Chapter 1

He could feel himself falling…

The sky was a whirling, yawning vortex of cobalt, the clouds a hundred rows of dagger teeth, and the shark that was the four winds threatened to consume him in one greedy bite. He could feel the icy sting of the air, rushing all around him, chapping his lips and tearing his clothes to ribbons. The tears streaming from his eyes trailed off into nothing, lost forever in that endless overhead ocean of air.

Link awoke with the scene still burning in his mind, his heart thundering against the confines of his ribcage, and sweat pouring out of every pore. He threw the sheets off, and gave a hoarse scream to the stifling, humid summer night.

A pale, gibbous moon gleamed at him through the window, and he could see the tops of trees glowing in the faerie light as the little orbs danced back and forth, no doubt still planting the morning dew, a duty legend had assigned to faery folk. Calm settled over him as he realized he was still in bed, still in the lush forest of Hyrule, with solid ground only a few feet beneath him, and not plummeting through the open sky. He sighed.

There was nothing but nightmares anymore, the boy reflected as he rose from his straw and feather bed and snatched a towel from a clothesline nearby. He regarded his dark and silent treehouse with somber melancholy as he dabbed the beads of sweat away from his brow and his neck. It had been nearly a month since he had slept well. He had taken to rising before the sun and not getting back to bed until well into the night in a vain attempt to minimize his exposure to the scene of terror that filled his dreams- a scene which did not diminish in its horror, despite its consistently growing familiarity. Always he was falling, through an endless sky, no ground in sight, and whether he had slept for one or eight hours in the waking world, the fall through that desolate and empty void of mocking blue felt eternal.

A creeping significance existed somewhere in this repeated vision, something that was beyond the boy's comprehension, but he felt that it was very real. Even as he sat upon the window sill, gazing out at the nighttime forest he made his lonely home, he couldn't shake the image of that endless sky from his mind. It felt like someone, somewhere was trying to tell him something… but what?

He went back into his treehouse, a round, single room of ramshackle carpentry constructed of scraps of wood and metal he had pilfered from the outskirts of nearby Castle Town, and rummaged through his single cupboard for something to put in his stomach. A mouse-gnawed, stale ear of bread was all he found therein, and his stomach warbled at him in desperate protest. He gnashed at the hard crust with a grimace on his face, and it made him look much older than thirteen.

The mystery of the nightmares was confounding and though he tried his best to garner some shred of coherent meaning from his fleeting memories of the rushing wind and sky, it amounted to very little, and soon his mind wandered on to other things. It would be morning soon, as the cuccoo crows, and he had a busy day ahead of him if he wanted to eat again before another night of nameless terror would overtake him.

Again he plucked something off the clothesline: a forest green tunic he had sewn himself from stolen cloth. He pulled it on, his tuft of messy blond hair springing out the top like a wave of golden grain crowning his dirt-smudged face. Then, it was gone again, as he pulled a matching cap like a great green sock over it. Stepping out into the moonlit night, he scurried down the ladder and disappeared into the twilight of the forest.

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Castle Town had been the largest city in Hyrule as long as anyone could remember. Over the hundreds of years it had stood at the Northern Border of the kingdom it had grown and grown until it had become fat and decadent. Its white walls and high parapets were stained with the sickly yellow of industry, and dwarfed by the tall smokestacks that belched their evil soot into the darkening sky. The walls of the city, to an unaccustomed eye, looked like a rising tidal wave of tarnished brass, dingy iron, and whistling steam. A thousand pipes of varying color and size ran up and down and back and forth along the twenty-foot high barrier, and the river that dragged along lazy and thick at its foot was pregnant with the potent stink of pollution. Its waters drifted, noxious and syrupy, under the great stone drawbridge, which had not been raised in immemorial centuries. Along this drawbridge, the poor and the vagrant had made little cities of canvas and animal skins, discarded wood and sheet metal, from which they, by day, accosted any travelers that they might trick, either through pity or the offering of some bauble or trinket, for a rupee or two to pay in tribute to the demon hunger.

Since Hylians had learned to harness the powers of coal and steam, and tame the curious energies of electricity, the temples of the old gods had gradually given way to factories, taller and more demanding of tribute than any deity. Here, thousands of people toiled with dirty hands and dirty faces, grinding out textiles, metalwork, and various sundries, working themselves to the very brink of death, and indeed sometimes beyond.

Link was orphaned in such a factory long ago, a nameless boy born to a frail and beautiful mother. She was unable to survive birthing him, and the boy was with no belongings and no inheritance. He became the charge of the city, and was thrust unceremoniously into one of the many overcrowded orphanages which grew up like weeds in the cracks between the factories and warehouses, of which orphans were a natural bi-product. At that time in Hyrule it was a custom to name the orphans after common tools or objects of the trade to which they were to belong once society had reared them up to the honest, working age of ten. So it followed that Link, who took his name from the great iron chains the factory near his orphanage produced, was meant to be a metal worker, as far as the city was concerned.

However, Link had proven more than a little resistant to the life of a typical Hylian orphan. So light was his step and so deft were his hands that often things went missing around him, and he was regularly disciplined by lashing with deku rods when hands could be lain upon him, though his nimbleness sometimes kept him well out of reach. When he had turned ten, when he should have entered into the life of a factory worker proper, he was thrown into the streets as a vagrant, and labeled as a thief with the branding of a triangle into the back of his left hand.

Link was a clever boy, though, and knew how to survive. He was quick at taking food and water from the places it could be found, and strong enough to fend off the other beggars. Besides, a natural affinity for animals and plants and places where nature still ruled was in him, and it did not take him long to trade the bleak city for the nearby cover of the faery woods.

Yet, as much as the endless green of the forest canopy beckoned him deeper, he was still bound to the city in some regard. He was not a hunter. Deft though he was at feats of stealth and skilled as he was with a sling or bow, it was not in the boy's nature to hunt and kill the same creatures which now comprised his only friends and companions. Fruit was too scarce in the forest, since long ago the Hylians had taken the best and most nourishing of it into the rotten city. What came in by cart and wagon came from foreign places, too distant and unknown to Link for him to seek them out. Link knew little of the world outside Hyrule, and though the forest beckoned to him with its promise of wonder and mystery, he dared not stray too far from the putrid city, wherein was his only guarantee of sustenance. At least, that is what he told himself, but a wiser and older part of him occasionally suggested he was afraid of what he might find if he strayed too far, and so chose the familiar evils of his rotten city over the unnamed evils of the world at large.

The sun was coming up over the Eastern mountains just as Link was clearing the tree line, and he saw the first golden rays play across the wheat fields and strike the bronze gates of Castle Town, making it erupt into a dazzling glare of fiery light. Already, the road was thickly trafficked with a mile long progression of travelers, coming and going in throngs innumerable with business of every kind. He would steal across the plain and slip in among them, letting some unaware coach or pack animal be his ride in through the gate, since the guards were acquainted with him and would not like to see him strutting out in the street. From there to the market he would be carried, for it went without saying that the market was almost every immigrant's destination in Castle Town, and then he could snag some bread and cheese and perhaps even a jug of milk if he was lucky. His stomach groaned pitifully at the thought.

He did these things with the efficiency and routine of clockwork, having done them many times before over the course of three years. Before the sun had completely crowned the tops of the trees he was clinging to the underside of an oxen-drawn wagon, clutching his hat to his head and trying not to let his skull knock on the hard, uneven gravel of the highway.

The procession of travelers was a diverse cacophony, rife with the whinny of horses, the bleating of oxen, the clucking of cuccoos, and the murmurs of a thousand voices in as many languages trading gossip and news from the world outside. As Link clung to the wagon, he could catch some spots of conversation of the passersby, and it was impossible not to notice that one piece of news was upon nearly every pair of lips,

"Did you hear-"

"Princess Zelda! A traitor to the crown!"

"-heard she tried to kill the king!"

"-only a girl, but they say she has the eyes of a witch-"

"-never would have believed it myself, but they say they caught her in the act-"

"-execution at dawn! Unbelievable. What is this Kingdom coming to where we have to behead our own princess?"

"-Royalty are all the same. Let 'em swing, I say."

Link had seen the princess once, at her father's side on the day of some speech the old king once made. He had been too small then to remember what the speech was about, but he did remember the girl, and he recalled that she looked, to him, like an angel. She was not much older than he, perhaps a year or two. Her skin was pale as alabaster, and seemed to glow with light and warmth. Her golden hair framed her face in tiny ringlets, and her eyes were as blue as five-piece-rupees. She was the very image of innocence.

It didn't follow with him that such a girl could be capable of attempting to kill the king, her own father, whose arm she clung to so dearly in that distant memory. The thought of the castle guards holding her on the chopping block, and the axe coming down on that porcelain neck was incomprehensible to him. It seemed that no one in Hyrule was safe from the growing threat of public execution. Not a day went by when Link didn't feel that terror breathing down his neck, the ever-present anxiety that one day someone might spot the triangle on the back of his hand, or catch him off guard as he pilfered a meal and then –CHOP! In one swing, he'd be erased from the world, without as much as a mother to mourn him.

Of course, that thought led him to wonder what sort of father would send his daughter to the chopping block in the first place. Link knew little of what it was actually like to have a parent, but he had been reasonably certain that parents were supposed to love their children. If it were true what they said, and Zelda had tried to take the life of her father, then he wondered what the reason might be. It seemed beyond reason that someone who appeared so innocent could be the perpetrator of a crime so heinous.

Link was thinking himself in circles, and so enthralled was he with the subject of young Zelda's treachery that he didn't notice the cart passing over the drawbridge and through the city gate. It was the smell of fresh bread baking and cuccoo roasting over glowing coals that first alerted him. His stomach growled urgently at him.

Moments later, the cart came to a stop somewhere in the market square, and Link let himself drop on the cobbles with a dull thud. No one noticed over the din of the market, and the boy rolled out from under the cart and disappeared into the crowded square, his nostrils full of the smell of cooking food, and his ears with the pleasant fanfare of flutes and lyres being played somewhere nearby.

Ribbons of color crisscrossed the open street, stretching from the corners of tents pitched right on the cobbles, their canopies reaching out over wooden troughs filled with fruit, nuts, vegetables, smoked fish, fresh bread, and glazed pastries. Merchants were calling out to passersby to sample whatever they were selling. Here and there, peasant children darted after dogs and cuccoos. Link watched these sneak-thieves, playing at playing, their nimble hands finding the pockets of the unaware and the purses of the oblivious. Shining trinkets, watches, rupees and snuff boxes disappeared as frequently as the odd piece of bread or fruit from the Castle Market. A wise man kept his hands in his pockets when treading the cobbled streets, and he never kept more rupees in his wallet than he absolutely needed.

Link didn't concern himself with money or wealth. He could not work to earn his pay, for the triangle upon his hand labeled him unemployable, and he did not have aspirations to be rich or powerful. Therefore, the boy kept his stealing mostly to food and drink and sometimes clothes, because without these things he could not live. His one weakness in this regard was his love of the clockwork toys a certain clockmaker in the town crafted so lovingly by hand. On occasion he had nabbed one of these, unable to resist their temptation, and so he had a little collection at home of windup cuccoos, deku scrubs, and even a white wolfos, which would stop every few steps in its ticking procession and throw back its head to imitate a howling motion.

Today was not a day for taking toys though. Link turned the other way from the clockmaker's shop, and headed down the row of bright tents where the bakers and dairymen kept their stalls. It had been a long time since his food situation had grown so desperate. The guards in the market had grown savvier and increased their numbers along the aisles that had once been best to shoplift. Even as this thought crossed Link's mind, he became aware of the dark eyes of a guardsman surveying the crowd for undesirables, and he hid himself behind a passing donkey just in time to duck the villainous gaze.

Link gave a sigh, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. He would need to be especially quick about it today. He would grab what he could and get out, not waste a second. He crossed the aisle to the side farthest from the guardsman and began toward a baker's stand he often made his mark, for they did good business and he felt that taking from them did the least harm.

When he reached the stall he checked to make sure no one was watching him and slipped between the canvas tents, wriggling his way under the wooden trough where the bakers stacked their bread. Hidden well in the shadows below the stall, he could see the shins and ankles of people walking on the street and some customers who had stopped to buy some loaves. With expert quickness, Link plucked a roll from the back of the counter, and sat down to munch on it right under the noses of the shop keeper and his patrons. He needed to be fast, but his stomach could not carry him on without something to fill it. While he sat, eating quietly among the forest of passing legs, he listened warily for the sound of approaching guards over the din of the market.

"Three rupees for a loaf! That is highway robbery, sir," the thick accent of a Gerudo woman rose clear above the hubbub of the streets, incredulity dripping off every syllable.

"If you do not like my price go buy your bread elsewhere," replied the shop keeper, unimpressed, "but you won't find it much different. Times are tough and food is scarce, and I must make enough to keep my shop open or there wouldn't be bread for you to barter over."

"Two rupees is a generous sum for hard bread!" cried the Gerudo.

"It'll be three, or you can keep as generous a sum as you like and take your business to another baker," said the shop keeper, "The price is what it is, take it or leave it."

"It's no wonder that even the princess is a criminal in a land where the bakers will rob you at their stalls!" spat the Gerudo, her words dipped in desert venom.

"I don't expect that savages from a kingless land should understand how city economics work," said the shop keeper, growing agitated, "I dare it to be four rupees, one for your insolent tone, and you can get out of my sight!"

There was a shout, and the shrill screech of a Gerudo battle cry. A sword was unsheathed somewhere out of Link's sight, and a great number of the legs on the street went scrambling in every direction.

"Guards!" cried the shop keeper, and Link's heart skipped. He crammed the rest of the bread into his mouth and began to gather himself to run, but all at once and with a terrible crash the trough he was under flipped over on its top. There crouched Link, exposed to the world.

"Hey! Thief!" cried the shop keeper, jabbing an accusing finger out at Link, but to no avail. The Gerudo woman, a tall, dark-skinned warrior clad in the silken kaftan of her people, and wielding a long, curved sword, came rushing at him.

Link somersaulted out of the way just in time, and the woman and the shop keeper went down in a tangled mess. The boy got to his feet and turned around, surveying the situation with desperate confusion. There was a small, semi-circle crowd gathered round the baker's stall, keeping just out of sword's reach but near enough to see the tussle between the Gerudo and the shop keeper.

Link's back was to the wall. His eyes darted around the scene, seeking an escape route, but there was none. The clatter of metal boots on cobbles announced the approach of a troupe of guardsmen, and Link felt the air leave his chest as realization that he couldn't get away sunk in like a knife to the heart. The Gerudo warrior was dusting herself off, standing triumphantly over the shop keeper, who lay unconscious at her feet.

"All hail the Goddess of The Desert!" she cried as she returned her sword to its sheath. She spat on the shop keeper, and her audience gasped in appalled shock.

"What is all this, now?"

A short, round man with a great caterpillar moustache and clanking silver armor came waddling on the scene, followed by a line of similarly dressed individuals of dissimilar girth and stature. It was plain that this was the captain of the Market Guard, and Link knew right away that his number was up.

"You there!" said the Captain, pointing his rapier at the Gerudo woman, "You are hereby under arrest for disturbing the peace and assaulting a citizen of Hyrule Castle Town. Lay down your arms and come quietly!"

"Miserable pig," said the Gerudo woman, turning to face the captain, "You will have some respect when you address an Amirah of the Gerudo."

"Amirah? What sort of nonsense is this?" barked the Captain, "Men, arrest her."

Two of the guards stepped forward at once; swords rose, and bore down on the Gerudo warrior. All at once, the bronze-skinned desert Valkyrie became a whirl of steel, her sword coming out of its sheath faster than Link could track with his eyes. It was a violent motion, yet something about it was fluid, almost like she was dancing, and with the rhythmic pinging of metal on metal she sent the rapiers of her attackers into the dirt. The guards barely had a chance to realize they had been disarmed before the clasps on their armor split at the seams and it came clattering to the cobblestone, leaving them in nothing but their long johns.

