Chapter Text
Zelda sat alone on the abbey’s roof at night.
It wasn’t a joyous breath of fresh night air or active sulking against her fate and her failures. Instead, she sat in a kind of malaise that went against her vow of devotion, because it in no way glorified Hylia. Her prayers had exhausted her, and she’d worked so diligently at her chores to try to impress the Goddess that her muscles ached. So now she just…sat.
Should anyone else at the abbey see her in such a dithering state, they–of course–wouldn’t judge her (due to their vows of charity), but they would also ignore her, charitably giving her the opportunity to correct herself, as she ought. Sitting out on the roof like this, the others would assume the best of her and assume that she was seeking out the tranquility of the stars and the calmness of the night to meditate and still her inner turmoil.
Perhaps that’s what she should have been doing. But it wasn’t.
Maybe you need a moment of rest. That was foolish. She hadn’t done enough to rest.
And maybe there was something else going on. Although there was no written rule against it, she was not supposed to be on the roof, and she found the small act of rebellion soothing. She had no idea what she was rebelling against (so why was she even doing it? Goddess, she was such a mess). And it was such a small thing that it didn’t even count (which was both relieving and depressing). So maybe the Goddess would appreciate this small enjoyment of the outdoors a bit more than if Zelda were having her malaise down in her sleeping cell. But the minor intention behind it to be a bit bad probably outweighed that.
Anyway, that’s why Zelda was on the roof when the knights arrived.
They rode their horses up the great stairs from Gate Town in no real hurry, carrying the banners of her father despite the darkness. This late, they should have stopped in Gate Town and spent the night at the inn. They should have come up to the Temple of Time in the morning and interrupted breakfast. But instead they rode on. That meant whatever message they had was urgent, but the slowness of their almost leisurely ride said the opposite.
Curious. And concerning.
Clearly, they were here for her. (That wasn’t a self-centered thought. That was simply the logical conclusion given the evidence.) Maybe they were taking her home. She had no idea if she wanted to go home.
“It’s not so gloomy,” one of them announced.
“Not any worse than the camps in Faron.”
The rest laughed. She hadn’t heard anyone speak in months. It was as if their voices were a knife and the silence of the plateau were something soft and tender. You would think they would take a hint and quiet themselves, but they did not.
“Yeah! I bet it’ll be nice and cozy."
"Warm."
"With feather down mattresses."
"Because we know you like to sleep."
"And those five-course meals you like.”
As they dismounted, they handed the reigns of their horses to a scurrying acolyte. Then they passed below her on their way to the temple, laughing and oblivious.
Oblivious except for the last knight.
He was shorter than the others, with the face of a boy under the sharp eye holes of his helmet. She would assume that he was a squire except that the plume on his helmet was the bright red of a captain. He did not laugh. Or say anything really. She startled when he lifted his head to meet her gaze.
And then he was gone, following the rest into the temple.
It took a while for silence to settle over her again. Either her ears or nature itself were so unused to the raucous sounds of human speech that the buzz lingered. Like ripples on a pond well after the stone had sunk to the bottom, the peace remained disturbed.
Just as the silence was getting back to normal, just as the crickets had gone back to chirping and the wind wafted back over her face, the bells rang. The ringing chimes eased more naturally into the quiet, as if they belonged, as if they were endemic. They brushed aside the silence instead of cutting through it. The call to the temple was unexpected, but not startling, and Zelda sighed as she stood from her spot and dusted off the butt of her pants.
It seemed the knights had put an early end to her malaise.
Inside the sanctuary, a few of the acolytes looked around in curiosity. But even as they were called from their beds, none of them looked irritated. Irritation was not charitable. If any of them felt this way, they were hiding it down deep.
Zelda took her seat in her usual pew and tried to look less desperately curious than the others. She always tried to be the best of the acolytes (not that it was a competition. She just wanted to do well to earn the Goddess’s smile). The acolytes at the abbey got so little news. They saw all the same faces every day. Unlike her life at the castle, the drama at the abbey was rare and subdued. That might be because they didn’t have the best methods of spreading gossip, so unless you were a witness, you would miss it completely. It might be because everyone was so understanding that there was never much interpersonal drama to speak of.
