THE GREATER DESERT
Chapter 3: It's a Secret to Everybody
An irritating wetness bothered her head. Fabric brushed in an obnoxious fashion against torn skin – not deeply torn. Gray edged at her vision from beyond her eyelids. Yeah, her eyes were closed, weren't they? She felt groggy. Her body lay upon something soft. There was a quilted comforter over her body. She felt it weakly with her hands. It was uncomfortably warm.
"Hey, darlin'," said a masculine voice, "Finally wakin' up, are you? Don't be afraid. You're among friends."
Zelda's eyes fluttered open. The light was painful.
"Easy, easy. You took quite a hit to the head. Link said you took a gun-butt from some scuzzball. He brought you to us passed out. Said your name was Marin, right?"
"Link!" Zelda almost shot up in bed. The man at her bedside gently pressed her back down by the shoulder.
"Yeah, mah nephew. He brought you in last night. Said you had a run-in with some bad men. We put you up here in his room. You don't look too badly hurt, but there's always a worry with hits to the head."
Zelda's vision cleared and she saw a man with shaggy blond hair and a short beard sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. He looked to be a strong man, with broad shoulders. He wore a kind, yet sly smile.
"The name's Russ," he continued. "And don't you worry, princess. I know who you are, but will keep your secrets."
"Princess?" Zelda asked, suddenly alarmed. "What? I… No… I'm… I'm Marin!" she choked. "I'm just a traveler…and…and…"
"Don't think you kin fool me, Your Highness," Russ smoothly said. "But like I said, don't worry. I knew you when you were a lot smaller. I'd recognize that button-nose and the taper of those ears anywhere… not to mention the portrait on the two-rupee bill. Hair's a lot longer and yer dressed a lot fancier on it, though. I know that sometimes a princess has gotta get outta the palace, plus I suspect there must be somethin' goin' on for you ta come all the way out to Nabooru."
"Don't tell anyone!" Zelda gasped. "It's a matter of national security!"
"Fair enough. Link doesn't recognize you, that much I can tell."
"Where am I?"
"Ordona."
"The outskirts province?"
"The very same. We're pretty hard to get to, so I doubt that anyone chasin' ya is gonna even bother with us."
"Mr. Russ… you said you knew me?"
"Sort of… but yeah."
"How?"
"Well, a lifetime ago, I used to be in the Royal Guard."
A memory flashed in Zelda's mind – a strong, tall imposing figure (all the guards were imposing and impossibly strong to a little girl). Scruffy, short blond beard, a kind smile. Those light, bright eyes.
"You look different without your uniform," Zelda whispered. "And you got shorter."
Russell D' Ordona laughed.
Zelda heard and felt her stomach growl.
"I suppose you can get up and get some breakfast."
The next morning, Zelda awoke with the rest of the farm. She assured Russ that she felt okay. He left her in the care of Link and Malon. They would show her some of the chores she could do during her indefinite stay with the family. Russ, for his part, muttered something about an "important anniversary" and rode away from Ordona for the day, off on his own business.
"It's something he does at the start of Fall," Link explained. "It's pretty important for him to do it alone. I think he has a friend, maybe even an ex-lover that he goes to visit or somethin'."
Zelda watched Malon transport hay bales. She brought one from the feed barn out to where some of the horses milled, undid the ties and started flinging flakes into a paddock. When Zelda tried to transport them herself, she could barely lift even one.
"Oh, that alfalfa will get ya," Malon joked, "It's packed tight, a bit heavy. Fado binds it thick. Sometimes, you have to watch out for rocks that get stuck in it. I found a deer antler in one bale, once."
"Come on, Marin, I'll show you how to wrangle cuccoos," Link said, leading her over to the chicken coop.
"People would keep cuccoos where I come from," Zelda confessed. "Aren't they a little dangerous, though? Where I come from, they had licensed handlers. Are we going to go check for eggs?"
"Not exactly," Link said as she entered the wired yard and held it open, careful not to let any birds escape. "We clip their wings to try to keep them from flying, but they still get out sometimes."
Zelda wrinkled her nose at the smell. Bird-manure was everywhere in sloppy little white and brown paint-drips splashed over the coop-houses like some kind of abstract painting. Her borrowed boots (she luckily shared a shoe-size with Malon), pressed a disheveled white feather into the earth.
Soon, Link was running around the entire fenced-in yard chasing a fat white hen. "Come here, you!" he said, "Gotcha!"
