Gah, another chapter that took forever. Mostly because I was putting off the awkward conversations. This chapter is pretty huge. I’m feeling a real urge to go and do other things instead of write. Come on, write, darnit! Not going to get to the end if I stop in the middle!
Also yeah Rana probably should be dead, but this is my story so I say she isn’t. Except it always bothers me when writers do that, expose their characters to heat or cold and expect them to survive normally. Bah. So I guess that means I hate my writing?
Going to try to finish another chapter anyway, despite this ridiculous heat. Ughhhhh. And I still haven’t drawn Franz yet.
Chapter 12: Cuccoos Coming Home to Roost
Chapter 13: Frostbite
The Mirror of Twilight was broken and there was only a piece that was roughly a quarter of the size of the full mirror left, sitting in its frame on the top of the Arbiter’s Grounds.
“Well,” Nabooru said. “Doesn’t take a genius to find out who did this.”
Link slid to the ground and gulped water from his waterbottle. All that running around and jumping and fighting had really tired him out, and now they were back in the heat again, reminding him that he needed to stay hydrated. Franz followed his lead. Night had fallen, but the heat of the day had not yet dissipated.
“No,” Midna said. She slumped down in the frame of the broken mirror. “Zant. He apparently doesn’t care about going back to the Twilight Realm when he can run around this one. Or he has another way back, one that I don’t know.” She spat on the ground. “Maybe that was why he was here. Maybe he broke it a while ago, but knew we would be coming. I don’t know. But we’re running out of options.”
“Link could go to Hyrule Castle and challenge him to a duel,” Franz suggested.
Midna cast a glance at him. “No. What, you seriously think that would work?”
“No,” said the prince meekly.
Nabooru stirred and looked up. “We’re not alone.”
Link looked up. High on the pillars that encircled the coliseum, six ghosts appeared. “Not all is lost,” a quavering voice floated down to them.
“Well, I’m stuck for ideas,” Midna said. “You got any, send them down. Who are you, anyway?”
“They’re the ghosts of the old Sages,” Nabooru said. “How old, I don’t know. Probably the originals. We’ve seen them once before.”
“The King of Shadows could not utterly destroy the Mirror,” said one of the sages.
“Only the true ruler of the Twili can do that,” said another.
“There is one piece in the high snows…” Midna looked up, hope returning to her eyes.
“One in the ancient grove…”
“One in the heavens…”
“Oh one chosen by the Goddesses… you can travel Hyrule and recover the lost pieces.” Midna actually got up and floated over to Link, leaning on his shoulder.
“But you must beware. The pieces are filled with a potent magic that invites chaos.”
“Retrieve them carefully, or Hyrule will suffer worse.”
“Blessings be with you, Hero.” They vanished.
Link and Midna shared a glance and a nod.
“Right,” Navi said. “So, more running around gathering things. Fantastic.”
“I’m more concerned about how we’re going to get down and back to camp,” Nabooru said. “This took a bit longer than I thought it would.”
“We can camp here for the night,” Link said. “Navi usually carries some emergency gear for situations like this. I don’t know if there’s enough food, though.”
“We’ll make do,” Nabooru said. “I’m used to occasionally going without, anyway. As long as we have water, we’ll be fine.”
They spent the night on top of the haunted prison without incident, and in the morning managed to find their way back down to the entrance in only an hour or two. The Moblin camp was deserted, and it looked like it had been burned to the ground. Nabooru offered no comment.
From there, it was a short hike to the Gerudo encampment, and Link and Franz took their horses and left the Gerudo. Nabooru slapped them both on the back and wished them luck.
They made good time on their way back, and ran into Auru near the edge of Hyrule Field in the late evening.
“How did it go?” he asked. “You came back quicker than I thought you would.”
“It didn’t go quite as planned,” Link said. “The thing we were looking for is broken, and Zant has scattered the pieces over Hyrule to try to stop us from putting it back together. Also we all seriously need a bath, except maybe Navi.”
Auru considered. “I don’t suppose you know where the pieces are.”
“The ghosts of the ancient Sages told us… the snow, the ancient grove, and the heavens. I’m not sure about the last one…”
“We’re pretty much decided that the first one means Snowpeak,” Navi said. “You said your friend Ashei went there, right? It was being all extra cold and weird?”
“Yes, it’s been like that for several days. It does not seem natural.”
“I need to resupply, and then I’ll head out there right away.”
“You’ll want to get some winter gear,” Auru said. “That thin tunic and mail combination won’t do you much good in a blizzard.”
Link nodded. “I actually have – well, Navi has some. I’ve been in blizzards before.”
“Then I won’t tell you what you already know. I’m headed back to the City, is that where you are going?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Then let us go together.”
