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The cottage on the far edge of Hateno Village glowed. Not with the holy light of a Goddess summoning in the end of yet another Hylian apocalypse, but a humble, flickering warmth. Embers of a campfire as you’re about to tuck into sleep. Light with a steady, thrumming pulse. The kind of luminous, beckoning peace that Link and Zelda had fought relentlessly to rekindle, a spirit she dreamed could reignite even the darkest, most forgotten corners of Hyrule. It was a luster she’d ached to know, though as she beheld it now from the far end of the bridge, it felt like a distant, impossible ambition. Serenity she could only glimpse through glass, her hands pressed up as her breath left clouds that blotted out her view.
She trudged across to the waiting door beneath the pergola, dripping with blue wisteria blossoms. Her hand flicked the knob, and the smell of onions in butter and honey-slicked, salted steak wafted like a tidal wave through the crack.
“HAPPY FIR-st…day of school,” Link hollered, his excitement dropping off the cliff as Zelda tucked around the doorframe, her shoulders slumped as she let her leather satchel bag slide down to the floor with an exhausted thud. The tiny kitchen was steaming with saucepans and skillets, a miniature lab converting their garden and walks and horseback ride forages into a banquet he’d clearly been working on since the moment she packed up her books and notes and headed up the slope to the school.
She hated herself for not smiling, for the sight of all his plates of sautés and skewers turning her already lurching stomach. “What’s wrong?” he asked, letting the platter of Porgy Meuniere slip from his hands onto the table below.
“Nothing,” she insisted, yanking her cheeks up into a grin. “It’s just a shock to the system, being in the classroom all day after so much time away. I’m not used to it, is all. You certainly didn’t have to go to this kind of trouble,” she said, grasping his emptied hands in her own and pressing a kiss to his lips.
She knew she was a terrible liar, but he obliged her, filling a plate as she fussed over how incredible it all looked and tasted, side-stepping any mention of the school or its eager children on her first visit since The Upheaval. She chewed the food mechanically, averting her gaze from the way his own eyes, veiled by his long wheat-gold locks, stole quick appraisals of her rigid posture in the chair, her small and slow bites, the way her focus wandered away past the table, through the wall, out into the cooling night air.
“Zelda,” he said, tugging her back from the drift.
“Hm?”
“Come on. Tell me.” The plea in his timbre, mirrored in his stare, cut her to the marrow, and it was all she could do to stand before dissolving into tears.
“This little house gets so stuffy in late summer,” she managed to say, pushing the chair back in against the table. “I’m just going to go outside a bit to get some air. I’ll be back to help with the dishes,” she promised, turning away before she could see that iron jaw tick with a frown, the only tell when he was upset. A quiver of a reaction only she knew to catch.
She rounded the side of the house, next to the shed, which was only a heave away from the roof. She stepped from the top of the storage to the home itself, the red shingles warm but not scalding. From here she could see the vista that ringed the village they’d quickly come to call home after falling from the sky.
A rustling of manes and hooves drew her eye down to Storm and Epona in their humble shelter, and her hands itched to heave the saddle and snap the reins to fly around the skirt of Ebon Mountain, out to the swaths of sandbanks at the edge of the world as she knew it. Nothing but scattered palm trees and cool air tinged with salt. The temptation was tempered by the cruelty she knew it would inflict on Link, who’d struggled even with the idea of having her away all day in the schoolhouse, practically a straight sightline from their house. She’d shared the same anxiety—everything felt like a trap now, an awaiting plunge into unfathomable ruin.
Just like that morning, one year and ten millennia ago. Everything splintering out into destiny or curse, no one seemed to agree. It began beneath these same shingles, trying to roll out of the right side of the loft bed. Link’s quick arms caught her around the waist with the reflexes of a mountain buck, twisting her back beneath the covers. “Come on, we’ve got to get up!” she insisted through laughter, helpless as a turtle on her back shell, batting at the blanket he kept trying to pull over her head like trapping a slippery fish.
“No we don’t,” he spoke into her shoulder, kissing the blade.
