Queen Lyra decreed that there would be a grand ball the following evening to welcome their illustrious guests. Zelda tried to beg off, saying they needed to continue on their journey, but the queen pointed out that it would take a few days before they could have everything ready to take them all the way to the human realm.
Zelda looked to Link, who shrugged a little. He didn't see that it mattered if the Zora had a reception for them while they waited to depart.
"Very well," Zelda agreed.
The queen's advisor—who was introduced to them as Fluet—showed Link and Zelda to a massive bedroom with a ceiling nearly as high as the one in the throne room. The entire wall behind the bed was windows with delicate mullions in the shape of seashells. In the dark distance, pale figures could be seen gracefully swimming. The lights of a city beyond the castle could also be seen, but no buildings could be made out in the dark. The lighting in the bedroom was dim, like in the throne room, making it feel as if night had fallen, although a glance up showed light penetrating the water. Above, it was daylight, but that seemed to have no effect on the Zora. Link wondered if their lighting was dim because they were accustomed to being in the dark water.
"Don't worry about anyone looking in," Fluet said, noticing them looking at the wall of windows that seemingly exposed the entire bedroom to curious onlookers. "From the outside, the windows are silver; you can't see in them.
"What do you put on them to accomplish that?" Link asked, stepping closer to examine them.
"Nothing, My Lord. It's just the way air bubbles work."
"Air bubbles?"
"Yes, My Lord."
Seeing Link's confusion, Fluet stepped up to the window, then thrust his hand through it. When he pulled his hand back in, it was dripping wet.
"We are in an air bubble," he explained to a shocked Link. "The building exists merely to anchor it in place."
Link was immediately fascinated. He tentatively stuck his hand through the window and it felt like plunging it into a tub of very cool water. When he pulled it back in, it was wet.
"Where does the air come from?" he asked, still marveling at the wall of "windows" that held back the flood of waters by mere surface tension.
"We pump it down here from above so that the air stays fresh."
"Where are we, exactly?" Zelda asked. "Are we at the bottom of Lake Hylia?"
"No, My Lady," he said, turning to her with a slight bow. "Lake Hylia has a tunnel which connects it to the sea. We are in the ocean, off Hyrule's southern coast."
It was nearly another day's journey from Lake Hylia to the closest point of the southern coast. Either the Zora were very fast swimmers, or somehow Link and Zelda had been drowned for the better part of twenty-four hours.
Link didn't think even he and Zelda, in their magically-restored states could manage to survive that. But the Zora didn't seem surprised that they had survived the journey.
"How . . . how are we not dead?" Link asked.
"We have means of covering great distances very quickly. The passage between Lake Hylia and here contains a sort of vortex which sucks you from one end to the other at great speed. There are a number of similar vortexes around the kingdom which greatly reduces travel time for individuals. Commerce and children under a certain age, however, have to travel by regular means; the vortex is rather rough."
"Do you really execute people for blowing the horn?" Zelda asked.
"It is the law, but it has never been applied, that I am aware of," Fluet replied. "A commutation to life imprisonment is the norm."
"So everyone gets sentenced to hard labor in your mines?" Link asked.
"For a time. But if they behave tolerably well, then they will be released."
"But . . . the stories on surface are that anyone who blows the horn will disappear and never be seen again."
"Oh, well, that part is true, My Lord. They are released from laboring in the mines, but we do not allow anyone to go back to land once they come here; it's safer for us if no one knows where we are." He spread his hands. "But, it isn't all bad, I don't think. We learn about the goings-on of the surface and he—for it is inevitably a he who blows the trumpet—is taken care of. The last such person we had, oh, back in my grandfather's day, had some wood-working skill and he made a very nice living from it. We do not do woodworking ourselves, for obvious reasons, so wooden objects are highly prized. He settled down with a Zora girl and had a family and did not seem to miss the surface."
Link perked a brow. "He was able allowed to marry a Zora?"
"Yes. It is rare for it to happen, but his valuable talent made him very desirable as a mate."
"And . . . their children. Were they Zora? I mean, could they swim and breathe underwater, as you do?"
