Warm winds, the smell of flowers, the sound of running water and bird song. Zelda walked barefoot on the grass; the hills rolled all the way to the horizon on every side beneath the clear blue sky. Laying in a grove of flowers she found the young blonde boy sleeping, his head on a pillow of leaves. She knelt and brushed a stray lock of hair from his face, and sighed. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never wanted you hurt." Then he was awake, and wrapped his fingers around hers.
"It doesn't hurt," he said gently. "Nothing hurts." He showed her the back of his left hand. The Triforce was branded into the skin just as it was into hers, but it showed not as an angry red burn, but as a light golden glow. She glanced down at her own hand and saw she was the same, her bandages gone. He smiled at her. She smiled back.
A hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked her to the feet, another around her neck, tight, too tight to breathe, and she could barely hear the distant howling of a wolf over the hammering of her own heart-
The princess awoke with a gasp. It was an instant before she registered the pain in her head, arms, knee – everywhere. Close by she could hear thunder, and the pounding of rain on the forest floor, but she felt warm and dry, and could smell something cooking.
"You're awake." She opened her eyes. Impa leaned over her, a thin cut across one cheek but otherwise unharmed. The Sheikah smiled. "For a while I thought I'd lost you. There's a fire in you, child." Zelda tried to sit, realising first that one of her arms was splinted and second that she was wearing only Impa's cloak, wrapped twice around her. She glanced around and saw her own clothes drying by the small fire that lit the little cave.
"You're alright," she whispered eventually. Impa laughed and went back to the fire, turning the meat that hung over it.
"It takes more than a few badly trained Gerudo a thousand miles from home to bring down a veteran Sheikah warrior, child," she said, a hint of pride in her voice. Zelda smiled. "You, on the other hand, are lucky to be alive," Impa added. "Your head's not too bad and luckily your arm didn't break, but I think the bone cracked a little. As for your knee, there was a shard of rock stuck in it that wasn't easy to pull out. Seems like the ground did more damage than the wolf. What happened to the horse?"
"It threw me and bolted," Zelda admitted. "I thought I was going to die."
"You might have done, if I hadn't found you. A tasty snack for a wandering bear."
"Why didn't the wolves kill me?"
"You killed their alpha, their leader. The head of a wolf pack is the strongest wolf. To their minds anyone who can kill their alpha is too strong to fight. Well…" She thought for a moment before continuing. "Some people think they hold off killing the one who kills their leader out of respect, not fear. Some people." Impa looked over at her, then turned back to the fire and pulled out one of the chunks of meat that had been roasting on a stick. "I still say you're lucky to be alive," she added, but sounded thoroughly proud as she handed the stick to Zelda, whose stomach growled even as she took a bite. The meat was tough and strong-tasting, but it was hot and the first thing she had eaten in two days.
"I was so scared," she said eventually. "I thought you were dead, Impa. I thought I was about to die alone in a forest and get eaten by wolves."
"It can be funny, the way the wheel turns around." Impa took a bite of her own. "I had my final exam in the Gerudo desert. The Gerudo Sheikah have long since died out, of course, but they were some of the first I learned to fight. And that wolf was the first thing you've ever killed, wasn't it?" Zelda nodded, her mouth full. "First time you've ever caught your own dinner, too, I'll bet."
The princess spat out the half-chewed mouthful and stared in horror at the stick. "This is wolf meat?"
Impa laughed. "Well, the horse wasn't around anymore. Hunting in a storm like this is almost impossible, and you had a good clean kill right there. Trust me, it's better than dog at least." Zelda shuddered, then looked again at the stick of meat. Well, it had tried to kill her. She took another bite. "We'll have to wait out the storm before we go on to Termina," Impa said between mouthfuls of wolf. "I don't know this forest very well, so it's too dangerous to travel like this. I think we should stay off the road until we're well past the border. I hadn't expected Ganon to be this well prepared; they were already waiting for us. We shouldn't need money, at least. I'll teach you how to trap game if you like. It'll be a slower journey on foot, but we should make it to Carveh in about a month. We won't need to worry about feeding the horse, at least, and the only thing I have to carry is my armour."
"Sell the wolf pelt, if you can," said Zelda. "We can buy water skins and food. Damn, we could have traded the horse…"
"Princesses don't curse," Impa said pointedly. Zelda sighed.
"I'm not really a princess any more, am I? But I'm not a queen yet either. I'm nothing at the moment." She pulled the last of the wolf meat off the stick. "Why should the King of Termina help me when I'm no longer royalty? Wouldn't it be easier for him to leave Ganon be?"