Link set out relatively alone the next afternoon, with only Midna and Navi with him. Epona was safely stabled at Telma’s bar, to which Telma had returned. She let him know that Colin and Ralis were doing well, and Ralis was up and about, which pleased Link. She also had a message from Rusl, in response to which Auru asked Franz for a favour with the Gorons, and the prince had agreed to go and help resolve their issues.After how hard Franz had argued to come with Link, and how humiliated he must have felt in the Arbiter’s Grounds when confronted with the living dead, Link hoped that there was nothing sinister at work in his head. But he seemed perfectly cheerful, and promised Link that he would come on the next part of the quest.
So Link ran north-west in the form of a wolf, up the river to the Zora’s Domain, with only his two ethereal companions.
He came to the foot of the mountain by nightfall, and slept in the form of a wolf, because the wind was bitterly cold. It should have been summer, but the summer flowers in the meadow by the river were dying in the wind that came from the north.
So he curled under a bush, put his nose under his tail, and slept as best as he could. Navi draped his blanket over him, which helped a great deal.
In the morning, he headed up into the hills, following a rough trail that looked as if it had been used recently by some large animal. He could smell fish, oddly enough, raw fish.
Coming up to a narrow pass, he saw a small hut. Ashei was standing on the front step, looking north expectantly. He turned back into a human and jogged up to her.
“Hello,” she greeted him as he came closer. “Didn’t expect to see you up here.”
“I’m looking for something,” he said. “Something that may be causing the unnatural cold on this mountain.”
“Well, the mountain’s always been odd.” She smiled briefly, lighting up her normally expressionless face. “I grew up in this area. My father was a knight, and this was his holding. I haven’t had time to take control of it since Ganondorf fell.”
“Your father is dead?”
“Killed in the second invasion, the one that took us over,” Ashei said, emotionless and practical once again. “Anyway, you didn’t come here to know about that. But take it from me that odd as this mountain is, it’s acting even more odd than usual. And just last night… something really big came by. I heard it, but I couldn’t get a good look at it… I think it’s a monster. I don’t know what it was doing down here.”
“Could it be coming for fish?” Link asked. “Unless you’ve been fishing recently.”
Ashei frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I smelled raw fish while coming up here, and I can see that some large animal went by. Do you know where it went?”
“No. I’m not foolish enough to go out at night here, even if I could follow a monster like that. It would be very dangerous. Promise me you’re not going to do something stupid like that!”
“Well, I have to follow the monster, but I’ll try not to do it at night.”
“All right. That will do. D’you think the monster and the cold are connected?”
“I don’t know. But I do think that the cold is connected to the thing I’m looking for. Have you seen… like a mirror, but only a piece? I’m expecting it to be a quarter of a circular mirror. It probably has jagged edges and strange designs etched into it.”
Ashei shook her head. “Nope. Haven’t seen anything like that. But I’ll keep an eye out for it while I keep scouting the area. Where are you headed?”
“I’m going to follow the smell of fish.”
She gave him a funny look. “Well, I won’t stop you. Good luck!”
“And to you,” he answered, and continued on his way. He crossed the rise into the next valley, and saw a beautiful half-frozen lake, bright white ice and snow lying over deep blue water. Beyond was the steep slope of Snowpeak itself.
“I think it would be a bad idea to fall in that,” he said, adjusting the heavy cloak he had added to his outfit. “All right. I think I can cross that better as a wolf.”
He wasted a lot of time following the fish trail; the creature carrying the fish was heading back and forth and all over. Link would have been frustrated, but he told himself that it was only because the creature was too big to take a more direct route up the mountain the way Link could.
It took him several hours before he reached the top of the next slope, but once he got there, he picked up a new scent. He paused and looked around, blue eyes straining to pierce the increasingly thick snowfall. The monster’s passage was all covered up now, so the only thing he had been using to guide him for the last three hours was scent.
The new scent seemed familiar, and out of place. It smelled a little bit like ferns, and a little bit like rock dust, and a lot like the scent that was just in the crook of Rana’s neck. If he hadn’t had the hypersensitive nose of a wolf, he would never have noticed it. It was a scent he could never remember until he smelled it, not that he was good at remembering scents anyway. He hadn’t smelled it since… when was the last time she had chased the nightmares away?
Why would Rana be up here? What mission was she on? Kakariko was still well-guarded without her; had she decided to come get some action? But from the way she had spoken when they last talked, it sounded like she didn’t want to see him again. Felt like she didn’t want to see him again, from the way she had fled Telma’s bar in tears. Maybe she didn’t even know he was up here.
He tried to make a note of where he was standing, where the fish trail and Rana’s trail intersected, but the visibility was too bad. He was at the top of a ridge and that was all he knew. There weren’t even any trees around. He would have to make a choice here. Navi and Midna waited patiently, bantering between each other about what was taking so long. Navi wouldn’t change him back without his permission, and he didn’t feel like telling them just yet. He was glad they trusted him. Was he afraid of their influence on his decision?