"Yes. Their Zora features were muted, so they looked a bit more human-like, but they had all the necessary features to live underwater.
"One of his grandchildren was a classmate of mine," he continued. "If you knew his lineage, then you could see little hints of his mixed-breeding, but if you didn't know, you wouldn't notice it."
"Why is it a capital crime to blow the horn?" Zelda asked. "What is its purpose that it must be so strictly guarded?"
Fluet looked at her with mild surprise. "It is Hylia's Horn, My Lady. It belongs to you so that you may summon us whenever you have need for us. We cannot allow random surface-dwellers to play with it to amuse themselves; it is a sacred object."
Link couldn't help but smile a little ruefully at his words, but he didn't point out the irony that when Hylia had actually shown up to blow the horn, they had treated her like everyone else.
A moment later, maids started bringing things into the room. There were towels, so they could dry off, and fresh clothes to change into. The maids also brought in two waterlogged baskets that were deformed and slumping, like fat pillar candles that had been left out in the direct sun all day long.
Link started to pull things out, like their tent. Water poured out onto the floor as he struggled to hoisted it up—it weighed two or three times what it weighed dry—and the maids quickly came with mops and pushed the excess water into drains, which were set in regular intervals in the floor.
"My apologies," the advisor said with a low bow. "We will dry it out for you," he said, before snapping his fingers. Three maids hurried over and took the tent from Link, carrying it out of the room. Another one went behind them, mopping up.
Link set aside the tent poles and unstrung Zelda's bow—which was barely strung anyway, as the bowstring had stretched considerably from the water—leaving everything flat on the floor; hopefully everything would dry out without too much warping. Zelda's bow had been in all kinds of weather before, and it had even gone for a dip in water a time or two when they were on their quest, but it was now terribly old. Like Link's sword, it had been carefully maintained by their descendants—waxed regularly to preserve the wood—but only time would tell if it would survive.
Thankfully, the leather quiver which held the Light Arrows, although wet, looked completely unfazed, as did the Soul Scepter. Obviously their magic kept them from being damaged. The same was true of the telekinesis glove and clawshot; although neither were divinely magical, the ancients had made them indestructible, which is why they were still around after so many thousands of years.
Link laid all the items out on the floor to dry.
His sword and shield—which had apparently been stripped from him before he was taken before the queen—were also returned to him. The mirror shield was no worse for wear, but the new scabbard for Link's ancestral sword was quite waterlogged. Water came out of the scabbard in a stream when he pulled out his sword. He tossed the scabbard on the floor to, hopefully, dry out before he needed it again. But his sword needed some immediate attention before it rusted.
"I can have that cleaned up for you, My Lord," Fluet offered, no doubt seeing Link's unhappy expression upon seeing his ancient sword exposed to salt water.
Link handed the sword to him, hilt first. "Please do. It's very old and needs to be taken care of."
Fluet bowed his head, then had one of the maids whisk it from the room.
Link turned back to the contents of the baskets. All the hardtack and pemmican and dried stuffs they had packed for emergency rations were ruined. Another maid whisked away the soggy mess with more apologies.
Link didn't even bother to try to get the charcoal out of the bottom of Zelda's basket. It was a black mess and completely unsalvageable. As the basket was already a loss, it didn't make much difference one way or the other. Link had a couple of the maids take away the baskets as well.
"I'm sorry," the advisor said, bowing yet again. "We will replace all your damaged goods before you leave."
Zelda made a noise of disgust as she looked at her bow lying on the floor. "Nothing will replace my bow if it's ruined. Do you know how many demons I killed with that thing? It was my pride and joy. And it's practically a holy relic in Hyrule."
The advisor fell to his knees and pressed his head against the floor. The remaining maids in the room hurried to lay face down on the floor.
"We have sinned against you, My Lady," Fluet moaned. "Do to us as you see fit."
This brought Zelda up short. She had been more irritated than truly angry, but that evaporated in the face of their contrition. She had a vague memory of people revering her, but she felt it was more like the sort of respect she was shown when she was a queen, rather than this level of trembling submission.
