Chapter 2
Link headed for the market and bought some fruit; enough for two or three days’ breakfast. He gave most of it to Tatl to carry. She protested until he reminded her that her magical carrying capacity was far greater and less inconvenient than his.
“We should go to the swamp first,” she said after that.
“Why?”
“It’s the first one Tael said. You see, there’s a legend that says that there are four protector giants. We need to get their attention, and one of them lives at each of the cardinal points, so we need to go in those directions! I guessed that was what Tael meant.”
“I suppose I understand.”
“You’re just a kid, but you have a sword, and you look competent, so I’ll let you through,” said the guard at the gate. “Be careful, now!”
“Hm,” grunted Link, jogging through.
He headed south for the line of trees at the edge of the circular Field of Termina.
As they passed a huge old dead tree, Tatl veered aside to look at it. There was a rough drawing of a Skull Kid and two fairies.
“He was lonely when we found him,” she said. “He just wanted to play, but everyone was afraid of his strange face, even the Deku people, who look kinda similar if you ask me. He was cold. So were we. We knew we weren’t supposed to talk to strangers, but we felt sorry for him.”
“We got to be good friends. We had lots of fun playing in the long grass. That’s when we made this picture.”
Tatl shut up and wouldn’t say any more.
“I know something like that,” Link said quietly.
They carried on south.
They came to a swamp, but the water looked bad, and smelt bad… more than bad, poisonous.
“Um, this would be not normal,” Tatl said. “It shouldn’t be acidic.”
“I’m going over there,” Link said, pointing to a small dock on the other side of the water.
“Change into a Deku first.”
“Why?”
“Because they can bounce on water.”
“Ugh.” Link put the mask on and felt the same crushing feeling again. When he was done, he headed for the dock, using the giant lily pads along the way to help him.
He saw a giant octo, and reached behind him automatically. Nothing. He transformed back and tried again.
“Drat.”
“What?”
“I didn’t even check, but that Skull Kid also has my slingshot, my boomerang, and all my supplies. That was one of my bottles Navi was in. Drat.”
“Throw rocks at it!”
“All right, I’ll try it. -How are we going to find rocks in a swamp?”
“I’ll get you something.”
Link stood on a lily pad and tried blowing bubbles at the thing. They popped, leaving a slight film on the octo’s skin.
Tatl came back with some Deku sticks. “This was all I could find.”
“They’ll do.” Link, Hylian form, hurled them like javelins. They punctured the octo, and it wheezed and sank to the bottom of the river.
Link passed by it, skipping on the water as a Deku, and followed the lily pads.
He found himself in front of a wooden palace brightly painted in stripes. A monkey came out of the bushes and grabbed his hand, dragging him gently, but firmly, into the cover.
“You’re a stranger around here, right?” he chirped.
“I am.”
“I’m Nikku. I need your help. You see, the Deku Princess has been kidnapped, and they think my brother did it. They’ve got him in there, and they’re going to kill him!”
“Right. I’ll stop it.”
“We need to work as a team, Mr. Deku. I’ll tell you where to go. You can get to the back of the cage, but I can’t get there myself. Too many guards. But you can go by ways and not be seen. I’ve spied them out.”
Nikku took Link to the side of the castle and showed him a magic bean plant.
“I’ve carefully tended this in case anyone showed up. You go up, and then straight, fly across the gaps with the Deku flowers, and then right, and then eventually another right. It’s not too hard. They’ve tied him to a pole, I hear, so the back door should be unlocked. Good luck!”
Link headed in. No one paid any attention to him, except for some guards who sat in other Deku flowers. Perhaps they weren’t guards, but feral Deku who had taken up residence in those flowers. They made him think of the Deku back home, whereas the others didn’t. The wild ones stared at him. If he got too close, they snorted a Deku nut at him. One hit another guard on the head and knocked him out. By the time that the scrambling and shouting started, Link was already inside. Tatl was a silent as a mouse throughout the whole thing.
They arrived at the back of the bamboo cage, and Link found the door. It was tied shut, more strongly than he could undo, so he transformed back to normal and cut it with his Kokiri sword. ‘Lucky the Skull Kid didn’t grab that,’ he thought.
“Hey. Are you Nikku’s brother? We’ve come to get you out,” Tatl said very quietly.
