Chapter 7: The Great Parasite

    The beautiful lake behind the Zora’s realm was worth coming to see. A big steel gate prevented anyone from jumping over the waterfall and breaking their necks on the rocks below, where the entrance was. There were a few islands dotted about, pleasant and peaceful.
    And a giant whale floated bang in the middle of it. It was huge! It was the biggest living creature Link had ever seen, counting the Dodongo. It had an ornate headdress, as befitting the sacred pet – or something – of the Zoras.
    Link popped his bottle’s cork out and dumped out the fish in it.
    “You got a fish?”
    “Down at the lake. I was saving it for later, to show Saria, but this is better.”
    Jabu-Jabu opened his enormous mouth. Link was poised to dart in, but it wasn’t really necessary, because the whale inhaled the fish, Link, Rana, and the fairies.

    In the mouth of the whale, there were many large bubbles. Rana poked one.
    “Ow,” she said, pulling her hand back sharply. “What are these made of?”
    “Octorok drool,” Naeri said. “Squid things. I think that means there are some of those in here.”
    Link ran forward, holding his sword for a great forward sweep, and it began to glow blue, and then red. Rana ducked.
    He released it in a spinning whirling flash of power, and all the bubbles popped. Link smiled at his successfully and carefully perfected new technique.
    They walked carefully down Jabu-Jabu’s gullet, passing into the next chamber.
    “I must say, this is the weirdest dungeon I’ve ever heard of,” Navi said, lighting up the whole room.
    “What are those things?” Rana asked curiously, pointing at some sizzling jellyfish.
    “Those are electrical,” Navi warned her. “Don’t touch them.”
    They ran warily across to another opening, to a large chamber with a red pillar pulsing in it.
    Link suddenly stopped. Standing there watching him was a rather pretty Zoran girl: Princess Ruto!
    “You! Who are you?!” she demanded imperiously.
    “I’m Link, this is Rana my friend, this is Navi and that’s Naeri.”
    “I am Ruto, Princess of the Zoras.”
    “Oh, then you’re the one we’ve been looking for!” cried Rana. “King Zora asked us to. He’s worried about you. We found a letter in a bottle down at Lake Hylia.”
    “What?! I’d never ask anyone to do such a thing as rescue me, and I don’t know what letter you’re talking about! I don’t care if my father is worried about me! Anyway, I can’t go home right now. And you… Get out of here!” She turned her back on Link and Rana and walked away determinedly. Suddenly, she fell through a hole with a scream.
    Link followed her and Rana after him. They fell in a heap together, and got up to see Ruto looking scornfully at them.
    “Are you following me? I told you to go away! I’m OK. I’ve been going inside Lord Jabu-Jabu’s belly since I was little, but… Lord Jabu-Jabu is very strange today… There are electrified jellyfish and things  around…On top of that, my precious stone was… but that’s none of your business! Go home now! Understand?”
    “I don’t understand at all. Does that mean that the jellyfish and such aren’t usually here?” Ruto didn’t answer and turned her back on them disdainfully.
    “I’m not going home until I’ve fulfilled my promise!” insisted Link.
    The Zora princess looked around with an expression that was oddly hopeful. “You’re that worried about me? Then I will give you the honour of carrying me! However… I won’t leave until I find the thing     I’m looking for. Got it?” She sat down and folded up into a little ball. Link picked her up with a sigh of resignation, after handing all his weapons, minus his sword and shield, to Rana. Ruto cooed.
    Shaking her head and smiling foolishly, Rana followed Link as they wandered back through the bowels of the whale. They found odd bits of inedible junk everywhere, including a small wooden boomerang that Link decided to hang on to himself. They accidentally meandered in a circle and came back to the same room, even with Ruto pointing in all directions to show them where to go.
    “Well, I’m trying to find my stone! I don’t care where we end up, as long as we find it! I just know that we can go from here to here, but not in here…” Link tried to tune her out as he carried her through a new door and into what seemed to be a branching artery. Link led them left first, left being his sword arm. Strange white snakes with large pincers came out of the floor and attacked. Rana slashed at them but was mildly electrocuted.
    “Rana! Are you okay?” Link put Ruto, who squeaked, down in a hurry and pulled out a Deku stick from his friend’s belt. He swung it at the snake, which broke in half, although the stick did too; he swung it too hard.
