Chapter 7: Hyrule Castle Town

Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

~The Fellowship of the Ring

The first thought that crossed Link's mind was that he had never known sunlight until now, when he took his first steps out of the forest. The strain of it on his pupils soon lessened, but he couldn't get over how bright it was.

Navi brushed his shoulder. "Look at that, Link."

How could I miss it, he was tempted to say. Instead, he simply nodded. Rolling hills and blooming meadows stretched into the horizon on all sides, dappled by the occasional pine tree or evergreen. The sky gaped overhead, blue and cloudless and so much larger than the small slice of it he could see from clearings in the forest. Here and there, he caught the scent of clover or a flower he recognized, but most of the smells were as new to him as the sights.

"Hyrule Field," he said, taking in the panorama while goose bumps rippled through his arms.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" said Navi.

Something in the tone of her voice gave him pause. "You've never seen it, either?"

"I'm just like you. I've never been outside the forest."

"I was hoping you'd know more than I do." He frowned at her, then at the landscape. "I remember things the Great Deku Tree said about the city, just not where it was at."

"I guess you paid more attention to people and battles and things like that, huh?"

"That's a pretty good guess."

"Well," Navi huffed, "at least I know the right direction. We go west and then north. We should be able to see the city from that hilltop over there."

"Thank you." He took one step forward, then another, hesitating for one last glance at the forest behind him before his stride lengthened in the direction of the hill Navi had indicated.

By the time he crested the hill, Link was out of breath, but that was only partly due to bodily exertion. New sights, sounds, and smells continued to greet him everywhere he turned, but it was the view of the royal city, just a few miles to the north, that affected him the most.

Even at this distance and without the foul weather to trigger the memory, he recognized the area surrounding the city gates: a drawbridge running over a small moat. The scene of his dream encounter with the man from the desert.

In the dream, he had been alone. This time, he saw cattle, horse-drawn wagons, and travelers on foot jostling their way into the city. A faint whiff of grease and sweat and meat grilling on skewers reached him on the breeze blowing from the north.

"Can you see it?"

Link didn't have to ask what Navi meant; he had already glimpsed the spires of Hyrule Castle rising deep within the city's outer wall before she spoke. "I don't like to say it, but…"

"What?"

"His stories didn't even come close to describing this."

"Maybe they weren't supposed to."

He shrugged and chomped down on a bit of roast Octorok from the pouch Saria had given him, washing it down with a gulp from the vial of water. "Let's go."

"Don't you think you should rest?"

"Navi," he said, "we're this close to the biggest city in Hyrule. The King, the princess, the Knights of Hyrule. Everything from the stories. Now that we're here, do you think I'd miss that for anything?"

They reached the drawbridge by early afternoon. In the preceding hours, traffic going in and out of the city had slowed to a crawl; those early to market who lived outside the city headed for home with their purchases while latecomers straggled in, and the two clogged the entrance to the city with human and animal bodies as they struggled to be on their way.

In such an environment, it was easy for a boy of twelve and the fairy hiding inside his pouch of rations to slip through largely unnoticed. Once past the gates, they relaxed somewhat. There was little chance that anyone here could be aware of their purpose, and besides that, they had made good progress. Their biggest problem would be finding the princess and convincing her to help them, whatever that meant.

A crowd of children frolicked near the center of the city square, their squeals of joy and rough-and-tumble antics being a source of relative calm amidst the chaos around them. Some of their parents looked on, while others played unsupervised. A pack of stray dogs had found their way to the children and joined in the fun, licking at heels, yapping, and gobbling up stray crumbs dropped by the young humans.

Link rubbed his stomach. "I've never seen so much food in my life."

"But you just ate," said Navi. "How can you be hungry already?"

"You're a fairy. You wouldn't understand."

"Hey. Just because I don't eat doesn't mean I—"

Her voice trailed off as Link disappeared into the crowd surrounding the food merchants at the west end of the square. "Wait!" She buzzed after him with an irritated squeak and found him eyeing a row of glass bottles on display next to cuts of beef and baskets of white and brown eggs.

