ZELINK ALTERNATE ENDING
Nearly one month after the Great Battle of Eldin, celebrations of the Hyrulean victory had done anything but decline. For so long so many had lived in fear and without guidance, but now their lands had been freed and their princess returned. The boards across so many Castle Town homes had been removed and the blue and red banners flew high, whistling songs of gentle winds. The sun shone down on the folk like a kind mother bringing warmth, and the birds soared through the white wisps of clouds merrily.
It was on a day much like this that Zelda stood on her balcony, looking out across her lands. Each morning she had lingered here before beginning her day, her life now full of meeting rooms, papers of policy, and common folk, nobles, and knights alike all vying for her ear. They each did so kindly, all wishing to pay respect to their ruler, and though Zelda patiently and generously listened to every word spoken to her, taking all praises and complaints to heart, there were times she actually missed the silent contemplation of her isolation during the Evil King’s reign.
She did not allow her gloom to shine through her eyes, and therefore, she hoped her general and her advisor could not see through to her heart. Auru had once been her tutor, but there were hardly any lessons for her left to learn, so he had said after the great battles and after he had watched how effortlessly she had guided her people back into an age of prosperity. She had so dearly missed his counsel, however--and perhaps to replace the hole where she missed her father--she had appointed him as her new High Advisor. Many of her afternoons were spent with this kind old man, either discussing her estate or people, losing themselves in tales of the ancient past, or reminiscing the times of her childhood.
Shad, too, had been welcomed back into the castle, and as both a book lover and researcher, it had not been long after the Great Battle that he had come to oversee the castle’s vast Library. For hours, he lost himself in books and scrolls, and his new office on the top floor owned scribbles across the walls rivaling that of the Oocca cavern he had found with Link’s help in Kakariko. When he was not musing over the latest breakthrough or helping the public locate a text--as the castle’s library was open to the people of Hyrule--he spent his time entertaining Zelda.
Zelda often came to the Library in the late hours after her meetings and deliberations with her council, and, though it had taken many moons, Shad had at last become accustomed to her presence and no longer stammered or clumsily bounced about--at least, in her company … most of the time. When she entreated his company, they usually took to playing at chess, and Shad was surprisingly a worthy opponent. Through their time together, he had become a proficient player and had taken her by surprise more than a few times.
The night before, victory had gone to Shad. It was nights like these, however, that he made sure to ask of her wellbeing, for more often than not, his victory had only been secured through the negligence of her wandering thoughts. He knew it was these nights that her mind lingered on a good friend of his … whom neither had seen for over a year.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Shad had asked, knowing that Zelda would have been more upset at knowing that others could see through her strong façade. He would ease into the topic and let her bring him up in her own time.
“I’m not sure,” she had said honestly. “I have served Hyrule as its princess for so long, but being named queen….”
“You’ll make your father proud, if I do say, Princess,” he smiled, pushing his round spectacles against the bridge of his nose again.
She cracked a grin. “How many times have I asked you--?”
“Of course, of course,” he said, knowing her reprimand already, “but tonight’s the last time any of us can call you that, isn’t it?” He hummed a short and merry laugh.
Zelda sat back in her chair. “How is your book coming?”
“Oh ho! Wonderful,” he said, already beginning to stutter again. “I remember the place as if it were yesterday. I must have twenty journals filled to the brim of notes. The translations are coming nicely, oh yes, I do think I am close.”
For some time they talked of Shad’s research, the expeditions he had taken to the darkest places of the Woods. He had been organizing his notes ever since he had returned from his second visit, which he had taken just a month after returning from his first trek to the Temple of Time. From its ruins, he had been able to identify its age--after a long while--and as he had unearthed more and more of the ruined temple, he had been trying to discover the location of the Hyrulean Castle from its time, for he believed that the geography of their world had changed since the Temple’s fall into ruin.
“I’m actually planning for another visit soon,” he was saying. “I think I’ve made a breakthrough. I’m not sure if Ashei would be too pleased, though. Odd how the captain of the guard always seems to send her along with me for protection.”
Zelda grinned at that, knowing for a fact that it was Ashei who secretly kept insisting that the scholar needed a guard whenever he traveled, what with the few bulblins who still traveled Hyrule raiding camps here and there. She somehow thought that it was Shad’s appointment as librarian that had been the deciding factor for Ashei accepting a knighthood with Hyrule. It was for this reason alone that Zelda had never intentionally made any advance to pursue Shad romantically, for she knew that in his continued ignorance of Ashei’s affections, he had eyes not for the princess of Hyrule.
“I say, I’m quite glad Link showed me the Temple. Such a find!” This he had accidentally said, for he had had no intention of mentioning Link’s name unless she first brought him into their conversation.
Her gaze went hollow at the sound of his name, like the name of a ghost, of a loved one who only appeared in dreams. His name had become something of a shell to her people, an idea. It had been so long since anyone had seen the young hero, save for the stories here and there of when a young man clad in green had intervened during a bulblin raid or an animal attack or even as simple as a missing child returned home. In every story, the hero did not linger long and offered only a nod before returning to the road. Zelda often wondered why the stories hailed Link as a silent hero, never speaking and never staying more than was needed. From the stories, she knew he traveled alone save for his horse, and from the letters she and Rusl had exchanged she knew he had yet to return home. Why did he insist on a lonely life?
“Do you think he’ll come?” Zelda’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
“To the coronation?” he asked incredulously, trying to smear any hint of her melancholy. “I can’t think why not. He nearly died for the promise of Hyrule’s future. I say, I doubt he’d miss it.”
The sound of his certainty seemed to ease her weariness, but the dull shine in her eyes had not yet faded. “It’s been so long….”
Unsure what to say, Shad chose to retreat into his study after a moment. The candlelight seemed to be the only thing keeping the darkness from taking her completely. Zelda thought perhaps that he had decided to give her privacy with her thoughts, and she thought that kind of him, but just as she was beginning to feel lonely and cold and afraid of what her future held--not the future of Hyrule, but her future--Shad had returned.
He had stepped up to her so quietly that she had not even heard his footfalls against the stone floor. He held something in his arms, cradling it like a babe, and she knew the tome he held was a precious thing to him. Shad scooted his chair to sit adjacent to hers, turning it so that his knees nearly touched her thigh.
“I’m going to add these to my book, give my readers a glimpse at what the Temple of Time now looks like,” he said as he passed the thick book to her. She pushed their chess board away to give room for the book, curious at what this had to do with her coronation or Link.
When she opened the book, she found the world captured on bits of paper. Shad smiled as she marveled at the images. “My two expeditions to the temple, I made sure to bring my picto box,” he said, as she turned the pages, thumbing through the pictographs and reading all the captions Shad had provided. Zelda had not seen the temple for herself and was in awe that she might see images of it through these papers. She forgot her woes for that moment, captured by the magic and feeling a sense of pride that Shad would surely inspire the same awe in those who read his book in the future.
“These are wonderful,” said Zelda.
“Thank you,” he grinned. “But the reason I wanted to show you this is on the last page.”
Zelda flipped through it and came to the last page, and a very familiar face looked toward her. At first, she turned to Shad, needing his assertion that this was real. When he nodded kindly, she looked back at the image. She could tell that Shad had taken this pictograph perhaps in a merry mood at the time to tease his subject, for Link was neither posed nor smiling as he looked at her--nor would he likely have struck any pose or put on a face for the pictographer. Instead, she saw the most honest image of Link that could have ever been burned into a pictograph. It was a close shot, framing Link from the collar to the top of his hairline, just enough to know that he wore his green hat. His sling hung against his left shoulder, and she could see pain in the way he held himself. The creases in his forehead and the slight angle of his brow indicated a deep thought lingering behind his visage. His lips were a thin line, a darker, vertical line representing a wound he had suffered. She could not see his entire face, but she could see both of his eyes, as if he had just turned around to the prank of Shad snapping his image. There was no color in the image, but Zelda could almost feel the shine of his dark eyes, the intensity of what it was to stand in his presence. Though he seemed a hardened man in the image, there was something in the way all the shades portrayed him, showing that inner kindness so iconic of the Hero.
Zelda peeled her eyes from his image to read the caption Shad had written, although there were several he had marked through--and some unfinished--until he had settled on the right words.
She read:
////Link showed me a world I thought I would never see.////
////Standing at the site of the Temple of Time////
////The Chosen Hero////
////Here we are at the site of the Temple of Time, with my guide and the Hero, Link.////
Without the courage of a boy hardened into a man by the fires of war our age saw, I would have never seen the wonder of an age long before ours. It is to this man, our Hero and my friend, Link, that I dedicate this work, without whose unfailing heart none of us would be alive to preserve the past for our future.
By the time Zelda had finished reading his scribbles and returned her sight to Link’s image, she realized she was crying.
“You can have it, Zelda, if you wish,” Shad said softly.
