable here," sighed Naomi.

Remissibly, Link shrugged and wore a careless expression-upturned lips, but not a smile, coupled with sloping brows. He flashed his palms and added, "So it is. And I notice, the temperature's dropping."

"Is it, Einstein?" a bitter Gerudo churned. "Forgive my desert whims but to me, this place feels like seventy below!"

"Actually from our current standpoint within this cavern, it is forty-three point seven two five two three nine six..."

Everyone glared at Navi and growled her name out loud.

"...Approximately forty-four degrees," she expediently abbreviated.

"So which way do we head now?" asked Elaine, pivoting on her hips and surveying what she could of the space they had sloshed into. Her eyes had adjusted, but Link's torch was not-so-mysteriously absent. He couldn't have performed his sliding trick holding on to that tremendous stick!

"Left, I think," he replied, walking up to Naomi and lifting Navi off her shoulder. He set her down on his own. Then he tapped her back and urged her to spill out what light she could in the pain of her ruined wings, in order to observe what was in front of him. With no less than grand contempt a weak little glow flickered around her and made the lonely open space less dark, but certainly not light enough to make out any shapes besides geological formations within ten feet and the four dirty companions.

"Better fix us up another torch," requested Naomi. She'd found some sort of boulder to sit on and had her legs and arms crossed irritably.

Link nodded to no one in particular and fished out his Din's Fire crystal again, along with a fresh Deku Stick. He held out the stick a few inches from his face and willed a flame to come into being from the crystal, but no reassuring light flew from it. There was instead a morale- wrenching belching noise and the fire within the gem dimmed.

"Huh?" asked Elaine, suddenly interested at the turn of the burp. "What's wrong?"

"Not sure," he briefly answered as he shook the artifact, agitated. "C'mon, you stupid thing! Work!" It replied by jetting a ray of fire back at him that made him drop the crystal in shock. The orb in the center vanished as quickly as it had flared.

He bent down to pick it up again. He knew that the fire wouldn't respond if he had no inner magic to spare for the jewel, for it drew from his own power to work its magic. Surely it couldn't be him-he had only called a very small amount of the enchanted flames, and it had been the first time in weeks he'd tried to use anything magical at all. He tapped the crystal and tried to coax it verbally into working-"Come on, come on, I really need a little help here!"

Link let it lie in tha palms of his hands and stared at it. Nothing happened. It was silent.

A very small curl of smoke dribbled down to the floor like a worm burrowing into the ground, and Link eyed it with fascination. It dug through the air and settled itself on the floor, twisting and bending to form a very distinct cursive "K". The trail it had left while moving drew after it, sketching next a swirling "O." So the smoke wrote an entire sentence, which last just long enough for Link to whisper it to himself before the currents swept it away-

Kotake was here.

"Damn," he muttered, probably much louder than he'd meant too. He clapped his hands and turned around with sarcastic cheerfulness. He told his comrades, "Well, looks like we'll have to make do without a torch!"

"Aha-aha-ha," Naomi whined, "what's the problem now?"

"Apparently our little icy friend here has bewitched this cave to repel fire magics," Link morosely told her.

"The Phantom?" wondered Elaine.

"No, Kotake," Link returned.

"Kotake? Who's that?" now Posie needed to know.

"The ice half of the witch sisters Twinrova," Naomi fixed her up.

"Well, no torch for us, then," Posie lamented. She twiddled her feet. "How will we find our way?"

That question got a response before it was even finished. As the last word slipped from he mouth, an usually strong wind whipped past from the northernmost passage. "I have a feeling that that wind that's coming from way deep down in there is coming from the Phantom." He pointed in the rough direction of the trail they needed to blaze. "And if we follow the wind, eventually we'll find the Phantom."

"And Tony," bemoaned Elaine.

"And Tony," affirmed Link.

The four of them hiked off in the darkness in the direction Link had directed them to. The Hover-apparatus he'd held had mysteriously vanished into some bleakness, but Naomi knew they'd be back next slime- filled hole they met. And for some reason, this thought made her... smile. Now she knew he was married, and she knew she could never love anyone besides her dear Randy, but Link was undeniably a really special guy. Maybe if he could take a peek before throwing himself off a cliff, he and her could possibly, just possibly, be friends. Friends with the great Link. Yeah... the idea had some charm to it. She didn't have a Book of Mudora for his mind, though, so that might take a while. But it was plausible...

