Chapter 9: For Dreamless Sleep
"Can you make it?" Link asked, again. He was sitting in small chamber in one of the castle basements. The witch Kotake—or was it Koume? Link could never keep them straight. In either case, the one with ice powers—had her little laboratory down here. She claimed she liked the cold air of the dungeons. Whatever her reason may have been, Link didn't much care. Whichever witch he faced now was the best potion brewer he knew of, and he had great need of her.
For weeks now his sleep had been disturbed by visions of past events and fallen enemies. At first they had been sparser, coming perhaps once or twice a week. Now he was having them nightly. Sometimes twice a night. Last night had been the clincher, when he had dreamed of Darunia's death, and had woken to heaving sobs for his lost Sworn Brother.
He couldn't take that again.
The idea to consult the witch sisters had come to him early in the morning after his failure to return to sleep, and he had hurried off to see them soon after the dawn broke. He went to the ice witch first. His father had always spoken of her as the superior brewer. When he came upon her door, he had knocked and awaited her reply before entering, shivering despite himself as he had moved across the threshold of her chambers, the frigid air of the dungeons slowly numbing his limbs. Her chambers were small and dank: threadbare linens and silks hung from the dark recesses of the ceiling, and hued smoke billowed in columns from round cast iron pots on the floor. Hard cushions were scattered around a single, large cauldron that boiled an ominous acid green. Ko-whoever was looming over it like a vulture. It occurred to Link that she should have been casting a shadow, but he couldn't quite pick out the light source for the room.
"Silly child, of course I can do that! Hee hee hee… but I will need ingredients." Her speech was punctuated by her peculiar coughing laugh every few minutes, as always. It had long ago frightened Link, but that had been when he was but a stupid little boy. Today, it was merely an annoyance, like the broken speech patterns of lizalfos.
"What kind of ingredients?" he asked, suspiciously, recalling once six years ago when he had come to her seeking a healing poultice and she had sent him to the bottom of Lake Hylia for some non-existent fish for a laugh, while in actuality she had the exact potion in generous supply in a cupboard.
"Oh, nothing special, nothing special, hee hee hee. All I need is an Ullup's Toadstool. They grow in abundance in the Lost Woods. I believe you to be familiar with the area? Hee hee hee…"
Link nodded, gravely. He had not returned to Kokiri Forest, or even gone near it since the day Saria had died, years before. If this was another joke he'd have the witch's head on a pike. But for now, the promise of a dreamless sleep held enough allure to drive him back to his childhood home.
The journey didn't take long with Epona, and before the sun had even fallen to sunset Link stood outside of the entrance to Kokiri Forest. The ride here may not have taken long, but it had still left Link enough time to think through the veil of fatigue and hope that had obscured his judgment. He now hesitated, unsure as to whether or not to enter the woods.
At last, the allure of dreamless sleep once again overpowered his fear of a homecoming, and he stepped into the darkness of the Lost Woods, crossed the bridge, and stood, for the first time in seven years, in Kokiri Forest.
It was different than he remembered.
For one, he was fairly certain there hadn't been a gigantic deku baba just on the other side of the hollow tree trunk that joined the Kokiri Forest to the outside world. As soon as its severed bulb stopped twitching, Link wiped the gooey sap from his blade and took stock of his surroundings. The entirety of Kokiri Forest was filled with the giant babas and dotted with the orange and red nests of insane deku scrubs. The Kokiri were nowhere in sight.
How could this have happened? Father promised me he would leave this place alone. Is this merely the effect of the Deku Tree's death? Should I have stayed? I could have—no. No regrets. Never any regrets. I made my choice long ago, and there is nothing to be gained by wondering what would have happened had I chosen differently.
Shifting the weight of his sword in his hand, he walked deeper into the forest, hacking apart babas as he found necessary, trying to decide his next move. He ignored his own old home and walked past Saria's, not wishing to be reminded of her anymore than this place already did. He paused outside of Mido's dwelling, however, and after splitting another baba in two, he walked inside.
Instantly, he threw himself sideways as a small barrage of deku seed slingshot bullets whizzed through the air, and was back on his feet, hand on the hilt of his weapon, before his attackers had even had a chance to reload.
There were four of them. Three were Kokiri, but one was a small Hylian child. She couldn't have been more than six years old, and stood even shorter than the Kokiri that clustered around her. There was something about her drew his attention, though he coud not place it. Mido was not among them, Link noticed. Instead, he recognized two of the know-it-all siblings and the girl Kokiri who used to sit above the entrance to the shop. The Hylian girl was clinging to the female Kokiri. Link sheathed his sword, but the Kokiris' expressions remained stonily set in masks of distrust. One of the know-it-alls spoke first.
"Who are you and what do you want?"
Link opened his mouth to answer indignantly, then hesitated, then closed his mouth and thought for a moment. Of course they didn't recognize him, the Kokiri never grew and, being unable to leave the forest, wouldn't know that the bodies of other races became larger and changed shape with time. The Kokiri had always thought that Link was one of them. Even I thought I was back then, Link thought. So now, do I tell them who I am, or do I let them think I'm someone else?
