Chapter 3

    Link dashed, using all the speed of his magical new hood to get there in time. Swords wouldn’t work – he’d tried it already once, so he carried a notched arrow and fired wildly.
    He barely punctured it.
    The aliens all vanished.
    “What?” Link gasped, breathing heavily.
    “We did it!” Romani yelled happily. “We saved the cows!”
    “It’s five in the morning,” Tatl said. “I’m tired. Let’s crash.”
    “Oh, yeah.” Romani looked rather chagrined, but not tired at all. Suddenly her eyelids drooped and she fell over.
    Link caught her and carried her calmly into the house and up to her room. Then he went down and fell asleep in front of the fireplace.

    The next day he rode Epona on Termina field. They headed to the ocean.
    The Great Sea was a beautiful sight. Link had never seen it before, and gazed with all his might. It smelled fascinating. A seagull called just over his head and he ducked reflexively. Melancholy overtook him again.
    “Hey!” Tatl yelled from over his head, and he looked up. “Look out there, there’re seagulls hovering over something! I wonder what it is.”
    “We can go see,” said Link, nudging Epona onwards.
    When he got to the waterline, he sprang off his horse and dove headlong into the water. His hat came off, but he paid no attention to it. Someone was calling weakly.
    “Help… please, help me… anyone…”
    “Hang on! I’m –“ Link swallowed seawater and coughed. It was bitter, and Link had only swum in freshwater before.
    He got to the person, floating face down except when they gained the strength to raise their head and call.
    “Hang on,” Link repeated, pulling them towards shore.
    “You idiot!” Tatl scolded, as a gull swooped down and met Link’s right arm, protected by his shield.
    After what seemed like ages, Link and his burden came to sand. The person tried to help his rescuer, and half stood with an arm around the short Hylian’s shoulders. The person was very tall. He was a Zora.
    “Ooh,” he gasped as he collapsed onto dry sand. “Thanks, friend. I thought I was a goner.”
    “You’re all right now. I’m afraid I don’t have any fairies with me, but maybe we can get to…”
    “Nah, I won’t make it. I’m still a goner, just not from those pesks.”
    “We can warp.”
    “No, just listen for a minute. I was on a mission, a quest. Y’know?”
    “Yes?”
    “My wife laid seven eggs, but they were stolen by Gerudo pirates. I went to their fortress to get them back, and… well… just look at me.”
    “Hm. I’ll go.”
    “That’s what I hoped you’d say. My name’s Mikau, of the Zora band the Indigo-gos. You can call me Mike. You heard of it?”
    “Afraid not,” Link answered.
    “Ooh, yeah! You’re the lead guitar, and your wife Lulu’s the lead singer! Whoo!” Tatl cheered.
    Mikau grinned weakly. “Heh. I’m in no condition to play now.” He pulled a large fishbone guitar off his back and strummed a few chords. “Oh, baby… I’m so sorry…”
    “Here,” Link said, pulling out his Ocarina and playing the Song of Healing.
    Mikau’s face relaxed peacefully. “Oh, that song does me good… I know what I’ll do.” His features contorted briefly, and then a bright flash of light consumed him.
    A small mask shaped like a Zora face lay on the sand. Link picked it up, and the mask winked and spoke to him. “You go get those eggs, dude. Maybe sometime we’ll figure out how to change me back, but for now I’m safe.” The mask hardened back into motionless wood.
    Link put on the mask. Again he screamed. The magic stretched his limbs out long, and fins sprouted from his elbows and hips.
    When he was done, he was a tall, handsome Zoran with a green tail-fin. He felt actually a lot like his grown-up self, only quicker, a bit lither, but a bit less powerful.
    “Wow,” Tatl said. “You’re cool now. Mike rules, by the way.”
    “I feel… wait! This… this… I imagined this once!”
    “What are you talking about? Can’t you speak clearly?” Tatl asked.
    “Once I had a dream of being a Zoran. I have a friend named Shoza, and I had a tunic that let me breath underwater, but I felt clumsy.” His voice was a higher tenor than his adult voice.
    “So Zora is your favourite of all the races so far, huh? You gonna be a fairy next?”
    “Maybe. We’ll have to wait and see.” Link dove into the water. “Where’s this Gerudo fortress?”
    “To your right. North.”
    “How do you get in?” Link asked, five minutes later.
    Mike spoke in his head. “Underwater…”
    Link dove and found a tunnel.