Wait a second, her feet weren't moving here. She was going to be left behind! Ooh, those airheads... She dashed into a sprint on the slickening earth, and suffered another embarrassing pratfall on a thin puddle of ice. She rolled over, spreading the mud on three fourths of her body to the remaining clean half, and crawled up to her stand and bumbled after. "Wait up!"

SMACK! Right into the wall of the cave.

Link peeked around the corner of the tunnel, sneering but only gently. "Wondered when you were gonna catch up, Nai," he chuckled. "Nice to see you do something stupid for once."

Dazedly she peeled herself off and shook her head with a sort of merry exasperation. "One, it's dark in here so that was not stupid. It was..." she brushed her front, "...a mistake anyone could make. Secondly, don't call me Nai."

"Fine then, Nukira," he teased before disappearing out of sight around the path. Naomi could have punched him for that one. But she restrained. It was much too cold for sudden movements. Now were had that ice come from if it was only forty-four degrees? Evil things were afoot in this cave, or at least highly annoying ones.

Little puffs of Naomi's breath appeared as she caught up to the back of Link's party. She sidestepped Posie to be behind Elaine. Had she night vision, she'd see that Posie was none too happy about this.

"Shhh." Link suddenly stopped. His right hand shot to the wall and his legs took a stance. Elaine hit the breaks so suddenly Naomi nearly tripped over her trying to halt herself. Steel sung from a leather scabbard, but it was Posie in the rear who took out her sword. Almost instantly she could feel as if all the foreboding energies in the underground were sucked up and drawn to gather in that blade. It trembled in eagerness, to smite them. And somehow Posie seemed not to notice this... Her eyes simply sparkled with an enterprising fire, but they were sharply ahead.

"Listen," Link advised.

They did. Posie and Elaine's elfin ears buzzed like pairs belong to giant rabbits. Naomi, who had no such ears, was stiffly alert.

Echoing around, bouncing like a stalwart rubber ball, a melody sounded. A few notes rustling out of the strings of a badly-tuned mandolin, barely recognizable as what ought to have been the Hyrulean national anthem. Except those lyrics obviously weren't the real ones, they were the lyrics as someone far too enamored with the Hero of Time would sing them...

"Link! He come to town! He come to save, The princess Zelda! Ganon took her away, Now the children don't play, But they will When Link saves the day! HALLELUJAH!"

Oh, Naomi didn't want to hear any more of that downright awful tune! She clapped her hands over her ears. It wasn't enough to completely muffle the gross disfiguring of the anthem, a truly horrid intermission of twanging strings playing now. Then the creature's voice came back, wheeling around with its terrible singing. It was a shame it was wasting itself with such a petty song, she realized, because it did have an uncommonly good voice that it was sadly deciding to waste.

Everyone else bore faces carrying similar distress. Posie had in fact practically wilted being submitted to the song.

Finally the ending seemed to have been reached, but at the hope of relief it passed from that ballad into another. Link relaxed his tense posture. He mumbled behind him, "Let's move." He beckoned them and slid forward with a catlike warrior's stealth.

Elaine purposefully let herself fall back to stride next to Posie, though the passage was very fast in narrowing. She took her friend's lead and removed the dagger she'd won from the Lizafos from its sheath, feeling it best to be aptly prepared. Link himself didn't know what they'd be facing.

Something hit Posie in the head. It clattered and split when it hit the hardened floor. She looked up-a crumbling spider-web branched out from the ceiling, and it was a brick of fogged white ice. At the floor-a jagged icen rock roughly the size of your average ice cube. She tried to pick up her pace to get as far away from the perilous overhang. But the soles of her boots didn't want to get any sort of hold whatsoever.

"Geez, I didn't remember this part," lamented Link as he sunk down to his knees. "No turning back now, it seems. Tighter than a Leever hole up ahead, be warned!"