She turned to him. “But what about your book? This is the only pictograph you have of him.”
“I know,” he said. “But the idea of a hero is stronger than a mortal man. Without a pictograph I think it’ll have more impact.” He leaned back, and trying to make the air a little lighter to breathe, he added, “Besides, the ole boy’s in the background of a few of the other ones … even though he rather blends in with all that green.”
Shad removed the image from the book and handed it to Zelda. Then he rose and shut the book. “I say, I think it’s time I closed up. Do you need an escort?”
Zelda shook her head and stood, holding the image of Link close. She looped her finger into the ring of a chamber candle and made her way for the door as Shad set his book aside and began clearing the chess pieces. She looked back at him for a moment before saying, “Thank you,” and then continued into the dark corridors of the castle.
===============
That morning as she stood staring out at the lands of her kingdom from her throne room balcony, she thought of Link, wondering if he would attend the ceremony. She had insisted that it be a public event, and though her general had consented to her wishes after some debate, he had set up a great deal of sentinels while soldiers patrolled Castle Town constantly. The people did not seem to mind the intrusion, understanding that the soldiers were protecting their kind queen-to-be on her special day.
The festivities had already begun as the people feasted in the streets and sang merry tunes and danced the hours away, awaiting the sight of Zelda’s final hours as Princess.
After her brief hour of solitude on the balcony, glancing at the pictograph Shad had given her, she retreated inside and handed herself over to her handmaidens, who took the next few hours prettying her face and dressing her in layers upon layers of blue and white clothing with red laces and tassels. During this ritual, Zelda said nothing, even at the prompting of promising gossip from her girls, who understood quickly that their sovereign’s thoughts were not to be disturbed. After this, they took to idle talk amongst each other to avoid the gloom of silence.
Once Princess Zelda had been pampered, the general and her council walked with her to the entrance of the castle and escorted her to the carriage she was meant to ride while standing as her knights displayed her to the people. This was an old tradition meant to bridge the gap between peasant and royalty, and Zelda had every intention to make sure that this gap had all but disappeared, so much so that as she rode the streets of her town--bracing against any fall by holding fast to a bar affixed to the interior--she called for the knights to halt. It was at this time that Zelda, Princess of Hyrule and Queen-to-be, descended from her carriage in all her royal robes to meet with the crowds of people hailing her name and casting her flowers. She spoke with several of them, her face shining bright as the sun reflected off the stones in her tiara and the fresh whiteness of her smile.
It was some time before her entourage resumed, for she had walked much of the way after that, only climbing once more into the carriage when they again came back through to reach the square before the portcullis. Here, she waved at her people and disappeared once more beyond the gates of the castle. Some hours later, the gates would open once more to allow the good people of Hyrule--even those who had ventured from other towns or provinces--into the courtyards and gardens of the castle as the nobles inside witnessed the crowning of their queen.
It was at her crowing some few hours later that Zelda felt nauseous. She had walked the blue carpet of the throne room countless times to reach her chair, but now, the distance felt like miles, and she so desperately wanted to look back … to see all the faces and to see if she might see the face of a young man from the forest.
At last the final moments had come, and it had all felt like a blur to Zelda. The great blue robe of her father was blanketed across her shoulders and in the moments following this, an older man removed her tiara, its gems gently releasing the last tendrils of her hair as if accepting the moment of its final goodbye. Then the coldness of a new crown, heavier and beset with stones of sapphire and ruby, rested against her head. As she sat there, the weight seemed less and less unbearable … as if it were perfectly formed for her head. The feeling relieved her, but she still felt ill at ease, for as she had sat there all this while, she had scanned every face in the crowd.
And Link’s had been nowhere among them.
After her crowing moment and the official instant where her life changed from princess-hood to true sovereign, everyone bowed, and she could hear the muffled cheer of the masses outside, for she knew that a councilor had given them word of her crowning.
She then sat through ceremonial gift-givings from the towns and provinces. Those representing Castle Town brought forth a great wreath with five golden leaves and powered with sapphires and amethysts. Renado was there to represent Kakariko--even though the town was now populated as greatly as Castle Town these days with far more important people, he had said--and he gave to her three silver-tipped arrows, having heard of her love of archery. A few from the Goron tribe were also in attendance and had crafted her a great set of armor from the heart of their caves. Ralis, still prince of his people due to his age, had come with two guards and a few Hylian river folk, and offered the Queen beautifully crafted coral earrings he said had belonged to his late mother.
The last people to pay respect to their new Queen were Rusl and Mayor Bo of Ordon Village. Bo stood behind as Rusl ascended the steps to bow before Zelda, who smiled rather fondly on him. From him she received a customary gift meant as a gesture that the old traditions would forever be remembered and to pledge the loyalty of his people to her service.
It also reminded her, and everyone in attendance, of a certain young boy … which had been Rusl’s intent as well. It was Link who had made this moment possible, and Zelda welcomed his honorable gesture by rising. Rusl bowed lower in response, and Zelda came forward to accept his gift herself. The others had been collected by her knights and council.
Zelda held the sheath of the Ordon blade firmly in one hand, and with the other, she pulled its steal forth with a singing whistle that echoed against the decorated walls of the throne room. She looked into her reflection and saw how different she now appeared.
“Let it be my first act as your Queen,” she spoke loudly so that all could hear, “to dub this man Honorary Knight of Hyrule.” As she spoke, she twisted her wrist and gently tapped each of his shoulders with the blade in turn.
“Rusl of Ordon, you showed valor and kindness in the face of the peril that doomed my kingdom one year ago. I owe you every honor. Rise a Knight of Hyrule … and my friend.”
There was a shout and cheer from the crowd as Rusl humbly stood. Zelda embraced him by the forearm, and he returned her gesture. There was a question in her eyes, he could see it when no one else could, and she could see his response in the way his eyes did not mirror the smile on his lips.
Link was not here.
The rest of the day was a blur to Zelda, and all she wanted was to be done with it all. She scarcely remembered the speeches she had made to her people in the courtyards as she stood at the balcony high above them. She could not remember the taste of her food at the feast that night. Her handmaidens had thought perhaps she had stopped breathing while they undressed her in the evening, but she simply stared on. She had offered every courtesy and every smile expected of her, but there was one spot in the crowd that day, one plate at dinner that evening, and one sword in her guard … that had been left absent.
When she had finally been left to the isolation of her bedchamber, the same chamber that had held her captive so long ago, she cried into her pillow at the thought that her Hero was still vanished from her life.
===============
Another year passed. Then two. And as seasons faded into each other and time went ever on, Zelda realized one morning as she stood at her balcony that she had been Queen for five years.
And it had been nearly six years since she had last seen Link.
She looked to the pitcograph Shad had given her on the eve of her coronation. It had wrinkled and slightly faded with time, and she wondered how different Link, too, might look in the time of these long six years apart. He had never promised to return to see her, he had only ever seen to his duty and completed the tasks he set out to do.
But she had always hoped….
She sighed. That night, the castle was hosting a grand fest in honor of her five year anniversary as Queen Zelda. She looked to Link’s image for courage and then took a deep breath before tucking it away and returning inside.
===============
Merry laughter and smiling faces. That is what Queen Zelda witnessed everywhere that night as she walked on the arm of Auru, talking with this and that person in the courtyards illuminated by thousands of different colored candlelight. Ordinary folk mingled with nobles and even the knights were enjoying the cheer of it all. Food was aplenty, dressing table upon table that had been set up in the days leading up to this night.
Zelda passed through gatherings that included Rusl, Bo and his daughter--Ilia, she thought had been the name--talking rather loudly with a few Gorons. Though, the daughter seemed uncomfortable as they talked of feats of strength. Then there was Telma chatting up Luda, the kind shaman’s daughter of Kakariko. They strolled past a troupe of entertainers she recognized from the town square and a magician she remembered from a corner of town. Even the fortuneteller from the west block of town was there, spinning stories to those that would listen of the day she had given their hero instrumental advice for his journey. There was also curious young woman all dressed up in frills and what appeared to be sequins in the shape of beetles on her rose-pattern skirt. Her face and gestures looked animated as she spoke to a couple knights who looked both smitten and perturbed by her.
Auru and Zelda stepped through the arch leading into another courtyard, and they made small talk as they did so, for Auru could tell that Zelda, even as she looked so beautiful in her blue dress--and the coral earrings Prince Ralis had given--, was either overwhelmed by the festivities or prey to solemn thoughts.
It was then that they came upon Shad and Ashei. While Shad spoke to a small audience of all ages about his research--his book In the Ruins had been finished a year ago--Ashei chatted to a few Gorons and knights. Zelda noticed how close Shad and Ashei stood to one another, and she knew that it was because Ashei felt the need to mark her territory, for not even a year ago, the two of them had at last been seen together. Zelda still remembered the way he had brought up the subject of Ashei over a year ago and how he was not sure what to make of the way she spoke and acted toward him. Giving Shad advice on how to approach Ashei romantically had been one of the most awkward conversations of her life, but seeing them married not three months ago had been one of the highest joys.