She suddenly remembered that the fairy on the mountain in Erenrue had unlocked her memories of being Hylia in order to remind her of her connection to Link, only to lock them away again. Zelda had demanded, at the time, to know why she had to forget again. The fairy said that knowing the power she had wielded as a goddess, but not being able to use it, would only serve to frustrate her.
But Zelda wondered if the truth was that she'd just find it awkward if she and others were conscious of the fact that she was Hylia? Having people grovel at her feet was a type of power, but it wasn't one she was comfortable with. She had been a mortal being for so long, she wasn't able to think of herself as a being deserving of worship any longer.
Granted, she had had a lot of people grovel in front of her when she was Queen of Hyrule, but it was always because they had done something bad and they were hoping for some mercy when she passed judgment on them. Perhaps now wasn't technically different than then—these people were asking for the same thing—but somehow the tone was different.
"Well . . . I just expect a new bow if mine is ruined," she said begrudgingly.
"We will acquire one for you post-haste."
"Very well then." When he didn't offer to get up, she added, "You are dismissed."
"Yes, My Lady," he said humbly, before rising to his feet. He took a few steps back, his head still bowed and eyes averted, then went quickly from the room.
"You never told me that the Zora worship you," Link said quietly to Zelda, as the maids continued their work.
"Honestly, I didn't remember."
"I don't think you should tell them that; it might offend them to know they were forgotten." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Although, considering they tried to punish you for blowing a horn they said was yours to use, it looks like the forgetting goes both ways."
Zelda shook her head a little. "I don't remember much at all from my life as Hylia. Just . . . bits and pieces. Kind of like . . . a dream that you can only vaguely remember when you wake up." She looked him. "Mostly, I just remember being with you. Those memories do come back to me clearly sometimes."
He laughed and started to make a comment, but suddenly stopped.
"What?" she asked.
He frowned, looking as if something concerned him. "I . . . don't remember much from then, either," he confessed. "I mean, I remember working with you to defeat some evil—I don't remember what, exactly—and I remember living with you and having children, but I don't know what we did most of the time, other than that."
"Well, neither of us were mortal at the time. I suppose since we've changed forms, we've lost some of the memories we used to have."
"Or, maybe memories of past lives work like memories when you're alive: the longer you're around, the less you remember about the distant past. You forget all but the most important things."
"I suppose you're the most important thing, since you're what I remember most from back then," Zelda said with a smile.
"Well, of course," he said, as this was patently obvious, "and that's why you're all that I remember."
Link and Zelda were rather exhausted from their near-drowning experience and they went to bed early. The next day, the palace was in quite a state as everyone hurried to get ready for the last-minute ball and the arrival of many noble guests. A page boy showed Link and Zelda around the palace a bit—they were particularly fascinated by the huge library filled with stone tablets instead of books—but after nearly being run over twice by servants carrying large loads, unable to see where they were going, they retreated to their room to get out of the way. They had experienced many such chaotic moments in their days as royals, and they knew the best thing to do was let everyone do their job without interruption.
In the early evening, servants came to help them prepare. Link supposed it shouldn't have struck him as odd that people who lived underwater did not have a concept of a bath, but he found saltwater left him feeling a bit sticky all over, and his hair was stiff and sticking out at weird angles that was too much to tolerate, even with it normally being rather unruly.
He had the maids bring them several buckets of fresh water and he and Zelda stood over a drain in the floor and took turns rinsing each other off. It wasn't anything like a nice hot bath, but it refreshed them well enough.
Once they were dried off, they examined the formal clothes that the maids had brought them to wear. Zelda picked up a dress that fluttered like gauze in the wind. "Oh, this is so light!" she exclaimed. "It hardly weighs anything at all."
Link picked up the cote for him and found it was likewise so lightweight, it almost felt like nothing at all. If not for the gold ball buttons down the front, it might have felt too light to exist.
Zelda rolled the fabric in her fingers. "It feels like silk, but it's lighter than anything I've ever seen."
"Well, seeing how they don't have access to silk worms, I have to assume something underwater has to produce it."
Maids took Zelda to a dressing table on the other side of the room and helped her to dress and arrange her hair. While they were working Link toweled off his hair and combed it into some semblance of normalcy (for him, at any rate) and dressed in the Zora clothing.