Naomi's steps farther up ahead disappeared when her fluffed-up pants started to chaff the now-frigid floor. Navi's miniature light was captured and thrown back over Naomi's shoulder by her right sword, now out in her hand, which translated it as slightly more bluish than it was. Her left one completely captured it in its smog-dark steel interiors. But it was clear where it cut the earth. It left moist, hot, steaming gashes where its owner had let it press into the ground. Elaine passed them with a slight worried look. She had to pull herself into a haunch much later than a tall adult. Posie, short as she was, could simply watch bemusedly.

The tunnel scraped the top of her head, though. And it wasn't like the very entrance was, either. There were no stalactites here. The passage was almost perfectly round, in fact. About two feet high. But wide enough so Posie could walk beside Elaine. Get passed her if she wanted, if she chose to up her walking pace. But she couldn't get around Naomi, who held out her scimitars in a strange way while crawling. The right walls were developing a little white ridge on them that resembled darning, and the left ones were drawn with a straight gash that made them bleed mud. Posie shifted back from her position on the left, let Elaine get ahead of her, and swung around to the right. The ice brushed into her thigh, exposed except for a shell of mud, but it was better than being shoved back by a tyrannical splash.

Link shimmied on forward, his feet unfortunately kicking mud in Naomi's face. She winced back, even if it did blend in slightly with her face and cover the markings there. Suddenly he stopped. "Oh, what NOW?!" she rebelled.

"Hmmm. We appear to be... stuck."

"Stuck?" asked Elaine from near the back.

"I'm not sure... there's... something here... a plug of some kind!"

"Great going, genius, now how do we move it?" It didn't take one to label Naomi.

"It looks like a giant block of ice! It's freezing cold to the touch!"

Posie rushed ahead of Elaine and elbowed Naomi so she would set aside the chilly one of her pair of blades. Link took up most of the way before her. She could leap over his legs and knelt down herself to pass under his stomach, peering around his shoulder at the end of the small obstacle course.

"I dunno. What do you think of it, kid?"

Posie eyed the block suspiciously. Tentatively she put a hand forward to the obstruction. She pawed at in a couple places, to build up the mental image of it as vaguely round. It was very cold. And it left her fingers and gauntlets wet when she drew them back. Process of simple elimination meant it was run-of-the-mil ice. Were it the enchanted red kind, her hand would come back covered in blistering vermilion burns. With so little light, it was mostly black. But something in the middle of it... if it were possible, it got darker there. She mulled it over while holding her chin... then she had an idea. Unceremoniously she dumped her sword on the floor for a moment and stood up to Link's shoulder height at the moment. She stole Navi("Wah! Hey!") for a moment and clasped the flailing fairy while she dove under his stomach again. She squeezed Navi like a rubber toy and reluctantly the fay woman gave out light.

Posie gasped.

Stuck in a state of suspended animation inside the water-block was that familiar facetious face literally frozen into a look of obvious discomfort. Tony had a hide pitted with dark black bruises and the scales on his fins mulled in the ice in unusual lackluster manner. His eyes were shut tight and his mouth was open, palms held up to brace against some charge. Like a person bearing up against a swift-moving and slithery Snake Rope. His body shuffled and clicked around ever so slightly. The silvery sheen just barely encompassing him indicated that a very fine layer of water surrounded him. What one might first assume to be a crop of feathers at the nape of his neck breezed around in the little space they could.

Of course. He was half Zora, naturally he'd have gills. And somehow fully formed enough to sustain him with even that small amount of water he was floating in, before it became ice. It must have been like breathing through a straw, though. Highly unpleasant. Posie exclaimed, "Tony!"

"Well, it's too tight here to do anything. We'd have to push him forward."

"Can't Naomi use one of her swords?"

"She'd have to come up here; no space!" Link's right hand, the free one, did half the talking as it gyrated on his wrist.

"What do we do then?"

"Only thing we can. Heave-ho!"

The charge from Link's shoulder managed to shove the Zorasicle a few inches forward.

"This might take a while," groaned Posie.

