(Guess who's back, y'all. Did you have a good nine years? Cool, let's keep going.)

Chapter Eleven

The scents of Romani Ranch were too similar to Ordon; too strong. They swirled together with the sharp orange of Midna's magic, and dredged up strange dreams in Link's head. Dreams of Midna and Ilia and herding goats and hunting shadow beasts - of teeth and claws and hands and laughter.

Dreams of the dew-drenched grass of Ordon Ranch, glittering in the early morning sun.

There was a strong scent in the air of sun warmed barnwood, contented animals, and dry hay, and Link breathed in deeply as he walked toward the open barn door, taking it in. Ilia was standing just outside, the sun dazzling on her shoulders and the cool, deep shadows of the barn interior behind her, and as he walked up she reached out her arms and took his hands in hers with a sweet smile on her face.

"You're not going away again, are you?" she said, giving his hands a little squeeze. "I get worried when you run off to play the hero. You tell me all those stories of how you saved Hyrule, and it's like a list of all the times you almost didn't make it back."

The scents of Ordon were strong around them. "You were more worried about Epona than me," Link said with a laugh.

"I mean it, Link. Things are back to normal now, aren't they?" Her smile slipped slightly, her grip growing tighter against his gauntlets. "We'll get married, and live here peacefully?"

"Of course," he replied, a little baffled. "Ilia, what's wrong?"

Her hands clenched almost painfully around his. "Your eyes," she murmured. "Sometimes, when you talk about it… your eyes look like you miss it. It's like you'd rather be out there saving the world. Like there's… a secret you're keeping from me, about that life you used to live. Link, do you really want to marry me?"

There was something sharp and orange cutting through the musky perfume of hay. The shadows behind Ilia were deepening - going crackling and distorted around the edges. Link blinked rapidly, trying to drive away the darkness.

"Of course I want to marry you-"

LIAR!

There was a horrible, stinging pain in his hands, and Link jerked them away from Ilia with a gasp. He stared down at them, at the shards of silvery, shattered mirror jutting out from the leather at his palms.

"Then it's a promise," said Ilia, her voice strained. "A promise to marry me. To be faithful to me. You've already decided, so you'll keep that promise, won't you? A real hero would never break a promise like that!"

Behind her in the barn doorway, a wall of Twilight loomed, inches from her back, smelling sharply of citrus and ozone. The yellow-black of it echoed endlessly in the mirrors in his hands. Ilia looked washed out and painfully bright against it.

"Who is she, Link?" she whispered. "The woman you're sleeping next to while I'm dying?"

Somewhere far off, there was a deep and distant rumbling, like a thunderstorm beyond the horizon.

-o{}o-

The tall golden grass of Romani Ranch, now painted silver by the faint, post-midnight moonlight of a scarred and eerie moon, rustled softly as if from wind. But the air was still. Some weak and almost imperceptible vibration passed like a ripple through the ground like the aftershocks of a distant earthquake, making vast, sweeping lines of shivering grass. The ripple struck the old wooden barn and made the slats of it resonate for a moment with a deep, subliminal hum before passing on. And up in the warm, dark hayloft, sitting atop a neatly folded pile of freshly washed and mended clothes, the metal of a sheath and shield rattled together with a tiny clink.

Link sat up with a gasping breath, tapered ears twitching and hand instinctively flying to the sheath of his sword before he'd even fully awakened. The bleary impression of a robed figure with Gyorg-sharp teeth and glowing, blue-green eyes standing over him in the darkness swam sharply through his mind… But that creature had vanished when he stabbed Kalau, and as his eyes adjusted to the dusk, he saw only the vague, dim outlines of shapes, the rafters of the barn and the piles of musty hay they'd slept in, highlighted by hints of silver moonlight creeping through cracks in the weather-aged wood siding, and by the faintest of golden luminosity from the birthmark on his hand. The cattle lowed sleepily somewhere below him.

Still breathing heavily, Link slowly let go of the sheath. It fell back with a little thump onto the pile of leather, chainmail, and fabric.

"Mmmph. Hey," said a drowsy voice from next to him in the straw. Midna was curled up in a tight ball beside him, her body comfortingly warm and the not entirely unpleasant pins-and-needles sensation of magic skittering across him where her hair brushed against his skin. Her own skin was slightly luminous in the moonlight, and her eyes opened just the tiniest slit to look up at him, glowing like dull embers. "Bad dream?"

