Part Eight- Zelda's Lullaby
He wasn't the only one who had been dreaming.
When Zelda had seen him first, he had been a simple figure bathed in light, and what a glorious light it was! It cleaved through the Evils of her sight and presented the key of salvation before her- a hero dressed in the green of the holy token that heralded his origins. Now he was here, close enough to reach out and touch. Was it possible that she was asleep still?
Link was surprised to find another child waiting for him in the depths of the huge fortress he had just snuck into, but his surprise turned to embarrassment when she began to laugh at him.
"Oh, please don't be so upset! I had prophesized about our meeting." For reasons he did not understand, Link's flustered fog immediately dissipated at her reassurance. This girl harbored absolutely no ill will- he felt like he knew her, but he didn't know why.
Still, he trusted her with his feelings immediately. "What is 'prophesized'?"
Navi, who had taken refuge in her child's hat, tugged on his hair in an effort to tell the boy that he was looking an ignorant fool.
Zelda only smiled. "A prophesy is a memory, only it shows the future and not the past."
Link thought hard about what she said. "A dream."
In reply, she turned her head to the side. "A special dream. But yes." Excitedly, she went on to describe the vividness of her vision, how the forest must have sent him as a blessed emissary, and then backed up and remembered her manners. "I'm Zelda, Princess of Hyrule," she told him. "What is your name?"
"Link." He answered immediately and with no hesitation. This girl was not only the princess he had been searching for, but she made him feel compelled to answer, do, and be anything she asked of him. In fact, it was a feeling not unlike the one Saria had inspired within him and that alone made Zelda even dearer.
As it turned out, the sudden trust was mutual- Zelda could swear that she had heard the forest boy's uncommon name before and she became even fonder of him than she had been already. She smiled and told him the great secret of the goddesses' Triforce. "Please keep this a secret from everyone," she warned.
A secret from everyone. A secret to everybody. Link felt a tug on his chest as he thought of Shad.
"If someone with a righteous heart makes a wish, it will lead Hyrule to a golden age of prosperity. But if someone with an evil mind has his wish granted, the world will be consumed by evil…"
A secret to everybody. The words kept playing in his ears.
"But the sages built the Temple of Time to protect the Triforce from evil."
Link saw the scary building from Castle Town in his mind's eye. He shivered as he thought of how eerie the place was- he could easily believe Zelda when she said that it housed a Sacred Realm. The giant, tomblike structure had managed to still all of the life around it and bury it within itself. Soundless, merciless, pitiless, ethereal- Link couldn't understand why anyone would ever dare try and open whatever doors lay within simply because it was so ominous.
However, as Zelda informed him how one could conceivably enter the deepest chambers of the eternal temple, he knew that was exactly what he was going to inevitably do. The words in his head grew louder- a secret to everybody.
The princess looked at him in concern. "Did you understand well what I just told you?"
"Um, yes," he replied, and Link wasn't lying.
She smiled at him again, but the glow quickly drained from her face as she gestured to the window behind her. "I forgot to tell you. The other element from my dream- the dark clouds- I think they symbolize this man…"
Although he stood half a head shorter than Zelda, Link could easily see through to the next room. A lush hallway filled the glass in the window frame, with purple fabric adorning the walls and the gilded soldiers standing at attention. Their attention was not on Link, however, and neither was the forest child's on them- the black boots that cast a menacing shadow onto the rich carpet eclipsed the rest of the world from every onlooker as they carried their wearer forward.
The boot became a leg, the leg became a body, and the body became a man. He did not present himself in the finery of a king, but Link automatically knew that was what this man was- he carried himself with a power no mere human could command, and he did it even though the leather and metal clothes he wore were constructed in such a way as to hide the slightness of his body caused by famine and dehydration. The ragged fabric fluttering off his back and wrists was torn and yellowed with age and something else that Link could only identify as the remnants of bloodstains. He was a leader, a warrior, and a merciless creature with a hungry demeanor like a coyote.
The metal studs on his gloves and shoes gave the effect of outstretched claws, like he was ready to strike at any moment.
Ganondorf, as Zelda had labeled him, did not even attempt to conceal his nature through his dress even in the court of a monarch and his physical features only added to his sinister image. In fact, the Gerudo King looked like a creature of legend with his fiery hair and dark grey skin- neither his locks nor his complexion were an ordinary color by themselves, but even if they hadn't been so outstanding, the two traits would not go together. The impossible impression was both stunning and unforgettable.
Was he a beast? Was he a monster? Was he a man? Was he a demon? Link was fascinated. He absorbed this man's shadowy presence and ignored Zelda's comments on him. There was something familiar about the dark man, but in a way that wasn't quite the same as the closeness of the girl beside him…
Suddenly, Link discovered that he had not even seen what was most haunting about the Gerudo Leader. With a swing of his earrings, three gleaming orbs found their way right into the child's soul and Link was bewitched by the flames within.