Off in the background, the good old Phantom was singing again. This time it chanted a traditional Hyrulean nursery rhyme, about rabbits. At first it sounded like a tune that could have come out of any country, but the ending had a definitely Hyrulean twist.

"The rabbits of the snowy lands Their paws are thick and pink, The rabbits of the fiery sands Their legs are long for leaps, The rabbits of the grassy plains They have big shiny eyes, The rabbits in the forest's reign Can almost touch the skies, I sing of them again and again, And of the Ebridani? Poor chap hasn't any, He's given his ears to the men."

Irreverent thing. If it knew of their predicament, it certainly knew how to worsen it, by irritating them all with its scratchy singing and reminding Link that he'd be able to move this rock along a lot faster had he a Bunny Hood. The enchanted kind, mind, not the simple toy kind you could see children wearing in the market. How ridiculous of him, to be thinking about silly accessories like that while trying to shove a block of ice out of the way...

"T-t-temperature is d-d-dropping q-q-quickly, L-L-Link," Navi stammered. Posie only just then seemed to remember that she was holding her. She held open her hand near Link's arm, and Navi stumbled off it to shimmy up to Link's shoulder. She clutched her arms around her stomach and bent over where she sat, like she had suddenly gotten motion sickness. "It's a-a-approximately t-t-twenty-four degrees now. W-w-water has w-w-well become ice."

"Do you think that's not obvious, Navi?" Link asked in a certifiably fed-up way. "Because if it wasn't, I don't see why we'd be pushing Frozen Boy here."

Eager to please, and eager to warm up Link's cold attitude, Navi decided to go on a ramble using some of her useless knowledge. "You know, this reminds me of a folk story from outside of Ebridane," she mused while being jolted as Link barged the icy boulder. "There was a man who owed a lot of money to a crimelord and was finally caught by a bounty hunter. His punishment was to be frozen solid... So he bid his friends and his sweetheart goodbye and they froze him. He was kept as a novelty item, until one of his friends trained enough to become a powerful warrior and save him from an eternity encased in ice. Ah..." Navi wiped a quickly- congealing tear from her eye. "That tale gives me the warm fuzzies every time I think about it. So touching."

Link gutturally remarked, "I don't see you doing any work here, Navi."

"Err, umm, I can't push very well," she fumbled to reply. It was truth. But a weak comeback.

CHINK!

"That didn't sound good," uh-ohed Naomi behind Link and Posie.

"There's something else in front of us," stated Link blankly. He rocked his head to the sides and tried to push the Tony-stone over to the side to see what was stopping them even further.

"I think it's another block of ice," breathed Navi. Despite the fact that there was nothing to look over, she craned heck neck as if attempting to peer above something that wasn't there. Since no one could see ahead beyond their initial obstruction, it was as good a guess as any. Elaine moaned something about needing permits to carry Ice Rods. Link looked near ready enough to snap at their lame run of luck. Either that, or sock the quasi-cube before him. It might have helped. It could possibly crack the shell on that kid and maybe allow them to get on. Until they came to whatever he'd hit, of course.

"At least we can tell Ruto we found her son," Link said through clenched teeth.

"Hey, Greenie, shove over." Link felt something jab at his ankles and he and Navi both turned their heads. Naomi was elbowing him and slamming the side of her fists into his heels. He scrambled into the wall to make room for the Gerudo, who had seethed her cold blade and had the hilt of the fire sword held in her teeth. Link had to bunch up into a tight ball to avoid being sliced, leaving Posie sandwiched between his stomach and the slippery floor. The passage had developed a bit of a third plug.

"This is a bit too close for comfort," he tried his best to say sardonically. Naomi, by the way her eyes shot him, obviously didn't find that funny.

Naomi slid her hand over the cold ice in front of her. "Right. Back up, guys, unless you like the idea of getting flambéed."

Link tried to back up with Posie still beneath him. She wailed at him. "Hey! Let me out first!" He received a small punch in the stomach as she slid herself up and dove to glide back. He slowly inched back from the block hunched together like a beaten Wolfos. The thin layer of mud on that side of their precarious passage helped his momentum slightly, if not much.