For the first year she was here, Zelda had had no idea how to deal with it.
Now, although she always tried to bury the emotions, she was starved for something interesting to happen. But not starved enough that she wanted to be the interesting thing. A bitter part of her wished that the abbot had come to her privately and called her into the sanctuary to meet the knights. Then it occurred to her that he might have done just that and not been able to find her in her cell. The only way for her to make an appearance was to call the entire abbey. Really, this was her own fault.
At least she’d give everyone else at the abbey something to think about for the next week after she left.
Then a horrible thought occurred to her: What if she didn’t leave? What if these knights had come to give her an epic dressing down in front of everyone, and then they left her here in her shame with the oh so charitable looks that bordered on pity and bordered on curiosity but never quite pushed far enough into either. Panic began to claw at her chest, working its way into her throat, and she desperately tried to make eye contact with the abbot to silently plead that he not do this.
Studiously, the abbot ignored her.
The knights had barely cleaned themselves up. They had removed their helmets, but they still wore their clanking armor and still carried all their weapons. That wasn’t technically against the rules, but it was a bit distasteful, if you asked Zelda, which no one did. They all took seats in the very front pew and had the good sense to calm themselves and bow their heads beneath the gaze of the Goddess.
Standing directly before the Goddess statue, the abbot lifted his hand in a meek apology for waking them. Then he gestured at the knights, beckoning them forward, and a tall, broad-chested man, who held himself as if he were responsible for a great many important things, rose. He slapped the boy on the shoulder with the back of his hand, signaling for him to rise as well, but the boy was already halfway out of his seat. Together, they approached the abbot, the boy’s eyes locked on the face of the Goddess statue.
“I present Sir Link,” the large knight said, introducing the boy with a hand motion. “By order of the king, he will sequester himself here for a time.”
Zelda’s eyebrows rose. The knights weren’t here for her at all! She bit back a smile as her chest flooded with relief. Now she could join in everyone’s curiosity over the boy. The knight. Who was banished here.
Hyrule needed every knight they had. It was unheard of to send one away.
Of course, it was also unheard of to send away the crown princess, and yet here she was. So anything was possible really.
The abbot smiled, fond and welcoming, focusing all his attention on the boy as if the big knight were not there. Due to his necessary administrative duties which involved people outside the abbey, the abbot was the only one of them whose vows allowed him to speak. Even then, she hadn’t heard his voice since Dimiv took her vows four months ago. His rough voice scraped over the words as if he could sand them down.
“Are you ready?”
Without a word, the boy lowered to one knee, dropping his eyes from the Goddess to the tile.
“Sir Link, you seek to join the sacred order of Hylia, a call of faith and service. In her service, you will live a life of charity–providing for others above yourself and remembering always that you are Hylia’s hand, and Hylia loves all her people. As you hear her call, do you take the vow of charity?”
“I do so vow,” the boy said. His words seemed as unused as the abbot’s, small under the Goddess’s feet.
“In her service, you will live a life of devotion–dedicating your time and energy to worshiping the Goddess, glorifying her in thought and deed above all others. As you hear her call, do you take the vow of devotion?”
“I do so vow.”
“In her service, you will live a life of simplicity–meager your belongings and meager your needs. You will embody restraint, cleanliness, chastity, and silence. As you hear her call, do you take the vow of simplicity?”
He nodded his head, sealing his voice away.
The abbot smiled, tugging Link’s pauldron until he stood. Then he pulled the boy into a welcoming hug that Link was too startled to return.
Zelda was buzzing too much to sleep, too wound up from her near miss at having the knights acknowledge her. Instead, she slipped back onto the roof and watched as the knights were welcomed into guest rooms and as they ribbed Link, asking him questions he was not allowed to answer and then laughing. He did not look up at her again.
But a few minutes after the knights meandered inside, there was a shuffling behind her and Link climbed out the same thin window she always used. He’d rid himself of armor, and now wore a light linen shirt–not given to him by the abbey, but far simpler than most knights wore. There wasn’t a phoenix crest in sight.