"I thought… I thought I heard something," Link muttered, eyes still casting around in the darkness.

Midna was silent a moment, as if listening with him to the quiet night. At last she rolled her eyes and reached up to pull him back down by his ear, and his back hit the hay beside her with a little crinkling wumph. "You heard a cow, farmboy. Go back to sleep."

She rolled over and pressed the hollows of her face into his shoulder, but for once Link didn't find it comforting. As the last faint vibrations of that far-off earthquake faded away, the dream crept back into his mind; Ilia standing before a wall of Twilight, staring at him with wide, betrayed eyes.

How many nights did we sleep curled up together like this, back when we were hunting down the Fused Shadows, or the Mirror Shards? How many cramped, forgotten alcoves of crumbling temples and monster-infested dungeons did we camp out in, and feel safe because we were watching out for each other? Why am I suddenly dreaming about…?

It really wasn't fair to Ilia, he realized. To be sleeping, even platonically, next to another woman, a woman a part of him loved very deeply. To be enjoying it, to be happy to have it for one final night. He'd already made the choice between them.

Liar-

I chose, the part of him that loved Ilia interrupted sharply. I chose, and you don't belong here.

How long has it been "me" and "you," instead of just "me"? said the part of him that loved Midna. How long have we been something separate?

You're the wolf, said the hero. You're cruel and you're selfish. You've always been something separate.

Liar. You're going to shatter like that mirror, thinking of it like that.

Link shook his head and sat up. Midna grumbled something incoherent and testy and rolled into the warm, Link-shaped depression he'd left behind.

Careful not to disturb her further as he dislodged himself from the hay, he located the neatly folded pile of clothes Babeurre had washed and mended for him the night before. The baggy, ill-fitting shirt was discarded, and Link finally slipped back into his familiar hauberk and tunic. Funny how uncomfortable they'd seemed when Faron had first given them to him, how un-Ordonian the cut of the fabric had been, how much like someone else's borrowed clothes. Now it was hard to image going without them. They fit him like the embrace of an old friend, and Link pressed his face to the green fabric of the collar and inhaled the faint scent of dusty temples, burning arrows, twili magic… All those permeating little odors that no amount of washing would ever banish. They were a hero's clothes, but by now he had more than earned them.

As he pulled on his gauntlets, Link held up his hand so his palm faced the rafters, and he spread his fingers, his eyes gradually adjusting to make out the shape of those three triangles that made up his birthmark. Their subtle glow was almost invisible in the darkness.

"Still working on that shoulder, huh?" he murmured, and flexed his scarred shoulder as he said it, feeling the stiffness of the skin where Kalau had bitten him. It didn't seem to have changed, and the fresh band of skin on his hand from his earlier burn was still tender. Injuries not life-threatening, not even painful… but not completely, perfectly, healed. How much magic had Lanayru taken, to weaken the mark this much?

"Mmmph," said Midna, half-buried in straw. "Why are you getting up? We are leaving when it's light out and we're both well rested. We agreed on that. They were nice enough to let us sleep in their barn, so be grateful and sleep in it."

With a sigh Link lowered his arm. "I know. I'm just…"

Convinced that every minute I spend not doing something is a minute someone in Hyrule dies, supplied his mind. "Shortsighted and annoyingly, self-destructively heroic," supplied Midna, perhaps more accurately. "You can worry all night if you want, but whatever potion shops there are in that town aren't going to be open until morning anyway. All you're doing is ensuring you'll walk slower tomorrow."

"We don't even know if it's a potion we're looking for," Link began, but Midna had already wormed her way further into the straw and was breathing with exaggerated deepness, pretending very pointedly to be asleep. "…Alright. I need some air."

He finished putting on his belt and the secondhand pair of boots they'd borrowed, and rooted around in the dark for his baldric. His shield and sheath made a little ringing sound of metal on metal as his hand brushed up against them.

"Oh, put it away," Midna groaned in a voice muffled by straw.

"I'm-"

"Getting some fresh air, I heard you. What are you planning to fight; cows?" In the gloom below them, the cattle shuffled quietly in their stalls.

