Chapter 25: Sage of Forest

My love, she's but a lassie yet.

~Robert Burns

"Are you alright?" Navi said. "I never saw you so upset. What was it?"

Link wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slipped the Hookshot onto his belt. "Nothing."

Navi landed on his shoulder gently. "Was it Saria?"

"I saw her." Link shook his head. "It was Zelda."

Mido rubbed his chin. "Who's Zelda?"

"It was just a ghost, Link," Navi said.

Link put his sword away and pretended he hadn't heard her. Now that the ghosts were gone, the elevator booth in the temple's grand hall had reappeared. Open on all four sides, the booth provided enough room for the three of them to crowd on at the same time. As soon as they had done so, the elevator creaked and began to sink through the floor again. Soon, the hall had vanished from sight.

Mido folded his arms. "You never did answer the question."

Link never looked at him. "What question?"

"Where have you been?"

The elevator ground to a halt on the basement floor. No one got out.

"It'll be okay," Navi said. "Mido's alive. Why not Saria? And you saw Zelda escape the city. They all know how to take care of themselves."

Link trembled. "Hyrule's a wasteland, Navi! You saw what Ganon did to the city, and he didn't stop there!"

Mido clapped his hands on his hips. "Would somebody tell me what's going on?"

"I'm going out there." Link stepped off the elevator and kept walking, even though Navi didn't follow him at first.

"You need to rest now," Navi said. "You're not feeling well, and you haven't eaten."

Mido pushed past her. "I'm coming, too. If there's any chance of finding Saria..."

The room seemed small at first glance, but the look was deceptive. After climbing a short flight of steps, Link and Mido had walked onto a circular stage surrounded on all sides by iron spokes. Beneath them, a painting of the Triforce covered most of the stage, but it wasn't the only painting in the room.

There were four of them, one at each of the major compass points. To the naked eye, the portraits seemed identical; all portrayed an unpaved road in the middle of the wilderness, leading up to a house set against the twilight horizon.

"Nothing here," said Mido.

Link smiled. "You think that if you want to. Neither one of you has to stay."

"You're not the only one who made a promise to the Great Deku Tree," Navi said.

Mido grunted. "Well, I didn't, but I did make a promise to Saria."

More iron spokes shot from beneath the stage, barring the way they had come.

"Guess that takes care of it," Mido said. Before he had finished saying this, a whine split the air, forcing them to hold their ears while a purple thundercloud formed near the ceiling.

Link handed Mido his bow and quiver. "One arrow won't do you much good by itself."

Mido hooked the quiver's strap around his shoulder and twanged the bowstring. "Thanks, fairy-less."

Just as the cloud began to take on a flat circular shape, a horse with fur as black as night sailed from the middle of it, floating on the air.

Link recognized the animal the moment he saw it. Seven years had hardly tarnished his memory of Ganondorf Dragmire or his steed.

But it wasn't Ganon riding that horse, was it? He stared closely at the rider, unmoving. The facial structure, the armor, the boots, and all the other outward features remained the same, except for one: the eyes. The eyes of the rider seemed alike and yet so unlike the man he had encountered on Hyrule Castle Town's drawbridge as a boy.

The rider carried a staff with three metal prongs, something like a pitchfork, but with the prongs at either end pointing outward at forty-five degree angles. The staff smoked and sparked as if in the throes of an electric current.

"Run!"

None of them knew who had spoken, but all obeyed the command as a bolt of lightning struck the center of the stage just a few feet from where they were standing. A second bolt followed the first, leaping from the rider's staff to the soles of Link's boots. The jolt threw him onto his face gasping for air.

"Look!" said Navi.

Link rolled over with a groan and propped himself up on his elbows. The cloud had disappeared, but the horse and rider hovered over center stage. The rider lifted his free arm and tore at the flesh of his face as if it were a mask of wood or iron hiding the naked skull beneath.

The three of them recoiled. The phantom Ganon—it could hardly be the real Ganon now—had no jaw. A pair of horns protruded from the top of the skull like spearheads.

Shaking, Mido lifted an arrow to the string and shot at the rider just as the horse lunged forward. The shaft fell short, striking the horse's leg just above the right rear hoof but failing to penetrate flesh.

Unmoved, horse and rider sailed into the painting on the eastern wall, above the stairs. Instead of the solid impact Link and the others expected, another cloud opened in front of the painting, and their foe shrank until his size matched the scale of the objects in the painting. The horse gave the painting a peculiar sense of life as it galloped along the imaginary road, headed for the twilight horizon. When it reached the horizon, it vanished.

