AN: Howdy, folks! There's nothing much to say here right now, really.
I've been sketching a lot of fan art and stuff based on this story, even
though I'm a horrible artist. I wish I could sent some of it to you guys,
but I can't due to the cursed Parental Controls. (I'm sorry for those in
shock that are just now realizing how young I actually am) I'll try to post
some on the internet at a later date, but I'm not sure that my Anni
drawings would be considered LOZ fan art. I'm very glad that more people
are joining in, and I'd like to thank everyone once more for their reviews.
I'm especially honored to have a NEW newbie thinking well of me, so I'm
feeling pretty good right now. I just read a lot of the "OoT" MANGA!
Whoopee for me. Sorry it takes so long, but I'm busy and the chapters are
pretty long (for me, anyway...) I've read it over and it's sort of rough by
my standards, (It was cut short since I didn't want to keep you waiting too
long, and I'm afraid it might be a dead chapter...) but what do YOU think? ~
We set off in the gondola down the canals of Boulviddar, on a search for
extraordinary things. For me, it was but a weekly shopping trip.
Link helped me out with the oars while I directed the boat toward the Main Current. The city of Boulviddar had been built over a great clear lake long ago, on long wooden stilts, but otherwise, it was your normal town. Minstrels played on the thin wood 'sidewalks' beside wooden houses and shops accented with reds and blues, asking for a rupee or two, and every once in a while, a peddler would cry out to sell his wares to the street. It was a rather crowded, busy place.
"Link, you're amazing," I said, looking at him as he leaned against the bow of the gondola. He was still wet, and he looked like he was shivering a little. "That was a very rich lady."
"Is that really so extraordinary?" he smiled, pulling his boots on over bare feet. "I mean, I do stuff like that all the time."
"Diving into water in a country that hasn't swum in years and gaining yourself 100 rupees is normal for you?"
"Yep."
"I should've expected as much," I sighed and smiled. "Lemme see that list, would you? Or did you get it all wet?" We were getting close to Saigon's favorite stores.
"Don't worry about it. I stashed it in my hat before I dove in," he assured me, pulling it off again. His hair was about three or four inches long in most places, and he looked pretty funny with it all hanging limply in his face. Regular Boulviddarian boys usually were bald or had hair cut very short, and none I had met were as gentle or amazing as Link. He handed me the piece of parchment and the rupees (including the two purple) after a bit of digging around. I told him to keep his own money, and he reluctantly took it back
"Hmmm. Let's see..." I scanned the list. "We're close to Ramoya's place, so let's stop there." Siagon usually asked for strange things; Monday was shopping day, and Tuesday was 'testing day'. I had to remind myself not to eat or drink anything I didn't make myself on Tuesday. After all, you never knew what would happen. One day you could be buying powdered lizard bone, and the next, you could drink something you thought was strawberry soda and grow donkey ears. Saigon was a full-fledged witch, and I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to be her student in the art of potion- making. "We've got to get some eagle feathers, a gilded spoon, some frog's legs, and some cherry marmalade. Gee, I wonder what she's up to this time."
"She said that she was going to test the magical properties of Rito feathers against eagles'," Link said, as if he was quoting and actually had no idea what it meant. Yep, that sounded like Saigon. I pulled the gondola up to the dock, got out, and asked the guy there to hold it. Link followed me as I walked a ways down the 'sidewalk', and up to a shop with a sign to the side of the door. It looked like it had been vandalized several times, since people's initials were etched into the wood and the oak was cracked horribly in several places. The sign itself was tidily whitewashed and declared in hand-painted scarlet:
RAMOYA'S GENERAL STORE
NONE OF THIS NONSENSE, PLEASE
It was that sort of sign that made you sure that you'd like the person within before you even entered through the 'door' which was really more of a curtain made from turquoise and ebony beads. "Whoa," Link said as he stepped in. I laughed. The way everything was arranged, it seemed that you could probably find anything you could ever want in this one little room. I don't know how it was possible, but it seemed tidy and dusty and lived in all at once. The place smelled of old spices and pansies. There was a barrel of sodas near the front, some cages with animals in them at both sides, and all sorts of instruments, foods and seemingly useless junk all over seven or eight shelves of different woods and styles. I quickly spotted a gilded spoon on a cedar shelf between some oatmeal and a live squirrel, which chirred softly at me as I took the silverware. Link found a few white eagle feathers in a decoupage jar near the dusty window, and a small container of marmalade on the floor. He began searching for frogs' legs, quite clueless on where he would find them, and rounded a corner. There was a loud birdlike yelp.
"Ah, take that, scoundrel! Don't you poke around here no more! I reckon you've STOLEN all you've been wantin'!" I recognized it as Ramoya's voice and slid around the corner. Ramoya was a large, usually kind woman of about thirty who always carried a broom with inscriptions written all over it. What I saw around the corner made me realize why.
Link dangled by his collar from a clenched, dirtied fist, and Ramoya was hitting him repeatedly on the head with the handle of her broom. He winced and let out a small cry every time this happened.
"What are you doing?!" I yelled, exasperated. She paused (without dropping Link) and looked over at me. Link immediately began struggling, and she put him down. He looked at her cautiously, took a step towards me, and was captured again by the tip of his ear. She her broom against the wall near an old package of chocolate, grabbed both of his wrists in her one huge, free hand and held them behind his back, and he twisted a moment before he realized that it was bringing nothing but pain to the base of his ear.
"What gives- owch...- Let me go! I didn't- ah- do anything!" he tried to protest between exclamations of pain. Ramoya looked down at him with a very harsh grimace, which was very effective due to her large nose, somewhat crooked teeth, and fiery eyes.
"Hello, Anni! Didn't 'spect ter see you here," She said, trying to sound cheery while tightening her grip on him. Link ceased, winced, gasped and grit his teeth. "As you can see, I'm a bit busy now. This little scoundrel's been terrorizin' this here gen-ral for since Sat'rday mornin', an's about time I got the silly pest!" Link made a sort of pained, puzzled expression.
"Excuse me?" I said. "Link hasn't even been in Boulviddar since yesterday, much less here!"
"Oh, yes he has! Believe me, I saw him run straight out that there door with a bundle of selene straw and a quart of unicorn blood from my most expensive stores!" Ramoya gave me a sharp glare.
"Those are the base ingredients in transformation essences..." I mused. Selene were mythical mixtures of turtles and bears with a crop of wheat growing on their backs all year. Link gave me a look which clearly said: 'Um... Are you going to do something about this?'
"I am fully aware of their magical properties. Funny thing is, the night before Saturday my supply in those particular items seemed purty small as is," the big lady informed me. Her captive let out a sigh as she loosened her grip again.
