Chapter 88: Sonatinas of Restoration and Return

…

"Well, I must say, I'm ratheh shocked that you've actually been injuhed in you nohmal ventuh. It's… really quite amusing." Link tried to resist the massive grin fighting to form on his face and ultimately lost. He had to admit that it was kind of funny.

It was later in the afternoon, a time which Link expected Irleen to return with Leynne and Lilly. They had only just stepped into the ward where he and Layna were recovering and, other than those words, there had been Leynne crossing his arms and amusedly shaking his head. Lilly had looked mildly concerned, but Leynne's and Link's smiles seemed to quickly ease her worry.

"I'm glad Irleen found you two," Link said as he watched Irleen hover over his bed. "I was worried that it'd be hard since you guys wouldn't understand one another."

"Fohtunately, panic translates quite well," Leynne said.

"I wasn't panicking," Irleen argued. "If you knew what I was saying, you'd probably be annoyed."

"Why?" Lilly asked. "Were you insultin' us?"

"Just him," Irleen answered.

"Chahming," Leynne told her with a sarcastic grin. Then he looked back to Link and asked, "So what do we do now?"

"Well, how are we in terms of funds?" Link asked.

Leynne put on an irritated look. "Well, not as fah along as I'd hoped," he admitted. "I was on my way to request anotheh day." Then he put on a grin. "I don't want to sound pretentious, Captain, but I can't help but assume I have it?"

"You have it," Link said with a grin and a nod.

"I've found most tend to resist once they heah me speaking. I've tried to explain that I'm from the south."

"And I gotta been tryin'na tell him that that story's impossible," Lilly spoke up. She shrugged. "But he doesn't wanna believe me."

"We're up here in the sky, Leynne," Link said. "Remember? All the directions up here are backwards."

"Which is annoying in itself," Leynne said. "I can't simply come to call south 'nohth'. That's not how my head wohks."

"The accent doesn't help, either," Lilly said, pointing to her throat. "To me, he sounds like an accountant or somethin'."

"I think he sounds like that to everyone," Irleen said. "I hear everything in Sorian, and he still sounds like an accountant."

"I have to explain things," Leynne argued. "I can't just keep quiet."

"Leynne, just tell everyone you're from Black Island," Link told him. "Trust me, it'll help."

"Why?" Leynne asked. "Do residents of Black Island sound like me?"

"Nobody knows what peoples from Black Island sound like," Lilly said. "Not even peoples from Black Island."

"Seriously?" Irleen asked, sounding annoyed.

"I know," Lilly said. "It's weird, huh?"

Leynne gave a hesitant moan. "I'm not suh I'm comfohtable with outright lying to people I'm making business deals with," he admitted.

"It's either that or get used to calling south 'north'," Link said. "We really don't want the Skyriders following leads back to us through other people, especially after what happened with Lilly. North already knows that we have surface dwellers on the Symphony. If he's heard that you, a surface dweller, have been making arrangements for payment, that could put more people in danger."

"We do gotta protect other peoples as well as ourselves," Lilly told Leynne. "And the truth is always the best."

"An omission is not the truth," Leynne told her with a bit of an edge in his voice. Then he sighed and said, "I'll… just go with the nohth-is-south thing. But I intend to make some cohrections to the way navigation is done up heh. That's just annoying."

Link grinned. "Noted. How's the ship?"

"The Symphony's fine," Leynne said. "But I don't think we want to leave it at the docks foh long."

Link nodded in agreement. "The surgeon here doesn't want us moving for a while. I'll be up and around tomorrow, though, and I'll take care of the technoworks." He looked up at Irleen. "It can wait another day, right?"

"Probably," Irleen agreed. "There shouldn't be as much heat built up down below, so the technoworks shouldn't be immediate danger. We can wait, but we shouldn't wait too long. Yeah, another day should be fine."

"'Heat built up'?" Leynne asked.

"Areas of the technoworks were exposed to the air," Irleen said.

"It's almost as hot as a desert under the island," Link added. "It'll take some work, but we should be able to return the Sky Lines sometime tomorrow. So, Leynne, if you can return to the ship and have them remain below the island for another day, we'll take care of everything tomorrow."

"Everything?" Leynne asked. He circled his hands around each other as he drawled, "As in…"

"Resupply the Symphony, take care of whatever other necessities we need, and then move on," Link explained.

