Epona is still too small for Link to ride, but she follows him trustingly, pricking her ears and trotting closer each time he whistles her song. Her presence is a comfort; she wouldn't choose to stay by his side if she considered him a stranger, so maybe she somehow remembers their adventures seven years into a future which no longer exists except in Link's memory. When he looks into her soft dark eyes, he wonders what she knows. He wishes he could speak with animals.
Instead, he speaks with fairies.
To the villagers and refugees in Kakariko who knew him as a mysterious swordsman, or to the Kokiri who knew him as Saria's timid little shadow, it might have been a shock to learn that Link can actually talk. He can. He always could. It's just hard to put words together, even in writing, and he can't do it around most people, and he has nothing to say that would be worth the embarrassment of being gawked at or worse. When he traveled with Navi, she would speak for him or he would whisper to her and she would translate. It earned him a few funny looks when he was an adult, but when you're a big muscular warrior with a sacred blade strapped to your back, people let you do what you want. Maybe they thought he'd taken a vow of near-silence, or something.
The pink fairies, not knowing about any of this, perch on Link's hands like butterflies and wait patiently while he whispers his questions, syllable by painful syllable. They're always surprised to see a "Kokiri" so far from his village, and invariably scandalized when he explains who he's looking for.
"Your guardian fairy left you? Just like that?"
Link nods, never sure whether to feel appreciative of their concern or defensive on Navi's behalf, because she must have left for a good reason. The fairies shrug and apologize, and say that they've never met a blue fairy named Navi. Link thanks them anyway before moving on.
The forest teems with birds and squirrels and rabbits, all of which fall easily to Link's slingshot, and Saria made sure that he knew which kinds of plants and mushrooms were okay to eat and which would make him sick practically before he could walk. Aside from the inconvenience of stopping to gather or prepare food instead of looking for Navi, daily survival is no problem for an experienced former hero like Link. After sundown, he stretches out on the moss and watches the fireflies dance above his head, remembering all the nights he spent camped outside with Navi, footsore and bruised yet oddly at peace despite their shared worries. Epona usually gets tired before Link does, and she's only a baby so he doesn't want to push her too far, but sometimes he keeps walking even through the dark, until he's so sleep-deprived that he halfway forgets what he's doing and where he is, and has to remind himself that those days are over now. He isn't the Hero of Time anymore. He did everything he was supposed to do, and the princess sent him away. She, like Navi, had her reasons.
After weeks of travel, stopping whenever he notices a spring or a particularly ancient tree, or places where fairies tend to congregate, Link finally passes through the other side of the forest and into unknown territory by late summer. Descending a long, low hill, he sees farmland, a green and yellow patchwork blanket wrapped around a town near a riverside. It's bigger than Kakariko Village but smaller than sprawling Castle Town. With only these two points of comparison, Link can't make any further judgments.
He leaves Epona by the outskirts of town and goes poking around, hoping that he'll either find a map or encounter somebody friendly and incurious enough to offer unsolicited directions to the nearest landmark of interest. He has a vague idea that he might be able to find a fairy fountain. He finds a shop with a mildly seedy interior and not enough sunlight coming in through the unwashed windows. There are no maps for sale, though he finds something else of interest: a pile of bombs under a glass case. They were never Link's weapon of choice during his quest, but they were one of the few items that he had no ability to make for himself or reuse, so he bought them up whenever he got the chance.
"Hah! Don't even think about it," says the shopkeeper. He's middle-aged and balding, with arms folded across his skinny chest and a faintly mocking smile that Link doesn't particularly like. "What'll people say about me if they hear how some little kid blew his hands off with a product I sold him, huh?"
Link stands up taller. The man laughs.
"Nice try, but no. Those aren't toys."
As if Link hadn't once ventured into the depths of a magma-filled subterranean cavern (not the fire temple, the other one) filled with monsters and killed their "king" by throwing a bomb into its mouth and splattering its guts across the floor. That was before all the mystical Triforce stuff, when he was still a coward and a crybaby, too.
Before Link can get too annoyed, he spots a Hylian shield hanging on the wall behind the smirking shopkeeper. It's identical to the shield he'd once carried, which, along with all the other weapons and possessions he acquired after his first arrival at Castle Town, disappeared when Princess Zelda sent him back through time. His wooden Deku shield came back with him, but it was reduced to charred splinters in the throne room.
The shopkeeper raises an eyebrow as Link points to his new prize. "Sheesh, kid. You actually want that old thing? Good for you, knowing exactly what you like, I guess. Are you hoping to grow up to be a knight or what?" He glances at the hilt of the sword poking over Link's shoulder.
Link keeps pointing.
The shopkeeper shrugs. "If it's fighting you're looking for, you're headed in the wrong direction," he says over his shoulder as he takes the shield down from the wall. "Something crazy happened at the castle when the king of those whatever-you-call-'em women from the desert came to swear allegiance to the crown, so I've heard. Now he's under lock and key in the castle dungeon... or dead, maybe. Heard it both ways."
