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Chapter Two

Link opened his eyes. He was freezing. He pushed himself onto his elbows and looked around.

Had he passed out?

The moon was up. It cast a milky blue light over Hyrule field. The sky was clear, and the wet, muddy ground had turned to grass and dry dirt. There wasn't a sign of the storm ever having passed through. Link rubbed his head. Even his hair was dry. How long had he been out here?

He looked around, rubbing his arms to keep his teeth from chattering. The smashed cart was gone, and Rodan was nowhere to be seen. Link felt a panic surge inside of him. Had something found them? It couldn't have been Tarin—he would have taken Link, too. Unless he hadn't seen him…

Seeing no better alternative, Link set off toward the village. If Rodan wasn't there, at least he could tell his uncle what had happened. Tarin always knew what to do.

Link reached Brynna Village in a little over twenty minutes. He was shivering all over. Even in the summer, once the sun went down, it really got cold. He jogged under the weathered wooden sign hanging across the village's entrance and set off down the cobblestone path.

Brynna was a small village. There were only twenty or so small houses, set off at varying degrees from the main path. All the lights were out, and Link found himself wondering again what time it had to be. He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to have been home hours ago and hoped Rodan had gotten back to explain the story already. Tarin must have seen the storm, and with Rodan to back him up, Link couldn't see his uncle being mad for long. Still, he was likely to start of angry, and Link didn't want to be the first to recount their mishap that afternoon.

The village path ended, and Link passed an aging fence that marked the start of his uncle's property. The lights were on inside. As he got closer, Link could hear his uncle's raised voice. He felt his heart sink a little. That couldn't be good.

He lifted the latch on the door and pushed his way inside. Tarin was standing in the kitchen, his face red from shouting, and Rodan wasn't far off. So he was home.

"Where was the last place you saw him?" Tarin demanded.

"I told you already," said Rodan in a helpless tone. "We left the ranch together, but—"

Link stepped inside, and Rodan broke off. At the same time, four people said, "Link!"

His aunt was the first to reach him. She wrapped him in a tight embrace. "Where have you been?" she asked the top of his head. "We've been worried to death!"

"I hope you've got a better story than your cousin," said Tarin, and Rodan's shoulders sagged. "You were supposed to be home before supper. Where the hell have you been?"

Link glanced at Rodan. Did Tarin not believe him? All Link could do was tell the truth. Maybe hearing the same story from Link would make Rodan's account more credible.

"We only stayed at the ranch for about half an hour," said Link. "We left on the cart, and we were about halfway home when the storm hit. It was right on top of us, and the horses were getting scared and wouldn't move, so Rodan got out to help them—"

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa." Tarin held up a hand. "What are you talking about? What storm?"

Link blinked. "Um… the storm that passed through this afternoon?"

His uncle raised an eyebrow.

"You can't tell me you didn't see it!" said Link. "It was right on top of us! A mile away!"

Tarin looked over his shoulder at Rodan. "A storm?"

Rodan shrugged. "I told you, I don't remember any of the ride home."

"What?" said Link.

"I blacked out right after we left the ranch," said Rodan. "The next thing I knew, I was in the cart outside the village, it was the-gods-know-how-long later, and you were nowhere to be found."

Link stared at him. "You couldn't have been in the cart," he said. "It got struck by lightning. It shattered! Don't you remember?"
There was a silence as four pairs of eyes fixed on him. He fidgeted.

"What?" he said.

"Link, the cart is fine," said Lidya, his cousin, the fourth person in the room. "Rodan rode back with it, maybe twenty minutes ago."

"But I saw—"

"Enough of this," said Tarin, his strong, impatient voice cutting over his nephew's. "The cart is fine. There was no storm. Rodan says he came to, alone, outside the village, not half an hour ago." Tarin folded his arms over his heavy chest and gave Link a hard, calculating look. "This is what we know. What we don't know is how he got there, or where you were all this time."

Link pursed his lips. Without Rodan's testimony, to try to convince his uncle of the truth would be a terrific mistake. He thought the storm should account for at least a part of their delay, if not the whole of it, but Tarin didn't seem to have witnessed the storm at all. This was puzzling—storms didn't just strike two people in an open field, after all—but now was not the time to worry about it. Link's uncle demanded an answer, and Link thought as quickly as he could to come up with a plausible explanation.

He began with the reason for Rodan's passing out. He hadn't looked very well, Link said, upon leaving the ranch, and they hadn't gone much of a distance when Rodan lost consciousness. The cart lurched, and Link was terrified that they would run into some river or off a cliff. This was why he had grabbed the reins and taken over, even though—and here he lowered his eyes sheepishly—he knew he wasn't allowed to drive. After a minute or two, concerned about Rodan, Link pulled over and tried to decide what to do about his cousin. He was worried to move him, since he didn't know the nature of his illness, and being a fair distance yet from Kakariko or, to his knowledge, Brynna, Link set off on foot back toward the ranch. When he found neither Marielle nor Malon at home—Link hoped he would have a chance to talk to them before they could set his story straight—he made for Doctor Reez's house in Kakariko. The doctor wasn't in, either, and Link, seeing no better alternative, resolved to wait outside his house for his return.

Link paused here, trying to gauge how much time his story thus far could reasonably have taken up. Only a couple hours, at most, he thought. How could he account for the rest of the night?