He stepped forward, leaving the fish trail. If Rana was up here, it must be something important.
He had been running only about twenty minutes when he saw something, something that broke up the smoothness of the freshly falling snow. He barked and ran towards it.
It was Rana, swathed in furs and winter robes, but she was unconscious.
“Oh Rana.”
“What’s she doing here, Naeri?” Navi demanded even before she changed him back. “How did Link know she was here, or was that random? Is she gonna be okay?”
“She’ll explain when she wakes up,” Naeri said. “She just passed out five minutes ago. I was freaking out until you guys showed up. Can you do something for her?”
Midna stared, then disappeared into the snow. “Sorry, guys, I’m not going to be any use here. I’ll just get out of your way.”
Link wrapped his arms around Rana and picked her out of the snow. “We need to get her under shelter, quickly.”
“Do you wanna build a snow house, or… hey, you could dig one as a wolf, that would work.”
Link looked around. There weren’t any trees nearby for deep enough drifts to form under, but there was a rocky ledge. He transformed into a wolf and began digging through the snow to get there. In only a few minutes he had a tunnel long enough to lie down in as a human. He turned back into a human, grabbed Rana, and dragged her with him into the tunnel.
He checked her temperature. It was hard to tell, since everything was cold, but she felt too cold. Her clothes were probably holding more cold than heat at this point, even if they weren’t wet. There wasn’t much he could do about that other than hold her tight and hope his own body heat spread to her clothes.
The fairies were quiet, for whatever reason, and soon afterwards, lying still in the stillness of his tunnel, he fell asleep.
He woke up to see bright sunlight filtering through a thin wall of snow by his feet. Rana was still breathing, and she didn’t seem as cold as before. Her eyes opened, slowly, and she stared at him blearily.
“Hi,” he said. “I found you.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled. Her mouth seemed to be too cold to talk. An idea of how to fix that passed through his mind, but he ignored it.
“I’m just going to check outside, okay?”
“Okay.” She squirmed back as far against the side of the tunnel as she could, while he wriggled down until he could sit up outside the cave. The sky was a clear, pale blue, and he could see for miles. He looked across the foothills into half of Hyrule. He could see the castle, small and pointed – and caged in a yellow forcefield.
He was hostage for Hyrule, in the opposite way that Zelda had been. What a strange situation.
He poked his head into the tunnel. “Weather’s clear. We can keep going, if you’re feeling strong enough.”
She slowly crawled out of the tunnel and blinked at the view. “Pretty.”
“You’ve never been up here before?”
“No.”
“What brought you up here?”
“I needed to tell you something. I didn’t know you were going to be here, but I had to be here to tell you when you got here.”
“So you knew I was coming eventually.”
“Yeah. And then I saw Ashei down at the foot of the glacier and she said you’d gone by, so I tried to catch up to you.”
“Good thing I took the long way, then. What was it you needed to tell me?”
“I was talking to Prince Ralis, and he told me about the Yeti who live on Snowpeak. They’re friendly. So… don’t attack them.”
He smiled. “You thought I might by accident?”
“Ralis says they’re really scary looking if you’re not used to it. And the big one is, like, twenty feet tall or something.”
“I see. And you guessed I was coming because…”
“I just knew,” she said. “I had a feeling this place was important. I didn’t know I would find it so hard to go on, though. I thought I was prepared.” She plucked at her cloak despondently. “I could have asked one of the others to go, but I thought I would be most fit for this kind of extreme…”
“You’re probably right.” Link unfolded and stood creakily. “Well, you can go back, or you can come with me.”
“You really want me around?”
He stopped and looked back at her. “I would have thought I would have to ask you that.”
She looked surprised. “What?”
“Franz says you don’t hate me, but I can’t think why not…”
“I don’t hate you,” she said, still surprised. “Where would you get such an idea?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Come on. Let’s go visit those Yetis. Maybe they know where the thing is that I’m looking for.”
“Ralis gave me directions. Well, he’s never been up here himself, of course, but he says the big Yeti told him you can see their house from the top of the mountain. I was going to go to the top and then hole up until the weather got better.”
“Well, it’s better now, so it shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
They climbed to the top; it took them another hour. Rana seemed unusually out of breath, and he wondered anxiously if it was a side effect of her exposure. The fairies trailed behind them, talking too quietly for them to hear.
Down on the other side of the mountain, in a valley that may or may not have even within the boundaries of Hyrule, there was a large house, a mansion of some kind. It looked a bit lonely, but smoke was coming from its chimney. “You think that’s it?”
“Probably,” she said. “I don’t see any other houses around here. What are these tracks?”
There were some deep grooves in the snow, leading straight down the mountain. Nearby was a collection of what looked like elongated frozen lily-pads.
Link began to smile. “That looks like fun.” He set down one of the flat things on the slope, sat on it, and pushed off.