Link nods, devoting all his outward attention to arranging his Rupees in a neat row on the counter. His hand quivers.
The shopkeeper snickers at Link's blank stare. "I shoulda guessed none of that would mean anything to a little kid. Well, I don't blame you. As long as they don't make a fuss around here, what does any of it matter?"
Having no answer to that question, Link leaves the shop with his new shield slung over his back, his wallet emptied, and a queasy feeling in the pit of his belly. He decides to leave town and see how much distance he can cover before dusk, but when he reaches its outskirts, Epona isn't waiting where he left her. He whistles. She doesn't come running.
Letting Epona wander off to do what she wanted was Link's usual routine when he went to places where she couldn't come along; if they were in Hyrule Field and away from other people, or if they were both bigger and stronger, he might have just left and trusted Epona to catch up when she felt like it. Instead, he retraces the path he had taken away from the forest, reasoning that somebody would've noticed if she had gone in the other direction and wandered into town.
He finds his wayward horse in a small fenced-in field, bouncing and nosing around a confused cow. He hops the fence just as she must have done and whistles sharply. Epona raises her head and trots over a few paces, as if to show she's sorry, then turns straight back around and resumes pestering the cow. Link sighs heavily. He remembers this game from the first time he visited Lon Lon Ranch, when she'd let him get nearly close enough to touch and then zoom off to somewhere else. Maybe there's a reason why most riders have a bridle and reins.
"Well, hello there," says a woman's voice. Link hadn't even noticed any other people nearby. "Are you here for your horse?"
The speaker is a somewhat heavyset older lady with a smudgy apron and red hair pinned back in a bun. A small purple-haired girl is peeking out from behind the woman's skirt, gaping at Epona.
Link nods, his face going hot, and the woman laughs with far more warmth than the shopkeeper had. "Yes, I thought so. Well, I knew she wasn't ours, and that someone would come looking... otherwise, we just might have kept her!"
The small girl waves at Link. He waves back, not knowing how else to respond, and the girl beams.
"You aren't from around here, are you?" asks the woman.
He shakes his head.
"No, I didn't think so," she muses, and Link feels her looking at the sword and shield just like the shopkeeper. "Are you two all by yourselves, dear?"
Link digs into the dirt with the toe of his boot.
"Well, if you are, then why don't you stay with us for the night? We would be happy to have a visitor, and I'm sure the rest would do you good. Your horse, too."
Navi was always the one to decide whether Link should accept or decline these kinds of invitations, because not all adults could be trusted even if they seemed friendly, and she isn't here, and time spent in a stranger's house is time Link isn't spending in search of her. There's a rosy tinge to the sky, and if Link is going to make any more progress today, he needs to leave soon. But this lady seems nice, and he won't make much more progress before nightfall even if he leaves immediately.
While Link wavers, Epona makes her own decision and canters off to the far end of the field, whinnying shrilly. Maybe she came here because she thought she might find other horses in this familiar-looking place.
"Well?" says the woman.
The small girl ventured out from behind the woman and grabs Link's hand. "Thtay! Thtay!" she commands.
And he's has never been good at saying no.
Link leaves his equipment propped up by the door of the farmer lady's cottage. She waves him aside when he tries to offer help with the pot over the fire, so he hovers in the middle of the room, watching the tiny girl steal his new shield and crawl underneath it like an unusually giggly turtle going into its shell. Her grandmother—he's fairly sure now that the lady is her grandmother—peppers him with questions, or at least statements that feel an awful lot like questions.
"It would take days to reach the nearest town from here."
"...Even for an adult."
"You would have had to travel all the way around that forest, of course."
"Yes, it's a long way..."
Link squirms and stares at the floor.
Over the meal, the farmer lady gives up on her questioning and tells Link how her granddaughter's parents left her here, the father running off with some other woman and the mother going after him. "Papa-th bad, mama mad," the little girl singsongs, kicking the leg of the table and picking out the squishy inside bits of a hunk of bread with one finger, leaving behind the hard crust. Link watches her, too worried that he's he's sitting wrong or holding his spoon wrong or doing something wrong to feel hungry, nodding absently whenever the farmer lady pauses in her story. He doesn't know why people are always so quick to tell him all about their troubles in life, but he doesn't mind. It's better than being bombarded with questions he can't even answer.
A After they've eaten, the little girl pulls Link back outside to look at patches of dandelions or interesting rocks in the waning light. He's never spent much time around children younger than himself before, and the girl's squeaky chattering gives him a certain sympathy for that cow when Epona had been prancing all around it. At least she seems happy to have the company of someone relatively close to her own size. When she tires of that and finally wanders off to bother a passing butterfly, Link notices a worried frown on the face of the old lady by the doorway. Confused and vaguely hurt, he hunches down into himself. She can see that he hasn't tried to throw her grandchild down a well or anything, but he's a nameless drifter and must seem terribly untrustworthy. He wouldn't trust himself if he were her. Especially if she's slightly better-informed about certain events than the shopkeeper had been. He might be in some trouble.