“No! There’s something more important to do! We need to rescue the Deku Princess!”
“All right, but be quieter. No one knows I’m here except your brother, and he’s counting on me to get you out.” Link could be very intense, and the monkey felt his intensity and fell silent. Link cut him free from the pole.
“Please listen,” the monkey said once they were out of the cage. “I need to teach you the song to open the Woodfall Temple. It’s been sealed.”
“First…” Link transformed into a Deku. “You can tell me later. I won’t rest easy until you’re out of here. Climb on my back. I think I can manage it.”
“This is the song,” the monkey insisted, and hummed it very softly.
“I know that!” Tatl said. “I must have heard you last week or whenever!”
“Then teach it to your stubborn partner,” the monkey said as Link popped into the flower.
He launched and fell. The monkey was too heavy for the little Deku body he was using. The guards quickly surrounded them.
Link untransformed, eliciting gasps from everyone, grabbed the monkey, and ran.
He almost made it to the gate, but then the guards dog-piled them both.
Link struggled free, being bigger and stronger than most of the guards as a Hylian, but the monkey was invisible. Link tried to get to him, but the guards were too thickly packed, and he didn’t want to hurt them with his sword.
He gave up and ran around to the bean plant.
“Who are you? Oh, you’re the Deku that I asked for help? What happened? Did you get caught?” Nikku asked. “Don’t worry about it. No! Don’t try again now! Plan B. You need to get to the princess. I’ll show you the way there. When we get the princess, she’ll listen to you and talk the king out of it. Come on!”
He led Link back through the swamp until they came to a giant waterfall.
“We have to climb this cliff,” he said.
Link set to, and reached a ledge with a tunnel very soon. They were about on a level with the top of the fall.
“Here you go through and then there is a series of platforms to a big wooden structure. Do you have the Song of Soaring?”
“No, but I see something written on that block of jet. It says Song of Soaring,” Tatl said.
“Lucky we’re in the right place. I use it to get to the platform. You better learn the song and join me.”
Link looked at the song. It looked like the Song of Storms, but different. He played it on his Ocarina. Nothing happened.
“Let’s go in!” Tatl said. They went through the tunnel, and Link used the platforms in Deku form until he saw the structure. There was one more flower to get there, or the song, so he used the flower.
“Now, do you have Deku pipes?” chirped Nikku.
Link showed them to him.
“Just play the song to open the Temple, would you? I can’t make a big enough noise.”
Tatl sang it again for Link, though she was very high-pitched, and Link played it on his pipes.
The centre of the lake began to bulge up and swell. The ground rumbled: the platform shook.
The trees in the centre of the lake rose on top of a tall mound of earth. Water cascaded off its sides.
Link dropped into a Deku flower and flew towards the island.
Two hours later, he faced off against the demon of the temple: a tribal warrior giant who kept chanting something that sounded to Link like “You wanna fight?”
“You want to fight?” Link shouted back at it. “We can fight.” He raised the bow he had found – perfectly sized for his thirteen-year old height – and fired an arrow. The warrior blocked it with his kite shaped shield.
After a short but fierce battle, the warrior, with his annoying chant, collapsed and burnt in green flames. The mask he had worn was unharmed. Link picked it up, and whiteness swallowed his vision.
It appeared he was standing on the top of a high pillar surrounded by waterfalls. It felt like the Temple of Light, but it was all light instead of all dark. Clouds and bubbles surrounded him.
A tall, bipedal figure materialized out of the mists ahead of him.
“Hey! You’re one of the four giants, aren’t you?”
A slow sad sound, as of singing, came back to Tatl’s call.
“He says that he is, and that he was imprisoned in that mask. He… thanks you for setting him free? He’s hard to understand. Um… Hey, slow down! Can you help us with the Skull Kid?” Tatl listened. “He says we need to free the other three. Um… Oh! This is a song he wants to teach us. Listen carefully, ‘cause I don’t want to have to remember it all by myself!”
Link heard the melody sung slowly by the giant and played it on his Ocarina.
Tatl leaned forward again. “He says… ‘Call us.’ Okay, I guess that means when we’ve got them all sorted out, we can call them with the song and they’ll help us with the Skull Kid.”