"Well... Are you sure it was him, exactly?" I was unused to situations such as this.
"Shore he is! Who else has yellow hair and pointed ears, and those fiery red eyes? Don't see red eyes every day; He's purty easily recognized, I'll tell you."
"Red eyes? I'm afraid Link's eyes are GREEN..." I pointed out. Ramoya let go of his ear, spun him around, and looked into his deep emerald eyes. Link sighed in relief.
"Ah, what? I'm sorry... My eyes have failed me once more..." she apologized, releasing Link. "But you look so... similar..."
"Er... It's okay, really," he said, massaging his ear and wincing. He managed a rather pained smile and hastily strode to my side, as if I'd protect him somehow.
"Ramoya? Now that that's over, I'd like to get some frogs' legs. Siagon needs them for something or other." I asked.
"They're in the back on ice. You just wait and I'll bring them up," she said, vanishing with a flourish into the back room. Link plopped down on a barrel and massaged the base of his ear.
"Is it... chafing?" I asked, wondering how sensitive pointed ears were.
"Yeah..." he grunted. "I had a burn on this one once, and it blistered for weeks.... Now it's still not up to handle something like that..."
"I think I could help you out," I said, and I looked at the fishing lures on my hat. I found a purple salve in a coil-shaped jar and took it off the hook. "Just a little bit of this- don't sniff it or anything."
"Why not?" he asked, taking the little jar without hesitation.
"It has infusion of dragon heartstring and phoenix tears. I don't think you want your ears to catch fire again, do you?" I mused as he took a bit on his thin square fingertips. "If you were really unlucky, you might grow scales on your forearms, maybe your shins, and growing scales is no gondola ride, I can tell you." He laughed and rubbed the stuff behind his ear.
"How would you know that?" he snickered, putting the stopper back in the bottle.
"Personal experience," I said.
He gave me a glance and then sighed, closing his eyes and going sort of limp. "Oh, man... this stuff works!"
I smiled. "Wouldn't have given it to you if it didn't. I'm sorry Ramoya hurt you... There seems to be a misunderstanding of some sort..."
Link shook his head in a carefree way as if it were nothing as he handed the container back to me, looking foggy-eyed with concentration. "...What's a transformation essence?"
I gave him an awkward look, and he rested his chin in his hand, waiting for an explanation. I sighed. "It's sort of complicated..."
"I'm listening," he assured me impatiently.
"Er..." I sighed. Link seemed determined to hear this. "It's a sort of potion that one makes if one wants to return to his original form... or something like that. Sometimes it's not the original form, exactly... I mean, it doesn't have to be. It can be something one was in a dream, or in the past, or in a wisp of memory- it requires memory to transform- and I dunno..."
"So all you need is memories of what you want to be and some straw and blood?" he said, biting his tongue as he thought.
"Well... Depends on how modern the memory... Sometimes, even when you sort of remember or if you dream something, you can't really recall every detail of it- and that's necessary to the spell, so sometimes one could capture the image of whatever the transformation's meant to be."
"Hmmm... Things sure are suspicious around here." He smiled in spite of himself and stared down at the dusty wood floor. He was now sort of perched on top of the barrel, one of his knees hugged up close to his chest and the other foot balancing precariously on the barrel's edge. His eyes weren't foggy anymore.
"What's on your mind?" I asked. He looked up.
"Oh, nothing... It's just that earlier today we went back to the beach to pick up some things, like Tetra's stuff, and one of her paintings was gone."
"Really?" I sat myself on a crate and swung my legs absently.
"Yeah," He blew his long straw-colored bangs from his eyes, propped his elbow up on his knee and put his chin on his forearm. "She had three framed paintings which hung in her cabin. One of them was a map of the sea with the Triforce marked on it, one was of her mother and all the pirates, and the last was an old peeling drawing of the Hero of Time. That was the one stolen." We thought in silence for a moment.
"Boy, y'all here's purty quiet." Ramoya appeared again from the back and dumped a frozen package of frogs' legs onto my lap. "Here ya go." I almost dropped it since I wasn't really prepared for it at the moment. I paid her with a quick nod. "If that's all you need, I should go organize my spice shelves." She turned to leave.
"No, wait!" Link jumped off of the barrel and took a few steps after her.
"Now, what's it ya need, hon'?" She picked up her broom again, and Link flinched. Then he shook his head and continued.
"Did that kid- the thief, I mean... Did he have a sword with him?"
"Well, yeah, I suppose he did. Lovely thing with a purple hilt and some golden triangles emblazoned on it." I watched Link's left hand curl into a fist as Ramoya turned a corner. "Oh, dear. I'm a forgetful one..." Her face reappeared again around the shelf. "I forgot to ask you... The Tournament's coming up, and Anni, I know you're fond of signing up as a judge for some of the competitions..."
"The Tournament? Oh yeah, sure, I'd like to judge for the fencing," I said.
"Just like every year," smiled Ramoya, pulling a notepad from her sleeve and writing down my name. "How 'bout you, lad? D'you wanna enter the contest?"
Link looked pretty excited, but he gave me a glance. "I dunno. What do you do?"
"Well," I began. "It's a contest that happens each year, and everyone competes in footraces, Boulviddarian fencing and sailboat races- they're pretty brave boys, of course... And whoever wins supposedly gets good luck from Lanir, the forest sprite."
He grinned cockily. "Sounds like fun."
I looked at him warily. Ramoya continued. "Well, if you want to be in, I'll have to sign you up, and there's also the entering fee, 100 rupees..." Link came up with Madame Ebony's reward money and handed it to her. "And just sign your name here," She handed Link another notepad and a quill. He nodded and scrawled down his name. Ramoya grinned and took a look at it. Then she grimaced and glared at Link. "You sure you're not that RASCAL?" She shook her fist dangerously close to his face, and he blinked several times as she shoved the notebook back into his face. I stood up to take a look.
There were three or four names written on the pad. The first two were completely normal, untidily scrawled names. The second two were written in identical handwriting, with a little circle instead of a dot above the 'i'. 'Link' had been written twice.
"But... That's MY handwriting!"
I grabbed Link by the wrist and, dragging him with one hand and carrying the things in another, dragged him out of the store. Link had been right; "Things sure are suspicious around here."
`~*~`
Medli and I sat on the porch that evening, among the appearing starlight. The wind, which should've been calm and cool at this time, was rampaging about the yard, creating dust devils. I had my old scarlet guitar on my lap, and I was picking out that tune I'd heard not that long ago. It seemed so old and vaguely familiar, as if my mother had sung it once to me over the cradle. Medli was embroidering something in the design of a great purple and scarlet bird, and she was quietly listening to my mishaps. I began softly singing the words, and gradually got stronger. They seemed so familiar somehow twisting and blending with the chords of my guitar:
Stay close, stay close,
Hear the river rush,
Never fear my friend,
Spring shall come again,
In the night, in the night,
When all hope is lost;
Huddle up close to me,
Share the warmth!