She was tired and annoyed and just trying to rile him, Link knew, just as she knew he'd never leave his sword and shield behind. Not after everything they'd been through on their last adventure; all the traps and monsters and midnight ambushes. But the uncomfortable thought came that maybe she had a point. The memory of drawing his sword on a heavily pregnant woman armed with only a fire poker - just because he'd seen a weapon and his hands had already started the methodic, ingrained motions of attack before he'd realized she wasn't an enemy - flickered across his mind, and Link's hand faltered in the act of swinging the strap of his baldric over his shoulder.

I've gotten paranoid, saving Hyrule, the part of him that loved Ilia murmured, accusatory.

I've gotten sloppy not saving it, said the part of him that loved Midna. Just a few months ago my instincts would have been sharp enough not to draw.

He buckled it firmly over his shoulder anyway. The weight of it felt oddly off, an uncomfortable wrongness at the back of his mind that might have had something to do with Babeurre and her fire poker. He tried not to think about it.

As he began down the hayloft ladder, Link paused, his head and shoulders just above the platform of old, dusty, well-worn wood. "Midna, what would the Twilight Realm think about us sleeping next to each other?"

"They'd think we were lovers, Link," Midna grumbled. "We're not that different from your kind. If you weren't Hylian, they'd probably be ecstatic about it. Everyone's been on my case about getting myself an heir. You'd think I was ancient and about to keel over."

Link's hands tightened slightly on the sides of the ladder, something in his chest clenching uncomfortably. "Does that bother you?"

She raised her head at last; propped herself up on an elbow and gave him a thoughtful, searching look with those embers of eyes. "Why should it? Nobody knows about you and me but Princess Zelda. The Hylians think you saved the world, the Twili think I did. It's nobody's business who I recruited to carry my stuff while doing it, and nobody's business if I happened to recruit his canine body heat every night either. And even if they did know, why should either of us care what they think about it?"

He was silent, and after a moment she probed back with, "Does it bother you?"

He'd asked Ilia to marry him. This really wasn't fair.

"I guess things are different now," he muttered. "We've been acting like they're not, but…" Midna kept staring at him, and he shook his head and started back down the ladder. "Forget it, it doesn't matter. I'll be back to wake you up when it's time to leave."

Those overly sensitive Hylian ears picked up the sound of her flopping huffily back down into the hay. "Different," he thought he heard her grumble to herself. As he cracked open the wide barn doors and slipped between them, pale moonlight outlined Midna as she stared with strange worry at her hands again.

-o{}o-

Link closed the barn doors as quietly as he could and pressed his back to them, gazing up at the still-dark sky. The light of a distant dawn was still only a line of deep blue on the horizon, and above him the stars twinkled, motes of silver in the velvet black.

He'd never really studied the stars in Hyrule, but even so Link knew that these stars were wrong. Slightly displaced, the constellations they made just a little off kilter, in a way that reminded him of how very alien this world really was. Termina's large, dark moon hung high over the trees to the north, above the ranch's wooden gate and the path toward Clock Town beyond. It was deeply cratered; from this angle the play of light and shadows on its dusky surface looked to Link like a face, its eyes sunken and its mouth stretched wide. An eerie little shiver passed through Link as he caught its gaze, and he looked away.

"Can't sleep, Grasshopper?"

Old Romani was sitting along the side of the barn a few feet away, perched on a weathered milk crate with her feet dangling. She was wearing a frumpy white taffeta nightdress which glowed ethereally in the faint moonlight to match her silvery hair. There was, of all things, a loaded crossbow settled comfortably in her lap - well-oiled and polished to gleaming. With a grin she waved him over.

"Well don't be shy! It's been ages; Romani wants to catch up."

Remembering before how the old woman had been convinced he was an old friend of hers, Link wandered over and sat down in the grass next to her crate, his back against the rough wood of the barn. It felt seeped with the last dregs of sunwarmth, slightly warm in the cool night air.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Couldn't sleep, same as you," said Romani. "Some nights Romani's old bones get achy, like there's a storm in the air even if there isn't. No point in lying in bed all night if I'm going to be awake anyway. So I come out sometimes and guard the barn; make sure it's still where it's supposed to be."

"Are you expecting it to get up and leave?" Link asked, perplexed.

"Oh, years and years ago it might have." With a bit of a wicked smirk, Old Romani hefted her crossbow and mimed taking aim and firing out across the silent, empty grass. "But not anymore. They know better."

