We often say that the water feels like home, but the feeling is more specific. All know the thrill of a dive, the exertions of a climb, the suspense of a hunt. We might outgrow the temptations of playing splash with friends, but we never forget, for the river is our eternal reminder of childhood
Wetland Tottika, The Zora Culture
The boy shivered. He was used to it. His mother could not always be at his side and her magic was not perfect. His own magic was not yet strong enough to cast. She assured him it would become so but not until he was older. Until then she had to cast and she had to hunt. They lived in the snow. A lean-to nestled into the lower reaches of the Gerudo Summit. He could see the desert from the edge of their plateau. Only with her though. He was not allowed alone. There were wolves and bears and worse. He shivered and held the one thought: that she would return soon. Then she would recast the spells of warmth and he might loosen his grip on the blankets.
Do not be seen. His first lesson. She told him again and again. When she was away, he stayed indoors. An unexpected sound was cause to hide. There was a secret hole dug beneath the floor, hidden by a carpet and an illusion of beaten earth. He was not scared of the hole (his every night was dark) but he was scared of their enemies. The strangers. Do not be seen. His watchword. He learned to read and learned to love it. He was confined to the plateau and had little else to do. She told him that it was important. He hated to disappoint.
The early years were harsh. He was reading precociously, which pleased her. She said he had the makings of a great sage. He personally looked forward to the time he would master the spell of warmth. That was his current ambition. He was six years old when he first encountered the word voe and asked her to explain. She encouraged questions. She said it was someone like him but not like him, which did not really help. He had a limited conception of other people. She said it was someone that you lived with your own age. It was hard for him to imagine. It sounded nice. They would return to this theme later, of course.
Every child will ask why? and the precocious most of all. As the boy grew, he got better answers. Sometimes he still did not really understand them; often they were not really to be understood. The matter of the voe for example was terribly obscure. But he liked its simple version, which was the question of the father, because it had a simple answer. His mother told him that she simply did not know how she had become pregnant. His father could be one of several people, some of them unknown even to her. Since the boy could hardly fathom another person of his mother's age, much less several, much less keeping track of them, he found this explanation completely satisfactory.
The mother would further explain that this uncertainty was partially to blame for their current living conditions. A voe was essential in Gerudo life. Unmarried and pregnant was already considered deeply problematic. To be unmarried and out of contact with the father was worse. Unmarried and fully ignorant of the father? It was an unthinkable transgression of the social code. She had fled the walls of town before her condition could become outwardly visible, setting up a tent in the desert to wait out her term. If she had waited she would have been thrown out, or worse. The town was full of warriors after all, intimately familiar with violence of all kinds, and Gerudo tempers run short often. No one would have jeopardized the child, naturally, but there were many ways to make one hurt. She could keep to herself in the desert, subsisting on her own as much as possible, and receiving occasional charity from a handful of reform-minded or otherwise public-spirited individuals. Her friends deserted her. They had been her fellows on the road of success, so to be seen with her in this new circumstance would have been a risk to their own precious growing reputations. After the boy's birth, she had retreated further into isolation. Do not be seen. Her deception had, however, made things easier in town. It was a loophole, more or less, but she had the Chief's apologetic support. A miscarriage is a tragedy always, and it was clear to everyone that she would not be given a second chance (for who would marry a vai that had not only been claimed, but whose fertility was in proven question?). And at least she was not a single mother, which meant the forms could be observed in outward principle. Some wondered why she stuck around rather than set out someplace with few Gerudo where she could more easily pretend to fit in, especially after her mother's death. But most accepted that she had simply embraced the witch's role—a recognized part of the Gerudo social order, and ultimately not a surprising choice. The woman's mother was considered a witch by temperament who had stayed in town only for its access to drink; her father was known to be notoriously aloof even by Rito standards. So it appeared to the townsfolk: a witch in mourning had gone off to pursue her magic alone, had returned to care for her mother fallen ill, and thereafter begun to offer occasional services in exchange for money she could spend on books and cloth. But, of course, in truth, she had not secreted herself away so much as she had her son. Again, the first lesson, always: Do not be seen.