“Thank you!” Link called to the giant. His vision swirled again, and he found himself in a cave.
There was rustling going on behind a curtain. Link pushed it aside, and found himself face-to-snout with a Deku girl with an elaborate hairdo in many-coloured flowers.
“You must be the Deku princess,” Link said.
“Yes, I am. Who are you?”
“I’ve been sent to rescue you by the monkeys. Your father thinks they kidnapped you.”
The girl began to quiver with anger. “Oh, foolish father!! How stupid can you get!” She turned to Link. “Quick! Take me home. I’ll settle him.”
“Who kidnapped you anyway?” Tatl asked, as Link headed out of the cave and found himself facing the tunnel to the waterfall. He noticed that the water was a pure blue colour, and guessed that since the demon was dead, the water was normal. That much was obvious.
“A big warrior, Ondoluwa, a monster of legend. I don’t know why he’s alive, he’s supposed to be dead thousands of years ago! A Deku hero killed him.”
“Now we’re going down a cliff,” Link said. “I need to change.” He put the mask on. The girl stared at him.
“You’re someone special, aren’t you? You look just like the butler’s son now. But you can’t be.”
“Really?”
“Hey! Maybe that tree we saw was the butler’s son! After we get the mask away from the Skull Kid, we can make him a Deku again,” Tatl squeaked.
“Hm.” Link hopped over the lily pads. The princess hesitated just for an instant – Link heard her mumble something about ‘undignified, but I must get home somehow’ – and followed.
She burst into the palace, flowers bristling, and marched up to her father, who started to burble with joy, but…
Bounce! The princess knocked him flat, jumping onto his protruding stomach. “F-f-foolish father! What have you done to the monkey! Let him go this instant!”
The monkey was brought out, but Link was set upon by other guards. “Your majesty, this is the Terminian who tried to rescue the monkey!”
The princess raged at them too. “Idiots! He was only trying to help the monkey because my father is a blockhead! He’s the one who rescued me!”
They trembled in their leaves. Finally, the princess got off the Deku King and came down to where Link and the monkey, Kikki, stood.
“I am terribly sorry, Kikki. My father gets these crazy ideas sometimes. You are officially pardoned, as you never did anything wrong in the first place, and you were only thinking of me.”
“Don’t mention it, Princess,” replied the monkey, waving a cheerful paw. “Nothing bad happened, thanks to Mr. Link here.”
“Yes, many thanks to Mr. Link,” repeated the princess. “You killed the demon of the temple. I hope you can stop the Skull Kid who is responsible for all this.”
“I am going to try,” Link replied.
Soon after, he left. He went back to Clock Town and fell asleep.
“Now what?” Tatl asked the next morning. “Let’s hit the mountains, all right!”
“Fine,” Link said, crawling out of the corner he had fallen asleep in, sword in hand – he was feeling a bit vulnerable with a demonic Skull Kid around, and had used his shield for a blanket.
He headed out of the east gate and climbed down a cliff, heading toward the white-peaked mountains. Snow still lay on the ground near the side of the town close to the mountains, although it was far below the snowline in the rest of the country.
He trudged steadily up a narrow path, dodging the occasional loose icicle or snowball thrown by some kind of snow monster. An ice slide blocked his path, but fortunately for him he had not lost his power of element arrows: he could still blast the cliffs of ice with fire.
He made it to some kind of Goron village, an outdoor Goron village. He wandered around, venturing cautiously into one building, but retreating hastily as the deafening wailing of a baby assaulted his ears. Then he went in again and asked a Goron why the baby was crying so loudly.
“Oh!” shouted the Goron. Link winced and gestured outside. “The elder hasn’t come back yet, so his son is upset, and also Darmani, our great hero, hasn’t come back yet either. Darmi can usually play the kid to sleep. Hey, would you go look for those two? We’ve got our hands full.”
“I can do that,” Link said.
“Why?” Tatl asked. “Why do you have to go and jump into every little problem that comes your way? Are you stupid?”
“I do it because I can fix it,” Link answered succinctly. “I can look for the Temple on the way. Come on.”
“You’re crazy,” Tatl said, shaking her head and following him into the hills around the valley.
It took him the next day to find the elder, frozen into a giant snowball. He was anxious about the hero Darmani, and about his son, but being half-frozen he could only travel slowly. “Please go sooth my son,” he said. “Oh, you can’t use Goron drums, can you?”