    A few hours of sneaking later, fighting some Gerudos hand-to-hand as a Zoran, and he had three eggs and clues for the rest. Overhearing some Gerudos speaking, he learned that four others had fallen into an eel pit in the ocean. Mike panicked.
    “Oh, man, am I freaked out, dude. They’ll get eaten for sure.”
    “Don’t be so hopeless,” Link chided. “We’ll go check it out, but I don’t think this bottle can hold much more.” He had dumped out the gold dust, reasoning that he could always win some more, and put the three eggs in instead.
    “We go incubate them at the sea research facility. That steel bubble thing by the shore.”
    Link swam back, skimming the water like a dolphin, and put them in the big glass tank for Zora babies.
    Then he hopped back into the water and sank to the bottom. “I guess I’ll follow the Gerudos, if they’re on a rescue mission of their own.”
    “Capture mission,” Tatl said.
    Link waited until a boat exited from the fortress, and followed it, keeping just under the surface behind them until they stopped and sent down nets. Link looked down. It was a very, very deep pit, dark blue and apparently fathomless.
    Link dove, twisting and weaving – he liked it – around the startled giant eel heads that came out of their caves to eat him.
    When he reached the bottom, he had to fling a boomerang fin very fast at an eel that was striking at him. The boomerang killed the eel, which collapsed. Link entered the cave cautiously.
    A gentle light was emanating from the very back. It was a Zoran egg, in a pile of other things that Link supposed might look edible to an eel – bits of seaweed, dead fish, a dead crab, three jellyfish, and a sea urchin.
    “That’s one, anyway,” he said.
    He swam out of the cave and shot up through the water, pulling on magic to help him go faster. A blue vortex formed around him.
    Accidentally, he shot right into the outstretched neck of an eel. There was a rending sound, clearer in water than even in air – or perhaps it was just that Zorans could hear delicately underwater.
    The dead eel was sinking to the bottom of the pit, so Link looked in this cave as well. No egg.
    “Giant eels are bad, right?”
    “Yeah!” Tatl scolded. “They’re monsters! Normal eels are all right. These eels dug this pit! Come on!”
    “Right. I don’t understand your logic, but I don’t feel bad about destroying them all.”
    “Great!”
    Link swam up and down the immense tube-like hole in the ground, charging at eels until his magic power ran low.
    He managed to find three more eggs, bringing his total up to seven. He felt Mike’s spirit relax, relieved.
    It was late afternoon, so he returned to Romani Ranch – Cremia had asked him back.
    She had a job for him. “Now that the roadblock is gone, I can make a delivery of milk to town. The only problem is…”
    “Yeah?” Tatl said. “I know my partner will jump at the chance to do more good around this popsicle stand.”
    “… The Gorman brothers, who own the racetrack down the road, are always trying to steal my deliveries. Could you ride with me and protect me?”
    “Yes,” Link said. “I will do that.”
    “Have your bow ready. They might try to hurt you.”
    Link mounted Epona, and followed Cremia’s cart onto the road. When they came to the place the boulder had been, there was a fence.
    “Drat,” Cremia spat. “They’re back. We’ll have to go the long way. Stay alert, young Link.”
    The cart had hardly turned onto the racetrack before it was followed by two masked mounted men. Cremia urged her horses faster.
    Link twisted around and sent arrows whizzing past the ears of the men. They fell back. Each time they came closer, Link shot more arrows, trying not to hurt them, but gradually they were catching up with the cart.
    Finally they were right behind Link, so close he could hear them laughing at him. Link gritted his teeth and shot one in his outstretched hand, and the other in the shoulder. They cursed and peeled off the track. Link could see them trying to overtake the cart through the trees.
    “Link! Keep them back!” Cremia cried, trying to get her horses even faster.
    He fired an arrow each in front of each enemy steed, and they flinched and stopped.
    The cart burst out of the racetrack, out of the forest, and made for town. The bandits followed for a short time, but their pursuit was now hopeless and they turned back.
    Link helped Cremia carry the heavy ceramic milk jugs to the Milk Bar. She hummed a little song to herself.
    After she was done, she turned to Link and gave him a big hug. “Thank you so much for driving them off! It means a lot to me. Romani’s Ranch can finally start getting back on its feet.”
    “I’ll escort you back, too,” Link said. “Just in case.”
    “Thanks. Here; here’s some of what we made.” She offered him several rupees.
    “No, no thanks. Keep it for the ranch.”
    “But…”
    “Cremia, if you give it to me, I’ll give it to Romani for her birthday.”