He heard this speech many times. He would come to understand it in bits and pieces. Sometimes one strand would come through stronger, and he would get a fuller accounting of that complaint. He wanted to know all about it of course. The reasons behind their life. It would come out most often directly after she had returned from a job in town. She would unload whatever few supplies she had bought, offer him some new book, and then regale him with her unending discontent. It made him unhappy to hear her unhappy. She was the most important thing in his life. He tried to be supportive. He accepted her claims without question—certainly he had never seen one of these "single mothers" in any of the Gerudo stories he found in books.
One day, soon after the boy had passed the threshold of adolescence, his mother told him they were going to take a trip into the deeper wilderness. She asked him to cast the magic she had taught him to secure their belongings. They would know if someone passed a wide perimeter around their home, and another alarm would sound if anyone entered the interior of their dwelling. She checked his work and added her own more sophisticated magic of concealment, to divert the eyes of anyone who might step upon the Mantle, as well as an explosive surprise for anyone who thought to try their hand at tampering with the simpler spells. The mother had taught her son to climb, following the instruction of the Sheikah, and he was skilled at it, as in most practice of the body. She told him they were going up the face directly behind their home and then trekking across the plain above. The boy led the way, surefooted up the cliff-face, pulled himself up the ledge, and stared in awe at the open field. His mother told him it was called Risoka. The high peak to their right was the namesake Summit of their people. In the far left distance rose Mount Agaat. And behind them sprawled the lands of the desert from which they lived in exile. She told him to lead onward, and mind the wolves. Her son had learned the way of the soldier and the hunter, had been training from the moment he could hold a dagger, and was equal to anything on the Mantle besides the rare grizzlemaw.
He had never been so far from home. They made camp in the lee of the Summit, halfway across the plain. She corrected his spellwork, which she found inefficient and lazy. He was happy. Variety was novel. He yearned to explore, to see more than just their home, more than just the small snowfield where they subsided. She told him he was not ready. She pointed to the Summit above their heads. There is a Lynel, she told him, that he must conquer. It would be a test. What she said he remembered forever. They slept in the open air. They trusted the cocoon of their magic for warmth and safety. They distrusted setting fires, which were too easily seen, even in the remote highland wilds.
They reached their destination the following day. The mother had found this hidden corner of the world in the course of her first training as a witch. The legends of her people were incomplete. Or rather, they had shifted, been changed by circumstance, by the tellers and the authors over time. Yet hints remain always, suggestions in the gaps. And their truth stood before mother and son in massive fact: that the absent one is greatest of them all. Her son knew the official histories. The story of the Seven had always been his favorite, no surprise considering his date of birth. But, she now explained, looking with her son upon the enormous statue, in earlier versions of that history the telling had been somewhat different. The Seven had not stopped the invaders at the gates. The four who were to hold the eastern gate had been pushed back. So three were sent from the western front to support them and hold the line at the edge of the wastes, and thus seven heroines stood triumphant over their enemies, the bloody corpses scattered across the East Barrens. The duty of the west was given to the single remaining warrior only. And in her people's time of desperate need, she called forth greater magic than anyone had seen in a thousand years. For this feat she had been shunned, called a threat and a taboo-breaker, her contributions scrubbed from history. Upon this furthest mountainside, however, her image was sheltered from the desert winds that had taken such toll on the likenesses of those who had betrayed her and her memory. The heroine stood grand and proud. Her son had often asked about what it meant to be a voe. Here was part of the answer. For a Gerudo, it meant greatness and it meant power. Their society had proved itself uneasy with both, and willing to scorn those who had them. They strayed from tradition by doing so. In the language of their ancestors, the mother told her son, the word "voe" was simply "king". Their mightiest heroine survived in fragmentary manuscripts and a statue seen by no one. The Gerudo voe, she said, must claim his birthright. His to wear the crown, his to claim his queen and the harem of his concubines. His to rule, and lead the Gerudo back to greatness like the Eighth's.
He hated to disappoint her. The statue was astonishing. The world was astonishing. He longed to see it. Everywhere he looked was something new. The allure of the harem was lost on him, but kingship he supposed could be interesting. At least, he would surely meet interesting people.