The Legend of Zelda: Mask of Darkness to Island of Dreams

    Chapter 1

    Zelda touched his shoulder gently.
    “We ought to go now…”
    Link sobbed still into Rana’s cold shoulder, but at Zelda’s insistence, gently laid the still girl on the stony ground and stood. Zelda looked in his eyes and felt her insides tremble: they were eyes that did not see. The deep blue was grey and dull.
    “Link…” With a simple call on the power of the Triforce, they shifted to the Sacred Realm.
    “Link, you must now go back.”
    “Where?” he asked dully, not really caring about the answer.
    “Go back to when you were supposed to be… to live the years you missed.”
    “Oh. Right. Rauru said so once.”
    “Give me the Ocarina. I’ll send you.”
    “I shouldn’t stay in Hyrule then. It will interfere with history.”
    “That is correct.”
    Link passed the princess the blue ocarina. “You will… bury her?”
    “Yes,” whispered Zelda gently. She raised the Ocarina to her lips and blew.
    Link felt the weightlessness and forgetfulness of warp travel surround him, and let himself go.
    He saw himself flying over Hyrule, for a brief instant. Everyone in Hyrule was gathered in Lon Lon Ranch. Epona was safe there, along with several people Link assumed Rana had rescued from the dungeons of Ganondorf’s Tower. Mido and the Kokiri, Darunia, and the Gorons, including the two most massive, King Zora and the Zorans… Shoza and Bitu were there. Even the Gerudo were there, dancing in their sinuous, hypnotising style. Ingo was thoroughly drunk, and shouting the praises of Talon as the two danced with an arm about each other’s shoulders. Malon’s pretty voice sang to an accompaniment played by people in all four races.
    His gaze turned towards Death Mountain. There were the six Sages. Saria was sitting on Darunia’s head. The Sages turned themselves into coloured flashes of light and sped over Hyrule Field. Some at the party pointed upward, clapping and cheering. A white flash sped to join them, and Link knew it was Zelda.
    Again his vision blacked out and he slept in the embrace of time.

    He found himself in front of the Pedestal of Time, as a small child, holding the drawn Master Sword in his small hands. Stepping forward, he plunged the silver blade into the pedestal and waited. Navi flew up to the window, and then returned to him as he turned his back and walked steadily out of the chamber. The Door of Time rumbled shut behind him.
    Tears began to fall from his eyes again as he exited the Temple of Time into bright sunlight. It must have been only a day or two after he had entered it; Ganondorf had not yet destroyed anything.
Someone, a grown-up man with a moustache, saw him. “Hey, little boy, what’s the matter?”
    “On the day of my greatest victory, my greatest defeat,” Link flung back, and ran from the town.

    He fled through the Field, towards his home, Kokiri Forest. A slow goal was forming in his mind.
    Then he halted, deciding to postpone his goal for a while. For the next year, he hid himself away, wandering the very outskirts of Hyrule, exploring the pathless mountains that surrounded it. No one saw him; he saw no one. Navi stayed with him; the faithful little fairy saw her partner become even more silent than he had been, but said nothing about it.
    One day, nearing the autumn equinox, he returned to Hyrule Field.
    At the edge of the forest, he called Epona. He had no idea what Malon would think of her filly suddenly running off and disappearing for some time. He had no idea how long he would go with Epona. She galloped up to him.
    “Navi, am I able to ride her yet?” he asked.
    “Yes,” Navi said. “She’s big enough to support you without injuring herself.”
    “That’s good.” Link mounted bareback and wound his hands in the black-white mane.
    The three rode for many days into the forest, sometimes walking together, sometimes Navi on Link’s hat and Link riding Epona.
    About four days from the last place Link recognized – but he was not lost, because he was always going south – the forest was so great and solemn and still that he slowed Epona to a walk, looking at the lances of sun piercing the forest.
    Suddenly Epona screamed and reared. Link felt himself flung off, and hit his head on a mossy stone.

    Some minutes later, all his muscles tensed and he frowned mightily. Sitting up carefully, he rubbed his aching head. He heard the sound of an ocarina played in single notes and the sound of several people giggling.