"Anni, what is that? It's beautiful," Medli murmured, turning an orange eye at me and then concentrating on her work once more. I smiled down at my guitar.
"Something I heard in a dream," I answered. I looked back up and jumped a bit. Epona had suddenly and silently appeared, her neck stretched over the fence. Her ears were turned intently toward me, and she pawed the ground impatiently. I reached out cautiously and gave her a pat on the nose. She snorted, but let it go. "You were in my dream too, Epona."
"Anni, you have a gift," Medli said, laying her sewing to the side and pointing her beak up at the sky to scan with eyes full of the young stars' reflections. "There has to be some magic in that music, if you can carry it over from a dream. The songs you hear from the heart and mind are always the sweetest."
"Yeah, I know," I said looking toward the sky also. "Medli, I have something to ask you." I didn't look at her, knowing that she was listening. Epona shook her mane.
"What is it?" she asked in her dove-like tones.
"Well, earlier this afternoon... I told Link that I thought the wind was bothersome, and... D'you think I offended him?" Medli looked at me.
"But of course you offended him!" She smiled thoughtfully, looking intently at the dust devils in the yard.
"How? I don't think it makes any sense..."
"It doesn't," she sighed. "Not at first anyway... But that's not the point. The point is, if you want to know something about Link, you really should be asking him yourself." She thought a moment and added. "I suppose that applies to everyone else, too. I'm afraid I'd explain everything wrong..."
"Please tell me! There's no danger in me knowing, is there?" I tried to persuade her.
"Oh, not at all... But you still really should ask Link, or maybe Tetra..."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why Tetra?"
Medli sighed and gave me a sheepish sort of smile. "I don't know. It's just that she and him seem connected... somehow, and- and she's more than what she seems. She's got a good heart and, well, she's just more than a pirate- a valuable friend. She's too, well, good to be just any of that, I suppose..."
"I know that," I said, beaming absently. "Well, if you won't tell me any of that, how about this Triforce thing everybody's always talking about?"
She looked sort of stuck in a place she didn't like too much. "Well... It's common legend in Hylian texts, but then again, all of us- well, Link, Tetra, Makar and I at least– have a little bit to do with it, I suppose. The Master Sword's story is the same and different, and I suppose it's Link that merges the two..." She looked into the distance and said; "I have a tendency to confuse myself every once in a while, and I think it's happened again... I'm literally bird-brained, I suppose." I laughed. I remembered all the events that had happened earlier this afternoon and sighed.
I heard some loud conversation behind the open door, and we both reluctantly got up and went inside.
"Whoa. I mean, I can't tell who THAT is, but with everyone else it's pretty clear," Tetra was saying. Everyone was crowded around her, so Medli and I couldn't quite see what was going on.
"C'mon, Tetra! That's ME!" Link said. There was a sound of crackling parchment and he turned around. He was holding a piece of paper, which he examined closely.
"She exaggerated your ears," Tetra grinned.
"She has good reason to, though," Link mused. "And she did it to you, too, so I wouldn't be bragging,"
I noticed my backpack lying forlornly on the floor, papers spilling out, and I suddenly realized what had happened.
"Tetra, did you raid my backpack?" I said, annoyed, scooping up all the stray papers and shoving them back in.
"I was curious about this 'school' place, so I decided to 'figure it out'. I'm a pirate, after all." She smirked. "You drew little pictures of us all over everything, so isn't it our business?"
I sighed. I had doodled on all of the homework I'd done that night. My subtraction was crowded with Tetra and the pirates sneaking about (the reason there WAS subtraction), Medli sat idly near my name, Komali and Makar hovered near my essay on ecology, and Link was drawn several times in different poses wherever there was room at the bottom of a page. I blushed.
"Oh, look," Medli ran forward and scanned the pages with a quick smile. "Aren't they lovely? I didn't think we looked this nice to anyone."
"Medli, speak for yourself," winked Tetra.
"My teacher doesn't think so," I laughed, ignoring Tetra and remembering the many times she'd scolded me on doodling.
"Well, we need to teach Ms.Whatsername a lesson, don't we?" grinned Tetra. Link punched her in the shoulder.
"Well, actually..." I tapped my toes uneasily on the floor, remembering the essay I'd written about them. "I got myself into a bit of a situation today..." This led to an entire retelling of how Ms. Koholint had thought my writing was fantasy, and how I could possibly bring them to school. I was hoping Link would be intrigued, and thankfully he was.
"Well, sure Anni. I'll come with you tomorrow," he assured me. My guess was that he didn't like to get me into trouble.
"I'll come too," snapped Tetra.
"Tetra, why? You aren't really interested in these sorts of things, are you?" he asked, rather unconvinced.
"It's not about ME, it's about YOU," she said rather forcefully to him. She winked and wagged a finger. "Can't have you getting yourself into trouble, now can we?" Link rolled his eyes.
"Tetra, you and I both know that I wouldn't be the one getting into trouble." Tetra stopped in mid-wag and folded her arms across her chest.
"Okay, so this is another one of my schemes to check things out... What'cha gonna do? Stop me?" We laughed.
Medli sighed. "I suppose I'd better go, too. Otherwise these two could get you into worse trouble."
"Medli, you don't have to do that," I said, smiling so that she'd know that I appreciated it.
"You wrote about me in your essay, didn't you?" She looked at me with an all-new, almost Tetra-like glance. It was probably more reasonable looking than Tetra's, of course.
"Yeah..."
"It's hard to believe something like a Rito exists unless you see one, am I right?" For once, it was she that had control, and not Tetra. I was amazed. Medli hadn't seemed to have such a side.
If only Ms. Koholint knew what she was in for tomorrow!
`~*~`
The next morning, Link joined me on a couch in the library, rubbing his side. He wasn't wearing his green tunic, but rather a blue sweater with a lobster design on the front, orange capri pants and a pair of sandals.
"The stuff I used to wear on the island," he explained. "I didn't really want to weird out your classmates or anything, so I remembered that Grandma sent these with me."
I laughed. "You look really cute," I said, and his ears and nose turned pink.
"Seagull-feathers," he muttered. I hadn't realized that his neck was as delicate and slender as it was, or that his feet were as small and callused as they were. I supposed it was from wearing his boots without socks and slipping around in them so much.
"So, you haven't been to school before, huh?" I looked around, wondering where everyone was.
