In Nayru's Palm

Clad in strange, immodest clothes, I was led to a nice house near the outskirts of the small village. Impa spoke consolingly to me on the way, but none of the words managed to actually slide into my ears. I was still numb—there was an odd breeze fingering my neck, and some loose hairs still clung tightly to my neck and begged me to scratch at them. I did not oblige.

Impa tucked me into bed. It was uncomfortable and itchy, and there was no pillow. Was this Sheikah tradition, or were we just poor? I was still writhing under the sheets, trying in vain to find a comfortable spot when Impa left. Irrationally I was angry with her, though I knew that without her, I would most likely be dead. As much as I loved the three goddesses, I had no intention of joining them yet, so I guilt-tripped myself into remaining grateful.

Somehow, while still carrying on in this vein, I glided into sleep.

I stood somewhere dark. The ground crunched beneath my shod feet, and yet something wet was seeping in through the leather. Glancing down, there were spiderwebs clinging to my calf-length leather boots, but they weren’t strong enough to hold them to the black soil. The air was damp, and odd smells hit my nose. Rotting plant. I remembered the smell from when a blight had hit some of the flowers in the castle greenhouse, and many of the flowers in the warm, moist environment had started decomposing like wilting corpses.

A rustle above my head. Immediately back on the alert, my hands whisked themselves immediately to my back, my left grabbing a short sword, the right slithering expertly into straps on the back of a shield of tree bark. I looked up.

On the ceiling, clinging tightly to a bunch of root-looking rafters, was an eye. The biggest eye I had ever seen. Only when the reddish eye sailed down to my level and landed with a crash on its feet in front of me did I recognize the body—the body of an incredibly massive, spider-like creature.

I froze, but when she drew back and struck as a desert snake would, but with its whole body, I was flung backward. Mentally revived, I scrambled forward on my hands and knees through the cobwebs. When I rose to my feet, rubbing my shoulder with the back of my sword-wielding hand, I watched in horror as the arachnid plugged my entrance and exit with a series of nasty, thick webs that dwarfed the ones under my shoes.

It turned to me. Took several steps to me. Drew back.

A handle of something new was in my hand. I didn’t remember dropping my shield or my sword, but suddenly, the moment it hit its highest altitude, poised for my death, I whipped the wooden handle above my head, glaring through a two-pronged piece of wood, and, in my other hand, released a pouch. The creature screeched and fell, large eye rolling like an agitated marble, before falling briefly still, a luminous bile green. I snatched my sword and struck it once, twice, thrice…

At the fifth blow, it recovered and pulled back, its eye bloodshot and narrowed with new analysis. When I advanced this time, it clambered up the wall and moved around on the ceiling. Eyes narrowed in the darkness, having lost my relative night-vision in the glow of its one eye, I watched it walk deliberately on the ceiling, and then drop something halfway to the ground. I stepped closer, hesitantly, as it undulated above me, and then I saw something drop to the ground, and then another. By the time the third had hit the ground, the first was making ominous cracking noises. My eyes flitted once to the ceiling, where Mama was resting and clutching, before I advanced on the egg. The other two I dispatched with a blow to each with my sword, but the last—the original—burst open before I got to it. A miniature of the creature above my head looked around and, much to quickly for its age, spun and leapt at me, stabbing at me with a stinger and striking home in my thigh. Falling to the webbed earth, I yelled as pain spread, and began swiping my sword back and forth until I felt it meet carapace and meat, and the thing fell off me and burned until it was still and decomposed.

Slowly I started getting up, but began moving much more hastily when I heard a large thud just beyond my toes. Mama was on her way. Blood pounded in my ears as I grabbed for my slingshot, and just like before I shot her in the eye and she toppled to the ground, her green eye going still until I slashed at it. She cried out every time the blade raked across her eye, and I could feel the weapon digging deeper and deeper into the tissue with every swing. As she had earlier, she recovered and stumbled to the wall, climbing drunkenly. Again I watched, ignoring the pain in my leg and shoulder, until she was in the position she had come to when she dropped her eggs to me. I waited at the bottom, ready to smash them, when I saw her eye, rolled back and a brilliant crimson, dropping bug blood to the ground before her eggs even left her. Resolutely I aimed my slingshot and shot her down. Crazed, she stayed still as I cut her and then stabbed to the hilt of my sword into the center. The hilt didn’t meet resistance until it was at least halfway in, and she let out a pitiful moan as the light dulled and her body decomposed at the same rate and in the same way as her larva had.

