10. Evil Well

I needed rather desperately to catch up on my sleep, but something about the rising sun and the lake full of water had struck a chord in my memory.

When water fills the lake, shoot for the rising sun...

I looked over at the stone slab with those words carved on it. Beyond it, the sun was rising, poised perfectly between two pillars on an island in the distance.

Slowly, almost dreamily, I drew my bow and walked over to the stone slab. I stood right in front of it and notched an arrow, drew, and shot for the rising sun.

The arrow zoomed forward with a speed and height unlike anything I'd ever been able to do before. It seemed to actually pierce the sun, causing a drop of blood to fall from it and down onto the island with the pillars.

"Wow Link!" Navi exclaimed, snapping me out of my stupor. "What was that?"

I looked at the red object on the distant island. "Let's go see."

I dove into the water at about the same place Sheik had and swam for the island. The water was cool and refreshing, but I was at that stage in tiredness where everything seems floaty and very far away. I was still wearing the Zora Tunic, I had no intention of changing it, and I didn't bother to come up above the surface of the water until I got to the island.

There was an arrow laying on the island. Just an ordinary arrow, except that the head was encased in what looked like crystallized fire.

"Ooh…" Navi said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Fire arrows."

I looked down at the frozen fire arrow. "Couldn't I just buy those arrows that you set fire to?"

"This is magic. It's better."

I nodded slowly. Everything was starting to fade.

"Aren't you excited?"

I responded by toppling to the ground and falling asleep.

I was sitting on the ground in a room full of people, all of them talking noisily, laughing, shouting, screaming, crying. The volume rose steadily, pounding in my skull, until I couldn't take it anymore.

"I can't hear myself think!" I screamed.

"Who needs to think?"

I turned and saw Sheik sitting beside me, smiling. He leaned over, put his hands on my shoulders, and gently pushed me to the ground, smiling all the while. Then he looked down at me, fixing me with his gorgeous ruby eyes, and leaned down…

And then he wasn't Sheik anymore. He was that angelic-yet-sexy blonde from my dreams, who I realized for the first time was Zelda.

Zelda straddled me on her knees, smiling in the same mysterious way Sheik had been. All the noisy people were gone, there was nothing but me and Zelda.

I don't think I need to go into what happened next.

I woke up with a start some time later, sat up, and groaned.

"You okay Link?" Navi hovered over me worriedly.

"Yeah, fine, whatever." Then I shook my head. "No, not fine, not whatever." I got to my feet and picked my hat up off the ground. "I can't take it anymore. I just can't."

"What are you saying Link! You're not going to just give up on the quest are you!"

"Huh? No, that's not what I meant." I looked in the direction of Hyrule castle. "I'm not giving up, I'll never give up, but I need a break from these raging hormones."

"So then…what are you saying?"

"I'm going back, Navi." I jammed my hat on my head and hefted my pack onto my shoulders. "Back to where I belong."

zzz

Gone. Finally, finally, the thoughts were gone. No more fantasizing about every woman I saw. No more being turned on by anything even slightly curvaceous. No more sick daydreams and desires. I was ten years old, and I was happier than I'd been in months.

Outside the Temple of Time I stretched and grinned. "Feel that Navi?" I asked, arms spread to the sun. "That's the feeling of the world not sucking."

"It's great that you're happy and all…" Navi bobbed around in front of my face, "but have you forgotten what we're doing here!"

"Course not," I started down the steps and into town, "I just have some things to do here."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

I grinned again. "Like go bowling, chase chickens, and drive that crazy windmill guy crazy."

Navi shook her head. "You're the crazy one."

"You can't blame me, I'm just a kid."

"Didn't you grow up at all after what's happened?"

Zelda flashed in my mind and I stopped. She'd gone through a lot more than I had. I closed my eyes. "Yeah, I guess I've grown up some. But…I don't know. I just can't seem to stay serious." I grinned again and kept walking.

Navi didn't give up, but I wasn't listening.

zzz

Kakariko Village. Hard to believe that in just seven short years its population would double, that it would become the home of refugees.

I said hi to the cucco lady, to the cursed family, to the boss carpenter and his wife. I'm sure they were all confused by my enthusiasm, but I didn't really care. I was just so glad to see the world thriving.

I popped into the windmill, just for kicks, and saw the crazy windmill guy cranking away on his accordion thingie.

"Hey Windmill Guy!" I greeted him.

"Hey kid," he returned. "What are you up to?"

"Just hanging around. How's your windmill song coming?"

"Still working on it. I just can't seem to capture the spinning melody."

I got an idea then. A very bad idea that confused me to no end, but I had to do it. I'd already done it after all. I was "that brat."

"I know a good song," I said. I took out the Ocarina and played the Song of Storms. The same song I would learn from the windmill guy seven years in the future.

But…if I taught it to him now, and he taught it to me in the future…who wrote it?

Wow, makes my brain hurt.

The song made the windmill spin faster, a lot faster, out of control really, and it drove the windmill guy insane. "Wait! That's not right! It's spinning way too fast!"

I got out of there as fast as I could.

