Excerpt: The Stuff of Legends / The Sky Above, The Field Below

Link is four, and one of the bigger boys has pushed him over.

He’s sitting on the dusty ground, crying - the bigger boy left a while ago, but Link is still sitting there, wailing, nursing his cut knee.

And Saria is there - only five years old herself, but she kneels next to him, and speaks gently to him, and puts a bandaid over his knee.

It has a fairy on it. Saria says that fairies can heal, and that means his knee will be better in no time, and lifts him to his feet to take him to Miss Uli. Miss Uli is nice. Miss Uli dabs something on his knee that makes the sting stop and lets Saria put the new bandaid on.

And then Saria takes him outside and shows him ladybugs on the leaves.

Later, Saria lets him sit in her tree house in the back garden, and tells him that he can go there whenever he wants to. Link sits in the dirt next to the ladder and draws himself - and Saria - fighting dragons.

--

Link is six, and it is activity day at the Home.

Miss Uli has a crafts table, and Link pokes curiously at some beads and at the paper and crayons and coloured pencils and the paint. He scribbles a drawing of himself fighting a monster, decides he doesn’t like it, and wanders away.

Mister Rusl has really fun activities. There’s a curvy bit of wood with some string, and some long pointy things, and some round things with circles on it. Mister Rusl lifts him up on to his shoulders, and he clings to Mister Rusl’s hair while he watches what the bigger kids are doing.

The curvy wood with the string is called a bow, Mister Rusl tells him, and the long pointy things are called arrows, and the round things with the colourful circles on it are called targets. Can you see what they’re doing, he asks Link, and Link watches carefully.

And then he tells Mister Rusl, I want to try, and Mister Rusl frowns and tells him that archery is for bigger boys. And Link pouts, and he nearly cries because he really wants to try it and he knows he can do it, and Mister Rusl gives in and gives Link a little bow.

And Link fires the arrow like the bigger kids are doing and it hits in the middle of the target, and he turns to Mister Rusl and asks, was that right?

And Mister Rusl is stunned, then ruffles his hair and says, that was excellent.

--

Link is seven, and they’re all going on a special trip to the city.

It’s because of Saria somehow, she has a special thing to do. Link doesn’t really know what it is, but the train is full of excited kids anyway, because they’re going to the city and there’ll be lots of fun things to do there. Saria is reading lots of papers, and she’s a real good reader, she reads him and Ilia and the other kids stories all the time.

But now she’s too busy reading, so Link plays clapping games with Ilia while everyone else does other stuff on their own. And then Link tries to tell Ilia a story, because Ilia’s only six so she’s still really little, and he’s seven so he’s practically all grown up. But he can’t tell it as well as Saria, and that’s okay, because no one can tell them as well as Saria.

The city is big and loud and crowded, and Mister Rusl shows him the cows and the sheep and the horses in their pens, and Link can’t stop looking at the horses. The man with the prettiest horses chuckles and ruffles his hair, and says that his little girl loves the horses too, and he lets Link and Ilia ride one of the little horses around in a pen.

At lunch time, Link has to sit in a chair and watch a stage, and he thinks he sees Saria there and waves at her. She waves back, and the big man next to her frowns and tells her off, and the other big man who looks a bit like a rock on her other side gives her a smile.

Link doesn’t remember a lot of it, but he knows that Saria was really cool. But then, Saria’s always really cool. Saria is his best friend in the whole world and she’ll always be there for him.

--

Link is ten, and Saria is dead.

He’s in her tree house, crying. His best friend is gone, and he’s all alone - except for Ilia, and she’s still little. Right now, Ilia is getting a hug from her dad, and for once, Link wishes he had a dad to give him a hug, too.

He chants stupid, stupid, stupid over and over, although he doesn’t know if he means himself for letting her go, or Saria for trying to get to her sacred forest meadow all by herself, or the driver of the car that hit her.

He has photos of her. And in a few years, he’ll be older and won’t look like the photos any more, and she’ll still look the same. An eternal child.

He misses her.

--

Link is twelve, and he’s bored and miserable.

So he’s sitting - well, if he’s honest, he’s hiding - up in the tree house, carving at a chunk of wood with his pocket knife. It’s not going particularly well, unfortunately - it doesn’t really look like a horse, it looks more like a blob with another blob at the top and four spindly sticks sticking out from the bottom.

He’s restless and troubled tonight, wishing he could ask Saria for her advice, unable to. Glancing across at the photos he’s pinned to the walls, he sighs.

There’s a creak from the ladder outside, and Ilia’s head pops up over the top. Link, she says softly, and sits down, I was looking for you.

He looks away. I’ve been right here, he says, and smiles crookedly. I’m always here.

And she asks, what’s wrong?

And suddenly it’s all spilling out - about how it’s been two years since Saria died and it still hurts, and how he hates the new high school he’s going to, and how he sometimes wishes he had somewhere to belong, and, oh yes, he thinks he likes boys.

And Ilia just blinks and asks, what’s wrong with that?

Link laughs bitterly and tells her about the man he had seen at the bus stop talking about how gross the gays were, and how there were boys at the school that he looked it in ways he didn’t look at the girls, and how if gays were disgusting and he was gay, did that mean that he was disgusting?

No, Ilia tells him firmly, you’re not disgusting. You’re Link. So what if he likes boys? That girl a few years older than them likes girls, and she’s not disgusting.

And he gives her a weak smile, and says thank you, and squeezes her hand.

--

Link is fifteen, and he’s off to a new school.

It was the competition - one of the riding competitions he’s been going to since he was old enough to sit on a horse. He actually has friends there - especially a girl called Malon, his age, his sports (show jumping), and just as enthusiastic about the beautiful horse her father’s farm had produced that Link had been riding since he was ten.

He and Epona move like a well-oiled machine. He, Malon, and Ilia are the only ones she lets near.

And at one of the competitions, an official from that school in the city comes up to him and Ilia, and offers them both a place there.

So he’s at a new school, awkward and unsure in his cargoes and hoodie, standing at the gate and the uniformed students and wondering what to do. Ilia has already run off to find Malon, and Link is left there, alone.

Well, not alone - there are two blondes coming up to him, a girl and a boy. The girl peers at him curiously for a moment, then smiles and offers him her hand and introduces herself as Zelda.

There’s an instant of immediate familiarity, one only emphasised when he turns his gaze to the boy next to her. Bright red eyes, as familiar as fire, as rain, as the sunrise. There’s surprise in those wide red depths, surprise and mutual recognition.

He knows even before the introductions are made they these two will change his life.

--

Link is seventeen, and it all comes crashing down.