The fight being over, I allowed myself to stumble, and saw her heart, purified somehow to a glimmering jewel-like object. I took it, and something zinged through my body, knitting the gash in my shoulder and healing the sting in my leg. Unfortunately, it did nothing for my exhaustion, and I glanced blearily around the room I was trapped in until I saw a blue glimmer in the center. There was something incredibly beautiful about the light, so bright in the middle of its ring that I couldn’t even see the material beneath it, and couldn’t discern its source.

Despite knowing nothing about it, I was drawn to it like a fairy to concentrated magic, and I had stepped in the center before I could consider anything otherwise. My body rose, and my feet left the ground, until all I saw was white.

Slowly I returned to consciousness, in my scratchy bed. For a moment I was disoriented, but then I came to hear voices, as if from far away. My immediate vicinity was silent. Sunlight on my bare wrist made the rest of my body feel cold, so I drew it from the glow of the outside world and tried to snuggle deeper into my bed. I was rewarded with a stab in the hip from something within the mattress, so I groaned and sat up. My skin was itchy still, and felt scaly. When I looked, I saw dry sweat on my spiderweb-pale arms.

With a rush, I remembered the dream. And, while it lacked in my sleep, recognition struck full force into my body, seeing the familiarity of the sword—short metal with a solid hilt of solidified Deku sap and an inset red gem in the pommel—and the shield—seemingly made of tree bark with the spiral design in a material I wasn’t familiar with, the insignia mimicking the design of the Spiritual Stone of the Forest.

I had been Link.

But why?

Before any questions could be posed to my caretaker, who had been silently standing vigil in the kitchen, she had sat me down and presented me with some kind of meat that smelled odd and, upon entering my mouth, declared itself tough to chew. I gagged on it, and earned a hard look from Impa.

“What is this?” I asked with disgust after I had—somehow—swallowed the stuff.

“You should know—you helped prepare it.” Impa was cleaning her fingernails with the tip of her dagger. When realization declared itself to me, I stared at the food in front of me.

“That dodongo thing?” I said, putting as much revulsion as I could into the three words.

“Yes.” She glanced up at me under her silver eyelashes. “Eat up.”

“A Goron wouldn’t eat this,” I grumped.

“Of course not. They eat only rocks.”

I repressed a scowl; it wouldn’t be ladylike. I wished I was like Link, with a fairy companion that I could commiserate with instead of strict Impa. Still cranky, I speared more of the meat and ate the rest of my food, but only after resuming my composure so I could do so with dignity, and not like a sniveling peasant child. At least, that was what my father had told me what sniveling would be like. I had tried it once, when I had been unhappy with where I was, and wanted to see if it would make me a peasant and I would be sent to the town. Instead, it got me spanked and sent to my room, where I was to stay until I could act my station.

After I finished, I sat still, waiting for Impa. When a few minutes passed without her doing anything, I cleared my throat. Her eyes raised to mine, and then they seemed to take in my situation. I was grateful.

“Well, pick it up,” she prompted matter-of-factly. I stared at her. She looked at my plate, then back at me. “Pick it up and take it to the pile over there. I can wash it later with the rest of the dishes in the evening, with the other women.”

I continued to stare at her, certain she wasn’t serious. It wasn’t until she looked back up at me and snapped a brusque “Now!” that I got up and stalked off with my plate like a whipped hound, taking the plate to the pile and placing it at the top. I winced as my worn feet complained at being used after such a beating as they got yesterday.

A knocking noise distracted me from my misery. I stared incredulously at the door, wondering what on earth had made it make such a sound, when Impa said in a bored tone, “Go answer the door, Sheik.”

Sheik? I glared at her, unknowing of what I had done to warrant such treatment as I was getting that morning. Before she could bark at me again, I went to the door, not certain of exactly how she expected me to “answer” it.

