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

“Eh? Oh, I see. You’re just a kid and you can’t read yet!” He laughed.

That wasn’t what Link had said at all, and he failed to see anything funny about it regardless. His expression grim but determined, he reached into his satchel and withdrew Zelda’s letter. This seemed like the right kind of situation for it. Not bothering to speak, he handed it to the guard.

The man took it, managing to look surprised and skeptical at the same time. “Oh…this is – this is surely Princess Zelda’s handwriting!”

Now how would he know that? Link asked himself, surprised. Maybe all the guards were trained to recognize it. That sort of made sense, actually.

“Well! Let’s see,” the man continued, holding it closer to his face, his eyes scanning the lines of writing. “Hmmm. Okay…” He nodded and began reading it aloud. “‘This is Link. He is under my orders to save Hyrule.” He lowered the letter to stare at the boy, eyebrows raised, and returned it.

So that’s what she wrote! thought Link as he put the note back into his satchel. Good. Maybe now he’ll respect me enough to open that gate!

“Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! What kind of funny game has our Princess come up with now?! Hahahaha!!!!!”

Or not. He drew himself up and glared.

The man put up a hand, continuing to chuckle. “Okay, okay, all right!” he choked. “You can go now – just be careful…Mr. Hero! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!” He pounded on the ground with the butt-end of his spear, and the gate slid open sideways.

Did all Hylian adults get this weird? the outraged boy wondered. Sure, he wasn’t exactly a hero, but then, that had been the guard’s word, not his or Zelda’s. He threw back his shoulders, told himself there was probably nothing to worry about on the other side of that gate, and began to go through.

“By the way, Mr. Hero – ”

I don’t suppose Navi can bite…

“If you’re going to climb Death Mountain, you should have a proper shield. Looks like you’ve got one under that wooden one – I’d take it out if I were you. This is, after all, an active volcano!”

Gulp. Link knew what a volcano was – Saria had actually told him about them once, although he couldn’t remember why. “Er, thanks.” He reached back and removed the Kokiri shield, took off the Hylian one, replaced the wooden shield in its original position on the scabbard’s hook, then plunked the metal one over it. “Bye.” He gave the man a brief smile, his ego still smarting, and went forward.

“I’d like to ask you a favor.”

Link stopped again. He raised an eyebrow at the guard. He said nothing.

The man actually looked a bit sheepish. “Have you been to the Happy Mask Shop, by any chance?”

The Happy Mask Shop. Link recalled hearing that name before, but…ah, right! The woman looking for her dog. Richard, was it? She said the way to her house was through an alley next to that shop. “No, but I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, you can’t miss it, really, if you’re in Town. It only opened recently, in fact, and everyone is talking about it.”

Link’s eyebrow rose a bit further.

“Ah, yes, well. My little boy pesters me for a popular mask, but I don’t have time to go there, you see.”

His little boy – he owned a little boy?! That was disturbing!

“So could you go and get it for me the next time you’re in the Market? If you don’t feel like it, that’s okay, too.”

I don’t feel like it. “Sure.” I may never feel like it. “What do I ask for?” What else do you own? A little girl, too, maybe? A few owls? Maybe a farmer or two?

“Anyway, it would sure make my kid happy.”

“Your kid?” So he owned goats as well. What a strange man.

“Yeah, my son; he’s a really good boy, and I’d like to show him how much I appreciate him, you know? The mask is a Kee-something. Keaton, maybe.” He shrugged. “And hey, sorry I gave you a hard time, kid. It just struck me funny that the Princess…well, never mind. Be safe.”

Feeling suddenly like a complete idiot, Link told the guard it was all right, and took off up the mountain path. The little boy wasn’t the guard’s property, he was his son! Of course! Link almost slapped himself. For while Kokiri children didn’t have parents, they did call the Great Deku Tree their father, and he called them his sons and daughters. This was why Link even knew what the man had meant, and also why he’d so badly misinterpreted the reference at first.

“Great,” he muttered, glad no one had heard the sarcastic rant in his head. He probably would  go to the mask shop for the man, to make up for his idiotic misunderstanding of the man’s request – assuming he got back from this part of his quest in one piece.

Thud! Ker-thud! Ker-thud!

Dumb assumption. What came at him from around a bend in the path nearly made his heart stop.

“Tektites!” Navi shrieked.

Okay, now, his ear hurt, too. He honestly didn’t care what the thing was called – it looked like a strange version of Gohma. Not as big, of course, but with a single red eye on the front of a disc-shaped body. Unlike the spider, however, this thing had some kind of hard shell-like covering, and only four legs. No legs would have been better. In fact, no big, nasty creature leaping at him would have been best.