With a backward nod to see that the lot of them were safely out of the way, Naomi picked up the flame blade from where she'd let it drop. She gave a casual-sounding but ultimately serious warning and she held it up to the stopper. "Alright guys, this little bugger is naturally hot, but it's gonna take a lot more power than just its normal heat to melt this thing quickly. Could take hours normally. Trouble is, it doesn't like giving just that-trickle. It like to burst the floodgates, so to speak. Good chance there'll be plenty of fiery backlash. So once you see this thing light up, get back. Got anything in your little miracle backpack for burns, Linky Boy?"

"Some burn salve, but whipping in out in this tight space might be hard. Worried for yourself, Naomi?"

"Me? Nah, you know the rules of magic. It can't turn on it source, and I tap my own stores for this stuff. I'm talking about your little fishy friend here. He could get scorched."

"He's no friend of ours! If you're going to toast him, so be it," laughed Elaine sourly.

"Ooh, we're bitter," sighed Naomi. "Holding a little grudge? Do what you will, but don't turn me into your instrument of revenge."

Elaine shrugged. She was of the opinion he was the creep to end all creeps, no matter what her mother was going to say about it. She had her own decidedly evil ideas planned for Tony. Naomi didn't have to hurt him for her. "Whatever."

Naomi happily rolled her eyes and diverted her full attention to what she was trying to do there. For maximum efficiency, she pressed the flat side of her blade into the plug. She tried to pick a spot where the boy trapped inside would be least endangered if something were to go wrong. Now she inhaled through her mouth and exhaled through her nose, in the meditative way she'd been taught, and pictured reaching into her heart and drawing out a glowing chunk of-something, protean and red. Her mental image tossed it up into the air, then caught it and crushed it in her fists. It broke into leafs of stardust that flowed down her arm as if a groove were cut in it, the arm that in real life held her sword. She pictured her fingertips springing to life in sparks of red fire-

There was a blast, all right, and it threw all four of them chaotically into a tangled heap about thirteen feet back. A cloud of smoke, filled with a cloying scent, formed into the selfsame words they'd seen earlier, Kotake was here, and dispersed to show that the chunk of ice was still intact.

"I forgot about that," moaned Naomi while she rather painfully extracted herself from the mess they'd landed in.

"Shh!" Link suddenly hissed at them all and they stopped, even as knotted as they were. A creaky breathing noise obviously not made by any of them penetrated from just beyond what they could not see.

The Phantom was just beyond the ice. It was humming. A caddy- wompus tune, something that reverberated with a hint of bluegrass about it. Words entered the so far wordless melody, echoing in the Phantom's true voice. It was of the trill sort that might belong to an anthropomorphic insect, minus the clacking of giant mandibles. But there was an odd charm to the way it vibrated, even perhaps musical. It chanted a few lines about fighting a losing battle, and they came off as very pleasing to the ear. Hardly like what it had sung so far, but it sung this very quietly.

"So. have you learned your lesson, child?" The sound waves came very directly down their hall, indicating it probably was speaking to one or both of their roadblocks. "Learned not to come trespassing into my home! How long would you like to be in there?"

Posie was a bit unclear on the situation. She seemed to think the Phantom could see through walls and was talking to her. Suddenly she blurted out, "I don't-no! I want out now!"

The Phantom drew a sharp breath. "Well. what was that? More little friends?" Posie swallowed when she felt the attention of her companions dawn on her. She lost her words into a pit of fear. There was the sound of glasses sliding into each other on a serving tray; instant blue light came through past the captured Tony. There was also a mild, round silhouette, hovering above it something that furthered the chilling filter. It put something like hands on the sides of their obstruction, and tugged backward. Inertia made it begin slowly, but it quickened as it fell onto final, pure ice. Tony and the whatever-it-was disappeared into the back of a large, open cavern lit by an enormous plume of blue fire, walls decked out spectacularly in great natural frozen formations. Stalactites and stalagmites that were near glass in their clarity created the appearance of a gaping mouth.

The finally-revealed Phantom wiggled out from behind the block and came to its side, its figure blurry at a distance. As it came closer it grew sharper until its image was totally defined.

