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But I am too angry to feel sadness—I am too furious with myself for having seen this coming and been able to do nothing. I am angry with Impa for failing as I did to prevent this tragedy. And I am angry—yes, I am angry with my father, too, for not having had the strength or foresight to defend his own throne.

But my anger means nothing; it is only the useless turmoil of a helpless girl. All I can do is let Impa carry me from the ruins of my previous life as the Rauron from my dreams, the evil-eyed pretender that had sworn fealty to my family, burns my home in his wake. All I can do is look behind me at the shrinking castle, all I can do is throw a gift to the last hope of our salvation, a boy I barely know who stands bewildered at the town's moat, watching our horse kick up dust as we gallop into obscurity.

Impa now stands beside me, shadows of the forest darkening her brown face, deepening her already terrifying frown. As we stare into the open, hungry mouth of the forest, I feel her nails dig into my palm in unconscious agitation. I can sense the creeping, almost living darkness of this place reach for the hem of my ripped and stained dress. I feel half-compelled to let it eat me alive. At least then this day would end.

"It is through here," Impa whispers. Even the slightest breath sounds like a gale in this obscene forest. It is too silent; no songs of birds, no shuddering of leaves in the wind or animals creeping through the grass. She has led me through the horrifying maze of roots and brush without fear, though with more than a little caution. Gods forbid Impa show trepidation—the moment she does, I know we are both done for.

She is not afraid, merely unsure. As she guides me, her large hand clutching my wrist, through the labyrinth of trees and water of a dark grove, I cannot help but watch the wide frown on her face. She is as cross with me as I am with her. She saw me throw my family's beloved treasure—that tiny blue ocarina—into the moat behind us as we rode away from the smoke and chaos of Castletown, away from the corpse of my father and the burning castle. How could she have known what I had; that another had more use of this instrument than either of us? Even I did not know how I came to that conclusion, but I cannot explain it to her now any more than I could then. She knows she does not have the time to chastise or punish me, so she stays silent, though I cannot tell if the fuel of her anger has burned out or is merely simmering inside her.

"Are we... are we going to hide here?" I stutter.

"No," she answers. She does not look at me. "At least not for long. We are going to retrieve something that may be of use to us. My people left it here years ago, in preparation for an incident like this."

It doesn't surprise me to learn the Sheikah would plan for a day like today. Even before the butchery the Civil War brought, they were half-buried in our country's history of greed and hatred—if anyone could predict Hyrule's day of reckoning, it would be them. Only the Sheikah could find truth in the darkness, look at the black and endless horizon of the future and make out the silhouette of annihilation. It didn't help them escape their end, but if I am lucky, it will help me escape mine.

Impa and I enter something of a courtyard, small and bathed in the green-tinted light of the woods. I would never expect to see a man-made structure this deep in the forest, but here it is—four walls, a decorative platform, a collapsed length of crumbled, impassable stairs leading up to some sort of gateway. It has no door, but the greenish darkness emanating from the stones seems to comprise a foreboding enough barrier. "Wait here," Impa says. I do not want to wait here, but she lifts me up and sets me on the nearest stump. She moves me sternly, as one might move an animal (and certainly not a princess), so I just stiffen, letting her position me on the wood. "The beasts and fiends of the forest will not dare to come here, so you'll be safe," she tells me. "As long as you do not move from this spot." She lifts her head and glances about us, at the flitting orbs of insect-light, at the shuddering trees and waving leaves. "If you do, you will not find the way back here."

I nod. I almost reach out for her as she slinks away, but I clench my fists in my lap, pinching them with my legs to stop their incessant shaking. Impa lifts herself up the vines on the wall, creeps along its edge and throws herself toward the broken stairs, landing gracefully on the platform before the stone passageway. She turns and narrows her eye at me, as if she can rivet me here with a look, before she disappears into the darkness.