The highest pit of fire in the man's face was really the great gemstone that fell between his brows, and Link knew it, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that the ornament was not a piece of jewelry, but a third eye, a larger window to Ganondorf's hellacious soul. What was this man, really?
In the split second that their eyes met, Link swore that the voice in his head did not belong to his inner consciousness but to the man behind the window. "A secret to everybody," it sneered.
Link backed off.
"Did he see you?" Zelda squeaked, and the look on Link's face told her all she needed to know. "Don't worry. He doesn't know what we are planning…yet!" Her gleaming teeth should have inspired confidence, but Link's returning grin was very half-hearted.
A secret to everybody. It wasn't Ganondorf's voice this time, but Shad's once more. He gave another fleeting glance to the windowpane- something didn't feel right. Zelda's reflection looked distorted, like the glass had been thrown on the ground and shattered. Even the best laid plans go awry, he thought.
Zelda mistakenly took Link's unsettlement as confusion over her plan. "Let's get the Triforce before Ganondorf does!" She swooped in towards the shorter conspirator. "I will protect the ocarina of time with all my power! He shall not have it!" Then, excitedly, she stretched out her arm. "You go find the other two Spiritual Stones!"
Hurriedly, she scrawled out something on a piece of paper and gave it to him. "This will come in handy, I just know it."
Link fingered the paper and looked uncomprehendingly at the words inside. "You should leave before the guards notice you," she urged, but not impolitely.
As obedient as any soldier, Link hurried off to obey her decree. The soothing lullaby of the courtyard and the stream faded back in and he began to feel soothed again. What it was about this little paradise in the castle, Link didn't know, but the air here gave him a calm feeling much like Zelda herself did. He banished all of his doubts about his mission and tucked her letter into his shirt. He'd ask Navi what it said later, when they were outside.
With his mind made up, he made to leave through the way he came in but stopped under the red gaze of the most commanding woman he had ever seen.
The color of her eyes may have been menacing, but Link felt safe within them. She called herself Impa, the nursemaid (what that was, Link had no idea), and bid Link in an unfittingly kind tone to play a song with her.
"It was my role to teach a song to the Royal messenger," she gave an almost imperceptible smile. "This song has a strange sort of power," she added.
Before Link could consider bombarding her with questions, Impa proved the song's mystique to be potent indeed, for when he heard it, the boy forgot everything.
The melody represented everything Zelda and this place was- he couldn't explain it- it didn't have the complexities of the real composition, but it was louder than the buzzing of the bees and rustling of the leaves because it was real music and not just the noises that melded together inside him. Link heard music everywhere.
He had often thought about trying to put down the feeling in the air around him in words when he was alone and others couldn't call him crazy or stupid. It had been his secret until Saria snuck up on him by accident while he was talking to his reflection about how to express sounds in words.
Only Saria knew that Link could hear music in everything, and that was why she had shown him her secret hideaway- and taught him to play the ocarina. In fact, she was the one who told him that words would never be able to hold the true power of what he wanted to express but that one day Link's ocarina could.
He knew what she had meant now.
The melody that Impa played was perfectly crafted to simplify what it represented and accurately depict its subject while still maintaining most of the meaning.
Had he a better grasp on the written language, Link would have said that Zelda's Lullaby was like music's equivalent to finding the single most precise word to encapsulate the otherwise indescribable, condensing an idea into a symbol everyone could understand.
Bliss.
Peace.
Maybe even a glimpse at a form of love.
He was so entranced that he didn't feel the emptiness in his chest when he pulled out the fairy ocarina his best friend had given him when he left and blew into it. He didn't think or feel anything, he just did.
Impa was surprised that the boy could play back the song after only hearing it once- and she was a little unnerved when he correctly continued the melody past what she had played for him.
He played it like he had learned it long before, like he really knew the feeling it conveyed.
It was beautiful.
When Link opened his blue eyes, Impa knew that his performance had a strong effect on him as well. He was in a daze and she knew that he wouldn't be able to understand anything she told him until he was out of the castle.
She put away her flute and led him by the hand outside of the palace. This boy was special, there was no doubt about it- he was worthy enough to traverse Death Mountain and more. Impa could feel it.
Super duper sporadic update GO! I was really dreading this chapter 'cause it's just big ol' foreshadowing and research on in-game dialogue UGH. It went soooo sloooooooow, but I got to write some Ganondorf! YEAH!
Anyway, I was so distracted by my Durarara! fanfiction that I almost forgot about this one. DERP. Also, rereading the other chapters, I'm probably gonna reupload 'em cause they aren't so good. I not only sporadically update, but I sporadically clean. Maybe I should get a Beta. Whatever.
Thanks for stoppin' by- please read and review and point out any atrociois style and typo issues!