    He looked over. Epona was shaking, faced by a Skull Kid and two fairies. One was white, and one was black. No: as he looked closer, one had a creamy tinge, and one was dark purple. The Skull Kid was playing around with the Ocarina of Time! As Link watched, the light fairy bopped the dark fairy, squeaking at it. Link studied them for a moment longer, and found Navi: trapped in a bottle at the Skull Kid’s belt. She was bouncing frantically, trying to get out.
    Link didn’t pay any attention to the words of the three misfits. He stood, a noiseless snarl of rage parting his lips. The two fairies squeaked, and the Skull Kid whirled.
    If the Skull Kid was one of those that Link knew, he couldn’t tell. The face was entirely covered in an elaborately painted purplish-red mask with bright yellow eyes. Link’s fury burst out, and he flung a hasty punch with his right, which the Skull Kid ducked easily, and a better one with his left. The Skull Kid jumped high over Link’s head as he did so, though, and landed on Epona’s back. She screamed and ran. Link dove sideways and managed to catch the Skull Kid’s foot.
    They ran for several meters, sticks and mossy stones tearing Link’s Kokiri tunic. Then a tree loomed up and Link knew no more for a long while.

    When he woke once more, he simply sat there for some time.
    ‘What do I do now?’ he asked himself.
    ‘Duh, you idiot,’ his thought replied, ‘you go after your fairy and your horse.’
    ‘Why bother?’
    At last he cried out: “No! They’re counting on me. I’ll not let them down again!”
    He jumped to his feet and looked for Epona’s footprints. They headed clearly for a log tunnel. Link ran through and found a ramp of stumps which Epona could conceivably have climbed.
    He jumped from one to another, practicing the side flip he had developed during the previous autumn. It worked very well at propelling his momentum where he wanted it. At the top of the stair was another tunnel, very dark this time.
    It was so dark that Link did not know when his feet left the ground and he fell for a long time, a long, long time.
    He landed with a whump in a bed of long grass.
    There, before him, sat the Skull Kid in midair. The mask stared with unblinking glowing eyes. They were malevolent. The two fairies floated above each shoulder.
    “Give me back my fairy partner and my horse!” Link shouted, his voice cracking hoarsely.
    The Skull Kid laughed. “You want them, come and get them. Well, you can get the fairy anyway. That horse of yours was stupid, so I got rid of it.”
    Link jerked in horror, and screamed wordlessly at the Skull Kid. The Skull Kid giggled again.
    “You’re funny. I think I’ll make you even funnier, how about that?” The Skull Kid stood up, midair, put his hands on his knees, and began to shake the mask.
    The rattle it made was a dry, deafening sound, louder than it ought to be, piercing Link’s ears. He felt magic taking control of him and writhed. Dimly he heard the Skull Kid’s laughter as the rattle grew louder.
    It seemed like he was surrounded by Deku Scrubs, all nosing in and pushing at him, snuffling at his sides with their big wooden noses. He struggled, trying to get away from the horror their touch invoked. He turned his head.
    Behind him there was a huge scrub, easily twice as tall as the twelve-and-three-quarters-years boy. Before Link had time to cry out, it sucked him in through its nose.
    He felt a slow, crushing sensation throughout all his limbs. They stiffened and straightened. Now he screamed.
    He fell to the ground, and for some reason his mouth hit the ground first. He scrambled up and tried to charge at the Skull Kid, but only got about two steps with his strange feeling legs before he crashed into the ground again, his face almost touching a tiny pool of water.
    He froze. Reflected in the pool was the glaring face of a Deku Scrub, a very young Scrub with yellow leaves and the same hat that he always wore. He looked at his hands, planted in the moss, and saw that they were brown, wooden things with little leather gauntlets.
    A shuddering cry went up into the darkness as Link saw he had been transformed into what he once knew as his enemy.
    The Skull Kid laughed again, the sound growing distant as the once-Hylian settled into a profound stillness, head drooping.
    A fairy squeaked, but Link paid no attention to it.
    This is what happened. The Skull Kid had left the cavern-like pit they were in through a round door leading to a tunnel. The white fairy had spent so much time laughing at Link that she found herself locked in. Beating on the door with her tiny hands, and finally her whole body, she couldn’t open it.