It made the noise again. I hesitated.

“Open the door!” Impa ordered. Why didn’t she just say so?

I did as she told, and the boy from yesterday stood on the doorstep, looking annoyed.

“You wanna play with us?” he demanded. I stood frozen in front of him, shocked at his abrupt tone. He rolled his eyes. “Are you stupid? Do you wanna come or not?”

I glanced entreatingly at Impa, but she was pointedly not looking at me.

“Impa?” I pleaded. She looked at the scene behind her chair, then returned to her fingernails.

“As long as she’s back by sundown, Ralt.”

Ralt nodded, looking resigned, and tugged at my sleeve. I started following, until a hand came down on my shoulder and handed me a pair of gloves. I put them on, and immediately the persistent hand tugged at my sleeve again, and I followed, bewildered, as he led me through the village until we reached a group of kids. They weren’t all the same age—they varied from as young as six to as old as fifteen.

“This is Sheik,” he introduced. “My mom says we have to play with him.”

His choice in pronoun didn’t even register as a couple of the younger kids grabbed at my hands and tugged me amongst them.

“We wanna play house!”

This announcement broke the dam and a river of children’s yells followed.

“I wanna be the mommy!”

“I’m the baby!”

“No, I’m the baby!”

“You can be the daddy,” a young girl, looking to be barely younger than I was, coolly informed me. “I’m your mommy.”

What in Nayru’s name were they talking about?

I found myself pulled into some intricate ritual of children announcing what they were doing. The only boy was a young one of about five that had been forced into being the brother by the same girl that had told me my odd role in the whole scheme. Several girls had announced that he was getting into trouble, he was punished, so he had to stand over there. Then it was announced that he and a young black haired girl had to go get milk from the cow, so they walked over to a girl that had to be my age, and she made mooing noises as they grasped at air under her stomach in odd, wringing gestures. I was directed to walk to one direction, then another, and then a young girl kissed my cheek. I drew back quickly at that, and got scolded for acting that way to my wife.

I glanced around, looking for some way to leave, and noticed Ralt and his older friends wander off. When the children were distracted by their “dog” I got up and followed them.

Thin yellow grass turned to red sand beneath my toes, and I finally caught up to the group. They laughed, still not noticing my approach, and trotted between a set of large, mountainous rocks that were striped with different shades of red and orange. I pursued them anxiously, and found they had disappeared. Panicking, I spun in my spot until I saw a gap in the rock to my left, and I entered.

It was dark, and I stepped carefully deeper into the rock. Sand shifted under my feet to let my foot contact more solid footing—more rock—as I crept farther in.

Something grabbed my arm. “Who are you?” a boy’s voice demanded, breaking as it hit “are”.

“Uh,” I said, panicking. What was my name supposed to be again?

“Sheik?” Ralt’s voice was surprised, but still irritated. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I followed,” I provided, still trembling at the boy holding on to my arm.

“He’s the new kid,” Ralt explained. To me, he said, “Look, you can’t just follow us, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Listen to him,” sneered another. This one actually sounded female. “He sounds like such a girl.” She pinched me, and I yelped. Why were they treating me like this?

“You’re a girl,” guffawed the boy with the funny voice. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I saw the girl punch him in the arm. I realized that he had released me.

As they seemed to forget I was there, my mind whirled around like a clockwork. They had said I acted like a girl. Called me “he” and “him”. Did they think I was a boy?

Come to think of it, even Ralt had done that. He had seen me yesterday, though!

Was I supposed to be a boy? I didn’t even know how to act like a boy!

The group continued to roughhouse, and then seemed to brush it off, laughing again. They started climbing deeper into the rock, and I followed mutely at the back of the pack. We started climbing upward, and still I went after, despite the scraping of my soles against the grainy rock, making my feet feel wet and sore. I must be bleeding, I realized dimly, still scrambling around on the rough surface. Near the top my foot slipped, and someone beneath me grabbed my hand before I fell too far.

“Careful, kid,” grumbled a boy I hadn’t heard yet. “Grab back on.”

I followed his advice, and once my footing was sure again he released me.

