Disclaimer: The usual, nothing is mine.

A/N: Thanks to gamegirl07 for beta-reading this chapter. *Hugs*

The Ghost Beside Me

Chapter Four: Denial Brings Nightmares

"Link," Ilia called him. But he didn't turn or give the tiniest sign that he heard her.

"Link?" She called again, but again no answer came. Link continued to walk away from Uli's house and the village. He was some steps ahead, his pace was somewhat unsteady and dawdling. His gaze was down, as if he needed to see his feet to walk properly and to not fall down. He looked like he was thinking or deciding about something. She wondered what was going on in his mind.

Seeing his friend's unusual mood filled Ilia with despair. Perhaps it was excusable; Uli had just uncovered a big part of his life that had remained unknown for all of them for quite a long time. When Uli revealed the story to both of them, she felt amazed and intrigued about that lost piece of memory. How did such a lovely story end up so tragically? And why did destiny deny a bright future to that new family – Link's family?

Now that the ever mysterious whereabouts of Link's family were no longer hidden, Ilia craved to know more, to satisfy her curiosity about the subject. She expected Link to feel the same – well, perhaps not as enthusiastically as she was, but she thought that Link, knowing now that he was not the lonely branch in his family tree, would like to fill himself with such knowledge. But to her dismay, he seemed barely affected. If he was hiding his true feeling behind his serene façade, he was doing an awesome job. She attributed his unusual mood to the manner the news was broken to him.

Anyway, she was going to interrupt his usual silence and find out what he was really thinking. She had done it before and she intended to do it again.

Ilia hurried a few steps to catch him. "Link." She said as she walked by his side.

Link kept walking. Silent.

"Link, please, say something. Anything." Ilia pressed. She hated being so persistent, but this time she needed to be.

"What do you want me to say?" Link said, his eyes fixed on every step he took.

"Well, you just found out about your mother, and that's just great." Ilia said smiling, trying to lighten his mood. "How do you feel about it? You didn't say much at Uli's."

Link did not reply immediately. In fact, it seemed like he did not want to reply at all. "I don't know."

"Come on Link, don't be afraid."

"I am not afraid." He said defensively.

"Then you can tell me." Ilia pressed.

Link was starting to feel annoyed by her. It was the first time he felt so harassed by her insistence. But if she wanted to know so much about his emotions, alright, he would tell her.

"So?" She insisted again.

"Nothing." Link said with no emotions embedded in his voice. "I feel nothing. I keep feeling nothing."

There was something about her friend's answer that made Ilia almost stop in her tracks. Perhaps it was the disheartened way he had said how he felt. "What? What do you mean 'nothing'? You've got to feel something."

Link shook his head as he couldn't think of the right answer for her question. "What do you want me to feel?"

"I don't know. Happiness, sadness, excitement, anger… Even confusion. It is not bad to feel that way."

"I told you, I feel nothing." Link said trying not to raise his voice at her.

Ilia was getting frustrated. As much as she knew Link, that was not the way she expected things to turn out. He was been uncooperative and very hard to reach out to. There was no doubt that the blow of the news hit him somehow, but he was in some kind of denial. Despite that, she did not feel discouraged. She decided to approach him from another angle.

"But Link, this is about your mother…"

"No!" He spat, almost shouting just as he turned to face her, cutting her short. "No, it is not." He recalled her in a lower voice.

Ilia just stared at him silently, but said nothing. It was the first time that Link shouted at her in some degree of anger. She didn't even recall when was the last time Link was angry at somebody. But the worst of all was that she provoked that sudden burst of anger. It was a bad idea, but it was too late to take back what she said.

"I have no family. I mean, my only family is you, Rusl, Colin… and the others. Not her. You should know that, Ilia."

"I don't doubt it, Link. Do you doubt Uli's words?" She asked.

"No, it's not that. It-It's just…" He shook his head furiously. He didn't know what to say. His emotions were finally coming forth from of his heart, but not the nice ones and certainly not in the best of ways. It was a disconcerting mixture, and he was not sure which one was the one that coursed through his mind. Link breathed hard and swallowed the small lump that unexplainably kept growing in his throat. He needed to control his thoughts, no matter how fast they ran inside him. "How will I accept that this… lady was a part of me when I have no memory of her? Besides, Uli and Rusl and who knows how many people knew about this all the time and I had to clean up my messed-up house to find out? They had no reason keep it from me for so long. They did not even leave a gravestone for anyone to mourn her."

She was forcing him to talk when he had no emotional energy to do so. Hoping Ilia would take the hint, he turned and continued to walk away from the village. But knowing her, it would take hours for her to let him be.

"But it was Adryll's desire, and perhaps I understand her." Ilia quickened her pace until she reached his side. "Don't be so rude to them. Think about it, maybe they kept this from you to protect you."