Zelda and Auru talked with them for some time, and conversation with Shad and Ashei seemed to ease her mood, Auru noted, but as they parted ways to give time to her other multitudes of guests, her spirit again fell. At this moment, Auru excused himself to wander back toward Shad. Zelda watched as they spoke lowly then turned to watch the night sky. She did not see Shad point to a garden enclosure off to the side of the courtyard.
Zelda saw a shadow move on the ramparts above and knew that it must be the tiny, unkempt man preparing the night’s closing act, rustling here to there to order around her knights as they set up his devices. She remembered how he had described his plans and was interested in seeing the marvel he had promised.
That was when Auru returned to her side. She smiled as he again took her arm, and then he guided her toward the secluded garden. A question lingered in her eyes as he motioned her in. “I must speak with the general for a moment,” he offered. “I won’t be long, and no, it there isn’t anything wrong. I’ll be back shortly.”
She nodded and watched him leave before entering the garden. This was her private garden, and since it was off-limits to guests, it had not been lit for the festival. Only the moon and the few torches in the sconces on its west wall lit the dense area. The other walls were made by hedgerows taller than she, which gave birth to another area of the garden, where ornate benches were organized around the dense-growing roses, the grand statues, and the countless trellises. At the center of the garden stood the single lattice pergola, intertwined with roses, lilies, and other colorful flowers that bloomed only in the night hours.
She made her way to the pergola, stepping alongside it and smelling the roses as she went.
That was when she heard the faint hum of a familiar song. She listened close, her heart racing in fright of the sudden intruder.
Her mother’s song. The lullaby that had coddled her nightly as a child.
The sound came from within the latticework of the pergola, and she peered around the side of one of its four symmetrical openings. There were benches inside, sitting diagonal to each corner, and from the lattice roof there hung more flowers along with six lanterns.
Across from the opening Zelda leaned against was the silhouette of someone else standing in the opposing framework. She drew a concealed dagger from beneath her skirt and raised it as she entered the pergola, taking each step slowly as the stranger continued to sing the tune of her childhood.
A few steps from the man, the singing suddenly stopped and the figure shifted. He did not appear threatened by her dagger when he turned, and he ignored her warning to stay back, taking one careful, slow step into the light.
Zelda dropped her dagger and retreated to the other side of the pergola. Her eyes wide, she thought surely this was what it was like to see a ghost.
Silently, the man knelt down and picked up her dagger. He lingered in that position a moment, as if paying respect to her, and since it seemed her voice was stolen, he presumed that it was all right that he stood once more. Carefully, he approached, ever silent. Silent and staring always into her eyes, as if to look away would free her from his spell. When he indeed did look away, it was to lean over slightly to place her dagger on the bench closest to her … drawing him quite close to her all the while.
He shifted his gaze back to her, but slowly and calmly, his blue eyes trapping her again in breathless silence.
It was a long time before either of them spoke, and in those moments, Zelda tried to understand that it was truly him who stood before her. He had aged, yes, and noticeably, but his eyes were ever full with the same fierce intensity that she remembered. Under a brown cloak, his clothes were different, she could tell, though their color was still predominantly green. His old tunic had been tattered and repaired so many times that he must have finally commissioned new apparel from a very skilled craftsman. His chainmail and boots seemed the same, though.
His face, though it had healed from the Great Battle, had suffered at the hands of different, less cunning foes. Just below his right eye, a scar had been etched into his skin from nose to ear, and it was there she noticed that part of his lower ear had either been slashed or bitten away. The gash on his lip seemed to have reappeared as well and was sure to remain forever now that it had healed again. If anything marked the years they had spent apart it was the slight stubble on his cheeks and chin as if he had shaved away the unwanted hair only yesterday. She was, after all, only three years his senior, which made him three and twenty now.
Link, six years older and six years made rugged by living in the wilderness, had returned.
When his crooked grin finally cracked, Zelda knew that as roguish as he appeared, he was the same as he had always been.
“It’s good to see you … Queen Zelda,” said Link.
“Don’t call me that,” she said suddenly, her voice unsteady at first. Then she amended with a softer, surer tone, “It’s never quite sounded right.”
“All right,” he nodded, and after another moment where it looked like he might have said something else, he turned away again, leaving Zelda to come to realize the stories of his silent heroism were likely very much true.
After she was able to find some sense, Zelda regained her mobility and stepped up alongside Link as he looked toward the flowers in the garden. She asked the only question she had ever wanted an answer to since she had realized six years ago how much she had missed him.
“Where have you been?”
His reply was simple. “Everywhere.” The scope of it bemused Zelda, and she was thankful that after a moment to collect his memories, he began recounting a few of his adventures.
“It started out as helping to rebuild Kakariko and to see that Prince--I mean--King Ralis now, was doing well. I’d never gotten the chance to personally tell him about his mother.” He trailed off here, but after some time he told Zelda how he informed Ralis of the circumstances of his mother’s death and her wishes from beyond the grave. Ralis had then sat with Link for the rest of the night telling him about his mother and father.
“Then I found the Cave of the Great Fairy,” he said, an excited sparkle brimming in his eye when he looked at Zelda. It seemed to her that he had grown a few inches since last they met.
“The Great Fairy?” breathed Zelda. “She’s a travelers’ myth.” She was suddenly at ease with having Link with her again, as if no time had passed at all.
“Not true. She saved my life once, out in the desert,” he said, and then he told her of how he had returned to Gerudo Desert and happened upon her cave, where she had been invaded by demons trying to use her magic to return to the living.
It was after this, he went on, that he had found out the truth to the rhyme about a man called Jovani, that his soul had indeed been trapped by the demonic poes that traveled the lands. He had been tricked and thus turned to gold and gemstones to live for eternity--as he had wished for immortality. Link had spent many months tracking down the spirits responsible in order to set Jovani free from their curse. Jovani, he said, was the reason he had come into a great deal of rupees as payment. Link had refused the reward, but as Jovani had learned that wealth was not the key to happiness, he had wanted to be rid of it, and therefore, Link accepted and put the stones to good use in having new clothes made, a better saddle for Epona, as well as some other odds and ends before giving the rest away to a charity run by an old man named Charlo in Castle Town, as well as offering some to Soal and his mother. It was even during his small stay in town that he said he had happened upon Agitha again, who had begged his help to find her pet grasshopper in the southern courtyard outside the town walls. Strange as it was, Link had obliged.
He had done much for the people in Castle Town, by the way he told it, though he did not claim credit for anything, not even the long trek he had made to deliver hot spring water from Kakariko’s Goron dwellers. He recalled with a laugh how Epona had hated being hitched to a cart for that.
Zelda was glad to hear his stories and glad to see that he enjoyed telling them these days, but she noticed how he never once mentioned his first journey … or Midna.
“All these years, though … why did you never come to see me?” Zelda finally asked at a length as his stories began to dwindle.
His brows furrowed at that. “I’m sorry. I should have made time, but as I said, it only started out as rebuilding and doing small favors to help out where I could.”
“Then what happened?” she pressed.
He looked distraught at having to bring her tidings of his other deeds. “At first I didn’t think anything of it,” he said remotely, and then he clarified. “The bulblins and bokoblins. Not all of them vanished from Hyrule. I’d encountered a few here or there on my travels the first two years, so I thought nothing of it. Stragglers. Outcasts. But they were raiding villages and small camps, so I had to intervene.” He had chosen a less violent word for what Zelda knew had meant the deaths of such stragglers. She had promised death to any who troubled her people again, and it seemed Link had delivered to the letter of her orders.
“As the years went by, I realized that the raids were becoming more common, and they didn’t seem so disorganized or random anymore. I started investigating, and instead of stopping one of their raids in Kakariko, I waited and followed them. After a long while, I learned that they were acting on the orders of a king who’d taken up residence in the old encampment outside the Arbiter’s Grounds. The news troubled me because I knew that King Bulblin had fled with his followers per your command.”
As Zelda listened to his tale, she noticed the slight inflections he now put on certain words or sounds, as if a life of travel with hearing so many different voices had cultivated his own into something unrecognizable, and the way he spoke, the words he used and the way he held himself … he seemed so much more grown up than last she had seen him.
Link continued his story, and Zelda listened, a captivated audience. He told her how he had traveled again into the desert and spied on the raiders’ camp and the gruesome, giant bokoblin who had come to rule over them. Link had chosen to stay his hand and instead sought out the old bulblin king, who had taken up residence in the marshlands beyond Hyrule’s westward borders. Once there he had spoken to the king, who had welcomed him and set his bulblin comrades at ease. King Bulblin and he had come to an understanding, Link told her, during the final hours of the fight against Ganondorf, and he was glad to have made an ally of him, for he had been instrumental in his plea for peace with the troublesome raiders. Link could have wiped them out single-handedly, Zelda knew, but he had insisted on a course of action that would spare bloodshed. The raiders, he thought aloud, had reminded him of himself … lost people looking for a place to call home. They had just taken a more destructive route than he had.
