Chapter 16: The Magic Eye

    A few minutes later, he heard two anxious voices calling him – the light voice of his fairy, and an alto voice… was it a girl? Maybe Malon?
    “Link, will you wake up already!” Navi yelled in his ear. Someone gently shook him.
    Link groaned and tried to sit up, shaking his dizzy head. “You know, Navi, I appreciate the shaking more than the yelling.”
    Navi half-smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. I was worried.”
    “Okay, that’s okay then. Sheik?”
    “Yes, it’s me. Did you forget what happened?”
    “No, I didn’t forget… it’s just for a minute your voice made me think of Malon. Nothing against you or her… just my messed up head.” He rubbed it. “Ow. So, what was that thing? Why aren’t any of the buildings on fire? Where did the shadow go? Can I fight it?”
    Sheik stared stupefied at the Hylian as Navi burst into laughter. “You’re not supposed to know about that!” he exclaimed indignantly.
    “About what? My memory didn’t blank out, and you asked if I forgot what happened. Answer my questions, will you?”
    Sheik patted his shoulder comfortingly, face serious. “That thing is an ancient shadow that Ganondorf has been trying to free for some time now. This morning, obviously, he succeeded. The burning buildings are all an illusion caused by the shadow; it’s haunting the town now. It’s gone to the Shadow Temple. Will you fight that one next?”
    “Yes. I don’t want Kakariko bothered more than necessary by Ganondorf.”
    “Well, that shadow… you can’t really use physical weapons against it, obviously. Also, you’ll need another tool to fight it properly. It was sealed in the well, but the well is dry because someone played the Song of Storms about the time you first disappeared… Do you know it?” Link shook his head. “Well, I’ll teach it to you. The thing should still be in the well if you go there in the past. I’ll see what I can do to get you there, seeing as you are the Hero of Time and all that.”
    “Wait, wait.” Link held up his hands and shook his head confusedly. “If the tool is at the bottom of the well, why can’t I reach it in this time? If the shadow’s back there, then how can I go in then? And what is it anyway?”
    “It’s complicated, as is usual with time travel. The monster is free now, so it’s free in all times… if that makes any sense. I think… yes, it broke free of its last sealing place about five years ago, but the last of the Sheikahs managed to seal in the well where it fled then. I don’t know what the device is, but it isn’t here now because… well, because you have it. Except you don’t yet.”
    “Okay.” Link thought for a long time. “I understand now. The last of the Sheikahs would be… you and Impa?”
    “Yes… Impa is missing, however…”
    “Ouch, things sound worse all the time. Let’s go.”
    Sheik nodded and stood up. After he gave Link the Song of Storms, he played the Song of Time, gesturing for Link to do the same. Blue warp whirl surrounded the Hylian.
    He reappeared in the tree near the entrance of Kakariko, in the body of a small boy, Navi beside him. The sleepy little village was just waking up. Link hopped out of the tree before anyone saw him.
    Trotting over to the windmill, he froze as he saw Rana curled up on the hill behind the windmill under a warm blanket.
    “Hey, it’s Rana!” cried Navi in delight. “Link, Link, should we –“ Link grabbed her and hushed her urgently.
    “We don’t know when we are. I think it will be better to let her be.” Link thought. “Let’s hide inside the windmill.” He crept in the door and hid in a corner.
    After a few minutes, the organ grinder slouched in, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and hooked up the windmill’s gears. He went to his seat and took his accordion, doodling away with notes and chords.
    Then Rana came in. Link took his Ocarina and played the Song of Storms softly.
    Rana’s ears perked up, and she traded a few words with the organ grinder. She reached down the front of her tunic and pulled out the Fairy Ocarina, hanging around her neck by a string. She tried out the song, practicing over and over until she had all the notes.
    Then Link let loose.
    The sky grew black over the windmill, lightening flashed, and thunder cracked overhead. Rana ducked instinctively, covering her head, and Link winced apologetically. Rain poured down like a giant bucket had overturned, and wind howled. The windmill began to spin faster and faster, and Rana, standing on the grindstone, was flung off. Link flinched again, appalled at the strength of the forces stored up in six playings of the song.
    Gradually the storm quieted and died.
    “What was that?” Rana wondered in an awed voice.
    “That must have been triggered by the song. I suggest you don’t play it anymore,” said the organ grinder.
    “I won’t. That was freaky. That must be… uh… it should be called the Song of Storms.” She skipped out, and gave a yell. “The well is empty!”
    The organ grinder cursed. “What? That blasted storm! It’s not your fault, lass, but… Grr! That’s going to make changes. We’d better go and tell everyone what happened.”
    “Right!”
    Link watched them out of the door, and waited for five minutes. “Navi,” he whispered at the end of that time, “go and see if anyone’s coming. I need to get down the well before Rana goes in or anything.”
    “No one’s there!”
    Link slipped out of his hiding place and out of the door. Jumping over the railing of the windmill entrance balcony, he climbed quickly down the iron rungs in the well. There was an opening at the muddy bottom of the well, a very dark opening.
    Link stepped in reluctantly. There was a crawl space. Bending down, he crawled through slowly, adrenaline beginning to flow in his veins.
    Navi lit up the small room. There were slimy chains hanging from the vaulted ceiling, and a ladder led downwards into a dark abyss.
    The abyss was about two meters deep, and the chamber was a dead end. With a skeleton in the corner.
    Link shivered. “Well, Navi, there’s not much here.” He searched carefully around the floor and walls for anything that might be a clue, a switch, or even the tool he had come to find. It was drafty and cold.
    There was nothing, but when he got close to the skeleton, Navi jumped. “Link!”
    “What?”
    “I can hear… spirits…” She snuggled up to Link’s neck. “They say not to trust your senses.”
    Link reached out and touched the brow of the skeleton. It felt real, and slimy from sitting in the well water.
    “They’re laughing at you,” Navi said. Link smiled.
    “They must be friendly spirits.”
    “I think they know you’re the Hero of Time. Hey, wait, where’s the Master Sword?”
    Link started and felt for the Kokiri Sword. “I forgot all about it. It’s… Well, I don’t have my hookshot or my bow either, so it must be back in seven years from now. Or whatever.”
    “Right. I don’t have your hammer or boots either.”
    “Anyway.” Link felt the wall. It, too, felt real.
    “The spirits are warning me that there are unfriendly spirits, too, in this… catacomb. Scary.”
    “I’m ready,” said Link, pushing through the wall. It melted under his touch, yet he could still see it. He hastily put his face through so that he could see if anything was waiting for him.
    There wasn’t anything, but he could hear the floating skulls he had encountered in the Forest Temple. “Great. Not these again… Gah!” He jumped as a green-glowing skull bigger than he was tall bobbled past in a corridor filled with ankle-deep water. “Very great.” He sighed, and started off in the direction the skull had come. “Navi, keep an eye out behind me, okay?”
    Turning the corner, he was suprised by the huge skull again, and jumped back with a startled yell, pelting it with Deku Seeds until it shattered. Link relaxed slightly.
    “I’m… rather anxious, Navi. I’m not as strong as I was – am when I’m nineteen, and I don’t have the same weapons. Everything feels different. And the enemies are frightening and a bit intimidating in size, even if they’re in reality weak. I think we should just get this over with as quickly as possible.”
    “No kidding.” Navi curled up on top of his hat.
    There was a door. Link opened it.
    “Redead!” squeaked Navi. “Din’s Fire!” Link cast the spell and backed into a corner, accidentally dislodging a pile of skulls around his feet. The Redead burned, but then the fire died and they advanced on him, moaning and groaning and fixing him with their hollow eyesockets. One shrieked and paralyzed him.
    A fierce light began to burn in Link’s eyes. “You want me?” Struggling against the magic, his left hand went for his sword.
    Two minutes later, the room was full of gooey pieces of Redead and a half-asphyxiated Link. One had gotten its hands around his neck from behind.
    Navi patted his cheek in adoration, and he smiled at her. “Hey, Navi. I’m fine now. I just got over my stage fright.”
    “I’m still creeped out, even if those things can’t hurt me.”
    “It’s still gross fighting dead stuff, but there’s no reason to be afraid just because of that, I realized.”
    “Yes.”
    Link rounded a corner and found himself face to face with a dead end for a bare moment – then he was falling through a hidden trapdoor. The floor had been an illusion.
    He landed in soft dirt, which quickly changed to mud. Link stood up covered in ooze and wiped his hands on his tunic. He looked around and found he was at the end of a corridor. He headed towards a dim light.
    There were lit torches in a room that held two more Redead. Link made a pathetic face and drew his sword.
    It was a long time before he found what he was looking for, but he found something anyway. It was a little purple magnifying glass with three spikes on the top. The Eye of Truth was carved into the handle.
    “Does this look like an important tool to help me defeat the shadow creature?” Link asked.
    “Yup!” Navi chirped. “Especially since it doesn’t magnify anything. Let’s go back! If we can get back to that time.” Link gave the Lens of Truth to his fairy. She agreed to tell him what she could see with it.     When Link got to the entrance, she said that the wall that was an illusion was not there to her. In other words, her vision of the world matched Link’s feel of the world.
    Link began to climb the up to the crawl hole when he heard a gasp. He realized that he saw a light above, too. Rana gave a little squeak and scrambled backwards through the crawl space, probably climbing the ladder in the well as fast as she could. The light disappeared; probably Naeri. Link half-smiled. “Poor butterfly,” he said to himself. “She’s not supposed to have to do this.”
    “She’ll want to, though.”
    “Well, we’ve got the Lens, so we’re done here. She can ransack it from top to bottom.” Link climbed cautiously out of the well and ran to the tree. A blue warp portal glowed in its branches. He grabbed a branch over his head and hauled himself up, warping through time to the future.