    “Let me out! Skull Kid, come back!” she cried. Then she looked around, zoomed over to the motionless Scrub, and bonked him in the head.
    “Hey, you! Help me get out of here!”
    Link didn’t answer. She hit him in the head again. “What, are you stupid? I asked you to help me!”
    The Deku’s head raised, and the fairy hopped backwards quickly at the sight of his eyes. They were barely glowing, but in the very depths there was a smouldering flame. His voice was a squeaky Deku’s trill.
    “I have lost my true love, my horse, and my form. My fairy is in the clutches of your pal. Why should I help you? Why should I do anything again?”
    “Pleeeeease? C’mon, a sweet helpless little girl is asking you! And my brother… I don’t know how he’ll survive without me!” The fairy made herself calm down. “I’ll be really good! I’ll help you find the Skull Kid and I’ll make him give your Ocarina back, and your fairy. We can find your horse again, too! I don’t think he killed it. Please please please help me? Please?”
    Link stood, walked forward slowly on his stubby little legs, and pushed the wooden slab to one side. “There you are. Now go and leave me alone.”
    “No! You gotta come to! We have to get your stuff back, and your horse and your fairy! I didn’t want her shut up, but if we hadn’t she would have messed up our joke. It was only a joke, okay?”
    Link glared at her.
    “Geez, talk about no sense of humour,” the fairy grumbled as she fluttered on ahead down the tunnel. “Well? Are you coming? All these things are fixable! Don’t be a wimp!”
    Link was standing motionless. “Have I lost my sense of humour?” he whispered. The day’s events hit him hard at that moment, and a flood of tears attacked him. He didn’t dare let them out; the fairy was no friend of his, and while he didn’t care what she thought of him now, he wasn’t giving her fresh resources for abuse.
    The fairy came back and hovered in front of his face. “Look, I’m sorry for yelling at you. I’ll tell you my name. It’s Tatl! Now can we go?”
    Link shook himself and felt his wooden head rattle. He trotted off obediently behind the little cream-coloured fairy.
    She led him to a place that was a deep chasm with small pillars of land dotted throughout it. They were much too far for him to jump. Huge pink flowers bloomed on them.
    “Now! Time for you to learn about being a Deku. You can burrow into these flowers, and then they can spit you out where ever you want to go!”
    “I don’t understand you,” Link said.
    “I don’t know how, but you climb in, and then you wait, and then when you hear a little pop you go shooting out and you can fly in whatever direction you like. All the Dekus I’ve seen have flowers like propellers in their hands, so maybe that happens while you’re in the flower.”
    Link stepped into the centre of the pink flower and felt himself fall downwards. A few moments later, he did hear a poof sound, and kicked down with his feet.
    He burst into the air, hovered for a few moments, and then dropped the two pink flowers he found himself holding. He fell and bounced on the bottom of the flower.
    Having figured out how to manage it, he headed towards the little ledges that were arrayed in a tempting path towards another dark opening. Sometimes it was very close between survival and a long dark fall.
    On the other side, there was a little tree… so very Deku-like, Link almost thought he had found a strange mirror. It looked so sad…
    Passing through a long, green hallway that positively tingled with magic, Link found himself in a dusty dark room. Rushing water churned nearby, and something was thudding rhythmically.
    Faced with a narrow ramp up to somewhere with a little more light, Link took it.
    “Bless me! You must be that Kokiri girl – turned into a Deku Scrub!”
    “Eh?” Link came snout-to-knee with a beaming red-haired man. An enormous pack on his back was stuffed with masks of all kinds. “No. I’m not. I’m a boy.”
    “You must be a Kokiri boy, then – cursed – you have the right clothes.”
    “I am. Do you know how to lift the curse?”
    “Perhaps, perhaps…”
    “And how do you know of Kokiri?” demanded Tatl. “This is Termina. A Hyrulian couldn’t have gotten through.”
