Part Nine- Liars

He didn't always dream of the dark landscape, at least not in every slumbering moment, but the dream of dark and light horses would still loom on the edges of his other visions, waiting eagerly to invade whatever else he was seeing in his mind's eye. It was always there in some way, whether as constant dark clouds on the corner of his new, blue dream-sky or as a faraway rumbling of violent weather, daring to break through and take over.

Tonight, he saw Saria and the Forest. She smiled at him and held out her hand. Suddenly, the rain began to fall from above. To a Kokiri, something like rain was highly unnatural- it did not rain in the Woods. When he looked to his surroundings again, though, he discovered he was not in the Woods at all, but in a field- it was the field he'd crossed to find Zelda, he knew now- and then he saw the princess and Impa rush by on the white horse, and then…

Hellfire. Ganondorf engulfed him in his eyes with that burning desire and Link woke up before he was incinerated.

He now knew what the vision meant and he was so glad that he had made a plan with Zelda to keep such a terrible dream from coming true. Link smiled to himself and went back to sleep, thinking that even if the dream still invaded his resting mind, it would serve as a congratulatory reminder that such an event would never happen instead of a prophesy of despair. Contented, he adjusted his hat over Navi and went back to sleep on the soft mattress.

Still, in his heart, he had doubts. He prayed he would never have to fall victim to such hungry eyes.

Again he drifted off, and this time had visions of a deep, dark place- and hands, and teeth, and the dead. And hands, and teeth, and the dead. And hands, and teeth, and the dead- and hands, and hands, and hands, hands, hands, death, hands, hands, such cold, dead hands with a hunger that was not that of Ganondorf, no, it was not a want for things of the flesh, but for something more, more, more- something that could not be put into words.

Something that could not be put into music.

This thing, whatever it was, ravenously sucked the very being out of the world around it and

there

was

nothing

left.

Absolute silence like the Woods, except where the Woods kept the hoot of the owls, the croak of the frogs, or the chirp of the crickets, this kept not a sound; it was a void, an absolute gaping wound in the world where something had been taken and the lacking itself was tainted.

Was there no music? No magic? No life? Yes, those things were all gone, but there was something more that was missing, something much more important—

Then, he was going backwards through the stony tunnel and away from the long, grasping hands and gnashing teeth, like time was reversing. He saw a big, red stain on the floor beneath his retreating feet and he felt sick.

As his body heaved from gagging, time suddenly moved forwards and threw him onto the bloody X on the floor. Instead of hard stone, his knee hit nothing; he went through it and he felt the emptiness, the sheer lack, swallow him whole and he saw himself falling further and further down into the abyss. The stained floor had looked like it had substance, but it was an illusion. Reality in the dark dreamworld had unknown rules and he did not know if the endless darkness he was plummeting into would encapsulate him forever or if the ground would come and end everything.

He stopped falling to come face-to-face with those teeth and those cold, rotting fingers gripped him again, and he blanched at the sensation of it all.

This hunger that the thing with the many hands and teeth felt in this deep, dark, dank hole wasn't for earthly things, but for something so much more that Link had. It didn't want music or magic or even life or love.

What was it that Link possessed that was so precious?

He listened closely to this terrifying thing as its neck just extended out more and more, past the point of the physically possible, until he could see the rotting flesh gathered upon its sinews tear from being stretched so far. Link coolly realized that he was no longer on the other end of the thing's teeth, but was watching it devour another person from a distance, like he was not part of the scene.

The creature held its victim's face in its jaws and he did nothing to stop it.

He heard its jaw shut in tandem with a clap of thunder and its pale, fleshy, undead neck became the healthy, muscular, and live one of a white horse carrying a princess and nursemaid on its back.

Link awoke again with the image of Ganondorf's eyes boring into his mind's eye. A tinkling of bells and a crowing sounded somewhere in the distance to herald the sun's arrival and Link needed no other goading to make him happily abandon his dreams and greet it.

He sat up in the bed and let his arms extend to their full length before slipping out of the covers and putting on his hat.

"Good morning!" said a voice. Link did not truly know what morning was, but he returned the greeting and came downstairs, with Navi immediately stirring and darting under his green hat.

The previous day, Link travelled to Kakariko Village on Impa's instruction and was immediately captivated by a white cucco clucking by the entrance. He, with all the care a young child who didn't want to scare a feathered friend could, picked up the bird and carried it around high above his head for any miniature girls in bright yellow that might be lurking around to see and claim. He walked around the little town like that for some time (It was small compared to Castle Town, but Link still thought it was huge) and then he found, wonder of wonders, another white bird- and then another! They were everywhere!

Link hauled his feathery passenger (who had calmed down and happily sat on his head after a while) around until a young woman with hair the color of strawberries stopped him and claimed the cuckoo.

"I keep them as pets, but they give me such horrible allergies!" she said.

Link looked up at the bird. "What's an 'allergy'?"

"I get goosebumps, no, cucco bumps!"