    The young ranch owner’s face broke into a smile. “Thank you again. Come, let’s be getting home. That was exciting, wasn’t it?”
    Link half-smiled back, hesitantly.
    The bandits were lurking along their path again, but Link yelled at them – “You want some more? Come and face me!” – and they slunk away.
    “If only they’d listen to their brother,” Cremia sighed as she put the horses and Romani to bed.
    “They have a brother?” Tatl asked.
    “Yes. Gorman is his name, although his brothers are called the Gorman Brothers. I’m sure they have first names too. He went into the circus business, and he’s very honest, but he’s been having trouble.     Maybe I’ll go to the Milk Bar and see if I can find him.”
    “No, let me. I don’t think it’s safe for you until they’ve stopped these raids.”
    “You idiot!” Tatl squeaked.
    “Be careful,” Cremia called.
    Link went on foot, since Epona was already stabled down.
    He entered the Milk Bar, having a small argument with a man at the door about letting minors in on harmless errands.
    He spotted Gorman, a thin, middle-aged, brightly dressed man with a large moustache.
    “Um, excuse me, sir!” he said softly beside him.
    “You idiot. Let me handle this,” Tatl said. “Hey! You! Gorman-person!”
    The moustache quivered. “What do you want?”
    “Uh… uh…” Tatl forgot what she was going to say and improvised. “Your brothers are threatening a nice lady who owns a ranch and we want you to go and tell them to stop!” she blurted out in one long string.
    “I can’t do that. They’ll never listen to me.” Gorman sighed heavily. “Take this mask. It might help you to convince them. Go away, please.”
    The mask was a melancholy copy of Gorman’s melancholy face. Link took it to the Gorman’s racetrack.
    “Whaaargh! It’s that stupid kid that interfered!”
    “Get ‘im, bro!”
    One brother dove at Link, while the other tried to target him with an arrow.
    “Stop it!” Link shouted, rolling out of the way. “I’m here to talk to you!”
    “Ha, ha. Stuff it!”
    “No! I won’t. I won’t hurt you, but I need to talk to you!”
    “Yeah, right.” The brothers backed off anyway. Link straightened up from his crouch, slowing his excited breathing.
    “I’m here to ask you to stop bothering Cremia. You don’t need to steal. Please! Your brother wants you to stop too!”
    “Not working,” Tatl whispered in his ear. “You can’t do the earnest thing. That only works with intelligent people and chicks. Show ‘em the mask.”
    Link donned the mask as the two brothers advanced on him. It must have been magical, because tears fell from the wooden eyes.
    The two men stopped in their tracks. One of them sniffed loudly.
    “Brother…”
    They fell on their knees, sobbing. “Yes, we’ll stop thieving! We’ll be good! Oh, that mask is so real, it’s frightening… Thank you, little boy, for showing us the light!”
    “You won’t bother Cremia again?” Link asked.
    “No! Of course not! We’ll go into the racing business right away!”
    “We’re good at that!”
    Link bowed. “Thank you very much. I’ll keep my eye on you for a while anyway, but I’m glad that you have decided to stop.”
    He turned to go. “Tatl, hang back, hidden, and see if they start snickering.”
    A few minutes later, the fairy returned to him as he was making his way back to the ranch. “Nope! I dunno why they fell for that mask so hard, but they’re talking about the possibilities quite convincingly. I’ll go back and keep an eye on them next time Cremia’s scheduled to make a delivery, and see if they live up to it. Neh? I’m good too, right?”
    “Yes, that will be good. Thank you, Tatl.”
    “Heh, your heroness must be rubbing off on me.”
    The corner of Link’s mouth curled up.

    The next day was the third day. Link helped out around the ranch, keeping an eye on the racetrack owners, and waited until sunset to return to the first day. He had difficulty keeping his feet as frequent earthquakes shook the land.
    The sun set, and the moon was a dark, ominous cloud over the waiting town. Link gazed at it from the roof of the ranch, and took out his Ocarina.
    Dawn broke over the clock tower as the young boy stepped out again.
    He exited town towards the west and stopped beside a fountain. Taking out his mask of Mikau, he sat down and looked at it.
    “Well, Mike, what should I do now? Are there any other problems in the ocean?”
    The mask lay still.
    “I’m willing to bet there are, but he’s too weak to tell you. Hey! I remember! The Skull Kid went to the Gerudos once and told them there was treasure in the dragons den out there. He probably messed with that, too. Let’s go see!”
