A/N: Ok, I know I already said it, but that last chapter was one of my favorite parts of the entire young Link portion of Ocarina of Time. The entire Death Mountain arc really qualifies for me, but especially his journey to the top to see the Great Fairy. I really wanted to work that into the story, but didn't think a magic sword attack fit into this part of the journey. Now, the Great Fairy quest is an essential part of "A Hero's Path". Only six or seven chapters left of Link's youth! (There's still more to work in...) I know this chapter is long, and is mostly about an OC (who ends up playing an important part in PD I hope), but its pretty funny too. Let's go!
A Hero's Path
Chapter 15: Zora Boy, Kauyo
They woke at the crow of a cucco as the sun began to rise, feeling rejuvenated from the previous day's adventures. Link and Navi realized to their surprise that there hadn't been a single Stalchild attack all night long.
"Well, they are vulnerable to rushing water," Navi reasoned. "Perhaps they know to avoid the river."
"I guess. Did you hear that cucco crow?"
"Did I hear it! It woke us this morning, Link!"
"Oh yeah."
"You're obsessed."
They started journeying upstream alongside the Zora's River. As they traveled, they encountered a river creature. It popped out of the water to reveal its tough, purple, spiky skin. It spat a rock at Link, who jumped aside.
"What's with these monsters and rocks?" he said as he swiftly pulled out his slingshot and shot it in the eye. It dove into the water and they didn't see it again.
They continued their journey as the hills grew steeper and rockier. The air was growing cooler. They traveled for three or four hours with no real interesting occurrences, except when they came across a herd of cuccos on the opposite side of the hill they were climbing.
"Cuccos!" Link exclaimed.
"There are wild cuccos?" Navi said. Strange for something to baffle her so incredibly.
"Navi, I'm getting hungry. You think I can kill one of these cuccos and cook it?"
"I thought you wanted a pet cucco."
"Yeah, so I can plump it up and eat it!"
"You are a crazy Kokiri."
"A little repetitive, huh?"
"I guess you can eat one. After all, they're wild."
"That's what I thought." He ran over to the flock of wild cuccos and stabbed one straight through its side. It stared at his blade as if it were a pesky fly, then side-stepped itself away from the dagger. Link's sword came right out with not so much as a drop of blood on it. Then the cucco did something strange. It turned its head skyward and started crowing loudly.
The action itself wasn't too strange, but the reaction. The entire group of the birds charged at Link.
"It's a stampede!" he shouted and started running up the hill. The front runners of the newly formed poultry army started pecking his boot heels and ankles, causing him to trip up.
"Their gonna eat me!" he cried as he ran. Navi flew alongside him.
"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, Link."
"I know! I'm sorry, cuccos! I'll never stab you again in a hundred thousand million zillion years!" He could have sworn the responding clucks and crows sounded like, "No you must pay!"
So he continued running as the enraged birds continued following.
"We're dead, Navi! We're dead!"
"Wait!" she said. "Scientists have just discovered cuccos to be the least intelligent animals known to Hyrule! If we keep going long enough, they may forget why their even chasing us!"
As if by command, the cuccos suddenly stopped and stared at each other, clucking back and forth. Link stopped running and watched from a distance. He thought he saw one shrug its shoulders and they all started pecking the grounds.
"Dumbest creatures my boot!" he spat at them and they turned and continued on their journey. Link drank some of the water he received from the Great Fairy. Suddenly, his hunger diminished. He downed most of the rest of the bottle and felt full.
Finally, they reached a sheer cliff. The river flowed down it in the form of a majestic, powerful waterfall.
"Oooooh..." Link said.
"Are you okay, Link?"
"There were little waterfalls in the Kokiri Village, but nothing like this..." It was true. This waterfall was atleast a hundred feet high and thirty feet abreast. The impact of the water on the rushing river caused a large cloud of mist, filled with rainbows. Link thought it may very well be the prettiest thing the goddesses ever created.
"Link, up here!" Navi had gone exploring and had apparently found a ledge of interest that stood before the waterfall mid-way up. She found a path that led him up to it, and when he got there, he found what had caught her eye. A plaque on the ledge with something written on it.
"Slee-pless Waiter-water-Waterfall," he read. "Sleepless Waterfall." He stumbled over the rest as well. With little help from Navi he managed to get out, "The flow of this waterfall serves the King of Hyrule. When the King slumbers, so too do these falls."
"What does that mean?" Link asked.
"It must be some kind of riddle. Let's see, if you serve the Royal Family, you must be able to do something here. When the King slumbers... Link, how does the princess sleep?"
"I don't know, you think I watch her go to sleep? I got better things to do! And I don't like..."
