In Nayru's Palm

“So we’re going to talk to a dead guy.”

“I am going to talk to a dead guy. I highly doubt you would be able to communicate with him.”

“Whoa, talk about superiority. And do you have any idea how out of place the word “guy” sounds when you mix it up with all your jargon?”

My hands clenched, and Mirage danced beneath me. I tell him everything, and he’s still just as annoying as ever. I glance to the sky before I say something rash, growing calmer by the light Farore sends over the horizon as her fiery sister recedes into oblivion.

Where did all of my control go? I thought. I never used to show anger. I’d feel it, but I never used to clench my fists and argue like I’ve been doing. I’m getting lazy.

“Well, whatever,” he went on. “I’m still escorting you in. It’s dangerous in there.”

“The danger is why I should go alone,” I told him, my anger suppressed well enough that I earned an alarmed look from Soun. Then again, when I thought about how the castle market—and the castle itself—must look, it was pretty difficult to focus on such a petty thing as being angry at my friend. And friend he was; I had decided that myself last night, when I had told him everything.

“Yeah, and you’re not the Hero of Time, Sheik,” he said in rebuttal. “Though you can defend yourself, there’s no reason for you to put yourself in pointless danger. You worry about magic and talking, and I’ll do the rest. Trust me.”

I looked up at him, searching. He wasn’t mocking me—he was smiling, but not mocking. I felt my own mouth turn up at the corners in response. I did trust him.

“All right.”

We were at the drawbridge when the aura hit me.

Nausea set firmly in my stomach in a roll of dread, and I doubled over in my saddle to clutch at my middle.

“Sheik?” Soun’s horse sidepassed to mine, and his hand brushed at my brow. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” I looked up. Black clouds that I hadn’t seen before rolled around unfamiliar black turrets. My marked hand burned. “I am fine. It is him. It affects me.”

“Can you put up a barrier or anything?”

“Doing so would only attract attention to myself, and I am not trained yet to make myself pass for a simple bystander.”

“Okay.” He was unhappy—he didn’t want me getting hurt. “Just don’t do anything conspicuous, okay? Wait ‘til we get inside the temple.”

I nodded, gritting my teeth against a strong desire to puke. My companion must have sensed the danger, for he was off his horse and helping me off mine in seconds, then leading me to the moat. Once we were there, it wasn’t long before I submitted to what I had contained, tearing back the wrappings before I really made a mess.

Wordlessly, Soun wiped at my face with a cloth procured from Nayru-knows-where.

“You sure you have to do this?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, hating my shaky voice.

He nodded, then hesitated. “You done, or no?”

I considered, but the twisting in my midsection had subsided. “Yeah.” Soun nodded again and returned to the horses, loosening the girths around their bellies enough to give them more comfort, but not enough that they’d lose their saddles, before setting them loose until we needed them again. As he finished, my attention focused ahead of us, and I frowned before stepping forward. “The drawbridge is broken,” I stated.

“Yeah.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “You—” he started, then bit back his repeated question of my determination to meet the sage. I was grateful for his control, however belatedly it returned to him.

You are definitely not the triforce of courage, I chided myself. Link would already be in that temple—well, he is, I guess—yet you can’t even bear to put your toe on the drawbridge! You need to do this!

I swallowed, and Soun’s hand tightened on my shoulder. I replaced the bandage over my mouth and stepped onto the split wood and iron.

“Let’s go.” I turned to Rue, who was pacing and whining by the horses. “Guard.”

In the entrance itself, there was already evidence of damage and deterioration. The cobblestones beneath our feet were uneven, like they were jostled out of there places in the earth. A man in shabby clothes knelt outside a door, shrouded by a cloth over his face. He held a Hylian soldier’s spear, but it looked like the wood of the shaft was weakening. A box was covered by another cloth, but where the cover was falling to one side, I could see the bars of a cage, and something glowing deep within. Deliberately, Soun put me to his left so that he was between me and the man. As we passed, the feeling of the man’s gaze on our backs sent chills up my spine, and I had strong images of that man burying that spear deep into our backs.

“Poe for me?” he rasped behind me. I jumped, somehow shocked that he could speak. Soun’s hand quickly found my elbow.

“A Poe?” I repeated, choosing to ignore Soun’s look of surprise and my own weak backbone.