"I fell asleep," he said finally. "The sun was beginning to go down, and there was a man with an ocarina playing in the square. I guess I was tired from the day, and I didn't think it could hurt just to lie down for a minute." It was a lame excuse, but hopefully a believable one, and he lowered his eyes to express adequate shame in himself. "When I woke up, the sun had gone down. The doctor still wasn't in, and it didn't make sense to keep waiting for him, especially after leaving Rodan for so long. When he wasn't where I left him in the cart, I came home."
There was a brief silence when Link finished his story. For a moment, he worried. His uncle didn't look like he believed a word of it, and he was just about to say something when Lidya asked Rodan how he was feeling.

"Fine, I think," he said, looking bewildered.

"You look a little green, honey," said Marin. "You ought to go upstairs and lie down."

"Definitely," said Lidya. "You probably had a mild heatstroke. Are you thirsty? Or hungry, for that matter—Mama, they haven't had anything to eat!"

"I'm not that hungry," said Rodan, clearly perturbed by the attention he was receiving.

Marin, though, would have none of it. "Lidya, take your brother upstairs," she said. "Get him some water, and I'll be up in a minute with supper. Tarin, would you mind putting the little ones to bed while I make something up for the boys to eat?"

Tarin still looked mildly suspicious of his nephew's story, but as he couldn't well deny his wife's suggestion, he put it out of his mind and obliged her.

The kitchen was then empty, except for Link and his aunt. Marin started to take things out of the icebox, but when the footsteps upstairs had faded and more than one door had clicked shut, she turned to Link. The look on her face had a fierceness that startled him.

"I'd just like you to know," she said in a low voice, "that your cousin and I were in town all afternoon, taking advantage of the weather. We stopped at Doctor Reez's to say hello. Both he and his wife were in." She narrowed her eyes. "We stayed for supper and were there until sundown."

Link winced. Somehow, the only response he could conjure was, "What cousin? Lidya?"

"I want the truth out of you, young man. Now you can tell me where you were, and your uncle can tan your hide for disobeying him, or you can stick with your story and I can tan your hide for lying to us. Which is it going to be?"

Link was stuck. To take a whipping from his aunt over one from his uncle would by no means be the path of least resistance. If he insisted on lying, she'd wear him out and likely appeal to him again for the truth, which would put him right back where he started. But if he did tell the truth, he didn't think it very probable that she believe him, and it might serve only to excite her fury to think she'd been twice deceived. The only safe way out was to invent a new story, one that involved some error on his part to explain his lying in the first place, and take the whipping from his uncle, and be done with it. But if he failed in that regard—and, frankly, he didn't think his second attempt at a story would be any more successful than his first—he'd be in the most trouble of all. His only choice was to be honest. At least, even if they didn't believe him, he'd be satisfied with himself, knowing he had tried.

"Did you see the storm that passed through this afternoon?" he began hesitantly.

"No."

"Then you aren't going to believe the truth."

"And why is that?"

Link took a deep breath, and quickly recounted the whole story, from the moment they had left the ranch until he had come to in the middle of the field, freezing cold but unhurt.

"There are some pretty obvious holes in that story," observed his aunt when he was through.

Of course Link knew that. But he had no other alternative. He said nothing.

"To begin with," said Marin, "there was no storm. Especially if it were of the magnitude you're describing, someone else would have seen it, or else heard it. There wasn't a rumble all day, and hardly even a cloud. Even if there had been, you say the cart was struck by lightning and shattered in two, throwing Rodan some distance away. You passed out shortly afterward. Have I got it so far?"

"Yes ma'am," said Link softly. He noted the way his aunt was laying out the information he had just presented. Her tone wasn't accusatory. Rather, she sounded like she was trying to understand what had happened. Link was sure, had he recounted the same story to his uncle, they would have gone straight to the back porch with no questions asked.

"And this all happened before Brynna was even in sight," Marin continued. "How, then, do you explain Rodan waking up in a cart—which is, I can assure you, all in one piece—just outside the village?"

Link shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I can't."

Marin studied him carefully. There wasn't any way she could believe him, Link knew. It was a paltry story. He felt stupid for even trying. He should have invented something. Anything. The events of the afternoon were so blatantly implausible that he was beginning to doubt them himself. Perhaps he had passed out, too, and imagined the whole thing.

"What did you say happened to the canvas?"

"What?"

"The canvas your uncle keeps in the back of the cart. Did you say you tried to cover the cart?"

"Oh—yes, ma'am," said Link. "I mean… well, I must have imagined the whole thing, I guess. I got it out to cover the cart with it, but I thought it blew away."

Marin was silent for a minute, and something like hope flared up inside Link. She was considering it. Then, "Come with me," she said, and his hopes were crushed. She was leading him outside. She was going to tear him up, and then demand again to know the truth, and he wouldn't have anything to give her.

Rather than stop on the back porch, as was customary, Marin led her nephew around to the front of the house. Link wondered what she was up to. She stopped behind the cart.

"This is how I found it when your cousin rode in tonight," she said, and Link stepped forward to look. At first, he assumed she was pointing out that the vehicle was not, in fact, broken, as he had so claimed, and he hung his head in acknowledgment. When she stepped aside, however, to give him a better view into the back, he looked a little closer. Immediately, he realized what it was she wanted him to see.

The canvas tarp was gone.