It isn't a second after she leaves that my own solitude crashes over me like water. I suddenly can't breathe, and I feel like a sacrifice under the gaze of the old forest, sitting on this stump like an offering sitting on a temple dais. I hear shuffles and scrapes in the nooks and crannies of the courtyard, I start to see shapes move against the wall, long and nefarious. It is too dark under this dense forest canopy to truly tell if night has fallen, so I am not sure if the sudden darkness is natural or just a product of my eternally overactive imagination. But I swear I can see the long outlines of familiar bodies—the bell shapes of ladies' dresses, the simple caps of my maids, the hunchback of the old librarian… I think I see my father, bent over as if in pain, and behind him—

I close my eyes and bite my lip. A cry rises and dies in my throat, and all that emerges is a soft, high-pitched whine, like that of a lost dog. I shake and shut my eyes and wish with every forsaken inch of my being to be somewhere else, to be safe, to erase the events of this day and wake up in Impa's arms, where the only thing I have to fear is the uneasiness of my own dreams.

But when I open them again, I am still in the wooded courtyard, alone except for the horrifying sounds of creeping life around me—even the light-tipped insects have flitted to safety from the oncoming darkness. But I stay strong, I stay silent, I stay on the stump, and I wait. The shapes continue to flicker around me, and I clench my jaw, summoning Impa back to me in my frantic mind. A few shadows pass by me, reaching out to grasp the hem of my dress, so I raise my knees to my chin and shrink into a ball, hoping they will pass by without noticing me. But the shadows only circle faster, deeper, crawling toward me like the darkness of my own dreams. I hear music—the distant, fluttering notes of an ocarina, as if the forest itself is chastising me for losing our family's treasure—and I see a flicker of green among the shadows, a white face, bare legs, I see the boy who had come too late, I see—

Impa. Thank all the gods, I see Impa. She reappears on the ledge of the broken stairwell, and when she steps into the courtyard, all the shadows disappear, undulating and slinking away as if in deference to her. She leaps off the ledge and lands at the courtyard's center, near the decorative platform, and the malevolent silhouettes disappear, replaced by the quiet, greenish hues of dusk. I rush from my stump to throw myself into her arms, but there is something in my way—a golden lyre, browned with age and strung with old gut strings. I skid to a stop and she extends it to me in offering.

"Seeing as you have given up one instrument, I have brought you another," she says. "The years have not been kind to it, but if anyone can play it back to health, it is you."

I reach out and take the thing in my hands, surprised at how cozily it falls into my grip. It feels right—the weight, the shape, everything about it seems oddly comfortable, though I have never played an instrument like this before. Of course, any princess can play the ocarina and the harp, can fumble her way through an organ piece or two, but never before have I seen a lyre of this shape anywhere in the castle. "Why… whose is this…" I start, but I can't quite form words over the strange friendliness with which the instrument greets me.

"It's yours now," Impa says. She lowers her eyes and her face falls with it. "Zelda… I know this will be difficult to hear, especially after the tragedies of today. But you must listen with a wise heart and an open mind." She pauses for an infinite, nerve-racking moment. "You are no longer princess of this kingdom."

My breath shouldn't stop cold, my throat shouldn't constrict as it does. I have known this for hours now—for months, counting the intuition my dreams have given me—but hearing it aloud for the first time, hearing the confirmation of my father's murder and my throne's usurping, hearing that it had not been simply a nightmare, seems to destroy the internal dam that had held back the day's emotions. I burst into tears, clutching my new lyre to my chest. The water runs down my face in an unstoppable torrent, but my weeping is silent—my eyes are still on Impa, my mind and heart still ready. I can listen, I can still think clearly despite it.

"No doubt the usurper will come looking for you. But he will not find us here tonight, and he will not find us in the future. Not until we have the strength to defeat him." She crosses her arms, a steeled frown shielding her face. "Zelda… long have you told me you wanted to learn the arts of my people. Now is the time to prove your conviction."

I swallow a sob and nod vigorously. It's all I can do at this point. It has been my dream for years, ever since Impa came into my life. Though I would've rather she offered in a less dire situation, I can't help stepping toward her, lyre still in hand, and pressing my forehead against her chest in thanks. She takes me into her arms, laying a big brown hand on the back of my head and kissing my brow. "It will not be easy," she says, and she knows I don't care.