He held the hen close and nodded to Zelda to open the pen door for him. They exited and Zelda followed Link to a little shed on the other side of the horse and cattle pens.
"Why are we taking a cuccoo way out here?" she asked. "Are you starting another coop?"
"Not exactly," Link replied. He entered the dusty darkness of the shed, with Zelda close behind him. "Hey, Jaggle!" he called. "Ready for ya."
A burly man in overalls looked up from his work – sharpening a hatchet-blade. There were all kinds of strange devices in this building. There was the stone-wheel grinder that Jaggle had been working with, various kinds of knives hanging along the walls and hooked chains hanging from the ceiling. Zelda didn't like the feel of this place. She recalled seeing a large pole standing outside the shed just before she'd entered. She doubted that it was used to fly flags.
A young boy with blond hair looked up at Zelda and smiled. He wiped down a large block of wood, long ago taken from some ancient tree, that stood on the floor. Zelda had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. Link held the chicken by the legs and body and laid her out so that her head rested upon the block. Jaggle brought the hatchet down with a decisive swing. Immediately, Link released the cuccoo's body, which ran, headless, through the shed until it hit a wall, toppled over and flailed its wings.
"Wait until it stills, Colin," Jaggle instructed the young boy, who was wandering toward the decapitated animal.
"You alright, Marin?" Link asked, dusting his hands off on his jeans.
Zelda was staring at the slain cuccoo, which didn't seem to know it that it had been slain, as well as the head, which still rested on the chopping-block, its clean-chopped neck-feathers stained in bright blood.
"Let me see your hat," she requested.
"Um… okay…," Link complied.
Zelda held the hat before her face and promptly vomited her breakfast into it.
"My best hat!" Link yelped.
Colin brought the dead chicken over to Jaggle, who held it by its feet and let its blood finish draining onto the earthen floor.
"We hafta bring 'em in here to kill 'em if we want chicken dinner," Colin explained to the still shaking Zelda, who held Link's soiled hat in her hands. "If the others see us doin' it, they'll gang up and attack. This way, it's outta sight, outta mind. They don't remember who got taken from 'em."
"Yeah…" Zelda said as she shivered. "Where I come from… I mean… I eat chicken all the time, it's just… I've never seen it done…"
"Come on, Marin," Link said, rubbing her back. "You should rest inside. And I can… uh… wash my hat."
"It's been a long time," Russell Ordona said as he pulled his gelding up beside a red boulder. He slid off; took his hat off and held it to his heart. "Link, brother, if yer listenin', I think some trouble's a brewin'. Zelda came to us. I've been tryin' to do right by your boy, but I worry that you might have been right. I just don't want his destiny to be yours and Grace's."
The man knelt. Here, in a secluded place in the Lost Hills, lay a pair of secret graves. They were marked by a naturally-occurring rock-formation. These hills were red, like dried blood. The ground here was light tan, almost blinding white in the sun. This particular area of the winding cliffs was difficult to get to, as the Lost Hills had earned their name by getting travelers in them lost. People had been known to wander for weeks at a time. Not-so-secret graves were found by people who knew how to navigate the area in the form of sun-mummified bodies and partial skeletons half-scattered by scavengers.
Russell, however, had buried his brother and his sweet sister-in-law himself. It felt a lifetime ago, and, in fact, was, when he considered how different his life was then to what it was now. He'd never brought Link to see where his parents rested. He'd never told him their full and true story. He'd tried to shield the boy, to give him a peaceful life – away from royal scandals and politics, away from the military and war. He wanted the boy to wield plows, pruning hooks and wool-sheers, not a sword or a gun. Right now, it didn't look like the peaceful life that Russ had wanted to give his nephew was going to be possible. Destiny… that damned Destiny of the Goddesses was chasing him down, the Call delivered by an unwitting raven.
Zelda's black locks… even chopped, he knew them. He closed his eyes and remembered.
"Are you going to bring the baby here so I can see him, Sir Link?" little Zelda asked, sitting upon Link D' Ordona's partially-armored knee.
"Sure," the big man answered, "Not right away, though. He'll have to grow just a little first. Babies are really tiny and fragile when they're first born, and my wife will be really tired."
"I still don't like that you have to go 'way for so long," Zelda pouted, "And Sir Russell's gonna go, too! And he's gonna take Malon! Who will play with me and tell me stories?"