"No, how does she get to sleep?"
"Oh. Doesn't Impa play the Royal Family's song?"
"Yes! Play it, right here."
Link played the lullaby on his ocarina, facing the waterfall. After getting through the melody, he played it again as loud as he possibly could, as it was hardly audible over the rushing water. When he did that, they heard some loud clanking, like the drawbridge in Hyrule Castle Town, and the waterfall seperated in front of them, revealing a tunnel with a man standing inside.
The man looked nothing like any man Link had ever seen. He was extremely pale. Link almost believed he was pure white, with blue patches all across his body. He had a long, pointed nose and pointy ears like the Hylians. His eyes were black like the Gorons. As Link moved forward to get a better look, the man's skin glimmered in the light. But the most interesting and strange features the man held were wings on his arms and legs, and a fish's tail on his head.
Link almost slipped on the rocks when he realized the last features were actually part of the man.
"Hail, visitor!" the man shouted over the roaring waterfall. "When you played the song, I thought you were the search party returning, but who are you?"
"Uh..."
"Nevermind that," the man said. "Come here!"
The ledge was seperated from the tunnel by about ten feet. Link was intrigued, so he decided he must go to the man. He walked to the other side of the ledge, and ran back toward the waterfall as fast as he could. When he reached the edge, he jumped. He knew he wasn't going to make it. It was too far. As he drew close, the man reached out and caught him, and put him in the tunnel. The man turned a wheel on the tunnel wall and the waterfall closed again. They started walking down the tunnel.
"Green clothes, a fairy, working for the Royal Family... Are you the Kokiri boy everyone's talking about?"
"Yeah, that would be me," Link said, remembering the Kakariko soldier saying the same thing.
"What brings you to the aquatic race of the Zoras?"
"Oh, are you a Zora?"
"Yes, I am. We live here in Zora's Domain." As he said this, they came out of the tunnel and into a large, open cavern. Light from the tunnel reflected off a huge pool making up the entire first floor of the cavern, and reflected in all directions, lighting up the entire cave with bright, waving light. All up and down the walls were little alcoves where Zoras apparently lived. Few were in them , but many were splashing around in the pool, maintained by another large waterfall inside.
"Wow, this place is beautiful!" Link realized he had to remove his personal note of the waterfall and instate the home of the Zoras as the most beautiful of creation. The walls looked almost crystaline by the moving reflected light of the water. They stood on a walkway far above the pool that circled around it along the wall. There were a few scattered ladders hanging from the walkway, leading down and dipping into the pool.
"It is called Zora's Domain," the Zora said. "If you follow this walkway to the tunnel over there you'll head up some stairs and into King Zora's chamber. Beyond that is Zora's Fountain, the spring from which Zora's River is born, along with Lord Jabu-Jabu, our guardian deity."
"Thanks. Do you know where I can find the Spiritual Stone?" Link asked.
"No. I don't know any 'Spiritual Stone'... But some guy in black armor was here just a few days ago asking about the same thing..."
"Ganondorf!" Link and Navi said together.
"Oh, you know him? He never told me his name. I think he might have been Gerudo, so that would make him king. You're friends with all kinds of royalty aren't you?"
Link was about to reply his hatred for the man, when Navi stopped him. "Can you guide us around?" she asked the man.
"No, my job is gatekeeper. If I'm not watching it, the search team won't be able to get in."
"Search party?"
"I don't have anymore time. I'll grab you a guide." The fish-like man dove gracefully from the walkway into the pool so far down. As Link and Navi watched, he came back up the ladder with a smaller Zora. This one's nose was a little less pointy and his fins were less developed. As they climbed off the ladder, Link found the Zora was just a little bit taller than he was and he wore a decorative belt with a strange bent stick stuck in it.
"This is Kauyo," the gatekeeper said. "He should be about your age. Kauyo, this is..."
"Link. My name is Link."
"Link. He's the Kokiri that slew all those Stalchildren. Will you show him around and answer his questions?"
"Sure," the boy said hesitantly. "Come on." So Link and Navi followed the Zora boy along the walkway while the gateman went back to the outer waterfall. Kauyo showed Link around. He pointed to the staircase into the throne room, he led him to the shop on the gentle slope down to the pool, and even showed him a Zora's alcove where there was a bed and a kitchen. Finally they came back to the walkway in front of the throne room. Kauyo stopped to talk to Link.
"So you really killed all those skeletons?"
"Yeah."
"You must be a really fierce warrior."
"No. I just do what I have to. Honestly, I don't hardly know what I'm doing when I fight. Just the other day I almost died on Death Mountain..." Navi smacked him upside the head. "Ow. What was that for?"
