Chapter Text
Gerudo Desert's heat was hell, even for its natives.
Even for Link who wore loose linen tailored specifically for this horrendous mid-summer heat. He had been out in the all-too-eager sun for all of five minutes and he was quite certain it had already roasted another few layers of brown over his skin. Sweat was beginning to sting his eyes. He had half a mind to wipe it over with a red sleeve, only to remember that there weren't very many dry parts remaining on his clothes.
Even his sisters hunched there, beads of sweat dropping like dead locusts when father worked his magic. They had chosen scarves and drapes over their hair in the hopes that it might provide some relief.
And then there was his father who looked perfectly comfortable in far too many layers.
“What kind of Gerudo are you?” His father's voice had always stood out, much lower, much deeper, much louder than the shrill voices of his tribes-fellows. He pat the boy's back hard, laughing and then soothed a hand over as if to apologize for making his ribs vibrate in protest.
Ganondorf looked off at the wood-iron gate in the distance, the closest Hylian outpost to their home.
“This is a perfect day for looting.”
Link and his sisters laughed despite themselves.
“The six of you are coming of age today, so let's see which one of you impresses me!”
At the last word, one of the girls darted off towards the post.
“Hey, Naila, that's cheating!” Taqat called after her. She was the only Gerudo that shared the same mother as Link.
Ganon shrugged. “And Hylians call us cheats, too, don't they?” he laughed, grin wide over his face, clearly approving of Naila's methods. Hearing this, Naila turned back briefly to stick her tongue out at the older girl.
“I'll show you!”
Link ran with his fellow tribesfolk, kicking sand around his feet, blinking away the hot grains they flung at him.
By this time, one Hylian soldier or another should have noticed the rambunctious children and little redheads edging towards them. Fortunately, Ganondorf had knocked out the most troublesome sentries with a small incantation. Of course, he wouldn't take care of all of them. The game would be no fun that way.
As Link started to follow Taqat up one of the posts, he caught sight of a guard's helmet edging to where Naila was. Link had half a mind to warn her, but it was too late.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
“Good job, Naila!” Taqat goaded. “Try to be a little more obvious next time, why don't you!”
“Shut up!”
Link heard the sharp whip of wind and the twang of an arrow catching into wood. A narrow miss to his face.
“Ack!” his sister exclaimed, glancing up at the archer above them. “Quick, take this!” She dug out a handful of pebbles from her shirt pocket and shoved them into her brother's confused hands. “I can't throw from this angle.”
Link obliged his sister, and with one good fling, knocked the archer cleanly into unconsciousness.
“Nice!”
At the top, the siblings split up, Link going right, Taqat going left. On his way, he found that same hole he always loved sneaking around in, only the Hylian soldiers by this time had learned not to leave ladders around for the boy to access their valuables.
Still, the jump wasn't too steep, and even less of a drop if he managed to swing onto one of the crates. He floated down, light on his feet.
Link dropped into a crouch, and, hearing guards shouting along the hallway, stepped forward lightly. He surveyed the cache and slid towards the first interesting thing that caught his eye. Leather sticking out from behind a crate on the opposite end of the wall. (The guards had long since stopped storing all their valuables in the cubbies allotted to them after everything went missing for six straight Gerudo raids; Link was more shocked it had taken so long for them to finally decide that perhaps leaving such expensive items lying around wasn't a good idea)
The Gerudo tugged on the leather, till a bulging wallet was in his hands. He pulled on the strings, opening up the pouch to a variety of rupees, a few gold coins and a peculiar-looking crystal.
The crystal was what drew his attention. It was warm and glowed with a soft light. When he picked it up, it hummed softly in his palm, a small, beetle-sized cat purring against his skin.
“Not again!”
Link watched (with a slight look of pity) as a Hylian soldier skidded to a halt just on the other side of the threshold. He looked absolutely irate, and Link had just enough time to stuff the wallet into his tunic before nimbly avoiding a spear to the chest.
