In Nayru's Palm

The half of the older teenagers that still talked to me happily accepted me back into their group a couple of days after my first magic lesson. I would have rejoined them earlier in their afternoon hangouts, but between being mentally sore and exhausted from repeated exercise of magic (yes, I could use that by then, to a very miniscule extent, but I always got headaches) and caring for Rue, I just hadn’t had the time. Rue followed at my side, tolerant of the rope around her neck for the time being. It was tied so that, should she pull against it, it would tighten until she put slack back into it.

She watched the other people warily as they came to greet me, several exclaiming their shock and horror at my bandages, while the ones that had seen me more recently just smiled at me, glad I could finally be with them again. It cheered me, even if the expressions were a bit sad for my sake.

I had found them sitting at the grassy, sandy slope of one of the hills. I expressed confusion as to why we weren’t back at the large rock structure.

“Didn’t we tell you?” Ralt said contemptuously. “Garren’s group has that all taken over. Some of our group has gone over to them, but for the most part, we’re not allowed.”

“Especially Ralt and Soun,” Creen whispered theatrically to me. As Soun sent her a raised eyebrow, Ralt said hotly, “You neither.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to go over there if they’re there.”

“And we do?”

“Watch her,” I warned one of the people I didn’t know as well. They were all converging on her at once, and she was giving them that look that said that bared teeth weren’t far away. “She is not very sure about people yet.”

They were more careful about her after that, but they still attempted to get close. I noticed that others weren’t even going to try getting anywhere near Rue. Already she was bigger than some of the people here. She stayed close to me, and never made the rope connecting us go taut.

“So we hang out here, then?” I asked, putting a hand on the back of Rue’s head.

“Yep,” answered Creen, lying back against the slope of the hill until the grass tickled at her ears.

“Hey, Sheik.” I turned to Soun. “Why did Impa bring you here? She was protecting the royal family over in Hyrule Castle before Ganondorf attacked. Why bring you?”

Thank Nayru Impa had already told me this. “I was living with my family when Ganondorf attacked. Impa found me in the road by myself, and took me with her.”

“Why say family?” Creen quieried, tilting her head to look at me better. “Why not say Mom and Dad?”

“My mother died when I was little, and my father and I were never very close,” I explained. At least that wasn’t a lie. My friends made sympathetic sounds.

“It is not that bad,” I protested softly. “My family cared for me very well.”

“Still, it must have sucked to not know your mother,” said Creen. “Maybe not as much, since you’re a boy, but having your dad not be close must have sucked too.”

“Are you all very close to your parents?” They looked at me oddly for a moment, and I felt uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” said Ralt. “Parents and children are very close here. Even after we reach adulthood, parents will still be watching over their children, and protecting them when they can.”

“Surely a child will not learn responsibility with such a relationship?” I asked.

“Of course they will. Parents step in when their child needs protection, but by then they’ve generally learned that we can take care of ourselves.”

“Like you’re so old, Ralt,” scoffed Creen. “You’re still too young to be anywhere near adult.”

“I’ve got older brothers and sisters,” he retorted hotly. “They’ve talked to me about it.”

“And that makes you the expert?”

“Better than you.”

“As if.”

“What’s that?” Everyone turned to Soun, and then followed his line of sight. Coming over the hill was a figure on two legs, awkwardly approaching with a slight waddle. Another followed it closely. We squinted at it, and made out the slender neck and long narrow head. Rue’s head came up, and I heard her snuffle the air. She growled. Hearing this, everybody scrambled to their feet.

“Somebody alert the village,” Creen ordered softly. A few of the group hesitated before breaking off and running to the houses. The heads of the approaching pair snapped up to attention, and then began moving toward us much more quickly.

“Halt!” Soun bellowed at them. “Who are you to come to this village?”

They did not answer. Rue had risen to her feet, the hair on her back standing as straight as the necks of the strangers. I looked up and saw green scales and reptilian heads. In their hands were blades.

“Lizalfos,” I said. “Soun, those are lizalfos!”

“Are they friends?”