Link held out the bird to her, which made her panic a little. "Can you make it give you one? I want to see what it is."

At the closeness of her pet, the lady wrinkled her face up into an expression of distaste. "No!" she shouted, and the nastiness that she said it in contrasted sharply with the innocent inflection of her previous comments.

"Oh." Link held the bird to himself again and it calmed down. "Can you make it give me one, then?"

She looked at him with her big, blue eyes. "If you aren't allergic, you can't get them. When I touch them, I get little bumps all over my skin. It's terrible."

"Why?"

"Because I'm allergic, that's why."

"But why?" In his hat, Navi smacked him for being rude.

"I don't know why! It's just that way. I can't help it."

Link began to wince as his fairy proceeded to pull on his hair. He got the hint and just settled for saying, "Oh," once more instead of inquiring further. The redheaded lady again blinked her bright eyes again and cocked her head to the side in a coquettish fashion.

"Will you please find my cuccos and put them in that pen over there?" She sent her gaze to a little fenced-in area that was crammed beneath the side of a crooked house built onto the edge of a small cliff, like a continuation of the jagged earth.

"Link," whispered Navi, "You should help her since you've been so obnoxious."

Link would have given her a hand anyway, but he was glad that Navi wanted to help her, too. He was also pleased that he had agreed to do it- running after the things was lots of fun and he got to learn so many things, like that cuccos could fly short distances and take you with them.

"I'm just like you, Navi!" he said as he fluttered in midair with the help of a frantic fowl.

"Oh, really?" she said, exiting his hat to hover alongside him. With a mischievous laugh, she darted forward and did several loop-de-loops in midair. "Can you do that?"

"No," replied Link, "But why would I want to? I'd get sick!"

Navi gave another gleeful response and playfully tugged on his ear before sneaking back under his green cap. Perhaps this boy wasn't as foolhardy as she thought- any other child would have tried her little stunt and fallen on their rears just hard enough to learn their lesson. Link's incessant questions weren't mindless, either- he always had a reason to ask and he almost always out whatever he learned to good use. He was an oddball.

Despite his perceptiveness and foresight, however, Navi knew that Link was still a child and needed guidance.

And had you asked him, Link would have wholeheartedly agreed with her.

He dropped the last snowy white cucco into the redheaded lady's pen. She gave a warm smile. "Thank you for finding my cuccos!" Link nervously nodded back at her and scuffed his feet.

"You're welcome," he muttered. "Sorry about your goosebumps."

She waved the problem away. "Here, I'll give you this. It's fine glass and I think you'll get a lot of use out of it."

Young Link almost had a heart attack when he saw the glass bottle in her hands. Was she a fairy-catcher? His left hand shot up to his hat to guard the little passenger within it. "What do you do with it?"

The lady didn't notice the accusing tone of his question, or if she did, she ignored it. "Why, you put things in it, silly!"

"What kind of things?"

"You silly goose! Anything you want! Water, bugs, juice, um," with a quirk of her head, she tried to think of other things a boy might like to do with a bottle. "I guess you could put a candle in there to make a lantern, if you wanted."

Link wasn't done with her. "Do you use it to catch fairies?"

His serious tone and stony face coupled with his subject matter made the lady erupt into a fit of giggles. "No, I certainly don't! But I guess you could if you wanted to!"

Beneath the cover of Link's green hat, Navi released her grip on Link's wild hair. Most Hylian adults did not believe in fairies- and the fairies strove to keep it that way. To the fey folk, nonbelievers weren't a danger. It was the faithful adults that caused problems. True, there were benign and worthy ones in the world, but the risk of encountering a bitter, greedy, and cruel fairy catcher was too great for creatures like Navi to show themselves to just anyone; fairies only appeared to those they deemed safe.

This is part of the reason why only children can become Kokiri. However, it should be noted that not all children are found and chosen- the unlucky souls that could not prove their inner goodness before the Woods claimed them were warped into Skullchildren.

Link didn't fully understand this, but this girl's reaction proved to him that she was not a threat. Link nodded at her. "Okay. You shouldn't catch them unless they want to be caught."

She stifled her amusement as best she could. "I see."

Navi hurriedly whispered that Link should thank her.

"Oh! Right!" He said brightly. Navi tugged on his hair to make him be quiet, but the girl hadn't noticed his lapse in judgment because she was too busy smothering her laughter. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she breathed. After a few sighs and stray chuckles, she asked Link a few questions of her own. "Where are your Mother and Father? Are you travelling? I can tell you aren't from around here."

Images of the Great Deku Tree came to mind and fluttered in Link's head like the dry leaves that had fallen from his branches when he'd left.

"My Father is dead," he said. Link didn't care that Mido didn't think he was a true child of the forest. He would always consider the Forest Guardian his father.

He hadn't the time to ask what in the world a "Mother" was before he was drowned out by the redhead's cooing. "You poor dear! Do you have anywhere to go?"

"Yes."

"Where, sweetheart?"

"I don't know."

The girl looked aghast. "What do you mean you have somewhere to go but you don't know where it is?"

