In Nayru's Palm

“Beautiful, Sheik,” Letta breathed to me. Suspended between us was a fuchsia flame, blossoming in the air like one of the flowers in the courtyard of my old home. “Sustain it for just a bit longer…”

My head throbbed, but the flame didn’t flicker. Finally my mentor held up her hand, and the fire extinguished itself in a wisp of silver smoke. My shoulders sagged. Sweat coated my body, making my bandages stick to me like an unshed skin.

“You’re progressing wonderfully, child,” she praised me, a smile pulling at her creased mouth. Unable to help myself, I imitated the gesture, though my body threatened to collapse beneath me. Letta rose to her feet and walked to her kitchen, her gossamer hair trailing behind her like the train of a gown. Upon her return, she handed me a cup, and I drank sparingly from it, knowing, from prior experience, that if I consumed it too quickly I would be sick. The water smoothed my throat and cleared my mouth of the gluey substance that always followed heavy exertion. I stood, and the woman offered me another cup, taking the empty one in exchange. The honey and milk tasted rich, and I wasn’t fond of the taste anyway, but it helped my energy return.

“Thank you,” I said to her, walking into the kitchen and putting the second cup in the pile of dirty dishes.

“Why don’t you go play with Rue for a bit, and then you can go to your other lessons, hmm?” I nodded to her and left.

Rue’s head came up the moment I came within sight of the front yard. Impa had her on her lead, but Rue pulled out of the hold with a couple of bounds, making it clear that she would get to me with or without her. She circled my legs a couple of times and sat at my side, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. I grinned and tugged the leash off of her head. The wolfo had reached the point where she followed me without such equipment, and she followed commands the first time they were given. I knelt and rubbed her body with my hands.

“How was your lesson?” Impa asked from my side, as usually reaching close proximity without my being the wiser.

“I held a flame for five whole minutes,” I told her, pride in my voice.

“That’s good. And you can call Mirage now, right?”

“Yes.” I had told her that a few weeks ago.

“Good. We’re going on a trip to Kakariko, and I want you to come with me. We have some business to take care of there.”

It turned out that I wasn’t the only one to accompany her, though I was the youngest. Pyrrna and her mother were also coming, as were Soun and his father. According to Impa, this was to be Pyrrna’s and Soun’s first excursion into Hyrule, and, for the occasion, one of their parents would come with them as guidance.

Soun had pretty much left me alone since that night a couple of weeks before, but I knew that it had happened, and he hadn’t forgotten. He treated me the same in front of our friends, but every so often he would prevent me from doing something and accompany it with some significant look. I was apparently to assume that this meant he was helping me keep my cover, but all it succeeded in doing was make me think longingly of leaving his laundry in a vat of half-spoiled milk until it absorbed the smell.

Pyrrna, of course, was still no friend to us. Thankfully, Garren had already gone on his first trip, so he would not be coming. It didn’t make her presence any more appealing, though. As I saddled my grey mare, she shot me dirty looks that made me more inclined to check my equipment twice more before trusting it with my horse. Her mother looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I had seen her before, so I dismissed it.

I checked to make sure my bow and arrows, and then checked my strings. I had been receiving training with Impa’s other sister, so that I could use weapons, but I still wasn’t allowed to use the knives preferred by the Sheikah. The thing with knives, I was told, was that if you couldn’t use them with precise skill, they were that much easier to manipulate until they aided my opponent. A bow was much safer, and I was a fair shot, though not as good as I would have preferred.

“Let’s go,” Impa called, mounting her chestnut stallion with easy grace, though she winced at the strain on her leg. I struggled to emulate her, but even with the stirrups she chose to do without, I still only managed to wriggle my way into my saddle, and once I got my seat I had to lean my weight to the right to realign. Mirage’s head was up, ears forward; she knew we were going on a trip, and she was excited.

“All set, Sheik?” Soun called to me, trotting up on his roan gelding. I glared as he came alongside me, half wishing that Mirage would kick him.

“I am fine,” I answered stiffly.

“Soun, watch your horse!” his father yelled, as Mirage and the roan touched grey noses. The roan pinned his ears and bit at her, and she retaliated with a cow kick to the rider's leg. His horse shied as he yelped, and I got the satisfaction of seeing him fall in the dirt.

This might be fun after all.

On horseback, the trip didn’t take nearly as long as it had on foot for Impa and me. We were there at the north end by the end of the day, and we dismounted outside the village and loosened the horses’ girths so they could roam with more comfort. Impa told me that horses didn’t like climbing stairs if they could help it.

The village was nice, in a quaint sort of way. I felt bad for thinking so, especially since I had been living in the simpler Sheikah village, but I expected something more grand, since it was not only the place that guarded the gate to Death Mountain, but it also held the graveyard for both Sheikah and the Hylian Royal family. I wondered absently if my father had made it there.