"It's gone!" Navi screeched.

Link stood to his feet, sword in hand, and turned in a complete circle. "No."

Two identical horses approached, one from the painting on the north wall, the other from the west. Both increased in size as they raced from the horizon to the forefront of the scene.

"If this one is like the other ghosts," Link said, "only one of the riders is real."

A cloud materialized to the north. Link saw it from the corner of his eye. "Mido, shoot!"

The arrow pierced the horse's mouth this time, pinning the gums to the upper lip as the animal left the cloud, back to full size. The rider whipped his staff in a circle and brought it down at Mido's face. Link was there to meet the staff with the Master Sword before the blow landed.

The rider spurred its injured mount past them, and the two burrowed into another painting, this time on the south wall. Again, they became a speck on the black road, speeding toward the horizon.

"Give me that." Link snatched the Fairy Bow and left Mido holding the Master Sword while he strung an arrow and waited for the rider to appear.

Mido tried in vain to raise the sword above his elbows. "How do you carry this?"

In his desperation to put an end to Ganondorf—even his phantom—Link aimed at the painting on the south wall but failed to check the others. When the cloud opened behind him, to the north, he had just enough time to whirl and watch the black horse leap over.

The lightning caught him in the chest this time, tossing him several feet backwards, onto the spokes at the stage's rim. Had his shield been in his hands instead of at his back, he would have been impaled. Instead, he rolled onto the stage, dizzy but relatively unscathed.

Mido dropped the Master Sword and grabbed the bow from Link's arms. "Mine." A shot at the retreating horse clattered against the painting on the western wall as the rider escaped into the frame.

"Yours." Link recovered his sword and his senses and stood with Mido.

"Left," said Navi. "There it is!"

A scream filled the chamber as Mido's arrowhead sliced through the horse's chest, into its right lung, as the animal left the new cloud forming to the north. The rider, leaving its dying mount to float listless, jumped from the saddle and twirled its staff in a circle, still hovering in the air.

Link burned with the memory of Zelda's face enveloped in the green ghost's flames. "Enough of these images. Face me yourself if you have the courage!"

Mido shook his head as Link and the rider closed with one another. "He's lost it."

The rider's staff continued to spin, building up electricity. When the buildup peaked, the rider discharged the staff at Link. This time, instead of lightning, the attack came in the form of a sphere about twice the size of his head.

He swung at the sphere without thinking. The metal in the Master Sword should have driven the electricity straight into his body, but instead, the blade connected with the sphere as if it were a solid object and hurled it back at the rider.

Mido flinched. "Incredible."

The sphere smashed into the rider's body, flinging it into convulsions. Limbs failed to respond to commands from the brain, and the rider quickly sank to the stage. Link rushed at the phantom and spitted it on his blade.

A voice came from the hole in the rider's chest. "Worthless ghost! I will banish it to the gap between dimensions. Step back unless you wish to join it."

A cloud opened on the stage, beneath the rider. A vacuum on the other side of the portal pulled the body inside, tearing it apart in the process.

Link stabbed at the spot where the cloud dissolved. "Where is she, Ganondorf?"

The voice continued to speak, though the body had vanished. "I see you have grown, boy. Do not think when you face me, it will end as swiftly."

"Answer my question!"

Mido whispered to Navi. "Who's Ganondorf?"

"Princess Zelda is dead, slain by the King of Hyrule," said Ganon.

The Master Sword slipped from Link's fingers. "Dead. No, not true."

"She survived far longer than I expected. Her guardian, Impa, performed her job well. Not that it saved either one of them in the end. Shall I tell you how I killed her?"

Link closed his eyes. Zelda's face and voice, her gentle, unassuming nature, the way she had understood him—even the taste of the fruit she had given him when he left the castle—all of these things pierced him with the force of a longing he had hidden even from himself.

"Shall I tell you how I cut her throat while Impa watched, pinned by my sword?"

"Gods!" Link clutched at his throat as if the wound had been his. "She was no threat. You already had what you wanted!"

A laugh was Ganon's only reply for almost two minutes. "I will have what I want when the gods who created Hyrule beg forgiveness for the crimes they allowed against my people." A pause, and then, "The closer you come to me, Hero of Time, the more I will remind you of her!"

Had he remained conscious, Link later realized, he would have been a danger to Mido and Navi, as well as himself. But body and spirit had endured more than they were capable of.

He saw his friends running to catch him, but he no longer cared. He fell, greeting the release of the void with a sigh of relief.