Throughout the ensuing months, King Bulblin and a small entourage had journeyed with Link across the desert plains to liaise with the bokoblin leader. After a bloody welcome into their camp--during which Link said he had sustained his most prominent scar when a bokoblin had nearly taken his eye with its dagger--they finally secured an audience with the giant bokoblin. At first, talk was difficult, the leader calling King Bulblin a coward and insisting that Princess Zelda was their sworn enemy for casting them aside without hope of a reprieve.
That was the part that was hardest for Link to tell Zelda, for it indicated that she had been indirectly responsible for the raids against her people. He could tell that the news had upset her, but hearing how Link and King Bulblin had at last found peace--although gravely won--set her heart at ease. Link grimaced as he conveyed how their peace had been secured, that the giant bokoblin would not see reason and had challenged King Bulblin to a fight to the death. Whosoever won the duel would also win the guaranteed loyalty of their followers.
Unable to present an alternative to which the bokoblin would agree, Link had found himself resigned to watch as the titans fought for supremacy. In a fortunate turn of events, King Bulblin had won back the missing half of his horde over the beheaded corpse of his opponent, and soon after, he had spoken his parting words to the green-clad hero and retreated once more into the West.
“I am sorry you had to handle that on your own. Why did you not come to the castle for aid?” asked Zelda.
“You had a kingdom to rebuild,” he said, shaking his head. “And may I add, everything looks better than it did before.” He turned and saw her smile at his kindness. When he shifted his gaze back to the garden, his eyes turned inward, and he sounded sad. “I play my part, as I’ve always done.”
Zelda was not sure what to say, and before she could think of any comfort, Link was speaking again. “I saw Rusl earlier. In the courtyard. He looks well.”
“Yes,” she nodded, still eyeing Link thoughtfully, wanting to know those thoughts that lay deep in his eyes, the thoughts he never gave light to in the presence of others. “He says you still have not visited the village. Is that true?”
Link grasped a break in the latticework, toyed with the bulb of a night-blooming flower. “Yes,” he affirmed softly. In the same softness and perhaps with a dusting of remorse, he added, “I never did ask his daughter’s name. She’d be like a sister to me, and I don’t even know her name.”
In the quiet, Zelda plunged through her brain. She hated seeing Link so … dejected … lonely. “I think it was Aryll,” she said finally.
“Aryll…” he tried the name on his tongue and after a moment he seemed to smile a little. “I could have a sister named Aryll,” he said softly, happily, looking up into the moonlight.
“You could go talk to her,” Zelda suggested tentatively. “I’m sure everyone would like to see you again.”
Link looked anxious at the thought. He averted his eyes and brushed a patch of dirt from the pergola and back into the grass with a boot. “I’m not really fond of crowds,” he said. He had never liked being put on a pedestal, and he knew that that was what would happen.
“Is that why you weren’t at the coronation?” asked Zelda, half playfully to combat his distress and half demanding to console the hurt she still felt at his absence.
But Link faced her then. “I was there.”
“But I did not--”
“I was one of Ralis’s escorts, part of the river folk.” He turned his body toward her, taking her bare hand in his as he spoke his apology. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to you plainly. I wanted to see you, and your coronation was soon after I had visited with Ralis, so he invited me to be in his keeping.” Unconsciously to Link, his thumb caressed her hand, but Zelda felt every stroke. “It’s just that I…”
“Not fond of crowds.”
Link looked into her eyes, saw how she teased him to relieve the tension sprinkled in the air.
“Is that why you never visited?” she asked.
He searched her eyes for a long time before his forehead creased under the weight of his thoughts. Turning away and loosing her hand, he scratched at the stubble on his jaw line. After a moment, he took a step away from her, and Zelda could almost hear his troubled thoughts with every careful step as he made his way toward the rose bushes a few feet away. On the other side was a sea of blue lilies, all climbing toward the moon-licked sky. He fingered a thorn thoughtfully, and just when Zelda stepped forward to kindly revoke her question, he sighed.
“When I was in the desert,” he began. “I went up to the Mirror Chamber….” He patted away the roses and stepped toward the stone wall to the west. “It was the same as we’d left it,” said Link, coming up to the dark stone and running a palm over its cold, hard, unforgiving features. “Silent and lonely.” He stared at the wall, eyes in a distant memory. Zelda approached as he continued in barely a whisper, choked by the emotions he had kept at bay for so long. “My memory of Midna has never faded … and I thank her every day for opening my eyes to the world…” --a sad smile tugged at his lips-- “…for being part of my life and showing me what true courage looked like.” He had kept the words inside for so long that he thought now he could not stop. The wound in his heart had been cut open again, and he could not seal its flow.
“I miss her….”
His lip quivered.
Zelda stood alongside him then, and the torchlight to his right cast a shadow across his face, shielding the full display of his emotions from view. She reached to touch his shoulder, but he turned away before her soothing caress had landed.
“She was … an extraordinary friend,” he said as he retreated into the sea of lilies, their blooms reaching toward him like hundreds of soothing kisses. He stood with his back to Zelda. “But she’s gone … and she’s never coming back.” He shut his eyes tightly, cringing at the memories. “It hurt,” he said, his brows rising as they curled to mirror his anguish.
When he opened his eyes, he looked up into the stars. “I thought for a long time that to go back would be selfish, something that I needed. I kept thinking that I didn’t want anyone else to care so much about me like I did for her … so they didn’t have to feel that pain when….” He lowered his gaze and lifted a hand to the scar on his face, traced the bulge of it with two fingers. “Someday … I’ll be gone, too….” Slowly, his head lowered again as his eyes closed, and his fingers lifted from his face, gradually coiling into his palm until they made a firm fist that he brought in to his chest. His fingers grasped the breast of his tunic, and he clutched the fabric tightly as if trying to hold his lonely heart in one piece. “So, I kept my distance and kept to the road, never lingering in one place for too long.”
His eyes popped open. “But I’ve been wondering lately.” Link swirled around only partly, looking on Zelda from an angle, his head cocked in uncertainty. “What will I have left behind?”
Looking upon him then, half in torchlight, half bathed by the moon and eyes caught by the flickering lanterns in the nearby pergola, Zelda witnessed a man who had sacrificed everything out of necessity and a man who had then continued to sacrifice because he had chosen to do so, because it had been the only way of life he had ever known. His watering eyes searched Zelda’s for an answer, wishing desperately to understand through her wise counsel. As he stood there, shoulders drooped, eyes vacant and lips quivering, she saw just how tired he was … and how lonely he had become.
She drew toward him, the lilies dancing as she moved through them. Reaching upward, she cupped a palm over his opposite cheek and gently turned him fully toward her. “You leave behind all that you have offered. Hope. You are a living legend, and long after we perish from Hyrule, the children of tomorrow shall remember you as brave and strong and true.”
He smiled, but it was all a show, for he choked on his next breath as he sucked in a sniffle and shook his head. “And in such a life, there are only so many battles before you’ve met your match.”
“Then you cannot seclude yourself from the world you helped preserve any longer.” She smiled up at him in that way she had, a small grin that promised the storms would always pass. She took his hand in hers, and his fingers wove through hers.
“I’ve done what I set out to do,” nodded Link, content with the favorable outcome of so many battles. “Ganondorf…. The raiders….” But it was his worst fear realized. In peace, there was no need for him.
“You’ve lived as the Hero,” said Zelda, looking deep into his eyes. “Now … live as the man.”
Link realized they were but a breath apart now, and it was a moment of perfect clarity, the moment when he understood his heart’s every desire.
“Ask me to stay,” he said, his voice as soft as the hum of wind passing through the lilies underfoot, “and I will.”
All Link’s sadness washed away in the next moment as their lips met in a gentle kiss. Warmth kindled him anew at the healing touch of her embrace. Their hands still clasped together, Zelda’s other arm glided up to hold him round the neck. Link brought his opposite hand up to cradle her face, barely touching her jaw as if she were as delicate as porcelain.
When they parted a moment later, their eyes remained closed as they leaned their foreheads together, savoring the feeling of being so close and so loved.
It all felt too surreal, with so much time having separated them. Zelda was breathless when she spoke, and she could still feel the tingle on her skin from where Link’s patches of stubble had tickled her. “…Stay.”
Link braided his fingers into her hair, his lips tilting toward her again. “As my sworn oath … Zelda,” he promised in the moment before his mouth covered hers once more.
As they kissed, they forgot the world, forgot titles like Queen and Hero, forgot the years they had spent apart. Here and now they stood, a sea of lilies cradling them gently as marvelous explosions of colored lights then burst in the sky from the ramparts. In this moment the world was as small as a garden, the sun as bright as a torch, and the stars as distant as the sparks raining down.