"Not really," he said thoughtfully. "I was once friends with a teacher named Miss Marie on Windfall Island. She taught a little school there- Miss Marie's School of Joy." I let out a bitter laugh.
"Sounds a bit different from the attitude around here." I took the "LZ" from the coffee table and flipped through it with only enough concentration to make sure I didn't rip one of the wafer-thin pages. Automatically, Link scooted several inches closer and slipped a finger between two of the pages. "There's a bunch of jerks at my school that live to pick the living heck out of you."
"I'll be fine," he assured me, poring over one of the pictures in the old scarlet book. He obviously sensed the worry in my voice. I shrugged and looked at the picture- and wrinkled up my nose.
"Eww... That's disgusting..." Link laughed.
"What are you talking about? Oh...Do you mean Ruto?" He put the tip of his finger on a fish-girl on the page. She was standing with her hands on her hips, seeming to be scolding next to the green-clad Link, who was sitting in a daze on some sort of pink ground, rubbing his head and covered in a clear liquid that seemed to cling to his clothes. Ruto looked really weird, whitish and scaly with a huge fish's tail.
"Well...yes- but no. I mean... Din, where are they?"
He grinned, a bit uneasily. "In the belly of a giant fish."
I raised an eyebrow. "Well, that explains a lot... Sort of..."
Link shrugged. "Well, we read a lot without you yesterday... Y'see, you know Link was the Kokiri without a fairy?" I nodded. Maybe he didn't realize that I was as interested as I was. "The guardian of the forest, the Great Deku Tree, sent him one, Navi, because he could sense evil in his roots. Then Link went and killed Gnoma, the arachnid that ate away at the tree, and then was cast away by the rest of the Kokiri because the Deku Tree died anyway. The tree left him the Kokiri Emerald and a few words on his destiny, so Link set out to find Princess Zelda."
"You mean Princess Zelda as in the kid's story? Y'know, with the prince and the evil wizard... The one that says each princess of Hyrule is to be named Zelda?" I thought a moment and realized that this was a particularly dumb thought, considering that the original Zelda slept for the rest of eternity, and that every princess and queen was named Zelda. Link looked confused.
"I don't know, really. I think this is a different Zelda than that." He took a moment to straighten out his thoughts. "So I guess Link couldn't get into the castle, and a ranch girl named Malon helped him get through the guard...." Here he paused and looked me hard in the eye as if he were searching for something. Then he abandoned this and continued. "He talked with the princess and made an agreement to save the world from the evil Ganondork- I mean Ganondorf, thereby promising to get the other two Spiritual Stones.
"The second stone was hidden in the mountains, kept by a rock-eating race called the Gorons. Link defeated the King Dodongo by feeding it bombs, and the Gorons were once more able to go into his lair and harvest stones. Darunia, the leader of the Gorons, willingly gave him the Goron Ruby. So, now he's gone to the Zora race for the third stone and realized that the Princess Ruto has been swallowed by their deity, Lord Jabu-Jabu."
"Naturally, he has to rescue her," I finished. He shrugged and nodded.
"Pretty much."
"Link, is that all you talk about anymore?" Tetra's voice came from nowhere. She leaned an elbow on the couch. She was still brushing her hair out. It was longer than one would suspect with it being in that bun all the time, and very, very gold. It flowed like water over her fingers as she tried to tame nonexistent knots.
"Oh, good morning Princess Ze-err...Tetra." Link said cheerily (and rather nervously toward the end). Tetra gave him a startled sort of glare.
"You really do have that on the brain, don't you?" She snarled. "Hold this." Tetra dug around in her pocket, produced a simple, worn brown hair tie and dropped it onto Link's page. "And Link, you're lucky you didn't call me that, because the next time you do, I'm going to make sure that you and the catapult have a reunion." She couldn't help but smile a little when Link shuddered. Not really her sort of smirk, either.
"It's because you have your hair down," he said hastily.
"Not... Anymore..." She grumbled as she began piling her hair back on top of her head. "Give me that." Link sighed and handed her the hair tie, which she doubled around her bun. She let out a satisfied little grunt and strode over to a chair, which she plunked into.
"Tetra, where is everybody? I mean, I know you were awake, 'cause my side's still smarting, but what about Medli and Makar? They usually wake up really early," Link mused, putting the old red book back on its place at the coffee table.
Tetra yawned. "Oh, them? Saigon said that Makar's violin couldn't be fixed by the repair shop owner because the strings were made of a special sort of bark fiber, so they went out to find it themselves."
"I can't imagine looking for that this early," I said absently. "I hope that Medli comes back before we have to leave..."
"She will," Link said, nodding vigorously. "She's not one to be late for anything." I shrugged and adjusted the yellow bandanna around my neck, playing with the lead bead that held it in place. I looked up at the old grandfather clock's ivory face. At least she had plenty of time to get here. There was a knock on the other side of the door.
"Come in," we chorused. Aunt Saigon appeared, accompanied by Medli, Makar and Komali and carrying a tray of toast and six varieties of jam.
"Hey guys! Didju find what you were looking for?" I asked. Makar gave Medli a glance, and she grinned pleasantly.
"Yes, it was a success," she said, nodding vigorously.
"It took me a while to get it back in tune," the Korok said a bit shyly, producing his violin from nowhere as if he were a magician. The instrument belittled him immensely- the bow was twice his height and he had to hold it as one usually would hold a cello or a bass.
"How'd you manage to tune by yourself- I mean, without another instrument?" I asked.
"When the Great Deku Tree made me and my violin, he gave me a wonderful sense of hearing and tune. No one else makes any music at Forest Haven, so I had to be able to tune it on my own." Makar explained, carefully retesting all four of his strings.
"Makar, that's not true," said Link with his mouth full of toast. He swallowed. "I remember Koroks singing when I saw the ceremony." Makar did what you could call a shrug.
"What makes a difference? It works now!" he said with a grin on his voice. He tapped what you could call his toe twice and began to play. It sounded wonderful- at some places the bow moved so fast I was afraid that both the instrument and the musician would catch fire. It was the most skilled bowing I'd ever heard. Link was tapping his sandaled foot on the floor absently, and Tetra simply cradled her head in her arms and lay back with her eyes closed and a slow, leisurely smile appearing on her face. When he ended, we all clapped.
"Din, Makar, I missed your music and I didn't even realize it!" Tetra said, opening just one of her eyes.
"Oh, it makes me remember the times we spent together on Tetra's boat, making duets and playing the Aria and Lyric!" Medli said, her eyes bright with nostalgia. "I hope we can get my harp fixed soon so that we might do it again..." Makar nodded.
"That would be splendid," he agreed, bowing absently at his violin in the same fashion most people twiddle their fingers.