"Deplorable. The tiniest Gerudo babe could best a thousand like these the first day she clutched a scimitar!"

"That will be quite enough, Lady Nabooru," the new voice seemed to appear on the wind, creaking and whispery yet somehow coming from all around. A black stallion came striding up, the crowd parting around it, and a murmur and hush of awe followed in its wake.

"The High Wizard!" gasped someone in the crowd.

Astride the black stallion was a man in billowy, purple robes, hemmed with black designs of three triangles connected at their edges to form a larger one. His neck was adorned with innumerable silver and gold chains, set with every sort of gemstone one could find, but one in particular stood out. It was a pendant in the shape of the claw of some great bird, and clutching a translucent orb which glowed inside with arcs of eldritch blue lightning. He wore a black mitre upon his head, a purple feather at its crown, and his eyes were jet black and sunk into the wrinkled sockets of his weathered, pale face. It was the face of an old man, but there was nothing of this about his countenance. No, the old wizard, if old he were, was built like a powerful stack of brick, his shoulders broad and his chest sturdy. He held his head aloft as he rode towards them, glaring down his pointed nose like an emperor regarding the most insignificant of peasantry with scathing hatred.

"Lord High Wizard," said the Gerudo woman, her sword again in its sheath, "I am glad you are here. The peasantry was becoming unruly, and I was growing weary of playing with them."

"Sir!" barked the Captain, saluting to the wizard, "We caught this woman attacking civilian merchants in the street! Are you going to forgive her of such behavior?"

"My dear Captain, I shall forgive you, for your mind is of a lower class and cannot be expected to comprehend fully the situation. This is Lady Nabooru, an emissary of the Gerudo people, and our King's guest. Please, I implore you, let your peasant laws be applied to peasants, and know that where the Amirah walks in our kingdom she shall have the full extent of the King's hospitality and full diplomatic immunity."

"But…"

"Ah, ah, ah, Captain," chided the wizard, waggling his finger condescendingly, "It is unwise to argue with your superiors. Now run along. I shall escort the Lady to the castle myself. She is here to observe the execution of the traitor Zelda, and cannot be detained."

"Well, what about the lad then?"

Suddenly, all eyes were on Link, and the boy remembered himself. Why had he not taken the chance to run away? Something about the scene had mesmerized him, rooted him to the very spot, and now he had missed his opportunity and it was too late to get it back.

"Lad?" said the Wizard, glancing around. His eyes met Link's, and those two black orbs seemed to see straight into the center of the boy's soul, giving him a feeling like ice dripping down his spine. "Nothing but a common thief. He's for the gallows, the edge of the axe is too good for his ilk. Take him away."

Link desperately tried to scream, to kick, to run away, but it was no use. The guards were upon him, all around him, and they were too many and too strong. One seized him around the waist and he bit down hard on the man's arm, making him yelp. Then something heavy came down on the boy's head with a bang and he went out like a light.

Chapter 2

When Link awoke, he found himself in utter darkness, his head throbbing from the bruise left where the guards had struck him. The floor he lay upon felt like stone: cold, hard and damp. A putrid smell invaded his nostrils, like the rot of decaying flesh, and it took him some effort to keep from vomiting outright.

He sat up in the darkness and began to grope around blindly for anything at all. Crawling on his knees with his hands held out in front of him, Link made it about four feet before grasping the cool metal of jail cell bars. An empty hopelessness rose in his chest, but he chided himself for it. What else had he expected? The guards had finally got him and likely the next time he saw the sun would be his last.

Defiantly, he rose to his feet, and began walking himself along the walls of his cell, creating a perimeter in his mind. It was not a large cell: About eight feet wide by ten feet long, shaped like a rectangle, with one wall of metal bars and three of solid stone. On the barred wall, Link had found a door, secured tight with a lock which felt sturdy and heavy, and had no key hole Link could find. The bars were spaced just enough that Link could thrust his arm between them, but when he reached into the empty darkness all that he could grasp was air.

"Hey! Hey, anyone there?!"

His echo was the only response.

Link dropped back on the hard stone floor, feeling defeated. He had no choice but to sit and wait. The prospect was simultaneously frustrating and horrifying. How could he just lay there, helpless, and wait to be killed? His mind was racing desperately for some un-thought of course of action, some alternative to waiting calmly for his own death. He paced back and forth, pulled vainly at the bars, pried his fingers in the cracks between the stones, but nothing did any good. Finally, he let out a hoarse and pitiful scream, somewhere between rage and heartbreak, and collapsed to the floor once more.

For a long while he lay in the darkness, listening to his own ragged breaths, thin streams of tears rolling silently down the sides of his face. It wasn't fair. He had never wanted to die alone in such a miserable place. His only crime was feeding himself, something he had no choice about if he didn't want to die. In the end, it all amounted to the same thing anyway. How cruel could life be to a mere boy?

He couldn't tell if it had been minutes or hours, but suddenly a sound broke the deep, dark silence. There was a metallic scraping; the clink of tumblers locking into place, and the unmistakable whine of un-oiled metal hinges swinging open.

"Who's there?"

Link sat up and peered into the darkness, but the pitch was absolute, and he couldn't see his own hands let alone anyone who might be coming into his cell. He waited expectantly, his heart racing, images of stalking, nightmare creatures swirling in the blackness all around him. Several minutes passed, and though he drew up all his courage to face the very worst, something Link did not expect happened… nothing at all.

Fed up with the monotony of waiting, Link got to his feet and stumbled through the darkness with his hands held out in front of him like a re-dead groping for an unseen victim. He caught the bars of his cell, and going hand over hand, sidled along them as if they were a ladder, until he came to the place the door should have been.

Link fell forward into the darkness. The cell door was not there! He scraped his knee a bit as he hit the floor, but he didn't care. He was out! Someone or something had let him out! He had no clue where he was or how to find his way back to the outside, but anything beat being stuck in that miserable cell waiting for his own doom. He got back to his feet and began to probe the darkness with his zombie-stretched arms, feeling his way along the walls like a blind man.

He seemed to be in a hallway, about five feet across. Directly across from his cell was another solid stone wall, but to the left and right the darkness gaped on for indeterminate distances. He would have to simply pick at random. Link recalled hearing somewhere that caves and dungeons had a kind of breath to them, a way to keep the air fresh and pure. The rule was, as he recalled it, if the interior of the cave was cooler than the air outside, the change in temperature would force air to flow out of the cave. Link felt the moisture soaked into his tunic and the chill of the sunless dungeon and decided that, even if it were night outside, the summer air of Hyrule Castle Town must be warmer than the air in his dark prison. He licked the tip of his finger and stuck it up into the air like a weathervane.

The faintest of breezes touched his hand, and he felt reasonably certain that it was flowing down the right hand passage. It was as good a plan as any. Renewed hope burning bright within his youthful heart, he furrowed his brow and trudged bravely into the unknown darkness.

It was a long and anxious journey through the blind dungeon; his only ally his sense of touch, and his mind finding fantastic horrors to replace the all-consuming silence. Had he imagined the skittering of a rat across the ground? Was that someone else's breathing, or his own? He feared he might go mad before he ever found an exit. Sometimes the path would turn ninety degrees, and sometimes he'd come to places where the maze of darkness split off in four directions, and he'd have to lick his finger and hope he'd remembered right the old Goron trick of breathing caves. Occasionally, the stones in the floor were skewed or damaged, and his foot would catch one wrong and he would fall painfully on the unforgiving ground. Link was a determined boy though, and, despite being bruised and battered and tired and cold and hungry, he kept on. It might have been hours of stumbling through that bleak darkness, but finally he came to a place where in the distance the light of some remote flame flickered.

At first he was sure it was just a trick of the shadows, a mere hallucination to accompany the horrible imagined sounds which had plagued him, but as he neared it something in the way the fire danced made it seem real. He quickened his pace, fighting the urge to laugh with joy at the sight of warmth and light for fear of giving himself away to anyone who might be near enough to hear him. Eventually, the fire was bright enough that he could see the blue-gray stones of cyclopean architecture which comprised the walls and low ceiling of the dreary dungeon, and he could see the iron brazier that held his beacon of salvation, the winking flame of an oil fire. He slackened in his pace again, and took in the dreary sight of the dungeon walls with the appreciation of one who has been blind and by some miracle can see again.

Then, a new sound came to him, and he had to stop and listen hard to make sure that his ears were not deceiving him once more.

There was the definite sound of whimpering, like some child crying further down the hall. The sobs were slight, and pitiful, the heartsick sound of youthful despair. He fancied the tone of the sobs sounded feminine, and something about their absolute sadness made him soften in his wariness of unseen listeners in the dark. Entranced by the melancholy of youthful tears, Link went stepping slowly into the lighted room which contained the brazier and its welcoming flame.

This was a larger room, its ceiling several feet higher than the hall, and in it were several objects which seemed out-of-place in such a dungeon. A table of hand carved deku wood, luxurious and well varnished, and paired with a finely crafted chair with velveteen cushion sat nearby the brazier, looking like they had been freshly dragged from the office of some factory owner in Castle Town. Upon the table was a large, leather-bound book and raven quill pen resting in an ink well. Beyond the table, a massive iron statue dominated the center of the room, shaped like a pyramid made of three triangles, one stacked atop the other two. At the base of the statue, huddled into a fetal ball on the cold stone floor, a girl in a satin pink dress was sobbing into her own braided blond hair.

Link approached her carefully, watching in awe as the girl went on sobbing. He knew right away, there could be no mistake about it; this was the princess Zelda who awaited her execution the coming morning.

Link was so caught up in the sight of beauty and sorrow before him, he did not notice the chink in the stone floor, and he stumbled noisily, knocking the wooden table with his knee and causing pain to shoot up from that spot into his leg.

"Ow, ow, ow!"

The princess ceased her crying with a gasp, her attention snapping up to Link, her deep blue eyes meeting his almost at once.

"Who are you?"

"Uh…" Link was still shaking the pain off of his knee as he struggled for an answer, "Uh… I'm Link. I'm a prisoner… I was a prisoner… the guards brought me here. I'm looking for a way out."

"How did you get out of your cell?"

"I… um… don't really know?" said the boy, realizing how stupid he must sound, "The door just kind of… opened. It was dark, so I couldn't see if anyone did it. Were you crying?"

"No!" snapped the princess, "I was not crying. I just… its awful… Nyarlath, the High Wizard, has me trapped here. He put a curse on my father and holds him in his chambers in a deep and unnatural sleep. He framed me for this crime, and will have me put to death when the sun rises if I cannot escape. He seeks to usurp the throne from my father, and kill me to ensure that none but he have a claim to the throne. Nyarlath must not be allowed to control Hyrule!"

"So it is you then. Princess Zelda?"

"Of course that is me! Who else would I be?" said Zelda. Then her eyes welled up with tears again, and she hid her face to keep Link from seeing her cry, "Anyway, it is hopeless now. There is no escaping Nyarlath, and with his rise to the throne any hope of a peaceful Hyrule is lost."

"There must be something we can do," said Link, taking a few cautious steps closer, "I knew it couldn't be true that you tried to kill your father. I won't just leave you here! I'll set you free!"

"You believe me?" said Zelda, the edge in her voice softening, "That is very kind, but there is no way that you can save me. I am chained here, and unless you have the key or some other means of breaking locks there is little you can do. It would be best for you to find a way out, get as far away from Hyrule as possible, and save yourself. Dark times are coming to this land."

"No way! I can't just abandon you. You've done nothing wrong, you don't deserve to die!" Link went to her and took her hand in his. There were chains tied around her ankles, securing her to the massive statue. The princess looked him in the eye, and he could see her fighting every moment to keep from breaking down in tears.

"You are very brave, but you must listen to me," said Zelda, shakily, "You cannot possibly stand against Nyarlath. You must leave me behind, or you will die too, and I will have that guilt to take with me to the chopping block as well."

"I don't care about that filthy old warlock! I'm getting you out of here. Wait right there, I'll go find something to break your chains!" Link released the girl's hand and turned to go find something to set her free, but he collided straight into something big and sturdy, and fell hard on his backside on the stone floor.

"Filthy old warlock, is it?" the High Wizard towered over the boy, his presence even more menacing by the flicker of the torchlight than it had been in the brazen daylight of the Castle Market. His black eyes glowed eldritch purple in the firelight, and the gems on his neck gleamed like the eyes of demons as they cast the flicker of the flame about the room. "Insolent little street rat. I knew you had the look of trouble about you. I should have killed you on the spot."

The Wizard raised his hand, palm held out flat, and the tips of his fingers began to seethe with daemonic purple light. Link gasped in horror as the dark magic went flowing into him. Zelda screamed helplessly for Nyarlath to leave him be, but the bolt of evil sorcery struck the boy full in the face, and sent him into a lifeless heap at Zelda's feet.

"No! No! You scoundrel! You evil murderer! You shall never get away with this!"

He chuckled at her mockingly, "You must see it, young princess. I have already gotten away with it. Your father is my puppet now, and your throne is within my grasp. In mere hours you will die, and with you goes the whole insipid line of your pathetic family. Don't worry though; Hyrule is quite safe in my care."

"You are a monster!"

"My fair princess, you have no idea."

"Lord Nyarlath, sir!" a pig-like creature, dressed in the armor of a castle guard, and toting a massive spear, came clomping into the room with panic on his porcine face. "Sir! The castle is under siege by some sort of pirates. You are needed at once to command the defense forces."

"What sort of mockery is this? None can stand against the might of this castle! I will have their heads alongside these two vile children in the morning. Come with me!"

The two sinister figures went sweeping out of the dungeon, Nyarlath's purple cloak billowing devilishly behind him, like the cape of some stalking vampire. A moment later, Zelda was alone in the silence, with nothing but the fallen form of Link at her knee.

She rolled the boy on his back, and propped him up with his head in her lap, her silken-gloved hand caressing his cherubic face. Leaning close to him, she could feel his warm and shallow breath upon her cheek, and sighed with relief to see he was alive. However, there was little to celebrate. The furrow of his brow, and fitful twitching of his eyes beneath their lids was familiar to her, and she quickly recognized the same sleeping curse which had been laid upon her father only days before.

"Poor, brave, stupid boy!" cried Zelda, rocking Link gently in her arms, "Why didn't you listen to me? How many people have to die? Father! It's not fair!"

She sank down on him, burying her face in his chest and caving into breathless sobs. She hugged him, felt his heart beating faintly against her, and drowned herself in the sorrow.

"Psst!"

Zelda perked up at the sound, glancing all around her for its source, but no one seemed to be there.

"Who is it?"

"Shhhh!"

A hand came to rest upon her shoulder, and she squeaked with fright, but another hand clasped itself over her mouth to muffle her scream. From atop the iron statue, three figures came creeping, half crawling on their hands, and so silent was their step that it seemed to make no sound at all. Each of the newcomers was lithe and tall, and shrouded in a crimson, skin-tight garb, wrapped at the hands and ankles with white gauze. Their heads were wrapped around in the same way, covering their mouths and hair, and all Zelda could see of them were their dark eyes twinkling in the firelight.

"It's her alright. Kef, head up and let the captain know we're on our way. We'll need to get out of here in a hurry."

One of the trio gave a nod of acknowledgement before darting silently off into the darkness. The one who had spoken the order, the one who held Zelda's mouth to stifle her scream, leaned in close by her ear and whispered.

"Princess, we are here to protect you, but you must be silent and do exactly as I say. I'm going to take my hand off your mouth now, and you must be very silent so that we don't attract more Moblins."

Zelda nodded. The hand left her mouth, and the mysterious figure stood up.