She lifted her eyebrows at him. Was he trying to run away already?
In response, he took a seat next to her, pulling up his knees and wrapping his arms around them.
She wasn’t sure what to do with this. Back at the castle she would engage in meaningless small talk, but that wasn’t really an option here. (Who was she kidding? No one would sit down quietly next to her at the castle.)
She should nod to him politely and go back to bed, where she belonged. She should leave him to his personal meditations on his very important day.
Or you could be kind to him.
For better or worse, she chose that option, tilting her head in question then pressed a finger to her lips. How is the vow of silence going?
He shrugged, then hesitated, uncertain how to express himself or uncertain if he should. Then he opened and closed his hands like the bills of ducks, made a face and mouthed, blah blah blah, then thew his hands in the air. He was over talking anyway.
She let out a silent giggle.
He pointed at his chest, pressed a finger to his lips, and then pointed at the castle. He was quiet back home.
She pointed back at the castle too, then covered her mouth so he couldn’t see it and pretended to whisper a secret to an invisible friend while pointing at him. When he silently laughed, she threw her hands in the air too, mimicking his gesture. She was also over it.
An expansive gesture to indicate the abbey and the temple and maybe even the plateau, and she shook her head. There wasn’t any of that here.
With a questioning face, he covered his mouth like she had done and leaned to the side, but his was truncated, less dramatic. She knew what he meant. Why would they whisper?
Realization dawned that he had no idea who she was. He must have become a knight after she left (he was surely too young to be a knight before she left). She assumed it would be common knowledge that she was here, banished to the temple, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he just hadn’t pieced it together.
He was still looking at her in curiosity. Oh, she had to answer his question! How…how would she answer his question?
She pointed at her chest then slapped her own wrist with two fingers so it made a soft tap. I was bad.
His eyebrows lifted, and she slapped herself twice more for emphasis. Very bad.
His smile was soft, almost teasing. What did you do?
It was more what she didn’t do, what she still hadn’t done, and she couldn’t for the life of her think of a way to convey that she was so wretched that the Goddess did not trust her to grant her the ancient sealing powers that their people needed.
Misinterpreting her hesitation, his face fell, and he held out both hands to stop her. You don’t have to tell me.
She waved that away dismissively. Then made her two fingers look like legs and had them run. I ran away.
You?
A lot.
Lowering one of his legs to lean closer, her turned further in her direction. Because of the whispers?
Mostly. The gesture was vague, and he probably didn’t understand it.
It didn’t seem to slow him down though. He pointed at her, pressed a flat palm to his chest and patted it twice like the beating of a heart, then repeated her expansive gesture. Your heart is here?
My heart… She started, but then didn’t know how to finish. She’d escaped the judgmental eyes in the castle, but she wouldn’t say she loved it here. It was peaceful in as much as she could find peace anywhere, but her failures and the oncoming calamity loomed in every shadow.
She repeated his talking hands complete with funny face, then flailed a moment for how to convey…a scooping gesture, then gathering it up towards her chest. She tapped her temple, did the talking hands, then tapped her temple again. She pointed at the castle, at the temple, everywhere. She mimed running away again then shoved the fingers off course.
I carry the whispers with me. It doesn’t matter where I go.
It was a lot to convey in hand gestures. And maybe she was being too open with someone she’d just met. Part of her hoped he wouldn’t understand. But his eyes sparkled with clarity, and he nodded, his face so serious that she realized he understood exactly what it was like.
She’d never found someone who understood her before. It sparked something long asleep in her chest.
Which was ridiculous. Maybe they were talking about completely different things.
She needed to change the subject.
Your heart? she asked, then pointed towards Castletown in question.
He shook his head and pointed. In Castletown.
In Castletown?
No. In Castletown.
What?
He breathed a laugh, then reached for her hand, which brought him closer as if he was trying to align his sight line with hers. He moved her hand a few degrees to the west, then drew her hand back and cast it out as if he were fishing. Further than Castletown.
Oh.
