"The giant glow in the sky is most definitely not a giant Deku nut, "Link decided, watching it sink lower and lower in the sky.
"Why did you ever think that it was?" Navi asked.
"What else was I supposed to think it was?" he replied defensively.
"I don't know, Link. I only know it as the sun."
"Oh," Link replied. "What's a sun?"
Navi was a little confused by the question. Hadn't they just been talking about it?
"The sun's the big glowing thing you just asked me about!"
"No, no, I know that, but that isn't what I mean." Link tried to elaborate, "I wanna know what is it? What's it made of? What makes it glow?"
Navi had no idea how to answer that. "I don't understand," she finally said.
"Oh," Link mumbled, acting a little more shyly, a little more like he had in the forest meadow around the other children. "I'm sorry. I guess it was a really stupid question."
"Why do you think it was stupid?" Navi asked.
"Well, because," As he walked, Link scuffed his feet around abashedly. "You know everything, so if I ask something that you can't understand, then it must be that I was saying something stupid again."
Navi was taken totally and absolutely by surprise. "You weren't saying anything stupid, Link," she answered automatically.
"Really?" the boy asked, pitifully hopeful.
Navi paused, trying to find the right words to lift his self-esteem. "You just think differently,that's all."
Link beamed, brightly. "That's what Saria says. But she also says that she's different, too."
He was so happy that Navi had said to him that she didn't think he asked stupid questions. Maybe she really was his friend and fairy, like all the forest kids had. Imagine- the little outcast had a fairy! At least one good thing had come out of this strange quest.
"Hey, Navi," Link piped up again, "I think you might be a little different, too." He turned and smiled at her.
She felt guilty for secretly thinking his question stupid.
The pair crested the hill they were working on and Link noticed a huge stone edifice rising out of the twilight-kissed greens of the field.
"Look at that!" he said, completely enraptured. "Do you think we'll find a Princess of Destiny there?"
Navi knew what the stone wall surrounding the town was through the Great Deku Tree's lessons and stories of the outside world.
"Probably. That's where the people of Hyrule live, Link," she said, proud to be able to appear knowledgeable. "That water surrounding the wall is called a moat and that tower near the opening is called a guard tower. Some of the people stand on top of it to look for danger."
"Okay, what's that?" Link asked, giddily pointing to the chains attaching the bridge to the opening in the town walls.
"The drawbridge?" She specified.
"Yeah, that's what it looks like it should be called!" He threw his arms up in a display of happiness. "But why are they closing it?"
Indeed, Navi could hear the clinking of the chains as they were being drawn upwards and their path to the princess being taken with it.
"Well, Link, it's for protection."
"Protection from what?"
"The darkness, I believe."
"You mean," he paused, "It's always got the sunlight in there, like how the Kokiri Forest Meadow never goes completely dark?"
"No, I don't think that's quite right." She puzzled over the predicament as the twilight faded into something blacker. "The Great Deku Tree says that with the darkness comes monsters and the people here shut them out."
"Oh." Link looked around. "I don't see any monsters," he said. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him and his face twisted into a horrified mask.
"Navi, are we monsters?"
He said it with such terror that for a moment she suspected he had figured out something she hadn't, but she shook the thought away. She wasn't supposed to be thinking stupid thoughts.
"No, silly, it just means that--" the concept clicked in tandem with the drawbridge and the city walls. "--the monsters come out at nightfall."
"Like what the giant owl had been talking about?" Link meandered towards the closed drawbridge and off the beaten path, not comprehending.
"Link! Get back on the path!" Navi shrieked.
"I am- the way to where the princess is has got to be the path, right?"
"No, see the part that doesn't have grass? That's the path!"
Link felt foolish for assuming he had known what a path was. Meekly, he squinted at the ground to try to find what his fairy friend had been talking about.
"Navi, it's too dark to see anything. Can you, um, come over here so I can see what you mean?"
Navi was completely exasperated and very afraid.
"Just walk toward me. Right now. It's over here." She flew in giant semicircles in the air, trying to take his attention off of the ground.
"But, Navi, you came over here," he said, his eyes not leaving the ground. "Is their danger around? You turned a weird color…"
Link marveled for a moment at the red-orange glow blooming at his feet and was about to ask Navi how fairies managed to change color when he noticed a second, twin glow peering out right next to the first one. He knelt down and reached out to touch one.