"D'you think that you could get it done right after school, Anni?" asked Komali.
"I think so. Why not?" I smiled. I took a glance at the clock. "We should leave pretty soon..."
Tetra leapt from the couch. "What say we get going, then?" I laughed, not knowing that she was so eager. I reached over the edge of the couch and found my book bag, a tan burlap pouch that hung over one shoulder, and stood up. Link was beside me immediately.
We bade everyone goodbye, and left them. Aunt Saigon simply sat by, thinking very hard with her opal eyes wide, wide open and a grimace on her face.
Link helped me out with the oars while I directed the boat toward the Main Current. The city of Boulviddar had been built over a great clear lake long ago, on long wooden stilts, but otherwise, it was your normal town. Minstrels played on the thin wood 'sidewalks' beside wooden houses and shops accented with reds and blues, asking for a rupee or two, and every once in a while, a peddler would cry out to sell his wares to the street. It was a rather crowded, busy place.
"Link, you're amazing," I said, looking at him as he leaned against the bow of the gondola. He was still wet, and he looked like he was shivering a little. "That was a very rich lady."
"Is that really so extraordinary?" he smiled, pulling his boots on over bare feet. "I mean, I do stuff like that all the time."
"Diving into water in a country that hasn't swum in years and gaining yourself 100 rupees is normal for you?"
"Yep."
"I should've expected as much," I sighed and smiled. "Lemme see that list, would you? Or did you get it all wet?" We were getting close to Saigon's favorite stores.
"Don't worry about it. I stashed it in my hat before I dove in," he assured me, pulling it off again. His hair was about three or four inches long in most places, and he looked pretty funny with it all hanging limply in his face. Regular Boulviddarian boys usually were bald or had hair cut very short, and none I had met were as gentle or amazing as Link. He handed me the piece of parchment and the rupees (including the two purple) after a bit of digging around. I told him to keep his own money, and he reluctantly took it back
"Hmmm. Let's see..." I scanned the list. "We're close to Ramoya's place, so let's stop there." Siagon usually asked for strange things; Monday was shopping day, and Tuesday was 'testing day'. I had to remind myself not to eat or drink anything I didn't make myself on Tuesday. After all, you never knew what would happen. One day you could be buying powdered lizard bone, and the next, you could drink something you thought was strawberry soda and grow donkey ears. Saigon was a full-fledged witch, and I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to be her student in the art of potion- making. "We've got to get some eagle feathers, a gilded spoon, some frog's legs, and some cherry marmalade. Gee, I wonder what she's up to this time."
"She said that she was going to test the magical properties of Rito feathers against eagles'," Link said, as if he was quoting and actually had no idea what it meant. Yep, that sounded like Saigon. I pulled the gondola up to the dock, got out, and asked the guy there to hold it. Link followed me as I walked a ways down the 'sidewalk', and up to a shop with a sign to the side of the door. It looked like it had been vandalized several times, since people's initials were etched into the wood and the oak was cracked horribly in several places. The sign itself was tidily whitewashed and declared in hand-painted scarlet:
RAMOYA'S GENERAL STORE
NONE OF THIS NONSENSE, PLEASE
It was that sort of sign that made you sure that you'd like the person within before you even entered through the 'door' which was really more of a curtain made from turquoise and ebony beads. "Whoa," Link said as he stepped in. I laughed. The way everything was arranged, it seemed that you could probably find anything you could ever want in this one little room. I don't know how it was possible, but it seemed tidy and dusty and lived in all at once. The place smelled of old spices and pansies. There was a barrel of sodas near the front, some cages with animals in them at both sides, and all sorts of instruments, foods and seemingly useless junk all over seven or eight shelves of different woods and styles. I quickly spotted a gilded spoon on a cedar shelf between some oatmeal and a live squirrel, which chirred softly at me as I took the silverware. Link found a few white eagle feathers in a decoupage jar near the dusty window, and a small container of marmalade on the floor. He began searching for frogs' legs, quite clueless on where he would find them, and rounded a corner. There was a loud birdlike yelp.
"Ah, take that, scoundrel! Don't you poke around here no more! I reckon you've STOLEN all you've been wantin'!" I recognized it as Ramoya's voice and slid around the corner. Ramoya was a large, usually kind woman of about thirty who always carried a broom with inscriptions written all over it. What I saw around the corner made me realize why.
Link dangled by his collar from a clenched, dirtied fist, and Ramoya was hitting him repeatedly on the head with the handle of her broom. He winced and let out a small cry every time this happened.
"What are you doing?!" I yelled, exasperated. She paused (without dropping Link) and looked over at me. Link immediately began struggling, and she put him down. He looked at her cautiously, took a step towards me, and was captured again by the tip of his ear. She her broom against the wall near an old package of chocolate, grabbed both of his wrists in her one huge, free hand and held them behind his back, and he twisted a moment before he realized that it was bringing nothing but pain to the base of his ear.
"What gives- owch...- Let me go! I didn't- ah- do anything!" he tried to protest between exclamations of pain. Ramoya looked down at him with a very harsh grimace, which was very effective due to her large nose, somewhat crooked teeth, and fiery eyes.
"Hello, Anni! Didn't 'spect ter see you here," She said, trying to sound cheery while tightening her grip on him. Link ceased, winced, gasped and grit his teeth. "As you can see, I'm a bit busy now. This little scoundrel's been terrorizin' this here gen-ral for since Sat'rday mornin', an's about time I got the silly pest!" Link made a sort of pained, puzzled expression.
"Excuse me?" I said. "Link hasn't even been in Boulviddar since yesterday, much less here!"
"Oh, yes he has! Believe me, I saw him run straight out that there door with a bundle of selene straw and a quart of unicorn blood from my most expensive stores!" Ramoya gave me a sharp glare.
"Those are the base ingredients in transformation essences..." I mused. Selene were mythical mixtures of turtles and bears with a crop of wheat growing on their backs all year. Link gave me a look which clearly said: 'Um... Are you going to do something about this?'
"I am fully aware of their magical properties. Funny thing is, the night before Saturday my supply in those particular items seemed purty small as is," the big lady informed me. Her captive let out a sigh as she loosened her grip again.
"Well... Are you sure it was him, exactly?" I was unused to situations such as this.
"Shore he is! Who else has yellow hair and pointed ears, and those fiery red eyes? Don't see red eyes every day; He's purty easily recognized, I'll tell you."
"Red eyes? I'm afraid Link's eyes are GREEN..." I pointed out. Ramoya let go of his ear, spun him around, and looked into his deep emerald eyes. Link sighed in relief.
"Ah, what? I'm sorry... My eyes have failed me once more..." she apologized, releasing Link. "But you look so... similar..."