Link shook his head.
“Well then, just help me home.” Link accompanied him through the cold, wet night and to the Goron hall.
The next day he wander around a bit more, trying to find the Darmani person. He did find, up a tall cliff, a tomb with his name on it, which confused him, but two Gorons were frozen outside. No one else seemed to know of Darmani’s death, and Link wondered if he could stop it if he went back in time. Unfreezing the Gorons, he asked them about it.
“Oh, yes, Darmi died several days ago. He went to fight the monster in the Snowhead Temple, but he never came back so we got this tomb ready for him.”
“So he might not be dead?”
“He said he would come back in at least two days, and that was four days ago. Darmi never breaks a promise.”
“Hm.”
Link felt he could do no more: he was running out of time. He played the Song of Time.
He went straight to the mountains from the door of the clock tower, using the Song of Soaring, and found that the elder had been frozen into a snowball again, and the baby was still crying.
While taking the elder home this time, Link saw something dark in the snow; something mysterious that he could not identify. He ran forward a little and picked it up.
It was the Lens of Truth. One of the three spiky points had been broken off. Link stared at it, shocked. How could a magical object be broken?
He saw the missing point and picked it up.
He supposed it was not so impossible. Plenty of things he had once thought invincible had been destroyed.
“Hey, what’s that?” Tatl asked. “I can fix that. Give it here.”
“No,” Link said, cradling it to him. “The Skull Kid stole it.”
“And you think that I’m gonna steal it too? Seriously, you are dumb. I said I can fix it. I’m trying to help you here!”
Link gave it to her after another moment’s hesitation. Light flashed and the Lens dropped into his hand, whole.
“…Thank you,” Link said quietly.
“… Do you know, that’s the first time you’ve ever said thank you to me?” Tatl said back to him.
“I’m sorry. I was angry.”
“Okay. That’s reasonable. Thanks for not being mad at me any more.”
“…You’re welcome.”
“Can you see anything?” Link asked a while later, as he gave the Lens back to the fairy. She flew up in the air.
“Nope! Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Keep an eye out for invisible things. I’ll go and talk to people in the village again and see if they know anything else.”
After they helped the elder home to the hall, Tatl squeaked and zipped behind Link’s head, apparently hiding from something.
“G-g-g-ghost!” she cried. “A big strong Goron with a massive gash on his belly! And he’s looking RIGHT AT US!”
“Calm down,” Link said. “Where? Can I have that?”
Link looked through the Lens and walked towards the translucent grey Goron.
“Gah!”
Tatl had ducked down the back of Link’s tunic, making him cold. He jerked, but kept walking.
“Hey, can I talk to you?”
“Eh? You can see me?”
“Yes. Are you Darmani, or someone else?”
“I am Darmani. You have heard of me, then?”
“A bit. My name is Link. May we help you defeat the Snowhead Temple?”
“No.” The ghost of Darmani sagged. “I was… defeated myself. Now I can do no more in this world. Snow came upon us suddenly, which should not be here-“
“No kidding,” Tatl interrupted. “My name’s Tatl, by the way.”
“-but the demon inside Snowhead is too strong for me. And only a Goron can do it.” The ghost ‘sat down’ on the snow. “I am weary, but I cannot rest. I wish to aid you, but I have no way of doing it.”
“I might be able to help,” Link said softly, raising the Ocarina to his lips. He played the Song of Healing.
Darmani’s transparent face showed an epiphany. He looked peacefully happy, as if greeting his fellow Gorons and accepting their emotions for him. “Brothers,” he rumbled. Then his eyes cleared, and he looked at Link again.
“Friend, you have given me strength to do something. Please defeat Goht and restore Goron Valley.”
“I will…” Link replied as the ghost shrank and condensed into something small and hard and dark on the snow.
He picked it up. It was a round mask shaped like the smiling face of a Goron. He put it on, and felt magic take hold of him. It swelled his arms, inflating them painfully with muscle and tough skin. His body frame changed completely. He yelled again.
When it was over, he was a massive, powerful Goron. He took out the Ocarina and was not surprised when he found himself holding a set of five differently-sized drums.
“Where’s this Temple?” he asked Tatl.