"That stuff inside the bottles." Link scratched his head. "That's milk, isn't it? The Great Deku Tree said it comes from an animal."

"They're called cows," said Navi.

Link licked his lips. "I'll bet it's delicious."

A girl roughly his own age with fierce red hair and lightly freckled cheeks spoke up from the other side of the booth. "It's not just delicious; it's the best milk in all Hyrule."

Link ran a finger along the surface of one of the bottles. "Can I have some?"

The girl laughed. "Sure, if you've got money in your pocket. Which I doubt."

Link hadn't thought of that. Money was something the Kokiri had little use for, since most of life's necessities could be gathered from the surrounding woods.

"We're wasting time," said Navi. "Don't you think we should be looking for you-know-who?"

"Sorry." Link cast a fleeting look of regret at the glass bottles and turned back towards the center of the square.

"Wait." The girl called after him before he had gotten more than a few feet away from the booth. "Your clothes. They're different. You're not from around here, are you?" She saw the frown on his face and added, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. It's just that you don't look like a farmer or a merchant or any of the other people we see here every day."

He smiled. "Call me Link." With that, he melted back into the crowd.

When they were safely out of earshot, Navi hissed in his ear. "That was close. You shouldn't talk to anyone unless you have to."

Link shrugged. "If you're worried someone will find out where we're from, maybe you should stay hidden. If it's someone who knows about fairies and the Kokiri, seeing you would be more dangerous than seeing my clothes."

"If I have to hide next to that roast Octorok again, I think I'd rather get caught."

They passed the group of children in the center of the square. Most of them capered about in groups of three or four, but one girl stood by herself, cuddling a dog so shaggy Link wondered that it could see at all. I know what it's like to feel alone, he thought, seeing the lone girl and the lone dog together.

Not looking where he was going, he bumped into something rough and excused himself. He tried to step around the object—a giant backpack hanging from the shoulders of a man far too skinny to be carrying so much weight—but the man hailed him in a squeaky voice.

"Say there. You look like a young man who enjoys a fine spectacle."

"Uh huh." Link feigned to the left, but the backpack blocked his path.

"Care to be one of the first to wear our new Keaton model?" The man pulled a cheap paper mask from one of the pack's many hidden pockets. "This is only a prototype, of course. The real mask is available for a small fee over there," he said, pointing to the northeast corner of the square, "at the Happy Mask Shop."

"He doesn't have any money," Navi said.

"My compliments." The man pressed the mask into Link's hands with a bow. "This one is free of charge."

Link stared at it. The mask reminded him of a fox, only it was bright yellow. "Thanks."

The man bowed again and shuffled off to the group of children.

Link held the mask up for Navi's inspection. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Maybe you should wear it." Navi spun around him in a circle. "Everyone else is."

Link had avoided eye contact with others as much as possible, but now he stared at the other children and even the men and women and realized that he was one among many wearing the Keaton prototype. There were other masks, too, and as he searched the crowd, he noticed that the man with the giant backpack had helpers, most of them with smaller backpacks, all of them distributing the paper masks.

"My Keaton mask is better than yours."

This remark was so loud in his ear that Link assumed it was meant for him, but when he turned to address the speaker, he saw two boys wrestling close by. Immediately, he thought of himself and Mido. He strapped the mask on and listened.

"Why are they giving them to us for free?" The boy who appeared to be losing the bout grunted. "They never did that before."

"That's because you've never been here when they did that," said the boy who had spoken first. "My dad says the Happy Mask Shop gives away masks on important days like this one, especially if they're happy and important days."

"What's so happy about the Gerudos coming? My dad says they're dirty desert people."

"Maybe they're going to promise the King to stop taking stuff from all of us."

"Why do they have to promise? Why can't they just stop doing it?"

"I heard that if they write their names on a piece of paper while the King is watching, it means they really, really promise."

Link shuddered and moved on. If the desert people are coming here, he thought, that means he might be, too. It seemed that wherever he went, he was constantly reminded of that man the Great Deku Tree had warned him about, that man with the red cape that haunted his dreams.