"What about Layna?" Leynne asked, pointing at the sleeping Gelto.

"We'll get her aboard the ship tomorrow," Link said. "She can recover there. Afterwards, we can find a clinic on another island and have her examined again."

"Think you can convince the doctor to let us take her?" Irleen asked.

"Injured people are allowed to travel," Link said. "Sick people, too. Especially if they need to return home or something."

"Oh!" Lilly cried out, snapping her fingers. "Speaking of sick peoples, I feel I know where the king and queen are."

"You do?"

Lilly nodded vigorously, and Link thought her head would pop off from the force. "They left the same day that the Sky Lines disappeared," she told them. "And wherever they went from there, it hadda be close, but it wouldn't be Tabletop Island. And since we're sure they didn't show up at Sagacity Island, the next best place'a search would gotta be West Iron Island."

"Okay…" Leynne droned for a moment. "So why the invocation of 'sick peoples'?"

"Because, wherever the queen is, she's probably really ill."

Both Link's and Leynne's eyes became wide. Irleen asked, "Ill? How?"

"I don't know yet. But it's the reason they delayed their trip backka Castle Island."

"And by the time she was well enough to travel," Leynne concluded, "the Sky Lines weh gone. Right?"

Lilly held up a finger. "Not quite. You see, they left so they could get the queen backka Castle Island, backka doctors that know her illness. Just like the captain's proposin'na take Layna, the king took the queen bedridden. She was well enough'fa travel, but not enough'fa not need a doctor." Leynne tried to work the semantics of that last statement in his head, unsure if he had understood her right.

"Right," Link said as he realized something, "because, before the Sky Lines disappeared, there should've been a nearly-direct route straight through the middle of the kingdom. Right?"

Lilly nodded. "At best, maybe a couple days."

"But then the Sky Lines disappeahed," Leynne said. "So they would've traveled… west?"

"Either direction is at least a week and a half of sailin' even with good winds," Lilly said. "At least, that's how I understood it."

"You'h not wrong," Leynne told her. "Might and Tabletop Islands ah relatively isolated compahed with the rest of the kingdom. We could easily be looking at anotheh two weeks going eitheh way."

"So the king and queen are going… uh… the direction we didn't go, right?" Irleen asked. "But if the queen got sick, what would happen?"

"I imagine, if they had the ability, they would stop," Leynne said. "But, considering that they neveh retuhned heh, that means they would've stopped at this… what was it? This island you mentioned?"

"West Iron Island," Lilly said. "And, yes, I feel they would've at least stopped there. But, since there isn't any news between the islands, well…" She bobbed her head from side to side to indicate her helplessness.

Link nodded. "Thanks, Lilly, that's great. At least we know we're going in the right direction. Uh…" He scratched the back of his head. "Look, I wanted to ask you… if you would join my crew, at least temporarily."

To Link's surprise, Lilly's features lit up with joy. "Oh, you bet!"

Link and Leynne stared at her in surprise. Even Irleen expressed astonishment at her acceptance by freezing in place, nearly falling out of the air. "R-really?" Link asked.

Lilly nodded. "I like this," she said. "I never traveled like this before. It's kinda fun."

"You know, except the whole issue of being on a ship hunted by the fake princess of Hyrule," Leynne explained.

She shrugged. "It's not like I'd be any safer back home. Besides, this is great for my studies."

Leynne and Link exchanged shrugs. "Okay, that solves that," Link said. "Leynne, you and Lilly should probably get back to the Symphony and set things in motion. We'll meet here tomorrow."

Leynne nodded. "All right, Link. Tomohrow."

Lilly waved as they both turned to leave. "See ya tomorrow."

…

~~Day—I don't know what day it is.

~~I've been away from the Island Symphony for almost two days. Both Layna and I were injured after facing the Lizalfos down in the technoworks under the center of Might Island. We're both resting at a clinic on the north side of the island, hopefully far enough away from the Moon's Shadow that Captain North won't find us. I couldn't sleep tonight because of my shoulder, so I found some paper and a pen at the doctors' desk.

~~I met with Leynne and Lilly earlier this afternoon. We know where the king and queen are, or at least where they've been.

…

~~Day 48

~~One of my crewmen is dead and two more are too injured to work. I can barely move myself. That encounter at Tabletop Island went worse than I expected. I just know Captain North is near, so I have to take the Island Symphony out of here. Leynne believes our best chance is at Timbre Island because it's small and out of the way. We lay low for a bit, and then back to Sagacity Island so we can drop Lilly off. I know the Sky Lines on the east side of the kingdom are back. From Sagacity Island, it would be easy to return to Castle Island.