“No!” Rana cried. “If you stand on it, you’ll get more control!” He looked back and saw her balancing skilfully on one of the flat things, and she overtook and passed him.
He grinned. “Is that the way we’re playing it?” He wobbled to his feet. His recent experiences with the Spinner would help him out a lot here.
He couldn’t help noticing their differences, so similar to their personalities. She dodged lightly around rocks and the occasional tree, and he rode straight over the rocks and ducked under the trees, taking the subsequent air and thumped landing in stride.
He caught up to her again. She was smiling. “This is fun. Look out for the cliff.”
“I’m looking out for it.”
“Don’t go over it either.”
“Never.”
She twirled, somehow, her arms carving a circle around her, and said something.
“What?” It was hard to hear her when they were going so fast, even in the clear air.
“I said, I should do things like this more often.”
“You don’t?”
“I haven’t done much of anything, since…”
“Define anything.”
“Anything except watch the south gate of Kakariko for suspicious monster activity.”
“What about sleeping?”
“Who needs sleep? I can’t sleep. Are you crazy?”
“I don’t understand…”
The mansion was coming up fast, and she flipped from her snowboard just as they reached the bridge that led across a chasm to the front door. She staggered a bit on the landing and drooped, breathing hard.
Link coasted to a stop and went back to help her. “You all right?”
“Tired,” she said. “Flabby.”
“You crazy girl.” He stooped and picked her up, putting her over his shoulder.
He climbed the oversized stairs to the mansion’s door. “I don’t see a knocker anywhere… should we just go in?”
“Put me down!” Rana scolded.
“You just said you can’t sleep, and you’re tired. So I’m helping. Relax. If the Yetis live here, then nothing will attack us.”
“Well, those kind of look like ice Keese up there,” Navi pointed out, directing his attention upwards to the eaves several stories above them. “And now that we’re up close, this place doesn’t look like it’s in good shape.”
Midna popped out of the door, startling them. “There’s no one in the next room. You can probably come in.”
Link put Rana down and pushed open the giant door.
Inside it was quiet and cold. Everywhere they looked, the house was beautiful, old, and decaying. The stairs to the upper level had collapsed, and there was a hole in the roof. The chandeliers hung frozen, unlit.
“Not terribly inviting,” Navi said. “But that looks like firelight peeking under the door.”
Link led the way across the room, and knocked on the inner door.
“Come,” said a strangely accented woman’s voice, and he pushed open the door.
He saw a very large version of a cozy room, with plush red couches and carpet on the floor. Sections of tree were burning in the fireplace.
Swathed in a thick blanket, sitting on the floor in front of the fire, a ten-foot tall plump figure with dark skin and intelligent black eyes was watching them. “Strangers visit, uh?”
“Yes,” Link said. “Is that all right?”
She smiled, sneezed, and smiled again. “Is fine, uh. Not having many visitors. I sick now, uh.”
“My friend isn’t doing too well, herself,” Link said, and Rana punched his arm weakly.
“Husband making soup. You drink, you feel better, uh. Come sit by fire!”
This was exactly what Rana needed at the moment. Warmth, and the prospect of food. Link noted the smell of cooking fish coming from another doorway.
The woman saw his glance and smiled. “Husband make fish soup, for make me better. Good fish, from Zora pool. My name Yeta. His name Yeto.”
“I’m Link, and this is Rana. These are our fairies, Navi, and Naeri.”
She blinked at them. “Pretty lights, uh.”
Rana smiled. “They are, aren’t they?”
“And friendly, too!” Navi chirped, flying close to Yeta’s face in a friendly way.
Yeta giggled. “Come sit, Link human. Tell Yeta why you come.”
Link sat on the thick carpet and was tempted to take his boots off and wriggle his toes in his socks in it.
Before he could begin his story, a head poked through the doorway, and a great big voice boomed out. “Yeta! Visitors, uh?”
“Human visitors, uh!” Yeta replied.
Link stood again. “I’m Link, and this is my friend Rana. We don’t wish to be a bother, but…”
Yeto laughed, a great big jolly laugh. “No bother, no bother! Come! Sit! Warm! I bring food when ready. Fish from Zora village most nutritious!”
“Thank you so much for your kindness,” Link said.
Yeto waved it aside. “Visitors nice. Not get many, uh. Okay. Back to soup now.”
Link carefully explained his story, and both women listened intently. Rana looked shocked that that there was a Mirror to Midna’s world, and even more that Zant had broken it. But he tried to keep it simple for Yeta, stressing more that he was looking for a mirror than what it did.
Unexpectedly, Yeta nodded. “Husband find mirror last week, uh. Hang in bedroom. Such pretty mirror! But then Yeta get sick, so come sit in living room by fire. Also rats become fierce. So we lock bedroom. You can have mirror to save world, uh.”