A legend, the world remembers.
But the love of a man and woman, that is something more precious … and too often overlooked.
It was on a day much like this that Zelda stood on her balcony, looking out across her lands. Each morning she had lingered here before beginning her day, her life now full of meeting rooms, papers of policy, and common folk, nobles, and knights alike all vying for her ear. They each did so kindly, all wishing to pay respect to their ruler, and though Zelda patiently and generously listened to every word spoken to her, taking all praises and complaints to heart, there were times she actually missed the silent contemplation of her isolation during the Evil King’s reign.
She did not allow her gloom to shine through her eyes, and therefore, she hoped her general and her advisor could not see through to her heart. Auru had once been her tutor, but there were hardly any lessons for her left to learn, so he had said after the great battles and after he had watched how effortlessly she had guided her people back into an age of prosperity. She had so dearly missed his counsel, however--and perhaps to replace the hole where she missed her father--she had appointed him as her new High Advisor. Many of her afternoons were spent with this kind old man, either discussing her estate or people, losing themselves in tales of the ancient past, or reminiscing the times of her childhood.
Shad, too, had been welcomed back into the castle, and as both a book lover and researcher, it had not been long after the Great Battle that he had come to oversee the castle’s vast Library. For hours, he lost himself in books and scrolls, and his new office on the top floor owned scribbles across the walls rivaling that of the Oocca cavern he had found with Link’s help in Kakariko. When he was not musing over the latest breakthrough or helping the public locate a text--as the castle’s library was open to the people of Hyrule--he spent his time entertaining Zelda.
Zelda often came to the Library in the late hours after her meetings and deliberations with her council, and, though it had taken many moons, Shad had at last become accustomed to her presence and no longer stammered or clumsily bounced about--at least, in her company … most of the time. When she entreated his company, they usually took to playing at chess, and Shad was surprisingly a worthy opponent. Through their time together, he had become a proficient player and had taken her by surprise more than a few times.
The night before, victory had gone to Shad. It was nights like these, however, that he made sure to ask of her wellbeing, for more often than not, his victory had only been secured through the negligence of her wandering thoughts. He knew it was these nights that her mind lingered on a good friend of his … whom neither had seen for over a year.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Shad had asked, knowing that Zelda would have been more upset at knowing that others could see through her strong façade. He would ease into the topic and let her bring him up in her own time.
“I’m not sure,” she had said honestly. “I have served Hyrule as its princess for so long, but being named queen….”
“You’ll make your father proud, if I do say, Princess,” he smiled, pushing his round spectacles against the bridge of his nose again.
She cracked a grin. “How many times have I asked you--?”
“Of course, of course,” he said, knowing her reprimand already, “but tonight’s the last time any of us can call you that, isn’t it?” He hummed a short and merry laugh.
Zelda sat back in her chair. “How is your book coming?”
“Oh ho! Wonderful,” he said, already beginning to stutter again. “I remember the place as if it were yesterday. I must have twenty journals filled to the brim of notes. The translations are coming nicely, oh yes, I do think I am close.”
For some time they talked of Shad’s research, the expeditions he had taken to the darkest places of the Woods. He had been organizing his notes ever since he had returned from his second visit, which he had taken just a month after returning from his first trek to the Temple of Time. From its ruins, he had been able to identify its age--after a long while--and as he had unearthed more and more of the ruined temple, he had been trying to discover the location of the Hyrulean Castle from its time, for he believed that the geography of their world had changed since the Temple’s fall into ruin.
“I’m actually planning for another visit soon,” he was saying. “I think I’ve made a breakthrough. I’m not sure if Ashei would be too pleased, though. Odd how the captain of the guard always seems to send her along with me for protection.”
Zelda grinned at that, knowing for a fact that it was Ashei who secretly kept insisting that the scholar needed a guard whenever he traveled, what with the few bulblins who still traveled Hyrule raiding camps here and there. She somehow thought that it was Shad’s appointment as librarian that had been the deciding factor for Ashei accepting a knighthood with Hyrule. It was for this reason alone that Zelda had never intentionally made any advance to pursue Shad romantically, for she knew that in his continued ignorance of Ashei’s affections, he had eyes not for the princess of Hyrule.
“I say, I’m quite glad Link showed me the Temple. Such a find!” This he had accidentally said, for he had had no intention of mentioning Link’s name unless she first brought him into their conversation.
Her gaze went hollow at the sound of his name, like the name of a ghost, of a loved one who only appeared in dreams. His name had become something of a shell to her people, an idea. It had been so long since anyone had seen the young hero, save for the stories here and there of when a young man clad in green had intervened during a bulblin raid or an animal attack or even as simple as a missing child returned home. In every story, the hero did not linger long and offered only a nod before returning to the road. Zelda often wondered why the stories hailed Link as a silent hero, never speaking and never staying more than was needed. From the stories, she knew he traveled alone save for his horse, and from the letters she and Rusl had exchanged she knew he had yet to return home. Why did he insist on a lonely life?
“Do you think he’ll come?” Zelda’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
“To the coronation?” he asked incredulously, trying to smear any hint of her melancholy. “I can’t think why not. He nearly died for the promise of Hyrule’s future. I say, I doubt he’d miss it.”
The sound of his certainty seemed to ease her weariness, but the dull shine in her eyes had not yet faded. “It’s been so long….”
Unsure what to say, Shad chose to retreat into his study after a moment. The candlelight seemed to be the only thing keeping the darkness from taking her completely. Zelda thought perhaps that he had decided to give her privacy with her thoughts, and she thought that kind of him, but just as she was beginning to feel lonely and cold and afraid of what her future held--not the future of Hyrule, but her future--Shad had returned.
He had stepped up to her so quietly that she had not even heard his footfalls against the stone floor. He held something in his arms, cradling it like a babe, and she knew the tome he held was a precious thing to him. Shad scooted his chair to sit adjacent to hers, turning it so that his knees nearly touched her thigh.
“I’m going to add these to my book, give my readers a glimpse at what the Temple of Time now looks like,” he said as he passed the thick book to her. She pushed their chess board away to give room for the book, curious at what this had to do with her coronation or Link.
When she opened the book, she found the world captured on bits of paper. Shad smiled as she marveled at the images. “My two expeditions to the temple, I made sure to bring my picto box,” he said, as she turned the pages, thumbing through the pictographs and reading all the captions Shad had provided. Zelda had not seen the temple for herself and was in awe that she might see images of it through these papers. She forgot her woes for that moment, captured by the magic and feeling a sense of pride that Shad would surely inspire the same awe in those who read his book in the future.
“These are wonderful,” said Zelda.
“Thank you,” he grinned. “But the reason I wanted to show you this is on the last page.”
Zelda flipped through it and came to the last page, and a very familiar face looked toward her. At first, she turned to Shad, needing his assertion that this was real. When he nodded kindly, she looked back at the image. She could tell that Shad had taken this pictograph perhaps in a merry mood at the time to tease his subject, for Link was neither posed nor smiling as he looked at her--nor would he likely have struck any pose or put on a face for the pictographer. Instead, she saw the most honest image of Link that could have ever been burned into a pictograph. It was a close shot, framing Link from the collar to the top of his hairline, just enough to know that he wore his green hat. His sling hung against his left shoulder, and she could see pain in the way he held himself. The creases in his forehead and the slight angle of his brow indicated a deep thought lingering behind his visage. His lips were a thin line, a darker, vertical line representing a wound he had suffered. She could not see his entire face, but she could see both of his eyes, as if he had just turned around to the prank of Shad snapping his image. There was no color in the image, but Zelda could almost feel the shine of his dark eyes, the intensity of what it was to stand in his presence. Though he seemed a hardened man in the image, there was something in the way all the shades portrayed him, showing that inner kindness so iconic of the Hero.
Zelda peeled her eyes from his image to read the caption Shad had written, although there were several he had marked through--and some unfinished--until he had settled on the right words.
She read:
////Link showed me a world I thought I would never see.////
////Standing at the site of the Temple of Time////
////The Chosen Hero////
////Here we are at the site of the Temple of Time, with my guide and the Hero, Link.////
Without the courage of a boy hardened into a man by the fires of war our age saw, I would have never seen the wonder of an age long before ours. It is to this man, our Hero and my friend, Link, that I dedicate this work, without whose unfailing heart none of us would be alive to preserve the past for our future.
By the time Zelda had finished reading his scribbles and returned her sight to Link’s image, she realized she was crying.
“You can have it, Zelda, if you wish,” Shad said softly.
She turned to him. “But what about your book? This is the only pictograph you have of him.”
“I know,” he said. “But the idea of a hero is stronger than a mortal man. Without a pictograph I think it’ll have more impact.” He leaned back, and trying to make the air a little lighter to breathe, he added, “Besides, the ole boy’s in the background of a few of the other ones … even though he rather blends in with all that green.”
