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A boy sits on a high ledge overlooking the swampland. The mask with the face of the butler's missing son is propped up on a rock beside him, gazing forlornly out at the Deku palace.
The swamp was polluted this morning, and now clean water bubbles freely up from underground springs untouched by Odolwa's curse. The fifteen stray fairies have been brought back to their sisters, restoring the Great Fairy's power; Link only managed to find fourteen his first time through Woodfall Temple, but he went back for the last fairy after bringing the Deku princess home to her monkey friend and her father. There will be no reunion for the old butler and his son, but there's nothing Link can do about that.
Tatl stares up at the sky through the mask's left eyehole. It's a little past four in the afternoon of the third day; the moon is twice as big as it was when she and Link first entered the temple. The point of its nose seems to nearly brush the peaks of the distant hills, and it's getting closer. Its eyes are bloodshot.
"Link."
"..?"
"You did pretty good back there. We saved the princess... it’s like something from an old story."
He smiles. The moon grinds its teeth.
"Snowhead is next, right?"
"..."
"Then the bay."
Link nods.
"Then the canyon."
"..."
"Then... whatever."
"..."
The ground rumbles, and the water around the palace sloshes. The guards shiver with a sound like rustling leaves as they look up. Link kicks his feet.
"You should play that song pretty soon."
"..."
"Link?"
"..."
"Are you even listening?"
He nods again.
"You should play the song."
"..."
"Link?"
"..."
"Link!"
"..."
"Tell me you're going back. You have to, remember? There’s no way we can stop that thing as it is now."
He looks down at the ocarina on his lap, cradling the instrument between small hands with palms callused and hardened into boot-leather. He doesn't play.
"What'sa matter? You didn't forget the song, did you?"
Link shakes his head, but his smile crumples into that sad-puppy look he always gives in response to questions he can't or won't answer. Tatl wants to pinch him, the way she would with Skull Kid or her little brother, but it won't help. She and Link have spent either two and a half or about fifteen days together, depending on how you count, and he hasn't spoken a word, not to her—which by itself would be understandable, because she did help drag him into this mess—or to anybody else. Hard to believe that such a fearless kid could be so shy. Maybe it's like a trade, where you can fight walking nightmares ten times your size (and win) or you can make eye contact with shopkeepers, but not both? Humans make no sense.
Tatl folds her arms over the edge of the mask's eyehole and looks out over the swamp, trying to see what Link sees. The clean water sparkles in the waning sunlight, and despite the pall cast by the unhealthily green-tinged sky, the painted walls of the Deku palace are as vibrantly colorful as a carnival tent. If Link keeps up his good work, he and Tatl might live long enough to see a real carnival.
"Even if it doesn't stay this way, you did good, Link," Tatl says. "And once we've knocked some sense into Skull Kid, you can come back here and fix everything again. You know how to do it now, it'll be easy."
"…"
"It's okay to let go. Just for now. They’ll all be okay."
The ground rumbles harder. Tatl is on the verge of pinching Link after all, just to get something out of him, but finally he sighs and nods. After a last look at the pristine water and the palace, he gently shoos Tatl out of the way so he can pick up the mask. There were moments in the temple when Link swapped faces so quickly, it seemed less like a transformation and more like the living human and dead Deku Scrub were fighting side-by-side; the mask has served him as a loyal ally no less than Tatl, and it never stole from him or hurt his feelings, unlike a certain fairy, so Link plants a kiss on its forehead before tucking it into his pack. Then he raises the ocarina and begins to play.
Time unravels. The princess and the lost fairies vanish back into the temple as if yanked away on invisible strings; Odolwa reanimates, and poison floods the swamp. The Deku king stomps and blusters at a monkey tied to a stake as the butler vainly tries to soothe his master and a distressingly monkey-sized cauldron of water bubbles over the fire. The moon stares down at doomed Clock Town, where the apocalypse is three days away and the carnival is in four.
The song ends, and the countdown begins.