It really wasn't like anything Link or any of his partners had ever seen before, really, and defied easy descriptions. Its body was spherical in shape and covered in a thick layer of fine, flat blue hairs. It had antennae sticking out from the sides of its head(which was about its entire body in truth) that curled. They were covered in a similar coat on fur, right down to their knobby tips. Despite their assumed fragility, they suspended between them a definitely thick-looking slab of something cold and teal. Its eyes-gaping, black and huge, almost fully taking up a fourth of its face with its batting eyelashes. Its hands were a totally out of place color of fuchsia pink, formed like a dog's. Its legs were a darker shade of navy and thick and fringed like a lion's, and its feet might have come off a rabbit. The "poor Ebridani" had lost more than his ears, it seemed. And the Phantom created a boiling patch of gasps in the passage.

"Hmm. Not Zoras, it seems. They look human."

"Yes, yes, we're human, we're human!" Elaine blurted. The creature looked harmless and its eyes were quite endearing, but there was no telling what it was capable of.

"Well, humans are of no concern to me. Be gone!" It waved its little purple paw at them while it turned its back to admire the frozen half-boy.

"Who and what are you, and why are you here? You're driving the poor Zoras insane with your singing," Link accused.

"Who? I wish I myself knew. What? Who cares? And as for the songs, I enjoy singing very much and have been paid to perform here nightly," it replied in a nonchalant way.

"Give us a straight answer or I skin your pelt for a Yeti Mail," snarled Naomi.

"Go ahead if you will, but I daresay it'd not be very affective," shrugged the Phantom. "I'm not a pure Yeti. Only on my father's side, you know."

"No, we don't know," Naomi griped back. "We've come here to get rid of you, and we'll do it without hurting you if you'll pack your bags and leave about now."

"Bags? I carry no luggage. Only my mandolin and my songs, the ballads of old. I live happily here, and pay no rent. Why should I leave? Please, come into the cavern so we may talk."

"But we're already talking," fussed Posie. "And I don't think that tune you sung earlier was very old at all, even if it did use the Anthem's tune!"

"Hogwash. That's not the point, child! All I'm asking is that you crawl out of that mudhole so we can speak face-to-face. You'd like to be able to sit down, wouldn't you?"

"Common sense dictates that you're probably trying to lure us into a trap, but my back says you're preaching to the choir," groaned a contorted Link. He managed to worm himself free and crawl on forward, coming to a stand at the exit of the burrow. This cave was not a part of the original caves, he knew. It was egg-shaped and the walls were perfectly smooth. No wonder he hadn't remembered the tiny crawlspace. Now that he thought about it, the Phantom was just a little shorter than the total height of the entire stretch. It must have been the creature's doorway, though an unnecessarily long one. Dungeon logic was purely baffling at times.

He felt Naomi spring up behind him. He caught sight of her out of the corners of his eye. He could tell even with his color-limited vision that most of her hair was the same tint as her skin. The two children appeared after her. Huddled at the entrance to its lair there, Link acted as spokesperson and asked, "What now?"

"Well, if you have something to say, say it," stated the Phantom blankly. It had its claws now wrapped around the mandolin it had spoken of, and it fiddled with the wooden tuning knobs. "And if not, then don't waste my time. I grow tired of these games."

"We're going to formally request you take leave of this place and find someone else to torture," Naomi laid out.

"And again I say: why? You are not my landlords, and I live here. You cannot force me to move."

"Well, at least stop singing then, or sing softly. I barely got any sleep last night because of what you were doing!" Elaine registered her complaints.

"On! I love to sing and I love to sing out. Besides, I receive money for my concerts. So stop, I think I'll not."

"Who would pay you to sing songs like that?" angrily Posie wondered aloud.

"I didn't ask for their names! They plucked me off the mountainside and told me they'd a job for me. They gave me sheet music and asked me to sing as obnoxiously as I could. They gave me this place to live in! No strings attached. They told me the cruel creatures called Zoras would try to take my home away and they gave me the fire to defend myself with. What is your point?"

Twinrova struck again. "Did they fly on broomsticks and have eyes and noses that should have made them top-heavy?" inquired Link.

"They did," was the concise reply from the Phantom.