    “Don’t underestimate my abilities, young lady,” chided the mask-seller. “I am the Happy Mask Salesman. Right now, I’m on a collecting journey… but I’m afraid a valuable mask was stolen from me. This mask was carved thousands of years ago by a primitive tribe that dabbled in darkness. It was soaked in evil magic, and its wicked influence, I’m afraid, corrupts most people. Thankfully I took great precautions when I embarked upon my search for it. Now an imp has it, and is plaguing the land. I wish to get it back before it causes further trouble.” He sat down to see eye to eye with Link. “I’ll make you a deal. Do you have an instrument of music?”
    “I did, but it was stolen,” Link said bitterly. “By a Skull Kid with a magical mask… is that the one that was stolen from you?”
    “It is. If you get me that mask, I’ll see what I can do about your curse.”
    “I will do that.” Link turned to find the doorway, then turned back. “…Thank you.”
    “Don’t mention it, lad. I am the Happy Mask Salesman, after all – my job is to spread happiness.”
    Link pushed open the heavy door and was dazzled by sunshine from his left, though it was only a little while past dawn. The sound of carpentry drowned the sound of water from whatever contraption lurked behind in the darkness. People scurried about a brightly paved market, or village square, apparently preparing for a celebration.
    A bell sounded over his head six times. Turning, he saw an enormous clock above him.
    “This is Clock Town,” Tatl declaimed. “It’s the capital of Termina. They’re all getting ready for the Harvest Festival. It’s on the Equinox.”
    “I see. How should I proceed…”
    “There’s a Great Fairy in the north part of town. You could ask her.”
    “All right.”
    Link checked the sun and headed north. North Clock Town was a playground for children, and a gently sloping path led up to a cave to the northwest. Tatl led him towards it.
Inside, there was a fairy fountain… but it was a fairy fountain that was normally full of little healing fairies, not the great variety. But there were no healing fairies, but a bizarre little set of cherubic creatures, with fluttering ears on the top of their heads.
    “Help!” they squeaked at intervals.
    “Oops,” said Tatl. “That’s supposed to be the Great Fairy, but I think she’s been split up…”
    “And would this have anything to do with that Skull Kid of yours?” Link snapped, trotting on his stubby legs out of the cave. “I suppose I have to find the missing pieces, right?”
    He spent hours searching for the little bobbing things that were portions of the Great Fairy. In the process he came to know the town rather well.
    At last he found one and took it back to the rest.
    The creatures spiralled into a tornado and there was a bright flash of light. The Great Fairies’ familiar laugh echoed through the cavern as one smiled down on the little Scrub.
    “Thank you, kind young ones, for restoring me to my proper form. Is there anything I can do for you?”
    “Can you help me get back to my original form or defeat a rampaging Skull Kid with an evil mask?” Link asked.
    The Fairy pondered. “I can teach you to blow magic bubbles as a Deku Scrub… No, really, it’s useful. They use it to attack monsters. As for your original form, I cannot. That requires divine magic to counter the dark magic. I am not strong enough, and my sisters have been similarly shattered… I am not strong enough to attack the Skull Kid either: we tried that already, and that is why we have broken. It is up to you, Hero of Time, to save this world, isn’t it?”
    “But what can I do like this?!” Link cried, ignoring Tatl’s gasp and look of awe.
    “Go find out where the Skull Kid is first, that’s what I would do,” the Great Fairy replied calmly. “You may return here if you are weary. Anything else?”
    “Can you recommend a good restaurant? I’m hungry.”
    The Fairy laughed. Link twitched. “You could try the Milk Bar, or even the Stock Pot Inn. Or, you can buy produce at the market! Bye now!” She vanished.
    Link left the cave and looked around. There was a boy blowing darts at a balloon, but his aim was off. There was a strange little man dressed in green, with a beard, hovering in the air with another balloon.
    Link went to the east and found the Milk Bar closed; he went to the inn and found the food terribly bland. Shoving it into his snout felt weird. At least he was full. He went and bought an apple anyway.
    He went to West Clock Town. He now had a purpose, but he didn’t know how to start. Going up to random people would do no good.
    “Hey! Deku-kid!” said a little boy’s voice. Link turned around and saw a small boy with a ball-cap on. “You look like you need help. Do you want my help?”