“Just keep up and you can stick around, ‘kay?” he said, and started climbing. I swallowed, recovering, and went to work at doing as he said.

Light broke suddenly, and I found myself in a hole in a very large, almost-flat-topped rock.

“Shit, what’s that still doing here?” complained the girl that had pinched me. She sat, all her weight on her palms and butt, leaning back with her feet in front of her. She had silvery eyes, and her black hair braided tightly at the nape of her neck. She was built like Impa—scrawny looking, but all wiry muscle. In fact, everybody here seemed to look like that.

Everybody but me.

“Lookit how white he is,” said a boy, reclining on an upward slope.

“His hair’s pretty white too.”

“Probably Hylian,” dismissed the one that had startled me so badly earlier. True to form, his voice had cracked on the first syllable out of his mouth. He was taller than the others, and looked to be the oldest.

“Weren’t you the one that led him here, Ralt?” asked the guy that caught me when I fell. He seemed older too—I’d probably place him at around fourteen or fifteen. He laid upside down on one of the red stripes in the rock, and it made it look like his head was bleeding.

Ralt looked flustered to me, and that was an aura that I was good at picking up. In court, be you young or not, discomfort is the first thing that gets smelled by the other wolves, cubs included. And among this group of self-assured older kids, his embarrassment was a red flag before he opened his mouth.

“He had to go play fetch for the two ladies,” jeered the girl, leaning back against the guy with the voice, and he placed his hand on her shoulder as he guffawed again.

“Impa brought him,” mumbled Ralt.

“And you brought Impa,” remarked one of the smaller girls. She looked small enough to be a Kokiri, and just as pixielike. Had her hair not been black, I might have mistaken her for one, until I would have realized that she had no fairy. That, and she didn’t seem to need green, with all the black she wore. “Therefore, you brought him. I think you can decide whether we keep him or not.”

Keep me?

Ralt went pale. “Look, I didn’t ask he-him to come along,” he protested.

“Quit blustering like a baby,” scoffed the first girl.

“Pyrrna, I—”

“Do you think he can do it?” She raised an eyebrow, and Ralt faltered.

“I could,” I heard myself say. I immediately flushed under all the attention that got me. I had only meant to help Ralt, but with the amused looks I was getting, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what I had just unwittingly agreed to.

“Alright then,” said Pyrrna, sitting up and looking at me. “You can stay with us if you can do the task we assign you. But no matter what, you can’t rat us out, ‘kay?”

I nodded hesitantly.

She grinned wolfishly. “Alrighty.” She came up to me and leaned close to my ear, her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll go up to the mountains, and you can steal us a Wolfos pup.” She turned to Ralt. “You think he could do that?”

He bit his lip. I expected him to say no, I couldn’t, but instead he said with resignation, “I guess so.”

Getting to the mountains was a long walk, though not as long as she would have thought. Even so, her feet were complaining as they ascended the somewhat grassy slopes, but even that respite died out after a bit. I wasn’t exactly sure what a Wolfos was, but I was pretty sure I was gonna find out.

“We are arming him, right?” I heard Ralt ask Pyrrna.

“Yeah, we’ll give him a dagger.” She glanced back at me. “He’s not very old, is he?”

“No, he’s not.” Ralt seemed angry with her for just that reason. “Do we really have to do this?”

“I wanna see if he can.” Her tone was dismissing, but I had a feeling it lied deeper than that. She wanted to see if the scrawny Hylian boy could get what she wanted.

Well, I’d try, if only to say, “So there” if I succeeded.

Even if not exactly to her face.

A couple of times I faltered, and one of the other kids would give me a helpful push forward. I wondered if this was because the guy earlier had told them, if it was because they wanted to see me do well, or maybe just to see the little kid get eaten by some monster.

I hoped to the three goddesses that it was not the latter.

“Found her,” Pyrrna breathed. We were on the side of the mountain, and she had found a small hole. I stared at it. What on earth was so fearsome that it stayed in a hole that tiny?

“Look,” she instructed, stepping back. I gave her a cursory glance before leaning forward and looking.