"Ok, Zig, the chains."

"Right."

The third of her rescuers knelt at her side, and with a metallic click a kind of skinny blade came sliding out from some hidden compartment at the wrist. The unknown jail-breaker inserted the tip of the blade into the lock of Zelda's shackles and twisted it. A second metal clicking announced the princess's release, and Zelda immediately began to rub her ankle, which had become itchy and sore from the tightness of her bonds.

"Thank you!"

"The least we could do, Princess," said the leader, "Now don't say a word until we're back on the surface. Zig, carry her, we can't afford to have anyone hearing us leave."

The one called Zig grabbed her unceremoniously around the waist and hefted her on his shoulder. Despite his slender form, the masked rescuer was deceptively strong, and raised her into the air as if she weighed no more than a feather. Immediately they made to leave, but Zelda saw Link still lying on the stone floor, sound asleep.

"Wait!"

"Tssst!" hissed the leader, "Princess, I really wanna help you here, I really do, but if you get us caught yelling like that then we're all dead meat. What is your problem?"

"That boy there- he tried to help me! I can't leave him. If you mean to take me away from this dungeon, you must bring that boy with me," said Zelda.

"No can do, Princess," said the leader, "We've got enough on our hands dragging you around, I don't even wanna think about how it's gonna be tryin' a sneak out of here with two pint-sized paper weights to carry."

"I will not leave without that boy!"

"I'm sorry, princess, but you don't have a choice," the masked leader replied, "Come on, Zig, we gotta move."

"I will scream!"

"Augh!" sighed the leader, "You really care so much about this little green beggar that you're willing to let us all die?"

The twinkling, dark eyes of the jail-breaker met Zelda's sprightly blue, and for a moment they held each other's gaze. Finally, the masked figure threw its arms up in defeat, and said, "Ok, fine. Just fine. Let's just save every damn body. Jeeze! Sometimes I wonder why I'm so nice. You owe me, princess."

The leader went dashing back, hefted Link on their back, and came back down the hall on silent feet.

"Oh, thank you!" cried Zelda.

"You can thank me by keeping your mouth shut. Now let's move!"

They went quickly and quietly down the hall into the silent darkness of the Castle dungeon, Link and Zelda carried along on the shoulders of their rescuers to adventures strange and unforeseen, and against her better instinct Zelda felt a flicker of hope kindling in her weary heart.

Chapter 3

As they climbed flight after flight of stone steps, higher and higher out of the subterranean depths of the Castle Dungeon, Zelda could hear the sounds of distant thundering, and see the walls tremble with the force of impact.

"What's going on up there?" she whispered to Zig, the masked pirate who carried her.

"Captains giving 'em hell, I expect," said the pirate, "That can't last forever though. We need to get up to the ship as fast as we can and get you out of here."

"Ship? There's no ocean near the castle."

"Not that kind of ship," replied Zig, mysteriously. Before Zelda could enquire what he meant by that Zig's unnamed superior cut them off with a sharp hiss. The senior pirate had come to a sudden halt on the landing of the next flight of stairs.

"You hear that?" said the leader, "Damn! Moblins! They're not far off. You'll have to take the boy too and go on ahead. I'll catch up."

Zig took the boy from the other pirate and slung him over his free shoulder. The skinny pirate seemed completely unaffected by the added weight. Up the stairs they went, two at a time, in an urgent sprint. Zelda had just enough time to see a group of pig-like guardsmen come rushing on to the flight of stairs, surrounding the pirate, before they disappeared around the corner and up the next flight.

"Will he be alright?"

"Who, Gwen?" replied Zig, "Oh yeah, I wouldn't worry about her. She can handle herself pretty well."

"That is a girl?"

Moments later, they were racing through the halls of the castle cellar, and Zelda knew they were only a few floors away from the ground level. Here there were more people, cooks and servants and other laborers running about, trying desperately to gather whatever little belongings they might have and scrambling for places to hide from the apparent conflict upstairs. A thundering boom rose about the place, and the walls trembled, sending dust down from the old stones of the ceiling.

"What is that awful sound?" whimpered Zelda.

"Cannon fire, princess," said Zig, "It was the only way we could distract that old Wizard long enough to get you out of here."

"Oh my!" gasped Zelda, "Your efforts are truly daring. I am in your debt!"

"Don't get all sentimental on me, princess, we're not in the clear just yet."

They continued through the kitchen and the scullery, bounding up the spiral staircase and through the open trap door into the halls of the ground level of the castle. Tapestries and suits of armor went flying past as they cleared the side halls and made their way towards the main entrance.

"We're going out the front gate?"

"That's the plan," said Zig, "They'll be watching all the back entrances, and Nyarlath's sure to be up in the tower putting on a show. There will be guards, but when it comes down to it no one will suspect that we're crazy enough to just waltz out the front."

"That's mad!"

"Wait till you meet the captain, and then you won't feel so surprised about that."

Through one more arched doorway, and the great hall gaped around them. They came through an open double door underneath the great marble staircase of the entry hall. Hylian guards were everywhere, and one of them saw Zig coming in. The guard raised his spear and pointed, shouting, "He has the princess! Get him!"

"Okay, Zelda, I've got to put you down for a second, so stay close and don't get caught!"

Zig set the princess down and shifted Link into a more comfortable carrying position. They boy's head bobbed deadly with the motion. Zig's right arm was free now, and with a flick of his wrist a long, triangular blade went shooting from his sleeve. The guards descended on him like a swarm of locusts, but the pirate was ready for them, and he danced around their clumsy spears with ease. There was a flash as he struck out with his blade, snapping spears and rending guard after guard unconscious, though it was apparent that he could have ended their lives just as easily.

Zelda gasped in wonder at the perilous scene, trying her best to stay at Zig's heals, and away from the encroaching guards. One of them came sprinting at her, and she screamed, but Zig was there in an instant, and he brought his blade like a cudgel down on the guard's helmeted head, knocking him out.

"Make for the gate, Princess!"

The two of them, Link still slung over Zig's arm, went sprinting out of the castle as fast as their legs could carry them. In all the commotion, the guard had not yet been able to seal the gate, and it stood ajar just enough for them to squeeze through.

Outside, the walls of the castle were ablaze, and hundreds of screaming figures scurried back and forth like the silhouettes of ghosts drifting through the smoke and flame of a hundred structure fires. Archers and ballista lined the bridge leading from the main courtyard to the castle gate, firing bolts of tremendous size at some phantom foe out in the misty, smoke-filled sky.

"What now?"

"Look!"

A behemoth object, like a great falling moon came down through the smoky sky, and at first Zelda thought they would be crushed. The humongous thing did not flatten them, though, but hovered over them with the gentle, floating quality of a helium balloon. The thing was huge and round, made of wood with massive iron straps and bolted studs. A droning hum accompanied it, and wind poured off it in gale force.

Zig came rushing past, grabbing Zelda's arm and dragging her further under the thing. There was a trio of explosions- Boom! Ba-Boom! –and fountains of flame like dragon's fire came spewing from iron tubes at the crown of the massive thing. The cannons decimated the Castle gate, collapsing the great wood and iron doors into a cloud of rubble and dust. For a flash, the fire lit up the sky, and Zelda saw that it was something like a sailing ship that hovered over her, impossibly, in the midnight sky.

As Zig dragged her beneath the wondrous enormity of the flying ship, a hatch on the underside popped open, and a ladder made of ropes came lulling down like a great brown tongue.

"Climb!" cried Zig, pushing Zelda forward. The ladder swung treacherously in the wind, but the princess gripped the ropes hard and began to climb as fast as she could, hand over hand.

Zig was just behind her, climbing expertly despite the handicap of Link on his left arm. Zelda glanced back at them, and saw by the light of the fires that the boy was still there. They were almost home free! It would be a dream come true to get away from Nyarlath and know that she had saved the brave boy who had tried to help her.

Boom! Ba-boom! Boom!

The cannons thundered at the sky again, and the ship shook violently. The rope ladder twisted and swayed, and then lashed like a whip in the torrent of wind. Zig's footing slipped, and his grip on the boy was lost. Link went plummeting twenty feet towards the hard ground.

"No!" cried Zelda.

Yet all was not lost! Out of the cloud of debris that had showered down in the cannon's wake a single lithe figure came sprinting, the tatters of the gauze wrap on its wrist trailing like streamers as it ran. Gwen caught Link just before he would have hit the ground.

Zelda and Zig let out a cheer as the pirate caught the boy. Gwen drew a cylindrical device from some hidden spot and pointed it into the sky. A little arrowhead with hooked edges fired out the end of it, and it brought with it a long chain of shiny metal, which burrowed into the hull of the flying ship. A moment later, the chain was contracting, pulling the pirate and her burden up into the air.

"You owe me big time, Princess!" shouted Gwen as the hookshot pulled her past. All Zelda could do was laugh and shed a tear of joy at the sheer relief. She and Zig climbed the rest of the ladder, and moments later someone was pulling them inside the hull of the massive airship.

"Alright, everybody on board?" shouted Gwen, passing Link off to another pirate, who disappeared down the narrow, wooden hall. "Good. Inform the captain. We can make our escape!"

The pirate pulled the wrappings away from her face, shaking out a mane of jet black hair. Zelda finally got a look at the face of her rescuer. Gwen was pale, almost ghostly white, with eyes of deep brown and a slender pink scar running the length of her right cheek. Confidently, she strode through the crowd of pirates, who were rushing about fiddling with barrels, tweaking complicated looking knobs and levers, and mending pipework where holes were letting jets of searing steam into the air.

"First Officer," said one of the pirates, addressing Gwen, "We have sustained minor damage to the hull and the starboard turbine, but she's still sky worthy. The captain requests your immediate presence on the bridge."

"Aye!" replied Gwen, "See to it that the princess is kept safe in the captain's quarters, and don't let her out for any reason until we're clear of Hyrule Castle. We just might be in the clear, boys!"

A general cheer went up among the raucous pirates and the one to which Gwen had been speaking took Zelda by the hand and led her off deeper into the airship's bowels.

Chapter 4

He was falling again, tumbling through wispy clouds and cerulean oblivion to the bottomless pit of fear that nightly came to devour him. This time something was different though.

He could still see her, clear as if he were awake, the Princess Zelda, chained in a deep dungeon somewhere, bleak and cold and alone. He screamed at the rushing sky, kicking and swinging his arms in hateful desperation. How could he have left her like that? Exhausting his fury to the uncaring wind, he screamed till he could scream no more, but did not awaken.

After a few moments, he began to realize just how strange his nightmare had become.

For one thing, the usual confusion of dreamscapes did not have any hold over him, and he could rotate freely in the open sky as he plummeted on towards nothing. Slowly, the fear was leaving him, and he began to wonder how he could be so lucid whilst so obviously asleep.

There was another curious occurrence: He knew that he was in a dream. This had not been the case the countless other times he had fallen through the sky. What could it mean?

"Are you quite done screaming, boy?"

A voice was in his ear. The warm and wisdom-filled voice of an elderly woman by the sound of it. He looked all around, but he was alone in the empty sky.

"Who's there?!" cried Link.

"No need to shout, kid," replied the voice, quite calmly, and Link noticed that the whistle of the wind did nothing to stifle it, "I can hear you just fine even if you whisper, so don't go screaming your head off again!"

"Who are you?"

"I," said the voice, "Am a friend, and someone who wants to help you and your pretty little princess too. Now how's that for a good deal?"

"Great! You can start by getting me out of here!"

"Oh, please," laughed the voice, "You don't need my help for that. What sort of boy are you? This is a dream, kid. All you have to do if you don't want to fall anymore is think about it."

"What do you mean?"

"Simple," said the voice, "You're in the sky, right? So why don't you think about something with wings."

"Ok…"

Link closed his eyes and concentrated on anything he could think of with wings: paper gliders, faeries, cuccoos…

All at once there was the violent sound of flapping and squawking. Links eyes snapped open. He was no longer plummeting alone. A whole brood of cuccoos were plummeting alongside him, their wings flapping desperately, and their startled crowing invading his ears. Some of them flapped towards him as fast as they could, clawing and pecking for a footing to brace them from the terrifying fall.

"Woah there!" said the motherly voice, "Okay now, you're not thinking with your whole brain! Try something bigger."

"Oh!" said Link, beating a cuccoo away from his face. "Ok, got it!"

He closed his eyes once more, and thought of the old clockmaker in Hyrule castle town. In the window of his shop was one prize far too large for Link to carry home in his pockets, but he had always wanted it since he was a small boy: a great clockwork dragon, the size of a pony! It had a huge windup key on its back, and when you twisted it sparks would come flickering out the mouth. Sometimes, he imagined riding it up into the sky, its sleek canvas wings carrying him up to the high peaks of the castle's loftiest towers, till he could crown the very smokestacks of the factories, and break through the mushrooming soot clouds to the glorious sky above. All at once, Link felt something underneath him, and the falling sensation gently went away. He opened his eyes, and there he sat upon the massive clockwork dragon, but it was not a toy anymore. Its canvas wings beat steadfast against the boundless sky, and up, up he soared!

"Woah!" cheered Link, "This is fantastic! Woo-hoo!"

He gripped the shoulders of the dragon's wings and found that, by leaning left or right, he could steer the thing. He dipped left and right, rolled over and dove up and down through the sky. The terror he had once felt in the empty blue void had gone entirely, and his heart filled with joy as he rode the clockwork dragon at breakneck speed.

"Ok, sonny, ok! You seem to have the hang of it now. I would have tried an airship, myself, but to each his own," chortled the motherly voice, quite pleasantly, "Now that you're done falling from the sky, you and I have some business to attend to. I'll need you to meet up with me as fast as you can. There's not a moment to lose if I'm to tell you everything before those idiots take Zelda to the Temple of Life."

"The Temple of Life?"

"Aye, it's one of the Seven Temples of the Sages, but we'll cover all that in just a minute. First thing's first, you fly that little windup dragon over here and we'll suss out how to break the curse you're under."

"Curse?!"

"Oh, aye," said the voice, "Forgot to mention it, did I? Well, I suppose you didn't think it was normal, acting like you're awake when you're asleep, did you? No, that Nyarlath put a curse on you something fierce. That's okay though, between you and me I'm fifty times the magician that snot nosed little so and so will ever be. Just get your butt over here, and we'll fix you right up!"

"But," said Link, glancing around at the empty sky, "Where are you?"

"Skyloft, o'course! Just keep flying, you can't miss it!"

The clockwork dragon beat its wings and Link rode it on into the cerulean horizon, unsure what else to do. The mysterious voice seemed friendly enough, and she had been right about imagining the dragon, so he supposed he should go ahead and do what she said. After a moment Link began to think she must have been crazy, because he flew on and on but there was nothing that looked like it would be called "Skyloft" anywhere in sight. Just as he was about to complain, something in the distance caught his eye. He gasped in wonder. If his eyes weren't deceiving him, a huge mound of earth, crowned with grass and forest trees was hovering, like an island in the sky.

The dragon carried him to it, its canvas wings drawing him high up over the mass of land, and circling the island so that he could survey it better. The ruins of ancient buildings poked out from the foliage and little birds were playing among the leaves. There was no sign of any people at all, and from what Link could see it looked as though Skyloft had not had visitors in a very long time.

"Go on then, just bring her down any old place. I'm in the little round building near the center of the island. Should be simple enough to find."

Link brought the dragon in low, and found that all he had to do was think about it and the thing set down like a living creature, its powerful wings slowing its decent, and it landed as lightly as a feather. Link jumped off its back, happy to once again have solid ground beneath his feet. The clockwork dragon reared its head, and joyfully shot sparks up at the sky. Link laughed a bit, patting the thing on the nose lovingly. It almost seemed to smile dumbly at him with its square-ish copper jaw before curling up like a sleeping dog with its tail wrapped around its snout.