An audible cracking of bone-on bone was heard as the earth around his feet was torn up and a skeletal hand tore out of the ground and gripped his.
In his surprise, Link fell backwards and his momentum took the monster's arm with him. He stared at it, wide-eyed, and noticed that it still had enough flesh to possess five long, broken, bloody fingernails.
"Watch out!" Navi screamed, rushing through the air over to Link. She swatted the broken arm off of him and cast a nervous yellow glow onto the immediate area surrounding them both. "Link, those are monsters! They're stalchildren!"
The little stalfos that Link had taken the arm off growled and clawed his way with its still-good arm to the surface.
It was a hunched-over, maimed little skeleton with orange-yellow eyes that burned holes into the darkness and illuminated the oversized, horribly mashed face and jagged, crooked teeth bent into it at painfully unnatural angles. Most noticeably, its spine was so bent that it would have made the comical silhouette of a baggage-weary peddler, but Link and Navi only knew enough to tell that its hips and legs, while unnaturally bent like under some great weight, were persistently moving towards them.
It cackled maniacally when Link tried to back off from his place on the ground and gave a little swat with its attached arm and only laughed more when it managed to nick Link's cheek. Its nails were surprisingly sharp.
Link scrambled backwards and tried to block the thing's next swipe with the limb he had already broken off, but the skeleton grabbed it and threw it to the side.
Navi flew around Link's head and tugged on the hilt of his sword. "Don't be afraid of the Stalchild! Just…attack!" She knew that her words were hypocritical, but she also knew that doing nothing was going to get them both killed.
With clumsy hands, Link took the hint and jabbed his sword around in hopes of hitting something. In a lucky swipe he managed to knock the creature's legs off, but that didn't deter its determination to get Link. It pulled itself forward, with one arm and one leg, still giving that sick smile.
Link jumped up to get off of its level and kicked its head off of its crooked neck, and watched its spine writhe. The vertebrae crunched as they moved against each other and it flipped over on its broken torso, the ribs somehow managing to move like little, spindly legs, and still going for Link.
The little Kokiri sword made five hurried jabs into the backbone before Link was sure it wasn't going to move anymore. He and Navi watched in sick fascination as the bone rotted into dirt before their very eyes.
The two of them stayed very quiet.
"Navi," Link whispered his voice barely audible, "Don't move. There are more."
She wanted to ask how he knew that, but before she could even buzz her wings, she heard the clatter of bone on wood and turned around to see Link jamming his shield into another monster's spine.
The skeleton wailed and she saw more eyes appear out of the ground, and a few hands, and feet, and heads, and arms started to make their way up.
Link finished slamming into the stalchildren closest to him (using his own hands, feet, sword, shield, and anything else that was available, his or otherwise) and screamed to Navi, "The path! Navi, go back to the path!"
Startled, she did as he said and flew over the ground and illuminated the closest part of the trodden earth she could.
"Here!"
Link pushed several stalchildren off with his shield and made a beeline for her yellow glow. He landed in a pile beneath her light and she noticed a few tears and scratches on the back of his tunic. Quickly, though, they were hidden as he rolled over and onto his knees, sword and shield in hand.
With a look of sheer terror on his face, he watched the little skeletal soldiers surround both he and his fairy partner.
"Link, if you don't do something, we'll die," Navi said, upset that she had to give such an ultimatum. He didn't answer, and they were soon surrounded completely.
The beady little eyes and the deformed bodies all stopped suddenly, like there was some unknown barrier surrounding the pair. They gave a few swipes and a few disappointed wails before finally, thankfully, they burrowed down into the earth one by one, leaving only their greedy eye sockets showing.
"I should have asked the owl more questions," Link muttered. Navi only blinked her light a few different colors in response.
They sat in silence for the rest of the night, countless orange lights burning into the darkness around them.
Okay, so I embellished a bit on the Stalchildren. So sue me (ACTUALLY, PLEASE DON'T I DON'T OWN THIS FRANCHISE.) And I'm really not that crazy about this chapter, but I kind need to know what y'all think- fanfic is great practice, y'know! Constructive, even blunt criticism is fine (Heck, so are flames! They're funny, often!)
And on another note, the reason for "HEAR No Evil" will become a little more apparent soon. Huzzah!