We passed a brawny, balding man and a much smaller, thinner man after coming down the first flight of stairs, as our feet touched grass again. The brawny one turned, to show a face with a thick brown beard and beady eyes that widened in recognition when he saw my attendant.

“Impa, is that you?” In two strides he had reached us, and he clapped Impa on the back with one of his huge, hairy hands. “I thought you had been killed! I’m glad to see you escaped.”

The skinnier man, with long auburn hair brushing his shoulders, came and joined us as well. “It is good to see you, Impa,” he greeted. His voice was more tired, but it did hold cheer.

“They are shopkeepers that had wares in the Castle Market. Tazu,” she said to us, gesturing to the larger of the pair, “had the Bazaar, and Kean ran the potion shop.”

“Well, hopefully we will be able to run those businesses again,” Kean said, wincing and rubbing at the back of his neck. “Recently the market has been overrun with monsters. We can’t work there anymore.” His hair shielded his face, but his arm seemed tense.

“What kinds of monsters?” Impa asked quietly. Her face had hardened, and her eyes were steely.

“Redeads,” Tazu stated gruffly. “They came in at night, and…”

I noticed he shook, and I didn’t blame him.

I had heard of redeads. They were dead bodies, reanimated and living with no regard to any morals they had as people. In order to live, they had to draw on the energy of the living. No wonder these people were shaken.

“Can we get rid of them?” Soun asked, looking to Impa.

“No.” She sounded defeated. I moved closer to her and took her hand, and she squeezed mine. Soun shot me a look, a look that I ignored. Impa’s pain was more important at the moment.

“Are you staying?” Kean was saying.

“Afraid not,” replied Impa. “We are here to take care of a bit of business, and then we must leave again.”

“Shame.” Tazu smiled. “You’re welcome at my hearth anytime. You and your group.”

“Mine too,” Kean said earnestly.

“Thank you, but we have a home here already. But we will be seeing you.” Impa waved as we turned and crossed through the village. By the time we had reached the other side, where our house was, I was sick of stairs. No wonder the horses didn’t like them.

When we got inside, a man looked up from his table. He had broad shoulders and strange hair, and wore a scowl as easily as he wore his clothes. The scowl disappeared when he saw Impa, and he got up and embraced her, clapping her on the back. She smiled over his shoulder as they greeted each other. I gathered that he was family.

We settled in quickly, and when we were done, I noticed Impa had disappeared. When I asked about it, I was told that she did that sometimes. Well, that might have been, but she had never done that around me before. Had she always acted differently around me before?

Maybe.

We were left to our own devices, so I left the house to explore the village. As I wandered, there were several times when I almost stepped on a cucco. I walked up yet another flight of stairs and bumped into a redheaded girl.

“I’m so sorry!” she said frantically, getting up. “I’ve been looking for my cuccos, but I can’t grab them ‘cause I’m allergic and they keep running away from me and—”

“It’s okay,” I assured her, realizing I probably sounded just as frantic as she did. Her anxiety was contagious, and it made me nervous.

“I shouldn’t be running around like this—”

“Are you okay, lady?” I asked, beginning to panic. She was obviously distressed.

“Yes, yes I’m fine,” she said, seeming to pull herself together. “I’m sorry, I really am. It’s just, everyone’s so scared and frightened anymore because of all the stuff that’s happening, and it makes me get scared and frightened and then I forgot to close my cuccos in properly and now they’re loose and by the Realms I’m sorry I’m freaking out…”

I patted her awkwardly on the back until she stopped crying so much. When she did, she looked up at me and smiled.

“You’re a nice boy, you really are.” Her eyes widened as she noticed my bandages. “Oh, I’m so sorry; I didn’t realize you were hurt—”

“I am fine, lady,” I said. “You are not hurting me, really. Is there anything I could do to help?”

“Well,” she sniffled. “Could you help me round up my cuccos? They’ve all flown off and I don’t know where they’ve gone anymore…”

“Yes, lady,” I said.

As we rounded up her birds (really the loudest and stupidest creatures I have ever encountered) she told me about the houses around the town as we passed them.

“That’s the Skulltula house, a really rich family lives there, they’re supposed to be cursed…This place is going to be another Shooting Gallery, the owner of the one in the market lost his old one…That house is really creepy, some old woman lives there who sits in the smelly old place and pets her cat all day…”

It must have been stifling to live there; this girl seemed to know everything about every person who had ever lived here during her lifetime. I couldn’t imagine knowing so many people so well. Was everybody here like this?

“Thank you so much,” she said, as the last cucco was put back into its pen. The tilted sun left shadows like holes on the ground.

“Yeesh. Nighttime already.” The girl shivered. “I always get the creeps around now. I’ve heard that the spiders carrying the Skulltula curse come out at night, and then the graveyard is so close…”

“The graveyard? Where is the graveyard?” I asked. I wanted to visit there, at least once.

“It’s just through that archway, past the windmill,” she directed. “Be careful, it’s creepy in there.”

I nodded and ran through.