“A ghost, sir,” he crooned. The “sir” was sarcastic. Soun’s jerking on my elbow got more intent, but I still dismissed it; I was beginning to feel that ignoring this man would not be intelligent of me.

“And how would I give you this Poe?”

He turned his head to me. Under his hood was naught but a deep, brilliantly glowing red eye. I suppressed another shiver.

“Put it in a bottle. I will buy it from you.”

“Nayru would watch over the evil ones…she is the one that watches over creatures like poes, stalchildren, stalfos, skulltulas…”

I remembered Kaepora’s words, taking comfort from them. I was marked by Nayru. I was more prepared to deal with evil than Ganondorf himself. I could speak with a creepy man in the street. In theory, anyway…

“And if I do not have a bottle with which I may catch one?”

A white hand emerged from baggy clothes, holding out the item I’d admitted I lacked.

“I’ll let you borrow it. But you must return it to me.”

“I will,” I promised, taking the proffered item.

“Don’t forget,” he whispered to me, stroking my hand with cold fingers before releasing me and curling in on himself, the tip of his spear grazing an overturned cobblestone. I stood and returned to Soun’s side, rubbing where his fingers had grazed my mark. Whatever my goddess had intended with that exchange, it still left me shuddering.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Soun hissed into my ear.

“Instinct.” I glanced hard at my hand, and he gave me a deep look before shaking his head and moving me forward with his hand on the small of my back.

The market was dead. Charred cloth was what was left of the stands where people had sold their wares, and doors were nodding off their hinges as if hanged. A whimper rose into my throat as I looked to the dry fountain, and then to a bunch of fallen beams where a house had collapsed. The very stones under my feet were black.

I wandered to one of the fallen booths and knelt, fingering the black and royal blue cloth left behind. My eyes burned and my throat worked. That was when I noticed something twitch in the rubble.

A survivor?

I reached for the wood and brushed it aside. Most of it was cleared away when a dark limb extended from the mess, and the stench of decaying flesh reached my nose. I sat, frozen, as more of the midden shifted and the rest of the corpse rose from the heap. It was a naked, rotting body, moaning and turning its torso as it stood. I shook, unable to move, sitting there like a frightened mouse. There was no light in its eyes, no sign of spirit at all.

When it grabbed me, I screamed.

“Sheik?”

A knife thudded into its chest, followed by three more. The redead stumbled back, releasing me, and I mirrored it, scrambling back toward Soun. I watched, waiting for it to fall back in death again, but it just turned its head around and started rising again.

“Sheik!”

I backpedaled and ran toward Soun, but stopped when I saw the redead wrapped around his body, face buried in his shoulder and neck. Soun’s face was contorted in pain, his eyes bugging and his mouth gaping, working, trying to make a sound. My pulse pounded painfully in my neck as I ran from the first redead and drew my dagger. When I was close I came around from behind and slashed at the corpse from one side of it’s torso to the other. Rotten blood of a deep purple-red splashed out, but didn’t continue bleeding as a normal wound would have. I drew back, horrified, but Soun began to scream. The sound shook me up again, and I closed in again and slashed at the things neck, stabbing until the blade separated the vertebrae. The body shuddered and its limbs went lax, dragging Soun to the ground with it.

I pried the jaws open and away from his flesh and tugged Soun farther from it. The old flesh was already receding from the bones. For a moment I stared, entranced and almost paralyzed by the grinning skull and the blank, empty eyes that were being left behind.

It was the movement beyond the skull that woke me up, and I screamed and dragged Soun away from the center and toward the temple. When we got to the steps I glanced back to see that none of the redeads had followed us. Instead, they crouched next to the fallen form of the re-slain body.

They’re mourning for it, I realized. Then I looked down at Soun and clenched my teeth. I need to get him to the Temple.

I dragged him a couple more feet before it registered that this was where I had seen Ganondorf cripple Impa. From there it wasn’t a far leap to remember that there were Sheikah stones here. I stepped to them quickly and knelt, passing a message that we had arrived. I wondered whether or not to tell of Soun’s wounds, and decided that if he got worse I would pass the message. First, his safety was a top priority.

My message left, I dragged him the rest of the way into the Temple of Time.