A large grey wolf was lying on her stomach, head resting on her forepaws. Her lips, even in sleep, were raised to bare overlarge teeth.

Resolutely, I started digging at the hole with my fingers, and soil started coming away from the entrance to the cave. I saw her ear twitch, and I paused until I was certain that she hadn’t woken up. Before I finished digging, Pyrrna tapped my shoulder and handed me a knife, hilt first. Finally, the hole was wide enough for me to slip through until my feet were planted firmly in the center of her den.

A sort of confidence came over me, and I swaggered up to the wolf. On the other side of her was a bunch of grey, tufty-furred fuzzy puppies, just at that stage where our master of hounds would have them weaned. I stepped carefully around the tail and reached out my hand for a puppy.

The mother moved before I could even really register the motion, until I got a good look at teeth and yellowed eyes. I leapt backward, then ducked as a massive forepaw swung at me, raking the earth out of the wall. The puppies made mewling noises, stumbling awkwardly around the cave as their mother howled and snarled. The dagger, though in my hand still, was forgotten, and I ducked as blow after blow was swung, intended to decapitate me. My eyes flicked around for an escape, and instead fell on the pups. An idea clicked into place in the crazier half of my brain and I dove for one, just under another wild swing from their mother. Wolfos were obviously not very smart. I felt fuzz on my arm and weight in my gloved hand, and I wheeled and made the puppy visible. The mother stopped, snarling, as I showed her the hostage. It surprised me that it never occurred to her to use her teeth.

Hesitantly, I stepped back, and she growled, but did not attack. I just hoped she didn’t decide to kill me despite the puppy in my hands. I made eye contact with her and held it as I continued to retreat. The puppy squirmed between my hands, but I did not release it. It wasn’t until I reached the hole that I realized I had another problem. There was no safe way of getting through the hole without hurting the puppy.

“Sheik, just leave the puppy,” whispered one of the kids behind me. I had no idea which, and at that point, I didn’t really care.

“I can’t,” I said. “Dig me out.”

Dirt shifted behind me. The whole time I kept eye contact with Mama wolf, resolutely holding the pup to my chest, in plain view but close to me.

“Okay, climb back out.”

I stepped back, my foot feeling softer dirt. Blood rushed in my ears and I could swear I could feel my pulse in my neck, but I still held her gaze as I backed out of her den.

It wasn’t until we were halfway down the slope when Pyrrna clapped me on the back.

“Good work. Give the pup to me, now.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” I said, shifting the small Wolfos to a better position that would be more comfortable for both of us.

“Kid, we’ve gotta get rid of it,” said the oldest, peering around Pyrrna. “Give it to us so we can take care of it.”

I slowed and stared at them suspiciously. “You wanna kill it?” I asked, my voice going cold.

“It’s a Wolfos,” said Pyrrna, stopping. “Give it to us.”

“No.” I was angry now, and I didn’t yell when I was mad. Yelling when I was angry never got me anywhere—it was when I sounded stronger and clearer when people listened to me. “I went through all that to get it, and you’re not killing it after it’s just been separated from its mother.”

“Just give us the damned pup,” snarled the guy, and he walked toward me, but Ralt and the guy who helped me stepped between us.

“He stole it,” said the latter, his tone deliberate. “If you wanna choose what you do with a Wolfos pup, get it yourself. He’s more than earned leave to do what he wants.”

“He didn’t even kill the Wolfos!” Pyrrna squalled, rage lighting her eyes.

“You didn’t tell her to,” Ralt stated.

“That would only have made them suffer, anyway,” I growled, my eyes staying on Pyrrna. “All creatures are revered in the eyes of Farore, their passions in Din’s, and their thoughts in Nayru’s. To needlessly kill is sin.”

Be they Wolfos or Hylians.

“Touch him and you’ll regret it, Garren,” hissed my older protector. Ralt seemed to convey the same message without words, even though he was younger than both of the other boys.

The group stayed absolutely still for a bit, until a portion stepped back, including Pyrrna and Garren. They left, and the rest of us stayed in silence for a moment longer.

“Looks like you’ve got something to look after,” said Ralt, finally. He smirked at me. “You earned him.”