"Come back," I can hear her saying. "Come back, Link. You can't quit now. There are so many things I have to tell you."

Am I dead? Is that Zelda's voice? Is this the afterlife?

Another voice, definitely Navi. "I think he's waking up."

I hear rain trickling in the background. Something hard beneath me. Uncomfortable, but somehow familiar.

The first voice again. "You're almost there. Stay with us."

"You're alive," I whisper, but I know it's not Zelda. The pang of that realization seizes me but passes quickly.

"Yes, I am," she says, "but you almost didn't make it."

I keep my eyes closed, unable to look her in the face. "We thought you were dead."

"I almost did die." She lowers her voice, as if speaking to herself. "It was the first time I'd gone back to that part of the forest since you left. It didn't feel right, but that wasn't just because you were gone. I know now it was the evil in the temple I was feeling. If it wasn't for you and Mido, I'd be back there still. I didn't have enough strength to fight the evil on my own."

With sudden insight into the clues of the past and present, I realize where we are—the Sacred Realm—and what my childhood friend has become. "You're the Sage of Forest," I say, finally opening my eyes.

Saria is quiet for several minutes. "That explains a lot, doesn't it? How I sensed the evil that night in the forest. Why both of us were drawn to these ruins, even though we couldn't know what they were back then."

Thoughts and regrets I've tried to ignore for so long brim over now in her company. "I left you alone, just standing there on the bridge. No goodbyes. Not a word after what you said to me." I fumble for the ocarina—her ocarina—and give it to her. "I've lost the right to carry this."

Without saying a word, she takes my hand, and all the guilt I've carried since that day is washed away in her touch. She's half my height now, but her character stands taller than ever.

She takes a deep breath. "I hope you'll forgive me, too."

This surprises me far more than her being a Sage. "Forgive you for what?"

"I wasn't honest with you about who you were. I knew more about it than almost anyone, but I was always trying to protect you from the truth." She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "You're not a Kokiri, Link. You're a Hylian."

The revelation that I'm not a Kokiri is unsurprising. What jolts me is the thought that Zelda and I come from the same race.

"Just don't tell me she's my sister," I mutter, only half joking.

Saria frowns. "I'm sorry?"

"Never mind." I attempt to change the subject. "Where's Mido?"

Saria helps me to my feet. "Safe, with the others."

"Others?"

"The Kokiri. They've survived."

A joy I've not felt since leaving the Temple of Time swells in my chest. "How many?"

Saria lowers her eyes. "Some died when the wolves attacked our homes, but the rest found shelter in the Great Deku Tree. We were safe there for weeks. The wolves shied away from him, even in death."

"Let's go back," I say. "They'll be waiting for us."

She shakes her head. "I'm a Sage. Hyrule isn't my home anymore. Until we seal Ganondorf, I have to stay here with the others."

I swallow, clenching my left fist. "Saria, I…"

"It's okay, Link." A smile appears on her face. "I love you more than you know, but my heart will always beat in this child's body." She wipes more tears from her eyes as she kisses me on the cheek. "Someday, you'll find the other heart that beats with yours."

The thought of Ganon cutting Zelda's throat—gods, let it be a lie—threatens to wipe out any semblance of hope I have in my heart. "I'll find her if she's alive."

"I almost forgot," Saria says, reaching for an emerald disc that she places in my arms before she steps back to the pedestal reserved for the Forest Sage. "Use that when you need my help. It only works once."

I tuck the disc away. "Will you take the ocarina?"

"No, that was always yours. But if you want, since we can never be more than friends now, there is someone else who might be encouraged by it if you pass it on to him."

"I understand." I offer her a bow, since we're standing on opposite sides of the platform now. "Goodbye, Saria."

The last thing I hear from the Sacred Realm is her voice. "Goodbye, Link…"

At this significant turn in Link's relationship with one of his dearest friends, I feel a word of acknowledgement is in order to all the Link/Saria shippers out there. I've seen some awesome fanart featuring the two together as kids. I love those.

Still, in my mind, a scene like the one you've just read is the only way it could ever turn out. Saria is obviously capable of adult thoughts and feelings, or else she wouldn't make a very good Sage. Therefore, her falling in love with Link is entirely plausible based on their early and lifelong connection. But if one tried to make it go any further than this, it would just be...creepy.

So I hope you'll forgive me ;-).

More surprises are in store for the chapters ahead, but as with this one, I trust you'll find that each surprise is just as plausible based on plot and character details gleaned from the game.

Keep reading! \(^v^)/