He gave her a confused look, and she laughed, gave the side of the barn a firm thump with the flat of her hand, as if to ensure it was staying put. "You're too young to have achy bones, Grasshopper. What's got you wide awake?"

"I've just been…" Convinced that every minute I spend not doing something is a minute someone in Hyrule dies. "Restless," he said aloud. Romani's eyes flickered to follow knowingly as his hand strayed automatically to where his horse whistle should have been.

"Burn off some energy, then," she said. "Let's take a walk."

-o{}o-

They meandered slowly through the moon-silver grass. Romani had a stooped little posture and a slow, creaking walk, and one of her weathered hands pressed heavily against Link's shoulder - half for support and half to guide him where she wanted to go.

"It's only right to go see Cremia before you leave in the morning," the old woman chatted cheerfully as they walked. "Her grave's in the family plot, over on the west end of the ranch. I'm sure she would have been happy to see you again too, after all you did for us." Romani's smile was misty and far off, as if she were remembering something pleasant from a long time ago. The crossbow made little swinging motions in her other hand, half-forgotten.

Link wondered if Romani, weak-eyed and a bit senile, had had a friend who looked like him once. Someone who'd worn a lot of green, maybe, or had a similar face. "Is that where we're going? Your family's burial plot?"

"Eventually," said Romani, her slow and tottering pace inching along beside him. "Romani's old, it takes a while. I visit when I can. Now, tell Romani what's got you so restless."

The frank, no-nonsense way in which she asked, as if the sooner he had out with it the better and they could both move on, reminded Link a bit of Telma, and he found himself speaking before he'd even decided to. "Ever since we got here, it feels like we have so much to get done and we're not doing any of it fast enough. I don't feel right just standing around in one place for too long. I think I'm running out of time to help someone I care about."

She leaned her head back with a creaking of joints and looked up at the moon, almost nostalgically. "Romani never thought she'd see you of all people running out of time, Link."

"I think," Link said at last, and sighed, because it felt a bit cruel to correct her, "I think you're confusing me with someone else. Sorry."

"Oh, of course I'm not." Romani gave the back of his head a friendly tap with the stock of her crossbow. "I guess Romani shouldn't have expected you to recognize her. Changed too much after all these years. I didn't used to have all these wrinkles." She tugged cheerfully at her cheeks as if trying to stretch the laugh lines away. "You don't remember a little girl living here, oh… almost a hundred years ago now?"

A small smile crossed Link's face as he pushed the crossbow away. His guess had been right, it had been a friend from a long time ago. "Do I look a hundred years old?"

She scrutinized him with mock seriousness. "Oh, I'd imagine you could look however old you wanted. Time never did work the same for you. Here I am an old hag, and you've barely aged." At Link's skeptical look, she added, "It's tough to pull one over on old Romani. You're a bit older, and you're wearing a different face, but Romani recognizes you. She knew the moment she saw you. You stayed away too long, Grasshopper."

The thought that she'd known his name before anyone had told her crept across the back of Link's mind, and he shifted uncomfortably, feeling the gaze of that deeply cratered moon on his shoulders. "Who exactly do you think I am?"

"We're a little old to be playing Keaton riddle games, don't you think?" said Romani, matter-of-factly. "You're The Boy Who Killed The Moon."

By now he knew what that meant. Termina's ancient, folkloric hero, the boy who fell through from another world with his blue instrument that could bend time around it, control the rain, play sacred songs that could summon even the gods. She had him confused with a fairy tale. Link remained silent. He wasn't sure what to say to that.

A warm breeze rippled the dry grass and made it whisper in the field around them. Through the wood-slat sides of the barn somewhere behind them, a cow lowed gently in the darkness.

"It has been a long time," Romani said again softly, after a long silence between them. "Longer for you, maybe, if you've gone on winding and unwinding time like you used to when we were kids. And it was just the one night, we had that adventure. I wouldn't be upset if you'd forgotten it all."

"I'm not The Boy Who Killed The Moon," was what Link tried to say, but the words that came out were: "I guess I must have forgotten."

That misty smile ghosted across her face.

Let the old woman have her dream, said that little voice in his head, the hero. It's someone she misses. Let her be happy.