And I noticed something. Something strange. First of all, it wasn't raining, but for some reason the well was empty. I was sure it hadn't been empty before, it had been full of water, but now it was completely dry.

"What is going on…?" I wondered aloud. I went up to the well and peered inside. There were rungs all the way down one side, so I hopped inside and started to climb.

"Link… This place is…" Navi ducked back inside my hat, obviously frightened.

The bottom of the well was still damp, and I found a small hole in one wall that I could crawl through.

Once through I was surprised to see a stone hallway, dripping a little, with walkways on either side and a shallow gutter full of water running through the middle.

"I can hear the spirits whispering in this room," Navi whispered harshly. "'Look for the eye of truth,' that is what they are saying."

"Spirits?" I repeated. "There are spirits?"

"Tons of 'em. This place is just…"

"Have I ever told you that I hate any and all forms of the undead?"

"Uh…"

"I do. I really do."

"Well you're going to have to deal with it," Navi said firmly. "This is one of the most evil places I've ever been in and it is full of spirits."

I shuddered, but kept going. Until I came to a dead end.

"Great, nothing's here. Let's go." I turned and tried to leave but Navi stopped me.

"There's got to be more to it than this," she said. "I can hear voices beyond the wall, there must be a way to get through."

"It's a wall Navi, you can't just walk through walls." I went over and put my hand on the wall to demonstrate, but lost my balance when it went right through.

"Woah!"

"It's not a real wall!" Navi exclaimed. "It's an illusion!"

"Oh yay," I muttered.

Navi led the way through the wall and into the water-filled passageway. I turned left, got run over by an enormous flying skull that I can only assume was called a green bubble, and found a stone demon at the end of the hall, spouting out water. It had the triforce symbol on the ground in front of it, and since Triforce symbol play Zelda's Lullaby, I did. The demon stopped spouting and the rest of the water in the well drained away.

I started down the hall in another direction, when suddenly I was falling! The floor had looked completely solid, but when I took a step in front of a freaky demon statue, there wasn't anything under my feet and I was falling.

I landed in a cave-like room full of ReDeads, silver rupees, and a pond of evil-looking green liquid.

Have I mentioned that I hate ReDeads?

Quickly, I played the Sun's Song and froze the rotting freaks. I grabbed all the silver rupees as fast as I could and went trough the door at the top of the ladder.

After that I made my way through the well veeeeerry carefully, testing each step before I took it, trailing my fingers along the walls to see if they were real. It worked pretty well, and when I found my way back to the beginning of the well I found a small tunnel that had been under water before. I crawled through, fought a Skulltula, and went into the room.

I was immediately grabbed by a pale claw-like hand attached to an unnaturally long skeletal arm and laughed at by some kind of creepy, pale, zombie-ish monstrosity.

"Crap! Dead Hand!" Navi exclaimed.

I mentally added Dead Hands to my list of undead creatures that I hate, then did a spin attack and broke away from the hand. The zombie-like "head" had been walking slowly toward me while I was caught, so I ran up an attacked the thing, all while trying to avoid the forest of other hands.

The head burrowed back under ground to get away from me, and there was nothing I could do except get grabbed again and lure him out. Then I kept him above ground by attacking furiously until he, uh, died?

Either way the Dead Hand was gone, and when he disappeared a chest appeared where he had been. Naturally, I opened it.

"A magnifying glass?" That's what it looked like anyway. A weird, purple, magnifying glass. That didn't magnify.

"The Lens of Truth!" Navi exclaimed.

"Huh?"

"It's the eye of truth that the spirits and that old guy from Kakariko were talking about! It's magic, can't you feel it?"

I put it to my eye and looked around the room, and, to my surprise, found something. There was a second chest behind the first one, one that contained a whopping 200 rupees! Yes! The Lens of Truth almost made it worth putting up with spirits, ReDeads and that Dead Hand. Almost.

I was all for leaving right then, but Navi would have none of it. The spirits were still talking, and she wanted to find out exactly why.

"This seems like just a well, but there is something very evil in here."

"But I hate this place…" I was whining and I didn't care.

Navi did care, so we returned to the main tunnel and I used the Lens of Truth to find a couple of keys and a compass. Great and all, but I just wanted to leave. A little further down the tunnel I find a big room. And here I stopped.

The big room held several cells, like prison cells, and in the middle of the room was something I had been praying not to find. A torture device.

It was a big wooden X with manacles on the upper crosses for holding a person captive. They were too high to let the person stand normally, so it was obvious that the tortured person would be suspended above the ground.

Not good. Not good not good not good notgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgood.

The rest of the well was an uncomfortable blur. I found some Gold Skulltulas, which was good, and some coffins, which was not. The Lens was essential, since about 50 of the well was fake, but even when I was seeing the truth I couldn't get the image of that torture device out of my mind. Why was there a torture device in this well? Was the guy who'd lived in the house above here a psychopathic freak? And why me? Why did I need to see all of this?

After snagging one last Skulltula I was finally free. Woo hoo! Done! Time to get outta this little hell hole.