"Er... It's okay, really," he said, massaging his ear and wincing. He managed a rather pained smile and hastily strode to my side, as if I'd protect him somehow.
"Ramoya? Now that that's over, I'd like to get some frogs' legs. Siagon needs them for something or other." I asked.
"They're in the back on ice. You just wait and I'll bring them up," she said, vanishing with a flourish into the back room. Link plopped down on a barrel and massaged the base of his ear.
"Is it... chafing?" I asked, wondering how sensitive pointed ears were.
"Yeah..." he grunted. "I had a burn on this one once, and it blistered for weeks.... Now it's still not up to handle something like that..."
"I think I could help you out," I said, and I looked at the fishing lures on my hat. I found a purple salve in a coil-shaped jar and took it off the hook. "Just a little bit of this- don't sniff it or anything."
"Why not?" he asked, taking the little jar without hesitation.
"It has infusion of dragon heartstring and phoenix tears. I don't think you want your ears to catch fire again, do you?" I mused as he took a bit on his thin square fingertips. "If you were really unlucky, you might grow scales on your forearms, maybe your shins, and growing scales is no gondola ride, I can tell you." He laughed and rubbed the stuff behind his ear.
"How would you know that?" he snickered, putting the stopper back in the bottle.
"Personal experience," I said.
He gave me a glance and then sighed, closing his eyes and going sort of limp. "Oh, man... this stuff works!"
I smiled. "Wouldn't have given it to you if it didn't. I'm sorry Ramoya hurt you... There seems to be a misunderstanding of some sort..."
Link shook his head in a carefree way as if it were nothing as he handed the container back to me, looking foggy-eyed with concentration. "...What's a transformation essence?"
I gave him an awkward look, and he rested his chin in his hand, waiting for an explanation. I sighed. "It's sort of complicated..."
"I'm listening," he assured me impatiently.
"Er..." I sighed. Link seemed determined to hear this. "It's a sort of potion that one makes if one wants to return to his original form... or something like that. Sometimes it's not the original form, exactly... I mean, it doesn't have to be. It can be something one was in a dream, or in the past, or in a wisp of memory- it requires memory to transform- and I dunno..."
"So all you need is memories of what you want to be and some straw and blood?" he said, biting his tongue as he thought.
"Well... Depends on how modern the memory... Sometimes, even when you sort of remember or if you dream something, you can't really recall every detail of it- and that's necessary to the spell, so sometimes one could capture the image of whatever the transformation's meant to be."
"Hmmm... Things sure are suspicious around here." He smiled in spite of himself and stared down at the dusty wood floor. He was now sort of perched on top of the barrel, one of his knees hugged up close to his chest and the other foot balancing precariously on the barrel's edge. His eyes weren't foggy anymore.
"What's on your mind?" I asked. He looked up.
"Oh, nothing... It's just that earlier today we went back to the beach to pick up some things, like Tetra's stuff, and one of her paintings was gone."
"Really?" I sat myself on a crate and swung my legs absently.
"Yeah," He blew his long straw-colored bangs from his eyes, propped his elbow up on his knee and put his chin on his forearm. "She had three framed paintings which hung in her cabin. One of them was a map of the sea with the Triforce marked on it, one was of her mother and all the pirates, and the last was an old peeling drawing of the Hero of Time. That was the one stolen." We thought in silence for a moment.
"Boy, y'all here's purty quiet." Ramoya appeared again from the back and dumped a frozen package of frogs' legs onto my lap. "Here ya go." I almost dropped it since I wasn't really prepared for it at the moment. I paid her with a quick nod. "If that's all you need, I should go organize my spice shelves." She turned to leave.
"No, wait!" Link jumped off of the barrel and took a few steps after her.
"Now, what's it ya need, hon'?" She picked up her broom again, and Link flinched. Then he shook his head and continued.
"Did that kid- the thief, I mean... Did he have a sword with him?"
"Well, yeah, I suppose he did. Lovely thing with a purple hilt and some golden triangles emblazoned on it." I watched Link's left hand curl into a fist as Ramoya turned a corner. "Oh, dear. I'm a forgetful one..." Her face reappeared again around the shelf. "I forgot to ask you... The Tournament's coming up, and Anni, I know you're fond of signing up as a judge for some of the competitions..."
"The Tournament? Oh yeah, sure, I'd like to judge for the fencing," I said.
"Just like every year," smiled Ramoya, pulling a notepad from her sleeve and writing down my name. "How 'bout you, lad? D'you wanna enter the contest?"
Link looked pretty excited, but he gave me a glance. "I dunno. What do you do?"
"Well," I began. "It's a contest that happens each year, and everyone competes in footraces, Boulviddarian fencing and sailboat races- they're pretty brave boys, of course... And whoever wins supposedly gets good luck from Lanir, the forest sprite."
He grinned cockily. "Sounds like fun."
I looked at him warily. Ramoya continued. "Well, if you want to be in, I'll have to sign you up, and there's also the entering fee, 100 rupees..." Link came up with Madame Ebony's reward money and handed it to her. "And just sign your name here," She handed Link another notepad and a quill. He nodded and scrawled down his name. Ramoya grinned and took a look at it. Then she grimaced and glared at Link. "You sure you're not that RASCAL?" She shook her fist dangerously close to his face, and he blinked several times as she shoved the notebook back into his face. I stood up to take a look.
There were three or four names written on the pad. The first two were completely normal, untidily scrawled names. The second two were written in identical handwriting, with a little circle instead of a dot above the 'i'. 'Link' had been written twice.
"But... That's MY handwriting!"
I grabbed Link by the wrist and, dragging him with one hand and carrying the things in another, dragged him out of the store. Link had been right; "Things sure are suspicious around here."
`~*~`
Medli and I sat on the porch that evening, among the appearing starlight. The wind, which should've been calm and cool at this time, was rampaging about the yard, creating dust devils. I had my old scarlet guitar on my lap, and I was picking out that tune I'd heard not that long ago. It seemed so old and vaguely familiar, as if my mother had sung it once to me over the cradle. Medli was embroidering something in the design of a great purple and scarlet bird, and she was quietly listening to my mishaps. I began softly singing the words, and gradually got stronger. They seemed so familiar somehow twisting and blending with the chords of my guitar:
Stay close, stay close,
Hear the river rush,
Never fear my friend,
Spring shall come again,
In the night, in the night,
When all hope is lost;
Huddle up close to me,
Share the warmth!
"Anni, what is that? It's beautiful," Medli murmured, turning an orange eye at me and then concentrating on her work once more. I smiled down at my guitar.