"So you knew The… you knew me?" Link repeated at last, feeling strangely off-kilter and small at being saddled with yet another hero's mantle, one which didn't belong to him, made from great deeds he'd never done. "One hundred years ago, when those stories took place, they were true?"

"True? Ha, they're history," Romani said with satisfaction. "People forget; tell them as bedtime stories and fairy tales, but Romani was there. You came to the ranch once, do you remember that?"

Link shook his head, and Romani went on, "There's a Boy Who Killed The Moon story about it. Your horse had run in here and me and Cremia had put it in the stable, since we didn't know who it belonged to. And when you came to get it…" A low whistle from the old woman. "That's when They came to take the cows." She pronounced "They" with an emphatic inflection, the capital letter slamming definitively into place.

It was like before, when Moramoa had first mentioned Termina's folk hero and his magic instrument. Link found himself oddly excited to hear another Boy Who Killed The Moon story. "Remind me of the rest," he said, and Romani nodded approvingly.

"Oh, this one's a classic. They came down on their ball of light, and Their eyes were like searchlights and Their fingers glowed like fire. They always used to come on nights leading up to the Festival, but Romani never had the courage to go out and stop Them before. Every year I'd stand at the window and watch and be too scared to move. But the year that you came, it was different."

As she walked, she raised the crossbow and sighted down its length, a wide, mischievous grin on her face, and there was something expert about the motion.

"We promised each other we'd fight Them, and we practiced and practiced and when night fell and Their light came down, you took your bow and shot Them all dead, from right there by the barn. It was the best shooting Romani had ever seen. And I always wondered how many times you'd done it to get that good. If you'd used that sacred song of yours and wound time back again and again to try and get it right."

In her hands, the crossbow made little plik plik sounds as its springs strained with a well-maintained tension, and she let it fall to her side, her smile suddenly fading. "Romani always had this horrible feeling, somewhere in the back of her head, that she'd gone up into the light with the cows before, and you'd fired and fired those arrows and couldn't bring her back."

Link's eyes fell to the crossbow swinging gently at her side, and he suddenly understood why an achey old woman would huddle up against the barn until the wee hours of the morning. It was for the same reason that a boy from a peaceful goatherding town would keep a pile of useless weapons gathering dust in his cellar, or never throw an ancient and malevolent artifact like the Shadow Crystal away, just in case.

The old woman shook her head sharply to dislodge the sudden melancholy mood, and said more cheerfully, "I used to tell Babeurre's mother that story when she was a little girl, and she'd swear up and down I was making it up. But it happened, true as the barn's still sitting there. Ah, and here we are."

The family graves of Romani Ranch were small, simple things. Wooden posts standing in neat rows in the soil near the edge of the ranch, where a low, long outcrop of reddish stone made a natural wall all along the boarder of the southernmost field, thickly forested above. There were about a dozen of them, a few generations of the ranch family. They hadn't been marked with any names or dates, but someone, or perhaps a few generations of someones, had carefully hung masks over most of them - crude and simple and stylized, and painted in bright colors, the oldest worn dull and smooth from the weather. It should have been creepy, to be watched by all those empty eyes, but to Link they seemed somehow loving, protective.

"They aren't soul masks," Romani commented knowingly, tottering ahead of him towards the far end of the graves. "Your face doesn't become one of those unless you die in some violence, I think. For those who went peacefully, the family carves them ourselves. It's always been our tradition to give a piece of the soul somewhere to live, so they can watch over the ranch and see how their children are growing."

She gave names to the faces as she walked. Her own parents, and Babuerre's mother, who'd been Cremia's daughter. From their brightly painted masks it seemed the whole family had been possessed of the same brilliant red hair as Babuerre and Panna. Cremia's grave was near the end of the line, and not the most recent - from the age of her grave she'd died long before her daughter. Someone had erected a simple wooden bench in front of it, and Romani sat down and beckoned him to do the same. Link sat beside her hesitantly. The bench was well-worn and strong with the scent of Romani, and of love and grief and comfort.

The old woman gave the grave a respectful little nod and set the crossbow down on her lap. "Hey there, sister. Grasshopper's back."

There was no mask affixed to Cremia's grave. The pole was empty, the only one to be carved with a name instead of marked with a face. And that, surrounded by the rest of the family's kind, watchful faces, was creepy.