    Sheik met him, pacing back and forth anxiously. The sun was up, and villagers were going about their business, with curious looks at the young Sheikah’s strange behaviour. When Link appeared, he stopped.
    “You look a mess.”
    “That’s what you get for jumping in a ‘dry’ well,” Link laughed at him. “I have the Lens. What now?”
    “Now I teach you the Requiem of Shadow.”
    “Sounds scary.”
    “Yes, a bit.” The song wasn’t the most comforting melody either.
    “Well, maybe you should rest before you set out again…”
    “Good idea. I need lunch, I’m starved. Join me?”
    “Nah, that’s okay. I need to go. See you!” With a flash, Sheik disappeared.

    After he had finished eating, Link rinsed his hands and face and played the Shadow song. Purple light took him to a ledge with a warp pad – on which he found himself – a tomb-like entrance in the side of a cliff, and a fenced-off drop to Kakariko Graveyard.
    “I should have guessed,” he mumbled as he walked down the Temple entrance.
    Link stared at the room hewed into the cliff face. It was filled with torches; he didn’t bother counting them. He looked around, and his gaze fell upon a little dais in the centre. He grinned to himself, centred himself on the dais, and cast Din’s Fire.
    With a whoosh, every torch in the room lit at once and the crypt door opened.
    For all his courage, Link was a little apprehensive as he entered.


Chapter 15: The Deathful Water and Avoiding Marriage    Contents    Chapter 17: The Most Frightening Place in Hyrule