    “Never seen one of those,” Ruto chattered. “Did you have to just drop me like that? Is your friend okay?”
    “I can talk too, you know. It’s okay. You can talk to me,” Rana said cheerfully. “I’m fine, now.”
    “I know you can talk. You talk almost as much as I do,” Ruto retorted. There was a lump in the floor and Link walked over it.
    A strange membrane on the door ahead of them disappeared with a thunk. Link stepped off again, and it appeared. Rana stepped on it, but it didn’t go away.
    “It needs the weight of two people to fix it,” Link said to himself; Ruto and Rana were getting steadily annoyed with the other. He put Ruto down surreptitiously on the lump beside Rana and walked through the open door, leaving the two girls arguing with each other. There was a huge red nerve end dangling from the ceiling. It flicked at him.
    “It can think!” Navi cried, alarmed. “I don’t know how, but it sees you as an enemy!” Link ducked as it almost took his hat off. It hunched into the ceiling. Then he brought his boomerang back and threw it at Navi’s targeting, the weak narrow section of the ‘tail’.
    It jerked as the boomerang hit it, and flailed all over the room. Link was tossed against the wall, and jerked randomly from the weak electricity. When his ears cleared, he heard the membrane on the door opening and closing, and knew that Rana and Ruto were trying to get in at the same time and not succeeding.
    He threw the boomerang and walloped the tentacle, and knew to duck this time. He wondered why it didn’t attack Navi.
    A third hit, and the last strands of nerve parted and fell on the floor. The rest pulled back up into the ceiling, and hopefully went back to wherever it was supposed to be.
    When he exited the room, Ruto pounced on him verbally. Link scooped up the princess, ignoring her irate chatter, and jogged down the other corridor, Rana killing electric snakes on the way. There was another lump in the floor, and another blocked entrance. Rana jumped on the lump, and it opened.
    Link left Rana sitting on the switch while he went in to the chamber, taking the Princess, who would not be parted from him. Red electrical fish flew up from the floor and circled near the 'ceiling'. Link pulled out his slingshot, the other thing he had kept.
    “You use that old stick? Why not a bow, like the heroes in the fairytales Daddy reads to me sometimes? It’s a little boyish, don’t you think?” Link glanced at her, and then shot them all down one after the other. Ruto just stared at him, trying not to show her astonishment.
    Link walked back out of the room without a backward glance. Ruto ran to keep up with him.
    Rana was crouched on the switch with her shield over her head and a Deku stick in her hand. Jelly tentacles were scattered around her. When she saw Link, she smiled in relief.
    “I’m sorry I said that!” Ruto squealed, grabbing his hand. “Did I offend you?”
    Link said no, not at all, but he didn’t smile. He was feeling rather tired of Ruto. He wished that it was just Rana and him again, the way they had done so far, bouncing ideas and funny comments off each other, showing off, complaining, all the ‘best friend’ things that they and Saria all did together every day.
    It was also dark and hot in the pits of Jabu-Jabu’s belly. Navi was a bit droopy, and so was Naeri: they all wanted a breath of air, though they wouldn’t admit it.
    They rambled back to the room with the holes in the floor, and Link jumped down the nearest one, a different one than the first.
    “Hey!” cried Ruto. She jumped down and landed in Link’s arms. When he put her down, she blushed and giggled.
    The next room was small and round. A low bulge took up most of the floor space. Shining on top…
    “That’s it! That’s what I’ve been looking for! Throw me up there!” The Zora girl was wriggling so hard that Link could hardly hold on to her. Obligingly he sat her on the edge.
    She giggled as she picked up the trio of sky blue sapphires. Then she turned to Link and Rana.
    “Thank goodness! I finally found my mother’s stone… I got very upset when Lord Jabu-Jabu swallowed it…While I was feeding him, he suddenly swallowed me! I was so surprised I dropped it and then I couldn’t find it… But, now that I’ve found it, I don’t need to be in here anymore!” She paused. “So, take me home, right now!”
    Link walked towards the lump, and Ruto wobbled unsteadily. Then the pedestal rose into the ceiling and Ruto screamed.
    “What! An octopus?!”
    The pedestal came down again with a gigantic Octorok on it. Rana screamed. The Octo jumped off the pedestal and began chasing Link around and around. Sharp teeth or spikes stuck out of the platform, scraping painfully against his skin.