"Good boy!" said Link.

Then, he turned around to regard the lonely, floating island with renewed interest. There were streets of cobbled stone like those of the Castle Town, although the vegetation had overgrown them. In many places the cobbles were turned over or missing entirely. Tree roots grew indiscriminately over the path, and brightly colored flowers lined the walkway, growing wildly without boundaries or the symmetry of Hylian gardening.

Cautiously, the boy began along the trail, hesitant to leave behind the safety the clockwork dragon brought him. It was hard to be afraid though, seeing the cheerful little birds with their rainbow plumes hopping here and there across the cobbles. They did not seem afraid of him at all, quite unlike the birds of the faery woods that were wise to hunters and avoided all Hylians whenever they could.

The pathway went around a bend and led down a little street which looked to Link like it had once been lined with houses, but the buildings were in a very advanced state of decay. Nature had taken back its real estate in the absence of civilization, and in some places trees grew right up through the roofs of abandoned buildings.

Link went on, regarding the strange place with cheerful fascination. Something about the way the plants grew over the empty houses made him smile, as though it were an omen that even the most poisonous of Hylian achievements of technology and industry were destined to one day be swept away by the timeless force of nature, a mere momentary blemish on the face of a serene and absolute beauty which was inherent in the very soul of the living world.

Farther down the path, a round building rose up from the overgrowth, and it looked as though it may have been two stories tall once, although the upper had apparently collapsed quite some time ago. Thinking that this must be the building the voice had told him to go to, he headed that direction at a leisurely trot.

The doorway was crumbling so much that one might have mistaken it for an unintentional hole in the wall. Link peered into the shadowy opening. The chirping of birds somewhere nearby and rustle of leaves in the wind were the only sounds. Inside the structure, he could see shafts of dim sunlight finding their way through the cracks in the ceiling overhead.

"Hello?"

"Come in, boy," replied the motherly voice.

Link obeyed, stepping carefully over the piles of fallen debris. There were no signs of the people who had once lived in this place. The paint on the walls and the wood of the doors and cabinets that might have once stood there had long since crumbled away to dust with the wear of centuries. The floor inside the building was a carpet of moss and clover, and little puddles of water pooled in the lower spots. Link's boots squished wetly as he stepped across them.

Ahead of him, in the gentle light filtering through the roof, a woman was sitting cross-legged on a big straw nest, like a giant roosting bird. Her hands were held out, palms flat, elbows resting on her knees, and her eyes shut in stoic meditation.

"Hello, young one," said she, and her voice was the same motherly one which had guided Link to that place, "It is truly an honor to finally meet you."

"An honor?" said Link, taking a few steps closer, "I'm nothing special. I'm just a beggar from the forest."

"You sell yourself short," replied the woman, "You do not realize your own potential. You are destined for great things, Link. There's much resting on your shoulders, and in time you will realize what power you possess, and learn to wield it with wisdom and courage."

The woman was very old. Her wrinkled and leathery skin was dark and red-brown like cinnamon. Her hair was white and braided and so long it had to be wrapped around her forehead and rolled into a little dangling yarn-sized ball. It swung at her side, with the hypnotic quality of a pendulum. She wore a tall hat, crimson, and rising to a high point some feet over her head and so long on the bottom that it draped around her shoulders like a cape. Her eyes, which Link had at first supposed closed, were actually hidden somewhere underneath that wrap of braided hair.

"Who are you?" asked Link.

"I am Impa," replied the woman, "I was not always Impa, but I am now. For every matriarch of the Shiekah carries that name. We Shiekah were the protectors of Hyrule's royal family long ago, but a great shame fell upon our line, and we were forced into exile. Never have we stopped watching from the distance, though. Never did we abandon the pact we swore so many ages ago to guard that which is sacred in the realm of Hyrule."

"Protect the royal family…" suddenly, Link remembered Zelda, all alone in the deep dungeon below Hyrule castle, or maybe already killed by evil Nyarlath. "Oh no! The Princess! Please, Impa, you must do something to help her!"

"Fear not, boy," said the old woman, "Your Zelda is safe. The Shiekah clan of the Waking World has saved her, and yourself, from Nyarlath's grasp for now."

"She's safe? That's great! But what do you mean they saved us? I don't remember anything."

"It was after you were cursed. The last of my people saved you and Zelda and brought you aboard their airship, and now they mean to take Zelda to the Temple of Life and fulfill the prophecy of the Seven Sages. A good plan, but they are missing a vital piece of the puzzle. That's where you come in, Link."

"What can I do?"

"This world you see around you is the Dreamworld, another plane of existence which lies close by to the Waking World which you know. Every living creature has two lives, lives which are lived separately and unaware of one another, one awake and one here in the land of sleep. You, Link, have been chosen by fate to be the bridge between the Dreamworld and the Waking World. Appropriately enough, a literal 'link' between the two realms."

"What has that got to do with saving Zelda?"

"There is a sacred treasure, something very secret and dear to the Royal Family, and only it contains the power to stop Nyarlath's plans. Long ago it was prophesized that this treasure would be taken, and corrupted by the force of evil if nothing was done to protect it. It was then that the Sages decided that the treasure should be broken apart into seven pieces, and each piece placed in one of the Temples of the Sages for safekeeping. The Shiekah of the Waking World are taking you and Zelda to the Temple of Life as we speak, in hopes of finding the first piece of the treasure there, but there is a part of the legend that they do not know: The Sages did not only hide the treasure in the Temples, they also hid the treasure in another world entirely. That world is none other than this realm, the Dreamworld of Hyrule."

"I don't understand," said Link, scratching his head, "How can the treasure be in both the Waking World and the Dreamworld at the same time?"

"Good question. You are a clever boy, when you apply yourself," said the old woman, with a pleasant smile, "Many places in the Waking World have their approximation here in the Dreamworld, although, as you have seen, the Dreamworld is not connected in so straightforward a manner to itself as the Waking World is. One cannot simply walk from temple to temple in one's dreams. This is why the Sages chose to hide the treasure in the Dreamworld counterparts of their sacred temples, for only one who wields mighty magic can safely tread between the two realms and go where they choose. One such as yourself, who is trapped in the Dreamworld by a curse, can go where they whither in dreams, but cannot return to the Waking World. However, with the proper magic item, it is possible to control when and where you enter this land of sleep."

"What item is this? Where can it be found?"

"There are two Sleepstones known to exist in the land of Hyrule. One is owned by Nyarlath, the treacherous High Wizard who seeks to destroy all goodness in our world and the Dreamworld alike. Perhaps you have seen it? A glowing blue orb, clutched in the silver claw of a giant bird?"

Link's mind raced back to the time he had seen Nyarlath in the Castle Market, and the glowing eldritch pendant of his largest silver necklace.

"I have seen it! He wears it around his neck," said Link, "But if Nyarlath has one of the Sleepstones can't he go to the temples himself and steal the treasure? What if he gets there first?"

"Ah, now I see that you are catching on to the urgency of the situation, and why it must be you who stops the evil wizard," said Impa. Then the lines in her face grew quite grim and serious, and she leaned in closer to Link, "You must take the other Sleepstone, and you must retrieve the treasure from the Temple of Life before Nyarlath can beat you to it. It will be very dangerous and I cannot guarantee that you will survive. Do you accept this burden, young one?"

"Of course! Anything if it'll save Zelda," replied Link, without hesitation, "Where can I find the Sleepstone? How can I get back to the Waking World?"

The old woman smiled wryly, chuckling softly, and causing her pointed hat to shake merrily about.

"A hero through and through. Truly the Goddess does not bestow her faith upon the unworthy," said Impa, "I have the Sleepstone here."

She reached one withered hand into her sleeve and produced a glowing blue orb, exactly the replica of the one on Nyarlath's necklace, minus the clutching silver talons. Carefully, she passed the thing to Link, who took it in his palms and held it up in front of his face, examining the interior of the orb with interest. Inside the crystal ball, magic lightning danced like a living storm, shooting across the diameter of the sphere in brilliant arcs of electric blue.

"Simply speak the word 'awaken' and you will wake up in the Waking World. If you wish to come back to the Dreamworld, simply hold the orb in your hands and speak the word 'slumber'. Only those with the blood of the chosen can make the orb work, so to anyone else it will be useless. You must be the one to undertake this task, so no cheating and passing it off to one of those Shiekah pirates, ok?"

"I understand," said Link, "But there is one thing: If the Sleepstone is here in the Dreamworld, then how can I use it when I'm awake?"

"The Sleepstones are different than normal objects. Their duality between the Dream and Waking Worlds is more blurred, and they exist almost completely simultaneously in either realm. When you wake up, you will find the Sleepstone quite comfortably stowed away in your own pocket, I expect."

"Thank you, Impa," Said Link, and he threw his arms around the old woman and hugged her tight, "If this helps me save Zelda then I can never thank you enough!"

"Uh… yes, well…" she gave him a pat on the back, "You are welcome, of course. Tell me something before you go though, Link. You only just met Princess Zelda. Why is it so important to you that you should risk your own life to save her?"

"Well," said Link, taking a moment to mull over the question, "Who else will? I can't just let her be killed by Nyarlath. It isn't right."

"You are a good boy, Link," said Impa, smiling widely so that her wrinkled face looked even more scrunched together than before, "Now go, child. Go back to Zelda! Retrieve the pieces, reunite the treasure, and save our land of Hyrule!"

Link nodded, a smile upon his face and a gleam in his shining blue eyes. He lifted the stone and prepared to say the word and bring himself back to the Waking World.

"Oh, and Link," said Impa, causing the boy to pause, "Let's keep all of this between you and me for the time being. The Shiekah of the waking world may not understand, and we can't afford to jeopardize our success by giving them the opportunity to second guess. Follow their lead for now. When the time is right to use the stone you will know it."

"Alright," said Link, "Awaken!"

Chapter 5

The sun rose brilliantly over the clouds, casting golden lights across the heavens. Sea gulls dipped in and out from the marshmallow puffs of water vapor, cawing at the daybreak. They were scrambling away from some large object, which was cutting through the clouds like a sword through a tuft of grass. Suddenly, the airship came bursting through the veil, its crimson banners flapping in the wind like giant streamers, and on each of them was the Shiekah symbol of the Lens of Truth: an eye, browed by three triangles, and crying a single tear.

The whirling propellers of the airship carved a steady path through the sky, and the ship came rising higher and higher towards the sun on the two powerful turbines which flanked either side of the boat-shaped vessel. Smoke trailed from one of the turbines, and holes dotted the ship like patchwork, but she still churned on mightily through the air. A trio of crimson sails, likewise bearing the Shiekah symbol, brought to full mast, catching the high winds above the cloud cover. The whole ship leveled out, and swam through the clouds beneath it like they were its ocean to sail upon.

On board, in a lush room dominated by an extravagant canopy bed, the Princess Zelda paced back and forth in anxious frustration. It had been several hours since the pirates locked her away in that room. She listened in vain to the exciting sounds of shouting and gunfire from outside. Then things had grown silent. Sometime later she could see the light of breaking day filtering in through the shades on the windows, but still no one had come to fetch her. She pried at the lock, but the door was sturdy and would not budge.

"Why do they not let me help them?" cried Zelda, tearing at her hair, "I am grateful for my rescue. Truly, I am! But now shall I be locked away in another, more luxurious prison? Prison it remains! How am I to save Hyrule if I cannot leave this room? Why does no one answer me!"

She pounded her fist on the locked door, but no response came. Finally, she slumped down in an armchair, and her posture did not look at all like a princess.

"I hope Link is alright."

A moment later, her heart skipped a beat as she heard the door click open, and in came the First Mate, Gwen. Gwen had traded her Shiekah wrapping for the more traditional garb of a ship's officer, a blue button-down coat with silver piping and silver epaulettes on the shoulders. A dangerous looking sword with a curved blade dangled at her side, its handle made of silver and set with diamonds and emeralds.

"Princess, we are clear of Hylian pursuit. Captain Scarlett wishes to meet you. Please follow me."

This was all Gwen said, and then she turned on her heel and marched straight out of the room. Zelda's jaw dropped slack. She was completely unaccustomed to being spoken to so matter-of-factly, especially by a pirate. Gwen gave her no opportunity to argue though, and Zelda soon found herself dashing after the First Mate with her dress bunched up in her hands so she wouldn't trip on it.

"Excuse me, Gwen!"

"That's gonna be First Officer to you so long as you're on this ship Princess," retorted Gwen, striding along without so much as a glance back at Zelda. They were moving along the lower deck of the ship now, and the wind was blowing a fresh, saltwater breeze all around them. Pirates were all about, cleaning, tying off ropes, and repairing the damage caused by the night's conflict. When Gwen would pass close by any of them they would stop to salute her before going about whatever business.

"First Officer, then," said Zelda, carefully, trying not to allow her temper to get the better of her, "Please, can you tell me more about what is going on? Who are you pirates, and why have you saved me? Where is Link, and is he going to be okay?"

"Save your questions for the captain, Your Highness," there was a mocking quality in the way Gwen said this, "I'm not at liberty to discuss the operations of this vessel without express consent from my superior."

"Express consent!" cried Zelda, rushing around to the front of Gwen and stopping her in her tracks, "Excuse me, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, you did save me from certain death, but the fact remains: I am a Princess of Hyrule. You have brought me aboard your vessel, locked me away in a room without any explanation, and now you won't even tell me why I'm here or where you're taking me. I think I have a right to ask some questions!"

"Oh, do you now?" said Gwen, her brown eyes narrowing ever so slightly, "You listen to me, Princess, and listen good, because I won't be saying this nicely twice: You have no rights on this vessel unless the captain gives them to you. You're right, we have saved you from certain death, and we can deliver your right back into its arms just as easily. You might be used to living in a castle where everyone licks the crap off your boots and smiles about it, but up here you're just a sniveling little girl in a place she doesn't belong and doesn't understand. My men and I nearly died getting you out of that castle! So you're gonna refer to me as First Officer, you're gonna do exactly what I say when I say it, and you're gonna wait to ask your stupid questions until the Captain is ready to answer them. If you don't like that, I have no problem ordering my men to toss you right over the side of this boat, and trust me there will be nothing pleasant about the splash you make when you land."

Zelda was stunned. Gwen couldn't help but smirk a little as she shouldered past the girl.

"Why did you save me at all if you are so prepared to just throw me away?"

"Because, it doesn't matter nearly so much whether you live or die as much as it does who kills you."

Zelda remained silent for the rest of their walk, feeling somewhat vulnerable from the harshness of the First Officer's words. Was she bluffing? Would they really just throw her overboard, just like that? Zelda decided it was best to wait and see what this mysterious Captain might have to say about the whole ordeal. Clearly, the First Officer had no intention of talking to the likes of her.

They went up a flight of stairs, where the deck above contained a wheelhouse. Zelda could see through the windows of the little room, and inside there stood a woman who seemed the living personification of the color red. Her hair was like a swath of crimson paint, wavy and wild beneath her black tri-corner hat. Her jacket, red with golden piping and a cord of golden rope wrapped around her right arm. Her epaulettes were gold with long, wispy tassels, and she wore a red eye-patch with the Shiekah mark upon it in glowing white.

Gwen led her right to the wheelhouse where the woman was standing with one palm wrapped firmly around one of the handles of a giant steering wheel. Zelda felt she needed no introduction; it was obvious that this was Captain Scarlett.

"Captain!" Gwen clicked her heels, and saluted dutifully to the red woman. Captain Scarlett turned to regard the pair of them, grinning devilishly, a gleam in her single eye, which Zelda could see now had a bright red iris.

"At ease!"

Gwen's hand dropped from salute, and she relaxed her posture only slightly.

"So, this is the Princess Zelda? It's a pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh, Princess. Please, come here, I'd like to show you my ship, The Crimson Stalfos!" said Scarlett, beckoning Zelda over, "That will do, Ms. Gwendolin. You're dismissed."