She turned to find his face very close. He seemed to only just realize this as well, and flushed, pulling away from her and taking shelter again behind his knees.
Out of charity (and maybe a little bit that she didn’t entirely hate it) she tried to continue the conversation as if nothing strange had happened. Using both hands, she mimed a thick column going up, then she waved her hands about a bit above that. Where the big tree is?
His brows furrowed in confusion.
How to phrase it? Her hands hung in the air as she thought. Uhh.
He breathed another laugh, quiet as the wind, and she gave up. It didn’t matter.
Why are you here? she asked.
And his face froze. The smallest wince in his cheek and at the corner of his eye.
Oh no. She reached out to press her hand to his knee and shook her head, pressing one fingers to her lips with the pad of her finger out. He didn’t have to tell her, but she wouldn’t judge him.
But he didn’t understand and pressed his finger to his lips in question. It was a bit of an odd gesture, the orientation of the hand clearly different from just telling someone to be quiet.
Oh. Umm.
Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she pushed back and changed the way she was sitting until she knelt on one knee before him with her head bowed just as he had been earlier that evening when he took his vows. She looked up into his eyes as she pressed one finger to her lips and mouthed, clearly and with great exaggeration, I do so vow. This she repeated with two fingers to her lips, and then with three fingers to her lips, ending in a purposeful nod.
Fingers to lips was a common way for people at the abbey to gently remind each other of their vows. It would be good for Link to learn them. Thankfully his face cleared in understanding.
Again, she pressed her finger to her lips: First vow. There is no judgement here.
His delight in understanding her faded into suspicion. He didn’t believe her on the no judgement thing.
She gave him her best unimpressed look. But then she relented, holding her palm flat towards him. But you don’t have to tell me.
His hands hung for a moment in the air as he hesitated. Then, looking her directly in the eyes as if daring her to judge him after promising not to, he pointed at his chest, then his ear, then opened and closed one of his hands like the bill of a duck.
She blinked at him. She must not have understood that.
Again: his chest, his ear, talking. I hear voices.
You hear voices?
He took a deep breath and shrugged, his face turning red.
Huh. Well.
She shrugged. That really wasn’t any of her business.
Her placid response caused him to perk up. Really? he seemed to ask.
She shrugged again, then (in a kind of awkward way considering the grammar) asked, What do they say?
I’m bad, he said, slapping his own wrist.
Are you bad?
I have no idea!
She breathed a laugh.
They say… Then he hesitated, halfway through gesturing something, but stopping himself. He took her hand and with one finger wrote letters against her palm. She tried not to let the tingles that shimmered over her skin distract her from understanding.
M. A. T. H.
Math? she mouthed.
He gave an exasperated shrug. Apparently!
In her excitement, she leaned (probably way too far) into his space. I love M. A. T.–
He stopped her and showed her a gesture: tucking in the thumb and pinky of both hands to leave the middle three fingers, then drawing his hands towards each other and apart. Math.
Clearly, he already had a large hand gesture vocabulary. Maybe “quiet back home” was an understatement.
She put the new word to use immediately. I love math!
A smile of such open relief bust across his face, that again that warmth lit unbidden in her chest.
The next morning, she rose with the bells before sunrise, groggy from her late night. The idea was that they would be mid-prayer when the sun rose to crash in bursts of brilliant color through all the stained glass. Sometimes, when she was very tired, this would happen, and she would think to herself, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!”
But she wasn’t. It was just the sun. Rising. Like it did every day.
Link slid into the seat next to her, wearing dark circles under his eyes and the gray, loose tunic of all the acolytes. Sitting together, they looked like a matching set, offering each other smiles. But she made a point of keeping her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
Using hand gestures to communicate was not technically forbidden. In fact, they did something similar when working: asking someone to hand you something, to help you lift something, to help you find something. But the conversation on the roof had gone beyond that in a way that was personal and specific and not about the necessary functioning of the abbey. They had not dedicated their time to the Goddess. Although it was not against the letter of their vows, it was certainly against the spirit.
Her stomach sunk as she realized that she would need to meditate on this.
Luckily, it was time for meditative worship!