We stay in the courtyard that night. Impa builds a fire because she's confident we will not be found this deep in the forest. We sit around it, and she offers me a few nuts and berries for supper. I am used to better fare, to roast chicken and wild boar, to baked vegetables and buttered bread, but I take what she offers eagerly. I have not eaten since yesterday, and the rumbling of my stomach is starting to deafen me.

As I eat, savoring the ugly, bitter nuts by virtue of being food at all, I lay myself against Impa, reveling in the way her arm curls around my waist, and suddenly, I am torn apart by gratitude. If it weren't for her, no doubt I would be lying in the castle somewhere, perhaps dead beside my father, perhaps in its deepest dungeons. If it weren't for her, I might be worse than dead. Something itches in the back of my throat, and I make an embarrassing sound, a squeak of thanks perhaps, unintelligible and wholly unintentional.

"What was that?" Impa asks.

"Tell me a story," I recover, clearing my throat. "Tell me the grimmest one you know."

"Zelda, I'm not sure if now is the time."

"Indulge me, Impa. Something has to drown out the rumbling of my stomach." She glances down at me and sees the look in my eyes, the desire to take my mind off my own discomfort and occupy it with someone else's.

"Do you know of the temple that lies behind us?" she says. Again I can recognize the glint of the storyteller in her eyes, dulled with exhaustion as it may be.

"No," I answer. "Please tell me it's tragic."

"You will like this one, I think." Impa smiles, though I see sadness in it. She knows my favorite stories have always been the ones with ghosts and ghouls and devils. Circumstances cannot change that—or so I might dare to think. I finish my meager meal and lay my head in her lap, stare in to the small fire, and listen.

*

Just a few feet from where you're sitting now, just past that mossy rock, once stood the golden staircase that led to the largest and stateliest palace ever built. Hundreds of years ago, when it was first constructed, it rivaled even the royal palace, though it does not look like it now that it has crumbled into ruin and been forgotten by the world.

The mind behind the palace, the matron, the first resident and founder was a Faronian woman named Madame Jovani. She was born a duchess, married an earl, and consolidated both her and her husband's family fortunes when he died. She had come from a long line of nobility, whose influence spread so far and wide that she was on nearly every one of her relative's wills. She had one daughter, who never married, so she did not have to cough up a dowry for any other family.

(What's a dowry?

It's what rich people used to pay other rich people in order to breed their children with one another.

You mean… like we do with horses sometimes?

Precisely.)

Putting it simply, they were a fabulously rich family. They had all the money in the world, all the servants, all the horses and hounds and guests and wonderful balls that any rich family would want. They had plenty of friends and allies, plenty of time for leisure; they were perfectly ordinary as far as the wealthy went, and they were perfectly respectable in every way. Except for one.

Madame Jovani's daughter had taken one too many liberties with her leisure time. One day, a few weeks after a particularly scandalous and obscenely indulgent masquerade, the young woman had found herself unexpectedly pregnant. She was not married, and confessed to her mother there was no way for her to be sure who had fathered her child that night (that particular ball was considered the most fashionably prurient party of the decade). Madame Jovani knew it would bring unspeakable shame on their family name if her daughter were to have a child out of wedlock, so she quickly searched for a safe place, a hidden sanctuary, where she could give birth without the ever-prying eyes of the world on her (for the Jovanis' circle of noble friends was notorious for being incredibly nosy). She sought out empty castles and remote palaces, anything that would let her daughter give birth and privacy and comfort, but found nothing. She knew, in the end, she would have to build her own.

So she hid her daughter away before she could grow too big, and sent for a man whom she had heard knew all the corners of the earth. When he came to her, she asked him for the name of a spot, remote and quiet, on which to build her manor. She asked for a place that was impossible to find if someone had not been there before, that was so far removed from the vicissitudes of the world none would ever think to search for it. And he told her of this grove, a holy place in the Lost Woods, well into Kokiri territory, that he had only stumbled upon by some mistake of his own navigation. He assured her it was a hidden place, a sacred place, somewhere where no sane man would venture of his own free will. Madame Jovani was delighted. She called architects and masons, carpenters and roofers, and had the adventurer guide them to the right place. She would pay them all a fortune large enough to last their progeny until doomsday as long as they could build the structure within nine months.