    “Who are you?” Link asked. Tatl repeated it. In fact, she kept interjecting annoyingly throughout the whole conversation, making Link long for the tactfulness of Navi.
    The boy puffed up indignantly. “What? You haven’t heard of the Bombers?”
    “Sounds dangerous.”
    “We are the Bomber Secret Society of Justice, devoted to helping people 24/7! Now tell me your problem.”
    “I’m looking for a Skull Kid with a freaky mask.”
    “Say no more!” yelled the little boy. “We know all about him. We’re keeping tabs on him. He’s on top of the clock tower right now. Let me go ask Jim.”
    Link had a hard time keeping up with the boy. He went back to North Clock Town, where he went up to the boy attacking the balloon, who had a red cap, and whispered.
    “Go ask Jack, John,” the other boy said.
    “Right!” The boys ran to West Clock Town, where there was another small boy, this one with a yellow cap.
    “Skull Kid? Well, Joe just went to check on him before breakfast, and he said he was still there.”
    “Thanks, Jack.” The boy turned to Link. “Well, now what are you going to do? You can’t get up there for another three days, until the night of the Festival.”
    “Three days? Oh, gosh…” Link said, deflating. “Can I join you Bombers? That way I’ll at least be doing something useful.”
    “WHAT!?” yelled Tatl. “You’re gonna join these wierdos?”
    “If you don’t like it, you can go away,” Link said.
    “Sure, you can join!” said John. “All you have to do is pass the test. Let’s go ask Jim and get the others. What’s your name?”
    “Yeah, what’s your name, strong silent type?” Tatl interrupted.
    “Link.”
    “Too bad it doesn’t begin with a J. Anyway, let’s go.”
    The complete Bombers’ gang, with the exception of Jack, who had to guard whatever he was guarding, lined up in North Clock Town.
    “Right!” said Jim. “You have to find all five of us – John, Joe, Jake, Jed, and me – before sunrise tomorrow. You have to give us ten minutes’ head start, okay? Good luck – most people can’t manage it!”
    “You’re crazy!” yelled Tatl.
    “All right. I’ll wait in here,” Link said, going into the mouth of the Great Fairy’s cave and closing his eyes.
    Ten minutes later, he began looking. They hid themselves well, but they hadn’t told him that he had to catch them as well as find them. His sharp eyes soon caught their brightly coloured caps in the worst press of travelling performers, but his short legs hampered him. Tatl refused to help him, but he didn’t mind.
    Still, he managed it eventually.
    “Darn!” cried Jim when Link finally tagged him. “I was caught! Anyway, welcome to the Bombers’ Secret Society of Justice. Here’s your official notebook.”
    “You guys are organized,” Link commented.
    “Us guys, now. You’re one of us.”
    “Yes. I forgot.” Link opened the book. It had spaces labelled ‘Name’, ‘Problem’, ‘Status’. He managed to fit it in the pocket of his Deku shorts.
    “So, I’ve never met a Deku my own age before. What’s your home like? What are you doing here?”
    “I’m not actually a Deku,” Link told him. “I’m a Hylian from Hyrule.”
    “What’s a Hylian compared to a Terminian? What’s Hyrule?”
    “Um… Hyrule is a country. I’m not sure how I got here or how far away it is… I think it’s a few day’s journey.”
    “Oh, no, it isn’t,” Tatl said. “It’s days and days and days by land. It’s huge. By the magic fairy tunnel, it’s only a week.”
    “All right, then. A Hylian is what we call one descended from the Knights of Hyrule.”
    “So why are you a Deku, Link-man?”
    “I was cursed by that Skull Kid. That’s why I want to find him – so I can make him take it off. He stole some stuff from me, too – including my fairy partner.”
    “Yeah! He caused no end of trouble when he wanted to join up. He didn’t want to help people! He’s mean! Isn’t that your fairy partner?”
    “No. This is Tatl. She is… helping me for the time being. She is sorry the Skull Kid attacked me.”
    “But he’s still a knucklehead!” Tatl called from where Link couldn’t swat her. “He’s a noble nutcase!”
    “My fairy partner is Navi. She’s a lot nicer and more polite.”
    “Hey!”
    Jim gurgled happily. “You two are funny. I think you really like each other.”
