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Shattered Glass Draws Blood
Somewhere in the Lost Woods, adrift in time
Link walked as a wolf in the woods surrounding the Temple of Time. He caught a scent––familiar, yet foreign, and he followed it past the secret grove, under brush and around trees, until he found a masked Sheikah crouched in the brush, blonde hair peaking out from under their hood, and bow in hand.
The Sheikah smelled….like Zelda, somehow.
Smelled like Zelda, but not quite. Not the Zelda he knew, but perhaps, her family? This Sheikah smelled like they’d been sleeping rougher and fighting harder than the Zelda he knew. Red Sheikah eyes stared back at him, brows lowered.
“You’re gonna scare off my dinner, wolf.”
He caught it, in her voice, then. The scent of magic. Of disguise. Link frowned back at the Sheikah. Eyeing the distance, she aimed her bow well above him and fired. The thud of a dead bird, and the sound of wings, taking flight.
“Fetch,” she said, and Link huffed. But something about this figure….her sadness, perhaps, or that familiar scent of Princess Zelda… it made him trot off into the woods anyway, and return with a pheasant in his mouth.
“Good boy,” she said, and set to plucking.
Link laid down on the forest floor to watch her, but as a swatch of sun crept over his fur, he found himself too tired and comfortable to stay awake.
****
Link woke to a crackling fire and a roasting bird. The Sheikah eyed him. “I’m gonna eat most of this, just so you know,” she said. Her eyes lingered over him. “I’m….sorry for bringing you here, by the way.”
Link tilted his head at that.
The Sheikah sighed. She pulled down her mask to eat. “My name is Sheik.”
Link sat up on his paws. He knew that face. It was like—Zelda. And yet…not quite. Like her scent, she bore a resemblance. But even her disguise felt familiar, as if he’d known her in a dream.
“I’m looking for the Golden Wolf. Do you know him?”
Link narrowed his eyes, opened his muzzle to speak. But of course, only a whine answered her.
Sheik sighed. “I guess…well, that’s that, then.”
The look of defeat on her face nearly cracked him open. Link padded over to her and nuzzled under her arm. She sunk her fingers into his scruff.
“You do know him, after all?”
Link put the answer into his eyes, hoping she could see it in the eyes of the beast. Yes.
Absent mindedly, she stroked his back. “I miss him… he’s an old friend of mine. I…I’m sure I summoned you, now, though I meant it to be him.” She sighed. “I’m chasing a rumor. A rumor of a Golden Wolf who wanders the Lost Woods. But you aren’t Golden…and you aren’t him.” She cast Link a sidelong glance. “Not really.”
Link whined again.
Sheik looked at him again. “Are you….stuck as a wolf?”
Link leaned into her. He wasn’t, not really. Even though the sun shone here, he could shift back to human with Midna’s help. But something about Sheik’s hands in his fur…he didn’t have the heart to refuse himself this comfort now. He sighed against her, deep and comfortable. She scratched behind his ear.
She snickered. “You’re not stuck, are you?”
He looked at her, mouth open and tongue lolling. She ruffled his ear and shoved his head. “You really are just like him, do you know that?”
And Link rolled over for her, showing his belly.
But just as Sheik reached for his furry belly, Midna made herself—-and her cruel sense of humor—-known. She shifted Link to human. Link froze, on his back, belly up to Sheik. Human tongue sticking out of her mouth.
Link sat up, rubbing his neck as it flashed with warm embarrassment. He looked to Sheik, and noticed her cheeks were bright red.
“Hey, uh, my name’s Link,” he said, lamely, holding out a hand.
“Sheik,” she said again, shaking his hand.
Link cleared his throat awkwardly. “I, uh, I do know the Golden Wolf.”
“You do? Is he alright?” She sounded younger, more feminine. As if her disguise couldn’t contain the part of her that cared for the Golden Wolf.
Link shrugged. “He’s…well, I don’t know, exactly, how he is. He teaches me. He’s my mentor, I suppose. I got kinda thrown into this quest thing…”
Sheik watched him, face drawn in the firelight. She swallowed hard.