    Link found he was catching up to it. He slashed at it with his sword, but it bounced off. Rana was really getting tired and slowing down wearily, the adrenaline of fright wearing off. The octo was almost on her. In desperation, he flung the boomerang at it.
    The lump of jelly stopped dead, paralyzed. Link ran up to it and slashed it. This time, his sword bit deep, stabbing the green spot on its rear end one more time. It collapsed and melted.
    “Gross,” murmured Rana. The spikes on the lump in the centre of the room retracted. Link jumped on it, but it rose before Rana could follow.
    In the room above, there was no sign of Ruto. Rana came up a moment later, and looked anxious.
    “You’re not worried about that bossy, prissy princess, are you?” demanded Navi.
    “Well… getting eaten by an octo would be a horrible fate,” said Rana.
    “Rana!” said Link admonishingly.
    “Isn’t that what seems to have happened?”
    “No.” Naeri seemed certain.
    “She would have jumped out and yelled at us for letting her get eaten after the thing melted, right?” said Link. “Sorry. She would have jumped out after the thing melted and yelled at us for letting her get eaten, right?”
    Rana giggled. “Right.”
    “Good. Then let’s go.”
    They wandered, and were lost. Finding themselves in a big green chamber with no exit besides an impassable valve, they sat down to rest in the muck on the floor.
    “I’m tired,” was the first thing Rana said.
    “I hope we can find a way out of here,” Link said quietly, looking around.
    “It sounds like a story,” Rana commented. “The intrepid, whatever that means, hero and his sidekicks descend into the bowels of a whale, never to return… to vanish mysteriously from the face of the world… never mind the princess…”
    “Yeah, right,” said Link, laughing.
    “We’ll get out of here,” Navi said indignantly.
    “Hey, look!” said Naeri, pointing with her body and wings. “You could climb that surface, I think.”
    The wall was rough and pitted, pocked with little holes. It was slippery, but Link stood at last on the top of a pillar jutting out from the wall. He found he was looking through spiderwebs and mucous at a funny lump.
    “If we hit that, maybe we can open the valve over there,” he said to Rana while giving her a hand up. She handed him his slingshot.
    “Thanks.” The Deku seed was stuck in the gummy web. Link frowned and pulled out his boomerang. He had to try a couple times, but the boomerang sliced through the webs and hit the lump at last. As he had guessed, the valve near the floor popped open.
    “Before I forget, you’d better take your stuff back,” said Rana, handing him the rest of his equipment. “You know, I’ve been wondering… why doesn’t the electricity fry the whale?”
    “I’m afraid I have no idea, laughing butterfly,” Link told her, smiling at the nickname. The fairies nodded.
    Link jumped down and somersaulted, getting thoroughly covered in slime. Picking up his hat, he strolled to the next room, jamming the hat on his head. Rana followed.
    The next room was as large as the last one, but it was pink. A large blue thing was pulsing against one wall. The door sealed shut behind them again, so shut that it could hardly be distinguishable.
    The blue thing detached itself from the wall, trailing tubes that connected it still to the innards of the whale. Navi squeaked.
    “G-giant b-barym-mede!” Naeri stammered out. Link rolled to avoid a miniature lightening bolt that shot past him. That would have killed him, alone.
    The thing swelled like a balloon, its colour changing to purple… until Link realized it was releasing a shield of blue jellyfish. He grabbed his boomerang, and with Navi’s targeting help, knocked some down.     Rana took one of her Deku sticks and held it in two hands like a baseball bat.
    One of the three turrets on top of the monster swivelled to aim at her.
    “Rana! Look out!” She rolled away in time. Link jumped to the side as another electric beam shot at him. He shot some more jellyfish.
    Another beam shot at him. He ducked and rolled.
    Right into the arms of a jellyfish. It stung and shocked him. It was much worse than the red nerve. He twitched and fell.
    Rana killed the last jellyfish. It fell on him, twitching weakly, but it didn’t shock him. He felt too exhausted to push it off and get up.
    “Link! You have to get up! It’s going to shoot soon!” Link clambered up with her helping hand.
    “Look out!” screamed Navi.

Chapter 6: The Realm of Music    Contents    Chapter 8: The Door of Time