    “Right. Sorry, Mike.” Link called Epona and rode down to the beach. Finding a tunnel through a rocky headland to another portion of the beach, he went through and found Zoras.
    “Yo, man!” one called. “Haven’t seen too many Hylians ‘round this neck of the woods. Who’re you?”
    “My name’s Link. Can you tell me if there’s been anything unusual going on, anything bad?”
    “Sure! There’s a dragons’ den – hurricane –“
    “I know –“
    “Good! – out in the bay, around our Great Bay Temple. Also, Lulu’s eggs got stolen…”
    “That’s been fixed. I met Mikau, and while he is too weak to remain flesh and blood right now, he’s all right, and I got the eggs back.”
    “Awesome! You should go tell Lulu. I’ll show you the way, okay, guys?”
    The other Zorans nodded and continued hitting at targets with their boomerangs. Link put on his Zora mask.
    “Whoa! You weren’t kidding. Can I talk to Mike through that?”
    Mike was stirring, trying not to take energy from Link, until Link shoved a bunch into him purposefully. He felt Mike taking over his mouth.
    “Sorry, man. I got beat up by Gerudos and birds. Not a good day. Link here saved me, and he’s a professional hero, man, so just trust him, ‘kay?”
    “Right!”
    “I’m sorry,” Mikau said in Link’s head.
    “What?”
    “That’s your life energy!”
    “You need it. I’m going to give you some more when we reach your wife, too.”
    “Aw… gee, thanks.”
    “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
    Link swam with the Zora to a large fish head carved out of stone. The fish’s mouth was deep underwater, but the passage inside sloped up. The Zora ahead of him gave a little extra spurt out of the water and rolled gracefully. Link followed him more clumsily by walking, making a mental note to try that water-exit manoeuvre soon.
    “Lulu’s room is –“
    “Wow!” Tatl cut off the Zora. “This place is gorgeous!”
    Link had to agree. It was smoothed out of blue stone, and the centre hall, well lit with torches, held a huge clamshell with a moat around it. The pearly clamshell looked like a stage, and the sight of a couple of Zoras performing music confirmed that. The moat was full of multi-coloured corals and anemones.
    “So…” the Zora waited. “Yeah, it’s pretty beautiful. I always think that we’re the luckiest race in Termina.”
    “If you’re done looking around, Lulu’s room is that one right there,” he pointed to one of many doors lining the edge of the big hall, “but feel free to go anywhere. Just knock first. If nobody’s in, you probably can go in. She might not be in there, you know.”
    “Thank you very much,” Link said to the Zora, and went over to the door. He knocked, but there was no answer. He went in.
    The chamber was a cozy little place, with coral furniture and golden hangings. However, it had been brutally attacked, and the scars were everywhere. Knife-marks were everywhere, and the hangings were torn. A small pile of stabbed papers lay on a green table. Link picked one up.
    “… I woke suddenly, and there were Gerudos in my room! Mike … up, and tried to fight them, but they left very …”
    “… eggs gone, and I can’t sing, I can’t talk, I can’t whisper, and Mike has gone after…”
    Link put down the diary page and looked around again. There was no sign of a Zora, so he left the room.
    He asked a Zora outside if he had seen Lulu.
    “Lulu? She ought to be outside, on the balcony, where she usually is. Just up the stairs – you remember, right, Mikau?”
    Link started to say that he wasn’t Mikau, but then decided the explanation would take too long and headed up the ramp to the second level. Light streamed in from the door.
    A pretty Zoran woman dressed in blue stood looking out at the ocean. Her eyes were filled with grief. Mike went up to her and put an arm around her shoulders.
    “S’okay, Lulu, love. Me and a guy named Link got the eggs back. I’m too weak to be technically alive right now, so this body is actually Link, but trust me, we’ll find a way to get me back to normal.” Lulu embraced Mikau, resting her head on his shoulder for a brief moment, and then turned away to go back to watching the ocean. Mike really wanted to kiss Lulu, Link could tell. But he didn’t understand yet that Link had been older than thirteen already, and had been in love himself, and so he held back, not wanting to have a private moment in front of a child. Link thought that he should tell him more about himself sometime soon. “The eggs are safe, love. Here…”
    Mikau took his guitar off Link’s back and began to play. The gentle, slightly blue arpeggios rippled out over the ocean. Lulu opened her mouth and began to sing, peacefully.