"You've got your sisters," Russ, who was standing in the hall opposite the seated pair, said.
"Kara and Anya are always busy and Cecelia never shares her toys!"
Link gently pried Zelda off his knee and set her down. "We won't be gone for very long, sweetheart. Besides, I have to thank you."
"Thank me?"
"When Gracie got pregnant, I wasn't sure how I'd handle being a father, but you've given me lots of practice."
Zelda shuffled her feet and blushed. "You got Malon… she's still real little, not like me."
"Yep," Link said with a smile, "You're becoming a big girl."
Russell stepped aside as a figure in white came storming through from one of the other hall entrances. The figure was that of a young girl carrying a sword that was too long for her delicate frame. It should have been too heavy, as well, but she managed to hold it.
"Link!" she cried. "You are late!"
"My Lady Cecelia," Link said, getting up from his seat and doing a little bow with his hand over his heart.
"You are fifteen minutes late for our fencing lesson!"
"Yes, Your Grace, I do apologize… I had to explain a few things to your little sister here and…"
"Enough. I chose you as my instructor, Link. I expect you to be prompt."
"If I may ask… It is proper manners to call me Sir Link. I know that you are a princess, but it is still proper manners to address your guards and your elders by title."
"Come, Link. NOW!"
Sir Russell watched Princess Cecelia exit, followed by his younger brother. Little Zelda remained and looked up at him. Russ was stricken. The little princess was giving him one of her "spooky," looks. Even at her tender age, Zelda was known for having odd observations on others that bordered on a "kind of extrasensory perception," – as was whispered about in the halls.
Russ knelt down. The girl was shaking and crying. She ran to him and gave him the biggest hug she could. The man rubbed her small back. "It's okay… I know your older sister can be rude, but she wasn't yelling at you."
"It's not that," Zelda said, looking up to him with wet eyes. "I just got one of my feelin's…. Once you and Sir Link go away… I'm never gonna see him again."
"Aw, why would you say that, darlin'? We'll be back, and he'll bring his new baby for you to play with."
Zelda emphatically shook her head. "I'm gonna see you again and I'm gonna see the baby, but I won't see Sir Link again."
Zelda rested on the couch in Mr. Russell's farmhouse. She dabbed her face with a moist cloth. Link apologized for having to leave her there, but there was much work to be done. Malon came in carrying a handle-less basket in both arms that was full of food. There was fruit from the orchard, a small sack, presumably carrying locally-milled flour, some shiny pie-tins, fresh garden vegetables, and to Zelda's dislike at the moment, a pair of freshly plucked and cleaned chickens with a few tiny pin-feathers still stick in the skin here and there.
The girl with the strength that didn't seem to fit her frame plopped the basket down atop the table in that joined kitchen-living room the house had. "Link told me what happened," Malon said. "I was wondering why he was wearing a different hat. I can't believe he took you to the slaughter-shed. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such a cruel thing to do to an outsider… or a stupid thing."
"Maybe I looked like I could handle it?" Zelda suggested. "I mean… I should…" she balled up the moist rag in her hands. "I mean, if you eat meat, you ought to know how it comes to the table… I guess."
"If you're up to it, you can help me prepare dinner."
"So early?" Zelda asked.
"Oh, there's lots to do. We're having everyone in the valley over. We were… kind of… going to celebrate having a guest. We have big get-togethers every month or so, anyway, and this time it's at our house."
"You were going to do it all yourself?"
"I don't always do dinner," Malon said, "but I'm very good at cooking, and besides, I wanted to come on in to check up on you."
"I'm better, thanks," Zelda said as she got up and wandered into the kitchen-area. She got a strange feeling while looking at Malon. Yes, she did remember that same vivid red shade of hair, only she remembered it attached to a chubby toddler in diapers. Zelda wasn't much older back then… when she played with a tinier girl in the castle garden.
Malon placed the cuccoos into a tray and rubbed their skins over with herbs and oil from a flask. Zelda chopped vegetables for her, which she used for stuffing. Malon noticed the way she looked at the fowl. "Oh, don't worry, Marin," the younger woman said, "They don't feel anything anymore. They probably don't feel a thing once their heads are off. They're completely brainless!"
"Urp!" Zelda said, choking down a gag. "I… I'm sure I'll eat well once they're dressed and cooked. That garlic smells wonderful."
"Slipping garlic slivers beneath the skin gives cuccoo a great flavor. Link loves roast cuccoo. I think he takes it as revenge for all the times they've scratched him."