"Ma'am!" said Gwen, saluting once more. Then, she spun on her heel and marched away at a clip, leaving Zelda all alone with Captain Scarlett.

"You'll have to excuse my First Mate, Your Highness," said the Captain, "She's hard as nails, but she means well. No better lass to have on your side when someone's pissing in your potion though. A fine officer, all around, if a bit unrefined diplomatically speaking."

"Thank you, Captain," said Zelda, glad to see that Scarlett's mode of communication was a little more like what she was used to, "I assure you it is quite alright. There were some matters I was hoping to discuss with you though."

"I'm sure there are," said Scarlett, "I'm sure you'd like to know how we knew you were in danger, and why we decided to save you in such a bold and reckless manner from such dire odds. No doubt you've wondered why pirates would care what happened to a princess, yeah?"

"Um," Zelda felt at a disadvantage once again, as Scarlett had taken the words right out of her mouth. Had she been being impatient and ungrateful? Perhaps she simply hadn't given the pirates enough time to clue her in on what was happening. After all, they had only just escaped a fight with the entire Hylian army. "Yes, I suppose those were the things I was wondering about."

"Well, I'd like to tell you, but the truth of the matter is that I'm not completely sure," said Scarlett with a laugh, "See, this here vessel is a Shiekah ship, and as I'm sure you are aware, the Shiekah have been on the Royal Family's blacklist for some time now."

"Shiekah!" cried Zelda, "But the Shiekah were all exiled for trying to assassinate the King more than a hundred years ago! Why would you help me? I didn't try and kill my father, you know! That was all a lie made up by Nyarlath."

"This is a pirate ship, Your Highness, everyone is innocent here," said Scarlett, still just as mirthful in her speech, "Anyway, my stealing you away from the clutches of that wretched wizard had nothing to do with your alleged assassination attempt. No, not at all. See, we Shiekah are a very spiritual sort of folk. We put a lot of stock in the analyzing of dreams and their relation to the world of the waking. A month or two back I had a dream of what I suspected a prophetic nature and in the dream a great winged beast led me to a little island way out in the ocean where a magnificent treasure lay in wait for me. See, this was no ordinary treasure. It was a special treasure, which only I know the real significance of, and I absolutely had to have it. When I came to, I found that I had scratched the coordinates of the island on the wall with my sword while I slept."

At this the pirate fingered the handle of a marvelous golden sword which hung low at her side.

"That was what clenched it. It was sure as warts on a Moblin's backside, that weren't no regular dream. It was a prophecy. So, I rallied up my crew and told 'em we were setting sail. For three days we pushed on full tilt until we came to the open ocean, and over that we soared until we came to the place that the charts said the island would be. There it was, just like in my dream! A tiny, Goddess-forsaken island out in the middle of nowhere, nothin' on it but a palm tree and a single stone hut. Would have been nigh impossible to find if we hadn'ta already known where it was goin' ta be.

"So, we weighed anchor and myself and Ms. Gwendolin and a couple of trustworthy sailors went ashore. In the dream the treasure had sat right there in the stone hut plain as day, but seldom are things as simple in life as they are in the land of dreams. The treasure was not there, but in its place we found a single iron box, which we took aboard and proceeded to break the lock of. Inside there was no treasure, but a map and a set of very specific instructions on how that map might be used.

"This map told of a great treasure. Not the treasure I was seeking, but one older than Hyrule itself, which contained a power so awesome that any evil could be destroyed by it. Long ago, wise old wizards and witches had recognized the power of the treasure, and so that it would not fall into the wrong hands they split it asunder, and divided the pieces of it among them, scattered to the Seven Seas.

"The map, as you might have guessed, could reveal the location of the seven pieces of the treasure, but there was a catch. 'Only the blood of the chosen can open the way to the sacred treasure.' Well, that was right frustrating, as you can well imagine. What was this blood of the chosen? Who's blood? And how?

"Well, it took me quite a bit o' searchin' through the annals of our Shiekah history to find a definite reference, but my searchin' eventually paid off. It was written long ago that once per Cycle of the Goddess, that is every thousand years, there is a Princess born to the Royal Family on a certain day with a certain name, and she shall be the Godess' Chosen One, and from her shall shine the light of destiny. Do you know what the name of that Princess is, Your Highness?"

Zelda felt the color draining from her face, and her heart sinking into her chest. She stared in horror into the Captain's single, blood-red eye.

"You… want my blood?" said Zelda, grimly.

"Well," said Scarlett, appraising her own fingernails carelessly, "That has yet to be determined. Sometimes these ancient writings aren't quite literal. Could be we just need you to have the right blood and we can get by just fine, could be we only need a couple drops, or could be we have to stick you like a pig. It doesn't honestly matter to me, Princess. You see, the treasure I seek is very dear to me, and only with the power of the ancients, the power to dispel all evil, can I win it back."

"Then you are no rescuers! I have merely traded one jailor for another. I am a prisoner here!"

"You can look at it that way if you like, and we could lock you up in the brig in a set of shiny shackles and you can eat bread crusts for the duration of your stay upon the Stalfos," said Scarlett, with the air of a bargaining salesman, "Or, you could agree to play nice, and we can make sure that the events of the future unfold as painlessly as is reasonably possible, with proper meals, your own quarters, and the freedom to walk the decks under only minor supervision. The choice is yours. It's of no real concern to me. My people's duty to your kindred ended long ago."

"You are despicable!"

"Darling Princess, I'm a pirate," said Scarlett, showing her teeth, "We invented the word."

"I…" Zelda felt faint, claustrophobic, like the walls of the wheelhouse were narrowing down around her and cutting off the flow of air to her lungs. What sort of peril was she in now? How much better ripped apart by pirates than beheaded in front of her own castle? Then, there was Link to think about. What would become of him if she refused to cooperate? Would they toss him overboard just as Gwen had threatened to do to her? It seemed as though she had no choice, and reluctantly she said, "Ok. Ok, I will play along with you for now. I have but one request: There was a boy brought on board with me. Is he well? I shall never help you if any harm should come to him!"

"Oh, aye, your little green peasant friend," said the Captain, a grim look crossing her face, "I thought it best we let you see him before we did anything about it, but there's not much hope for him. The curse he's under is a mighty one. I've seen it's like before only once, and to my knowledge there is no certain way to dispel it. He won't ever wake up again."

"That cannot be!"

"I'm sorry, Princess, and I don't often use those words, but about this I truly am."

"You are a liar! There has to be a way to save him!"

"I'm afraid not," said Scarlett, solemnly.

"Take me to him!"

"As you wish," said Scarlett, then she went to the door and leaned out to call to one of her crew, "Mr. Zig! Take the helm. I'm going to accompany Her Majesty below decks to deal with our little green man."

A moment later they were in the cramped crew quarters below the lower deck, and the crowd of Shiekah pirates were scrambling to make way for their Captain, saluting dumbly, some stripped down to their overalls and undershorts, clearly unaccustomed to having a superior in their living space. Gwen had joined them on the way down, and Scarlett led her and Zelda to the little cot where Link lay, fitfully dreaming. His face still caked with dirt, and the bruises on his head were swollen and purple.

"Link!"

Zelda fell to her knees at his side, clasping his hand tenderly in hers. The mere sight of the boy was enough to drive her to tears. What dumb luck had brought him to her? A wiser man would have left her there to die, but he wanted to help her! It was her fault that he lay there, cursed and unable to awaken.

"You see, Captain, it's just like…"

"Tsst!" Gwen swatted the sailor automatically with the back of her leather gloved hand, "There are matters private to this ship, Mr. Kef, and you will do well to remember that."

"Aye, it's the dreamer's curse alright. I'm afraid there's nothing to be done about it," said Scarlett, and all of the devilish mirth was gone from her voice. There was a look in her eye as she watched the sleeping boy, which belied something far more dire than what was in her words. Zelda looked up at her in silent wonder.

"Here is the boy you had us risk our lives for, Princess," said Gwen, "He is trapped in his own dreams, and nothing can wake him. He would have been executed if he had remained with Nyarlath. Now he has the option of dying slowly from thirst and starvation, and there's nothing to do but sit here and watch it happen. What say you to that? Are you glad we risked so much for him? Would you still scream for the guards so that we wouldn't leave him behind?"

"It cannot be…"

"It is," said Scarlett, very sternly, "I'm afraid there's nothing else for it. We'll have to put him out of his misery. Ms. Gwendolin, take the Princess topside, she doesn't need to see this."

Scarlett unhitched a leather holster on her hip and drew a single-shot powder pistol from it, knocking the hammer back and leveling the weapon directly at Link's forehead. Zelda screamed.

"No!"

She broke the grip of Gwen from the sheer shock of her scream and put herself right between Scarlett and Link. The barrel of Scarlett's gun was pointed right at her heart.

"No, you cannot do this! I will not let you!" shouted Zelda.

"Don't be a fool, Princess! The boy is as good as dead," yelled Scarlett, "What I do now is a mercy compared to the suffering he'd go through if we left him like this. Can you imagine the dreams you might have if you were slowly starving to death? If you couldn't drink any water?"

"He is just a boy," pleaded Zelda, tears streaming down her face, "You cannot. You just cannot. It is all my fault!"

"Ms. Gwendolin, hold the Princess back."

Gwen took a step forward and grabbed the struggling Zelda by the shoulder, tearing her away. She kicked and screamed and cried, but the pirate's grip was too powerful. There was nothing she could do. Scarlett leveled her weapon once more, aiming it straight for Link's head.

"May you find yourself on brighter shores than these, lad," said the captain, quietly. Her finger was on the trigger…

"Awaken!" screamed the boy, sitting bolt upright on the cot. His eyes were wide, and his breathing heavy, but he was alive!

"Link?" said Zelda, not believing her eyes. Then, "Link!" as she rushed to him, throwing her arms around the boy and hugging him as tightly as she could, "Oh, Link! You are alive, you are alive!"

"Huh?" said Link, looking confused, "What? Yeah, I'm fine. Are you okay?"

All she could do was sob into his shoulder uncontrollably.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So you just woke up, huh? Simple as that?" asked Scarlett, disbelieving. They were in the Captain's cabin, Zelda, Scarlett, Link and Gwen. The pirate had stared awestruck at the boy for several minutes after his awakening, seemingly unable to process what was happening in front of her, before storming back above deck, barking at Gwen to bring the two of them up immediately. Now Link and Zelda sat on a plush red couch in Scarlett's quarters. The Captain was interrogating the boy quite fiercely.

"Uh," said Link, feeling a little harassed, "Yeah, I just sort of woke up. I don't remember anything. Did I do something wrong?"

"No, Link, you have not done anything," said Zelda, shooting a dagger stare at Scarlett, "These pirates are simply barbaric, and cannot accept that anything pleasant should happen to anyone."

"Shut yer trap, Highness, or I'll shut it for ye," said Scarlett, her voice sinking into the growling pirate drawl Zelda had come to associate with her temper rising, "Boy. There was nothing unusual that happened before you woke up? You didn't see anything? Have any strange dreams?"

"Uh," said Link again, "Well, I have this nightmare about falling from the sky sometimes. Is that unusual?"

"Zig dropped him when we were leaving the castle," said Gwen, shaking her head, "I don't think it's significant."

"Hmm," said Scarlett, "Fine, I've heard enough. Ms. Gwendolin, take the Princess down to the galley and set her up peeling potatoes or something. I won't have any idle hands on my ship. I have a few more words to say to the boy, in private, and then we make way for the Temple of Life."

"Aye, Captain!" said Gwen, saluting, and then she took Zelda roughly by the shoulder and began to drag her out of the room.

"Unhand me, you!" said Zelda, trying to resist, but Gwen dragged her right along. "Link! I will see you as soon as I can. Stay safe!" called the Princess, just before the door slammed shut.

Link was alone now with Scarlett.

"Listen to me now, boy," said Scarlett, "This isn't my first day of buccaneering, you'll find me as savvy as any captain worth their salt, and I know that you are hiding something. Normally, I'd string a little liar like yourself up to the keel and drag him until there were nothing left but bones, but as your luck should hap the thing you're hiding is of a very particular interest to me. So, you can stay on my ship for the time being, and work as a cabin boy for my crew, but keep in mind: I've got my eye on you."

Link stared blankly into the Captain's single, crimson eye. He felt himself gulp audibly. What had he gotten into? He stuck his hands into his pockets and his fingers brushed the Sleepstone, which rested there, safe and secret, for now.

Chapter 6

The next couple of days were restless and full of hard work, and Zelda and Link rarely got to see each other at all. Link would be woken before the sun every morning and ordered every which way across the ship, scrubbing floors, digging muck out from the cracks in the woodwork, polishing doorknobs, emptying spittoons, tacking down patches on the hull, and whatever else the pirates could think of for him to do. The only times he got to see Zelda were during the three meals the crew had each day, during which time the Princess would be forced to serve them, Link included.

Zelda did not adapt quickly to the role of cook and servant. The first day, she spilled a pot of broth down the front of her dress, and the Captain had berated her for wasting food. Scarlett made her wring out the broth into a bowl, which she was then forced to take as her own dinner. The pirates shredded up her dress to use as rags for cleaning. Now Zelda wore the loose-fitting slacks and tattered black vest of a common pirate, and she could not have looked less like a Princess of Hyrule.

Yet when she saw Link in the galley she always smiled brightly at him and it made the boy feel a kind of happiness he had never felt. He had never known what it was like to have a friend before.

Link took very careful pains to hide the Sleepstone and almost never removed it from his pocket. He felt tempted to utter the word 'slumber' and slip back into that fantastic world of dreams and go riding on his clockwork dragon once again, but the words of old Impa stuck out in his mind and he didn't dare to go against them.

For one thing, it was obvious that the pirates were quite dangerous, far from the noble rescuers he felt Zelda was deserving of. Indeed, they didn't even seem to like the Princess, much less have any desire to protect her. Link could see the way some of the pirates glared at her as she served the food, and it gave him the feeling that among these miscreants the poor girl was downright loathed.

The only thing that kept him from trying to think of some way to engineer his and Zelda's escape from the vile swashbucklers was Impa's promise that they would lead him to a place where he needed to ensure Zelda's continued safety, although he couldn't imagine how that might be. 'When the time is right to use the stone you will know it,' Impa had said. The more Link thought of this, the more frustrated he became. How would he know it? What if he was wrong or he missed it somehow? Then was everything simply doomed? Oh well, too late, how sad. Link could think of no reason things were so ambiguous.

On the evening of the second day he heard the pirates whispering. They were saying that the ship would reach the Temple of Life in the morning. There was some comfort in that. After all, Impa had said the Temple of Life was where they would be going and validation of at least that much information helped him to convince himself that he was right to heed the old woman's cryptic words.

That night, Link enquired of Zig, one of the pirates who had been part of the party who had rescued him and Zelda, whether he would be going into the temple along with the rest of them. Zig was an older pirate, tall and skinny but built with powerful muscles. His head was bald on top, and he wore what wispy strands of silver hair he still had in a long ponytail behind him. Even on the ship, Zig wore his skin-tight Shiekah jumpsuit. Link found it easier to talk to Zig than the other pirates. Perhaps it was his advanced age, but he seemed friendlier and somehow more peaceful than the other crew members of the Crimson Stalfos.

When Link had asked Zig about going to the Temple of Life, the pirate had laughed warmly.

"You are eager to help Zelda, aren't you?" he said with a smile, "Well, don't you worry. We're pirates; we've done this sort of thing before. I understand that it's frustrating to have to just sit back and watch what unfolds, but trust me Link, you'd only get in the way. It wouldn't help Zelda if you went and got yourself cursed again, now would it?"