It was not an easy offer to refuse. There were hundreds of people working on the palace at any time—and at first it seemed like they would have the building completed well within the lady's allotted time. But not long after they started building, strange occurrences began to visit upon the workers.

Accidents abounded. Beams collapsed, men fell, whole piles of materials seemed to disappear without a trace. When a mason fell to his death, they would find the rope he had used to secure himself broken, chewed away by some beast or sliced with a blade. When a wall or doorway collapsed, they would find that someone had removed a keystone or other such base. Sometimes men would simply disappear, wandering into the forest with no explanation.

They told Madame Jovani about these occurrences, that she should not even have thought to build a mansion so far into the wooded wilderness, that it was madness to have thought up the project. Others insisted that it was a mistake to build on a sacred place for the Kokiri, and now the mythical children of the forest were exacting revenge on this desecration of their land. Others said it was the mansion itself, its maze-like design and the way it rose too proudly to the sky, that was the cause of such misfortune. It angered to gods, it angered the Kokiri, it angered some spirit or another—all these words fell on deaf ears; Madame Jovani needed her palace, though she refused to divulge why.

The woman brought in new workers where the old ones quit or disappeared or died, offering them twenty times their weight in gold just for a few months' work. There was no lack of new builders—they came, called by the promise of wealth, but left just as easily. No one stayed for more than a few weeks, except for the butler, who had been with the family for decades and was left in charge of supervising the process. He was intrepid and practical, a man not easily spooked by trite stories of ghosts and ghouls. But even he could not hide his uneasiness when the workers spoke about how someone had seen the spirit of a man who'd died crushed under stone, or one who'd hung himself on the rafters of the newly-constructed banquet hall. Even he could not stop the shivers from running up his spine when the men around him told stories of the ghostly pale faces of children they'd see at the edge of the manor's garden, framed in green and flitting between shadows like evil spirits.

The going was slow, of course, impeded by the appearance of ghosts and phantoms and woodland sprites and all sorts of things that meant harm to the mansion and its builders. But eventually the last stone was laid, the last windowpane fitted, the last fixture of furniture laid down, the last doorway carved and the last rupee paid. The workers cleared out as fast as they could, returning to their families with generous earnings and an abundance of horrifying stories on their lips, but, as with all such stories, very few people believed them. As time wore on, the workers stopped talking and started forgetting—even the location of the mansion was lost to all of them eventually.

(Why?

It is the nature of this place. There's a reason it's called the Lost Woods.

Are we lost, then?

Very much so. But we will find our way again. Count yourself lucky; most never do.)

The day after the three residents moved in—the stalwart butler, Madame Jovani, and her heavily pregnant daughter—the latter gave birth. The young woman bore a child, as expected, but she did not stop at one; she pushed out four daughters, one right after the other, all healthy. The poor woman did not live through the strain of it, and Madame Jovani found herself the grandmother of four orphan girls.

She sent for four wet nurses, all of them from poor families in the forest and who would have no interest in questioning where a woman like her had come across four infants at once. They did their duty and were paid well, acting as mothers should to the little girls until it was time for them to leave, all under the watchful eye of the butler. Madame Jovani, driven half-mad by the trials of building her mansion and the tragedy of her daughter's death, shut herself up in the tower, surrounded by jewels and silks, as the babes grew into children, then into young women. Though they rarely saw their grandmother, they wanted for nothing; they had healthy appetites and active minds, they played in the courtyards and planted in the garden, drew water from the well and read in the library, chatted and sewed in the many drawing rooms. Like all children, they suffered from selfish desires; they contended with one another for rare treasures like dresses and jewels, they picked on one another and had their moments of hatred. In other words, they were ordinary children—apart from their complete isolation, an acute sense of their own wealth, and the fact that the house in which they grew up was decidedly haunted.