"Something I heard in a dream," I answered. I looked back up and jumped a bit. Epona had suddenly and silently appeared, her neck stretched over the fence. Her ears were turned intently toward me, and she pawed the ground impatiently. I reached out cautiously and gave her a pat on the nose. She snorted, but let it go. "You were in my dream too, Epona."
"Anni, you have a gift," Medli said, laying her sewing to the side and pointing her beak up at the sky to scan with eyes full of the young stars' reflections. "There has to be some magic in that music, if you can carry it over from a dream. The songs you hear from the heart and mind are always the sweetest."
"Yeah, I know," I said looking toward the sky also. "Medli, I have something to ask you." I didn't look at her, knowing that she was listening. Epona shook her mane.
"What is it?" she asked in her dove-like tones.
"Well, earlier this afternoon... I told Link that I thought the wind was bothersome, and... D'you think I offended him?" Medli looked at me.
"But of course you offended him!" She smiled thoughtfully, looking intently at the dust devils in the yard.
"How? I don't think it makes any sense..."
"It doesn't," she sighed. "Not at first anyway... But that's not the point. The point is, if you want to know something about Link, you really should be asking him yourself." She thought a moment and added. "I suppose that applies to everyone else, too. I'm afraid I'd explain everything wrong..."
"Please tell me! There's no danger in me knowing, is there?" I tried to persuade her.
"Oh, not at all... But you still really should ask Link, or maybe Tetra..."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why Tetra?"
Medli sighed and gave me a sheepish sort of smile. "I don't know. It's just that she and him seem connected... somehow, and- and she's more than what she seems. She's got a good heart and, well, she's just more than a pirate- a valuable friend. She's too, well, good to be just any of that, I suppose..."
"I know that," I said, beaming absently. "Well, if you won't tell me any of that, how about this Triforce thing everybody's always talking about?"
She looked sort of stuck in a place she didn't like too much. "Well... It's common legend in Hylian texts, but then again, all of us- well, Link, Tetra, Makar and I at least– have a little bit to do with it, I suppose. The Master Sword's story is the same and different, and I suppose it's Link that merges the two..." She looked into the distance and said; "I have a tendency to confuse myself every once in a while, and I think it's happened again... I'm literally bird-brained, I suppose." I laughed. I remembered all the events that had happened earlier this afternoon and sighed.
I heard some loud conversation behind the open door, and we both reluctantly got up and went inside.
"Whoa. I mean, I can't tell who THAT is, but with everyone else it's pretty clear," Tetra was saying. Everyone was crowded around her, so Medli and I couldn't quite see what was going on.
"C'mon, Tetra! That's ME!" Link said. There was a sound of crackling parchment and he turned around. He was holding a piece of paper, which he examined closely.
"She exaggerated your ears," Tetra grinned.
"She has good reason to, though," Link mused. "And she did it to you, too, so I wouldn't be bragging,"
I noticed my backpack lying forlornly on the floor, papers spilling out, and I suddenly realized what had happened.
"Tetra, did you raid my backpack?" I said, annoyed, scooping up all the stray papers and shoving them back in.
"I was curious about this 'school' place, so I decided to 'figure it out'. I'm a pirate, after all." She smirked. "You drew little pictures of us all over everything, so isn't it our business?"
I sighed. I had doodled on all of the homework I'd done that night. My subtraction was crowded with Tetra and the pirates sneaking about (the reason there WAS subtraction), Medli sat idly near my name, Komali and Makar hovered near my essay on ecology, and Link was drawn several times in different poses wherever there was room at the bottom of a page. I blushed.
"Oh, look," Medli ran forward and scanned the pages with a quick smile. "Aren't they lovely? I didn't think we looked this nice to anyone."
"Medli, speak for yourself," winked Tetra.
"My teacher doesn't think so," I laughed, ignoring Tetra and remembering the many times she'd scolded me on doodling.
"Well, we need to teach Ms.Whatsername a lesson, don't we?" grinned Tetra. Link punched her in the shoulder.
"Well, actually..." I tapped my toes uneasily on the floor, remembering the essay I'd written about them. "I got myself into a bit of a situation today..." This led to an entire retelling of how Ms. Koholint had thought my writing was fantasy, and how I could possibly bring them to school. I was hoping Link would be intrigued, and thankfully he was.
"Well, sure Anni. I'll come with you tomorrow," he assured me. My guess was that he didn't like to get me into trouble.
"I'll come too," snapped Tetra.
"Tetra, why? You aren't really interested in these sorts of things, are you?" he asked, rather unconvinced.
"It's not about ME, it's about YOU," she said rather forcefully to him. She winked and wagged a finger. "Can't have you getting yourself into trouble, now can we?" Link rolled his eyes.
"Tetra, you and I both know that I wouldn't be the one getting into trouble." Tetra stopped in mid-wag and folded her arms across her chest.
"Okay, so this is another one of my schemes to check things out... What'cha gonna do? Stop me?" We laughed.
Medli sighed. "I suppose I'd better go, too. Otherwise these two could get you into worse trouble."
"Medli, you don't have to do that," I said, smiling so that she'd know that I appreciated it.
"You wrote about me in your essay, didn't you?" She looked at me with an all-new, almost Tetra-like glance. It was probably more reasonable looking than Tetra's, of course.
"Yeah..."
"It's hard to believe something like a Rito exists unless you see one, am I right?" For once, it was she that had control, and not Tetra. I was amazed. Medli hadn't seemed to have such a side.
If only Ms. Koholint knew what she was in for tomorrow!
`~*~`
The next morning, Link joined me on a couch in the library, rubbing his side. He wasn't wearing his green tunic, but rather a blue sweater with a lobster design on the front, orange capri pants and a pair of sandals.
"The stuff I used to wear on the island," he explained. "I didn't really want to weird out your classmates or anything, so I remembered that Grandma sent these with me."
I laughed. "You look really cute," I said, and his ears and nose turned pink.
"Seagull-feathers," he muttered. I hadn't realized that his neck was as delicate and slender as it was, or that his feet were as small and callused as they were. I supposed it was from wearing his boots without socks and slipping around in them so much.
"So, you haven't been to school before, huh?" I looked around, wondering where everyone was.
"Not really," he said thoughtfully. "I was once friends with a teacher named Miss Marie on Windfall Island. She taught a little school there- Miss Marie's School of Joy." I let out a bitter laugh.
"Sounds a bit different from the attitude around here." I took the "LZ" from the coffee table and flipped through it with only enough concentration to make sure I didn't rip one of the wafer-thin pages. Automatically, Link scooted several inches closer and slipped a finger between two of the pages. "There's a bunch of jerks at my school that live to pick the living heck out of you."