Link had desperately wanted to argue his point, and tell Zig and Scarlett and the rest that they needed him with them to stop Nyarlath, but he couldn't compromise his promise to Impa to keep the Sleepstone secret from the pirates until the time was right. Besides, even if he had produced the Sleepstone, how could he expect the pirates to believe him? Having a magic rock that makes you fall asleep wouldn't look too impressive to an observer. Besides, if he did use the Sleepstone in front of them, couldn't they just take it from him while he slumbered? And then what about the Sleepstone in the Dreamworld? If they took it from his sleeping self in the Waking World, would he lose it in the Dreamworld too? There were too many risks involved in letting them know. However, Impa had indicated that he would need inside the Temple of Life to save Zelda.

There was only one thing for it: He would have to sneak away from the pirates and catch up with Zelda and Scarlett inside the temple. Hopefully there would be enough time for him to reach them before something went wrong. He'd have to just make sure he was there when he needed and worry about figuring out what he was going to do when that problem arose.

In the night he rose from his cot among the noisy snores of the sleeping pirates and crept silently past them to the doorway to the upper decks. The moon was enormous, and looked close enough to brush with his fingertips, casting silvery light on the nighttime deck of the Crimson Stalfos. He slinked along, catlike, hugging the shadowy places at the corners of the walls and under the side railings. When he reached the door to the Captain's Cabin it relieved him to see that no lamp was burning inside. Carefully, he crept past the Captain's door to the next door down the way, a little sleeping cabin reserved for keeping Zelda.

He knew the door would be locked, but he went to the little four-pane window set in it and rapped sharply but quietly on the glass, then put his mouth up to the door frame and hissed, "Princess!"

There was no response. Link felt his heart racing in his chest. He hated to imagine what the pirates might do to him if they found him sneaking around Zelda's door at night, but he had to at least let the Princess know he was going to help her, even if he couldn't say exactly how. He held his breath and knocked on the window once more.

"Zelda!"

"Link, is that you?" came the whispered response from the crack in the door.

"Yes, it's me!" replied Link, "The pirates say we'll be at the Temple of Life soon. They won't let me go with you off the ship, but I wanted to let you know not to worry. I'm gonna sneak out and come to help you!"

"No, Link, you mustn't!" pleaded Zelda, "You don't understand, these pirates are dangerous. They might kill you if they catch you! I can't let you put yourself in more danger because of me."

"But Zelda, you don't understand," said Link, "I can help you. I found out something really special, but it's a secret so I can't tell you what it is yet. Just trust me, I can help this time. I'm gonna get you out of all this!"

"Oh, Link," whimpered Zelda, "You are too brave for your own good!"

"Just don't worry Zelda, I promise I will save you."

Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps on the stairway overhead, and Link had to scramble to find a place to hide. Noticing a canvas tarp draped over some barrels, Link stuffed himself underneath and hoped that the toes of his boots weren't poking out. He held his breath and tried his hardest to keep completely still.

A moment later someone came walking up, a lantern in their hand, whistling. There was the jingle of keys and the sound of a door swinging open on creaky hinges. Then the lantern light disappeared. Link exhaled with relief. Slipping out from under the canvas, Link could see that the light in the Captain's cabin was on now. He knew that he had only been seconds away from running smack into Captain Scarlett coming down from the wheelhouse.

"Don't worry Zelda! I'll see you tomorrow!" hissed Link at the door frame, but he didn't wait for a response before quickly and quietly making his way back below deck to lay in his cot, sleepless, and await the coming dawn.

The pirates woke before the sun came up to the cry of 'All hands on deck!' from First Officer Gwendolin. The Crimson Stalfos came drifting down through the misty clouds, the open expanse of blue ocean revealed beneath them. They headed straight towards the rising sun. Off in the East the silhouette of a great temple dominated the ridge of coastal cliffs of some unknown continent, high golden minarets rising up over the horizon and into the sky far above the breaking whitewater waves of the sea crashing upon the sheer rock face.

Link stopped in his morning routine of scrubbing the decks and stood up to regard the scene of otherworldly awe and beauty with starry eyes. He had never seen anything like the Temple of Life before.

"There she is," cried Captain Scarlett, "Ok, men, let's get some food in our bellies, we have a big day ahead."

Zelda seemed particularly somber during breakfast that morning. Her hands trembled as she poured coffee spiked with some thickly spiced, acidic liquor into the flagons of the pirate crew. Link's eyes met hers. She smiled weakly, but the sadness in her eyes made a pang in his heart. He finished breakfast before anyone else and rose to head back above deck and finish his chores.

"Not so fast, little green bug," said Gwen, seizing Link by the back of the tunic, "You're not doing any deck work today. I suppose you think that we pirates are a dull lot? That we'd just leave you running about full well knowing how prone you are to doing stupid things when that Princess of yours is in danger? 'Fraid we're a bit cleverer than we let on. You're spending the day under lock and key, Captain's orders."

Gwendolin lifted the struggling Link off the ground by the back of his collar and held him out in front of her like a dirty diaper. She carried him through the galley and out to the lower deck.

"Hey!" protested Link, "You can't just throw me around. I have legs you know!"

"Too many legs, if you ask me, but keep on struggling and we can find a remedy for that," said Gwen, clearly enjoying herself, "You're going straight in the brig, and that's that!"

"But I haven't done anything!"

"Yeah, yeah, keep talking," said Gwen, taking Link down a flight of stairs and through a side door to one of the lower decks. Inside was a room of the ship Link had not yet seen, a narrow kind of hallway, beset on either side by cramped cells of iron with enormous locks. Gwen tossed him unceremoniously into one of these and locked the door with a mocking laugh. "There, that oughta keep you out of trouble, Mr. Hero!"

Gwen slammed the door behind her as she went, but Link was hardly left alone for a moment before a portly looking pirate of considerable size came plodding into the room. He grunted unpleasantly at Link, then parked himself on a rickety old stool and propped himself up in the corner with his piggy little eyes glaring at Link directly.

"Oh perfect," Link whispered to himself under his breath, "A big, stupid guard. What is this, a fairytale?"

Once again the world suddenly seemed hopeless. How was he supposed to help Zelda at all while locked up here? Link just couldn't figure out these Shiekah Sky-Pirates. Were they trying to help Zelda or not? Why were they so mean to the both of them? Link was pacing round his cell, feeling anger rise up in him, his desperation fueling it like bellows blowing up a blacksmith's fire. He could feel the piggy glare of the portly pirate guard. His temper broke like a wave on the rocks below,

"Why don't you stare at someone else, you great big idiot!" screamed Link.

"Hur, hur, hur," chuckled the massive pirate, quite unimpressed with Link's raging.

"What's so funny?" shouted Link.

"Yer fancy yerself tuff, lil' man?" said the Pirate, his gruff words barely intelligible, snorted out as if through the gullet of a pig, "Ter ther Captin', yer aren't but a wee morsel. One tha in't fit ter shiny up her boots! Tha Princess too. Tis only ther blood she want, an' if'n a wee pinprick dun't git it, shill stick her dry ta git hands on tha booty o' this curst port."

"Her blood?" cried Link, "Why do they want her blood? That won't work at all!"

"Quit witcha nah, or y'll git me whip!" the pirate thumbed a huge bullwhip which hung upon his belt. Link threw his arms up in frustration and turned away to pace the corner of his cell with fury in his heart.

They meant to take Zelda's blood! How could they? He suddenly regretted ever trusting anything that Impa or any Shiekah Pirate ever said. Had he known what kind of peril Zelda was in, he never would have waited so long to act. He would have spent the last two days searching for a way to save Zelda. Now he was hopelessly trapped, no way out, and only moments from now Scarlett would be bleeding Zelda dry to get at a treasure that wasn't even there. Perhaps if he'd at least told the pirates about the Sleepstone they might have taken it and gone about their way and left him and Zelda somewhere on their own, which would be a thousand times better than the situation they were in now.

With the guard watching him relentlessly there was nothing he could think of to do. He collapsed to the ground in a huff. Sometime later, there was the sound of a gunpowder bang somewhere outside and the pirate guard confirmed that it was the sound of Scarlett's landing vessel deploying from the Crimson Stalfos. It wouldn't be long now before Zelda faced the edge of the knife.

The ensuing minutes passed with dreadful slowness. Link could feel his heart fluttering anxiously in his chest. He couldn't tell whether he should scream or cry, so he just sat there in the middle of his cell hugging his knees to his chest in catatonic hyperventilation.

Only the sudden addition of a new sound to his ears made him snap out of the grief-driven trance. He saw that the portly guard had drifted off and was now snoring loudly, teetering precariously on the little wooden stool. Link felt suddenly inspired.

"When it's time to use the stone, you'll know," he repeated the words of Impa to himself, "Well, this seems like as good a time as any. What have I got to lose? Here goes."

He reached into his pocket and slipped the Sleepstone into his palm. Bringing it out to rest in his cupped hands, he glanced over his shoulder one more time to make certain the guard was still asleep before holding the orb up to his lips and whispering, "Slumber."

The transition was sudden and remarkable. The whole world seemed to shift around him in a kaleidoscopic manner. He was suddenly sitting beside himself, looking down on his sleeping form. He took the Sleepstone, still held in his hand, and slipped it into his pocket. He watched as the shadow of the Waking World counterpart stowed itself in the pocket of the sleeping him as if drawn in by an invisible hand.

The Dreamworld version of the Crimson Stalfos was like looking into a funhouse mirror. The low wooden ceiling of the brig was now so high and shadowy that he could not clearly see it and the bars of the cell were unusually shaped, spaced farther apart in places and closer together in others, giving the place a sort of unreal quality. In the corner where the pirate slept there were now two pirates, but one was awake and dangling a string of yarn, which a little glowing kitten was playfully chasing and batting around.

The pirate didn't seem to notice him. Link was able to slip through a sizeable gap between the distorted cell bars and creep up beside the slumbering lummox. He was laughing gruffly at the antics of the little kitten, which looked to Link, upon closer inspection, made of fairy-dust and light.

"What are you doing?" said Link.

"Awww, wudya lookit tha?" cooed the pirate, joyfully, "Its Matey, it is. Live an' playin' an all! S'been so long tha I seent 'im!"

"Right," said Link, carefully, "Well, he sure does seem… um… playful. So, since you're busy playing with Matey, I thought I would just let myself out to use the bathroom. Think I could maybe have the key to the cell door?"

"Hum?" said the pirate, still gazing at the kitten wistfully, "Oh, yer, yer. 'Ere, take it. I jus' wan' to play wit' Matey."

The pirate barely seemed to notice as he handed over the key to Link. Hoping against hope that his plan would work, Link went over to the bars, shoved the key in the lock, twisted it, and very slowly pulled open the cell door. He went back inside and sat down beside his sleeping self. He took one last look at the surreal sight of the massive pirate, sitting beside his own sleeping self, playing with a cat that wasn't there.

"Awaken!" whispered Link.

The world seemed to spin around him, reshaping itself into the familiar rotting planks of the Stalfos's brig. He sat up, taking a look around. There slept the pirate, same as ever, a pleasant smile on his gruff face and his breaths coming in long, motorized snores. The only difference was that the door to his cell hung wide open, the key still dangling from the lock.

Link checked his pocket to make sure the Sleepstone was still safe and then crept out of his cell on nimble feet. He slipped through the door to the brig unnoticed, the huge pirate still snoring soundly to himself as Link closed the door quietly behind him. The deck was still alive with the shouts of working pirates, but down below where Link was there was no one. Deciding the open deck was too risky, link padded down the hallway deeper into the bowels of the ship on silent feet. Turning down a hall he had rarely seen the pirates frequent, he found himself descending another flight of stairs and coming out into an open room filled with crates and barrels and boxes, no doubt stuffed with the various food and sundries the Pirates needed for their long journeys through the Hylian sky.

Link went further into the dark storage room, groping his way across the boxes and crates, looking for some means to get himself off the ship and down to the ground below. He scrambled up over a tall stack of crates and came to a place where a single iron ladder came down from a hatch in the ceiling. Here there was a pair of big metal bars, like a rack set into the floor of the ship, and giant brass hinges which indicated that the floor itself could be opened, presumably for something to enter and exit the ship. By the look of the big empty rack, Link guessed that this was where Scarlett's landing ship descended from the lofty heights of the Crimson Stalfos, but no similar vessel was anywhere in sight.

Even if he could open the huge cargo door, how was he supposed to get down to the temple without falling? He continued on, unsatisfied there was not some other way. Eventually the storage room narrowed and ended in a wall with a rickety flight of stairs leading up to a little wooden door. Link climbed these and tested the little brass knob. The door was unlocked. Link slipped silently through, closing it behind him. He now found himself in a hallway with such a low ceiling that an adult would have to crouch down to navigate it. He could see light filtering in through little grated windows which lined the walls. The wind whistling in and out of these was fierce and loud and the chill of it cut straight to his bones as he went. At the other end of the hallway, it appeared that there was no door, merely a sort of port cut in the bottom of the airship, and some sort of vehicle with the quadruple wings of a giant dragonfly secured there by metal bolts. He headed straight for this and got inside.

The cockpit of the thing was a little round dome of brass with a single shield of glass in the front to save the driver's face from the wind. The last few feet of the hall that led to it seemed to have a separate metal floor from the wood planks which preceded it, and once Link was inside he saw that this was actually the top of the tail of the dragonfly shaped thing. The machine was a confusing mess of levers and buttons, none marked in any way that Link could decipher. He hadn't any choice though; if he wanted to save Zelda then this was his ride. He would have to just figure it out. After a moment scratching his head in silent wonder, Link shrugged, reaching out to jab a random button on the control panel.

Jets of whistling steam shot out of valves on the side of the thing, and its silken-looking translucent wings began to beat with the thrumming force of a hummingbird. As the wings buzzed with amazing strength, the narrow hall Link had come by began to tremble violently. The iron bands which held the little vessel in place began to whine with the strain of holding it.

"Hey, what's going on here?!" the angry snarl of a pirate came from the little wooden door at the end of the hall. Feeling panic gripping him, Link began to smash buttons and yank levers with reckless abandon. The flying machine tried to shift left, violently ripping the bolt which held it clear out of the bottom of the ship. Link pulled another lever. A brass door slid over the top of his cockpit, sealing him inside. A moment later there was the sound of angry pounding on the door, and Link jabbed another button at random. There was a loud 'ka-chunk' sound. The other bolt came loose, but the little flying machine remained there, now hovering on the strength of its own wings. The broken bolt and chunks of hull still attached to it went plummeting sadly away.

"He's dislodged it! Get clear!" he heard the pirates shout outside. Still unsure of how to proceed, Link gripped another lever at random and pushed it forward full force. The little dragonfly ship lurched forward, its tail breaking away from the little hallway and tearing out some more boards on its way. Link could hear the hull of Stalfos scraping against the top of his little flyer like rocks being dragged across metal. He pulled the lever back. The wings dwindled in speed, and the nose of his little ship dipped down. He began to plummet towards the open ocean.

Link screamed, grabbed desperately at the lever as gravity willed him forward to the nose of the cockpit. As he went tumbling past, the lever came with him. The wings beat with renewed strength as the flyer leveled itself out.

"Ok, lookin' better," said Link, re-situating himself in the pilot seat. Past the windshield, he could see that the Temple of Life lay directly ahead, massive and beautiful atop the megalithic stones of the coastal cliffs. He headed straight for one of the highest minarets, a silver-white spire capped with a massive, onion shaped bulb of shimmering gold. "Alright, Zelda, here I come!"

The little flyer went careening forward at top speed, its dragonfly wings beating madly. Link imagined the Shiekah pirates chasing him in similar little vessels, right at his heel with murder in their eyes. He glanced back and saw through the rear window that he was without pursuers, but there was no time for relief. As he turned around and saw the minaret rushing at him, he realized he had no clue how to stop the runaway flyer!