Shad removed the image from the book and handed it to Zelda. Then he rose and shut the book. “I say, I think it’s time I closed up. Do you need an escort?”
Zelda shook her head and stood, holding the image of Link close. She looped her finger into the ring of a chamber candle and made her way for the door as Shad set his book aside and began clearing the chess pieces. She looked back at him for a moment before saying, “Thank you,” and then continued into the dark corridors of the castle.
===============
That morning as she stood staring out at the lands of her kingdom from her throne room balcony, she thought of Link, wondering if he would attend the ceremony. She had insisted that it be a public event, and though her general had consented to her wishes after some debate, he had set up a great deal of sentinels while soldiers patrolled Castle Town constantly. The people did not seem to mind the intrusion, understanding that the soldiers were protecting their kind queen-to-be on her special day.
The festivities had already begun as the people feasted in the streets and sang merry tunes and danced the hours away, awaiting the sight of Zelda’s final hours as Princess.
After her brief hour of solitude on the balcony, glancing at the pictograph Shad had given her, she retreated inside and handed herself over to her handmaidens, who took the next few hours prettying her face and dressing her in layers upon layers of blue and white clothing with red laces and tassels. During this ritual, Zelda said nothing, even at the prompting of promising gossip from her girls, who understood quickly that their sovereign’s thoughts were not to be disturbed. After this, they took to idle talk amongst each other to avoid the gloom of silence.
Once Princess Zelda had been pampered, the general and her council walked with her to the entrance of the castle and escorted her to the carriage she was meant to ride while standing as her knights displayed her to the people. This was an old tradition meant to bridge the gap between peasant and royalty, and Zelda had every intention to make sure that this gap had all but disappeared, so much so that as she rode the streets of her town--bracing against any fall by holding fast to a bar affixed to the interior--she called for the knights to halt. It was at this time that Zelda, Princess of Hyrule and Queen-to-be, descended from her carriage in all her royal robes to meet with the crowds of people hailing her name and casting her flowers. She spoke with several of them, her face shining bright as the sun reflected off the stones in her tiara and the fresh whiteness of her smile.
It was some time before her entourage resumed, for she had walked much of the way after that, only climbing once more into the carriage when they again came back through to reach the square before the portcullis. Here, she waved at her people and disappeared once more beyond the gates of the castle. Some hours later, the gates would open once more to allow the good people of Hyrule--even those who had ventured from other towns or provinces--into the courtyards and gardens of the castle as the nobles inside witnessed the crowning of their queen.
It was at her crowing some few hours later that Zelda felt nauseous. She had walked the blue carpet of the throne room countless times to reach her chair, but now, the distance felt like miles, and she so desperately wanted to look back … to see all the faces and to see if she might see the face of a young man from the forest.
At last the final moments had come, and it had all felt like a blur to Zelda. The great blue robe of her father was blanketed across her shoulders and in the moments following this, an older man removed her tiara, its gems gently releasing the last tendrils of her hair as if accepting the moment of its final goodbye. Then the coldness of a new crown, heavier and beset with stones of sapphire and ruby, rested against her head. As she sat there, the weight seemed less and less unbearable … as if it were perfectly formed for her head. The feeling relieved her, but she still felt ill at ease, for as she had sat there all this while, she had scanned every face in the crowd.
And Link’s had been nowhere among them.
After her crowing moment and the official instant where her life changed from princess-hood to true sovereign, everyone bowed, and she could hear the muffled cheer of the masses outside, for she knew that a councilor had given them word of her crowning.
She then sat through ceremonial gift-givings from the towns and provinces. Those representing Castle Town brought forth a great wreath with five golden leaves and powered with sapphires and amethysts. Renado was there to represent Kakariko--even though the town was now populated as greatly as Castle Town these days with far more important people, he had said--and he gave to her three silver-tipped arrows, having heard of her love of archery. A few from the Goron tribe were also in attendance and had crafted her a great set of armor from the heart of their caves. Ralis, still prince of his people due to his age, had come with two guards and a few Hylian river folk, and offered the Queen beautifully crafted coral earrings he said had belonged to his late mother.
The last people to pay respect to their new Queen were Rusl and Mayor Bo of Ordon Village. Bo stood behind as Rusl ascended the steps to bow before Zelda, who smiled rather fondly on him. From him she received a customary gift meant as a gesture that the old traditions would forever be remembered and to pledge the loyalty of his people to her service.
It also reminded her, and everyone in attendance, of a certain young boy … which had been Rusl’s intent as well. It was Link who had made this moment possible, and Zelda welcomed his honorable gesture by rising. Rusl bowed lower in response, and Zelda came forward to accept his gift herself. The others had been collected by her knights and council.
Zelda held the sheath of the Ordon blade firmly in one hand, and with the other, she pulled its steal forth with a singing whistle that echoed against the decorated walls of the throne room. She looked into her reflection and saw how different she now appeared.
“Let it be my first act as your Queen,” she spoke loudly so that all could hear, “to dub this man Honorary Knight of Hyrule.” As she spoke, she twisted her wrist and gently tapped each of his shoulders with the blade in turn.
“Rusl of Ordon, you showed valor and kindness in the face of the peril that doomed my kingdom one year ago. I owe you every honor. Rise a Knight of Hyrule … and my friend.”
There was a shout and cheer from the crowd as Rusl humbly stood. Zelda embraced him by the forearm, and he returned her gesture. There was a question in her eyes, he could see it when no one else could, and she could see his response in the way his eyes did not mirror the smile on his lips.
Link was not here.
The rest of the day was a blur to Zelda, and all she wanted was to be done with it all. She scarcely remembered the speeches she had made to her people in the courtyards as she stood at the balcony high above them. She could not remember the taste of her food at the feast that night. Her handmaidens had thought perhaps she had stopped breathing while they undressed her in the evening, but she simply stared on. She had offered every courtesy and every smile expected of her, but there was one spot in the crowd that day, one plate at dinner that evening, and one sword in her guard … that had been left absent.
When she had finally been left to the isolation of her bedchamber, the same chamber that had held her captive so long ago, she cried into her pillow at the thought that her Hero was still vanished from her life.
===============
Another year passed. Then two. And as seasons faded into each other and time went ever on, Zelda realized one morning as she stood at her balcony that she had been Queen for five years.
And it had been nearly six years since she had last seen Link.
She looked to the pitcograph Shad had given her on the eve of her coronation. It had wrinkled and slightly faded with time, and she wondered how different Link, too, might look in the time of these long six years apart. He had never promised to return to see her, he had only ever seen to his duty and completed the tasks he set out to do.
But she had always hoped….
She sighed. That night, the castle was hosting a grand fest in honor of her five year anniversary as Queen Zelda. She looked to Link’s image for courage and then took a deep breath before tucking it away and returning inside.
===============
Merry laughter and smiling faces. That is what Queen Zelda witnessed everywhere that night as she walked on the arm of Auru, talking with this and that person in the courtyards illuminated by thousands of different colored candlelight. Ordinary folk mingled with nobles and even the knights were enjoying the cheer of it all. Food was aplenty, dressing table upon table that had been set up in the days leading up to this night.
Zelda passed through gatherings that included Rusl, Bo and his daughter--Ilia, she thought had been the name--talking rather loudly with a few Gorons. Though, the daughter seemed uncomfortable as they talked of feats of strength. Then there was Telma chatting up Luda, the kind shaman’s daughter of Kakariko. They strolled past a troupe of entertainers she recognized from the town square and a magician she remembered from a corner of town. Even the fortuneteller from the west block of town was there, spinning stories to those that would listen of the day she had given their hero instrumental advice for his journey. There was also curious young woman all dressed up in frills and what appeared to be sequins in the shape of beetles on her rose-pattern skirt. Her face and gestures looked animated as she spoke to a couple knights who looked both smitten and perturbed by her.
Auru and Zelda stepped through the arch leading into another courtyard, and they made small talk as they did so, for Auru could tell that Zelda, even as she looked so beautiful in her blue dress--and the coral earrings Prince Ralis had given--, was either overwhelmed by the festivities or prey to solemn thoughts.
It was then that they came upon Shad and Ashei. While Shad spoke to a small audience of all ages about his research--his book In the Ruins had been finished a year ago--Ashei chatted to a few Gorons and knights. Zelda noticed how close Shad and Ashei stood to one another, and she knew that it was because Ashei felt the need to mark her territory, for not even a year ago, the two of them had at last been seen together. Zelda still remembered the way he had brought up the subject of Ashei over a year ago and how he was not sure what to make of the way she spoke and acted toward him. Giving Shad advice on how to approach Ashei romantically had been one of the most awkward conversations of her life, but seeing them married not three months ago had been one of the highest joys.