“Thank you,” Link said. “Can I pay for it, or…?”
“No, is okay. It pretty, but rats come because of it. So no can enjoy pretty. Please take.”
Yeto poked his head through the door again. “Yes, take. Mirror make Yeta sick, no want. If want pay, help around house, uh? Kill rats, fix drafts, uh.”
“That sounds good,” Link said, getting up once more and going over to him. “Can you tell me where to start?”
“Come,” said Yeto. “We men talk business, uh?” Yeta laughed softly.
Link followed Yeto into the kitchen.
“So, human come to snows for mirror, uh? You on spiritual journey?”
Link couldn’t help but smile. “Sort of.”
Yeto thought that very funny and laughed uproariously. “You look for long time! Huh huh. Yetis joke too, uh. But you make good climb.”
“Thanks.”
“House is open to you. Go where you like, uh. Maybe start with wolves in yard? Also need pumpkin, cheese, for soup. Wife look bad, uh? Fever. Make soup to fix.”
“I understand.”
“You married, uh? That your wife?”
“No, not my wife… Just a friend.”
“Ah, friends, uh. Good friends! Come up here together, very brave. All right. You start when ready. We be here.” He turned back to his soup, humming and burbling to himself.
“Fish, pumpkin, and cheese soup?” Midna whispered to him. “That sounds kind of weird.”
“Don’t hate it til you’ve tried it,” was Navi’s sage response.
The ‘rats’ turned out to be white wolves, who howled in the courtyard, and also strange ice monsters of a kind he’d never seen before. The mansion was more of a castle, now that he was wandering around it – the walls were made of heavy stone blocks, except in rooms that clearly had once been beautiful social places. He wandered through a ballroom where water that had dripped from a hole in the ceiling had made an ice sheet across the floor, and wondered what it would have looked like when new. Also there were several cannons sitting around on the walls.
He found a pumpkin and a wheel of cheese and brought them to Yeto. They were so large he could barely carry them, but in Yeto’s huge hands they hardly looked like they would be a snack for him, and they didn’t make much of a drop in the eight-foot-tall cauldron that he was cooking the soup in.
However, Yeto pronounced the soup done, and they all sat in the living room next to the fire to eat it. Rana and Yeta looked to be fast friends; the Hylian was snuggled up next to Yeta’s soft, downy fur.
Link asked about the cannons and the Yetis smiled.
“Husband aficionado of weapons of modern warfare,” said Yeta. “Has big collection.”
“You like, uh?” Yeto boomed. “Tomorrow I show you how to shoot cannon. Big noise! Fun time.”
“That sounds interesting,” Link said. “I would like that.”
“You feel better much?” Yeto asked his wife.
She nodded. “Less headache now, uh. Good soup.”
“Thank you! Yeto do dishes now.”
“Let me,” Link volunteered, and Yeto passed over the massive bowls and spoons. Link and Rana had shared a bowl between them, and still hadn’t managed to finish it. Link was worried their host would be angry, but Yeto just laughed at the “cute little humans” and their tiny stomachs.
When he came back, everyone was asleep. Yeto was curled protectively around Yeta, a fond smile still on his face. Rana was lying a little apart from them, a little further from the fire. He bent down to look into her face. No, she wasn’t asleep. She was just lying very still, her eyes still open, and a tear fell down into the carpet.
“Hey,” he whispered gently. “Are you okay?”
She wiped the tears away and rolled over, presenting her back to him. He sighed. “Rana…”
“Go to sleep, Link.”
He shook his head, although she couldn’t see him. “Are you going to sleep?”
“Maybe. If I feel like it.”
He scooped her up in his arms, despite her muffled squeak, and carried her back into the kitchen. He set her down on a box near the fire and knelt in front of her. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
Her face crumpled. “Because I’ll just make you feel bad. And I know you already feel bad about me crying, so I don’t want to make it worse.”
He reached up to touch her elbow. “It’s all right. Tell me anyway. You said you can’t sleep; is it that, or you don’t feel like sleeping?”
“It’s both,” Naeri said.
“Naeri,” Rana said, and her fairy stopped talking. Both fairies looked at each other, and then flew over to a far corner of the kitchen. Neither Hylian noticed them go.
“At court,” she whispered, “if you say anything to anyone about your problems, how you feel about bad things, then you’re labelled a whiny loser who wants attention. And someone else always has a worse sob story anyway. But if you don’t say anything, then you’re a stupid person who doesn’t know how to get the help you need. And I don’t want to say too much to anyone anyway, because I feel like I’m boring them with my complaints that are the same day after day. I’ve managed to not tell too many people about… my current problem, and I’m certainly not telling you. Not like it matters compared to Zant’s invasion.”
