The Waters of Nayru
Chapter 42: The Lost Woods
By, Frank Hunter

The Gerudo made their way into the Kingdom of Hyrule unimpeded and unchallenged, but not unnoticed. The rope ladders the Hylians had abandoned on the sides of their pueblo were reinforced, lengthened with all the additional rope the Gerudo could spare. In the end, both of them were long enough to climb down the cliff face to Lake Hylia, and five hundred soldiers came down like desert spiders, congregating on the banks.

The canon man, Fyer, was the first to see them, and he didn't greet them. At the sight of the Gerudo, the man was packed up and inside his shack with his solid door locked tight. The army marched past, having no business with him. They cleared the lake and made their way into the field, and as per the planned course, Rigo turned them to the south. Death Mountain stood in the distance, and the Castle Town just to their left as they turned. A funny-looking, scrawny postman in a red fez hat first scurried toward them, and then back away toward the Town. Rigo guessed it wouldn't be long before the drawbridges were pulled up in preparation for the attack that they would now be expecting. He could only wonder what the Queen would think about it all.

They spent one short night at the edge of the tree line, but wasted no time moving into the woods the following morning. There had still been no sign of Tydus, and Rigo was beginning to fear the worst: that he'd already made it to the Sacred Realm. But no, he reasoned. No, that couldn't be the case, or Nabooru would know. She would warn him if it was all already over.

The spirit was able to provide detailed instructions through Faron Woods, and as Rigo led the party along her path, the trees became thicker and thicker and the forest more and more ominous. At its deepest, the sun barely came down through the branches, and the Gerudo found themselves marching through a thick, purple-tinged fog that made everything claustrophobic, and made it difficult to breathe. They held themselves together though, driven by purpose and ambition and by their long-lost Prince, and eventually made it through.

When they reached the point that Nabooru deemed the entry to the Lost Woods proper, Rigo's heart sank. Before him, there would have been rubble and a thick tree line barring entry. According to Nabooru, the only possible entrance should have been on a cliff face, down below, very dangerous. But here, the trees had been blown apart by blasting powder. They were splintered and crooked, and there was an opening in the wreckage three men wide leading into the darkest depths of the woods.

"They've been here," Amili said.

Rigo didn't bother answering. "We don't have time to worry about it."

With a brief rest to steel their nerves, the Gerudo prepared and then pushed headlong into the Lost Woods.

"Everyone stay together," Rigo instructed, taking his cues from Nabooru. "Hold onto someone else, or at least onto their pack. Stay connected, and we stay together."

It was easier said than done. Marching in formation was not possible in the thicket, and the individual soldiers had no choice but to weave around trees and bushes, and separate from others from time to time. Anyone who wanders off on their own is finished, Nabooru had told him, but Rigo chose not to relay that particular detail on to them. It wasn't long before the darkness and haunted air of the place began to get the better of them. The Gerudo gradually became jumpy. Simple things, owls hooting and clinging spider webs, were getting to them. And to top it off, Nabooru was not as sure of the route as she'd said she would be.

It's like the trees have shifted over the years, the spirit told him.

They grow, Rigo said back to her, getting annoyed. It's what trees do.

I'm aware of that, Nabooru answered, testily. But it's not just growth. Their positions have moved. The forest is literally laid out differently. That and there are more of them now. Go left ahead.

Are you sure? Rigo inquired.

No, Nabooru said.

Amili was picking up on the indecision and confusion. "Is everything alright?" she asked him, as they stepped over a pile of rocks and into a small clearing.

"Yeah, dandy," Rigo said. He was holding her hand, and she clenched him tightly despite herself. "It's this way. I think."

"You think?" she said.

"Yeah, I'm doing my best over here," he looked over his shoulder at her. "This isn't exactly a walk in the park." As he made to turn back, he stopped. Something was wrong. He turned again. Amili was there, right where she should be, glancing over him with nervous eyes. But behind her?

"Where's Pureet?" Rigo asked her.

Amili whipped around to glance back, where she thought the old attendant was walking right behind her, and saw nothing. Further back, the army was still moving along with them, but Pureet was gone.

Rigo clenched his teeth. "Can we regroup and get a head count?"

"Form up!" Amili shouted back at her army. "Squad leaders, head count!"

It took a matter of minutes to do it, but even as they pulled back together Rigo could tell that the group was smaller than it should have been. The count put it at less than half. Several squad leaders were missing.

"Damn," Rigo swore.

"We should go back and find them," Amili said, sensibly.

Don't listen to her, Nabooru advised. More will get lost in the search, and you'll be no closer to your destination.

You have no idea if we're any closer to our destination than we were when we got here, Rigo said. But he did agree. At this point, changing direction might be the most dangerous thing they could possibly do.

"Maybe Pureet and the rest of them are together," Rigo said, though he didn't believe it. "Maybe they'll be able to catch up with us ahead. But we can't do anything else for them now."

Amili lowered her voice to a level she was sure the soldiers apart from the two of them wouldn't be able to hear. "You want to abandon half of our army to these woods and just move on?"

"Not when you put it like that, but what do you wanna do instead? We turn back, we just increase the chances of more people getting lost."

"If we get to the end of this maze at half strength, we're just gonna get slaughtered by the Hylians there," Amili said. "Assuming they're not lost in here too."

They're not, Nabooru said, and Rigo knew she was telling the truth. They had come too far to get out of this without a fight. Tydus would be at the end. He would be waiting.

He resisted asking Nabooru for any more details, knowing that he had enough on his mind without worrying about Tydus just yet. Instead, he devised a plan.