"I'll be fine," he assured me, poring over one of the pictures in the old scarlet book. He obviously sensed the worry in my voice. I shrugged and looked at the picture- and wrinkled up my nose.
"Eww... That's disgusting..." Link laughed.
"What are you talking about? Oh...Do you mean Ruto?" He put the tip of his finger on a fish-girl on the page. She was standing with her hands on her hips, seeming to be scolding next to the green-clad Link, who was sitting in a daze on some sort of pink ground, rubbing his head and covered in a clear liquid that seemed to cling to his clothes. Ruto looked really weird, whitish and scaly with a huge fish's tail.
"Well...yes- but no. I mean... Din, where are they?"
He grinned, a bit uneasily. "In the belly of a giant fish."
I raised an eyebrow. "Well, that explains a lot... Sort of..."
Link shrugged. "Well, we read a lot without you yesterday... Y'see, you know Link was the Kokiri without a fairy?" I nodded. Maybe he didn't realize that I was as interested as I was. "The guardian of the forest, the Great Deku Tree, sent him one, Navi, because he could sense evil in his roots. Then Link went and killed Gnoma, the arachnid that ate away at the tree, and then was cast away by the rest of the Kokiri because the Deku Tree died anyway. The tree left him the Kokiri Emerald and a few words on his destiny, so Link set out to find Princess Zelda."
"You mean Princess Zelda as in the kid's story? Y'know, with the prince and the evil wizard... The one that says each princess of Hyrule is to be named Zelda?" I thought a moment and realized that this was a particularly dumb thought, considering that the original Zelda slept for the rest of eternity, and that every princess and queen was named Zelda. Link looked confused.
"I don't know, really. I think this is a different Zelda than that." He took a moment to straighten out his thoughts. "So I guess Link couldn't get into the castle, and a ranch girl named Malon helped him get through the guard...." Here he paused and looked me hard in the eye as if he were searching for something. Then he abandoned this and continued. "He talked with the princess and made an agreement to save the world from the evil Ganondork- I mean Ganondorf, thereby promising to get the other two Spiritual Stones.
"The second stone was hidden in the mountains, kept by a rock-eating race called the Gorons. Link defeated the King Dodongo by feeding it bombs, and the Gorons were once more able to go into his lair and harvest stones. Darunia, the leader of the Gorons, willingly gave him the Goron Ruby. So, now he's gone to the Zora race for the third stone and realized that the Princess Ruto has been swallowed by their deity, Lord Jabu-Jabu."
"Naturally, he has to rescue her," I finished. He shrugged and nodded.
"Pretty much."
"Link, is that all you talk about anymore?" Tetra's voice came from nowhere. She leaned an elbow on the couch. She was still brushing her hair out. It was longer than one would suspect with it being in that bun all the time, and very, very gold. It flowed like water over her fingers as she tried to tame nonexistent knots.
"Oh, good morning Princess Ze-err...Tetra." Link said cheerily (and rather nervously toward the end). Tetra gave him a startled sort of glare.
"You really do have that on the brain, don't you?" She snarled. "Hold this." Tetra dug around in her pocket, produced a simple, worn brown hair tie and dropped it onto Link's page. "And Link, you're lucky you didn't call me that, because the next time you do, I'm going to make sure that you and the catapult have a reunion." She couldn't help but smile a little when Link shuddered. Not really her sort of smirk, either.
"It's because you have your hair down," he said hastily.
"Not... Anymore..." She grumbled as she began piling her hair back on top of her head. "Give me that." Link sighed and handed her the hair tie, which she doubled around her bun. She let out a satisfied little grunt and strode over to a chair, which she plunked into.
"Tetra, where is everybody? I mean, I know you were awake, 'cause my side's still smarting, but what about Medli and Makar? They usually wake up really early," Link mused, putting the old red book back on its place at the coffee table.
Tetra yawned. "Oh, them? Saigon said that Makar's violin couldn't be fixed by the repair shop owner because the strings were made of a special sort of bark fiber, so they went out to find it themselves."
"I can't imagine looking for that this early," I said absently. "I hope that Medli comes back before we have to leave..."
"She will," Link said, nodding vigorously. "She's not one to be late for anything." I shrugged and adjusted the yellow bandanna around my neck, playing with the lead bead that held it in place. I looked up at the old grandfather clock's ivory face. At least she had plenty of time to get here. There was a knock on the other side of the door.
"Come in," we chorused. Aunt Saigon appeared, accompanied by Medli, Makar and Komali and carrying a tray of toast and six varieties of jam.
"Hey guys! Didju find what you were looking for?" I asked. Makar gave Medli a glance, and she grinned pleasantly.
"Yes, it was a success," she said, nodding vigorously.
"It took me a while to get it back in tune," the Korok said a bit shyly, producing his violin from nowhere as if he were a magician. The instrument belittled him immensely- the bow was twice his height and he had to hold it as one usually would hold a cello or a bass.
"How'd you manage to tune by yourself- I mean, without another instrument?" I asked.
"When the Great Deku Tree made me and my violin, he gave me a wonderful sense of hearing and tune. No one else makes any music at Forest Haven, so I had to be able to tune it on my own." Makar explained, carefully retesting all four of his strings.
"Makar, that's not true," said Link with his mouth full of toast. He swallowed. "I remember Koroks singing when I saw the ceremony." Makar did what you could call a shrug.
"What makes a difference? It works now!" he said with a grin on his voice. He tapped what you could call his toe twice and began to play. It sounded wonderful- at some places the bow moved so fast I was afraid that both the instrument and the musician would catch fire. It was the most skilled bowing I'd ever heard. Link was tapping his sandaled foot on the floor absently, and Tetra simply cradled her head in her arms and lay back with her eyes closed and a slow, leisurely smile appearing on her face. When he ended, we all clapped.
"Din, Makar, I missed your music and I didn't even realize it!" Tetra said, opening just one of her eyes.
"Oh, it makes me remember the times we spent together on Tetra's boat, making duets and playing the Aria and Lyric!" Medli said, her eyes bright with nostalgia. "I hope we can get my harp fixed soon so that we might do it again..." Makar nodded.
"That would be splendid," he agreed, bowing absently at his violin in the same fashion most people twiddle their fingers.
"D'you think that you could get it done right after school, Anni?" asked Komali.
"I think so. Why not?" I smiled. I took a glance at the clock. "We should leave pretty soon..."
Tetra leapt from the couch. "What say we get going, then?" I laughed, not knowing that she was so eager. I reached over the edge of the couch and found my book bag, a tan burlap pouch that hung over one shoulder, and stood up. Link was beside me immediately.
We bade everyone goodbye, and left them. Aunt Saigon simply sat by, thinking very hard with her opal eyes wide, wide open and a grimace on her face.