He sat beside her and put his arms around her. It was manipulative, and he hated that, but he did it anyway. “Tell me. I’m not going to be mad, or feel more bad than I already do. I was… partly wrong. Stopping Zant is the most important thing. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not important. I didn’t want you to think that. And I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” Although… she was clearly holding back a flood of tears, biting her lip, proudly not wanting to break down in front of him. Perhaps he should go after all.
“More than I’m already hurting?” she snipped back. “I’m sorry. This is why I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Rana, I’m… I’m sorry for hurting you so much. I just want to know, now. Please tell me.”
She was silent for a long time, tense against him. “I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking of you and it hurts,” she said finally. “It’s like… when I saw you for the first time again three years ago, except it’s not just your eyes now… it’s everything. Everything you do, everything you say… even when you’re not here, I can’t stop thinking about you and how amazing you are. Maybe I don’t know you, but you’re enough the same that I don’t think I’m wrong to love you. Even if I’m in love with a shadow of who you really are. That doesn’t change what you do, and I can tell you’re a good man. And I can’t get enough of you; I’m addicted to you, every twitch you make. Being apart from you is… I’m so jealous of Yeto and Yeta.”
He wanted to tell her she was crazy, but she probably wouldn’t take that well right now. She was tense as a bowstring, but he wouldn’t let her go anywhere until she was done.
She chuckled through her tears that she was ineffectually trying to hide. “I sound like a crazy person. Well, maybe I am. I was raised in the forest, and then by fugitive ninjas. What is ‘normal’? I don’t think I’m capable of normal. What about you?”
He thought back to how crazy he was about Marin on Koholint. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I don’t want to be selfish, even though I totally am. I certainly don’t want your attention just because it makes me feel better – although it doesn’t anymore, it just hurts. Oh, I shouldn’t have come up here! I should have sent Rusl.”
“Rusl’s not used to adventuring like you,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t put him in danger. But why did you keep going when it started to look bad? You could have died, and no one would have known. And then I would really feel awful.”
“Oh, well,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I’ve been doing anything useful with my life, anyway. You probably shouldn’t have saved me from those Ironknuckles, even. You would have figured out the Yetis were friendly. You’re smart.”
“Rana,” he said, and shook her in exasperation. She pulled away from the shaking, looking annoyed. “Don’t value your life so cheaply. Now I’m going to tell you you’re crazy.”
“No, just upset. And crazy.” She focused on him through her fingers, suddenly calm. “You seem different. In a good way, though.”
“I got the Master Sword back. It chased away a good portion of my doubts about the past and my capabilities, told me that I’m not a failure, despite everything. If I had gotten it back when I found out you were alive… Well, Navi told me to stop thinking about what might have been.”
“I don’t think I can do that yet.”
“You need your own Master Sword.”
She managed a smile. “Now where am I going to get that, at Malo Mart?”
“I don’t know – wait, Malo has…”
“He started a shop in Kakariko. He’s in business with a Goron who supplies him with bombs and arrows and things.”
Link whistled. “So that business jargon he likes using wasn’t just for show.”
“And he drives a stiff bargain. But it’s not like you find arrows just lying around everywhere, so he can do that.”
“And how is Talo taking it?”
“Talo’s been watching the eastern gate, the one to Goron City. Not many monsters come through there, but he is very vigilant. And he has a good set of lungs.”
“That he does.”
“I guess you want to know about everyone, right? You haven’t been able to see them in a while. Beth and Luda play together a lot. They like dolls and tea parties, but they have this sense of responsibility that… well, I wish I had it at their age. I wish I had it now. Ralis is up, and he and Colin are helping Renado take care of the town. Ralis doesn’t want to go home yet. He doesn’t feel he can face his people, even though he ultimately succeeded in getting help for the Zoras. Ilia’s been keeping to herself, although Beth keeps trying to draw her out. Rusl watches the north gate. Sometimes he asks me to spar.” She looked down. “I haven’t taken him up on it yet. I just wanted to… stop existing.”
“But you talked to Franz.”
“Yeah. He came to visit while he was staying in Kakariko. He’s nice. He was sympathetic. He reminds me of Zelda, in a way. Some kind of unconscious dignity. Jakob’s all healed, now, so Rusl spars with him instead.”
“You should join them, when you go back.” Oops. He didn’t mean that she was going alone. “When we go back?”
“Where are you going after this?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead. The other two pieces of the mirror are supposedly in the forest and the sky, and I’d probably go to the forest first, because I haven’t the least idea of how to get up to the sky.”
“You need a really big cannon,” she said, and chuckled. “Or a bird. Probably a bird. Too bad Kaepora Gaebora’s not around anymore…”
“Or even if he was, I’d be rather too big for him,” he smiled back. “Maybe you should come visit Saria.”
“I don’t want to bother her.”
“She probably wants to know.”
“No, no, no. You can tell her.”
“So what are you going to do? Lie around feeling sorry for yourself in Kakariko?”
