V

Ezerella could not piece it together. Her current state was certainly an indication of Link's presence in her life, but she couldn't place an exact memory of the man. Whenever she closed her eyes and tried to solidify his existence in her mind, she only saw a haze of black and red diamonds within deep, ominous eyes. What was more, no one else even recognized the name when she spoke it. She spoke to Pivona only a day ago, but her sister did not even remember talking about a Link. It seemed as if the entire city of Gerudo women failed to remember any stranger Hylian visitor. Ezerella was close to deeming herself as gone mad.

She had just begun to accept her insanity, and that the silver-haired stranger never really existed, when she missed one of her moon days. At first she wrote it off as a mere irregularity, until she missed the next one as well. Panic settled in the pit of her stomach when the third one came around and still, no blood. She spent her days in a hazy stupor, going about her daily tasks with mechanical lethargy. The only explanation for such an impossible occurrence was this unknown Hylian character, who at this point in her memory was nameless. She explained her condition to Pivona, who was just as incredulous as her, but promised to help in any way she could.

Ezerella was hidden away in Pivona's bathing chamber when she thought of one possibility: get rid of the baby. At that point her belly had become a sizeable lump, and she rested her hands on it solemnly. She could do a number of things to kill it now, or she could remain in hiding until it was born and get rid of it then. But the more she thought about these possibilities, the more she hated herself. She was going to be a mother—she couldn't possibly bring herself to do such a thing. She already loved her daughter.

But time dragged at her consciousness. She had no idea how she'd gotten pregnant. She couldn't remember any man in her life, unless one had somehow crept into her room at night without waking her. It didn't seem likely, since she was hardly desirable and rather difficult to reach in her high quarters. It kept gnawing at her, all alone as she shirked her sentry duties so no one would see her swollen belly. Eventually she wrapped herself in layers of cloth, despite the sweltering heat, and left Pivona's apartments in search of the ralzana's palace. Surely Koume would remember a male traveler.

Ezerella made it through the streets without only a few looks, due to her excessive clothing. She walked up the steps that led to the palace courtyard and pleaded with the guards, saying that a shielded nomad with Hylian sigils was making his way through the desert and she needed to speak with the ralzana immediately. She entered the palace, taking no time to admire the ornate relief work on the walls and ceiling. She'd been in the palace a few times before with her sister, but never as far as the grand foyer.

She was escorted through the foyer and up carpeted steps into the throne room. In the center of a wooden floor was an elaborate throne where Ralzana Koume, dressed in casual garments of blue and gold, sat and spoke to one of her personal guards.

Ezerella dropped down to one knee and dipped her head in a low bow. "Your Highness, I have urgent news for you," she said, praying to the Sand Goddess that the ralzana couldn't detect the dread in her voice.

Koume waved a hand in dismissal to the guard, who left to return to her station outside the other door. Ezerella was thankful for the privacy. "Explain yourself," Koume said with a calm patience.

Ezerella straightened and stood before the princess with sweaty hands clenching the folds of her pant legs. "I actually have a question for you, ralzana."

A flicker of annoyance flashed across Koume's face. "Do you think I am here to answer every peasant's questions?" she said coolly.

"It's of the utmost importance, ralzana," Ezerella said, "regarding a male visitor."

Koume shifted slightly in her chair as she considered Ezerella with a mixture of impatience and curiosity. "Well then, spit it out."

"Everything in my memory and in my common sense tells me that there was a visitor," Ezerella began. "But I cannot seem to remember him, not really. I see him only in my dreams. I've asked everyone I know, but they do not recall him either. I was wondering if you by any chance remember a recent male traveler who stayed with the Gerudo."

Koume's expression remained emotionless as she gazed at a point somewhere beyond Ezerella. "You have come," she finally said, "to inform me of a male presence in your dreams?"

Ezerella felt a pang of fear quicken her heartbeat. "Not at all," she said quickly. "I'm asking if this visitor was ever a real traveler."

"If this visitor did indeed exist at some point," Koume said icily, "do you not think that someone would have remembered him besides you?"

Ezerella had been hoping to avoid the subject, but she now realized that it was inevitable. "Ralzana, you see, there simply had to have been a male traveler in our midst," she said.

"Why so?"

Ezerella slowly and anxiously let her cumbersome shawls fall to the floor. They revealed her stomach, bare and enlarged. "How else could I have become pregnant?"

Koume sat straight immediately, stone-like face settling into an unyielding emotionless stare. Her fingers tightened around the scepter in her right hand, which she held erect. "That is not possible."

Ezerella knew she had to step lightly. "It's true," she said in a shaky voice. "I have already missed three moon days and feel a constant nausea in my stomach. If no such traveler ever existed, how did this happen?"

Koume inhaled, once again gazing past Ezerella's pitiful form. "I do not know what you wish of me."

Another pang of fear. "Ralzana, there has to be a reason for—"

"I would remember a male visitor within the past year," Koume interrupted, the heated sound of anger building in her velvety voice. "Your becoming pregnant is clearly not an issue of my memory but of your promiscuous lifestyle. Surely, three months ago, you seduced one of the non-Gerudo residents in our city and are trying to cover your tracks with this ruse of forgetfulness. I certainly hope that this child will not exhibit any unusual traits for a Hylian, such as Zora flippers or Goron skin. And I certainly, above all else, hope for your sake that the child is indeed female. Now cease bothering me with your insignificant, inconvenient troubles and leave my presence."

Ezerella's brow twitched in confusion. Female? Of course the child would be female. But as two guards came to seize her arms and remove her from the palace, she remembered her conversation with Pivona, the one her sister had forgotten. She spoke of a ralzan to bring a golden age into the world. A true Gerudo man, something that legend said only happened once every hundred years. Did Ralzana Koume truly believe such a myth, just like her sister?