Was he kidding? “No, they are not,” I breathed. Soun drew his knife. The lizalfos strode close and made a sound like a bark. A growl shuddered through Rue. Nobody noticed, until one of the lizalfos made a leap like a cat and landed on its feet close to our group and made a stab at Ralt. He dodged and fell. Next to me, the wolfos stood on her hind legs and let out a howl that made the hair on my neck stand on end, and then she had torn from my grasp and run at our aggressor. Its head whipped around to look at her, fixing beady yellow eyes on her charging form, and barked. She stood on her hind legs again and swung her forelegs, catching the lizalfos in the neck and sending it sprawling, bluish green blood bursting from rent flesh before it decomposed. The other reptile barked again, and she turned on it as it came forward. She circled once at a run, then came at it like the she had the other. As she rose, it swung its blade and caught her arm, making her fall back. Her eyes were crazed, but she limped in a circle again.

“Rue, no!” I called. Her eyes were distant, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. The lizalfos watched her warily. There was a movement to my right, and a blade appeared in the side of its throat. The lizard froze and fell, decomposing before our eyes, just like its partner.

“Rue, come,” I ordered. Rue looked up, her eyes still crazed. “Rue, come.”

She hesitated, then walked closer to me, limping and watching me warily. Her rope dragged behind her. Blood matted the hair on her foreleg.

Soun went forward and lifted his knife from the spot where the lizalfos had disappeared.

“That was…” Creen began, but she didn’t finish her sentence. The gravity of what had happened hung between us, and everybody watched Rue stalk her way toward me, her eyes going back to normal only when I petted and crooned to her, my hand once more around her rope. She licked at my face then.

A pair of Sheikah appeared by the group. They looked around.

“What happened?” one demanded. She was a tall woman with black hair braided back, down to her waist.

“Lizfods,” said one of the group.

“Lizalfos,” I corrected softly. The woman looked to me.

“What did you say?” she asked. Her eyes flashed when she recognized me.

“A pair of lizalfos came from over the hill. We sent a couple of people to tell you, but they attacked us. Rue killed one, and Soun got the other.”

The woman’s eyes did not soften. The other Sheikah—a man—said something in a language I did not understand, and she nodded. She took a step toward me, but Rue stepped between us, still favoring her leg, and growled at her. The woman froze, but her hand went to her knife hilt.

I wrapped my arms around Rue and glared over her neck at the woman. She would not hurt the wolfo, no matter untrusting she was of her. The woman tensed as she saw how close I was to Rue, and didn’t move. Did she honestly think that the creature that had just protected all of us would turn on me so easily?

The man disappeared.

“He speaks the truth, Kesha,” Creen said to the woman. Kesha glanced at her, but didn’t answer.

“You come back to the village,” she said instead to all of us. Slowly everybody followed her, me included, and Rue stayed at my side all the way home.

Apparently the Sheikah knew a language that they did not intend to teach me, and they used it to discuss what I assumed to be the occurrences on the hillside. Impa listened throughout, but, in Hylian, chided, “The boy does not lie. If there were lizalfos here, they will not be the only creatures coming here.”

Somebody spoke harshly to her, but this time she responded in her own language in such a sharp tone that he ducked his head, silent now. Another person whispered something to Impa, and she sighed.

“Ganondorf, leader of the Gerudo, reached the sacred realm when Hyrule Castle fell.”

Everybody, including my friends and me, stared in horror at her. She stared at the table in front of her.

“I believe that we will get many more monsters than these. Surely you have heard of the problems with the gorons and the zoras?”

A couple nodded, but many didn’t even do that—their faces said enough on their own.

“He did this by his hand. I have also heard that the Great Deku Tree of the Kokiri Forest has been killed by a curse. The forest is unprotected.”

“We can’t do anything about that,” protested Kesha. “If we enter the forest, we will be lost. No humans can go there.”

“I am aware of this,” Impa replied gently. “I am informing you of the circumstances. Unfortunately, Ganondorf is sure to throw many different horrors upon this world, and we will have our hands full. We might very well have to keep all of our power here and in Castle Town.”