This did not bother Meg. She was the first to be born (only a few minutes before the second), and often claimed to be the eldest by that virtue alone. Her amethyst eyes shone with confidence; she was domineering and active, and she was not interested in the history nor the haunting of her chateau. She busied herself with dancing, aided by an instructor the butler hired from afar (who, of course, left after only a few months of living with them, claiming every morning she woke up with a hanged man at the foot of her bed, rope creaking with the strain as he dangled in the morning light). Meg was prone to a somewhat cruel disposition—she was quick to anger and had no qualms with taking it out on her younger sisters. But she could be kind as well; as the self-proclaimed eldest, she often doted on her sisters, feeding them sweet cakes and sewing dolls for them, acting as she supposed a mother should (which was a complete guess on her part as she had never had one).

Joelle, the second child, had a passion for painting. She was a quiet girl of a ruby hue and very much fascinated with her surroundings—she painted the woodlands, she painted her sisters, she painted the palace's salon and the bedrooms, the courtyards and the well. Each of her pieces was perfectly represented to the smallest bizarre detail; in a woodland landscape, she would add a small child, clad in green and crawling furtively through the bushes. In the paintings of the mansion, if one squinted carefully, one could see the small markings in shadow where a phantom might creep—in the edges of the canvas, behind walls, or on the surface of the oil so that it appeared only when the painting was placed in the light a certain way. In the portraits of her sisters, always there were faces watching from the mirrors and windows behind them, almost invisible in the streaks of glass. She painted, as most artists do, what she saw—the hanged man the dancing instructor complained about, the flitting shadows of the ill-intentioned sprites of the forest, and the lost souls of the workers and planners who had died during construction. She saw disembodied skulls floating in the hallways where others saw the flames of candles, she saw enormous skulltulas where others saw only house spiders, she saw ghostly, deformed black hands descend from the ceiling where the others only saw flickering shadows. Even when her sisters glimpsed a white phantom disappearing into the kitchen door, or heard incorporeal laughter peal down the empty halls, or saw the torches of the main hall light themselves or flicker out of their own accord, Meg would appear, all common sense and matronly disdain, ready to dismiss them. Only Joelle could not laugh off the specters as figments of her imagination.

The third daughter, Beth, had eyes of sapphire. She was a skilled archer and lover of animals—she could often be seen riding in the palace grounds with her hounds at her horse's feet. They also slept in her bed at night (she once made the mistake mentioning to Joelle that she kept the animals close to scare the ghosts away while she slept). Beth was kinder with her sisters than Meg, but avoided the butler and their grandmother, whom she insisted was insane (she was quite right, of course; after only a few years of living up in that tower, the woman had succumbed to her madness). She was more willing to indulge Joelle in her stories of black hands and floating skulls, since once when she had returned from the woods after a leisurely hunt, she brought back her own strange tale: she had seen a child, much younger than her, clad in green and utterly alone. She, being a practical girl, at first did not believe all the stories of the mythical Kokiri, but she did not know what else it could've been. The child had beaten her to her quarry—as the elk lay there, arrow in its side, the Kokiri had laid a hand on its heaving flank, and the animal rose to its feet, bellowing once before fleeing into the forest. With an evil look in its eye, the child had glanced back at Beth before it too disappeared, and she felt a horrible pain in her side, in the same spot where her arrow had hit the elk. She carried that pain, and that story, all the way back to her sisters, only one of which believed her.

The fourth daughter, Amy, spent most of her time in the library, reading stories of her own. Above all things, she loved her books.

(So Amy was a little like me.

Yes, she was quite like you.

Though I… I can't… my library is gone…

Don't cry, Zelda. Even without your books, there will be plenty of stories for you. For now, let us finish this one.)