"Hmm? He gets hurt by them? I thought that only happened when…"
"He likes to tease them, and has ever since he was a kid. He used to play hero using a stick as a sword, chasing the cuccoos around the ranch."
Zelda couldn't help but utter a soft laugh. "That's… that's really kind of cute."
"The cuccoos didn't think so. Nice that Link finally got to be a hero, though… Saving you in the city."
"Yes," Zelda said, keeping her eye on a potato she was turning into cubes, "He was… very brave."
A sharp, piercing wail shattered the air of almost eighteen years ago outside of the mountain town of Darunia. Those many years later, a man standing before secret graves in the Lost Hills would remember the strength of the cry.
Russell remembered sitting in a chair outside the master bedroom of his brother's mountain-house, watching his wife and daughter out by the horse-pen through a window, worrying over the cries and assorted grunts and noises that his sister-in-law made inside the bedroom. The cry announced that a child with tiny, but strong lungs had just entered the world.
Russell was, of course, on leave with his brother to assist him and his wife in the birth and care of an expected infant. Russell was a father, himself, though of a single daughter who had just learned to walk. He felt still inadequately-new to the situation, but was glad that he and Darla could help Link and Grace in some fashion. They'd been on their own. The family vacation-home in Darunia provided a quiet place, unlike the bustle of Castle Town. Out in the yard, machines hummed. Link had something of an experiment going on with machines he'd built that could draw moisture from the thin air, as well as devices that could recycle wastes.
Link exited the room after a while, holding a bundle wrapped in a soft blanket. His face looked strangely grim.
"Hey, is Gracie okay?" Russ asked.
"Yeah… She's real tired, though… fell asleep. The midwife is watching over her. Kinda… overwhelmed, seein' the little guy for the first time…"
"How is he… or she?"
"I have a son," Link said. A smile tugged at his lips, but he still seemed less than joyful. "Would you like to hold him?"
"Would I?" Russ beamed. He held out his arms to receive his new little nephew. The child squirmed slightly. Russell D'Ordona always wondered why people were so quick to call newborns "cute." To him, they grew into their cute phase later. They were an "ugly-cute," perhaps, like naked little baby songbirds or strange little monkeys or miniature elderly people, all wrinkled and tender.
"Welcome to the world," he said to the boy as the child cracked his eyes open, just a little, only to shut them tightly against a world that was brighter and colder than the warm, dark world of his mother's body. "It's a pretty big world um…kid…? Um…"
"Link," Link answered, "Link Jr."
"Did you and Gracie agree on that name? I thought you were going to name him Ralph…"
"Rafael, yes, but we changed our minds. There aren't many 'Links' in the world, we thought it could use another. It also just seemed right."
The child squirmed enough to free his left hand from the blanket. Its chubby fingers groped blindly. Russ found himself staring at a strange, distinctive mark on the back of it. The mark caught the sunlight that was streaming in through the nearby window and blazed gold for just a second. Russell blinked. He took baby Link's hand between his thumb and forefinger and gingerly manipulated it to get a good look at the strange pattern.
"You see the Triforce," the elder Link said.
"It could just be a temporary mark, a bruise, perhaps," Russell offered.
"I don't think so. He has it in him… my son's been born with a shard of the Triforce in him. This means that he belongs to the goddesses and that Destiny is going to hunt him down like dogs hunting a wild boar. I fear for his life, Russ."
"Nonsense!" Russ said, bouncing the baby boy gently, with practiced arms. "That stuff's all just stories."
"Mom and Dad believed them. You know they named me after the Hero of Winds."
"I thought the Hero of the Rails was supposed to be the most recent in the line."
"I think they were hoping for a hero to bring the tides back," Link Sr. sighed. "But I never chased the Triforce nor had it in me. Now my child is born with it… this does not bode well. The land's been in distress for a long time, but… this means that true Evil is rising. Evil will hunt him, Russell… and he will not know a life except one behind a sword."
"He is your child, nothing more and nothing less. Stop worrying. It's just a birthmark and you will be able to give him a peaceful life." Russ passed Link Jr. into his father's arms. "You need to trust more in yourself than in legends."
The hills around Ordona Valley were bathed in the gold-toned and orange firelight of sunset when Link met the wolf.