…

"For the record," Irleen said as she circled Link's head, "a Sorian doctor wouldn't be so eager to manipulate the facts."

"Well then, I guess we should be glad that we had a Hylian doctor," Link responded with a grim tone.

Early in the morning, there was a sort of haunted feeling about the empty and broken streets in the middle of Might Island. The stars had disappeared from the navy blue sky, casting the buildings around him in a strange ambience that could only exist between night and day. It was odd to see the landscape so dark against a bright sky. Link had become accustomed to the definiteness of things around him from the time he had spent on the surface, how night and day could so clearly be distinguished even when watching the sun rise and fall.

He probably pondered the sight because of his own venture into strange territory. Last night, the surgeon which had stitched him up had caught him making a journal entry using stuff he had found in the desk. They started discussing Link's problems with being chased by the Skyriders, and the surgeon commented that, with all the blood and bullet holes in Link's clothes, it would be quite easy to misdirect the encounter at Tabletop Island. To that end, Link had written a fake journal, taking suggestions from the surgeon and trying to keep his intentions vague. Their idea had been to make Captain North believe that Link was going to return to Castle Island. The paper Link had written on had been stashed in the pocket of his ruined trousers, and they, along with his bloody and shot-up tunic, had been placed in an old footlocker and deposited behind the clinic. The other doctors and nurses who had seen Link and Layna would be witnesses to their stay and, due to some of them carrying the footlocker outside, eventually point to the false evidence as part of the clinic trying to cover up Link's visit. Although the plan hinged on the Skyriders returning after Link gathered his crew and left, Link felt that the idea would work.

However, Link also felt that the misdirection was the latest in a lying game he was beginning to play. Yesterday, he had wanted Leynne to claim that he had come from Black Island just so he could not be traced back to the Island Symphony. And he had been falsifying the logbooks at nearly every port he had been to. Now, he was hoping that a fake journal would take North in the wrong direction. He began to feel uncomfortable with his actions now that he had a moment to think about them. Captains had hammered into his head the consequences of lying and misleading, and Line had always been a reminder of the kinds of trouble lying could bring with his record of trying to wiggle out of responsibility and, ultimately, failing. It concerned him that, if discovered, he could be in for some devastating results. At the same time, though, Link felt he was losing options. They were too close to being caught by the Moon's Shadow. He wanted to avoid another encounter, fearing that his crew might be killed. Added to the dangers of finding Cunimincus' crew in the technoworks, the idea of losing any of his crew at any turn was becoming unbearable. Link had to tip the odds in his favor. There were still people that needed his help.

Irleen had picked up on the unease in his tone and asked, "What's wrong, Link?"

"I just… Do you think I lie too easily?" he asked in turn.

"You?" she asked with a chuckle tinting her voice. "Lying? Link, you're probably the most honest person I know. What makes you think you're capable of it?"

"I asked Leynne to lie yesterday," Link said. "And… at every port, I've been putting a different name in the dockmasters' logs. And last night, that doctor and I came up with a way to send Captain North in the wrong direction. It's… kinda bothering me."

"Well it shouldn't," Irleen told him. "Link, we're talking about a man who has orders to kill you. It's bad enough you're trying to keep him alive. You don't need to feel guilty just because you have to lie to him. If anything, you lying to keep him away from the ship is probably better for his health. Especially since any of the Gelto can kill him at any time."

Link stared at the road for a moment. "I… I hadn't really thought about it like that. Still… I think I should apologize to him after all this. He's… They may be fake, but he is just following his orders."

"That's your decision, Link. But, for now, it's best that he goes as far away as possible."

Link allowed himself to grin and gave her a nod. Maybe it was good that Irleen had set everything out before him. Still, he hoped to eventually explain everything to North later on, when the captain was not trying to kill him.

The main reason for waiting for morning was so Link might have a chance at finding any Lizalfos he might have still been alive by virtue of not being around when he, Irleen, and Layna had ventured into the technoworks. But from the time Link entered the haunted areas of the city to his rediscovery of the entrance, nothing approached him. So he ventured into the technoworks with Irleen watching his back just in case.