“It’s up the mountain. I’ll show you the way to go. You’ll need to stay a Goron, and roll – there are chasms that you can sorta catapult across. You’ll see. Just go at full speed and follow me!”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Link found ‘full speed’ a rather tall order when he was having trouble just rolling forward. Eventually he got it and followed the fairy.
They arrived at a narrow trail, a bridge, through a deep valley. On the floor of the valley a huge Goron, as big as the largest in Hyrule, was snoring thunderously. Giant snowballs were crashing down the spiked pinnacle that the path led to. Link dodged them carefully.
He transformed back into a Hylian to climb the spiralling path to the cave entrance, the entrance to the dungeon.
A day later, and several hours of sleep in a safe spot, Link stood in the cave of the boss, Goht. It was a large, mechanical monster with four legs and horns. It was frozen in a block of ice.
“This rather looks defeated to me,” Link said to Tatl.
“No, you need to blow it up! Duh!”
Link shot a fire arrow and melted the ice. He sighed and dove out of the way as the behemoth tried to trample him. He turned to a Goron and followed after, going so fast he sprouted metal spikes from his body. The spikes tore at the metal of the monsters legs, while Link dodged falling stalactites.
Finally the robot lost control and galloped into the wall, blowing up. All except for the mask was destroyed, and Link picked it up and found himself warped to the exit of the Temple.
That part of the world at Snowhead Temple didn’t look too different, but when he got to the village, the change was dramatic. The ground was free of snow, and the place where he had found the elder was a lake with small islands dotted throughout it. Link felt peaceful in the blooming meadows he found there, and then he remembered something.
“I’m going back to town.” He warped to the clock tower with the Song of Soaring, and went to the bomb shop.
“Hello. I’d like to use this now,” he said, showing the Goron bomb voucher to the elderly lady, while he was in Goron form. She gestured to a stack of large barrels. Link took one and carried it out, not without difficulty.
At last Tatl said: “This is ridiculous. Gimme that thing.” She put it away.
Link wandered and wandered, poking into all the corners he could reach around the swamp, mountains, and Termina Field. He found a racetrack that some Gorons had to blast open with their mega-bomb, and he saw the baby Goron.
“Darmi!” the baby squawked, toddling up to him. “Are you going to race today?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on it.” Link knew he looked slightly different than Darmani, but he let the child have his mistake. His bass Goron voice bothered him somewhat; it resonated through his torso and set his bones vibrating.
“But Darmi! You always race! You’re the greatest!” Tears began to trickle down his cheeks.
Link knelt beside the child. “Sometimes I get tired. I like racing –“ which was true, now “- but sometimes I don’t feel like it, right? Don’t you sometimes find you don’t want to do something you love to do?” He felt oddly parental, but reminded himself he was trying to gently keep the baby from becoming a spoiled brat.
“T-that’s true,” the Goron said. “But I want you to race! Please, Darmi?”
“I will race today,” Link said, bringing smiles to the baby’s face. “But you mustn’t be disappointed if I find I can’t come next time.”
“Why can’t you come?”
“I might be busy saving the world somewhere. Right?”
“Ooh! That’s so cool! You do that!”
Link went to talk to the elder, explaining that Darmani was, technically, dead and that his name was Link. “Please explain it to your son later, when he’s older.”
“All right, young one. Go race, now.”
Link found the race difficult, but he wove around the other competitors early and stayed ahead of them to the end.
They gave him a bottle of gold dust.
“A new bottle!” Tatl exclaimed. “That’ll come in handy!”
“Yes,” Link said, looking at her meaningfully.
Tatl stared at him, and then giggled. “You wouldn’t do that! Hee! You don’t not have a sense of humour after all. Sorry ‘bout that. Heh. That’s funny. We gotta get your fairy back soon.”
“Yes.”
Back on day one, he found a path through the woods to the southwest, a path that was blocked by a large boulder. He blew it up with the special Goron bomb. The fat man who was trying to hack at it with a pickaxe thanked him and walked back to town.
On the other side of the boulder, the path went on, winding through golden woods. Link saw birds and dragonflies, and flowers. It made him feel happy, and also sad. A lump came into his throat. It was much like home…
And then he came upon a wide open area, through a wooden gate in a wooden fence, and saw horses and cows and a chicken coop. The lump grew bigger.