He was mending a gap in a fence on the edge of Lady Gwen's property in an area that was butted right up against the slope of a stony hill when he'd turned around and nearly had a heart-attack. The animal had come upon him silently. It sat upon a chunk of granite, regarding him silently.
s
"What the...?" Link said to himself as he stared at the creature. It was a wolf, alright, and quite a large one – larger than some hunting dogs he'd seen. It had an impressive mane – something that he didn't think wolves were supposed to have; and it had the remains of a metal shackle around one of its paws. Was this creature kept as someone's pet at some point? Was it some kind of experiment – a crossbreed pup of a giant mastiff and a wolf or something? It had blue eyes, which weren't natural on most wild animals that he'd known, save for some birds. Most wild mammals, especially predators had yellow-green eyes or brown eyes. Was it some kind of freak of science – a wolf doped on steroids or potions of some kind?
Link had no weapon. The animal yawned. Link backed up slowly until his hand found a stick that was leaning up against the fence – a branch that had fallen from one of Lady Gwen's trees.
The wolf stood up and padded closer. Link held up the stick, but backed up and around, following the line of the fence. He wasn't going to attack a wild animal unless he was attacked first. He didn't think that screaming and "making himself look big" was going to work on this "freak-beast," either.
The wolf did something that utterly surprised Link, making him wonder if he did, in fact, have a heart attack and was having his death-hallucinations. It spoke.
"You are wielding that improperly," the animal said. "Your wrist is quite stiff. You're never going to carry real steel if you carry a mere stick the way you do."
Link stood stunned. The wolf leapt and topped him to the ground. Reacting defensively, Link kicked and rolled. All he did was send up dust. He got up and looked around for the wolf, bracing himself with his weapon. He blinked, finding himself in a white void. Befuddled, and with his heart racing, the young man looked around. Hits boots sent up clouds of white dust that disappeared into the void. The ghosts of trees appeared all around him. He found that he was walking around in a white mist.
The sky darkened… no… it was a twilight sky. Strange black particles rained down from it, like squares of cut paper - only to vanish like a dry rain before they hit the ground. The white world turned gray. Link was in a gray grove. The leaves on the trees were alight with a ghostly glow, like the last golden gleaming of sunset. The environment was ethereal. He found a young man sitting on a fallen log before a gently glowing spring of water – a spring the likes of which Link had never seen except in illustrations of children's fairy-tale books or fantasy-themed paintings. The young man was dressed in green clothes and heavy boots of an ancient style. He was wearing chainmail beneath a tunic and he had a long hat that Link thought looked ridiculous, but it did match the rest of the way he was dressed. The man had dirty-blond hair, a bit of a darker shade than Link's own, and Hylian ears. He polished an impressive-looking sword with a soft cloth.
"Who are you?" Link cautiously asked, "And where am I?"
The young man looked up. "You aren't in the desert anymore, are you?" he said.
"No, I'm not. Did I just die?"
The young man laughed as he put his sword in its scabbard and stood up. He offered Link a hand. "Let's walk together for a while, shall we?"
"Um… okay, I guess. I'm dying, though, right? I never thought I'd hallucinate being in a grove…"
"This is a forest," the mysterious stranger corrected.
"Those don't exist anymore"
"Hyrule was covered in them in my time.
"In your time?"
"I am… a memory of yours. Sort of. I serve to give you advice from a life gone by."
"So I am dreaming… must have… passed out or somethin'."
"Yes and no. I am your first advisor, so I understand your confusion. It's hard to explain. First of all, you're not dead or dying. After our walk is over, you're going to get up and you're probably going to go home and pretend you never saw me because visions are things that only crazy people get and you're not ready yet to be as eccentric as your friend, Lady Gwen." The oddly-dressed man sighed and stretched his arms behind his back as he walked. "Second, I believe that I am the first to come to you because you and I have much in common. We are centuries apart, but we both revere the ways of nature and know life as ranchers. Some of your memories know the ways of the winds and waves, the ways of machines, the ways of time and space and the ways of deep and wild magic. You and I are most familiar with the ways of beasts and shadows."
"You're right. I am confused," Link answered.
"You are to become the next Hero, Link. I am speaking of our Chain – the line of this world's sacred Heroes."
"Those are just stories. No one's ever been that strong, or good for that matter. And battles with high magic? Give me a break, dream-guy."
The dream-companion laughed. "Oh, I understand where you're coming from," he said. "Magic-use was pretty low in my time, too. Most magic was attached to objects and there were few adepts. Hylians were dwindling… very few had our ears. You're an even rarer creature in your time, aren't you?"