His first decision was to find the two bodies that he and Layna had hidden in the dormitory and, in a similar manner to what they had done with the later Lizalfos, pull the tiles up from the floor and bury the corpses for the technoworks to absorb. It turned out to be a very arduous process, and Link was thankful for the change of clothes he had received from the clinic. He wore a black body suit under a pair of black trousers and a lime-green, short-sleeve shirt, relatively lighter and a little more comfortable to wear and move around in compared to his old clothes. His hat, boots, and gloves had survived the fight with the Gatolfos as did most of his gear; he had not realized that his boomerang had saved his buttock from an embarrassing wound until he had picked it up earlier as he was gearing up. He lamented his shot-up tunic and resolved to get another one as soon as getting another one would not lead to a quick death.

The upside to his new clothing was his comfort when it came to descending into the lower levels after burying the Lizalfos and retrieving the small bag of lead rounds that the Lizalfos had been making. The heat had not improved since the first time, and it made Link miserable as he started replacing all of the large cubes. This was considerably less exciting while he had a bullet wound in his shoulder, but his thoughts about finally leaving this island and finding the king and queen helped him push through the issue. The first room he did was the ladder room. He even replaced the cube that had sat between that room and the corridor since, in the process of returning the cubes where they belonged, he discovered another room.

A room which he wished he had not discovered. The Lizalfos had left the tiles in this room alone. Instead, the ground was littered with the bones of the Hylians that the Lizalfos had killed and eaten. Link and Irleen stood stunned at the doorway, eyes taking in the sight of thousands of bones scattered about the room in indiscriminate piles. Not all of them were Hylians; Link knew this much, and the incredible size of some of the bones supported it. Still, he felt sick looking at this room, and he eventually had to back out of the room and rest against the wall of the ladder room so he could resume breathing.

Irleen followed a split-second later. "This is… This is just…" She could not finish her sentence, perhaps out of shock or disgust; her voice seemed vague in either direction. "I-I… I can't…"

Link understood her frantic stammering, believing himself to be in the same mindset and grateful that his own shock had left him silent. He had not realized the extent to which the Lizalfos had been preying on the locals. How long had they been there? And…

And was Line among them?

He clutched at his chest as if to physically grasp control of his heart. There could have been over a hundred bodies in that room. How many were Hylian? How many were not? Which was the Sorian they had brought with them? The scattered remains would never tell. It was bad enough that they had all died to feed the scourge of the skies. But they had done worse. The room was a mass grave, and each person that had been discarded into it no longer had an identity.

Link nearly choked on the bile trying to rise in his throat, and he swallowed it back. Then he told Irleen, "We… We need to… to tell someone. About-about this. They… They shouldn't have to remain here."

"Okay," Irleen replied in a silent voice Link almost did not hear.

They ventured through the room to a doorway on the right. Link took extra care to step over the bones no matter what they had belonged to. He wished he knew some kind of rite or show of respect to give to them, if anything to help him cope with the sight by giving him assurance that he had done all he could. But this was just another reminder of how much he had messed up. He tried not to look at the bones too carefully, tried not to imagine who they might have belonged to before the Lizalfos had stripped their individuality away.

He finally found his breath as he stepped back into the room where he and the Gatolfos had fought. The body still lay in the middle of the floor, and, with the heat, had begun to create an ugly stench. Neither he nor Irleen talked as he cleared another space in the floor to dump the corpse.

But by the time he was ready to drop the Gatolfos in the floor, he just stood above the corpse and thought about which lives this monster had consumed just to keep up its murdering ways. Rage bubbled inside him, and before he knew it, he was kicking the corpse. He kicked hard, and he kept kicking until he was sure the toe of his boot would rip open. If it would, then he would kick until the footing of his body suit tore. Then he would kick until his toes broke, until he could not stand. Then… Then… He did not know what he would do. It felt as if his life had just been shortened to this one moment where he abused a dead body for reasons he was not sure of anymore. He could not even remember what he was angry at. His voice came out in grunts, and then they were cries of pain.

The force he exerted eventually caused something to dislodge from the headless body's jacket. The pistol was in Link's hands the instant he saw it on the ground. He held it at the corpse, hand shaking wildly as he tried to aim for where he believed its heart was. He squeezed the trigger just to realize that the pistol had not been loaded. In frustration, Link hollered something incoherent and threw the pistol across the room. He delivered two more kicks to the corpse, and the force from the second one caused him to lose his balance and fall onto the floor behind him.