He ventured towards the small group of houses, smaller than Lon Lon Ranch, and saw a small girl and a young woman sitting on the step of the house, talking. But he also saw…
“Eponaaaa!!” he shouted shrilly, wild with delight, and ran forward and vaulted into the enclosure she was in. The two girls looked up sharply. “That’s why you couldn’t come to me, girl. You couldn’t get around the rock.” He hugged her neck and stroked her mane. “I’m so glad to have found you.”
“Sorry to cut short your touching reunion, but there’s a little girl about to shoot you in the butt,” Tatl said. Link turned around and saw a small red-haired girl, the one who had been sitting on the step, clutching a small bow and an arrow.
“Hi,” Link said. “You must be the owner of this ranch.”
The girl nodded solemnly. “You must be the owner of this nice horse. What’s her name?”
“Epona.”
“She’s pretty. She just appeared out of nowhere early this morning, and she was freaked out, so we put her in here and fed her.”
“Thank you. Do I owe you anything?”
“Well, you could do me a favour. What’s your name? Mine’s Romani. The name of this ranch is Romani. Mom and Dad named it after me, but then they died when I was really little, so my sister Cremia takes care of it now. I’ll call you Grasshopper because you wear green, okay? Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Yes… Uh, my name’s Link.” She reminded him of Malon when she was young, but Romani was even younger, about eight years old.
“Right, Grasshopper. Here’s the plan. Meet me here at sundown and help me protect the cows!”
“Um… okay.”
“Thanks, Grasshopper! Come and meet my sister.”
Link spent a good day at Romani Ranch, talking to the sisters. They gave him lunch, and they became good friends. A friendly, though depressed young guy with a Mohawk and facial piercings was in the chicken shed, and after talking to him a while, he gave Link a headband with two bunny ears on top of it.
“It could come in handy,” he said with a sombre wink.
Link put it on, feeling very silly. Romani giggled. Link took a few steps.
“Run,” said Grog, the chicken man. Link ran.
He skidded to a stop because he couldn’t control his headlong dash. He stopped centimetres from the wooden wall of the enclosure. “Whoa!”
“Yep, they’ll come in handy,” Tatl said. “We’ll be able to get around sooo fast now! Yeah!”
“Mm-hmm. Thank you very much,” Link said to Grog. “These are great. I don’t think I’ll bother taking them off again.”
“You look so funny!” Romani giggled.
“You’re just jealous of my superior fashion sense,” said Link facetiously, making Romani laugh harder. “Nah, these are embarrassing. But if they help me save the world, I’ll wear them. Not that I’m in public, exactly, at this moment…”
“Yeah! Let’s see you in South Clock Town!” Tatl yelled.
Link’s heart jumped in his chest and he turned away.
“Hey! Whatsa matter?”
“Sorry. Just… memories.”
“You gotta friend who’d love to be here?”
“Yes…”
Link turned again, searching Romani’s questioning eyes, and then, spontaneously, smiled broadly. “She’d love to meet you,” he said quietly.
“Wow! You can smile!” Tatl said. Link started. “What?”
“My friend… once, she could not laugh or smile… and I gave her that back… I have turned into that, haven’t I?”
“Whatever. Come on, bunny-boy.” Tatl grabbed a real ear and tugged it toward the door, where Romani was already.
“Good-bye, Grog!” Link called.
That night, close to midnight, Romani snuck out of her bed and downstairs to where Link still sat half-dozing by the dying fire – it was cool in the evenings.
“Let’s go, Grasshopper!” she whispered. “We can take them!”
Outside, she ran to the barn. “I’m usually about right here. They mostly come from the field, but one or two come from behind. They’re after the cows.”
“I’ll tell you if that happens!” Tatl volunteered. “I’m not gonna let you take all the glory!”
“Right. I’m ready,” said Link, testing his bow.
It was a few minutes later that they appeared.
Link and Tatl found that the fairy could not get a target lock on them, so Link used his eyes more than usual. He missed only very rarely, though. Once he had a heart-attack when one snuck up from the side, heading for the barn.
Romani kept passing him arrows from her stock. She had a lot.
Tatl screeched. “Link! There’s one almost at the barn back here!”