Key Quest: Air and Fire by Judy Colella (first color ebook reader TXT) 📕

He headed down the ladder.

“Link! Where are you going?”

He’d been fully expecting her question, and almost laughed. “Down, Navi.”

“Why?”

He jumped to the ground when he’d only gotten about halfway down – the whole drop wasn’t all that far – and turned right. Another grouping of dead tree branches and stumps were sticking up from some thick green ground-cover; as soon as he climbed onto one of the stumps, two figures appeared on the branch of the larger stump facing his.

Every other time Link had encountered these two, they’d said nothing, done nothing – stood there, swaying side-to-side and staring at him. Nothing more. He’d tried talking to them, but a response had never been forthcoming. After the third time, Link had given up, deciding they were simply there to irritate anyone who came along.

This time, however, the flute-like objects tucked in their belts registered in his thinking as having major significance. Confident he was right about this, he took out the ocarina and played Zelda’s lullaby.

As soon as the notes faded, the two whatevers (they certainly weren’t Kokiri) drew out their flutes and to Link’s satisfaction and delight, one of them spoke. “Follow along with our song on your ocarina. We’ll lead you into it.” The being sounded like a boy, one who was somewhat older than Link.

Link nodded happily and put the ocarina to his lips, waiting.

The creatures played three notes in unison, repeated them, and lowered their flutes. Link played the notes back. Immediately, the one who hadn’t spoken tossed a green rupee into the grass by the foot of Link’s tree stump. The same three notes were then repeated, but a new one was added. Again, Link imitated the melody with no difficulty. Another rupee came his way. This continued until he’d played back a rather odd, eight-note tune and the collection of rupees included a blue and a red among the green gems.

The two players lowered their flutes, and now the other one said, “That was quite a nice session! As a token of our friendship, please take this gift!” He jumped down and came closer, laying a large heart-fruit on top of the pile of gems. Then he returned to his stump, the two beings nodded at each other, and they faded away.

Astonished but quite honestly thrilled, Link climbed down and gathered his reward. Who would have guessed? He laughed, tucking everything away.

“Link!”

“I know, Navi. Let’s go.” Smiling, he climbed the ladder and headed off again, this time making a sharp right into the next hollowed-out tree section.

These were what had been used throughout the Lost Woods to connect its multiple areas, with a few exceptions. One of these was facing him when he emerged on the other end – a tall stone doorway set into the side of the grassy wall. Link had wandered into this once, only to find his path blocked by some very odd-looking plants several feet down its length. They were like flowers in the shape of large green balls, and were incredibly heavy; he’d tried picking one, of course, so he could pass, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Strong as he was for his age, he simply wasn’t strong enough.

This annoyance wasn’t in his thinking at the moment. No, his mind was too busy recovering from the sudden and quite startling reappearance of the gigantic owl. He was perched on a branch to the right of the stone door, and had leaned down to greet Link.

“Over here, young man! Hoo! Hoo!”

As if I could have missed something your size blocking out half the sky…

“Link! It’s good to see you again!” the owl went on in a chatty way that set the boy’s teeth on edge.

Creatures that big shouldn’t be allowed to have normal conversations with creatures so much smaller as far as Link was concerned. Trying not to show that he was fixated on the bird’s razor-sharp beak, he acknowledged the words with a smile and a nod.

“Listen to this! Hoot! Hoot!”

Hoot, hoot to you, too. You sound ridiculous. “Certainly,” he said aloud.

“After going through the Lost Woods, you will come upon the Sacred Forest Meadow.”

Oh, great. Another meadow. Last time I was in one of those –

“That is a secret place where few people have ever walked.”

“I’ve heard of it, but – but not, I mean, yeah. Never could find it.”

“Sshh!”

Crap. “Sorry.” Link gulped. Why did he sometimes start babbling when he was afraid?

“No, I mean listen! What is that? I hear a mysterious tune…”

A what?

“You should listen for that tune, too! Hoo hoo ho!” He did that weird, disconcerting thing with his head again, and added, “If you are courageous, you will make it through the forest just fine.”

Courageous. Everyone is wondering if I’m courageous, he complained silently. Sheesh. He wanted to point out that he’d ‘made it through the forest just fine’ many times, but in the face of the bird’s size and obvious sense of authority, he opted for humble silence.

The owl readjusted his head. “All you have to do is follow your ears, and listen to the sounds coming from the forest! Hoot hoot!” And without further discussion, he spread his wings, pushed off from the branch, and flew away.

Sounds from the forest, eh? Great. What sounds –

“Link!”

“Navi!”

“Don’t you hear the song?”

“No. What song? What are you both talking about, anyway? ‘Mysterious melodies?’ Songs? All I can hear – ”

“Is the sound of your own voice! Be quiet and listen, Link!”