“I can’t do anything useful, so, yes.”
“Stop saying that.”
“It’s true!”
He sighed. “You really are crazy. And stubborn.”
She sagged. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for not being able to do anything more useful than say ‘I’m sorry’. Now you’ll really hate me.”
“Now when did I say anything like that?”
“You certainly don’t love me anymore, and that’s just as bad.”
“…Go to sleep, silly.”
“Link,” she said, suddenly serious. “I know it’s stupid to be wallowing in self-pity because I’m not in a relationship, especially right at this moment when the whole kingdom is in danger. People break up, people live single lives… but knowing that doesn’t really help.”
“I understand. And I’m sorry for being such a huge pain, for being around and reminding you of things you don’t want to think about.”
“Oh, I still like thinking about you,” and she blushed a little. “But I shouldn’t think about that anymore, so I feel bad.”
“Don’t feel bad. I don’t suppose you can help it.”
“I’ll try to sleep. And I’ll try to be more useful tomorrow. I think Yeta likes me.”
“I like they both like us. I like them.”
“Yeah.” She pulled away from him and began walking sleepily back to the living room. For some reason, he felt… disappointment?
He followed her, and they lay on the carpet near each other but not touching. He fell asleep pretty soon.
The next morning, Yeto showed him how to use the cannons. It was a lot of fun blowing up the especially large ice monsters that seemed to have grown overnight. Then Yeto went back inside to take care of Yeta, reading to her in the strange Yeti language. Rana and Naeri stayed with them. She still didn’t look happy, but at least she didn’t look completely sleep-deprived like he feared she would.
He fought a large lizard monster dressed in heavy armour, whirling an iron ball on a chain around its head at him. He managed to dodge the ball, which would probably have crushed him like a slug, and stabbed it in the back. He picked up the iron ball out of curiosity. It was heavier than his iron boots, and very solid. He couldn’t swing it with one hand the way the lizard could, and he felt like an idiot using it. But it was fun, so he kept it. Or rather, Navi kept it. No one had to see him using it, anyway.
It was shortly after noon, and he was just starting to feel hungry, when he came out of the castle’s chapel with the key to the master bedroom. He had destroyed a lot of the furniture in a spectacular fight with some ice monsters, and was feeling kind of guilty about it, considering he had promised to help fix the place. He heard a call.
“Link!” He looked right and saw Yeta and Rana walking slowly up the ramp from the courtyard.
“Hi! I found the key.”
“Yeto said it was nice out, and that most of the monsters were gone, so we decided to come find you,” Rana told him.
“You find key?” Yeta asked. “Good, uh. I take you to bedroom now, give you mirror.”
“You seem to be feeling better,” he commented.
“Yes, have more of husband’s soup. Feel much better! Fresh air good, too.”
“We’ll take the mirror away and then you won’t feel sick at all anymore,” he promised.
She smiled. “You very nice little humans. You should marry like Yeto and me.”
He laughed awkwardly. “I think it’s a bit early for that.”
“Why not? She like you.”
He gave up trying to figure out whether Yeta meant “she likes you” or “she is like you”. “Maybe later,” was all he said, diplomatically. Rana shot a glare at him, and he knew he would be in trouble later.
Yeta let him unlock the big blue heart-shaped lock on the door, and he held it open for her. She giggled at him as she waddled past him.
The master bedroom was one of the rooms that was still beautiful and taken care of. It was very dusty, but Link supposed that was because they hadn’t been in it for a few days. There were several candle sticks, a very large but empty bookshelf, a grandfather clock, and a luxurious looking bed with draperies and a lot of pillows. The room was two or three stories tall, even by Yeti standards, and windows ringed it near the top.
At the back of the room, propped on a large chest of drawers, was a piece of the Mirror of Twilight.
Yeta went straight to it. “See, pretty mirror.” She began to sway gently in front of it. “Pretty… uh… pretty mirror… lovely…” She began to twitch and groan, still repeating the word ‘pretty’, and Link’s hackles rose, and he would have growled if he was in wolf form. Something terribly wrong was happening.
“Yeta!” he began, but before he could move, she spun around, her face horrifically transfigured, and screeched at him.
“NOT TAKE MIRROR!”
The windows shattered, and freezing air filled the room. It swirled around Yeta, as she seemed to absorb the mirror into her body, and lift her high in the air. He couldn’t see her for the snow and ice that whirled around her. The carpet began to freeze into ice.
Something massive slammed into the floor, and he jumped and slipped backwards. It was a huge sphere of ice, with a face seemingly etched into the side that faced them. “Rana! Stay back!”
Her sword was in her hand, not that it would do her much good against the enemy they now faced. “How do we get her out of there?”
“Can you go and get Yeto?”
