I awoke the next morning to the crowing of a rooster. I turned over in bed, wondering what kind of moron had brought a rooster into Eugene. When the rooster crowed again, I forced myself to open my eyes.
There was a bed next to mine, upon which a young blonde slept.
I sat up immediately, disoriented. I was in a room with rustic wooden walls and floors and wooden rafters. It suddenly occurred to me that I was not in the Onyx House. Everything flooded back into my memory now: the crystal, the vast marble room, the castle, the march across the plains, the ranch upon the rocky hill. I was not in Eugene, not even in the United States. I was in…I wracked my brain trying to remember what the land I was in was called…Ah, yes! I was in a land called Hyrule. The blonde whose bed was placed aside mine was Zelda, and I was in one of the numerous buildings in the ranch.
Slowly, carefully, so as not to wake the princess (or was she a queen by now?), I eased myself out of bed, still in my clothes from the day before. I rummaged around in my backpack, finding a change of clothes. Then I hesitated. Surely it wasn't good form to change in front of a princess, even if she was asleep. I could roll under the bed and do it, I thought, but that would be awkward and I'd stand a good chance of getting splinters in my rear end.
There was a door at one side of the room, apart from the door which I knew led outside. I stealthily made my way to the former and opened it. There was a small changing room on the other side, into which I slipped. After I closed the door behind me, I began to hurriedly change clothes. After a minute and a half, I stepped back out into the larger room. After walking past the bed upon which Zelda slumbered, I deposited my old clothes beside my backpack, slipped my shoes on, and, as quietly as I could, slipped out the door.
The sky bore the grey light of the early morning as I walked around the lonely ranch. A few soldiers were out; most of these were those patrolling the palisade. I crossed the practice field and ascended to the wooden battlement. There, I looked out to the east.
The sun was slowly ascending in the sky; fully a third of it was exposed. It was bright, beautifully bright, but oddly, it was not blinding. It was like a sun in a perfect dream world. It rose above the vast forest across the plain to the east. At once, I wished I had brought a camera with me. But I shook my head. A camera would have only wasted space.
There was a light footstep on the battlement, and someone stood right next to me. I looked over to see Zelda, still in her blue suit with the red eye, but without the cap or mask. Apparently, she must have awoken soon after me. We now stood side-by-side, looking out to the eastern lands.
At length, she indicated the great forest and said, "Those are the Lost Woods. Within its heart is the home of the Kokiri."
I looked at her quizzically, which she almost immediately noticed. "The children of the forest," she elaborated. "Saria, one of the Sages, is one of them." I assumed she meant the diminutive girl with the green hair and garments.
After a while, I replied, "That's cool. Is that where Link is?"
Zelda shook her head, and beckoned me to follow her. She lead me along the battlement almost halfway around, until we faced nearly due west. She pointed to the narrow valley I had seen before in the western plateau. "That valley leads to the home of Ganon's people, the Gerudo."
That was yet another name I had not yet heard. "Who are they?" I asked her.
"A tribe of thieves," Zelda replied. "They live in an arid region; it is all they can do to survive. Nearly all of them are women. One of our Sages, Nabooru – she's the one with the swords – is of that people. Men are seldom born among them. It is something which only occurs once in a century. These men become their kings. Ganon was one of these rare men."
"A tribe of nothing but women," I mused, fascinated. "Like the Amazons."
Now it was Zelda's turn to be curious. "They were an ancient tribe of female warriors," I explained. "They were some of the most feared fighters of their day. They never brought men to war, even if they were their husbands or sons."
Zelda nodded, satisfied at my explanation, before continuing, "Our best guess is that Link is being held prisoner in the Gerudo people's great fortress, which is built into the walls of the valley. Ganon may also be there."
"So how does one get in?" I asked.
Zelda grimaced. "The fortress has only two gates. One opens into the valley. The other opens into a vast desert, which forms the majority of their territory, and lies at the other end of the valley from us. Both gates are heavily patrolled. To venture in those ways means certain capture."
I mirrored Zelda's grimace. This endeavor was beginning to seem like a very tall order. "If we can't get in through those ways, then how do you suppose we approach the place?"
The blonde princess looked at me. "That's what I was hoping you might be able to figure out," she answered."
Groaning inwardly, I turned to look back at the entrance to the valley. A frontal entrance was utter folly; that was plain. There was no way of going around the fortress, as it seemed from Zelda's words that it was part of the valley itself, and there was no way around to the desert. Digging was obviously not going to work, the sandstone walls of the valley likely turned into even harder bedrock below the ground. Scaling to the plateau would be difficult in the extreme.
And then my mind stopped. Scaling the plateau. It was the only way that was even halfway feasible. But it would be hard. That plateau had to be easily a hundred feet above the plains. But it was either that or nothing. "If we could get to the top of the plateau," I began to ask, "would it be easy to get from there into the fortress?"
Zelda's eyes widened. "It would," she responded. "The fortress is shaped like a massive stair up to the plateau. You could easily get from the top to the highest part of the fortress. It would be surmounting the plateau that would be the biggest challenge."
But I was already thinking as soon as the first sentence left her lips. It was about five seconds after she'd finished speaking that I said, "I'll need a hundred feet of rope, a long metal spike, and a small pick."
Zelda blinked several times. "Those will get you to the top?" she asked.
I grinned. "With some luck, they will."