He took a deep breath. “Fine.” Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the silence. After a few seconds, the silence…was no longer silent. A lively little refrain was filtering through the air, repeating after several moments. He turned and noticed that it seemed to disappear. He turned again and it got a bit louder, but not much. A third turn and now he could hear it quite clearly. He opened his eyes and found he was facing the opening to the right of the stone door.

“Very good, Link.” She’d spoken quietly, for once not sounding smug. “I guess you should follow it, yes?”

He nodded and went forward, knowing that this would lead out to the Pond. He liked swimming there once on a while, the crystal water refreshing and peaceful. Intriguing, too – at its bottom a line of gems sparkled, but he’d never been able to dive far enough to reach them. It was this small body of water that had provided Link a glimpse of how he looked, its surface like glass, able to reflect his features when the sunlight was at a certain level of brightness.

The music was coming from the tunnel-like connection to the left of the Pond, so after getting a quick scoop of the deliciously cool liquid – his encounter with the owl had left him somewhat dry-mouthed – he headed that way, wondering how much further he’d have to go. The Woods, as far as he knew, were vast. His past wanderings had been limited by an understandable concern over getting too far away and being unable to find a source of food or water sufficient to sustain him on his return journey.

Several turns and a good twenty minutes later, he found himself in a part of the Lost Woods he’d never bothered to explore, mainly because he hadn’t seen anything interesting in that  direction. But now, with the melody louder than ever, he reconsidered his former opinions and kept going.

One last turn and he stopped, surprised. A kind of field with deep grass had opened before him, and in a stone wall straight ahead was a closed gate. It consisted of eight metal shafts with sharp, spear-like tops. Curious, he headed for this to see if it was also locked.

He’d taken only a few steps when he was halted by a loud animal howl on his left, and he instantly drew his Sword. It was a wolf – a really large one. He’d heard of these things which he’d been told were called Wolfos, and had seen crude drawings of them, but of course had never encountered one before.

To his dismay, the creature was every bit as horrifying – and then some – as the primitive sketches. Far bigger in every way, the thing had shaggy, silver-grey fur, a long muzzle ending in a maw full of pointy fang-like teeth, and lethal claws that raked at him as he swung his weapon to fend it off.

The thing swiped at Link’s head and he raised his shield in time to avoid being decapitated, then lashed out with the Sword to take advantage of the animal’s temporary vulnerability. It howled as the blade found its mark, but only backed off for a second.

Link’s heart was pounding like crazy and his alert levels were at their highest. Because of his wounds and the subsequent euphoria following his intake of the small heart fruit, even his battle with Gohma hadn’t gotten his adrenaline flowing this fast.

The fight settled into a kind of rhythm, the Wolfos clawing at him and being fended off by the shield, Link striking back as quickly as he could after this and cutting into its body, the creature backing away, then lunging forward again for a new attack. This continued for what felt to Link like hours, but which in reality had only been a few very intense minutes. In the end, the wounds the boy inflicted took their toll. The Wolfos emitted a final yelp of agony, collapsed to its side, and Link finished it off quickly, stabbing it through the heart.

Like the Stalchildren, this creature’s body disappeared in a sudden flash of bluish light, a light that resembled a kind of broad flame. And then, as had been the pattern of things in the Great Deku Tree, the gate slid open, only this time the bars slid down into the ground since there was no ceiling into which to rise.

Link closed his eyes and waited a bit until his heartbeat became closer to normal and he could breathe easily once more. “Okay,” he said quietly, opening his eyes again. “Let’s go.”

On the other side of the gate the pathway traversed horizontally in front of a high, mossy stone wall. To the left, the path ended at a pool of water that was level with the ground. To the right, he could see it made a left turn at the end of the wall. Before this, he found a small alcove on his left, and would have ignored it except for something shiny gleaming at him from under the foliage growing there. He slashed through it with the Sword and found a large blue rupee. Nice.

He kept going to the end of the path and turned left.

Ploomp!

“Ouch! Hey” A Deku Scrub, but this one was different from any of the others he’d encountered. The ones in the Great Deku Tree had been about his size, and dark green with brownish bodies. The one in the stump in the Lost Woods was smaller and light green, it’s body more yellowish. This thing, on the other hand, was larger, it’s covering orange and red, and looked like a pile of autumn leaves – angry ones.

Shield up, Link stalked forward, furious. The little creep! He deflected the missile and hit the Scrub square in the face. It squealed and ran off.

“Come back here!” Link raced after it, determined to either get it to calm down or –

Ploomp!

Nope. It wasn’t going to calm down. When he cornered it at last, it continued its aggressive behavior, clearly determined to do the boy harm, so he did the only thing he could. With a yell, Link executed