“We do ,” she said, playfully batting him off. “It’s already well past dawn, and you know it takes four hours to get to the gates.”
He shrank back, beating his head against the pillow as she slipped her feet to the floor, pulling their fresh changes of clothes from the dresser. “What did you sign us up for, exactly?”
“I told Purah that we’d go and investigate that bizarre phenomena that’s coming up from beneath the Castle,” she reminded him. Not that he likely needed reminding; he’d been right there in the same Hyrule Restoration Society meeting as she had, as the Sheikah scientist flipped through sketch after sketch on her presentation pad, striking the pages with her pointer that she then tapped nervously against her palm. Several of the guards patrolling the docks had already fallen ill, and the night patrol around the gates was starting to complain of strange symptoms as well. The chills and mild fever were one thing; the hallucinations were another. Do not look away … Insufferable light …
“Can’t Hoz and his crew go down and look?” he asked, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “Or what about Josha? She’s always up for a gothic mystery.” She felt a flitter of guilt at the sight; he’d already done so much, beyond what anyone should ever be asked to do for any cause, no matter how altruistic. It wasn’t her place to volunteer him to do her bidding any longer. He wasn’t her servant. This was the last errand, she promised herself.
“I told her we’d do it,” she said, her voice bent with apology. “I’ve never been down beneath the Sanctum. I haven’t even seen the Lockup.”
“You’re not missing much,” he grumbled into her abandoned pillow.
“There could be artifacts down there that haven’t been seen for centuries,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed past the tenth step below as a child. It was an invisible line the governesses held for my father.” She shook her head, batting away the memory as she rummaged for their Hylian hoods in the drawer. “Besides. I don’t want it to look like we’re ‘hiding’ out here in Hateno. This is a chance to show Hyrule that we’re still committed to the Restructuring, even if we—er, if I —” she stumbled, “don’t physically reside at Hyrule Castle.”
“Putting in a hundred years holding back an annihilation seems like a pretty clear message that you’re committed to restructuring,” Link mumbled, the same way he did whenever she began fretting about appearances. The idea that anyone would question her commitment to the Kingdom was the surest way to sour his mood, darkening his expression into that unreadable slate that he’d been trained so deftly to draw. He was one of the few remaining witnesses to her early days of public doubt and ridicule. He wasn’t keen to go back.
“It’s going to be an easy afternoon,” she tried to cheer him. “I’ve already asked Nack to water the flowers and the veggie patch, so we won’t have any chores when we get home. I’ll just get some decent pictures to impress Purah with my report, make sure nothing is stuck or rotting down there, and we’ll be on our way.”
“But I have plans for you tonight,” he said, dropping his voice to a growl. “Big plans.”
She paused, raising her eyebrow just a tic as he reached beneath the bed, retrieving a thick bound book that he held like an invitation against his hip. HYRULE’S BIG BOOK OF CLASSIC CURRIES .
“For Din’s sake, Link,” she cried, shaking her head. “There will be plenty of time for dinner. It’s a foundation level, not an abyss. As long as you can keep Epona in line on the road, we’ll be home before the sky is even thinking about sunset.”
“Twenty minutes.”
“What?”
“Let me have twenty minutes,” he said, catching her hand resting on the dresser handle and reeling her in.
“Link, come on ! I promised Purah! Do you really want to set her off?”
“Let me take the fall,” he said as she hit the mattress, bouncing slightly as she tipped toward his waiting arms. “Tell her I couldn’t find my gauntlets.”
“She’ll never believe you,” she murmured, bringing her nose against his own.
“She doesn’t have to. You’re the Princess, remember?”
“Then can’t I order you to get out of bed?”
He curled up his lip, snagged once again in her damn technicalities. “Twenty. Minutes.” With his will and might holding her waist, there was little she could do but oblige. The big book of curries fell to the floor with a thump as he tumbled her over in one swift turn, tickling her nose and cheeks with his unkempt hair that caught the rising sun, as warm and bright as stained glass. The blue eyes as expansive as Lake Hylia locked into her own as those hands, those hands trained to cleave limbs and sever bones and fuse a continent back to life, traced down the edges of her body so lightly, her teased skin could do nothing but rise from the small of her back, pleading for more.