She glanced towards the door. It was shut and barred by thick ice. “Nope! We’re stuck here! I don’t even think I can climb out the windows…”
“Yeta! Fight the mirror! You don’t want to hurt us!” He had to shout over the wind still driving about the room.
The sphere did not answer him, but instead began to move, sliding smoothly across the icy floor. He jumped out of the way, wondering how on earth he was going to win this one.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Navi said to him, and the iron ball appeared dangling in front of him.
“Navi! That won’t work!”
“How do you know? Maybe it’ll break the ice around her without hurting her!”
“And maybe I’ll squash her!”
“Are you freaking out again?” his fairy screamed at him.
“I’m freaking out a lot!”
The sphere had given up on chasing Rana and was barreling at him again.
“Well you don’t have a lot of options, do you!”
He seized the chain. “Fine. Yeta, look out!”
He swung the heavy ball and hurled it at the ice. It cracked, pieces going in all directions, and bounced, heading away from him again. He couldn’t tell what had happened to Yeta, but it was still moving, so he hoped she was all right.
It kept coming at him, so he kept swinging the ball and chain at it. His arms were going to hurt tomorrow. Rana wisely stayed behind him, where the sphere couldn’t attack her.
With every blow, more ice fell from it, until it slammed into the wall and shattered. Yeta hovered a foot above the ground, looking unhurt, but she still had the giant fangs and glowing red eyes that had appeared when the mirror took her. She wailed, a strange, angry, guttural cry, and floated up into the air with a sinuous wriggling motion. Cold air gathered around her again, forming into a bunch of icy chunks that hovered menacingly over their heads.
“Run!” Navi squeaked, and he took her advice and sprinted for the other side of the room as fast as he could across the slippery carpet. A series of thuds behind him told him that Yeta was throwing the oversized ice cubes at him. He heard a squeak from Rana, but it was a startled one, not a hurt one, so she was okay. Although if one of those ice cubes hit her, she probably wouldn’t be saying anything ever again.
There was an especially large crash behind him, and he turned to see Yeta, in some kind of ice gazebo, had landed in an attempt to crush him. Before she could lift off again, he brought out the iron ball and swung it at her icy prison. Part of the top fell off.
She rose into the air again, screaming in anger, and began pelleting them with hailstones while she gathered new lumps of ice. He dodged them as they slammed into the floor in his wake, and then Yeta herself landed again.
He swung the iron ball at her, and it smashed her ice into the far wall. Yeta, unshielded, screamed and wailed and fell to the floor, unhurt as far as he could see.
Something glittered in the air, and tiny fragments of glass coalesced into the fragment of Mirror that they were looking for. It throbbed as it hung in the air in front of him, a soft but tooth-jarring rumble. He didn’t reach out to take it. Yeta didn’t even have to touch it to be corrupted.
Midna popped out of the floor and took it instead. “Well, now we have two.” She turned to look at Yeta with the rest of them. “I feel bad for her. She’s a sweet girl, and to become corrupted like that… All worlds can be cruel, I guess.”
“You can say that again,” Navi said. “But she appears to be unhurt, and she looks normal now…”
“Link?” Naeri said.
“We have to hurry to the next place,” Midna said. “We have to, to get those pieces not just to stop Zant, but to prevent other people from suffering like this…”
“We need to make sure she’s all right,” Navi said, flying over.
There was a crash from the doorway, and Yeto stood there, over the remains of the door and the ice that had blocked it. Navi hurriedly backed away from Yeta. He saw his wife lying still, and gave a huge cry, rushing to her side.
Yeta sat up just then. “Uh… uh… What I saying? Where…”
Yeto put a giant hand on her shoulder. “You just dreaming, uh.”
“Yeto! Mirror you gave…” she looked around, confused, at the dresser, at Link, at Rana.
Yeto shook his head and picked her up in his arms. “No, Yeta. Look into eyes of Yeto. Look at reflection in Yeto’s eyes. There true beauty! Who need mirror?”
“My love, uh!” Yeta cried, her own eyes shining.
Link looked away, not wanting to intrude on a private moment, and saw a pile of fur. “Rana!”
“I was trying to tell you,” Naeri said, as he ran to her. He felt ashamed as he picked her up in his arms. She was breathing. “She got sideswiped by an icicle and hit the bookshelf hard. I think she has a concussion.”
“I think I can get us out of here,” Midna said. “The Mirror’s given me some power. Shall we?”
“We should leave a message…” Navi said, glancing at the two embracing Yeti.
“Or we can come back later, when Rana’s all right,” Link said. “I’d rather do that.” He sighed over the still form in his arms. “You’re so silly.” But he meant it affectionately, and the others knew that.
He also glanced at the Yeti, and had a sudden vision of a golden-haired couple embracing… embracing in a wood-walled room with white breezy curtains in the window…
“This is the place,” said the man. “It brings back memories, doesn’t it?” The woman answered him by laughing and kissing him on the mouth.