    When the song was done, Mike took Lulu’s arm, but water sprayed skyward! There was a massive upheaval from a small island with two trees in front of them, and it was moving, but it was not an earthquake. Link shielded his eyes from the wet with his left arm and watched in astonishment as a huge, old turtle lifted its head out of the water and blinked solemnly at them both.
    “Mmmm! How long have I slept? Well, it doesn’t matter. Lulu’s voice woke me.” Lulu stared at the creature in awe. “You seem confused. Well, that doesn’t matter either. I know you all; I am the guardian of these waters, and I know everything that happens, even when I’m asleep. Tell me, young warrior, do you know of Great Bay Temple?”
    “No, not really. I heard it’s inside a hurricane.”
    “Yes. I will take you there so that you may break the curse on it.”
    “It’s a good thing that we were planning to do that in the first place!” Tatl yelled. “We gotta break the curses on all the temples, but that’s just rude, assuming we-“
    “Tatl, please,” Link said, trying to swat her with his hat, forgetting that it was attached to his head as a Zora.
    “What? It’s true!”
    Link sighed and hookshotted to the turtle’s back via the trees. The turtle winked at Lulu and turned for the swirling mass of cloud on the horizon.

    When they reached the temple, Link ducked to avoid an oar that narrowly missed his head. The palm trees bent alarmingly, and Link clung to them, and Tatl clutched to his elbow to avoid being blown away.
    The tortoise entered a cavern in the side of a towering structure. Link climbed off and onto a sort of dock, lined with barrels.
    “Fight well, little hero. I will wait for you here.”
    “Thanks, Great One!” Tatl said, mostly seriously.
    Link waved and set off into the temple.
    It appeared to be a mechanical conglomeration of pipes, valves, paddlewheels, nozzles, jets, switches, taps, platforms, see-saws, and monsters. Some, like the glowing hand of seaweed, were actually life-threatening; others, like the little live bombchus, were simply startling.
    He was startled when he found himself in front of the boss chamber. A whole day had passed since he had started, and he had found himself so caught up in solving the puzzles – and being frustrated by them – that he had barely allotted himself time to eat and a few hours of sleep.
    He had a few more bites before entering. It wouldn’t help him fight any better, or give him energy or strength, but it would keep him from feeling hungry. He had fought on an empty stomach before, but it was preferable not to.
    The boss chamber was a square pool, with only dim lighting coming down from the opening in the ceiling. In the centre there was a round platform just barely protruding from the water.
    An enormous, dark red fish splashed out of the water and whooshed past Link’s head. It sprayed him with water as it fell heavily back into the water.
    Link transformed into a Zora and plunged into the water, zipping along with magic swirling around him. He spotted the fish, lurking in a dark corner, and neatly dodged the sharp teeth, ramming his head with all its magic shield into the fish’s side. He bounced off. He shot for the surface, and somersaulted onto the platform as the monster snapped its jaws at his heels.
    Turning, he transformed back and shot an ice arrow at it: Zoras were ill suited to firing bows because of their slightly webbed fingers. The ice spread through its joints, and Zora-Link dove back into the water to try again. He wanted to fight the thing one-on-one as a Zoran hero, seeing as he loved being a Zora so much.
    This time, magic hit the fish’s body and wounded it. Link darted away before it had time to chomp him – those teeth looked painful; worse than painful: they looked like one bite would tear him to shreds, and he didn’t care for that to happen.
    It took him many arrows and much zooming through the water to injure the fish further. There were many close calls, but Link was actually enjoying himself… in a rather darker way than usual.
    As he leaped out of the water again, blood trickling from scrapes and cuts, mingling with the water streaming off his body, the fish leaped after him. Link ducked. It had done this before, but this time…
    The fish was shrinking. Its head fell off, but the fish itself didn’t seem to be lacking one… A small silver fish no bigger than his hand flopped around in the middle of the platform he was standing on, until it gave one great convulsive leap and landed in the water.
    Link did not untense until he had picked up the fish mask it had left behind and warped to the cave with the turtle, who ferried him back to the place where Lulu was.
    Thanking the giant turtle, who went back to sleep, he turned and touched Lulu’s arm gently.
    “I’m sorry about Mike, but after I keep the moon from falling we’ll find a way to restore him. I’m certain of it.”
    “Thank you, Link the Hylian,” Lulu said softly. “Please take him with you as long as you need him.”
    “Thanks. He’s a terrific help. Good bye!”
    “Good bye, hero.”