"Don't get a big head, Link," she whispered.
"You almost died? How."
"Uh... I tripped." Another smack. "Ow! What now!"
"You can't just lie to him now. Not since you said, 'I tripped'!"
"You tripped?" Kauyo obviously didn't believe him.
"Okay, sorry. My fairy's confusing me. I entered the Dodongo's Cavern and fought all the Dodongos."
"I thought Dodongos were extinct." Long story short, Link told Kauyo his life's story.
"...So now I'm here trying to find the last Spiritual Stone. That big cucco said it was here."
"He's not a cucco, Link!"
"Okay, whatever."
"The only thing like that I've seen is Ruto's stone," Kauyo said.
"What's a Ruto Stone?" Link asked.
"Ruto? Princess Ruto?" Kauyo said. "Oh, I forgot you don't know anything."
Link wasn't sure how he should take that last comment.
"Ruto, King Zora's daughter has a blue stone she always has with her. She's the most beautiful Zora I've ever seen. All the Zoras think so. She's about our age. I think. How old are you?"
"Ten years old," Link answered. "You?"
"Twelve. Yeah, she's right in there. She'll be eleven in a week or so."
"Oh. Okay. Well she's gone missing. It's the only thing anybody's talking about."
"That's who the search party's looking for," Navi said.
"Yep. Your fairy's a lot smarter than you."
"I know," Link said resentfully.
"In addition to the princess disappearing, Lord Jabu-Jabu's been acting strange lately."
"Isn't Lord Jabu-Jabu your god?"
"Yes."
"Then how do you know he's acting strange?"
"Because he's not roaming Zora's Fountain, and sleeping on the bottom of the pool anymore."
"You can see him? I always thought gods were invisible, or stayed up in the sky."
"No. He's right up in Zora's Fountain."
"I think Lord Jabu-Jabu is more like the Great Deku Tree to these people than the goddesses, Link," Navi said.
"Oh, is he your father, Kauyo?"
"No." He turned his face from Link. "It's not like that. We all have real parents and everything. My father died."
"I'm sorry. I understand. So did mine. Remember, the Deku Tree.."
"It's not the same!" Kauyo said. "My dad raised me and played with me, but died in the last battle of the Hundred Years War."
"The Hundred Years War?"
"Man, you really are sheltered."
"Link, don't pry," Navi said. Then she whispered in his ear. "Before you left the forest, a war had just ended between each race of Hyrule. It lasted for a hundred years, but King Hyrule is uniting the people."
"How do you know that?"
"I ask around while you chase cuccos."
"Oh. Well you have a mother, right Kauyo?"
"No. She died from a disease that struck our people during the war."
"So you're an orphan?"
"The only one I love anymore is our princess."
"Oh. You like the princess?"
"Shut up. It's not like that. We're friends."
"Oh."
"You're lucky you can be a warrior, Link. I would. I know how to fight. I have nothing to hold me back. I just know what can come of violence."
"I have plenty of friends and 'brothers' and 'sisters' to hold me back," Link said. "I don't want them to get hurt. That's why I fight, to protect them from the evil that has come to Hyrule. That's what the Great Deku Tree and Princess Zelda told me about. Ganondorf is looking for the Triforce, so I have to get that Spiritual Stone to stop him!"
"All this started happening when that Gerudo man came here."
"Did he know the song of the Royal Family?"
"I don't know. He just showed up a few days ago, and when he disappeared, Lord Jabu-Jabu started acting strange, and now Ruto's gone... I think that man might have kidnapped her, or..."
"Or what?"
"Princess Ruto was always very close to our god. She may have run away when she found out. I know just where she would go. She always liked this place in Lake Hylia."
"We should go," Link said.
"Why, so you can take her stone? I don't care about that evil man, I just want Ruto back! But you're a warrior, and if she's in danger you'll be useful to have around."
"Thanks... I think."
"Give me your hand," Kauyo said, extending his own. Link held his hand and Kauyo pulled him, jumping off the cliff into the water.
"Kauyo!" Link shouted as they fell. Navi plummeted after them. They made a large splash in the water and sunk far down. Despite its appearance, the pool's surface was almost halfway up the cavern, making the pool extremely deep. At the bottom was an entire area filled with eggs the size of two fists. Link remembered slashing eggs much larger in areas similar to prevent the breeding of certain creatures. He shook the thought out of his head as they descended. Fortunately, Link had drawn his breath, because they sunk all the way to the bottom.