He yanked out the Sword and waited until it was almost on top of him, then, eyes closed, he jabbed upward right as it leaped into the air over his head. Fully expecting the thing to land on him, squash him flat, and start eating him, he was taken aback when the blade pierced the underbelly of the creature, and he opened his eyes in time to see it fall apart. Literally. The legs detached, the eye flew off, and the center crumbled into a grotesque little pile of rubble.

There was no time to wonder about this, though, since another one was bounding toward him. He did the same thing, and then repeated his actions a third time on the next one. Where were these stupid things coming from?

A fourth appeared on the trail ahead, but wasn’t moving. Link wasn’t sure if it had learned from its fellows’ deaths or it if was simply waiting for him to get closer. He paused, caught his breath, moved forward, and when he was only a few yards in front of it, the monster attacked.

Stab! Crunch! Clatter! Dead.

Was this how the mountain got its name? By its baddies being so easy to kill? He frowned. Nah.

Directly in front of him now was a massive boulder that looked like it was blocking a hole in the mountain. Beside and in front of this was a much smaller boulder, although it was still quite a bit larger than Link. It caught his attention because of its color – unlike the base stone of the mountain itself, this one was an odd brownish-green with inexplicable speckles neatly spaced along the top curve.

Whatever – it was getting dark, and Link realized that because he was no longer in the village, he’d have to deal with time functioning in its normal way. So he ignored the intriguing object and made a hairpin turn onto an upward ramp along the mountainside. No more of the crusty spider-like things were anywhere in evidence, but he quickened his pace in case any more were lurking around behind him.

When he reached the top, he stopped to get his bearings. It was then that he thought to ask Navi where they were actually headed besides up.

“There’s a village up here, too,” she told him. “Don’t you remember what Impa said?”

Oh, right! The Mor…er, no, Gorons. “Of course. I think I got a little distracted, though, between almost getting eaten by a one-eyed crusty thing and being laughed at by the guard.”

Navi giggled.

Link sighed. “Let’s – huh.” He’d been about say, “let’s go,” but saw that another of those strange, brown-green rocks with the speckles was sitting to his immediate left. He started to approach it.

“Later, Link! The sun is almost down!”

He nodded and set off again on the path. To his right, it dropped away to the previous level which was now far enough down to cause severe injury if he fell from it. When it finally took a sharp left turn, the edge had become a cliff – falling off at that point would have meant certain death. Ah! Death Mountain – yes?

A wall of rock was to his left as he took this bend, and he decided to stay close to it. A moment later, he was grateful he had, but not for the obvious benefit of avoiding a tumble into the abyss on his right.

Making an incredible amount of noise, one of the brownish-green boulders suddenly appeared at the head of the path and rolled directly down the center. Had Link been standing there, he would have gotten severely flattened. As it was, the thing came close enough to push the boy sideways against the wall. He wasn’t hurt, but figured it might be a really, really good idea to run now.

“Look, Link! An opening! It probably leads into the Goron’s Village! Hurry!”

Since he was already hurrying faster than he probably ever had, he didn’t bother to reply. They passed an interesting-looking opening on the left and a large platform of some kind directly in front of him, but the boy completely ignored both, wanting only to get off that path and into what he hoped was a friendly little village.

 At first he was unable to tell what he was coming to. The tunnel into which he’d plunged was dark, the air dry and earthy-smelling. Not like a forest, though. More like…earth. Dirt. And rocks. Soon, however, light entered from the far end, and the closer he got to it, the more he could see that what lay ahead was more a cave than an actual village.

At the mouth of the tunnel, he stopped and looked around before coming out. He’d been right about the cave-like quality of the place, only it looked like it had been excavated and organized into three distinct levels defined by ramps on each, which surrounded a huge, open area. In the middle of this, and on the bottom level, was something he would have called a clay urn except for the size of it. Its top reached above the second level, and it took up a major portion of the floor on which it sat. Two handles flanked a smiling face, but a face that was definitely not Kokiri, Human, or Hylian. Goron, then.

If the face on the urn into which he could have fit his entire tree-cottage was a true representation of the Gorons, they were a people with wide, pleasant features, completely round, innocent-looking eyes and…wait. A terrifying thought came to him as he was considering the Goron features. What if this urn thing was a normal-sized object? Something one of them had casually set down on the floor? That would mean they were –

“Huh?”

“Ahhh!”

The first sound came from what Link had assumed was another of those strangely-speckled boulders. The second was Link shrieking as he jumped back several feet, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get away.

The boulder had suddenly moved, somehow opening into a very large being with legs, feet, arms and hands – and the same pleasant face as the one on the giant urn. It looked down at the boy, scratching its side with one hand (Link honestly couldn’t tell the thing’s gender).

Link gave the Goron a weak smile.

“OH…I’M SO HUNGRY,” it groused in a deep, unbelievably loud voice.

Was this the normal way they greeted strangers. Was it their way of warning the visitor that he was about to get eaten by a huge,