Irleen found it safe enough to float down in front of him. He sniffled, tears leaking from his eyes and snot covering his upper lip. He sat like a rag doll about to flop forward onto its face, eyes staring at the floor between his legs and arms limp at his sides. "Did it help?" she asked.

"No," Link replied in a cracked voice.

Irleen remained silent for a moment. Then she said, "Put it in the technoworks. In twenty, thirty years, the Hylians here will live off of it."

Link nodded and slowly returned to his feet. He silently dragged the Gatolfos' body into the hole, where the technoworks hissed as they seemed to cook the body. Link then went and used his foot to slide its head along the tiles and into the hole. He replaced the floor cubes on top of the grave. Next, he found the cubes that he had thrown and, using the flowing patterns on their tile surfaces, placed them back into the appropriate holes in the floor behind the scrap pile he had been using for cover. As he was doing this, he realized that there actually had been gaps large enough for bullets to get through and found himself amazed that he had not put himself in front of one during the fight. The fact that the Gatolfos had managed to miss him so many times left him wondering if the monster had actually been aiming that gun. After the floor repairs, he went to the large cubes that had been pulled out of the walls and pushed them back in. He started from the wall closest to where he had replaced the tiles and followed the walls, glad that the cubes here had only been pulled out partially.

When he found his quiver again, he stopped and stared at the dried, smeared mess of dark crimson behind a shot-up, wooden table. He stepped down to stand over the dried pool, heart pounding in his chest and stomach twisting into knots each second he stared. His dried eyes welled with tears again, and he pressed a hand over them as if to stop from crying again.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" he asked aloud.

"Link?" Irleen asked as she hovered in front of his face.

"Layna nearly died here," he told her.

"But she didn't. Link, you saved her."

"I know, but…"

"It's just like I said, Link. Layna survived because you were there to save her. Layna is danger-incarnate; she knew what she was getting into. It was her choice, so don't blame yourself for her injuries."

"It's just…" He removed his hand and gestured at the blood. "They're all in danger for as long as they're with me. I don't know if they really understand that."

"Link. Most of your crew didn't sign on just because they needed a job. They signed on because they trust you and want to help you. They might not have known what kind of danger they'd be in, but they're still with you. They won't give up, and they're not gonna let you give up. And you can't let things like this bother you anymore. That'll be how you lose this crew."

"You're right, you're right," Link said, wiping his eyes. "It's just… it's scary. It only took two days of command for me to lose my best friend."

"I know you don't want to lose anyone else. But that's the kind of point Captain Albel was trying to make. Sure, he wasn't nice about it, but you'll definitely lose the Symphony if you keep shutting down like this every time you think you're gonna lose someone."

Link nodded and reached over to retrieve his quiver. "It's not just my crew, Irleen. It's everyone we meet."

"I know, you've got a big heart. I'm not asking you to stop caring. Just… try to keep your head together. For all we know, the same thing may be waiting for us on the next island." Link nodded. Then, spotting the next cube that needed to be replaced, he stepped up and strolled to it. "By the way, you do realize that everyone on your crew is older than you, right?" The revelation caused Link to chuckle.

He finished the room and moved on to another room through a third door. This room was not as deep, but it sported the very thing they needed: columns. They stood on the opposite side of the room from the door and, like the columns on Sagacity Island, the blue particles under the surface were falling to the floor. This room did not appear to have been bothered by the Lizalfos, although Link noted a few bullet holes in the left wall, standing out more due to the presence of the warning glow of necrosis. Link drew the blues harp from his pocket and stepped up to the area between the columns. He could not remember which note it was that he had to play, but he knew it was a draw note. He went through the range starting from the right and found it to be the fourth hole from the right when the particles froze in place. So he let out all his breath and pulled on the note, watching the particles rearrange themselves into the similar lines of Sorian script. Yet again, he had to pause so he could breathe out.

When he was finished, Irleen looked at the lists. "Okay, first, we need to reconnect the technoworks," she told him. She stopped at the top of the column on Link's right. "This one." Link had to stretch to touch the bullet next to the word. A white circle appeared where Link had been standing. And, just as before, the emeralds on the top side of the blues harp glowed a pattern for Link to play. He returned to his place and studied the pattern. It appeared simpler than the songs he had played in the Sagacity technoworks, but it was longer and harder for him to remember completely.