Link felt a drawing sensation as the water swept by him toward the wall. There was a large, open tunnel in one wall sucking the water through. Kauyo was able to stabilize them to keep them from going through, but when they touched the bottom he lunged toward it, pulling Link with him. They went through, and the tunnel kept getting larger until there was a space between the surface and the roof of the cave. Kauyo drew Link up to the surface and he caught his breath as the current took them far. Kauyo kept them in the middle of the tunnel so they wouldn't crash into either wall.
He shouted over the rushing current. "This is 'the drain', as we Zoras call it. Water flows into Zora's Domain from the Fountain, and goes out through the drain."
"Where does the drain go?" Link yelled back.
"Lake Hylia. Where else?"
After following the underground river for a long amount of time, it opened up out of the side of a rock wall and they came out in a stream that flowed into a massive body of water. Link's foot got caught on something on the stream floor and he lost his grip in Kauyo's hand. Link dropped underwater to pull his leg free. The object holding it was glass, and it was caught between two rocks. Link pulled the object free with him and careened down to the lake, where Kauyo was waiting.
"What happened?" Kauyo asked as he swam in place in the water.
"I got caught on something."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm gonna go rest on shore for a moment, okay?"
"Sure."
Link swam to shore, Navi following behind. They climbed up and Link got a look at the item he was holding. It was another bottle.
"Alright! I got another bottle to put stuff in!" Then he noticed something was alrready put in it. He popped the cork and pulled out a slip of paper.
"It's a message in a bottle!" Navi said. "Read it!"
"Help me," Link read slowly. "I'm waiting for you inside Lord Jabu-Jabu's belly. Ruto. PS?"
"PS stands for post-signature. It's an after-note," Navi informed.
"Oh. Post-signature: Don't tell my father!" Link pondered the note for a moment. "Let's tell Kauyo. He'll know what to do!"
"No!" Navi said.
"Why not?"
"If we tell Kauyo, he'll want to see Ruto in Jabu-Jabu."
"So?"
"This is our quest. He's just a young boy, and he seems very desperate to do something rash!"
"Where do you get that idea?" If it weren't for the bright light imminating from Navi's form, Link would see her expression as one saying, "Are you joking?"
"Link, we don't know him, but he knows you. Too well."
"Since when did you become Miss Mistrusting?"
"Since you told him everything you've done since the day you were born and all we know about him is that he has a crush on Ruto!"
"Fine. What do you suggest we do?"
"How did you two get all the way out here?" a familiar voiced said, scaring the boots off of Link. (figuratively speaking, of course)
They looked above them to see Kaepora Gaebora sitting on a tree branch.
"Didn't I give you a map? Why not use it?"
Link pulled out the map. It was drenched, as was everything else in his possession. On it he saw Lake Hylia and Zora's Domain. They were both in the south of Hyrule, but on opposite sides of the map! "Were we in the drain that long?"
"This is a beautiful lake, full of pure, clean water. At the bottom of the lake is a temple used to worship the great water spirit. The Zoras are guardians of this temple. Haven't you met the Zoras yet?"
"Yeah, we were just there," Link said.
"Hoot, I'm sure you were. Did you get the Stone yet?"
"No. We're working on that."
"Oh. Well keep working. Do you need another ride to the Zora River?"
"No we can just take the drain again."
"Link, the drain's a one-way trip!" Navi said. "Honestly, do you forget to put on your brain some days?"
"So do you need my services or not? I was on my way to Hyrule Castle Town, but I can make a detour to help the young hero."
"Link? Who's the bird?" Kauyo was coming to shore.
"Kauyo!" Link said. "This is the big cucco!"
"It's Kaepora Gaebora, the great owl!" Navi corrected.
"What's he doing?"
"Uh... I... Look. The cucco has a mission for me. Its really important..."
"It's Ruto. I heard."
"Oh."
"Look, Link. I know you have all this experience in the field, but I have something you don't."
"Kauyo..."
Kauyo removed the stick from his belt. It was thick and yellow and perfectly symmetrical at the bend. On the bend was an encrusted red jewel.
"This was my father's weapon," Kauyo said. "He said it was only something a true warrior could use. It's a Zora weapon. Whatever's going on, you'll need the help of this boomerang."
"Boomerang?"
"Yes. I want you to have it. It'll get crowded in Lord Jabu-Jabu's belly with three kids and a fairy."
"Thanks, Kauyo. You're a great friend." Kaepora took off and came low for Link. He bagged Navi in his hat and put it back on his head. (how it stayed on through the drain the world will never know) Then he grabbed the owls talon, and with a shout of "Goodbye, Kauyo!" he flew off into the sky. The fantastic splendor of the sight warmed Kauyo's heart.