CHAPTER 18
Link gingerly lowered his bow, scowling and shaking his head. The arrow was just a warning – he knew damn well that no Skull Kid in his right mind would willingly fight a living child – but he was in no mood to put up with any further tomfoolery. Who knew what this Skull Kid was capable of, when he'd so casually suggested that they eat Link's betrothed?
Speaking of which. . . . . . . . .
"Ruto? Are you hurt?" he asked, stowing his bow away.
"No. . . . . . . . .at least, I don't – I don't think so."
He gently pulled her out of his tunic and inspected her diminutive frame. No, she wasn't wounded – merely apprehensive and disoriented.
"Easy. Easy, love," he tried to reassure her. "You're all right. There's no danger now."
Ruto opened one eye, winced in discomfort and shut it again. Then she opened both eyes together – and no sooner did she open them than the twinkling fairy-lights entranced her. "Link. . . . . . . . .where on Din's red earth are we?"
Link took a deep breath, his smile stretching from one ear to the other. "Home."
"Home, as. . . . . . . . .in. . . . . . . . .the Lost Woods?"
Link peered in Ruto's direction as she mounted his shoulders, draping her miniscule frame around his neck. "Where else would we be?" he asked, still smiling, with one eyebrow raised.
"That must've been a false path, then," she replied, shuddering.
"False path?"
"The Lost Woods are famous for such paths, aren't they? For leading unwary travelers astray until they've reached the entrance again? I never would've imagined that this process would be so. . . . . . . . .so, so utterly horrifying, though. . . . . . . . ."
"Are you referring to that – that hollow tree back there?"
"The very same! By the way, are those false paths all hollow trees, or is that the only one?"
Wait. So, Ruto thought that they'd been in the Lost Woods this whole time? Link had surely heard the stories about false paths, but none of them described anything like the interdimensional blackness that they'd traversed. Perhaps she'd been mistold?
"Um, Ruto. . . . . . . . .I didn't think to tell you this before, but. . . . . . . . ."
"Tell me what?" Ruto asked, glancing upward impatiently.
Link tenderly bit his lower lip, trying to determine the best way to explain the matter to somebody born (or hatched, in Ruto's case) yesterday. "I found you in Termina. Not Hyrule."