    “That remains to be seen,” Link said evenly.
    “How old are you?”
    “Thirteen.”
    “Holy cuckoo! We’re all seven and eight, except for Joe, who’s six. You’re really old, aren’t you?”
    “I suppose,” Link replied.
    Jim invited him over for meals, solving his food problem. He talked to the Bombers all day, and some of the festival performers.
    After sunset he curled up in North Clock Town and slept.
    At around midnight, he was woken from a restless sleep when he heard a weak cry.
    “Help…”
    “What?” Link cried, running forward. He saw a tall, bald man bending over a small elderly woman. “Hey!”
    The man ran off with a sack full of stuff. Link took off after him. He managed to intercept him on the way to the gate and hit him with a wind attack: the attack was what came out when he tried to do his spin attack as a Deku. The man dropped the sack, yowling in pain, and ran through the gate out of the town, although the guard there tried to stop him also. Link blew Deku bubbles at him until he could see him no longer. Then he picked up the sack and returned to the old woman.
    “Thank you, child. I must thank you somehow, with something…” She stood up. “I know! Come to the bomb shop tomorrow. I will have something for you.”
    “Thank you, ma’am,” Link said, bobbing his big Deku head as she trundled away.
    Jed came forward from the darkness of the South Clock Town gate. “Nicely handled, Link-man.”
    “Who was the thief?” Tatl demanded.
    “That’s Sakon. He’s greedy nut. We watch him closely.”
    “And people say the Skull Kid’s bad! Other people are bad!”
    “Tatl, the Skull Kid has far more power at his disposal. Also, don’t forget that that power comes from the mask, and also that the mask has evil influence.”
    “That would make sense. He wasn’t so mean before. He just wanted people to stop shoving him out. He didn’t want to hurt them.” She pointed upwards – somehow Link knew, although her pale glow completely hid her little shape.
    “He did that?” Link gasped. The moon was as big as the biggest Goron back at home, and it seemed to be getting larger, but Link would have thought it was just how this country, Termina, worked.
    As he looked, he fancied he saw large, yellowish-red eyes that made him think of Ganondorf, which made him feel sick, and large craters and mountains that looked like eyes and a mouth. Then he saw that it was no trick of his imagination, and felt very sick. Images blurred in his mind – fighting with Ganondorf, Ganon, the ring of fire…
    He turned away.
    “Yep,” Tatl said grimly. “He did that. It’s normally the same size it is in Hyrule, and it definitely doesn’t have that freaky face. That was one of his jokes, to creep everyone out. I’d say it worked with you.”
    “It’s only a memory,” Link answered, walking away to find a place to sleep.
    The next day he visited the bomb shop and got a discount for Goron mega-bombs. He kept it for later – as a Scrub, he couldn’t even handle ordinary bombs anymore.
    It rained that day, so Link kept under shelter, keeping his wooden body dry, and chatting with – or listening to – the fairy-wannabe, Tingle. Tingle was the short little man dressed in green, floating in the air.     Link popped his balloon with a well-placed bubble, gaining Jim’s admiration. Tingle wanted to have a fairy partner, even to be a fairy himself, but he was thirty-five years old already and had to support himself by drawing maps. Link found him a ridiculous character, but it lightened his mood and his mind to hear the man’s ideas about fairies.
    The third day, the moon was looming so close that it blotted out half the sky. Link paced up and down in front of the clock tower, waiting for it to open. John, the tallest of the Bombers, waited with him. John would give him a leg up to where the door into the top of the tower stood. The ground shook periodically. There was a febrile rush of activity all day. Jack reported the Skull Kid still waiting on top of the tower.
    As ten o’clock struck, fireworks burst over the town. The tower changed dramatically. The whole top rose several meters, and a counterweight swung down, putting the clock face on the top of the tower. The door dropped, and another behind it, and another until there was a set of stairs leading to a trapdoor into the clock face.
    John boosted Link-the-Deku Scrub onto the platform before the door.
    “Good luck!” he said. “I hope you get him good!”
    Tatl stuck her tongue out at the Bomber.
    Link hurried up the steps and pushed open the trap door.