"Well," Link began, "I'm looking for something. Something really special. But I don't know where it is. I'm going to find where I'm going!" He looked her straight in the eye when he said it- to him, there wasn't anything unusual about what he was doing.

The lady found him very odd, but he wasn't insincere. On the contrary, he was the very picture of blind innocence and honesty and she immediately felt compelled to take care of him. "Why don't you stay with us for the night and try to find what you are looking for tomorrow?"

Link, still unsure of the concept of day and night, furrowed his eyebrows. "Tomorrow?"

"You poor dear, night will be coming soon. You can't stay out here in the dark and cold!"

Navi gripped her young charge's scalp as he gritted his teeth. Night's darkness was one challenge they did not want to face without shelter.

"I would like that very much. Yes please!"

She took him by the hand up to the house that was sitting upon the craggy hill that overlooked the cucco pen. "My name is Repa. What is your name?"

"Link," he said. He noticed that she didn't seem bothered by the cucco feathers that had stuck to his hands, but he didn't want Navi to start using his hair to reign in his bad manners again. He wisely kept his mouth shut.

They climbed up the uneven stairs to the main part of the house, which was even larger than Link had previously thought. The red tiles on the roof and matching coloration on the shutters were brighter than any flower Link had ever seen. With his nose upturned and his mouth agape, he looked like a codfish.

"I'm going to fix dinner. Do you want to help?"

"Is it broken?"

Miss Repa laughed at him and brought him inside to spend the night, and that was how Link eventually found himself sitting across from her for breakfast- they were having leftover cucco from last night.

As with Link's allergen-laden hands from the day before, Miss Repa had prepared that bird without any signs of irritation or bumps. Again, Link didn't say anything (especially since the man living with Miss Repa had insisted that the girl had horrible allergies and should be treated with the utmost respect), but he was curious.

He thanked them for the meal and left their big house all alone on the rocky hill.

"Navi," he said to her when she exited his hat, "I don't think that Miss Repa had allergens."

"Allergies, you mean. I don't think she had them either."

Link was aghast. "But why would she lie?" He was very puzzled and hurt. "The Kokiri would lie to me so they could pull pranks on me, but I think Miss Repa actually liked me. She fed me and gave me a nice bed."

Poor guardian Navi didn't want to answer such a hard question like this; the reasons people lie are vast and various and the answer would really upset her companion. Given the magnitude of their mission and surroundings, though, she knew Link needed to face some hard truths.

"Link, people lie for a lot of reasons. I think she lied because she didn't want to have to go find her cuccos herself. She manipulated you into doing it."

"Why didn't she just ask me to do it without that silly story?"

"Because then you might've refused."

"But I would have said yes."

"She didn't know that."

"So she wanted to trick me into doing something?"

"Yes."

"So that's what 'manipulate' means."

Navi was stunned at his deduction. "Kind of, yes." She wasn't sure if she should praise his clever reasoning or try to comfort him first, but the next words out of his mouth told her to keep quiet.

"A lot of people are going to lie to me to manipulate me to do whatever they want to do even if I don't want to do it, aren't they?" He thought about Zelda. "I don't think Zelda was lying. I am going to trust her and I am going to trust Saria and," he looked at his little blue fairy, "I am going to trust you."

Navi prayed that he could trust her enough to know that any lie she told him was for his own protection. She quietly prayed to the Goddesses as the pair explored Kakariko Village.


Beneath the Well is, like, one of my favorite parts of this game now that I'm older. There's something fascinaing about the TYPE of terror it inspires. I hate horror and torture movies, but I like the idea of it as a backdrop for characters like Link... if you've played Majora's Mask, you know what I mean even more... Link has this uncanny ability to work alongside/conquer/control darkness in a way that eludes most silent, "righteous" protagonists. That idea is the main (eventual) purpose behind these snippets- Link the child was raised in a deceptively tricky and dark environment and he "grows up" (relative to maturity rather than physical growth, y'know) to go to Termina and (literally and figuratively) masquerade as whatever he needs/wants to be as well as manipulate any event that happens in a span of three days. He is given a tremendous power that, if used correctly, could make him more of a god than Ganondorf could ever hope to be- and in my mind, Link'd be a trickster, of all things!

I personify each Link differently, but this particular Link has always been my favorite because I've always viewed him as a figure that parallels Ganondorf more so than Zelda, except where the former succumbed to the seduction of power Link kept a firm love for others- he's still a "Hero of Light(okay, time, whatever! XD)!" figure but he (eventually) uses sinister and dark magic/methods to reach his ends. He's also got much more tranquil fury than most of the other Links- and even when that subsides into bitterness, he's still sympathetic to others.

He's enigmatic. That's what I'm trying to say, I think. Eventually I may just tell everything from his point of view (because he is so fascinating), but as part of the trick of the fic I've got to let him grow up a little. He's still very young and impressionable right now!

Anyway, thank you for reading and don't forget to review! I really appreciate you guys! Thanks so much!