He screamed as loud as he could, threw his arms up to shield his face, and braced for impact. The little dragonfly machine went crashing into the side of the onion bulb atop the minaret, punching a hole straight into the tower and disappearing from the sky. Link was in a daze as dust and debris came showering all around him. He and the little flyer were falling, tumbling through the dark interior of the Temple's tallest tower. He screamed the whole way down.

Chapter 7

The flyer came crashing down through the floors and rafters of the temple tower with a thundering clatter, sending dust and shrapnel flying in its wake. Link's ears were ringing with the sound of the fall and the sound of his own screams, completely unable to control the plummeting craft as it snowballed through floor after floor of the old tower. There was a metallic twang, and Link saw one of the dragonfly wings of his little escape craft come tearing off and go whirling away into the mess of tumbling debris all around him. The cockpit hit a massive stone and went bouncing like a rubber ball from one wall to the other, rattling Link around inside the little brass sphere like a rupee in a beggar's cup. Finally, the little flyer came smashing down on solid rock with a bang, throwing Link on his back. For a few moments, sand and wreckage could be heard, pouring down atop the thing, and dwindling away into slighter and slighter noises till Link was left alone in a sudden and unnerving silence.

The boy coughed and wretched, his stomach rising up in his throat with the nausea of his spiraling descent. The flyer had landed on its side, and the glass of the windshield had exploded with the impact. Scraping his arms and knees, Link pushed his way out the narrow gap it had made, cutting himself lightly on the shoulder and forearms but not enough to really be a bother. Forcing his way through the shattered windshield, he came flopping out with a thud on the bleached-white stones of the temple floor, which felt rough and overgrown with moss. Link sprawled there for a moment on his back, sucking down air in deep, ragged breaths.

Up above, sunlight shone brilliantly through the spot in the high stone ceiling where his ship had come crashing through. A rolling cloud of dust was still settling in the air above, revealing itself like a passing ghost as the sunlight cut a swath across it. He had done it! He was in the temple, and as close to in one piece as he could have hoped for.

Once he had caught his breath, Link sat up to have a better look around and get his bearings. The room he was in was enormous, likely one of the central chambers of the massive temple. It appeared that the place he had come to rest was the top landing of a giant set of stairs, which wrapped around the dome-shaped walls of the room at a shallow incline, but the flight leading down to the next landing had crumbled away countless years ago. He was left stranded on a little island outcrop of stone, high, high above the temple floor.

This was only one of the incredible visual marvels to take in though, for just as one might have expected from a place called "The Temple of Life", the entire room seemed a kind of giant atrium, a self-contained greenhouse of flourishing jungle life, which crept up the walls in brilliant vines as thick as a person's arms. From every balcony and bannister the hanging fronds of tropical trees stuck out like great fans of green, beset with every kind of flower, fern, and shrub. Butterflies and fairy gnats played on the unseen currents of the air. Somewhere down below a bird of paradise hooted pleasantly. The wall furthest from Link was partially caved in, and a mighty waterfall came spilling into the living chamber, its cascades echoing musically across the entire lush expanse of the temple.

"Wow," was all Link could manage to say.

He carefully stepped to the edge of the ancient landing, his boots causing the centuries old tile to crumble a bit, almost making him fall. Regaining his balance, he peered down to the depths of the massive room. Down below, maybe ninety or a hundred feet, a stone pathway marked a possible road through an otherwise overgrown canopy of tropical jungle. He spotted a group of figures down below following this road, which would lead them to the base of the waterfall. When he saw that the one in the lead was Captain Scarlett he hit the floor to try to hide himself from the pirate's menacing gaze.

Scarlett was tramping along, swinging her cutlass wildly at hanging vines and brush which encroached upon their path. Behind her, Gwen was pulling Zelda along by the arm. The Princess was hanging her head in resigned despair, allowing Gwen to lead her. In the rear, Link recognized the lithe forms of Kef and Zig, Captain Scarlett's favorite crew members save for First Mate Gwendolin herself.

So Zelda was still alive! There was still time to save her if Link acted quickly, but he was stuck up on the landing and had no idea where in the dungeon the pirates might be taking the Princess. He went back to the wreckage of the flyer, searching around for some oth er way off the landing.

It appeared that there had been a doorway leading off the landing to some other part of the temple, but Link's crashing entrance had completely caved it in. He was stuck! Come so far just to get stuck up in the air once again, and who knew how far behind him the rest of Scarlett's pirates were? Surely they would come to warn the captain of his treachery. Link closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, willing his brain to gift him with some sort of plan.

There was no direct route down, aside from the obvious leap of certain death, but perhaps there was a way around. He went over to the remnants of the ancient bannister, where the crumbled stair had once adjoined with the temple wall. The roots and vines that clung to the wall looked thick and sturdy, and Link decided that they might hold his weight if he gripped them tightly and climbed across them like a ladder. Link resisted the urge to glance down once more to the temple floor so many stories below and began to search for footing on the overgrown wall.

Finding a good place to make way, he gripped the roots and learned that they were sturdy enough at least for the time being. Moving carefully but at a steady pace, he went like a spider crab, crawling sideways across the dangling vines, his heart pounding as he tried not to think about the deadly fall below. Seconds later, he was nearly halfway across to the next landing and he began to feel a little more confident. His hand came to rest on a thick vine of startling blue. The sound of shivering leaves made his heart jump.

The blue vine began to writhe in his grip and his right foot lost its hold on the precarious wall. The vine he gripped in his left hand gave way just a bit, its roots snapping like fishing lines as he dropped three feet down and came to an elastic stop. Above him, where the blue vine had been, a dekubaba the size of a man was shaking its fronds at him and hissing grossly.

Link felt a lump in his chest and tried not to look at the hungry carnivorous plant as it sputtered and clicked at him. The boy checked his footing and began to crawl along the wall once more, glancing warily ahead for any wriggling blue vines.

After a harrowing climb across the perilous wall of overgrowth, Link was glad to see solid stones under his feet. He let himself drop to the ground lightly and dusted the leaves and dirt off of his tunic.

The landing he had arrived at was in better condition than the one he had crashed the flyer on. A ten-foot archway of bone-white stone crowned a door set in the wall and the spiraling staircase twisted away further down the wall of the massive room. Link glanced over the bannister and saw that Scarlett and her pirates had taken Zelda somewhere further in the temple. He decided that, wherever they were going, he'd have a better chance cutting them off somewhere deeper in the temple than going all the way down to the ground floor and trying to catch up to them. He went to try the door.

The handle and lock, if there had been one, had long since crumbled away. Link was able to drag the stone door painstakingly free of its frame. Darkness greeted him on the other side, a narrow stone hallway of roots and vines and hanging moss, which had laid unmolested by the feet of interlopers and treasure seekers for untold eons. Link pulled the door as wide as he could to let light spill in.

He went inside, crawling on his hands over the massive roots, which crisscrossed the path, running in and out of giant holes they had bored patiently with their centuries of unchecked growth. The path was uneven and the overgrowth left him panting from exhaustion with his efforts of climbing, jumping, and scrabbling through it. As he went on, the light began to dwindle more and more, and he could tell by the slant of the ceiling that his path was descending at a low incline deeper into the ancient temple. He could hear snakes slithering, and the scamper of unseen rats in the wake of his trundling charge through the underbrush, but he moved on unafraid with no thought in his mind but the urgent need to get to Zelda before Scarlett could harm her.

Eventually Link came to a place where a dim and phosphorescent glow was visible on the foliage ahead. Pushing aside a hanging curtain of moss he revealed a sight so beautiful and unexpected that he had to stop and stare in wordless wonder for a moment before he dared to go closer.

Stretching down the hallway before him and away around the corner, a forest of mushrooms tall as men was glowing brightly enough to light the path. The fungi were massive and their caps hung overhead like the canopies of ancient trees. Each of their caps and stalks glowed a different color of fluorescent, psychedelic rainbow light.

Link stepped out into the forest of fungus, letting the strange glow of the eerie plants wash over him, casting his skin in lightning blue, electric pink and glowing eldritch purple. He meandered on through the glowing forest as in a dream, his fingertips brushing the cold and clammy surface of the glowing stalks as he went.

"Krrrrrruk!" the frog-like sound came echoing down the hall somewhere behind him, and he turned in a flash to peer warily down the hall of glowing fungus for its source. Silence greeted him. The glowing rainbow forest seemed devoid of life. Link dropped down into a crouch, scraping around in the creep of living vines and roots for something heavy enough to defend himself with. His hands clasped the end of something firm, and he tore it free from the underbrush with a grunt.

He held his prize up to the dim, rainbow light and saw it was a hefty stick of deku wood, snapped at one end and still firm enough of substance to make a decent club. Link gave one more look to the silent forest behind him before continuing on down the hall with his new prize. He had no doubts that something hidden was watching him from the cover of the glowing mushroom stalks, but he had no time to sit and lay in waiting. Zelda needed him, and if something intended to try to stop him they had better get it over with because he wasn't going to wait around to find out.

After a few more minutes of tramping through the weird glow of the mushroom forest, the croaking came again, but closer at his heels. "Krrrrrrrrruk!"

Link whirled around once more, his deku club raised to swing like a bat at anything that might pop up. The empty forest surrounded him, and there was no sign of the thing that had made the croaking sound. Link narrowed his eyes suspiciously, listening so hard he could hear is own deep, deliberate breathing. The rainbow of glowing mushrooms twinkled and shimmered all around him. He held his ground.

A shadow flickered across his peripheral vision. Link swung wildly, striking the stalk of a mushroom and carving a chuck right out of the soft fungus. There was nothing there. Link turned round and round, searching for his assailant, but there was nothing there!

"Come on out and fight!" cried the boy.

Another shimmer of movement caught his eye, and he spun around on his heel. At first, it seemed as though the forest itself was coming to life, as the very meat of one of the mushroom stalks came lunging at him, but as the shifting pattern of colors came sliding from its clever hiding spot in plain sight, he saw it for what it really was. Huge hands with skinny digits, suction cupped at the end, came reaching for him. A smiling mouth gaped at him from under dead eyes. The horrible purple tongue came lolling out, then snapped at him like a rubber band. Link hit the floor to avoid being gobbled by the giant, chameleon-skinned frog.

Link screamed, swinging the club wildly at the beast. Thwack! He struck the thing squarely in the side, and it croaked pitifully. The blow staggered the monster. Link took the opportunity to get back to his feet before the creature attacked again with renewed resolve. Now the thing was watching him warily, strafing around him on gangly legs, waiting for an opening to strike. Link brandished the club and waved it threateningly at the beast, but he wasn't willing to risk being tagged by that sickly purple tongue to get a good swat on it.

Link had lived in the forest for years, and watched the comings and goings of the deku scrubs, faery folk and mysterious skull children. He had learned much of the ways of the natural world. Strange and colorful frogs with sickly purple tongues reeked of poison and he had no desire to test his theory that the creature's slimy mucous was quite noxious.

He nearly tripped over a root poking out from the loamy ground, and the monster took the chance to strike. Link was barely able to lean out of the way of the slimy purple tongue as it came hurtling out of the gaping, smiling mouth. It hit the stalk of the mushroom next to him with a wet thud and stuck there like a spit ball. Link smiled at the un-blinking, dead eyes of the thing and brought his club down like a hammer on the knot at the end of the beast's tongue.

"Kruuuuukkk!" the thing moaned horribly, and its roars and sputters were disgusting. The putrid purple tongue went rolling back into its mouth, and the jaws clenched shut to guard the sensitive appendage from any further assault.

Link was on the offensive. Taking three steps forward, once more he swung his bat and caught the monster right between the eyes. The beast gurgled and croaked ghoulishly at the pain. Link took a step back and watched as the beast turned tail, scampering away into the mushroom forest as quickly as its gangly, hopping legs would carry it.

"Yeah, you just try that again!" he cried after it, "I'll see to it that you croak your last croak!"

Link watched the silent, glowing forest for a minute, waiting to see if the thing would come back for another go. After a time of silence, he decided that it was gone. He turned to continue on his path deeper into the old, musty temple.

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Some floors below, the Princess and her captors were getting closer to their goal. The four fearsome pirates faced all the horrors of the forbidden temple with iron resolve, dispatching angry dekubabas and mischievous deku scrubs without skipping a beat. Zelda hated to admit it, but she admired the way that Gwen and Scarlett could face death so stalwartly. She secretly wished to have such courage. True, her devotion to her kingdom and her people was absolute, but in the face of danger and death she had proven herself little more than a scared child. When Nyarlath had attacked her father and locked her away in the dungeon she was completely powerless to stop him. Now her father lay under the same curse which had nearly killed Link and there was no certainty that he would ever awaken, which left her the only successor to the throne. Even if they could save Hyrule from Nyarlath, how could she be the queen when she was unable to even protect herself? Queens protected entire countries. They were strong and powerful. She was nothing like that.

Yet Link had survived the curse somehow, so maybe her father could as well. She had wanted to ask him if he had any clue how he had woken up, but there was never a moment they had together when the pirates weren't watching like hawks, listening to their every word. No good could come of those pirates knowing anything about magic or breaking curses. It was bad enough they thought they could just go around abducting whoever they please and forcing them to work like slaves.

Scarlett led them down a long, open hallway, lined with standing columns, several of which had toppled to the ground, or were missing pieces entirely. Up ahead, a short set of stairs led up five steps to a massive double door, wrapped in golden chains, and sealed by a golden lock in the shape of a dragon's head.

"Mr. Zig," said Scarlett.

"Aye, captain," said Zig, saluting dutifully. The pirate sprang up the door acrobatically and perched himself on the golden chains, situating himself directly on top of the golden lock. With a flick of his wrist, the same lock pick he had used only days before to save Zelda from her shackles came springing forth. He jammed it into the keyhole and began to work it back and forth methodically, his brow furrowed in deep concentration.

"Well, Princess, this is it: our moment of truth. I do believe this sort of lock upon this sort of door is in keeping with the traditions of the Seven Sages, so there is no doubt in my mind that we shall find our treasure in the room beyond," said Scarlett, "Are you afraid? It's okay, anybody would be."

The Captain came close to Zelda, her blood-red eye only inches from Zelda's face. The Princess returned her fearsome gaze with refined and melancholy silence.

"For the record, Princess, I do not want to kill you. There are some among my clan who hold a grudge with your family for our exile, but to me that is mere fable and legend. I could care less," said Scarlett, "There are other things I care about and it just so happens that this is the only way that I can protect those things. So I'm sorry about what has to be done. I wish there was another way, but I do not have a choice. It's nothing personal."

"You're going to kill me, and it's nothing personal?" said Zelda, calmly, "Oh, its personal Scarlett. Whether or not you want it to be, it is. Now let's get this over with."

Zig unlocked the door with a sharp click, and the golden chains began to withdraw into themselves like magic. Eventually, the lock itself came clattering to the floor, and the enormous double doors came swinging open of their own accord.

Inside was a round chamber with a domed ceiling, its floor a courtyard of short, lush grass of deepest green. A deku tree the size of a building dominated the center of the space, a small stone alter at its foot, etched all around with ancient runes carved in its surface. Scarlett went marching in immediately, and the pirates came after her, dragging Zelda along beside them.

"The Great Deku Tree!" cheered Scarlett, "The old legends said it would be here. It is said that this tree was the first living creature in all Hylia, older than the legend of the goddess itself. Long ago, it had a voice and a spirit, but the disrespect and defilement that people have for nature drove that spark out of it, and now it stands here a normal tree, a mere shadow of what it once was."

Scarlett approached the stone altar at the foot of the tree, and the pirates and Zelda gathered round her expectantly.