"The girls in town think my ears are… sexy."
The oddly-dressed man laughed aloud. "I suppose we've all been ladies'-men, whether we wanted to be or not."
"Well, I'm not a man's-man, if that's what you think," Link replied. "Not that I'm insulting your looks, and who is this 'we'?"
"The Heroes," the man replied. "I know you don't believe it now, but it will come to you in time – you are our latest reincarnation. Your spirit is the ancient Hero's Spirit. In other words, you were me once, long ago. You are your own, now. You've lived many lives… most of them noble. If you need a name to call me by, you may address me as the Wolf, or as the Hero of Twilight."
The Hero of Twlight jogged ahead until he was walking in front of Link, backwards, facing him, with his hands behind his head. He smiled slyly. "And, yes, we are good, but not all of us have been good entirely. Our Spirit does have a devious streak, a little bit of rebelliousness that comes out at just the right time. Some of us are a little more innocent than others. As I've said, I am of the shadows. I didn't always do things the nice way. There is a reason why when the energies of the Twilight Realm hit me, I became a large and dangerous predator rather than, say, a little bunny-rabbit."
"I remember the story now… an old tale. It became popular again after the Rift opened in the west, in the mountains bordering Holodrum. There are Twili emissaries in Castle Town, but I've never seen one."
"Is that not magic?"
"It's explainable by science. It's a parallel universe. The place is like another country, just writ large."
"Is that so? Oh, what I would have given to see it," the Hero of Twilight sighed, once again walking next to Link. "My only connection to that world was lost in my time. I'd been there, you know, and I cared for someone from that country deeply. To think she would have guarded gateways all this time only for nature to foil her… Perhaps light and darkness could have mixed, after all."
Ignoring the sadness in his companion's voice, Link went on, "There's not much mixing, just a few emissaries that have to stay indoors during the day and have to use powerful technologies to keep from being burned if they do go outside. I hear they even have to use 'fields' to keep themselves from being burned by our moon. From the rumors I hear in Nabooru, people don't much like the aliens. It's said that they're really stuck up and think of us as being like cattle."
"Oh, I hope there won't be another war," the Hero of Twilight said. "I might just have to take over your spirit and your body in that case because I'd be the only one who'd know what he's doing!"
"I doubt it. It's their technology that they lord over us and it's too weird for us to really care about it. Nothing they do is practical."
"Strange… my dear partner was a very practical person. Anyway, I am here to teach you a few basics about what Destiny will demand of you."
The two had come to a beautiful clearing. There were ancient statues and brickwork, broken and crumbled in places in among the thin, whispery trees. The Hero of Twilight passed his sheathed sword into Link's hands. "Gird that on and take up thy sword," the man instructed. He, meanwhile, went to a pedestal that was in the center of the grove and loosened a strangely-glowing sword that was struck there. Before Link could even buckle the belt of the sword–scabbard over himself, the Hero of Twilight was upon him.
The ancient Hero swept for Link's legs, causing him to trip hard on the courtyard's moss-covered stones. Apparently, he could still feel pain in this dream, or at least his hips could. He looked up to see the tip of a very sharp weapon pointed at his nose.
"You're dead," the Hero of Twilight said, taking the sword back and offering a hand to help him up. "You'll never live the noble life that Hyrule needs of you if you're going to go down that easy."
"I've never done swordplay before," Link confessed. "What's the point of it when I could use a gun? I guess they didn't have those back in your day, if you are the Hero from the old Twilight Legend, but they're powerful. They work at a distance, like… like arrows, but they're many times more powerful. That's why all the lawmen use them in my day, as well as all the criminals. No one uses swords anymore."
"Swords don't run out of ammo," the Hero of Twilight quipped. "Anyway, if you are one of us, of the Hero's Line, you will need to learn how to use a sword. I don't care what kind of gadgets are at work in your day, it's only been the Master Sword that's been able to put down the very essence of Evil. Only light dispels darkness, even if that light is twilight. If you wish to water your desert, you will need the sacred sword's power. Come on again, come at me. Take up thy sword. Hold it with a fluid wrist. Follow my example and I'll show you how to sweep and dodge."
Link complied. After a while, he found that he was enjoying this little dream. Too bad what one did while asleep or passed out didn't translate to a physical workout. He could have used this, even if it made him sore later. He learned a forward thrust-stab, sideways slices, a jumping-strike and even a circular attack meant to cut down enemies that surrounded him on all sides.