"She was the only one who really believed it, you know," Romani said distantly. "That story I just told you. I mean, she was there, so she knew it was true, but to every generation after her it was just a bedtime story. The Boy Who Killed The Moon was a legend, not a real person you could meet. And Romani's the senile old auntie who swears up and down she met him."

He hadn't thought she was lying; the story had a ring of gospel honestly to it, the kind of tale that was too bizarre to have come from someone's head. "I believe you," Link said.

"Well of course you believe me, you were there too."

Link went silent, watching the maskless grave and wondering, suddenly, what stories would be told about him and Midna. How many generations would it be before they were titles instead of names; before legend made them into faceless heroes, and the humanity, the people they actually were, was stripped away, unimportant and forgotten? He'd never thought about it before.

There was a long, peaceful silence. At last, Romani broke it by saying, "Romani has proof."

"Proof of what?" said Link, breaking out of his contemplation.

"Proof she met you. I haven't shown it to anyone. They can believe what they like, as long as Romani knows in her head it really happened. I think… Romani thinks she might have doubted it herself, after all these years, if she didn't have proof. If you'll get that ocarina out of your belt pouch, Romani can show you."

"I don't have an-" he began, and she thumped him with the crossbow again.

"You really have forgotten everything, haven't you, Grasshopper! It's what you get for wearing a different face for too long; all your real face's memories start leaking out. That blue instrument at your belt! I know you still have it. It doesn't fit in there very well, I can see it peeking out a bit."

"It's called an ocarina?" Link asked, taking Renado's gift from his belt and instinctively holding it so that his fingers corresponded to the holes.

"It's the Ocarina. The Ocarina of Time, the one you used to use to play those sacred songs. How do you think I recognized you, when you don't look the same?"

A little shock ran through Link as he stared down at the instrument, and Moramoa's voice from what seemed like a lifetime ago echoed in his head. They say he had this blue… I forget, it was like a flute or something, and he used it to travel through time. He just had to know the right song and he could bend the world around him. The Ocarina of Time glinted in the moonlight, suddenly heavy in his hands.

But this instrument was from Hyrule; a gift from Renado. It couldn't really be…

"How did it go again?" Romani was muttering to herself, a little hum in her voice, and then, "Ah, right, it's the one I used to use to charm the cows. Haven't sung this one since Cremia died, but I remember how it went." And she started singing.

There were no words to the song. Romani simply sang out the melody in a sweet soprano gone slightly vibrato with age. It was swaying and mellow, the slow gait of a horse's hooves, the swaying of a saddle, the creaky barn doors of Ordon Ranch swinging back and forth in the breeze. Ilia with bare feet, her elbows on the old corral fence that needed mending. Epona's muzzle pressed into his palm. The warm and slightly sweet musk of still, dusty air that had long seeped in cattle and animal droppings and termite-eaten wood and the subtle acridity of rusted old farm tools.

Romani sang, and Link's hands moved of their own accord. Still wrapped in memories of Ordon, he lifted the ocarina and pressed his lips to the mouthpiece as if in a trance. His fingers twitched, moved, flowed from position to position, and a high and sweet piping filled the night and made the wind rush and the grass dance and the bells of the cattle chime deeply as they shifted in their stalls and turned their heads to listen.

It was the real instrument from the stories. He no longer questioned it. Nothing else could sound like this.

I don't know how to play the ocarina, some tiny part of Link protested before the song swept it, and every other thought, away.

He had been far from the only one who couldn't sleep that night.

Up in the hayloft, Midna stared upward through the gloom at the rafters of the rough, sloping ceiling, her eyes distant as she listened to Link play.

In the goat paddock in Ordon Village, wind whistled through the horse grass and made a calm and swaying sound beneath Hyrule's familiar starlight. The goats in their barn ceased their weak bleating, their shuddering struggles against the ropes binding them, and listened. Halfway through shutting the barn door for the night after checking on the sick goats for the dozenth time, Fado paused and stared into the darkness with eyes a million miles away.

A shadowy silhouette against the faint window lights of Kakariko, Epona tossed her head and made restless sounds, straining against her reins where they'd been tied to the hitch in front of Renado's hut. Sitting weary but sleepless on the edge of the trough beside her, a disquieted Mayor Bo reached out absently to pat her side. The hollow sound of the wind wound lonesome through the dark canyon above.