Amy was an intelligent girl, and behind her green eyes she stored thousands of facts, figures, narratives and maxims. She had a quick wit that matched the greatest minds of her generation, but, of course, growing up in an isolated forest only in the company of her sisters, she had never met any of them. She had an appreciation for all things logical and beautiful—she was not fond of the stories of Joelle and Beth, but she was also a girl swayed by evidence. She could not deny the strange things she had seen with her own eyes, and sometimes she took a page out of her nearest sister's book and borrowed a few hounds to warn her of the phantoms, for she had read many times, in many languages, that animals are sensitive to the dead and can speak with them. Many times she held a dog down and recited to it what it should relay to the wandering ghosts, but as far as she gathered, no messages got through. Out of all four sisters, she was the one who spoke most often with their grandmother, and would make the trek to the top of the tower to visit her. She carried the old woman meals and treats, relieving the elderly butler of the duty (his bones and joints by then were old and creaked audibly—the sisters could always tell when he came down the hall by the clicking of his knees, not to mention the grumbles of pain. When he died, the mansion doubled in eerie quietness).

The four sisters lived in relative harmony, clashing as sisters do, comforting one another as sisters do, until they became women. Each was restless in her own way, having grown up isolated in the woods for so long, and more than once each wished that she could leave and go into the world to make something of herself. But they could not leave—not only did they not know the way back to civilization, they had their ailing grandmother to care for, a grandmother who rapidly grew old and demented up in her tower. Each day she seemed a little worse, and since the butler had died (though Joelle insisted she saw him wandering the halls, plates of hot food in hand, knees creaking louder than ever before), there was no one but the sisters to care for her. Out here in the woods, they did not know how to call for a doctor, and all they could do was bring her food and change her sheets and endure her nonsensical ramblings as best they could.

It wasn't long before the sisters came to the realization that their grandmother was to pass on the entirety of her wealth to them. When they asked her who got what, she only muttered unintelligibly at them; by this point she was too far gone. So they searched for a will, or any other such document that would indicate her wishes. When they found none, they realized they would have to decide among themselves.

It was an impressive fight that filled the halls with noise and anger all night, so fierce and so prolonged that even the spirits retreated back into the walls, put off by the screaming. At first, they decided to split the fortune evenly in four, but the definitions of "even" changed with the minute, and soon each sister was greedily claiming what the others did, until each one insisted she get the entirety of the fortune. These sisters, who could've easily argued for a full day about who got to sew with what needles, who had to make the tea, or who got the last spread of jam, had no chance of solving the dispute overnight. So they argued into the next day, and the next, and the next, until Meg could not stand it and ascended the spiral staircase to the tower where her grandmother slept. Her sisters followed, and when she burst into Madame Jovani's room and threw the covers off her, the old woman started awake and sat up.

Meg demanded to know to whom the family fortune would pass. "Pick one of us, grandmother, since you are not of sound enough mind to apportion to each of us a fair piece of it. I am the eldest so it only makes sense to choose me."

"But I am the one who cared for you most," Amy put in. "So I should get it."

"We're of the same age, so Meg has no right to demand it all for herself," Joelle said. "Give it to me, because I am the most devoted to preserving the memory of our house in oils and canvas."

"And I'm the most likely to actually make something of it," said Beth. "I should get it."

Madame Jovani lifted her head and looked at each of them with an uncommon lucidity. "You will get what you deserve," she said, before collapsing back into a deep sleep.

(But what did any of them hope to do with such a fortune this deep in the woods?

That is the essence of the foolishness of greed, Zelda.)

The squabbling and scrambling continued. No sister could glean a clear meaning from their grandmother's statement, but each was sure that she was the one worthy, she was the one who deserved it. The days dragged into weeks, and they got nowhere. Their grandmother had not woken up from her deep sleep—her cheeks were hollow and grey, her eyes seemed to sink back into her head; there was no doubt she would not wake again. And the sisters still had not given in; each declared herself worthiest, each was unwilling to back down or compromise.