The cote was woven with different-colored warp and weft threads, so it shimmered and seemed to change color as he moved. It went back and forth between a brilliant emerald and rich, vibrant blue, like a peacock shaking its feathers. The hemline was asymmetrical; on his right side it stopped at his upper thigh, but on the left side it fell to just below his knee. It buttoned all the way up the front with what looked like a hundred little gold ball buttons. It was probably meant to fit pretty close to the body, but Link was obviously smaller than its owner, because it was a bit loose on him, although it was more comfortable than baggy. It had a very short standing collar and long, fitted sleeves, but at the back of the sleeves, hanging like old-fashioned tippets, were the "fins" he had been seeing on the mer-people, made out of silk so fine, just his breath caused it to gently flutter in the air. He finally had his answer to the question of whether the fins were real or just clothing.
The pants provided were a brilliant white—whiter, possibly, than any fabric he had ever seen. They were a little loose and baggy through the thigh and knee, but tapered to a fit at the calf. The cuff on them was asymmetrical as well, coming into points on the outsides of the leg, a few inches above the ankle. There were no shoes to go with the clothes, but Link had noticed none of the Zora wore shoes. Between needing the use of their flipper feet, and swimming, rather than walking, it made sense that they would not need or want shoes.
There was only one piece of jewelery, and that was a single earring.
After Link and Zelda had defeated Ganondorf, and Zelda had been crowned Queen, Link had returned home for a few months while Zelda cooked up a plan to make the common people love him so that they would approve of her marrying him. While there, his uncle had offered to bestow upon him an earring.
In Kakariko County, it was traditional for sailors to get their ear pierced when they had sailed alone or had command of a ship for three or more days, or had survived a storm. Most boys from Kakariko went out on a boat for the requisite amount of time when they came of age specifically in order to earn their earring—regardless if they wanted to be fishermen professionally. It had evolved into a sign of manhood.
Link had both sailed solo (having Zelda on board didn't count, as she wasn't a sailor) for more than three days, and had survived a storm that shipwrecked him and Zelda both.
Everyone in the entire village had turned out for Link's piercing. It was a special coming-of-age ceremony for any young man, and everyone normally took part, but his family's neighbors and friends seemed extra interested in seeing the Savior of Hyrule and Lord High Chancellor kneel down, put his ear against the stump set up in the middle of the town square, and have a needle hammered through it. Thankfully, Link's uncle was a good executioner, of sorts, because he only had to deliver one hit from a wooden mallet to drive the needle through, pinning Link's left earlobe to the stump.
Alfon had wiggled the needle out and put in a small, but thick gold hoop. There were many cheers from the onlookers, and pats on the back, and praise for his stoicism (although painful, it was far from the worse thing he had had to endure over the previous twelve months). It was the first time Link had ever truly felt like he was a part of the community. He had come home so infrequently as a child that he was more a visitor than a resident. And the fact that he was destined to be a knight and serve the monarch in the capital had further widened the gulf between him and the simple fishermen of his hometown. But, being acknowledged to be a sailor—in fact, having sailed farther than anyone alive, save his father, and manging to return to tell the tale—made him one of them, regardless of what rank or position he would have in the future.
Link had removed the earring when he left Kakariko, and with all the excitement over the announcement of his and Zelda's engagement, and the speed at which the wedding had been thrown together, he had not even told Zelda about it until they were on their honeymoon progress and passing through Kakariko County, where he felt the need to wear it. Zelda had proclaimed it made him look like a pirate. But when they were in bed at night, she had casually played with it, and he got the distinct impression that she secretly liked it. Maybe she found the thought of him as a pirate sexy? Regardless, he wore it from time to time, when the mood struck him—never for formal events or when he was sitting on the throne, but when he was being casual or when he and Zelda traveled. Despite the fact that he didn't often wear it, it caught the attention of everyone when he did, and soon many young men around the castle were rebelliously sporting one as well. Before long, it was a fashion in the entire city for bold young men. Just like his Kakariko-style tunics had once been a distinct regional fashion that became popular because he wore it, so too had the sailor's earring become a trend.