"You're worried, aren't you?"

He snorted at Navi's question. "Why would I be worried?"

"Because the Great Deku Tree asked you to do something he couldn't do himself. To stop that man from taking what he wants."

Link said nothing, but the slump of his shoulders was answer enough. Why is it me? Why don't the Knights of Hyrule fight him? Why not the King?

Even as he nurtured these thoughts, he noticed an odd change in the crowd's behavior. Instead of arguing over the price of cloth or greeting friends from neighboring villages, people traded whispers and uneasy glances as they parted to either side of the square, packing the east and west-most sections so that the path running north from the southern end of the square lay open.

Some of the children playing at the center of the square were slow to realize what was happening around them. Those with parents nearby were called, pulled, or carried away in due course, but a few remained oblivious, including the little girl and the dog playing by themselves.

Link watched, riveted in place as four women wearing silk pantaloons and carrying long spears marched down the middle of the path that had been cleared for them. They never looked at the crowd; they simply crossed from one end of the square to the other, stopped, and turned to await the rest of their party.

They all heard the clatter of hooves on the drawbridge just outside the square, then the clatter of hooves on cobblestone, and finally the horses appeared at the south end of the square, opposite the guards that had just entered. Instead of slowing, the three riders at the head of the column charged through, showing the same contempt for their surroundings that the guards had.

Link had lost all color the moment the riders came into view. "It's him," he whispered.

Navi, finally heeding what Link had said about staying out of sight, spoke from inside the food pouch. "How do you know?"

"I saw him—twice. Once, in a dream. Then I saw him again when the Great Deku Tree was talking about him, just before he…died."

The man's sudden appearance would have been terror enough, but Link understood, with a chill that came from the certainty of disaster, that the girl and the shaggy dog would be killed in a matter of seconds unless someone intervened.

A man broke from the crowd at the corner of the square farthest from the little girl. He ran with the urgency of a father, calling out a name as he ran. But he was too far away to reach her before the horses did.

Link tensed every muscle in his body, taking deep breaths. I've been here fifteen minutes, he thought, and I'm about to risk everything to help someone who can't possibly help me. What an idiot.

With that firmly in his mind, he darted into the middle of the square, only a short distance back the way he had come, and shoved the paralyzed girl with the dog in her arms out of the path of the oncoming horses. In doing so, he lost his balance and fell on his stomach just as the riders plowed through.

The hooves of that man's horse came within millimeters of his face and limbs, but Din and her sisters must have been watching over him after all, Link thought, for he escaped injury and death and even the man's notice, apparently, since he never looked back or showed any sign of having observed the close call he and his companions had been part of.

"What happened?" Navi flew from her hiding place into the open air as Link recovered himself and stumbled towards the crowd at the west end of the square. "You didn't…"

"Yes," he said. "I did."

Behind them, the other riders waiting near the drawbridge followed their leader across the square. Four more guards on foot brought up the rear of the party, cementing themselves at the center of the square.

At this, a woman beside Link cursed. "They act as if they'd conquered the place. As if an invitation from our King meant they could be themselves while they were here."

A few of the townspeople gave Link a cursory glance. He was thankful they couldn't see his face through the Keaton mask and even more thankful that they turned away without saying a word about his courage or stupidity or whatever it was that had driven him to do what he had just done. Probably, they were too busy worrying about the desert people.

The father of the little girl did scan the crowd for a glimpse of his daughter's savior, but by that time Link had already moved out of sight, heading for the north end of the square and the road to the castle.

Before he had gone much farther, he stopped. A pair of Gerudos—the name he had heard the townsfolk whisper around the desert people—stood in his path. Their eyes wandered over the crowd, but if they had seen him, they betrayed no sign of it. Maybe they weren't looking for him. Why should they be? To them, he was just another street rat.

"We'll be better off if you just stay out of…" The word "sight" died on his lips, not because Navi had burrowed into the food pouch before he thought to ask, but because someone had pushed him to the ground—hard.

"Race you to the alley!"

Link picked himself up in a daze, recognizing two of the children from the center of the square as they ran past him. What was that about?