"To the one who bears the Chosen Blood of the Goddess," said Scarlett, her fingers tracing the ancient runes on the altar top, "The secret of the treasure shall be revealed to you, and what you dream of shall become a reality. Seems straightforward enough. Bring her here!"

Gwen seized Zelda's arm and began to drag her towards the altar, the Princess struggling hopelessly against the pirate's iron grip.

"Touch her hand to the stone," said Scarlett.

Gwen grasped Zelda's wrist and forced her palm down on the top of the altar. Zelda felt the cool stone under her fingers, but nothing happened.

"Alright then," said Scarlett, producing a dagger from her belt, "This will hurt a bit, Princess."

Zelda was struggling and pleading with them, but the pirates held her firm in place. The Princess whimpered in pain as the pirate dragged the curved edge of her knife across the back of the girl's hand, cleaving the skin with razor sharpness. Blood flowed in little crimson trickles over the back of her hand, slipping down the sides of her palm and in between the cracks of her fingers, the liquid breath of life pooling on the cool stone and running into the grooves of the carven runes.

There was a rumbling, and the altar began to shift, sliding off its pedestal as cleanly as can be.

"Looks like it's your lucky day, Princess!" cried Scarlett, wiping her dagger clean and stowing it away in her belt once more. Zelda and the pirates all watched with keen anticipation as the shifting altar slid away, revealing a recessed compartment of stone in the ground below. Scarlett leaned in close. There was a depression in the stone the shape of some jagged object that the pirate could not name, because, whatever it had been, it was not there.

"Damn!" shouted Scarlett, "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!"

The pirate tore her hat off her head, threw it to the dirt and kicked it angrily.

"Where the hell is it? It has to be here!" she shouted. Then, she rounded on Zelda, and there was a kind of mania about the look in her one red eye that Zelda had never seen before. Scarlett was always unpredictable and a little scary, but with that look on her face she was downright terrifying. She looked like a woman at the end of her rope, driven to actions of desperation more deplorable than the Princess could have imagined. "Drain her dry," sneered the mad pirate.

Gwendolin drew her sword swiftly, and pointed it at the Princess. Zelda screamed.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

All eyes were upon the newcomer. Nyarlath came up the steps and through the double doors, appearing like a rising titan, taller and more menacing than any of the pirates. His eyes were alight with eldritch magic, and the crystal clutched in the silver talon on his chest crackled inside with mystic lightning arcs.

"Demon!" cried Scarlett, the madness in her eyes still burning. She drew her own cutlass and pointed it at Nyarlath in an accusatory manner, "You show your vile face at last! I will make you pay for your crimes against the Shiekah."

"And defile one of your people's holiest of temples? The very symbol of the life you would avenge?" the Wizard sniggered evilly, "Life springs up all around us," said he, producing from his closed fist a single green seed the size of a large marble, which he laid out flat on his palm, "Growing from the humble beginning of a single seed into the myriad of squirming, breathing things that flutter all around us." He let the seedling fall from his palm, and where it hit the dirt it burrowed down of its own accord, and a sapling sprang forth at once as if time had kicked into overdrive.

"From the creeping ground, it reaches up to the heavenly sun, grasping for the energy to grow. So it develops, mind, heart and soul, becoming part of all of us, and we are led by the strings of fate, which speak to us from the shadow realm of dreams, guiding us ever onward towards infinity," said Nyarlath, watching as the little sapling began to shift and stretch, and soon was as tall as his knee.

"Life truly is the grandest of journeys, but no matter how we struggle, no matter how we rail against the adversity of the world around us, every one of life's great journeys ends in the same place: the inevitable demise of all things, our pitiful return to the very void which spat us out, our moments in the sun tiny and unremarkable in comparison to the finality of that last, desolate horizon which awaits us all," said Nyarlath. The plant was almost as tall as him now, and the end of its stalk began to swell, developing into a giant flower bud, large enough to hide a child in.

"Do you not understand?" said Nyarlath, his gaze now locked on Zelda's, and she knew the awful sorcerer was addressing her directly, "Our very lives are but waking dreams, meaningless trances we find ourselves in, where the illusion of purpose is maintained pointlessly and our every toil only serves to dig ourselves deeper into our graves."

The flower bud shivered and split at the seams, blooming suddenly into a blossom of crimson red, deep violet and shocking orange. The dekubaba had just been born, and clicked its razor teeth hungrily at the air, its 'head' bobbing about, sightless. Even as it blossomed it continued to grow, now larger than Nyarlath himself.

"I am Nyarlath, Lord of Dreams, and I will awaken all life from this perverse dream of reality, and bring about that final void of demise to which all things are destined to return! You fools cannot fight your own fate. I will awaken you to the reality of your own insignificance, and you will feel the bliss that only death can bring!"

At the Wizard's words, the giant dekubaba came lunging forward, snapping viciously at them. Gwen hit Zelda like a bullet, grabbing her around the waist and bringing her to the ground to avoid the massive, snapping jaws. Kef and Zig both cartwheeled away expertly, and Scarlett merely sidestepped the attack, taking the opportunity to bury her cutlass in the side of the massive creature. It screeched, thrashed its bulbous head, and struck the Captain with such force that she was knocked into the rough bark of the nearby deku tree.

"Captain!" cried Zig, rushing forward to put himself between the monstrous plant and his fallen Captain. The thing snapped at him, but the pirate dodged its assault and jabbed it four times with the point of his wrist blade before it could recover. The monster roared hideously. Zig braced himself as it lunged at him again, and though he was quick the monster was quicker this time. Zig threw up his sword arm to shield himself, and the massive jaws of the thing came chomping down, taking his arm all the way up to the shoulder. The plant flailed extraordinarily, and shook Zig like a rag doll.

"Zig!" shouted Gwen.

The plant whipped the unfortunate pirate around like a dog shaking a piece of meat. Eventually the force was simply too much, and Zelda watched in horror as Zig's arm seemed to tear right from its socket. The pirate went flying to the ground with a thud, and did not rise. Zelda screamed.

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Meanwhile, Link was emerging from the damp, mushroom-lit hallway into a room lined with the ruins of standing pillars, and he could hear a commotion up ahead which caused him to burst into a run. Clearing the huge stone hall, he went leaping up the stoop and towards the double doors. He gasped in shock at the scene before him. The Wizard Nyarlath was there, and some kind of giant mutant dekubaba was thrashing violently at Zelda and the pirates!

"Zelda, no!" cried Link, dashing into the fray. He leapt over the wriggling vines which were sprouting like awful parodies of feet from the base of the monster's stem, and made his way to Zelda and Gwen with acrobatic quickness.

"Little green bug?" said Gwen, unable to believe her eyes, "How did you get here?"

"Don't worry about that!" shouted Link, "Just give Zelda to me, I'll get her out of the way!"

Gwen stared at Link for a moment. A searching vine went whipping at the pirate, grasping her arm. Yelping with surprise, Gwen hacked at the thing with her cutlass which she still held in her other hand. It came loose in two swings.

"Fine," said Gwen, allowing Link to take Zelda's hand, "But don't go too far."

Link took Zelda's hand and led her across the treacherous battlefield, ducking creeping vines and razor teeth, and scrambling over the ever-expanding system of roots which writhed around the floor like a carpet of squiggling earthworms.

"Link!" cried Zelda, "I cannot believe it! How did you get away from the pirates?"

"It's a long story," Said Link, leading the princess out of the chamber and into the hallway with the ruined pillars, "But right now I need you to trust me. I have to stop Nyarlath before he gets his hands on the treasure of this temple. It's going to look like I'm asleep, but just trust me ok? This is the only way I can do this. And try not to let them kill me while I'm still unconscious, ok?"

"Wait, Link, I do not understand," said the Princess, "What do you mean asleep? Unconscious? I do not know what you are talking about!"

"Look, I know it doesn't make sense, but you have to just trust me," said Link, clasping the princess' hands in his and looking her in the eye. Zelda's ocean blue orbs shimmered back at him, tears threatening to spill out from the corners, but the princess smiled faintly at him and nodded her head.

"Ok, Link, I trust you."

"Good."

Link took the Sleepstone from his pocket, and held it up in front of his face just as he had in the brig on the Crimson Stalfos. "Slumber," he whispered.

There came the kaleidoscopic shift of perspective Link had come to associate with the Dreamworld. The Temple of Life shifted all around him, and he watched as the fallen pillars rebuilt themselves, and gorgeous potted plants of myriad colors sprang up like caps upon their tops, letting ropes of foliage which shined like silver down in long thin strands which draped the length of the pillars and coiled on the ground like sleeping snakes. There was no roof anymore, only a sunlit sky of brilliant blue, dotted with puffy rolling clouds of angelic white.

Nearby, the shadowy Waking World Zelda was shaking Link's sleeping self, urging him to return to her, and tears streaming down her cheeks. Link felt a little pang of guilt for putting her in such a spot, but he steeled himself against it, remembering that this had to be done for Zelda's sake and that of all Hyrule. Link's eyes narrowed in determination, and he was ready. Nyarlath had to be stopped!

He raised his fingers to his lips and gave a sharp whistle, "Here boy!"

As if from thin air, the clockwork dragon came careening from the sky, landing at Link's side with a thunderous boom. It shot sparks into the air in a declaration of readiness. Link mounted the thing, and together they went soaring into the room where the pirates were fighting the giant dekubaba in the Waking World.

In the Dreamworld the monster appeared sharper and more defined than most of the shadows cast by the Waking World. Link steered the clockwork dragon round the beast, scanning the room for Nyarlath. At last, he spotted the wizard near the stone altar, and he seemed to be searching for something. The treasure! Link urged the dragon forward. They dived towards Nyarlath like a swooping falcon on a field mouse.

"Insolent boy," said Nyarlath's voice in Link's ear. The old wizard turned, and in the Dreamworld link could see that his weathered face was not his own. A bull's skull with hollow, dead eyes beset with eldritch purple flames glared at him, its hideous grin motionless and without feeling. The wizard raised his hand and Link and the clockwork dragon were stopped mid-flight, hanging there in the air as if frozen in time. "I do not know where you gained the power to walk amongst the sleeping, but the Dreamworld is mine to do with as I see fit. You cannot hope to stop me here."

With a gesture of his hand, Nyarlath sent Link and his dragon flying into the giant dekubaba, which rounded on them spectacularly, its jaws chomping hungrily at the Dragon's beating wings. The clockwork dragon began showering the monster with steam and sparks which singed its shaking leaves, but the dekubaba remained relentless in its attack.

"No!" cried Link, gripping the dragon's shoulders tight so he wouldn't be shaken off, "You have to fight it!"

The vines of the plant began to rise, twisting around the dragon, creeping up to brush Link's arms and legs, and pulling them both closer and closer into the awful, snapping jaws.

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In the Waking World, the pirates were taking the opportunity to regroup. Scarlett rose from the grass, marveling at the sight of Nyarlath floating in the air above her, and the giant dekubaba, apparently fighting some unnamed, invisible foe. Then her eye caught sight of Gwen and Kef, who were dragging the limp form of Zig away from the battle on their shoulders.

"Damn," said Scarlett, making a mad dash across the grass to join her crew.

"What happened to him?"

"Captain!" replied Gwen, "He's unconscious. The beast tore his clockwork arm clean off and smashed him pretty good on the ground, but I think he will be ok."

"Right," said the Captain, "Get him to the hall and hang back. Make sure that Zelda hasn't slipped away from us."

Then she turned back to regard the Dekubaba, which was still struggling enigmatically with some unseen attacker.

"What is it doing?" said Gwen.

"I don't know," said Scarlett, plainly, "But I intend to find out."

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The vines were closing tight around Link and his dragon, and in moments they would be dragged into the waiting mouth of the giant dekubaba and eaten alive. Link roared defiantly at the beast, willing his dragon to fight back to the very last.

Then Link felt an electric sensation, like a wave of thought coming storming into his brain like striking lightning. "Okay now, you're not thinking with your whole brain! Try something bigger."

Link's eyes snapped open, and he suddenly knew exactly what to do. He concentrated as hard as he could on the dragon.

The vines, which had once cracked and tore at the brass and wood surface of the clockwork dragon's skin, now seemed to intertwine, seeping like trickles of water straight into it. The canvas of the wings seemed to molt away, peeling back like dried snake skin to reveal thick, tropical leaves. The brass caps on the top of the head came bursting apart, and horns of curled deku wood emerged, twisting into fawn-like spirals which flanked its head. All around him, the clockwork dragon was transforming, become something organic and full of the vibrant green of forest life. The mighty jaws of the dragon were flung open, and it belched a cloud of noxious, corrosive poison. The dekubaba shrieked and loosened its grip, its leaves and branches shriveling away to ash in every place the gas cloud touched.

Link's dragon beat its wings triumphantly, roaring at the clear, blue Dreamworld sky above. It had shaken off its clockwork aspect, and at Link's will become an avatar of nature itself, infused with the very spirit of the Temple of Life. As the dying dekubaba crumbled away to ashes, Link wheeled the dragon around, and the pair of them faced the Wizard Nyarlath with vengeance in their eyes.

"There is more to you than I thought, whelp," said Nyarlath. Then he sniggered again, that devilish, raspy laugh. "It matters not. When next we meet I shall be ready for you. You only prolong inevitability."

"You talk too much!" said Link, and the dragon opened its jaws again and belched another plume of noxious gas, but when the air was clear again Link could see that the Wizard had gone.

The dragon set down gently on the grass before the stone altar, and Link dismounted. He rushed over to the depression in the ground beneath the altar, and peered hopefully down. Sparkling in the sunlight, set perfectly in a carven socket on the stone, a jagged shard of shining metal was resting. Link reached down and picked the thing up, being careful not to cut himself on its sharp edges. He held the thing up to the light and it looked to him like a piece of the blade of a sword.

"Is this the treasure?" he wondered aloud. He shoved the thing into his pocket, and then turned to face his dragon. "You did a great job, boy!" said Link. The hybrid of wyrm and wood bowed its leafy head, and Link patted it approvingly.

Reaching into his pocket, Link withdrew the Sleepstone, and held it in front of his face to say the magic word…

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"Is he asleep?" said Gwen as she approached Zelda and Link. Zelda looked up, tears still in her eyes, and shook her head with disbelief.

"I do not know what happened," said Zelda, "He just took me out here and told me to trust him and then he… and now he is… it is like he is cursed all over again!"

"What's going on up there, Captain?" shouted Kef. Scarlett was still at the top of the stairs, watching the giant dekubaba struggle pathetically against thin air. Its leaves were beginning to curl and shrivel, turning brown and wilting before her eye.

"It looks like its dying," replied Scarlett.

"Dying?" said Kef, "How could it be dying?"

"It doesn't matter," said Scarlett, "It seems as though Nyarlath is gone too. Bring Zelda back up here, we have to collect the treasure quickly and get out of here before the old warlock returns."

"Awaken!" shouted Link, sitting bolt upright, and causing Zelda to scream. Link looked at her, and his face broke out in a giant grin. He hugged the Princess tight.

"Zelda!" he cried, "You're safe! We did it! We really did it!"

"What is he babbling about?" said Gwen.

"Whatever you think happened, kid," said Scarlett, marching up to seize Zelda's hand and pull her to her feet, "It was just some stupid dream. You've been asleep this whole time."

"Yeah, I know," said Link, "I know, it was a dream, but it doesn't matter! I did it!"

"He's mad!" shouted Gwen.

"No, look," said Link, producing from his pocket the little shard of blade he had recovered from the Dreamworld, "Here: the treasure. This is it, I'm sure!"

"Let me see that!" shouted Scarlett, letting Zelda go and snatching the little shard from Link's fingertips. The pirate held it up to the light, and saw that there were runes marked upon its flat side, although with only the one piece there no words to be read. "Well I'll be drunk and robbed, this is the genuine article."

The pirates could only stare at the boy in slack-jawed wonder.