“Yeah… so the Golden Wolf and I don’t exactly talk.”
“He’s trapped here, too.” Her voice barely a whisper.
Link looked Sheik up and down. “Are you…are you alright, princess?”
She flinched at her title. “Does it still show? Even with travel and the disguise?”
Link shrugged. “My wolf nose is pretty good...” Link grabbed a leg off the pheasant and handed it to Sheik. She took it, staring at it. Link bit into his own leg. “Come on, I know you’re hungry.”
She ate.
Bones thrown back into the fire, Link broke the silence. “So, how long have you known the Golden Wolf?”
“Since we were children. But…I haven’t seen him…since about three years ago. How…how old would you say he was, when you last saw him?”
Stalphos bones, clanking in decrepit armor. “I’d say he was getting on in years.”
Sheik wrung her hands. Link looked at her hand. Daring, he took it in hers. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t pull away. Link peeled back her glove and suit to find the Triforce of Wisdom glowing on the back of her hand. He showed her his own Triforce. “Does the Golden Wolf bear the Triforce of Courage, too?”
“He…he didn’t tell you?”
Link shrugged. “We don’t exactly speak much.”
Sheik looked down.
Link sighed. It was long and heavy. “I get the feeling you are imagining a different man than I am.” His blue eyes flicked to her red eyes. “You love him, don’t you?”
Sheik looked down, tears pricking at her eyes.
“Bastard,” Link said. “He never should have left you.”
“He….he didn’t.” She blinked back tears. “I sent him away.”
Link looked at her, horror settling in his chest.
“I sent him away a year ago, and I regret it. That’s why I’m out here, looking for him.” She looked upwards, biting her lip. “I never should have—-”
Link’s hand found her shoulder. “Hey, Zelda, it’s okay–”
She shoved his arm off. “You aren’t him!” Her voice cut through the growing darkness like a knife.
“...But I came when you called, didn’t I?”
Sheik looked at him, her face streaked with tears. Link opened his arms. “Come here.” But she didn’t come. She folded in on herself, gasping with the strain of her mistake.
Link sat beside her as she cried. Link stared into his shadow from time to time. It danced along with the firelight. Midna emerged, her eyebrow raised in question. He nodded. She rolled her eyes, but complied—shifting him back to wolf.
Sheik wouldn’t comfort herself with the arms of a man. But she cried into the scruff of a beast easily enough.
*****
The fire died. Sheik fell asleep, curled into him. He covered her with his tail, as much as he could, dozed until dawn came. When the birds woke, singing in the pre-dawn darkness, she stirred as well. Wiped her eyes—red twice now, with disguise and with tears, and sat on her own.
Link shifted back to human, and rekindled the fire. “Hungry?” he asked.
She nodded. They finished what was left of the pheasant for breakfast.
Eventually, Sheik spoke. “We are trapped in a cycle. We will be born, meet, fulfill our destinies, die, and be separated again—-hopefully in that order—over and over as long as the cogs of time keep turning.”
Link nodded, picking the last of the meat from a bone. “You were separated from your Link before you died. That’s who the Golden Wolf is, and why you are looking for him.”
Sheik nodded.
“Dismal stuff, isn’t it?”
“I…am not one to argue with the facts put before me.”
“So…..” Link looked to her. “You will just take the losing hand you’ve been given—?”
“Shut up.” Her voice was cold. “You know nothing of our suffering.”
Link sighed. “Of course I don’t. But I’m here, aren’t I? So, hit me, Zelda. Tell me what happened.”
She was taken aback, again, by the sound of her name in his voice. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “My story is over, and yours is still in progress.”
“...and that’s a reason for detachment because…?”
“Because I lost him! Because—!” she cut herself off, checked her outburst. Swallowed hard. “You wouldn’t understand.” It came out garbled, untrue.
Link put a hand on her knee. “Try me.”
She gave him an angry look and shrugged off his hand. But she began speaking: “We were only children….”