"Protect me?!" Link said, turning again and facing her, contorting his face in disgust and atonement. He looked directly into her eyes, his blue eyes locking onto hers. "Protect me from what, from a dead woman?"

"Link!" She gasped. Her mood changed from concerned to serious in a snap. "Don't talk like that. No matter what happened to her, she was your mother and you have to respect her, whether she is alive or dead." She pointed her finger to his face. She did not allow any disrespect to anybody. And as incredible as it sounded, Link was no exception. "How can you say that? It is not like you in any way."

Link shook his head again. No matter how much he kept shaking his head, the increasingly bad mood did not go away. He sighed exasperatedly. "It doesn't matter. It was me all the time by myself, since the very beginning. And no one else" He fixed his eyes and gave her a very unpleasant look to make her understand how serious and upset he was. "I have no mother. And I never had one."

He turned and kept walking, not caring if Ilia was still following him or not. Perhaps he finally made himself clear and she had subdued to his mood. If that was what happened, he did not regret doing do.

Link arrived home before he expected. He was about to climb up the ladder when he heard Ilia's voice again. In other situations, Ilia's voice should sound playful and sweet. But at the moment it was the opposite; it thundered in his ears.

"Link, listen to yourself. It is the anger in you speaking. Don't let it get into you." Ilia said, almost in a pleading tone.

Please… Link thought. He closed his eyes and breathe deeply in order to calm down his nerves and to put his thoughts in place. Turning to face her, he opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came. It was like his spoken speech was giving all the reason to the other part. She didn't look angry at him. Despite Link's rant, she looked rather comprehensive with a hint of concern in her eyes, concern that he did not want from anyone.

"Link…" Ilia mentioned his name again softly.

Link waved his hand over her, urging her to stop before starting again. "This conversation is over." Link replied matter-of-factly. "Please just leave me alone." He could not look at her any longer and turned quickly to climb the ladder in front of him, praying that she would not follow him inside his house.

Link looked at his cellar content in front of him, unmoving. The oil lanterns that he lit up hours before were still burning and illuminating the reduced space. Now that the cellar was cleaner and more organized, the air was fresher and everything was easy to locate, even with his eyes. But from all the stuff stored there, he could not keep his eyes away from the objects that unwillingly had him already hypnotized.

He walked tentatively toward the big and old wardrobe to his side, where he found the box with the faded pictographs inside. The door was slightly opened; perhaps he forgot to close it when he left for Uli's house. He extended a hand to close it and noted that his hand was trembling. He closed his hand to a fist and opened it again, hoping that it would deter his nerves a little. Breathing courage in, he touched the armoire handle, and blinked, seeing a sea of white mist before him…

It was a mess. He was dirty and he knew it, he felt dirty. His fingers were stained by dried-up paints and his clothes had some of it spattered on his chest. His cheeks were also stained by some green-yellowish color. But still he continued. He submerged two fingers in the green paint canister and applied carelessly on the piece of parchment on the floor. He pressed his small hand on the parchment, leaving a neat print on it.

"Link!"

His name was mentioned somewhere afar by a mellow, then a coughing sound, but he did not acknowledged it. He kept making circles and doodles to his masterpiece.

"Oh Link, look at you! You should learn how to use your paints without staining yourself!"

The toddler looked up, and the pretty woman was looking down at him with small disgust on her face. What did he do wrong this time?

He looked down at his drawing once more and pointed a red finger to it. The woman knelt beside him. "What have you painted this time?" She took the parchment and observed the colorful irregular patterns. Her face lit up with a smile. "Well this looks like a tree, isn't it my boy?" She kept looking at it. Her smile grew wider. "Oh of course, this is our tree house! Link you've just drawn our home."

Her contagious smile got the best of the boy as he giggled excitedly, clapping his hands and spattering a few drops on his clothes and face from doing it. She was right, he drew the tree house. In fact, she was always right.

"This will surely compliment the living room walls perfectly," she said as she stood up and placed the parchment on a nearby table. "But for now, I'm going to wash you up."

She took a key from her skirt pocket and opened a polished wardrobe and began searching for something inside. The boy watched her intently, but with no idea of what she was doing inside that big box with doors.

"There it is." She stepped back holding a neat, white baby shirt. "You will look so pretty in this one. The toddler reached for the shirt with a stained hand but the lady took it was quickly. "No no no. As I told you, you must be very clean before wearing it. Understood?"

She stroked his hair with a hand, her brown eyes big and full of caring…

Link let go of the handle as soon as he was in control of his thoughts and immediately after the avalanche of images faded to black. His heart was beating a bit faster that usual and shivers swam inside his belly. He eyed the wardrobe one last time; it had become an ugly wooden door to an evil witch's house, waiting for somebody to show up and cook them on her charcoal oven. It disgusted him rather than terrified him. He found the thought incomprehensible yet justifiable. But he could not meditate those things with his mind as preoccupied as it was.