Link avoids eye contact as the woman approaches and, with some effort, kneels beside him in the grass. Her words are gentle, however. "How old are you, boy?"
He picks at a blade of grass. These sorts of questions really shouldn't surprise him anymore.
"Eight? Ten? That's much too young to travel by yourself. Where is your mother?"
Link makes a slicing motion across his throat. The creases deepen around the lady's frowning mouth.
"Your father?"
The Deku Sprout said little about Link's mother and nothing about his father; they could have walked past each other on the streets of Castle Town a hundred times and never known it. Link can only shrug.
"Poor child," the old lady murmurs. "You and your little horse, all alone."
He peels apart the blade of grass, his face a mask.
"Couldn't you... tell me your name? I want to know who you are," says the old lady. Her eyes are all soft and gentle. Her words are soft. So soft, soft, soft.
Seized by something close to madness, Link drops the torn scrap of grass and raises his left hand, palm facing inward. Where there had been nothing but slightly freckled skin as he laid down his weapons and drank from a cup of milk and braided a little girl's hair, there now shines the mark of the Triforce, and the lower-right triangle burns like molten gold. The shard within him is sleeping now, separated by long miles from its two mates, but he remembers what it had felt like when the three resonated together and the power to reshape the very world filled him and his fellow vessels. He isn't who he used to be. He isn't what he looks like.
Link smiles with bland innocence.
The lady's mouth hangs open. "What—" she begins, then loses hold of whatever she'd meant to say, staring uncomprehendingly. She must recognize the symbol, not being as isolated from the world as Link once was, but this is surely the first time she's ever been faced with a power like this. And he wears the form of a child. "Isn't that... what are you? Is this a trick? It... isn't funny..."
The woman's face has gone as pale as dough, her eyes wide and shining with the reflected gold light as she clambers back to her feet as quickly as her aging joints will let her.
She's scared.
The realization hits Link like a slap, and regret hits him even harder. He ducks his head and the marking on his hand disappears, his throat tightening.
The little girl chooses this moment to run back with a squished bunch of dandelions. Her grandmother grabs her arm to stop her from going any nearer to Link, ignoring her whines of protest. Her braid is coming undone at the end.
What did Link just do that for? He didn't mean to scare the farmer lady. He doesn't know what he'd meant to do. He just wanted to make her stop, and now he can't remember why. She was only trying to be friendly, and now she's scared and he doesn't know how to fix it, to make her see that he didn't mean it . If Navi were here, maybe she could smooth things over.
She isn't, so he can do nothing except sit and watch the lady pull the little girl away from him, back into the safety of their cottage.
The farmer lady's invitation to stay for the night wasn't outright withdrawn, and she evidently didn't think to lock him out. but the homey warmth is gone when Link musters the courage to follow her inside the cottage, replaced by a silent tension he can't abide. It feels too much like Lon Lon Ranch just after the soldiers left, when he crawled out from between the hay bales and saw Talon standing there with folded arms, and Malon in the doorway of the house asking who those men were. Talon told her to go back inside, then dragged Ingo into the barn with more force Link ever expected from someone so sleepy and lazy, and the brothers shouted at each other. When Talon came back out, he made Link sit at their kitchen table with a chunk of writing-charcoal and an old bill flipped over to the blank side, and asked why the king had ordered his men to take a certain Hylian boy with blond hair and green clothes into custody. Link sat and stared at the paper until Talon said he'd changed his mind and didn't actually want to know anything, except for whether Link had hurt any little girls or maybe boys his age or younger, or killed animals for fun. Horses, birds, dogs or cats. Link shook his head no, no, he had never even thought of doing either of those things, and then all of a sudden he was crying uncontrollably, he had no idea why—it was like something just broke inside him, or else it had been broken already and he didn't know it until then. Malon heard him and flew down the stairs, demanding to know what her father said to make him so upset, and she'd hugged Link. After he finally calmed down, it was decided that he could stay there on the ranch for a few days longer at the very least.
Link left that night. He leaves this time, too, and the farmer lady doesn't try to stop him.
He leaves town and sets up camp by the riverside, just as he'd originally planned. The night air is has been getting cooler, so he wraps himself in his winter cloak as a blanket and uses his pack for a makeshift pillow. Epona snorts somewhere nearby, and the sound of rushing water fills Link's ears.
If Navi were here, and if she decided it was safe enough that she didn't need to keep watch, she would be curled up against his cheek or nestled safely in his hand, her wings drooping as she slept. Or she would be scolding Link for how he behaved today. Maybe she could explain what's wrong with him.
He'd like to know, too.