The fire in Renado's hut flickered for a moment and made the shadows sway gently. Kneeling beside Ilia's pallet and dabbing a damp cloth across her forehead, the Shaman went still. He could sense it: in some tiny, insignificant way, the magic of the world had eddied. With a small, satisfied nod, he went on with his work.

And Ilia sighed softly in her sleep and dreamed of horses.

Romani stopped singing, and Link's hands stilled. The last piping notes of the song echoed out across the ranch and into the night, and faded into silence.

"Oh," Romani said faintly beside him, sounding suddenly weak. "It's been so long since I've heard it played like that."

The music at last released him. Link's grip went limp, and he dropped the ocarina to the grass in front of the grave, his breathing suddenly labored, the last dregs of some ancient magic crackling like static through his hair and tunic before vanishing away.

"You alright there, Link?" Romani asked, and Link ran one gauntleted hand across his eyes and shook his head. His cheeks were wet, streaked with tears like they had been while hugging Ilia tightly in front of the spirit spring back in Hyrule.

"I… I don't know. I…" He wiped his face again, his triforce hand clutching pointlessly at his tunic, trying to grasp a horse whistle that wasn't there. The scents of Ordon were still strong in his head, and the wolf whined softly at the back of his mind, sounding lonely and lost. "It sounded like… like where I come from… the ranch where I work… it was like…"

"Like home?" Romani supplied gently, looking unseeingly out into the darkness, at the grave of a sister long dead.

Link nodded, his throat tight.

"I think it sounds like home to everybody," Romani mused. "It's one of the sacred songs, the ones with power. Romani's only proof she ever met you, that you weren't some little girl's made up story. A horse charming song, I think you used it for, but it was so much more than that. You hear it and it tells you where you come from, where you need to be. Horses hear it and they remember their riders; know they're needed somewhere in the world. Romani hears it and she thinks of her big sister. It can be a sad song, if you're not where you belong."

A small sob escaped Link, and he buried his face in his hands, feeling stupid for getting emotional over a song. "Sorry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be… I should be there. I never said goodbye to her, I never told her where I was going, I…"

"Oh, you really are still just a young kid, aren't you," Romani murmured, and she slid arthritically off her well-worn spot on the bench and with some effort crouched down in front of him. She wrapped her arms around him, smelling of the ranch house and old age and fireplaces, and he buried his face in her crumpled white taffeta.

"I'm so afraid she's going to die before I get back."

A little laugh from Romani, slightly muffled by the fabric bunched up around his face. She didn't ask who he was talking about. There was a strange sense that she already understood. "What a silly thing to be afraid of, Grasshopper, when you've got all of time wound around your fingers."

I don't, said the part of him that loved Ilia, the part that grew up a goatherd and was as far removed from the wolf as any part of him could be. I'm not who you think I am, I don't know the sacred songs, I can't do those things. Real heroes aren't like fairytale ones. They're stupid and selfish and sometimes they get there too late…

Sometimes, said that other, twilit part of him, the wolf, that cruel little voice that wouldn't let him let Midna go, there are parts of them that think maybe things would be easier if they got there too late.

He'd separated them too intrinsically in his head, and now he couldn't fit them back together into one person again.

"What's wrong with me?" Link murmured weakly, "I promised I'd marry her. But she's dying right now and there's a part of me that worries that maybe I don't even love her."

"Ah," the old woman said with a nod. "So that's it. It's got something to do with that strange, pretty thing you've been curled up with in our hayloft, hm? Romani thinks maybe you're afraid you might love her too?"

She pulled away at last, and Link wiped his eyes one last time. "Is it obvious?"

"It's obvious that you know each other better than anyone else ever will. That you think in tandem sometimes. That you…" She considered for a moment. "Well, for a nice metaphor, that you guard the same barns at night. Maybe that's not love all by itself, but it certainly makes people want to cling to each other; be as close as they can for as long as they can. If it's anything more than that between you… well that's just Romani's guess."

"What's wrong with me," he repeated. "I'm so selfish. Part of me wants it to last forever… wants to never find the cure, just so she can stay. What's wrong with me?"

"Would you do it?" the old woman asked.

Link looked at her blankly. There was no judgement in her face.

"Would you do it?" she said again. "If you had the choice to just stop searching, and let your kingdom die, would you?"