The tale she told gutted Link, one knife-stab at a time. As she spoke, he saw the Stalphos of the old hero, teaching him everything he knew, cursed to walk the woods as a skeleton. After such sacrifice and suffering for his own people, his own time….and then he was pushed away from all of that. Exiled.
“It was the only way…he needed his childhood back.” Hot tears dripped down onto the forest floor. “But it’s so painful, and it doesn’t feel true, now.”
Link sighed “Zelda….I think you wanted him to have a childhood. I don’t think that’s what he wanted.”
She looked at him. “How can you say that?”
“Because we have the same heart,” Link said, somber.
Sheik shoved him. “How dare you—!”
“If making it my fault makes it easier, then by all means, blame me. But I’m tellingthe truth.”
Sheik gritted her teeth. They sat in silence for a while after that.
Eventually Sheik spoke. “He grew up in woods just like this. I don't think he told you.” She sighed. “The problem with carrying the triforce of wisdom is that I know too much. All I wanted was to save him the pain of separation, but I knew, deep down: there was no other way. We had to split up. I had to send him back to his time when his mission was finished.” She sniffled. “I'm… I’m gonna regret this for the rest of my life, aren't I?”
And, nestled in the shadow of the hero, Midna curled into herself.
“There’s no way that was the only option,” Link said.
“Link…”
“I’m serious! I’m a man who can turn into a wolf and you a woman who can control time?! And yet we can’t find a way to, I dunno, turn back time to save a wolf?”
“Link, it’s not that simple—”
“How, how is it not that simple?”
“He was robbed of his childhood. He deserved to get his childhood back–”
“He didn’t want it, Zelda. He didn’t want to go back to childhood, not after what he’d seen, what he’d done!”
“But without a childhood he would be missing a part of himself, empty, lonely without—”
“Without you! He will always be lonely without you!” Now it was Link’s voice that cut through the forest like a knife.
Link sighed, his fists clenched. He lowered his voice, barely containing it. “Zelda, you were robbed of your childhood. Your Link….he gave up his childhood for you.”
“He couldn’t have known, I didn’t warn him—”
“Because you didn’t know, either!” Link sighed, forcing his hands to unclench. “You blame yourself too much, Zelda.” He looked away from her, down and away. “You try hard to carry the weight meant for his shoulders. That is what pains the Golden Wolf the most.”
“Please, Link…”
“You say it’s impossible, Zelda. You tell that to a man who stepped into twilight and became a wolf. To a man who kills beasts ten times my size. I've survived the impossible countless times. And now….you say the Golden Wolf’s happiness is impossible? Please, Zelda. Look inside and see that cruelty for what it is. Please treat his hope, his happiness, with a fraction of the care you treat your kingdom's peace.”
Zelda sobbed, now. “You're being unfair.”
“I'm being honest, Zelda. Midna and the Princess Zelda of my time ask me to do the impossible every five minutes. Give your man a year of peace. Use the ocarina, go back.”
She wept. “He wasn’t himself. He'd been robbed of his childhood.”
Link looked at her, long. “You were robbed of your childhood, Zelda. And he gave his childhood up so that you might one day know peace. Do not punish that man's sacrifice.”
“He shouldn't have had to…”
“Neither of you should have had to. Ganondorf should have stayed in the desert. The darkness should have never fallen. That's not what matters, Zelda. What matters is…..giving this man back the choice you took from him. Zelda. Please.”
Sheik shook her head, sobbing. “The ocarina….I—I broke it. I shattered it, Link. I knew I would be weak and want him back and I took the choice away from myself….”
Link stopped. Then he threw his arms around Zelda and held her as she wept, wailed into his chest. Regret, pain. He stroked her hair, her face, desperate to soothe her. She would not look at him. He kissed her face, lips ghosting over eyes she held shut. At some point, he wept too.
*****
Huddled in shadow, Midna wrapped her arms around herself.
The Light World and the Twilight Realm were too different. They were doomed to always quarrel, to envy each other, to damage and destroy each other. As princess, her duty was to her people. She knew, now, what she had to do.