Link smiled at the memory and decided to wear the Zora earring. It was not a simple gold hoop, however; it was a series of white and black pearls joined with gold loops. At the end were several strands of fine gold chain that made a sort of tassel. It was so long, it lay on his shoulder.
Link sat on the end of the bed and waited for Zelda to finish. Even with help, it always took her longer to get ready. But he didn't mind; what she looked like when she was done always made it worth the wait.
He was turned, looking out the windows when Zelda announced, "Ready." He turned to look at her and quietly gasped at the sight.
She was wearing a dress as light and frothy as seafoam. It seemed to be made of many layers of silk so fine it was transparent, and it looked to have just enough layers to prevent it from being see-through—barely. It was dyed in an ombré gradient that went from a pale seafoam green at the top to a soft turquoise at the bottom. It had double-strands of large pearls as straps to hold it up. It had wrist-length, trumpet-shaped sleeves, but these were merely decorative, hanging off the shoulder in a gentle drape. Like his outfit, there were gauzy, fin-like tippets hanging from the back of the sleeves. The body of the dress was A-line, having no shaping to it, instead hanging in the same sort of drape as the sleeves. The V-shaped neckline was rather plunging. At the bottom, the hems of each layer of silk were cut so each one was a little bit longer than the one above, and some special shaping or stitching made the edges of each hem gently roll like the scalloped edge of a shell. The final layer of silk fell to within a few inches of her ankles, and she was likewise barefoot.
Around her neck she wore a long string of pearls and pink coral beads that hung almost as low as her neckline, and on her right wrist were three rather substantial bangle bracelets made of gold and studded with pearls or inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She had elaborate earrings of pearls and gold as well, but rather than hanging down to her shoulders, two strands on each earring looped back up and clipped to the edge of her ear in two places with gold cuffs. Her long, platinum-blonde hair was piled high on her head in a bun made of loops and soft curls and was studded with several hairpins made of gold and topped with pearls and lustrous shells. In front of the bun sat a half-crown of gold wire twisted into coral shapes and dotted liberally with pearls. Behind the bun was pinned a narrow veil that hung halfway down her back. It was so sheer, it was hard to tell if it had a color of its own. It was less substantial than even a ghost, and so light that it floated lightly behind Zelda even when she was not moving.
Zelda had very rarely worn make-up before. Link had always told her that she was so naturally beautiful, she didn't need any help, so she had never developed the habit, saving it only for masquerade balls and other times when something dramatic was called for. But the Zora maids had applied eyeshadow in the same ombré shades of green and turquoise as the dress and tinted her lips in a pinky-coral.
It was just enough to make her gray eyes stand out and bring a little color to her face, which seemed rather starkly white compared to the shades of blue and gray of everyone around them.
"Beautiful," Link whispered. Zelda lit up, smiling brightly—as she always did—when he complimented her. She had always acted like a woman who had never gotten any compliments, despite the fact that she had always been beautiful and had no doubt been surrounded by people who had told her that from childhood. But it was as if she only trusted Link to be truthful—or maybe his opinion was the only one that mattered.
He noticed that the maids behind Zelda exchanged proud looks between them. He hadn't thought about it before, but it must have been a challenge for them to dress, bejewel, and make up someone shaped and colored rather differently from everyone else. But they had adjusted wonderfully. He gave them a nod of thanks, and this really made them smile and giggle.
A moment later, there was a knock on the door. One of the maids hurried to open it, then she turned to Link and Zelda.
"Lord Fluet will show you to the ballroom whenever you're ready," she announced.
Link held out his arm to Zelda. "I'm ready, if you are."
She reached out to take his arm, but stopped. Then her hand went to touch his earring. "You still look like a pirate. Just a really rich one."
Link laughed. "Well, as long as I look successful—that's the important part."
She slipped her arm into his. "You know," she said quietly, as they headed towards the door. "I would have never expected to wind up here when we agreed to come back, but I'm not sorry that things have led us here."
"I always like to cultivate allies," Link agreed. "The tigers ended up being our most-important allies before. Who knows what help the Zora may give us before it's all over with."