"Light a torch," he said to Amili. "Stick it in right here. We split the army up into squads, they can go as far as possible as long as they can still see the torchlight. Before they pull out of range, they turn back. We can search, but never get too far from each other, and regroup back here. Maybe we'll find some of the others around here without losing anyone else."

Amili nodded. It was as good a plan as any. She raised her voice and gave the order to the remainder of the troops and divided them up into a dozen different groups that made off in different directions. It was decided that the Stewardess would remain with the torch and keep her own small contingent, in case she needed to go off on her own.

"I'll go with one of the groups," Rigo said. "It shouldn't look like we're both afraid to join the search."

"You make sure to turn back before you lose the light," Amili told him. There was worry on her face. Rigo noted it. It brought a spark back to him, a glimmer of their old relationship, his old mischievousness.

"Hey," he said. "It's me."

Amili rolled her eyes while one of her guard set fire to a small torch and wedged it into the ground. Rigo joined a squad, and they made off a few paces into the wilderness. The squad leader separated the group into a wider area, reiterating the order to march out and keep an eye on the torchlight.

Rigo started out between two Gerudo soldiers, almost shoulder to shoulder. But, as they all moved forward calling out for their missing companions, they were forced apart by the concentration of trees and brush. The Woods, almost in a supernatural sense, had a way of separating the individuals from their parties. It wasn't more than a few minutes before Rigo, still able to hear the echoing calls of the search party, could no longer see any of them. Still, the orange light burned behind him in the mist, and he felt he was comfortable to go a little further.

By the time he reached the end of his comfort zone though, he still had not found anyone at all, and there were only the faintest whispers of cries around him. He bit his cheek and decided it was time to call off his search, and hope that any of the others had more luck. He turned around and, guided by the dim orange glow in the distance, he made for the location of Amili.

He walked and walked, climbing over broken branches and stumps and rocks. He walked more, walked until he realized he had been walking for too much time, far more than made logical sense. And still, the orange light was in the distance, still glowing faintly from behind a tree. He'd made no progress toward it at all, as though someone were continually and deliberately pulling it from his reach.

He picked up his pace to a trot now, knowing it was dangerous, that he could fall and possibly hurt himself doing so, but not caring. The light was the only landmark left, and if he was too turned around now to make it back, then he knew he was lost too.

With the extra speed, he seemed now to be gaining on the torch. He stumbled only once, smacking his shin against a shattered tree stump, but he ignored the pain and carried on at the light became brighter and brighter. His breathing came faster and faster, but he could see the glimmer of light from behind the branches of the farthest trunks, knew that he was almost there. Hoped that this was just some twisted, warped vision the forest had given him, and that would dissipate when he again found Amili.

At last he weaved around the final tree and, upon coming into sight of the firelight, panicked when it was suddenly and instantly extinguished before him.

"Ah!" he cried out, unable to help himself. He whirled around, looking desperately for something, anything he might recognize, but there was nothing, no sound, no Gerudo, no way for him to navigate.

As Rigo struggled to find his bearings, forced himself to focus, he noticed, absently at first, that the orange glow was coming back. The trees around him were lighting up, brighter and brighter by the second. He looked around and around and finally froze, a feeling of dread settling in his heart as he finally realized that he was being toyed with.

It was another moment before he found it, the source of the light. And it wasn't a torch. It was a lantern, floating over his head, spinning in the air arbitrarily, as though dangling from some thin, invisible string.

From nowhere, and yet everywhere at once, a high, rattling voice began to speak to him. It sounded young, like the voice of a child, but no child in the living world could have produced the twiggy, crackling sounds that came behind it. Its tone was melodic, almost singsong, as though it were reciting a nursery rhyme it had heard all its life a single way, and had no choice but to sing it back mimicked, in that exact style.

"A pretty young florist,
Drank tea in the forest,
And spilled sugar all over her blouse."

As the voice spoke to him Rigo took a few tentative steps back, away from the floating lantern, and drew his sword. Whatever this was, he'd likely have to face it head on, but he didn't want to be directly under it when it got to his point. The eeriness of its song made him certain beyond doubt that this thing was dangerous. But it didn't pop out. All it did was continue the rhyme.

"The powder was sweet,
And delicious to eat,
And that's when the hornets came out."

"Show yourself!" Rigo called out to it.

"Are you afraid of hornets?" the voice asked from the dark in a genuinely inquisitive manner. "He's big, isn't he? They'd sting him lots of times, hundreds of times before he fell down. Do you think he'd get up?"

Rigo growled, unsure how to answer, but he watched and waited and still nothing happened. The thing seemed to just amuse itself. It erupted in a fit of high-pitched cackling that made Rigo's hair stand on edge.

Ugh, Nabooru sighed, and Rigo almost jumped out of his skin. He'd forgotten about the spirit.

Nabooru? Do you know what this thing is? he asked.

Yeah, she said. It's a forest imp, a troublemaker. They live just to harass people. They're called Skull Kids.

"Skull Kid?" Rigo asked out loud, tasting the words.

"You shouldn't wander into the Woods," the Skull Kid said back to him. "Anyone who wanders into the Woods gets lost. Anyone who gets lost changes."

It laughed again, and as it did Rigo squinted up into the trees. High up in the branches, beyond the light of the lamp, he thought he could almost see something there, some slight form dangling by its limbs, scraggy as a scarecrow, and just as ugly.

"What do you think he'll change into?" it asked again. "A Stalfos?! Ooh, ooh! Can we watch?! Can we?!"

A final round of laughter, and the lantern went out again, leaving Rigo alone in the fog with the dwindling echoes of the creature ringing out around him.