How often she had unfurled and played this memory back in her mind, until it wasn’t anything real, nothing but a fairy tale in the sleepless nights unmoored from reality. Once upon a time, a long time ago, so long ago it has yet to happen…
The seal would have broken , Purah had assured her so many times. Whether Hoz or Josha or the Demon King alone, denied witness to his revival. His return was an inevitability, she would say. Zelda’s intervention was the miracle.
And yet.
The groan of dry wood beneath Link’s feet gave away his intrusion. His eyes crept up from the roofline, spotting her before pulling himself up to scoot beside her. Wrapping his arms around his knees he stared in the distance with her, out to the faint outlines of Dueling Peaks and the expanse of stars cut by sky island silhouettes. “What happened?” he asked quietly.
She closed her eyes a moment, gathering the day together. This was her fault, her stupid idea. Thinking that the excitable children in Hateno Village had any interest in Ring Ruins still stranded in their western sister town. “I thought I could march in there with my lecture notes and handouts and it would be like it was before,” she said. “I thought, it’s been six months since we’ve come back, certainly the excitement of Upheaval and puppets and battles has faded and life can just…pick up where it should have been.”
The children were ecstatic. Armed with their offerings of rice balls and crayon drawings at the door, it certainly felt as it had before, when she supplemented Symin’s lesson plan with the occasional mini-class of her own, covering historical oddities or her latest Hylian botany obsession. That was, until she noticed the horns protruding from her crudely sketched head and the vision of the Master Sword spearing her forehead, wrapped in flecks of metallic, waxy waves.
Why did you fly in a circle?
What does a Secret Stone taste like?
Did Old Hyrule have Zoras? What about Gorons? And were the Ritos there too?
Did the Master Sword give you headaches?
When Link found you, did you know he was there?
How did you know you had to fight the Demon Dragon?
How could you be “up there” for 10,000 years, but you still look the same?
What do you remember?
Do you remember?
Remember?
She felt the a tear cresting her lower eyelid, and she quickly flicked it away, feeling foolish. “Before I left, they barely believed in The Calamity, it was so removed from their lives,” she said. “It was their great-grandparents’ burden partitioned off in their history books. But now disaster is fresh all over again, and I’ll never escape it. I’ll never be Teacher Zelda or even Princess Zelda. I’ll always be The Light Dragon, this walking reminder of when the world almost ended. Again.”
The silence settled in between them, punctuated by the frog chirps and sunset fireflies bobbing along the riverbank. The show line had risen up on Mount Lanayru, leaving the craggy mountainside bare and reflecting the silvery moonlight. She remembered nothing, which wasn’t the answer anyone wanted to hear. What would it be like, recalling hundreds of lifetimes, all suspended up in that ageless sky? A blessing, she imagined being told, as people liked to bid her after The Calamity. It’s better for you this way, the not knowing. The packaging and the slumber away, for as long as the Goddess willed it. She was lucky, they said. To have a mind left at all, they left out.
“Those kids love you,” Link murmured, turning back to her, his eyes so soft and kind, it was easy to miss the haunting behind them. “Everyone loves you, Zelda. People were beside themselves when you were away. They’ll come back around. They’re just excited right now, that’s all.”
She half-smiled, a warmth for his sake. Link was so easy around people. He scarcely had to say a word and they began filling in the gaps, telling their stories, cajoling him into their peskiest task, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and pulling him in for a drink or a meal. His presence seemed an invitation unto itself to unload their burdens and sigh with relief, his spirit an encouragement he didn’t have to speak. Meanwhile she consistently felt respected but removed, and that if she was present then there was some reason for her to be so. There was an expectation, unintentional but lingering, that she was there to inspire or impart. The Goddess incarnate, the light savior. She’d come close to casting off this cloak of divinity before, with her monarchy in tatters, the castle and its town in ruins. She dug in the dirt side-by-side with them, grieving at the memorials, rebuilding and replanting one stone at a time.