"Easier, yes, but not right. Lie back, princess. You need your rest."
The storm lasted for three days, and it was a further three before they left the cave to continue on their way; Impa dried sticks of wolf meat for them to take with them, and eventually found some nuts and berries to take the taste away for a time. Zelda's wounds were healing slowly, and she still limped heavily on her injured leg. Impa had wanted to wait a while longer, but Zelda had insisted – as soon as she could walk again, they were on their long, slow way to Carveh, capital city of the Kingdom of Termina. The ground was slippery with mud and rotten leaves, and the nights were just as black as they had been, but with Impa by her side to protect her, Zelda got used to it all. The Sheikah was impressed at how quickly her little princess adapted to life on the road – or, far more difficult, life off the road. She never complained about the rocks beneath her as she slept, about the cold or the wet, the shabby meals or the insects that would crawl into her clothes at night. She didn't even say anything when one of her boots wore through; Impa only noticed it when the princess took them off to wash in a stream. She just marched on, silent and determined.
In truth her silence worried her protector; something had darkened in the child's eyes, and she seemed to have aged immensely in those past few weeks. "Revenge is no reason for war, princess," she told the child one night while checking her injuries; most were nearly healed, but the skin had twisted somewhat around her knee where the shard of rock had been. She'd set off walking again too soon, thought Impa with a sigh.
"You told those men I was a queen by right," Zelda said eventually. Her voice had grown quiet and a little cracked from disuse. "Yet you always call me princess."
"And you yourself said you were nothing. What do you want me to call you?"
"When you pulled me away from the wolf you called me your child."
Impa startled; she'd had no idea Zelda had still been conscious at the time, and gave a swift, silent prayer of thanks for the rain that had obscured her tears when she'd seen the girl laying blood-soaked beneath a giant wolf. "You try to distract me from the subject," she said eventually.
"Now so do you." Zelda sighed. "Call me Zelda. When we get to Carveh you can be formal again if you want to. You've relaxed, you know. Are Sheikah allowed to relax in the presence of their charges?"
"Revenge," Impa said firmly. Zelda sat back, wincing slightly as Impa probed the healing wound. "You'll never convince the King of Termina to lend you his army for it."
"No. I'll convince him to lend Hyrule his army to depose a tyrant and honour the vows he swore us, and his father swore before him. We have never dodged our duty to our allegiances. He'll lend us his army for Hyrule, his ancestors and his conscience." Impa almost breathed a sigh of relief, but then Zelda continued, "When I have that murdering traitor flogged through the streets and hung living from the castle gates for the crows to peck at, that will be for revenge."
"Sometimes you scare me, child."
"I'm not a child."
"You're eleven years old. Lately I have to remind myself of that."
"I stopped being a child the moment my father was killed. I became Hyrule. Now I'm just a vessel for her will and her protection. Father tried to explain that to me once, but I couldn't imagine him as a servant. He was servant to a nation, he said. I understand it now." She looked up, her eyes cold and hard as they had so often been of late. "I won't let revenge distract me from my duty to my kingdom," she said determinedly. "But nor will I let the opportunity creep by me."
"I'm at your service, Zelda. Don't put yourself in danger. You have me for that."
"Impa…" Zelda reached up and touched the Sheikah's face. "I could never do that to you. Enough people have died for my protection. Now you're all I have."
Unsure of what to say to that, Impa finished replacing the bandage in silence. She had never expected this. As a Sheikah she had learned how to survive in practically any situation the world could possibly throw at her, and then when she came of age she had worked in Kakariko, defending the town from the many creatures that crawled down from the mountains or up from the plains until the day the King had sent for a Sheikah warrior to protect his daughter. She had expected that to be her life, caring for the princess in the castle, seeing her become a queen when her father stepped down in his old age, guarding Zelda until the end of her days. Well, she thought, the situation may have changed but her duties had not. She had to protect the child, and serve her. She needed advice. For all her simmering anger and her determination, she was still just a little naïve. She still believed all men had honour, and all oaths were kept. In a day, perhaps two, the child would likely be bitterly disappointed in the King of Carveh. When they lay down to sleep that night, Impa wrapped her arms around the child and prayed that the Gerudo captain's dying boast that there was a price on Zelda's head in every between them and the sea had been a lie, but could not shake the feeling that she was escorting the child as good as a daughter to her into a snake nest.