It was the day after Madame Jovani died that Meg decided there was only one way to solve the dispute. She awoke that morning, dressed herself and did her hair, applied her makeup carefully in her mirror, spread jam on her toast, and decided to kill her sisters. She spent a few hours thinking about it; how she could go from room to room with a knife and end each of them. They would not suspect a thing—she doubted they even thought her capable of such a deed. She herself didn't until recently, but she was sure she had been driven to this by forces outside herself, forces she could not control. So the next morning, she ate her toast with extra jam, did her hair up in an impeccable bun, slid a knife in her sleeve and prowled the halls looking for her sisters. She did not suspect that each one of them, Joelle, Amy and Beth, had arrived at the same conclusion, at nearly the exact same moment.

Joelle had been up all night painting. She had locked herself in the darkest room in the basement of their manor with her oils and canvas—she descended to the depths of the chateau, where only the rats and ghosts go, and sought out the best place to paint. When she found a suitable location, where the ghouls and ghosts and angry spirits were most active, she started her painting. She splashed oil over canvas like a madwoman, smearing it with her fingers, running her nails down its middle, scratching and screaming and cursing the names of her sisters for their greed, for their disregard of her stories, for their cruelty. She knew she could show them, if she could get the spirits to listen to the will of her paint, to the content of her curses. And by the morning, when she had finished a painting so hideous even she could not dare look at it, she knew she had succeeded. From the canvas an evil spirit slithered, insubstantial and white, tortured moans echoing down the halls of the mansion. She watched it go, watched it crawl on broken arms and legs through the halls of her home. Cats fled from its path, the dogs howled in the kennels outside, and the spirit wandered, moaning and screaming from its broken jaw. From the way it collapsed over itself as it tumbled, Joelle knew it had been one of the workers who had fallen from the highest heights of the courtyard wall—there seemed no bone left unbroken, no human shape left in its elongated limbs. She followed it at a distance, making sure it did not see her, waiting for it to find one of her sisters, waiting for it to secure for her what was hers by right.

Amy had been up all night as well. But she had been concocting a different sort of art, one of science and medicine. In her grandmother's extensive library she had found a book on herbs and oils, worn with age and filled with yellowed illustrations. It had been one of her favorites for years, and it had come in handy when it came to patching herself up if she fell, or helping her through headaches and stomach pains. Now, she used it for a different purpose. In the darkest hours of the night, while Meg plotted and Joelle painted, she snuck from her bedroom and crept into the ghoul-filled forest, ignoring the dancing shadows around her to gather what she needed: nuts, flower petals, the stem of a certain herb. She made a concoction in perfect proportions, and after ensuring the kitchen was devoid of life, she crept her way to the pantry and mixed it in with the jam.

Beth had not planned so assiduously. She had slept soundly, hands clasped under her sweet face, and dreamt of her animals. When she rose in the morning, she skipped breakfast and made her way to her personal armory, where she kept her bows and quivers, her saddles and riding crops. She chose her favorite hunting bow and slung her quiver across her shoulder. She took with her only three arrows, because she was entirely confident she would not miss. When Beth set her mind to something, it got done; there was no room for failure. So she perched herself on the top of the western tower, with a clear view of where Amy would no doubt emerge from the dining room after breakfast, as she had done every day for her entire life. Beth crouched in the shadows, arrow nocked, eyes focused on the one decorative balcony where she knew Amy would emerge. She didn't blink when the dogs started howling in fury and fear at nothing; she could comfort them later, when whatever ghost that had passed by sank back into obscurity. She waited in hiding on the veranda of the tower until Amy emerged below her, shaking out her hair. Her strong features were wrinkled in discontent, and she seemed to be searching for something. Her fingers curled around the balcony's decorative balustrade, and from this distance Beth could not read the complex mess of emotion that crossed her face. But she didn't need to. She drew her bow and with no hesitation, loosed an arrow into her sister's throat. Amy fell, and Beth stood; she still had two more sisters to rid herself of that day, so she would have to hurry if she wanted to catch them before they came across the body.