And now, once again, she was strange.
“You’re never going to have a normal life with me,” she said. Out loud. A palpable truth she couldn’t take back, thick and leaden between them. “I’m never going to be able to give you this glowing, beautiful home that’s simple and safe. I’m always going to be a ticking clock to the next disaster. No one is ever going to have it easy with me, and that’s not fair. Not to you, after everything you’ve already been through.” She sighed, cradling her head as she slightly rocked against the rickety shingles. A stage for a play-act where she was the sweet-faced ranch girl, serenading horses and only ever as famous as her prized cow’s milk. “You can leave, Link. You don’t have to live the rest of your days out as a Knight. You’ve fulfilled any obligation you had to a crown that no longer exists. I’m not a child, I don’t need security detail.” She forced herself to turn, to meet that beloved gaze. “You can still find a girl who will make things…easy.”
A long exhale sank through his nostrils. “How long were you in Old Hyrule?” He asked.
She’d told him…hadn’t she? The stories seemed so exciting to tell at first, until they kept leaving her feeling hollowed out, winnowed with sadness and regret. “Two years,” she said. The first spent in bursts of hyper-focus in Mineru’s libraries and Rauru’s palace archives, combing through for anything that might shade in a clue as to how she arrived there, or any whiff of a loophole back; tempered by hazy, fogged distraction as she began to wonder if her past and their future was nothing but a delusion they humored out of misplaced kindness. It was the small celebration held in honor of their “niece”’s arrival where the tables began to shake, tiers of cake and glasses of dazzlefruit champagne quaking as a hoard of Molduga charged from the west. One more year distracted by the darkening presence in court, the gathering storm the proud king did not heed. Months growing more and more desperate until, finally, that smooth shard caught in her throat.
It tasted bitter, like a berry children were warned not to touch.
“And was there one time in those two years that you thought about staying?”
“Staying?”
“Staying,” he repeated, brushing the soil from his knees. “Finding some other way to help the coming generation. Leaving behind some of your very detailed notes, or filling up that Purah Pad with all kinds of intel. Or just saying to hell with it, we’d figure it out. We were too far ahead, too unimaginably far in the future for anyone you met there to understand. Didn’t you think about what it would be like to stay and marry an ancient Lord and just accept that this could be home now?”
“No,” she said, incredulous.
“But it’s true, isn’t it? Once Rauru sealed Ganondorf away, everyone would have thought you were their last surviving relative. Heir to the throne. You would have been able to shape thousands of years of Hyrule history, or just disappear into whatever it was you wanted out of that new, perfect world.”
“...Yes,” she conceded.
“So then, why? You didn’t have to destroy yourself. You said no one wanted you to, that they tried to stop you in the first place. Tell me why.”
“Because, I…” her voice caught, trying to answer the question she never thought to ask. “...I knew I needed to get back to you.”
“That’s insane,” he pointed out, a wryness cutting the words as he lifted his brow. “You do realize that there’s no one else in Hyrule that would have made that leap.”
“That’s not true,” she murmured, tilting back toward his waiting shoulder. “You would have.”
They remained this way as the blue hour went black, two sides of a shape relying on the other on the curious pitch of their shared roof.
As the darkness and shadows settled, Link stripped off the leather straps of his right gauntlet. He took Zelda’s hand in his own, now bare, turning her palm up. A pulse of light gathered just above her life line, flickering with the same rhythm of her heartbeat. “There is no other girl. There is no other life,” he said, kissing her wellspring of glowing power. “I’d lose any memory, any limb, any chance at ‘easy’ all over again if it meant seeing this light from your shadow.”
The telling light grew, pure happiness she couldn’t temper, swallowing them both in luminous relief. It burst like a firecracker, flecking their skin in shimmering stardust and, for a breath, they were a constellation of two; an extraordinary universe above the simple, steadfast home.
There would never be an ordinary life. “It’s getting cold out here,” she lied, sliding her legs back down toward the shed, beckoning him to follow. At least she knew, with Link’s arm wrapping around her shoulder, they could settle for extraordinary love.