From the corner of his eye, Link watched her, following her actions so he didn’t do anything wrong. That was normal for his first day. His first month, really. It wasn’t as if there were a guide book, and it wasn’t as if she could tell him everything he should do. He would have to figure it out from quiet observation. He would make mistakes, and it would humble him, and everyone would show compassion, and he would learn he was welcome. He was loved.
When it was time, she clasped her hands together under her breast, lowered her eyes, and prayed.
You know better than to break your vows like that. You’re supposed to glorify Hylia in all things. How did hiding on the roof show devotion? How did telling someone all your selfish problems make you a better person? Why you were sent here is in the past and there is no point in dwelling on it save to better yourself for the future.
So why did you do it? You don’t need a friend; you need to focus. You were not just being kind. You were being rebellious on purpose, and that is so far from the divine. No wonder you’ve never amounted to anything. No wonder you can’t harness the Goddess’ power.
You need to do better.
You cannot wallow in a malaise.
You cannot flirt.
Link sucked in a sharp breath beside her. Disturbed from her thoughts, she peeked open one eye to find him gaping up at the Goddess statue, his eyes wide and horrified, his hands clutching at his tunic over his heart.
Her hand on his shoulder startled him so badly that he caught the attention of a few other acolytes, who peeked open their own eyes to watch him.
She couldn’t mouth the words or offer him a questioning thumbs up with everyone watching, so she just tilted her head and looked concerned. Was he alright?
He blinked at her too many times, as if coming out of a trance. Then his head snapped back around to the Goddess statue, which he watched expectantly, his shoulders tense as if the huge statue might reach out a giant hand and crush him.
Then the moment passed, and he breathed a sigh of relief, dropping his eyes and looking shaken. He offered her an embarrassed nod and hunching lower to avoid the stares.
He was hearing voices.
Before pulling her hands back into position to pray, she squeezed his arm.
You’re doing nothing wrong showing kindness. In this situation, Hylia couldn’t possibly hold against her.
Or maybe she could.
Yes, the Goddess definitely could, because Link scooted slightly away from her.
Okay. Okay. If she felt disappointed with such a mild rejection, it was a sign that she was wanting too much–attention, friendship, a distraction. Those were all bad and unnecessary. She needed to clear her mind and start again. With less emotion.
She took a deep breath through her nose, held it, then released it through her mouth and brought her mind to something simple: a series of numbers, each one formed by adding the two before it. She visualized it like a rectangle that grew larger, adding a square onto the side with each addition, and then rotating, and then adding a square again. Growing. Growing. Just as the depths of her spirit could grow. Just as her sense of the world could grow past herself, past the boy next to her, past the abbey and Hyrule and her problems. The numbers grew steadily onward.
She settled into that. Into the clarity, the simplicity. Into her place in a long series. Perhaps the Goddess would smile on her.
Beside her, Link’s shoulders slowly softened.
After sunrise meditation was breakfast, where they all sat together at two long, ancient tables with benches that creaked any time any one of them moved. The dining area nestled next to the kitchen, both rooms half underground like the warm burrow of a hibernating animal. The windows (near the ground outside and near the ceiling here) were made of honeycombed stained glass cut into a simple pattern of diamonds.
Their breakfasts were always small. For instance, today they had coffee and lovely, flaky bread rolls. They were given one item at each breakfast that Zelda thought of as a special treat. Today it was butter, which she had helped make by shaking mason jars for hours. Some days they had jam, and some days they had orange slices.
They would have a sizable lunch and dinner, but unlike in the rest of Hyrule, here breakfast was not the most important meal of the day.
Link paused when confronted with his small plate with its pair of rolls. He still looked a bit shaken from sunrise prayers (and she really wanted to ask about that but wouldn’t. For several reasons). In the warm light of the dining room, he now looked a bit pale.
He made an effort to eat his bread, although she had no idea what he was doing. Something deliberate. Maybe he hated butter but was forcing himself not to choke.
Then she realized: he was trying not to scarf it all down. He moved as if he savored every bite. As if it would fill him more if let each taste linger.