He shook his head and walked away from it, only to stumble over the rocking chair that was also stored in his cellar. He stepped back a little, and he found his eyes locked into the rocking chair. He kept looking at the inoffensive object which rocked back and forth with a creaking sound, not daring to move away from it or to blink. Yet, white fog was already filling his thoughts, his memories…

He had never felt so good, not even his crib made him feel so comfortable. Up until now he realized that being embraced by this lovely lady was better than being in a crib, no matter how cushioned and fluffy it was.

He was practically enveloped by a warm, soft blanket that covered almost all his small frame. In addition to that, the fabric he was leaning on was even softer and smelled sweet. There were some movements which surrounded him and made him feel calmer, even sleepier. And sounds; not the coughing sound he'd been hearing somewhere from time to time, but the sounds of music, like a song. A tender song.

The baby let himself fall under the spell of such a beautiful lullaby, grabbing the soft fabric of his caretaker's clothes. The song transported him to a land of golden houses and crystal lakes, the rocking movements made him feel as if he was navigating through endless seas. His boat was her firm embrace.

Link gasped as he closed his eyes shut and opened them back. He saw the chair again which was still rocking and creaking in unison. His stare drifted to the crib, located beside the chair. A single drop of sweat dripped down his forehead, but he did not bother to wipe it away. The images were gone again, but a wave of dizziness took its place almost immediately. He tried to shake it away, resulting in him staggering back a few steps before the dizziness could dissipate completely. He breathed deeply until he was sure that he felt like his old self again.

"Liiiiinnnk…"

He turned his head quickly, startled. It was no more than a whisper, but he heard it loud enough to recognize it even over the rocking chair's creaking sounds. And it said his name. It brought very recent and almost forgotten memories to his mind, the memories from his work day in the woods.

The wind, the whisper, his name.

Like in the woods, it was just like in the woods…

He glanced to where he thought the source was coming. His guts jumped when he saw nothing but that idiot wardrobe. And nothing more.

He gave a quick glance to the cellar to assure nobody was there; he was really hoping that some flesh being actually called him. But he knew he was alone, and stared back at the wardrobe suspiciously. What if someone was inside the wardrobe?

As ridiculous as it sounded, it was a possibility; he was sure that somebody called him. Perhaps one of the village children – surely Colin or Talo - entered his house and wanted to play a joke on him. But he knew those kids very well. His house's cellar would terrify him and they would not dare to even climb down the ladder.

He walked slowly towards the wardrobe for a second time, ignoring the rocking chair and its annoying creaking. He stretched out his fingers before touching the handle. He took hold of his subconscious mind with all of his emotional strength, praying that it would not hit him with another round of weird images swimming in his mind. Determined, he reached the handle. His mind was clear, no dizziness. He sighed in relief, and not wasting any second, he ripped the wardrobe's doors opened as fast as his nerves allowed him.

The chair kept rocking and creaking in the background.

No one. Or better said, nothing. Except for the box full of pictographs and some loose dust, there was nothing there.

The rocking chair slowed its movement, the creaking ceasing with it. When Link glanced at the chair from over his shoulder, the chair stopped moving and it remained in its original position.

At that point, Link should have felt relieved, but no. Far from that, he felt dumb, embarrassed. His own house had played a joke on him, and he fell for it like an ignorant child. He imagined the walls laughing at him, pointing their fingers toward him in a mocking way. Before his boiling mood made him tear the place apart, he closed the wardrobe and stumped out of his cellar, not wanting to go back down there again.

Once out of the cellar, Link threw himself into his bed, mortified. He took one pillow and held it over his head with both his hands. He'd had enough in the course of one day: discoveries, revelations, weird experiences… He wanted that day to end, he urged himself to fall asleep and forget everything unwelcome to his mind. But even the silence around him brought everything back to him; the rocking chair, the trip to Uli's house, and the pictograph, that cursed pictograph.

He could not deny that the whole pictograph thing got to him from the very beginning. He felt confused and bewildered. The fact that in some time in his life he was held by his very mother caught him entirely unprepared. He never thought that there was a mother in the first place or, for a very short amount of time, a father. Even after Uli finished his mother's story, and as much as he forced his mind to, Link could not summon any memories of her. It was like she ever existed.

But what he did not entirely understand was the reason why nobody ever mentioned anything about her. Uli knew about it all the time, as well as Rusl. Even Mayor Bo knew about her existence. And yet no one mentioned anything; he grew up, learned to read and to mount his horse, and no entity in the village said a word about it. And what reason had Uli and Ilia given him?