No, said both halves of him, in unison, and "No," said Link again. Hero or wolf, sacrificing or selfish, Hylian or Twilit, no part of him would ever do that.

"Well then, nothing's wrong with you." She picked up the ocarina and pressed it back into his hands. "It doesn't make you evil, you know, to be confused."

Link closed his hands on the little blue instrument. The triforce insignia carved into the mouthpiece pressed cooly against his skin at the place where a hole had been burned through his gauntlet. Romani reached up and touched his face gently, the rough skin of her thumb brushing the line of his jaw. Her touch was that of a grandmother: caring and familiar and unabashedly affectionate. They were motionless for a long time, waiting for Link's breathing to steady as the last of the song's magic drained from him.

"Romani trusts you," the old woman said after a while. "She knows you. You'll do what seems right when it seems like the right time to do it."

Link stared back at her smiling face, the moonlight making deep shadows in her plethora of wrinkles and creases. Crouched down next to him, she seemed so ancient, so fragile. It was easy to believe that this woman had walked out of a legend from one hundred years ago, and waited all her life for that legend to come back.

"Listen, Romani… I'm sorry I'm not him. That I can't remember you. I know you must have missed me."

She drew her hand away, smiling gently. "It's been a good, long life. It wouldn't have been if The Boy Who Killed The Moon hadn't been around back then to make those stories. No one really expected you to come back, after helping us all with your songs. You had other worlds to save, and it was high time we learned to help ourselves. Now, forget what I just said and help Romani stand up. She's old; her knees need a hand with these things."

Link put the ocarina back into his belt pouch, stood, and helped her to her feet. Her joints creaked.

"I used to cry too, when I sang that song," Romani commented. "When my sister Cremia died. Romani couldn't even bear to charm the cows with it; it brought back too many memories."

"Why doesn't her grave have a mask?" Link asked, and Romani's lips made a tight line, her eyes grown serious.

"We tried to make her one, when she died." Her voice was dark. "We couldn't. The wood split, or the tools would break. Romani thinks maybe her soul wouldn't have touched it even if we'd managed to make it. She should have rightfully had a soul mask of her own."

"You mean she died… violently?" Link said quietly. He'd thought Cremia had been old like her sister, had imagined her passing quietly and peacefully in her sleep.

Romani nodded. "She was young. Too young to have died the way she did; she'd only just had her first child. They found her in a ditch in Ikana. This was back when people still lived there, and we used to drive our cart over with deliveries of milk. Nobody lives in that place anymore. It's cursed, and cursed bad. Not even The Boy Who Killed The Moon could chase a curse like that away forever. Mark my words, Grasshopper, you stay away from that place. It changes people, and not for the better."

Link vaguely remembered Ikana as the wasteland marked on Midna's map with a drawing of tall stone towers. Even on the map, it seemed a desolate place. "Why didn't she get a soul mask?" he asked. "How did she die?"

The old woman gazed glassily at the maskless grave. "He likes redheads, the Lantern Man does. Jalhalla tore her face off."

As if reacting to her words, the faintest of shadows shifted, somewhere above that little rocky embankment. Romani's crossbow suddenly flung itself upwards and fired. The bolt skimmed past Link's face, so close he could hear the air whistle around it, and with a THUNK the bolt buried itself deeply in the wood of a tree. Cursing softly, Romani struggled to rewind the thing, and Link, casting around in startlement, caught the briefest glimpse of something small and nimble flitting through the darkness between the trees: something with glowing, blue-green eyes.

"Garo!" Romani hissed, trying to fit another bolt into her crossbow, arthritic fingers fumbling. He had no clue where she'd been keeping the extra ammo. "I see you there, Garo! You'll come nowhere near Romani's barn, you sorry, cursed thing! Speak of evil and summon it, Romani should have known better-"

Link was already scrambling up the rocks, battle-calm settling over him, muscles tensing with adrenaline. He recognized those eyes. They had tried to kill him while wearing Kalau's skin.

"Don't get close to it!" Romani was shouting up at him frantically. "Link, stay back, they're cruel little assassin spirits, they posses people-"

"I've fought one before." Pulling himself up over the ledge and into the thick brush of the woods beyond, Link rolled with practiced grace to his feet and reached for his sword.

His fingers closed on nothing. His sheath was empty.