She wondered if he was trying to be polite and if he was disappointed in the size of the meal. She wondered if maybe the knights all had terrible table manners and he was afraid of embarrassing himself (as if the monks and acolytes weren’t all eating with their hands).
Her question was answered when he’d finished and pressed the pad of his thumb against his plate to gather the crumbs, quietly slipping them into his mouth.
Everyone pretended they hadn’t noticed.
His stomach growled, and his face turned bright red.
Everyone pretended they hadn’t noticed.
The thought of how he would now hunch in on himself, of how small he could make himself look, made her heart twist. (And she thought of how his face had lit last night when she’d shown him the smallest bit of understanding.)
She still had her last roll left. As much as he’d tried to eat slowly, no one would ever eat slower than Zelda. A moment later, her roll was torn in half and one half was on his plate.
Link froze.
Before he could decide what to do, the acolyte on his other side took what was left of their butter and transferred it over, as if cleaning the knife off on Link’s plate and leaving behind a hefty blob.
Still Link didn’t move, but the tension on his face had changed from embarrassment to something that looked deeply overwhelmed.
He took a moment to gather himself, but his hands still shook as he picked up his roll, dabbing it gently through the butter, as if readying a brush to paint.
Everyone in the abbey did chores. Most likely, someone would say it built character, but really it was to keep the abbey running. It wasn’t as if someone was going to cook for them. Or make repairs to the building. Or do laundry. Or tend the garden.
That was Zelda’s job that morning. Over time, the monks got a sense of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and of all the things you could say about Zelda, no one could deny her talent with vegetables.
She wondered sometimes if her father had sent any instructions about what she was not allowed to do. No studying bugs. No climbing trees. No guardian parts. Whenever the abbot assigned her to the garden or had her repair the drainpipes, she wondered if he was secretly going against her father’s wishes. Maybe it was a little, silent nod in her direction that he believed in her.
Maybe he just desperately needed someone to fix the drainpipe.
Maybe her father hadn’t said anything at all, and this whole drama lived entirely in her head.
Whatever the reason, she would make the abbot proud and show her appreciation for the opportunity he had given her here. In every chore she did, she tried to make the abbey better, more efficient. She tried to be as helpful as possible so the Goddess would approve.
As they rose from breakfast to begin their chores, handing their plates to the acolyte on dish duty, the abbot gestured Link close, squeezed his shoulder, and then steered him into following Zelda.
She wondered if the abbot knew about their meeting on the roof.
Keeping her face calm, she nodded, making eye contact with Link before turning towards the door. She could hear him following.
As she lifted the hood of her tunic over her head, she wondered if Link would think this was some show of piety as she tended the tomatoes. She actually just sunburned easily. When she looked back, he had covered his head as well. Oh well, it would keep him from getting sunburned too.
She got him started weeding while she inspected the tomatoes, tying new growths to the trellis with twine. As always, they had way too many cucumbers, and she set Link to harvesting them. The marigolds seemed to be working to keep the bugs off the strawberries, but there were more signs of squirrels.
Someday, Zelda was going to do something about the squirrels.
But first she had to do something about Link, who wouldn’t meet her eyes as he harvested cucumber.
She should leave him be. But that felt cruel. Isolating when he probably already felt alone.
But the whole point of the abbey was for solitary contemplation. So what was she doing getting into his business?
Despite everything, she reached out and squeeze his arm, drawing him to look at her and giving him a questioning look. Are you alright?
Kindness wouldn’t bend her vows.
He sighed, then nodded in a determined way that meant not really, but I’m trying.
She ought to have stopped the conversation there. Maybe squeezed his arm and offered him a smile and had him help her haul out a bag of fertilizer to keep him occupied.
Instead, she nodded her head towards the temple. What happened in there?
I’m sorry if I was too something.
What?
He held three fingers to his lips in shame.
Oh. He was feeling guilty about their talk last night as well.
Slowly, she nodded. Right. Yes. But she couldn’t help but ask again, Are you okay?
That he was willing to answer. The voices. I hear them louder here. He gestured around them at the plateau.