Zelda and Auru talked with them for some time, and conversation with Shad and Ashei seemed to ease her mood, Auru noted, but as they parted ways to give time to her other multitudes of guests, her spirit again fell. At this moment, Auru excused himself to wander back toward Shad. Zelda watched as they spoke lowly then turned to watch the night sky. She did not see Shad point to a garden enclosure off to the side of the courtyard.
Zelda saw a shadow move on the ramparts above and knew that it must be the tiny, unkempt man preparing the night’s closing act, rustling here to there to order around her knights as they set up his devices. She remembered how he had described his plans and was interested in seeing the marvel he had promised.
That was when Auru returned to her side. She smiled as he again took her arm, and then he guided her toward the secluded garden. A question lingered in her eyes as he motioned her in. “I must speak with the general for a moment,” he offered. “I won’t be long, and no, it there isn’t anything wrong. I’ll be back shortly.”
She nodded and watched him leave before entering the garden. This was her private garden, and since it was off-limits to guests, it had not been lit for the festival. Only the moon and the few torches in the sconces on its west wall lit the dense area. The other walls were made by hedgerows taller than she, which gave birth to another area of the garden, where ornate benches were organized around the dense-growing roses, the grand statues, and the countless trellises. At the center of the garden stood the single lattice pergola, intertwined with roses, lilies, and other colorful flowers that bloomed only in the night hours.
She made her way to the pergola, stepping alongside it and smelling the roses as she went.
That was when she heard the faint hum of a familiar song. She listened close, her heart racing in fright of the sudden intruder.
Her mother’s song. The lullaby that had coddled her nightly as a child.
The sound came from within the latticework of the pergola, and she peered around the side of one of its four symmetrical openings. There were benches inside, sitting diagonal to each corner, and from the lattice roof there hung more flowers along with six lanterns.
Across from the opening Zelda leaned against was the silhouette of someone else standing in the opposing framework. She drew a concealed dagger from beneath her skirt and raised it as she entered the pergola, taking each step slowly as the stranger continued to sing the tune of her childhood.
A few steps from the man, the singing suddenly stopped and the figure shifted. He did not appear threatened by her dagger when he turned, and he ignored her warning to stay back, taking one careful, slow step into the light.
Zelda dropped her dagger and retreated to the other side of the pergola. Her eyes wide, she thought surely this was what it was like to see a ghost.
Silently, the man knelt down and picked up her dagger. He lingered in that position a moment, as if paying respect to her, and since it seemed her voice was stolen, he presumed that it was all right that he stood once more. Carefully, he approached, ever silent. Silent and staring always into her eyes, as if to look away would free her from his spell. When he indeed did look away, it was to lean over slightly to place her dagger on the bench closest to her … drawing him quite close to her all the while.
He shifted his gaze back to her, but slowly and calmly, his blue eyes trapping her again in breathless silence.
It was a long time before either of them spoke, and in those moments, Zelda tried to understand that it was truly him who stood before her. He had aged, yes, and noticeably, but his eyes were ever full with the same fierce intensity that she remembered. Under a brown cloak, his clothes were different, she could tell, though their color was still predominantly green. His old tunic had been tattered and repaired so many times that he must have finally commissioned new apparel from a very skilled craftsman. His chainmail and boots seemed the same, though.
His face, though it had healed from the Great Battle, had suffered at the hands of different, less cunning foes. Just below his right eye, a scar had been etched into his skin from nose to ear, and it was there she noticed that part of his lower ear had either been slashed or bitten away. The gash on his lip seemed to have reappeared as well and was sure to remain forever now that it had healed again. If anything marked the years they had spent apart it was the slight stubble on his cheeks and chin as if he had shaved away the unwanted hair only yesterday. She was, after all, only three years his senior, which made him three and twenty now.
Link, six years older and six years made rugged by living in the wilderness, had returned.
When his crooked grin finally cracked, Zelda knew that as roguish as he appeared, he was the same as he had always been.
“It’s good to see you … Queen Zelda,” said Link.
“Don’t call me that,” she said suddenly, her voice unsteady at first. Then she amended with a softer, surer tone, “It’s never quite sounded right.”
“All right,” he nodded, and after another moment where it looked like he might have said something else, he turned away again, leaving Zelda to come to realize the stories of his silent heroism were likely very much true.
After she was able to find some sense, Zelda regained her mobility and stepped up alongside Link as he looked toward the flowers in the garden. She asked the only question she had ever wanted an answer to since she had realized six years ago how much she had missed him.
“Where have you been?”
His reply was simple. “Everywhere.” The scope of it bemused Zelda, and she was thankful that after a moment to collect his memories, he began recounting a few of his adventures.
“It started out as helping to rebuild Kakariko and to see that Prince--I mean--King Ralis now, was doing well. I’d never gotten the chance to personally tell him about his mother.” He trailed off here, but after some time he told Zelda how he informed Ralis of the circumstances of his mother’s death and her wishes from beyond the grave. Ralis had then sat with Link for the rest of the night telling him about his mother and father.
“Then I found the Cave of the Great Fairy,” he said, an excited sparkle brimming in his eye when he looked at Zelda. It seemed to her that he had grown a few inches since last they met.
“The Great Fairy?” breathed Zelda. “She’s a travelers’ myth.” She was suddenly at ease with having Link with her again, as if no time had passed at all.
“Not true. She saved my life once, out in the desert,” he said, and then he told her of how he had returned to Gerudo Desert and happened upon her cave, where she had been invaded by demons trying to use her magic to return to the living.
It was after this, he went on, that he had found out the truth to the rhyme about a man called Jovani, that his soul had indeed been trapped by the demonic poes that traveled the lands. He had been tricked and thus turned to gold and gemstones to live for eternity--as he had wished for immortality. Link had spent many months tracking down the spirits responsible in order to set Jovani free from their curse. Jovani, he said, was the reason he had come into a great deal of rupees as payment. Link had refused the reward, but as Jovani had learned that wealth was not the key to happiness, he had wanted to be rid of it, and therefore, Link accepted and put the stones to good use in having new clothes made, a better saddle for Epona, as well as some other odds and ends before giving the rest away to a charity run by an old man named Charlo in Castle Town, as well as offering some to Soal and his mother. It was even during his small stay in town that he said he had happened upon Agitha again, who had begged his help to find her pet grasshopper in the southern courtyard outside the town walls. Strange as it was, Link had obliged.
He had done much for the people in Castle Town, by the way he told it, though he did not claim credit for anything, not even the long trek he had made to deliver hot spring water from Kakariko’s Goron dwellers. He recalled with a laugh how Epona had hated being hitched to a cart for that.
Zelda was glad to hear his stories and glad to see that he enjoyed telling them these days, but she noticed how he never once mentioned his first journey … or Midna.
“All these years, though … why did you never come to see me?” Zelda finally asked at a length as his stories began to dwindle.
His brows furrowed at that. “I’m sorry. I should have made time, but as I said, it only started out as rebuilding and doing small favors to help out where I could.”
“Then what happened?” she pressed.
He looked distraught at having to bring her tidings of his other deeds. “At first I didn’t think anything of it,” he said remotely, and then he clarified. “The bulblins and bokoblins. Not all of them vanished from Hyrule. I’d encountered a few here or there on my travels the first two years, so I thought nothing of it. Stragglers. Outcasts. But they were raiding villages and small camps, so I had to intervene.” He had chosen a less violent word for what Zelda knew had meant the deaths of such stragglers. She had promised death to any who troubled her people again, and it seemed Link had delivered to the letter of her orders.
“As the years went by, I realized that the raids were becoming more common, and they didn’t seem so disorganized or random anymore. I started investigating, and instead of stopping one of their raids in Kakariko, I waited and followed them. After a long while, I learned that they were acting on the orders of a king who’d taken up residence in the old encampment outside the Arbiter’s Grounds. The news troubled me because I knew that King Bulblin had fled with his followers per your command.”
As Zelda listened to his tale, she noticed the slight inflections he now put on certain words or sounds, as if a life of travel with hearing so many different voices had cultivated his own into something unrecognizable, and the way he spoke, the words he used and the way he held himself … he seemed so much more grown up than last she had seen him.
Link continued his story, and Zelda listened, a captivated audience. He told her how he had traveled again into the desert and spied on the raiders’ camp and the gruesome, giant bokoblin who had come to rule over them. Link had chosen to stay his hand and instead sought out the old bulblin king, who had taken up residence in the marshlands beyond Hyrule’s westward borders. Once there he had spoken to the king, who had welcomed him and set his bulblin comrades at ease. King Bulblin and he had come to an understanding, Link told her, during the final hours of the fight against Ganondorf, and he was glad to have made an ally of him, for he had been instrumental in his plea for peace with the troublesome raiders. Link could have wiped them out single-handedly, Zelda knew, but he had insisted on a course of action that would spare bloodshed. The raiders, he thought aloud, had reminded him of himself … lost people looking for a place to call home. They had just taken a more destructive route than he had.