But when she turned, she felt cold hands wrap around her neck. She heard the ghostly echo of snapping bones, the groan of the tortured phantom, but she got only a glimpse of the broken, deformed limbs that gripped her before her vision started to fade. She thought she saw Joelle emerge from the door behind the specter, thought she saw her sister's hands rise to her mouth in contrition and her eyes widen. Beth fought, hands passing uselessly through hollow, cold flesh. She tried to cry out, but the ghost bore down on her, wrapping itself tighter around her throat, before in a panic she backed up, tripping over the veranda's edge and falling to the courtyard below.

Joelle watched the ghost flutter after her sister, disappearing into the mist, and rushed to the edge of the balcony. Seeing Beth splayed and broken in the courtyard, seeing Amy lying bloodied on the lower walkway, hearing the howl of the dogs—all of it cleared her head. She was suddenly overtaken by the knowledge of the evil of her actions. She backed away from the veranda's edge, terrified, and turned to flee, turned to hide anywhere from the knowledge of what she had done, but she did not get far before she met Meg. And in the course of a second, her sister freed her from her actions, from her terror. Joelle fell to the ground before Meg, heart pierced with the tip of a hidden blade, and stilled.

Meg wiped the knife on her red dress and made her way up to the tower, where she found that someone had already done her work for her. Finding Amy with an arrow in her throat and Beth lying shattered in a spray of blood on the courtyard tiles, she simply put her knife away and returned to the dining hall, where she made herself a pot of tea, and died from Amy's poisoned jam before it finished steeping.

Though the Kokiri have reclaimed the sacred land under this place and reestablished it as a temple of silent devotion, it is said to this day that Meg's tea remains untouched, still hot, still fresh on the Jovanis' table. Around it, nature has reclaimed the palace—Beth's dogs have turned to wolfos, Amy's medicinal plants and flowers have crept up the walls and covered the place with vines and green shadows, and Joelle's paintings have taken on a life of their own; the phantoms walk between them like rooms in a house, appearing and disappearing at will. The angry ghosts and spirits Joelle saw still wander the halls of that place, and the laughter of little girls still echoes through its rooms and courtyards.

The riches of Madame Jovani remain unclaimed to this day, but in these very halls the sisters roam, protecting their house and their fortune from anyone who dares trespass on their property. They still light the torches in the mansion's main hall, looking for their gold, they still carry meals up to the ghost of their grandmother, and if you listen closely to the forest, that's not the clicking of a woodpecker you hear, it's the creaking and popping of the butler's old, aching knees, as he wanders in darkness forever. And if you see a light, any light in this wood, a torch of any color, do not follow it, for it is one of the sisters trying to lure another to her death. But she will not discriminate if she finds you instead, for none of them has anything left to lose but her fortune.

*

I dream of gold. At first I think it is a torch of one of the ghostly sisters, luring me into the darkness, then I think it is the glinting gold of Madame Jovani's fortune, sliding through my fingers, but it is neither of these. It burns me, it sears the skin of my hand, and I want nothing more than to get it away from me, to pull myself from its light. I open my mouth to tell it to leave, to say I do not want the fortune, I do not want to follow this glowing light into the depths of the temple. I tell it I do not care about gold and rupees, though I have none of my own anymore; all I want is to shut the ghosts from my head—Viscen, my father, the charred bodies of the old librarians—to sleep in darkness and quietness and forget everything.

When Impa shakes me awake, it is grey morning. There are leaves and twigs stuck in my clothes and hair, every inch of me hurts, and for a moment I cannot tell where I am, what has happened or what I dreamt about. When Impa lifts me from the ground, it comes back to me too slowly—the events of yesterday, my fears, my dreams.

I look down at my hand, where the pain is sharpest, and see something on it—thinking it's a firefly for a second, I brush it off, but it stays, locked to my skin through my stained gloves. When Impa examines it, she says nothing, merely grips my hand and squeezes, pressing her forehead against mine and muttering in old Sheikah. I do not know what to think; she only does this when something is very wrong or very right. I gulp, glancing again at the strange triangle on the back of my hand, and begin to understand.

Despite my horror, despite my bewilderment, I allow Impa to pull me to my feet. When I stand, I notice a spot of blood has spread through the back of my white dress, and I start to cry anew.

It is a day of all sorts of changes.