He tried once more to make his way out of the square, but someone grabbed the back of his shirt and started dragging him towards the buildings at the west end of the square.

"Come on, I thought you said you wanted to roast some Deku Nuts with us!"

Another boy jogged alongside the one holding Link's shirt. "And don't act like a Cuckoo this time. You've got to stay close to the fire when they go off!"

"Stop it," said Navi. "Leave him alone. Who—"

Link struggled to free himself from their grip, but he was too bewildered to offer more than a half-hearted effort. Was it a custom among the people of Hyrule Castle Town to assault strangers, he wondered, or was something else going on here? But the question itself was even stranger than the boys' actions. No one knew him here.

So who were these boys, and where were they taking him?

The four boys, still carrying Link, entered a narrow alley between two large buildings. One building appeared to be a business, the other a house of some kind. Even with the sun still lighting the streets, shadows draped most of the cobblestones here.

Finally, after turning a corner so that they could no longer see or be seen from the square, the boys deposited Link on the ground, and he collapsed to his hands and knees, shaken and not altogether sure he would ever make it to the castle.

"Well done," said a cold female voice from the shadows.

Link sucked in a breath as if it would be his last. One of the boys approached the shadows, holding none other than the Kokiri Emerald, the Spiritual Stone of the Forest entrusted to him by the Great Deku Tree. The Stone the Tree had died to protect. The boy gave it to the woman with a sigh of reluctance, but his scowl changed to a grin when she tossed him a handful of gems to share amongst himself and his companions. The boys scampered away with scarcely a look behind them.

How had his identity and his mission been discovered so quickly? Had this woman bribed the boys to take him here so that his kidnapping appeared less obvious? Did she plan to turn him over to that man from his dreams?

At last, the woman stepped forward, still partly enshrouded by the darkness, but far enough into the light so that Link could make out most of her features. Tall, lean but muscular, with hair slightly grayed and arms folded across a chest protected by a silver plate of armor, the woman seemed made for the shadows.

"Clumsy," she said, rapping the Spiritual Stone against her side with a clenched fist.

"How did you—I mean how did they get that?" Link flushed. "I mean, it's not that important, but I, I…"

She waited until he had stammered himself into silence, then she sighed. "That was a brave deed, but in allowing yourself to become consumed by the thought of the girl's death, you lost track of something no less important. As you fell under the horse's hooves, the stone fell out onto the street. One of the children had the foresight to retrieve it."

The natural light Navi's body emitted gave Link a better view of the woman as the fairy hovered closer to her. "Who are you?" The fairy's voice still betrayed a tone of suspicion.

"Does it matter who I am?" The woman's expression never changed, but Link felt her eyes pierce him as she dropped the Spiritual Stone into one of the pouches at his waist. "I could take this stone where you would never find it, and you would have come here for nothing."

Link swallowed. "What are you going to do to me?"

The woman eyed him for a while longer, until he felt he would wither beneath her stare. "What I do to you is of as little matter as my name. I suspect you are here for the same reason I have come to you."

"I don't understand."

"No. You could not be expected to comprehend your destiny yet." The woman's eyes tightened. "Perhaps it was fortunate that you were clumsy. The stone and the fairy allowed me to be certain of your identity before I acted."

"But it doesn't make sense," said Navi. "If you wanted to talk to us, why did you need those children? Why didn't you just come to us yourself?"

The corner of the woman's mouth curled up just enough for Link to notice. "With the crowds and my ability to cling to the shadows, there is a good chance I might have avoided the notice of the Gerudos. But I am known to them, and had I been seen with you, my involvement in the matter you are part of would have been obvious and would have hurt not only myself, but another whose wellbeing I am responsible for."

Link began to tremble. "Do you think they might have seen the stone?"

"If so, there is nothing any of us can do to change that at this point." The woman sighed, lifted the Keaton mask from Link's face, and let it fall to the ground. "Be thankful that none saw your face, at least."

Link had almost forgotten about the mask. "So why did you come to me?"

"That," said the woman, "is a question I must let her answer. Come."