Louder? she asked, making a mouth of her hand and stretching it wide before clapping it together.
He nodded. The gesture shifted into him shaking his head as he looked up at the sky for explanation.
Obviously, none came.
She patted his arm again to get his attention and tried, Maybe the voices are louder because everything else is quiet. Then she tried to explain that the voices in her own head were loud here too, and she tried to explain that back at the castle everything was so loud that the voice in her head was quiet in comparison, but that wasn’t really true once she thought about it. Her own negative self-talk was always very loud. But then again, a lot of actual people with actual voices had said a lot of the things that she now found she told herself. Here she had to do it herself.
He didn’t seem to really follow most of what she tried to convey, which was probably good, because she wasn’t sure she believed it.
And it was probably good because they shouldn’t be talking like this. They’d just established that.
Deep in thought about what she had said (or about something else, who knew?) he nodded.
She tapped his arm again to draw him out of it (why did she keep touching him?) and offered him her brightest smile. He looked down at her hand (because she still hadn’t pulled it away), and a timid smile stretched across his face as well.
She put him to work hauling the bag of fertilizer.
Link met lunch with such relief that Zelda felt bad that she hadn’t reassured him that he would get decent meals. He scarfed down his food, much less embarrassed, which meant he was either so hungry he didn’t care or he had abysmal table manners. Maybe Zelda had made him feel so at home that he’d realized there was no reason to be embarrassed about anything.
That probably wasn’t it.
After lunch was another prayer session, this one involving the holy gestures that they all did in unison. Both hands pushed forward as if shoving away darkness. Right hand out in front, then both hands drawn around in a circle and down into prayer. Right hand out, left hand come to join it as if adding power, then right hand drawn into the chest, then flung out, as if flicking away a deep-seated power. Right hand out, left hand come up to join it, both arms flung down in a triangle, hands together, and then a movement like drawing an arrow aimed at the sky.
They grew in complexity, and at some point Link lost the pattern, making it so his arms were always in the wrong places. With practice, he would get it. And the sequence soon repeated.
He missed it.
He’ll get it.
Zelda forced herself not to sink into her breath and imagine an ever-growing sequence. Instead, she imagined that she held the power of the Goddess. She imagined that these moves would draw it out, press it forward. She imagined that power gathering as she inhaled, and as she exhaled, she imagined the power releasing, out of her splayed palm. She imagined it running through her arms, directed by her will.
Of course, nothing happened.
Link’s arms were in the wrong place again, but he caught the first form, and from there moved easily into the second. Then into the third, which he wasn’t supposed to do yet.
It didn’t seem as if any voices were shouting at him. Perhaps the exercise kept them at bay.
After mid-day prayers, the residents of the abbey dispersed, and Zelda was ready to head to the scriptorium except Link was right at her elbow, giving her a look as if waiting for instructions. A look like he didn’t want to be left alone.
She blinked at him. He blinked back at her.
She had no idea how to explain the next part of their day, even if they weren’t in the middle of the sanctuary right under the eyes of Hylia and were able to sign to each other as much as they wanted. The abbot was nowhere in sight, either trusting Zelda to take care of him, or leaving Link to figure it out.
She waved him to follow her into an alcove, where beneath a statue of the forest sage was a cubby full of old hymnals that were more for study than use. Flip flip flip, she finally found the hymn she wanted and tilted the book to show him the title. All Praise and Glory to Hylia. She circled the last three words, then awkwardly held the hymnal under her arm pit and held up her hands to form a triangle in the air. Glory to Hylia.
He half nodded, but still looked skeptical. Of course, he wouldn’t want to say he understood her, because he didn’t. Glory to Hylia. Okay? What did that mean?
She slipped the hymnal back into place and guided him back out into the sanctuary, where she pointed at the monk taking his place at the pipe organ. He took his time sorting his music, rolled his shoulders, and began to play. To practice. It sounded beautiful, the full, pressured notes bursting at them like the sun.
Giving Link a look, she lifted the triangle in the air again. (This time all the way over her head, because she didn’t have to hold onto a hymnal.) Glory to Hylia.
Then she waved him to follow her.