The Hero of Twilight did not look overly impressed. "Good enough," he said. "It's a good start. You'll know now what to do once you finally have a sword in your hands and you'll learn the finer points through experience… I hope."
"Thanks… I guess."
"You'll be visited by others in time," the ancient Hero explained. "They'll first appear as I have… in the forms of animals symbolic of their essence, because you and the Princess of Destiny are the key to nature reclaiming what has been lost."
"Princess of Destiny?"
"You should ask her if she's had any visions, too. You'll know her in time. Also, if you see Midna… tell her…for me… Uh… You'll know what to say."
Before Link could ask the Hero of Twilight about the last thing he'd said, the world washed itself away in gray and he awakened. The sun was gone, leaving an outline of fire over the mountains. In the gloom, Link could see that Lady Gwen's fence was now fully-repaired. Save for a small tuft of hair on the lower-wire of the fence, there was no sign that the wolf he'd seen had even been there. Link looked for tracks in the dirt and found none. He wandered back home, wondering just what had happened.
Russell was waiting for Link on the porch when he saw the boy come up from Gwen's place. He'd arrived home about an hour ago, had taken care of his horse and had presented Malon with some wild chilies he'd picked out in the desert on his way back from his trip. She'd chopped them up and put them in a little bowl as an option for anyone who wanted to add smoke coming out of their ears to their dining experience, namely, Russ, Link and Mr. Fado. Everyone else who lived in the Valley was gathered in the house. Savory smells wafted through from inside.
Russ decided that it was time that Link learned the truth about his parents – where they were buried and how they'd died. It was time that he'd learned the meaning of his birthmark. Tonight, he'd take him aside and give him the whole story. Tomorrow, he'd take the boy to the Lost Hills. For now, however, they would enjoy dinner, the company of their friends, and the company of their new guest, "Marin."
Link came inside and washed up, telling no one of his "vision." Although it had felt very real to him, he convinced himself that he'd passed out. Even at sunset, the heat was blazing and he probably hadn't been drinking enough water. It was supposed to be the beginning of Fall, but there really wasn't much difference between the seasons in Hyrule anymore. Ordona Valley would be lucky if the Winter rains came. They'd been slightly paltry last year. He sat down next to Zelda.
"Marin!" he gasped, "What happened to you?"
Zelda held up her left hand. The knuckles were wrapped in a tight, white bandage. "I'm not as used to cooking as I'd like to be," she answered.
"She was helping me out," Malon said, setting down a platter with roasted cuccoos smelling richly of garlic and rosemary. "She was helping me all afternoon kneading dough and chopping vegetables. I told her to watch the knife, but…"
"I got really into it!" Zelda said, excitedly, "Chop, chop, chop, mincing fine… and I kind… scraped myself with the edge of the knife. I'm alright, really. It's just a little scrape."
Link's stomach growled. He reached for a buttered roll when Malon wrapped his hand with the flat side of a wooden spoon. "We say grace first, Link."
Everyone turned to Lady Gwen, the usual blessing-giver for these gatherings. She invoked Farore and gave thanks for the sacrifice of lives on the part of the animals who were now savory meat and gravy. She invoked Din to thank for the blessings of the earth, in which grew the vegetables and fruit, and she invoked her personal patron goddess, Nayru in thanks for all of the wise hearts that were gathered at the table. Lastly, she breathed a small prayer for the "mortal spirit of Hylia, wherever she is in the world."
Zelda dropped the fork she was holding onto her plate. It created a loud ring. "It… it slipped," she said, not sure why she had experienced a sudden shiver.
Cuccoo was sliced nice and thin, mashed potatoes were spooned, as were vegetables with butter. Rolls were paired with creamy herbed cheese and pies were sliced. Everyone talked and laughed, and for "Marin's" sake, her troubles in the slaughter-shed were not brought up. For her part, she'd never tasted more flavorful chicken. The roasted cuccoo was both fresh and had been fed well, as well as been allowed to run around its enclosure. The exercise, sunshine and fresh air was reflected in its flesh. It was almost like the taste of a wild thing, without a gamey aftertaste.
Everyone who was not stuffed was on dessert when strange murmurs sounded from outside.
"Have travelers come to our door?" Russell asked. "It's so late…"
Zelda suddenly felt a sense of panic. Before anyone went to the door, all of the windows of the main room iced over.