    The Skull Kid hovered in the air. When he saw Link, he giggled.
    “Look who’s here! It’s the dumb guy!”
    “Tael!” cried Tatl. “You’re okay! I was worried!”
    “S-sorry, sis…” mumbled the purple fairy. “I have something to tell you.” He fluttered forward a little way. “Jungle… mountain… ocean… desert… bring them here.”
    “What? You’re not making sense!” Tatl scolded.
    The Skull Kid whapped Tael out of the way viciously. “Stupid fairy – talking out of turn!”
    “Tael! No!” Tatl squealed. “You mean Skull Kid! You’ll pay for this!”
    The Skull Kid shrugged. “And why should I care? I don’t need friends anymore… not when they’ll all be sorry for not being nice to me… not when I do… THIS!” He flung his arms out and shrieked, a thin, piercing cry that sent purple waves up to the descending moon. The descent hastened.
    “Oh, no!” Tatl cried.
    Tael stirred from where he had falled to the floor. “Jungle… mountain… ocean… … desert… hurry…”
    “Okay, okay, we’re hurrying! Link, quick! Do something!”
    Link was trying to communicate with Navi, but he couldn’t hear her frantic cries over the sound of the screaming. He blew a bubble in an attempt to knock her loose, and he hit the Skull Kid square on the bottom. The grotesque creature flinched, and his noise faltered for the barest of moments before beginning again with renewed force.
    Navi did not fall, but something else did…
    “The Ocarina!” Link shouted at the top of his squeaky voice, rushing to get it. He picked it up, and put it to his wooden lips, wondering what he should play, or, more importantly, how he should play it. He was startled when the blue instrument disappeared and he found himself holding a massive set of wooden organ pipes.
    Finally he heard Navi. “Play the Song of Time!”
    “Take us back to the first day I came here?”
    “Yes! Hurry!”
    Link, after a few false starts, managed to drone out the magical melody on the strange bagpipe-like instrument he held. Focusing all his thoughts on the day they had arrived, he was gratified when white washed over them and disappeared. He felt as though he was falling, and then found himself standing outside the lower door of the clock tower.
    “Wha-wha-what??” Tatl squawked. “What just happened?”
    “I put us back in time three days, the day I arrived here.”
    “Go see that guy and see if he’ll change you back!”
    Link turned and bobbled his way through the big wooden door.
    The Happy Mask Salesman was there. “You turned back time, didn’t you? I’m one of the few who know. Most people won’t be affected, you know. I will change you back now.”
    He pulled out a large pipe organ and played a soothing melody, with strange harmony. “This is the Song of Healing.”
    “The first six notes are Saria’s song backwards,” Link said, and then caught his breath. Something was pulling at his face. His limbs were pulling out… His whole body felt like it was uncramping.
    Something fell to the floor with a rattle. Link took a deep breath and stretched. He was Hylian-shaped again.
    He stooped and picked up the thing that had fallen. It was a mask shaped like a Deku’s face.
    “You can put that on any time and turn back into a Deku, and when you are done, you can take it off. Don’t look at me like that; it could come in handy. Now… do you have my mask for me?”
    “Eh?” Link realized that only half his mission was complete… the easy half.
    The Mask Salesman turned demonic. Lunging forward, he grabbed Link by the collar and shook him. “That mask is dangerous! You must get it! Get it soon!”
    Link wrenched himself free. “I will! It is difficult! Leave me alone!” He tore off out the door. The Happy Mask Salesman didn’t follow him.
    Link leaned against the side of a building and sighed. He did a quick mental recap and shared it with Tatl.
    “We still have to stop the moon from crashing.”
    “Yup.”
    “To do this, we need to go to the jungle, the mountains, the ocean, and the desert.”
    “Yeah. I’ll tell you what I think we need to do there in a minute.”
    “Then we can confront the Skull Kid again.”
    “Yeah!”
    “And then we can rescue Navi and Tael.”
    “Yeah!”
    “And somewhere in here, we need to find my horse.” He gave her a hard stare. She giggled nervously.
    “And I need food.” He gave her another hard stare.
    “Eheheh. Yeah.”


Contents    Chapter 2