"…to protect you."

Link groaned, irritated. That was the most stupid and unoriginal reason they could ever give him. What kind of protection did silence have to offer to a human being?

"…you were the gods' ultimate blessing upon her. She loved you so much."

Link groaned louder, but it was stifled by the pillow covering his face. No, that was a lie. It was not love, it was arrogance. From her, and from everyone. He began to have serious doubts about Uli's story and his own origins. There was no gravestone, and he could not verify if that woman was really dead. Perhaps she never existed and that story was some made-up fable to comfort him.

He retrieved the pillow from his face and reached for the folded pictograph from his pocket. He unfolded it and looked at it for the hundredth time. He watched Adryll's image intently; her face, her hands, the fragility of her frame… Nothing clicked on his mind, not a single spark of memories. She was not there.

Defeated, he placed the pictograph on the night table. He was wasting his time and racking his brain for a lost cause. He did not grow up with his mother, and he never needed her. The people in the village took care of him and that was enough. She was still invisible to him, still dead. Gone with the wind, forever.

"It was me all the time… by myself." he said to himself, echoing his harsh words to Ilia earlier. He remembered her surprised face when he had said that to her. She looked at him with glassy eyes as he discharged his disoriented feelings towards her. It was something that had never happened to him before even on his bad days. Even in his anger, Ilia seemed to understand when she mentioned that his antics were unusual for him. She offered him a moment to cool down, and he had rejected it.

He wiped his face with his hands. He felt his face flush red. Now he was ashamed. No matter how bad his day was or how messed up his feelings were, she did not deserve to be treated like that. It was not her fault, nor had she known any detail of his untold past; she was just as stunned when she found out about it too.

Link yawned. He shifted positions on his bed and was now laying on his side. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Tomorrow would be another day; he would apologize to Ilia for his erratic manners and most of what he'd heard that day would be forgotten for good.

She was going to tuck in her son when he grabbed his hand and refused to let go of her. In order to calm him down, his mother sat on his bedside. The three-year-old boy slept fitfully, his head on her mother's lap.

She was leaned on the small bed head. She was singing his favorite bedtime song while she stroked his hair. He felt a finger caress his pinkish cheek, the ticklish sensation made him smile in his semi-sleep state. He opened his eyes to see his mother's fingers. His eyes widened when he noticed the fingers roaming his cheek was not her mother's.

They were not fingers, they were bones; yellow, putrid digits danced in front of his eyes. A frightened sob got caught in his throat when he lifted his head slowly. Instead of clean clothes, he saw raspy, dark grey fabric, like the fabric used to make potato sacks. It was torn apart on several places and looked very old and discolored.

The little boy was paralyzed by fear; a stranger was at his side. He urged his eyes to see his mother's face, but it was not there. She was not his mother. Instead, a hooded figure was at his mother's place. Afraid but curious, he moved daring to see the stranger's face. A tear escaped his eye when he couldn't find any nose, or mouth. It had no face; it was a hollow, endless void beyond the hood. But it had eyes, or something like that. Two brilliant orbs floated where the eyes should be. They were frighteningly hypnotizing, and the boy wanted to look away, but he couldn't. It was as if his eyes were magnetically attracted to that horrible face.

A ghost was beside him.

He was starting to cry when the ghost leaned forward to him. The orbs in its face never stopped glowing. He tried to resist the pull, he fought like an endangered cub, but it was useless. The ghost was moving closer, and was going to eat him and swallow him whole…

Link awoke with a start, gasping fiercely. His heart was pounding rapidly inside his chest. The bed's blanket tangled on his feet as he unconsciously fought to get away from his own bed. He reached his bed foot and turned to look at the bed head. There was nobody on his bed and the only sounds he heard were of his own heart and breathing. He looked around to be sure, but again, no one but him.

He ran a hand through his hair. He'd never had such a vivid nightmare before. He could not remember much of it, just that cloaked monster in the end. His breath quivered as the nightmare remnants and the blurry images of the mysterious figure roamed through his mind. His eyelids threatened to close and he forced his eyes to remain open. That ugly creature was too real and still too fresh on his mind and he did not want to see it again while he was supposed to rest. No hideous intruder was welcomed while he slept, not even in his dreams.

He rarely felt afraid; in fact, he was not afraid of anything, or almost anything. But that nightmare was a big exception and he didn't know why. He had gotten frightened by a lousy nightmare and now he could not avoid it. Everyone's gotten some nightmares from time to time, so why did he felt so overwhelmed by that one?

He looked out through his window. It was dark and the sun had set long hours ago. His wish had been granted; the day had already ended, but now he wanted the night to be over as well.

A/N: Better, huh? Well, now it's time for you to show me that you really care by sharing your comments and criticism with me :)