Back in a hallway deeper into the temple, one of the acolytes was practicing a harp. They did not peek inside, but they could hear it.
Glory to Hylia, she said.
She brought him outside, where a small group of monks were working through meditative stretches. It was a lot like the prayer session they had just done, but these were actually an ancient martial art, meant to strengthen their bodies and minds. In a nearby courtyard, another monk poured colored sand into a painstaking design of circles and triforces. Glory to Hylia.
She brought him to the abbey and leaned into the doorway of one of the cells, where a monk was embroidering a quilt so complicated that it looked like a watercolor. In another room, someone neatly tapped a glass cutter against a pane of red glass so they could fit it into a stained-glass window of the Sage of Spirit, now only a quarter of the way completed. Glory to Hylia.
These were not chores meant to preserve the functioning of the abbey. These endeavors could be called superfluous, except that they were all in service of spreading Hylia’s love and showing their love for Her through art--a medium close to the Hylian heart.
Link’s nod now was enthusiastic. He got it.
Satisfied, Zelda headed to the nearby scriptorium where she usually spent her time copying and illuminating pages sent by the Sheikah clan. Pages detailing ancient technology. It was as close as she could get to studying the technology herself, which wasn’t technically against the rules, but there were no guardian parts around and she had a feeling that technology’s absence on the plateau was half the reason she’d been sent to the temple in the first place.
She settled at her drawing desk and began to set out her brushes and pick her colors. And yet Link hesitated by her side.
Go, she shooed. Glory to Hylia.
He thought for a brief second, then scooted away.
Maybe, she thought as she prepared a fresh page of paper, she should have given him some materials to work with. He might need a musical instrument or some cloth. She cringed. He would have to take that up with the abbot, and hopefully he knew enough to go do that. Probably he would just join the acolytes in their meditative movements. If he needed something tomorrow, she would help him ask.
He’ll find something.
This decision did not stem the guilt that churned in her stomach. She should not have left him alone.
Today, she was going to start on a diagram of an ancient core, which would probably take her several weeks. It was her job to re-sketch the design and then paint it so it lit up as brightly (if not more brightly) than it did in real life. She’d spend most of her time on this picture before transferring the Sheikah’s notes in brilliant calligraphy in a column on the side. She would have to correct their spelling mistakes, which were frequent. (At first, she’d hoped there was a code. That they were trying to get her out. But after months of trying to decipher it, she realized there wasn’t one.)
The Sheikah didn’t send the diagrams specifically for her to illuminate. They just sent them to the abbot and asked if his people could do something nice with them. But then again, of course they sent them just for Zelda. She could catch bits of Purah peeking through–the funny twist on her infrequent Fs, the way she would capitalize words she felt were Important, but definitely were not. The diagrams were like little nods from home. She liked to think that maybe her friends thought of her as they wrote them. She liked to think that they eventually saw the illuminated pages she created.
She thought back to Link’s question of where her heart was. Maybe it was with the Sheikah.
Maybe that was part of her problem.
Movement in the courtyard caught her eye, and she turned her head in the briefest curiosity to see what it was, expecting it to be nothing and to go straight back to her drawing.
Instead, she froze.
Because Link had a sword and was running through his forms.
Of course, she’d known that he could use a sword. He was a knight after all. She was mostly surprised that he’d been allowed to keep his sword at the abbey. She thought he would have put it in the chest in the storage room under the sanctuary, where he put away all the personal affects with which he’d arrived. His armor would be in there too. He wouldn’t have given that to his fellow knights to take away.
(Somewhere in that storage room Zelda had a chest as well. There was a fine dress and some shoes and clips for her hair. She suspected that only the hair clips would still fit, and the abbey should go ahead and sell her dress rather than letting it go to waste. It’s not as if she could wear it when she left.)
But it was strange that the abbot let Link have the sword from his chest.
Or was it? She supposed his practice certainly glorified Hylia.
Almost to a distracting degree…
With a blush, she realized she was staring, and quickly turned back to her work. Away from the quick spinning of his blade and the confident movements of his feet and the roll of his shoulders.