“Seriously?” the soldier snapped. (If Link remembered correctly, his name was Radolf from all the times he had been yelled at; Hylians had such weird names) “Why do you always manage to find my things?”
Not bothering to wait for an answer, Radolf tried to make a grab for the boy. Link jumped onto a crate, agile as a cat, then jumped out from where he came from.
When Link returned to the top of the sentry post, smiling to himself with a nice, fat wallet in his hands, he heard his sister shouting. She was perched at the top of a flag post, waving navy blue fabric back and forth.
“Do you think I could make a good dress out of this, father?” she yelled, to which her father and the others laughed.
The grin was wiped off her face when an arrow connected with her back, lightning flaring from its feathers. One of Link's sisters screamed. Taqat dropped forty feet below, the royal flag still clutched tightly in her grasp. Link closed his eyes and covered his ears, fearing the sound and sight of bones cracking.
But when he looked, his father stood there, daughter in his arms, black balls of non-light floating around him, like small, dark fireflies.
“It's time to leave,” Ganondorf ordered.
“No you don't.”
The only deep voice Link had ever heard was his father's. This voice was deeper, darker, rasping violently with centuries-old hatred in its cords. Link's nightmares began to revisit him in his wake, the earth wrenching open by hands made for despair. This voice wanted nothing but to corrupt.
Another arrow shot out from Goddess knew where, straight at the Gerudo leader, but it halted a foot from him, trapped in the magic wall he had cast.
“Everyone, run!” he shouted.
Thoroughly frightened, the Gerudo all slid down from ladders and banisters, rushing across the sand towards their home. None of them, except Link, looked back. He stood there, suddenly feeling like a traitor as he watched his father engage with the demon, Taqat still sound asleep in his arms. His father glanced back, noticing his son, and threw his arm to the side, the way he did before he magicked into nothingness.
“I thought I told you to run,” Ganon chided, appearing next to him. He tugged on his arm roughly. “Come,” he said, and Link felt the familiar suffocation accompanying teleportation.
*
“The rice has spoiled,” Link's mother tutted, looking down regretfully at all the wasted grains of rice. Link glanced in the sack and shuddered at the sight of unidentified insects crawling about in what had almost been his dinner.
“And you!” Hind snapped, turning to her daughter who was lumbering around despite her wounds. “Why do you always have to get injured the day of the ceremony? Sit down!”
“Link.” The boy turned at his father's voice, barely catching the gold coin he flipped into his hands. “Take someone with you to the market. We'll need enough for the whole tribe.”
“Four sacks of rice all gone to waste!” Hind sighed again, returning to the issue at hand.
Link stepped out into the hot sun and called Aberu’s attention. He had half a mind to keep the curtain parting the kitchen and the outside draped over his face, but his father began nudging at his back. Link moved out of the way and watched as Aberu kicked a ball one last time to a group of enthusiastic Gerudo.
“What, what?” she asked, sprinting to him. She wafted her face with the scarf around her neck.
Link lifted the empty sacks in his hands. Aberu nodded in understanding. If it had been anyone besides her or his sister, they might have prodded for at least a word or two. She grabbed his sleeve and started pulling him towards the series of colorful tents on the horizon.
They heard Ganon’s voice in the distance, reprimanding the children playing ball to watch where they were going.
“Aim for his head!” Aberu shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. Link could hear his father’s growl from all the way over here. Immediately, all of the girls started kicking the ball towards their tribe leader, and the result was a very broad-shouldered grown man running for his life as a group of eager, giggling children tried and succeeded to knock the ball into his head.
Link and Aberu spent the remainder of their walk flipping between laughter and concern for what Link’s father would do to their friends.
Once they reached the stands, however, Aberu’s mind went somewhere else completely.
“Ah, ah! They have those bracelets I’ve been looking for!” Her hand left Link’s, and she sped off somewhere where Link couldn’t follow. He sighed. In these moments, Link preferred his sister’s company over Aberu’s He needed someone to speak for him.