Throughout the ensuing months, King Bulblin and a small entourage had journeyed with Link across the desert plains to liaise with the bokoblin leader. After a bloody welcome into their camp--during which Link said he had sustained his most prominent scar when a bokoblin had nearly taken his eye with its dagger--they finally secured an audience with the giant bokoblin. At first, talk was difficult, the leader calling King Bulblin a coward and insisting that Princess Zelda was their sworn enemy for casting them aside without hope of a reprieve.
That was the part that was hardest for Link to tell Zelda, for it indicated that she had been indirectly responsible for the raids against her people. He could tell that the news had upset her, but hearing how Link and King Bulblin had at last found peace--although gravely won--set her heart at ease. Link grimaced as he conveyed how their peace had been secured, that the giant bokoblin would not see reason and had challenged King Bulblin to a fight to the death. Whosoever won the duel would also win the guaranteed loyalty of their followers.
Unable to present an alternative to which the bokoblin would agree, Link had found himself resigned to watch as the titans fought for supremacy. In a fortunate turn of events, King Bulblin had won back the missing half of his horde over the beheaded corpse of his opponent, and soon after, he had spoken his parting words to the green-clad hero and retreated once more into the West.
“I am sorry you had to handle that on your own. Why did you not come to the castle for aid?” asked Zelda.
“You had a kingdom to rebuild,” he said, shaking his head. “And may I add, everything looks better than it did before.” He turned and saw her smile at his kindness. When he shifted his gaze back to the garden, his eyes turned inward, and he sounded sad. “I play my part, as I’ve always done.”
Zelda was not sure what to say, and before she could think of any comfort, Link was speaking again. “I saw Rusl earlier. In the courtyard. He looks well.”
“Yes,” she nodded, still eyeing Link thoughtfully, wanting to know those thoughts that lay deep in his eyes, the thoughts he never gave light to in the presence of others. “He says you still have not visited the village. Is that true?”
Link grasped a break in the latticework, toyed with the bulb of a night-blooming flower. “Yes,” he affirmed softly. In the same softness and perhaps with a dusting of remorse, he added, “I never did ask his daughter’s name. She’d be like a sister to me, and I don’t even know her name.”
In the quiet, Zelda plunged through her brain. She hated seeing Link so … dejected … lonely. “I think it was Aryll,” she said finally.
“Aryll…” he tried the name on his tongue and after a moment he seemed to smile a little. “I could have a sister named Aryll,” he said softly, happily, looking up into the moonlight.
“You could go talk to her,” Zelda suggested tentatively. “I’m sure everyone would like to see you again.”
Link looked anxious at the thought. He averted his eyes and brushed a patch of dirt from the pergola and back into the grass with a boot. “I’m not really fond of crowds,” he said. He had never liked being put on a pedestal, and he knew that that was what would happen.
“Is that why you weren’t at the coronation?” asked Zelda, half playfully to combat his distress and half demanding to console the hurt she still felt at his absence.
But Link faced her then. “I was there.”
“But I did not--”
“I was one of Ralis’s escorts, part of the river folk.” He turned his body toward her, taking her bare hand in his as he spoke his apology. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to you plainly. I wanted to see you, and your coronation was soon after I had visited with Ralis, so he invited me to be in his keeping.” Unconsciously to Link, his thumb caressed her hand, but Zelda felt every stroke. “It’s just that I…”
“Not fond of crowds.”
Link looked into her eyes, saw how she teased him to relieve the tension sprinkled in the air.
“Is that why you never visited?” she asked.
He searched her eyes for a long time before his forehead creased under the weight of his thoughts. Turning away and loosing her hand, he scratched at the stubble on his jaw line. After a moment, he took a step away from her, and Zelda could almost hear his troubled thoughts with every careful step as he made his way toward the rose bushes a few feet away. On the other side was a sea of blue lilies, all climbing toward the moon-licked sky. He fingered a thorn thoughtfully, and just when Zelda stepped forward to kindly revoke her question, he sighed.
“When I was in the desert,” he began. “I went up to the Mirror Chamber….” He patted away the roses and stepped toward the stone wall to the west. “It was the same as we’d left it,” said Link, coming up to the dark stone and running a palm over its cold, hard, unforgiving features. “Silent and lonely.” He stared at the wall, eyes in a distant memory. Zelda approached as he continued in barely a whisper, choked by the emotions he had kept at bay for so long. “My memory of Midna has never faded … and I thank her every day for opening my eyes to the world…” --a sad smile tugged at his lips-- “…for being part of my life and showing me what true courage looked like.” He had kept the words inside for so long that he thought now he could not stop. The wound in his heart had been cut open again, and he could not seal its flow.
“I miss her….”
His lip quivered.
Zelda stood alongside him then, and the torchlight to his right cast a shadow across his face, shielding the full display of his emotions from view. She reached to touch his shoulder, but he turned away before her soothing caress had landed.
“She was … an extraordinary friend,” he said as he retreated into the sea of lilies, their blooms reaching toward him like hundreds of soothing kisses. He stood with his back to Zelda. “But she’s gone … and she’s never coming back.” He shut his eyes tightly, cringing at the memories. “It hurt,” he said, his brows rising as they curled to mirror his anguish.
When he opened his eyes, he looked up into the stars. “I thought for a long time that to go back would be selfish, something that I needed. I kept thinking that I didn’t want anyone else to care so much about me like I did for her … so they didn’t have to feel that pain when….” He lowered his gaze and lifted a hand to the scar on his face, traced the bulge of it with two fingers. “Someday … I’ll be gone, too….” Slowly, his head lowered again as his eyes closed, and his fingers lifted from his face, gradually coiling into his palm until they made a firm fist that he brought in to his chest. His fingers grasped the breast of his tunic, and he clutched the fabric tightly as if trying to hold his lonely heart in one piece. “So, I kept my distance and kept to the road, never lingering in one place for too long.”
His eyes popped open. “But I’ve been wondering lately.” Link swirled around only partly, looking on Zelda from an angle, his head cocked in uncertainty. “What will I have left behind?”
Looking upon him then, half in torchlight, half bathed by the moon and eyes caught by the flickering lanterns in the nearby pergola, Zelda witnessed a man who had sacrificed everything out of necessity and a man who had then continued to sacrifice because he had chosen to do so, because it had been the only way of life he had ever known. His watering eyes searched Zelda’s for an answer, wishing desperately to understand through her wise counsel. As he stood there, shoulders drooped, eyes vacant and lips quivering, she saw just how tired he was … and how lonely he had become.
She drew toward him, the lilies dancing as she moved through them. Reaching upward, she cupped a palm over his opposite cheek and gently turned him fully toward her. “You leave behind all that you have offered. Hope. You are a living legend, and long after we perish from Hyrule, the children of tomorrow shall remember you as brave and strong and true.”
He smiled, but it was all a show, for he choked on his next breath as he sucked in a sniffle and shook his head. “And in such a life, there are only so many battles before you’ve met your match.”
“Then you cannot seclude yourself from the world you helped preserve any longer.” She smiled up at him in that way she had, a small grin that promised the storms would always pass. She took his hand in hers, and his fingers wove through hers.
“I’ve done what I set out to do,” nodded Link, content with the favorable outcome of so many battles. “Ganondorf…. The raiders….” But it was his worst fear realized. In peace, there was no need for him.
“You’ve lived as the Hero,” said Zelda, looking deep into his eyes. “Now … live as the man.”
Link realized they were but a breath apart now, and it was a moment of perfect clarity, the moment when he understood his heart’s every desire.
“Ask me to stay,” he said, his voice as soft as the hum of wind passing through the lilies underfoot, “and I will.”
All Link’s sadness washed away in the next moment as their lips met in a gentle kiss. Warmth kindled him anew at the healing touch of her embrace. Their hands still clasped together, Zelda’s other arm glided up to hold him round the neck. Link brought his opposite hand up to cradle her face, barely touching her jaw as if she were as delicate as porcelain.
When they parted a moment later, their eyes remained closed as they leaned their foreheads together, savoring the feeling of being so close and so loved.
It all felt too surreal, with so much time having separated them. Zelda was breathless when she spoke, and she could still feel the tingle on her skin from where Link’s patches of stubble had tickled her. “…Stay.”
Link braided his fingers into her hair, his lips tilting toward her again. “As my sworn oath … Zelda,” he promised in the moment before his mouth covered hers once more.
As they kissed, they forgot the world, forgot titles like Queen and Hero, forgot the years they had spent apart. Here and now they stood, a sea of lilies cradling them gently as marvelous explosions of colored lights then burst in the sky from the ramparts. In this moment the world was as small as a garden, the sun as bright as a torch, and the stars as distant as the sparks raining down.
A legend, the world remembers.
But the love of a man and woman, that is something more precious … and too often overlooked.