Ti was bewildered. The camp had become suddenly frantic, filled with screams and mothers scooping up bawling infants. The tents were being rapidly struck, and fathers were shoveling earth onto the firepit. The clearing in the woods was alive with activity.

Ti's ears pricked up. There. That whistling in the woods again. The whistling abruptly stopped when an arrow materialized next to his head.

He dropped to the ground and began to cry.


ONE YEAR LATER


They were preparing for something, Ti knew that. They had journeyed to a town and started buying up all the food, piling the pack mules with filled sacks. The donkeys grunted under the weight, but none of them collapsed. Rumors came from the north of a growing darkness, and Ti discovered they were to trek to the south, to Hyrule, the golden land.

The next morning, the nomads left Oppsiel and started the treacherous journey to Hyrule. There were more rumors, about bandits assaulting travelers in the woods bafore the slopes of Death Mountain, the last stretch of the road. Ti shuddered at that word, remembering that night still fresh in his memory.

The last remnants of mist still clung to the trees sparsely growing in the flowing grasslands. The men were at ease, and the women stayed in the wagons. However, Ti's mother, a fiery woman with strong features framed with black hair rode beside her husband, refusing silently to a life of cooking and sewing, which the mothers put up with in Ti's tribe. He thought it was idiotic, and the mothers of his friends should be riding up front. They were just as strong as anyone else.

His father was the leader, who kept them together. He sat tall in his saddle, a short sword hanging loosely in his powerful hand. He had close-cropped jet hair, with blazing green eyes that saw through every lie.

Ti sighed, and put his mind on the journey ahead.