Link decided on the latter, racking his brain for an identity. A name from his schooling by Ganondorf came to him, though he couldn't remember who the name belonged to.
"My name is Hod. I'm a hunter, just passing through the forest." Moments passed in awkward silence, and the Kokiri remained defensive. Both the know-it-alls had surreptitiously slipped new deku seed bullets into their hands since he'd put his weapon away, and the shop girl had begun to inch back with the Hylian girl in tow. The Hylian girl, still clinging to the Kokiri, was peeking over her shoulder at him, and there were tears of fright in the corners of her eyes. If she was what hey were defending, his best chance at winning over the Kokiri was to win over the child.
Slowly, Link bent down on one knee, leaning forward towards the girl with his hand outstretched palm-up, the way he might present it to an unfamiliar dog. The girl still clung to the Kokiri's skirt, trying to hide behind her, but her grip on the cloth had loosened. Link noticed and was encouraged, though he again felt a strange twang of implacable recognition. He smiled at her in what he hoped was a friendly, non-threatening manner, and beckoned her over, careful not to make any sudden movements. It was not likely that the Kokiri would be able to do him any serious harm, much less actually kill him, but Link was in no mood to be fighting unless it was serious. He beckoned again to the girl, widening his smile slightly and calling softly to her.
"It's all right, come here. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm here to help," he cooed, but it seemed to only have the opposite of the intended effect, as she now shook her head violently and clung tighter to the Kokiri girl, and the know-it-alls slipped the bullet seeds into their slingshots and leveled them at Link.
Link frowned. This wasn't going at all as expected. The monsters in the forest, the missing Mido, and now this girl who refuse to respond to him in anyway other than trying harder to hide.
The girl was beginning to shake again now, and the know-it-alls were pulling back on their slingshots. Link stood, slowly again, and began to back towards the door. He was nearly out the door when he heard the snarl of a deku baba. His eyes widened.
Damn, I forgot how fast those things grow back.
For the next few seconds, Link was moving purely on instinct. Lunging back inside of the house just before the baba snapped its huge jaws on the spot he had been occupying, he landed in a crouch next to the Kokiri and the Hylian girls, spun on the balls of his feet, and had his hand on the hilt of his sword by the time he was standing again, and he drew it. He heard a high-pitched shriek of terror as the blade was exposed once more, but he wasn't paying attention, lunging forward again, this at the deku baba, whose head was still framed in the doorway. Link swung the sword in a high overhead arc, bringing it down to sever the stalk just behind the baba's flower-head, causing the stalk to convulse and ooze milky-white sap as the bulb flopped around in its death throes. Sap dribbled down the edge of his blade, dripping into a small pool on the floor as the adrenaline faded, leaving Link fully aware of his surroundings and the Kokiri once again. He heard crying behind him, and turned, slowly, not certain of what he was about to see.
The Hylian girl was huddled over, crying loudly, and the Kokiri girl was bent over her, clutching the girl to her, and staring at Link in wide-eyed terror. The know-it-alls moved in between Link and the girls, their slingshots drawn back. They were yelling at him, but he couldn't hear them. He wasn't there anymore. He'd remembered where he'd seen the girl before.
It was five years ago: the sack of Kakariko Village. After he'd slain the scythe-wielding man he'd wandered off to search for new targets in the burning village, the ghost of which now filled his vision. There was a woman. A young mother, huddling behind the smoking hulk of some building or another, trying to shield her daughter, begging to be spared. Link had stood a few feet away, his sword dripping the blood of the scythe man, and he had watched as a lizalfo pounced on her. He remembered her scream, the wide, terrified eyes of the little girl cowering beneath her. The lizalfo jumped away from the woman, its taloned feet tearing deep gouges in the dirt, preparing to jump again to see if the woman would make the same funny sound. Then it had been distracted by something and run off. The woman, evidently not terribly injured, stumbled to her feet, and tried to run, carrying her little daughter.
He let her get a few yards before he went after her. His orders had been clear: kill everyone. The sword demanded it of him. He gave the woman a shallow slash across the back just before she reached the torn-down remains of the village walls, causing her to collapse. She managed to turn as she fell, landing on her back so as to keep from crushing the child with her body. Then she had once again struggled to her feet and ran. Link had chased her down to the river where it ran past the village on its way to the castle. He had struck her again, and she had fallen into the water, child and all.
Link had taken her for drowned and returned to the village to kill some more.
He'd forgotten about them completely. Most of the events of that night were hazy in his memory, save for those that he had been forced to relive through his recent dreams. And now he faced the woman's little girl, who already resembled her mother. She was still crying loudly, screaming in fear. Link felt his breath catch in his throat, and his air came in ragged gasps as he stumbled backwards over his feet to get out of the house, then turned and ran.
He didn't go to the Lost Woods. He didn't get the mushroom. He just ran back to Epona and rode as fast as she would go back to the castle. Even the promise of a dreamless sleep would not make him go back and face that girl again. Even entering the Kokiri Forest was now a horrific thought.
That night he dreamed of the day he had killed Princess Ruto on the dais before her frozen father, and awoke in another pool of cold sweat.
He didn't sleep again that night.