He edged over to one of the more familiar stands. The food was more expensive, but Link also knew no one would prod him for words.
“Ah, Link.” He recognized the easy voice of the stand owner. She was Chambali, like most people in this marketplace aside from the other various tribes in the desert, the occasional Hylian and less occasionally a bandit disguised as a Hylian. He had known her since he was a child.
“What would you like today?” Aqaab asked. “Rice?”
Link nodded.
“How many?”
Link held up four fingers.
“The boy doesn't speak?”
Link hadn't noticed the man, edged as far back in the shade as possible, maroon dress blending in with the wide tent sheet. His arms were crossed, and despite the relief of shade, he looked incredibly flushed and irritated.
“He’s shy,” Aqaab answered for him.
The man leaned forward. “Is it true you're the second Gerudo male born in a century?”
Before Aqaab could scold him for being nosy, she was interrupted by another unexpected voice.
“Stolen, more like, if you ask me,” someone snapped. “That's all they do, Gerudo. Steal. And now they're stealing babies, too.”
Link recognized this voice as well.
Banu reared her horse back, so that she pinned Link between the stand and the broad-shouldered mare she currently rode. She was Avarra, a tribe known for being bitter about most things but most recently for the fact that the Gerudo had two men, while they still had none.
“Stealing babies and then teaching them to steal,” Banu spat. “Remember the time you tried to take Nona, boy?”
If she was trying to use the abnormally large bull she called a horse to intimidate Link, she was failing. To her dismay, Nona quite liked the boy and took every opportunity to chew affectionately on his hair.
“If I recall correctly, Banu,” Aqaab snapped over a sack of rice. “The boy was all of eight and was merely playing with your horse. Don't be bitter just because Nona likes Link more than she likes you.”
Banu let out a snort, much more horse-like and irritated than one Nona could have mustered.
“Perhaps not stolen,” Banu ignored her and went on. “But Goddess knows what his mother did to get her child to look like that. He's as dark as us, but he looks like a Hylian.”
With surprising speed, Link ducked under her horse and bolted towards one of the other stands.
“Link!” Aqaab called after him. But her voice faded away as he kept running. He kept running until all the tents were a safe distance away and he could cry without being seen.
Banu had a point, he thought. They always had a point or two. A second male was unheard of among the desert tribes, and for his hair to be bleached white blonde…all of that pointed to that word everyone called him, the one that was like teeth hitting metal. He despised that word, but it was more familiar to him than his own name.
Link pressed the sleeve of his tunic to his eyes, if only to alleviate the itch the tears caused.
A faint glow of light pulled him out of his thoughts. He glanced around and realized the source of light was coming from his shirt pocket. He frisked through the tunic, feeling for the gemstone he had snatched earlier from the Hylian soldier.
Link jumped back as the gem transformed into something that resembled a human.
“Greetings, Master.”
Link had no idea what he was looking at it. A figure about half his height, floating above his hand, colored in more shades of blue and violet than Link had ever known existed. Her eyes were glassy, her face sculpted with the delicacy of the finest woodwork.
The crystal, which he had mistakenly assumed was only that and not some sort of ethereal being, was fitted securely at the top of her sternum.
“Are you happy to see me again?”
Her robotic smile fell after a moment of silence.
“Master?” she asked again, flitting eagerly towards him.
He could feel anxiety creeping up his arms, hundreds of scorpions crawling and paralyzing his body. He suddenly couldn't breathe.
“Link!” The figure evaporated into light, folding and shrinking back into the crystal in a fraction of a second. “Link, there you are!” Aberu sprinted towards him, freshly bought bangles and rings of flowers in her hand. She bent over briefly to pant and then laid a free hand on his shoulder. “You look pale. Are you okay?”
The boy blinked at her. He nodded after a moment.
“Good,” she said with a pat. “Let's go. Aqaab packed all the rice for us.”