"Well, terrific. That was Twinrova. You made a bargain with Twinrova. Apparently, Mr. Phantom, you're quite the mercenary."

The Phantom puffed up like one of the balloons it was shaped like and looked offended. "I should think not! Neither Yeti nor Freezzard wanted to count me among their kind on Ipanajou because I was not fully either. I leapt at the chance for residence and where I could pursue my hobby at will! And that's Miss Freezair to you," she corrected.

"Oh, so that's what you are, a Freezair," Naomi mock-gasped. "Whatever the hell a Freezair is."

"According to the Ipanaj, a hybrid of fur and frost. It was what they called me, for my mother never gave me a name. But my angst is not of your concern."

"-Wait a moment, actually, it might be," grinned Link catching its statements. "You say you collect ballads. Do any of them concern a Scholar and the place he was buried, along with his warrior brother?"

"Ah, I don't give free information," Freezair guarded her instrument. "I exchange Rupees or services for my music. The only songs you'll get from me without gems are the ones the whole world's heard enough to weary of. And bearing God's hatred it came, through swamps and marshes-"

"I never liked Beowulf," Link cut her off. "What would we have to give you to make you shove out?"

"Pay me fifty and I'll sing anything you request. But I'm not leaving."

Now it was Link who wearied of her toying. "What if we made an exchange? We give you fifty, and you give us a ballad of Ipanajou. We give you a whole new ballad, and you get out of here."

"A tempting request, but only if you can provide me with a song I've never heard before."

Link assured the creature that he indeed could, and for a moment Posie seized in panic. Glossy-eyed she gripped his leg and asked meekly, "Daddy, you wouldn't. not. the song?"

"Darling, of course not," he knelt down to pat her head. "Never that. But what about the other songs I know?" The presence of teeth in his smirk portrayed his best "You know." hint.

"Oh," Posie chuckled as it dawned on her. "That. Well, you can sing that. In fact. may I chime in? But why are you so sure.?"

"Because, here in Hyrule, we sing the 'Great Returns' song. Not that little ditty. 'Here again, here again, this is now and that was then. Great returns of the day.'"

"What are you two plotting?" Navi had to ask.

Link pretended not to hear her. Instead he put on a submissive emotion as he unhunched and reached at his belt for a leather satchel marked with a long glass octagon. He tugged apart the knot holding the drawstring to pull the little bag open, a pattern of colored light kissing his face as the brilliant jewels inside replied to the illuminated world around them. He tugged out one that painted violet and tossed it at the feet of the Freezair. "Alright. Ipanajou. Mention of Scholar's Tomb or the Sword of Obedience if you would. Do your little act, then we'll sing you our song."

A tiny hooked claw caught the strings of her mandolin and sent out a sweet, fresh song. "Request taken," and Freezair sat down a moment to ponder her choices. She resembled a round version of the famous thinking statue with her hand on what they could guess was where her chin was. Then the puffball bounced up as if rubber with a joyous "Got it!"

She cleared her throat. Left paw ready to finger the strings and right prepared for strumming, she went through a scale in her unadulterated voice. It still had a bit of a twang to it, but it was beautiful in the way a vibrating opera singer's voice was. She had chosen her profession wisely. The claws that one would have thought to be an encumbrance proved perfect little picks while she began her song.

"The ancient one So knowing well as he did

Saw top of Mount Ipanajou

A shock of magnitude this He saw the things of his nightmares And the things of his dreams And learned from that scry What was not as it seems The gilded cage Which holds the bird A sculptor's masterpiece In a single word The glass escapes Filled with its wine It tastes of the feasts But stings as the brine If he should sip Drunk and a danger But to threats They are not stranger The minor demigod rules the spire It commands the wind Faced with a flea The dog will rescind."

They all applauded politely, even Navi. In fact, she even complimented the Freezair. "Terrific song. Very moving. But what does it mean, exactly? I heard Ipanajou, but. I can see how the first few lines might have involved the Sword. 'Stuff of nightmares and dreams.' but then it wanders off into nonsense."