His first attempt saw him play it all the way through on the first try. However, since the technoworks had not responded, he assumed that he had missed or made a mistake on a few notes because, otherwise, it sounded like a fairly agreeable song. It had a slow pace, but it kept an upbeat, inviting tone that made Link feel less annoyed about having to play it again. Although, two tries later, he was becoming irritated by his lack of progress. He watched the pattern again until he found that, in the process of memorizing the latter notes, he had confused a series of notes with a similar set that occurred at the beginning. Now realizing the mistake, he played through it once again.

The technoworks responded with a low, grinding sound somewhere behind him while the room changed to a soft, blue color. He played again, and the sound of the blues harp drowned out the grinding. When he was done, he played once more. Halfway through, the technoworks returned to normal, but since Link was into the song enough, he continued to play it to the end.

There was a moment of silence as he glanced up at Irleen. She eventually asked, "Having fun yet?"

Link grinned at her. "Actually, that one was kinda fun," he admitted. "I think I'll have to remember that tune; I think Lukka might like it."

"Who?"

"He's a member of the Sokk—uh, he's a member of a band," Link said, correcting himself when he realized that Irleen might not recognize the name. "Remember? That band I mentioned back on Sagacity? He taught me how to play the harmonica."

"Oh. Well, remember later. We need to get the Sky Lines going next."

"We do? What about all the necrosis around here?"

"That song you just played restored the technoworks to the way they were before the Lizalfos started taking them apart," she explained. "This includes the injuries to the technoworks. It's… sort of like a 'reset'. The technoworks created a kind of 'save point' when the Lizalfos started taking it apart, so when you replaced all the exposed areas, the technoworks realized that it might need to reset and made the option available. And since most of the injuries were not part of the technoworks for any significant period of time, the technoworks should have placed in part of a signal to trigger apoptosis."

Link scrunched his face for a moment. "Um… sooo… the technoworks are back to normal?"

Irleen released an exhausted sigh. "Yes, Link. The technoworks are back to normal. The exposed parts are linked together again, and the necrosis has been repaired. There's a chance that the necrosis wasn't a big deal anyway; we didn't find a whole lot of it like on Sagacity Island."

Link nodded. "Okay. So…"

"I need the list again."

"Right." Link put the blues harp to his mouth again and pulled the note to return the list to the columns. He glanced at the one on the left, expectant of her to approach that one.

She did as he thought and hovered next to the second-to-last item. "This one, and then it should be the second item again." Link pressed the first one, and then he paused to see if she said anything else. "Yeah, go ahead, Link."

Link tapped the second bullet. This caused the room to grow dark, and the circle in the floor returned. Just as before, Link took up position and studied the notes flashing on the blues harp. The notes were simple, like the song before, but this one was also quite long compared to the songs on Sagacity Island. His first attempt saw him recalling the notes from the wrong song and playing it part-way through until he realized his mistake. It was pretty honest; he could recognize parts that the two songs shared. He stopped and studied the notes longer and harder. Then he played again only to result in accidentally skipping some of the song in favor of playing notes that he knew were shared by the two songs.

"Link…" Irleen moaned when he stopped mid-song again.

"Just give me a moment," he told her as he started memorizing the notes again. He stared hard at the blues harp.

Then he played a piece that reminded him of some of the romantic songs that he had heard from some of his musician friends. It was soothing, and Link felt a little lulled by the song, almost as if he was about to fall asleep standing. He managed to keep his wits together long enough to play through twice. The third time, however, he lost track of where he was in the song and played himself into a loop of the same notes until he stopped.

"Whoops…" he told Irleen with a sheepish grin.

"Don't stop, Link," she told him in urgency. "Hurry, keep playing."

Link restarted the song and found that some of the notes had changed, similar to what had happened to the second song on Sagacity Island. But these ones were easier to catch, and he finished the final iteration of the song with only a few notes out of time with the rest of the song. It must have been acceptable because the ground shook underneath Link's boots, and the particles disappeared from the wall. When it was finished, light returned to the room.

Link glanced up at Irleen. "Well?"

"That last one sounded a little funny. What'd you do?"

"It changes notes on the third one. Do we have Sky Lines again?"

She glanced around the room. "Yep, we do."

Link nodded. "Okay. We should get back to the clinic. If we make it in time, we should be able to make it before Leynne tells the ship to duck away for another day."