She’d hoped to guard the Mirror of Twilight, to control crossings, and to use it to visit Link and Princess Zelda in Hyrule, and allow them to visit her. But now, this Zelda's words echoed in her head: “I shattered it. I knew I would be weak and I took the choice away from myself—-”
Midna knew what she had to do. She couldn’t let interlopers use her love of Link against his world, or against hers. She had to break the Mirror of Twilight.
And as soon as she knew what she must do, she knew one more thing: that she could never tell Link her plan. He would stop her. He would twist her heart, as he twisted Sheik’s, now.
The shattered glass would draw blood, but that couldn’t be helped. The cost, the risk—it was all too great.
She would regret it, as this Zelda did. But as Midna watched Sheik—-crumpled into Link, being rocked and consoled by him—-she drew courage from the two of them. Across lifetimes, they always found each other. Her eyes traced over Link. She wasn’t like that, not with him. She couldn’t be, now.
Because she was going to break the mirror and shatter his heart.
****
Zelda hadn’t known comfort like this since before her father died.
Link rocked her in his arms, cradled her shaking body, and sang a lullaby—-one familiar and yet different from what she knew. Something from his own time, probably. It soothed her, all the same.
Well, she’d known this comfort once before, she supposed. When he’d held her. Her own Link.
She’d been gravely injured, and he’d saved her life. She’d revealed Sheik to be Zelda, and for a brief moment they’d embraced. And then she’d been snatched away, and it was nothing but struggle and battle for Link until Ganondorf died. And then she’d sent him back, using the Ocarina.
She’d assumed the Ocarina would travel with him, but when it remained in her own time, it haunted her. She assured herself she’d done right by Link----And she’d smashed her last remaining link to him—her hero, her heart.
She’d sliced her hands on the broken ceramic. And she’d cried—-for the first time since her father had died.
Princess Zelda had little appetite for rebuilding these days. Every choice she made felt hollow and insignificant without him by her side. She found some comfort wandering in her old Sheikah guise. Straying into the Lost Woods, hoping to find what she’d lost.
“I don’t even think he loves me,” she muttered into the tunic of this Link, the one who smelled of horse hair and wolf musk, instead of petrichor and stable hay. He was a strange Link from a strange time—-but a kind one, all the same.
“Trust me, he loves you,” Link whispered back. “I’ll tell him, the next time I see him. Tell the Golden Wolf to find you, in the forest of time. Tell him that you are looking for him.”
“Tell him I’m sorry I broke the Ocarina. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him back after I sent him away. I made a mistake.”
Link nuzzled his head against her. “It’s okay, Zelda. I’ll tell him.” And he kissed her head. As if she was a child. As if he looked at her and saw a little girl, even when she wore the shape of a Sheikah warrior. She didn’t deserve this kindness. Surely, that was why comfort like this evaded her: she spoiled it for herself, drove it away at every opportunity. Anything, to avoid the memories of a little girl fleeing a burning castle in the dead of night. Anything, to keep that frail, weak voice quiet.
“I don’t deserve his love. And I don’t deserve your kindness,” she said.
“You don’t get to choose who he loves, Zelda. His heart is his own, as is yours. Don’t question why he loves you. Just accept it, and focus on loving him back.”
She blinked hot tears into his tunic. He shushed her and stroked her head, just as she’d stroked his, the day before.
The sun rose high over the Forest of Time. Midna shrank in the shadow of high noon. And the time to say goodbye crept closer, closer.
Zelda clung to him, gripping Link’s tunic in her fists. Desperate to avoid the inevitable goodbye. But she felt him drifting, slipping—
“No!” she cried out, but the cold mist surrounded her. He was gone. The kind man and the sweet wolf—gone.
Zelda wrapped her arms around herself now. “Please,” she whispered to the woods. “I’m looking for the Golden Wolf.”
Before she could draw up her mask, before she could raise her armor—--golden light, shifting fur, at the edge of the mist. Tears sprang to her eyes again. “Link!” And she raced towards him.