Nobody answered this. The impact of her words apparently robbed her fellow Sheikah of speech.

“What of your charge?” an older man finally spoke. “The princess? Is she…”

“She is out of his reach now,” Impa said. There was an aura of finality in the tone, and even I, for a moment, believed the Hylian princess had died. I suppose, in a way, she had.

I was in a maze. Creatures spit chunks of plant matter at me, but they bounced easily off my wooden shield, and once they had been knocked out of their nests, they were easily dispatched by a blade or a well-aimed seed from my slingshot. The grass made almost no sound beneath my boots, but it rustled softly as I waded my way through the waist-high patches. Will-o-the-wisps floated in the air, leaving trails of luminescence in the paths they wove above me. There was something peaceful about this place, despite the guards. It was beautiful.

I walked up a set of stairs, and then another, after taking care of a few more scrubs. The stone beneath me was a change from the grass, but there was something elegant about it. It shone as dew settled on it, making it gleam silver. Despite the vegetation surrounding it, no plants grew on the flight’s surface. Music caressed my ears.

I reached the top, turning and looking around the place I had found. A stone insignia made its presence clear the moment I was on level ground, and the triforce was right in the middle of it. I wondered what all the designs on it were for. The uppermost tip of the triforce pointed ahead, to a set of broken stairs that once led to an opening in the wall above, now unreachable. On a stump next to these broken stairs sat somebody in green—the source of the music.

I went to her, and she looked up only when I was close enough to touch her. Not only her clothes were green—her hair was vibrantly so. An ephemeral feeling swept through the pit of my stomach when I saw her. She was very tiny, like a child. There was something incredibly vernal about her—a liveliness that exuded from her that was evident even as she sat still before me.

She was a Kokiri.

As we talked, I noticed how she looked at me with such fondness. I felt something for her, too, I realized absently, but I didn’t think it was enough to make me even near capable of replicating that kind of gaze. Even though I didn’t care for her as much as she did me, I still reveled in that look—it was like lying in long, lush grass.

She taught me to play a song that echoed all of the vitality that she had to spare, and my spirits lifted as I played it. This girl, who inspired the name Saria somewhere in my head, had me promise to play it and talk to her, and I complied. Her tiny hand reached up and brushed her hair behind a pointed ear, and she giggled melodiously. Then she put the ocarina to her lips and continued her playing like we weren’t there anymore. What an odd, flirtatious little creature she was.

I left the place, noticing as I left a stone with the inscription of an eye…

I was shaken awake. Something had a hold on my shoulder, and gave me a few shakes. I looked up at the silhouette, expecting Impa but getting Soun instead.

“What’re you doin’ here?” I groaned.

“Shh,” he replied, closing the window behind him. He glanced to my door, then looked at me. He looked down at my shoulder.

“You aren’t really burned, huh.” It was a statement, so I did not deign to answer. “Why do you pretend to be?”

Even though this wasn’t a statement, I had no answer for him.

“Who are you really, Sheik?”

“I cannot tell you,” I said. “It is late, go to sleep.”

“Who are you?”

“Go home.”

“Sheik—”

“I am tired, go home.”

“You talk like a noble.”

The phrase was random enough that I didn’t know how to reply.

“How so?” I finally asked.

“You talk all proper. Anybody from the kind of background you say you’re from wouldn’t talk like you.”

“I will keep that in mind. Go home. Go to bed. I am tired.”

“Are you the princess?”

I stared at him. As I watched, I saw his mouth twitch upward in a triumphant smile.

“I thought so.”

“You cannot tell anybody.”

“How ‘bout asking, princess?”

I turned and pulled the covers over my head.

“You don’t act burned,” he went on. “You’d be much more careful of what you touched if you were. I can help you, you know.”

“I have Impa. I do not need you.”

“Why are you here?”

“You have answered every question you have asked me. Use your imagination.”

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, ZELDA.”

I cringed under my blankets as the window opened and he crept out into the night.