She had no time to question as she was escorted out of the palace. She hadn't quite known until that point what it was like to feel hopeless. But as she made her way back to Pivona's quarters there was an almost pleasant sense of pointlessness about her. Her steps were buoyed by a carefree feeling that she simply could not do anything about her situation.

The months flew by and Ezerella had effectively moved in with her sister. When the day finally came, Pivona had just returned from collecting the rest of Ezerella's belongings from her small apartment on the other side of the city. Ezerella was lying on the floor, clutching her stomach, and crying out in unbearable pain. Pivona, due to her influence, was able to call for a midwife to help deliver the baby. But Ezerella's surroundings were entirely blurred by pain and ceaseless tears. She barely noticed when Pivona and the midwife lifted her onto the bed, barely recognized the familiar face of their mother who had joined Pivona in gathering Ezerella's things. All she could feel was pain and anxiety, and she found herself praying that the labor would take her life.

Hours and hours passed however, and the pain finally stopped. Ezerella's eyes were still blurred from tears and sweat, but she could hear the faint mewling of a newborn not far from her. She heard her sister and mother laugh, heard the midwife gasp. When she found her voice, she heard herself croak to let her see him. She wanted to see her son.

After a moment of unsettling concern, the midwife handed Ezerella the baby. His skin was deep ebony and his head was covered in a thick, bloody mess of crimson hair. The child looked like the spitting image of its mother, and even if Ezerella could begin to recall its father's looks, she was sure she wouldn't find many of his traits in the baby's features.

Ezerella smiled and held the baby close to her chest. She looked up to see the other woman watching in shock, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

"That's impossible," the midwife muttered as if to assure herself she was hallucinating.

After another moment of incredulous, tense silence, the midwife scurried out of the chamber. Pivona started to run after her, but Ezerella stopped her.

"Let her go," she said weakly, stroking her child's forehead. "Nothing will keep us apart," she added with a whisper.

It didn't take long for the ralzana to arrive. A troop of three guards stormed into Pivona's quarters, followed by the ralzana herself. She stopped at the foot of the bed and gazed at mother and son with an unreadable expression. Ezerella only smiled, tightening her grasp on the bundle in her arms, and announced very plainly that his name, after the once highly revered hero of Gerudo folktale, was Ganon.

Through the years of telling the tale of the Gerudo Ralzan's birth, the focus began to diverge. Many believed that the mother was forced to give birth by herself in her tiny apartment, with only the warmth of the hearth to welcome her child into the world. Some heard that instead of Ralzana Koume checking the baby's sex herself, the mother simply strolled straight into the palace, past guards and warriors, and declared her son's birth without so much as a tremble. One version of the story claims that Ezerella threw her son into Koume's arms and pleaded for her life.

But there was a general consensus that once Koume declared her sentence, Ezerella made no attempt at escape or even struggle. Koume ordered the guards to seize the baby and the mother, whose name, until the day Koume died, she could not remember. Pivona and the sisters' mother were taken to the inner city prisons for harboring a traitor. The baby was taken to a hidden chamber and the mother was taken to a secret chamber on the far end of the palace. There she was chained to the back of a carriage, which made its way all the way across the sandy desert toward the Snowpeak Mountains. One guard was told to keep her eyes on the prisoner at all times, and she could swear that through the intolerable wastes, trudging along behind the carriage, the prisoner was smiling, laughing, she if her fate were some joke to her.

The final truth that resides in all of the stories is the one of the mother's last moments in the realm of the living. When the guards chained her within the tomblike chambers of the Arbiter's Grounds, one heard her whisper into the fading light, "Hello, my love," before they departed. They recounted the sound of a poe's laughter while crossing the desert back to the city.

Koume had been pacing her bedchamber back and forth, one hand covering her thin lips in a very pensive expression. Had it been exactly one hundred years since a Gerudo woman gave birth to a son? Was this new boy, this Ganon, to be the next ruling Ralzan of the Gerudo? She had to act quickly, for her people still hadn't discovered the existence of a possible male Gerudo.

The ralzana was indeed torn. If this bastard of a child were to be the next ralzan, she would be damned for the rest of eternity for getting rid of it. But to accept the fact that the lowest peasant within her walls was the birth mother was simply not something Koume could tolerate. And there was certainly no way she could convince her people that the baby was of her own descent.

Koume made a quick decision to bring the baby as far away from the valley as possible. If he were the true ralzan, he would find his way back and claim the throne. But if he were simply another bastard child of some Hylian outside the desert, then he would be so for the rest of his life.

Nodding to herself on the plan, Koume turned and entered the room where the baby boy was crying. His pained expression hinted at a longing for his mother, and Koume looked down on him with something quite new in her heart: sympathy. She lifted the bundle to her chest, hushing at first with a sense of anxious urgency. But as the baby quieted, the hushing turned into a soft cooing and the princess lightly cradled the baby in her arms. "Little Ganon," she whispered on occasion, brushing a long finger against the boy's cheek. It became apparent to her in the following moments that she could not simply leave a baby Gerudo boy at someone's doorstep. No, this baby would remain with her.

Her first instinct was to rename him, give him a fully royal name and not the name of some dead, unknown fairy tale. But Ganon had a strong sound, and she had already begun referring to him as "Little Ganon." So Koume remembered her mother's name, the ralzana before her, Dorfina. The name always sounded rather elegant to Koume, and she found the combination of strength and elegance quite appealing. A smile in her eyes, the princess whispered, "Ganondorf Dragmire," and brought the new king's forehead to her lips.