"I think we all can be sure it was intended as some sort of prophecy," chortled Freezair. "Nonsense of that sort typically is. Perhaps it is serviceable nonsense."

"I'm not a seer so it doesn't help me," Link turned up his nose. Hiking up his belt, he asked, "What more?"

"You only paid for a single song. Cough up another fifty and I'll see what I can do. But we had a deal."

"My wallet doesn't go that deep," Link lamented. "Fine, deal's a deal. You want a favor in return, you get it. Posie, are you ready?"

He scooped her into his arms and lifted her to his chest. "Alright. Who ought we dedicate this one to, anyway?"

"Mmm. We're giving Freezair this song, so let's make it hers all the way. Good?"

"Works just fine with me."

The two of them turned to the musical connoisseur. With his free hand Link conducted a steady rhythm. Head turned down at Posie, they began: "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Freezair. happy birthday to you!" And they bowed, after that brief encore. Elaine figured it would be polite and clapped, knowing that after Link had picked up that song who knew how many years ago he sung it at every birthday party instead of the more traditional "Great Returns" song. Navi openly rolled her eyes at their choice. Naomi simply thought it a tad eccentric to sing to this thing a song wishing it a good birthday, regardless of whether it was really its birthday.

"Hmm. lyrics in the vein of 'Great Returns.' melodically simple. short, no doubt. but I do like it! I like it a lot! Perhaps I'll add a bit more to it. but I'd wager, I've made a good trade."

"So will you leave?" asked Naomi.

"I think I shall, and seek my fortune elsewhere. For many nights now I've heard a haunting noise upon the wind, and it beckons me to wild adventure." She slung her strings over her somewhat nonexistent shoulder. "I wish you luck upon your journey, voyagers," she bade farewell.

"And to you on yours, Freezair!" Posie waved.

Link realized that they had better step away if their spherical friend was going to escape, but rather it lifted a golden pod of the kind Sheikah often carried. It snapped it on the floor with a purple and black flash, vanishing without even a whisp of smoke, and taking with it almost all of the ice. Tony and their other cubically frozen friend, apparently Bruno, eased out of their frightened poses to be surrounded by a dark, open space that stank of moldy earth. Not wonderfully welcoming, but better than being stuck in a block of ice.

*****************************

"ARRRRRRRG! KOOOOOTAAAAAAKE!"

"What is it?" the old harridan grumbled. Mounted to the front of her broom as she hovered was a pragmatic little blue screen she'd whipped up, and across it flowed a steady picture of rippling dunes and a walking trashcan.

"Turn off that viewfinder doodad and come here so I can wallop you!"

"What have I done this time? For the record, you had our baby last."

"Your so-called 'Yeti' that you sent to torture the Zoras just vanished into thin air! I felt it during the routine monitoring I was doing! I checked all over and it isn't even on this planet anymore!"

"Koume, Koume, calm down. You've said it yourself. They're the 'prissy' breed of Zoras. Nothing compared to their hard-nosed, fire- breathing, reptilian cousins. They will submit easily when the rightful King comes to reclaim his throne. They are the tamest race to fell."

"Easier than Sheikah? Once we assassinate the royal wench and Kakarikan white-hair, we'll be rid of their pathetic lot."

"No, no. We will convert the Sheikah, for the use of feeding our baby with their magic. Blood will not be the only nourishment he will need."

"Perhaps we will let him have a meal of Zelda, after all, and keep the Sage. One of each race. Hylean. Kokiri. Goron. Zora. Sheikah. sad to say it, but Gerudo. Perhaps a Deku Scrub for good measure. And of course."

"Greensleeves," Kotake chimed in while trying to stay focused on what flashed on her picture device.

"And then what?" cackled her sister in her typical witchly manner. Even though she knew the answer.

"We send fat old Mercutioe Harkinan a curveball he can't bat- an army of marching swords!"

Both hags laughed at the prospect of the portly king sending his little viridian champion to try and ward off a million living blades with his teensy Master Sword-if it hadn't already been recruited. And if Link hadn't presumably already kicked the bucket at the hands of their minions. He'd be the crowning glory feast for their charred child, once he'd risen.

Only in the world of the mortal were there no second chances.