    Link returned to Romani Ranch, and found the sisters still remembered him – they had lived through the time change, along with all the others he had helped, and while it was a bit troublesome that each time they had to do the same things again, barring the things he had changed such as the invading aliens, they still did them in case today was the day that Link broke the cycle. He raced Romani once, and then had to come in to the house to eat and sleep.
    It was the second day, and Link spent his time wandering again, trying to find the last temple that was somewhere in the east. He found a canyon full of bomchus, and gates only Epona could leap past, since he was riding her. He found a graveyard full of Stalchildren, and a huge old Stalfos who spoke to him after he woke it and challenged him to a footrace. It wasn’t necessarily a fair foot race, but Link caught him anyway, and the Stalfos gave him a mask before burying himself in the ground to sleep. After this, Link discovered that he could talk to the Stalchildren without being attacked by them. They were actually rather helpful.
    For that night, he went to the Stock Pot Inn. He found some solace in the innkeeper, a young woman named Anju with short red hair. She, too, was missing a lover – her fiancé Kafei had disappeared mysteriously, and she was very worried inside.
    Link found himself telling her all about himself, while Tatl and his masks listened. He told her how he had gone forward in time to fight Ganondorf, and fallen in love with his best friend, and how she had been taken from him just when she had become cured. Then he became more philosophical.
    “So, this is the odd part. I realized just the other day that I didn’t want to smile or laugh anymore because she was my happiness. But, I did smile at something funny, and then I remembered her and realized that I’d turned into something like her – brooding, and whatnot.”
    Anju listened carefully. “She seems like the kind of person who would want you to be happy whether she was alive or not.”
    “Yes, I know. She would want me to live life as joyfully as I could, so that I could live, in a way, her life as well. Does that make sense?”
    “Yes, it does. I need to keep my spirits up so that Kafei isn’t unhappy because of me when he returns. But there’s a difference. If I’m so happy I forget him, which wouldn’t happen, but let’s just say; he would… well, that would be a bad thing.”
    “I understand. So I should experience everything for Rana, keeping everything in my heart and mind, remembering her every moment, but with joy, not sorrow.”
    “You’re a wise… child.”
    Link smiled more easily. “I’m still not sure what age I’m supposed to be. There’s still some adult left in me. I’m supposed to be living out my earlier life, but it’s very strange.”
    He paused. “It’s been a year. Yes, I should give up my grief. Thank you, Anju.”
    “It’s nothing. You have helped me too. I can wait for Kafei better now.”
    “I’ll find him soon. His mother asked me to help, too. I know what he looks like.”
    “That would be wonderful!”
    “I betcha the Skull Kid has something to do with that,” Tatl said unexpectedly. “I wouldn’t know, but that mask likes messing with people, so…”
    “Why wouldn’t you know?” Link asked curiously.
    “Hey, powerful magic is beyond me. It probably did stuff from a distance.”
    “Hm.”
    Link went back out and wandered through the torch-lit streets. In the West Town, he found two girls of the carnival still trying to perfect a dance. They just couldn’t find the right moves.
    Well, Link had met the ghost of a dance master, and so he went up to them.
    “Excuse me…”
    “Go away! We don’t need people staring while we practice!”
    “Um, but we can help with your dance!” Tatl yelled back. “We gotta magic mask that’ll show you! Put it on, Link!”
    Link shrugged, left the rather embarrassing mask in his pack, and did the dance that the ghost had taught him.
    “Ooh!” said one girl, in pink.
    “Hm,” said the other, in blue.
    “Like this?” they both said, copying him.
    After they did it perfectly, they both threw themselves at him, hugging and kissing him. They bowed at his feet, fawning and giggling.
    “He’s so cute!”
    “Master, would you stay with us forever?”
    “Uh…” Link managed to force out, and then they glomped him again. “Gah! Sorry, you’re making a lot of fuss over a dance…”
    “But you’re so cute!” the pink one screamed, half-strangling him.
    Link struggled free and made a run for it. He returned to the inn and went to bed, his mind roiling with the past and the future and the adrenaline of escape.
    Although he had given up his future with Rana, he still hadn’t given up Rana. Those two girls had disturbed him. He wasn’t yet ready to make a new close friend with a girl, like with Saria and with Malon, and he was pretty certain that the two dancers were not right for him.
    ‘What am I talking about? I’m only thirteen now,’ he told himself. ‘I will never give up Rana, but I have time to stop getting wierded out by girls.’
    ‘Besides, those two girls were the strangest I’ve ever met.’


Chapter 2    Contents    Chapter 4