"And so you haunt me.
Always with me, you are the invisible diner at our table, the constant presence that trails me as I go about my daily routine...
In the darkness of a closed-lidded world, you are alive and vital, unchanging, mine.
You are the ghost of everything that once was lovely...
a shadow casts its majesty over everything that remains."

~Samantha Bruce-Benjamin, The Art of Devotion

This chapter is dedicated to my readers. Thank you for putting up with me.

"Anyone can use a little love, young one. Even those who have passed on," she said, crouched down over the fresh earth.

He waited with the tiny seeds in his hand, waited for his grandma to dig the little hole, and then she'd tell him 'go ahead,' and he'd drop them inside - insignificant granules that would soon spring to life. Insignificant, then something more. Something beautiful.

Every morning it was like this; he'd walk a few beats ahead, his grandmother slower behind him, and they would end up past the wooden gates to tend the Kakariko Graveyard. Even though she didn't need to and it was a job not given to her, she took it on because no one else did. And every spring, those who passed on would have life sprung from them once again, in the form of yellow daffodils that peppered the landscape like fireflies.

"Be mindful of the princess," she said as he stepped too close to one of the headstones, and he jumped back, startled.

"Apologies, your highness," he said solemnly to the ground.

His grandma chuckled. "Doesn't matter how high up you once were. We all end up down here sooner or later."

And the little boy stared at the soil, knelt down to touch it. He waited with his palm pressed flat against the grass that had begun to grow there, and listened.

Only a breeze whispered through the air, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Spring smelled sweet, and he stayed there for a long while with a slight smile upon his face.

"How did she die?" he asked.

"Oh I don't rightly know. They were both lonely, these two," she said, pointing between the princess' grave and to another beside a large tree.

"The one I'm named after?" he asked.

"That's the one," she said. "Go ahead," she motioned toward him, "dig a little around his headstone and put these in the hole, will you?" She handed him a couple of seeds. They fell into his palms, and he looked at them.

"What are they?" he asked.

"Glory Lilies," she said, "because a hero like that deserves to be honored."

He found a good spot and began digging with his hands, the soil soft and malleable.

"Hi Link," he said, "these are gonna look real nice when they grow." He dropped the seeds down, and covered the hole, patting gently. "I'm sorry you're lonely," he whispered, "can I do anything to help?" He waited again, closed his eyes, his palm again pressed atop the mound of earth.

"Let's go, young one. It'll start to rain again soon and we best get back home." She held out her hand and he stood and took it, peering oddly back at the hero's grave as they walked away.

"Don't go in there!" she yelled from their house one day, to her young grandson across the way.

He was peering inside a window at the old creepy house, standing on his tip-toes and rubbing the dirty glass with his sleeve.

"I wanna see what's inside!" he yelled back, squinting to make out whatever resided in the darkened interior.

His grandma continued to rake the leaves in front of their house, but said, "There's nothing in there anymore!" She shook her head and mumbled to herself, something about curiosity and the little boy having too much of it.

"But there are voices!" he yelled to her and resumed his search through the window, lowering his voice he said to himself, "I can hear you." He strained to see anything at all, but he was certain there were people inside.

Like the people at the graveyard, too.

That night was the first time he saw it, the figure standing near the window in his bedroom.

It was shadowed and hooded, red eyes that glowed from darkness.

It was terrifying and he yelped, covered himself in his blankets. All he could hear was his breathing, and he tried to hold his breath so he could be perfectly quiet. There was a heaviness in his chest and he wanted to look, to see if it had gone, but he couldn't bring himself to remove the covers.

It returned almost every night after that.

When he would finally sleep, his dreams were plagued with memories of his even younger self, and memories that he had never experienced at all. His mind would reenact the village he was born in, just next to the Kokiri Forest, and the awful people who lived there.

He remembered being banished from the town, the townsfolk who had uttered accusations at himself and his grandma. "Cursed Hero", they snarled. "Wretched Hylian Lineage", they said. The tiny blonde boy named Link had no idea why they all hated him.

His grandma would tell him, "they're afraid of you."

And he'd ask, "why?"

She'd cradled him in her long, rough cloak, and said, "with heroes comes disaster. Without trouble, there's no need for someone to fix it, and these folks don't like trouble."

"I'm a hero?" he asked.

"You never know," she said.

He would also dream of the Kokiri Forest, of a little tree house with a little bed inside. Lots of children lived there who never seemed to grow, and he made a friend in his dreams, a girl named Saria.

He spoke to her when he slept, and he spoke to her even while he was awake.

The villagers of Kakariko chuckled at the young boy with the imaginary friend.

One afternoon, when he was just about 15, Saria opened the door to the creepy old house. She turned the locked knob with ease and giggled, whispered to him, "Come here."

"I'm not supposed to go in there," he said, remembering the warnings his grandma had spoke of.

"It is important, you'll see," Saria said, and she disappeared inside.

He found an image of a beautiful man, with sun lightened locks and the eyes of a jewel. "I know this guy," he said to her,

and back she responded, "How?"

"He's visited me almost every night since I was younger."

Saria took the picture in her hands, and smiled to herself. "You should try talking to him, then," she said and added, "his name is Sheik."

"You know him?" he asked, baffled.

"Of course I do!" She thought for a moment, a finger to her lips, and continued with, "he's very lonely and hasn't yet found a place to rest. I'm sure he would appreciate someone noticing him. Especially you."

So that night he waited in bed, nervous energy pooling in his stomach. His eyes flickered to every corner of the room, waiting for the shadow to appear.

When it finally did he tried to quench his fear, and he spoke aloud to the figure near the window.

"S-Sheik?" he whispered.

And a strange noise, a hum, a rip in the universe. He lay petrified, scared out of his mind.

The shadow said nothing but its red eyes continued to glow, and it began to move forward, closer, closer still.

As it neared he smelled something familiar. It started with a faint burning smell, but then turned to amber - a honeyed mixture of incense and maple syrup. Sweet. Gentle.

And when the shadow placed a wispy hand on his forehead,

all felt right with the world.

The ghosts he became accustomed to, and he actually looked forward to spending time with them.

His grandma would watch him with one eye squinted, shake her head at the poor timing that her little one had been brought into this world.

She had thrust a sword into his hands at sixteen, the weight of the metal pulling his arms down to the earth until its tip stabbed the grass.

"It's so heavy," he gasped, slightly bent over and awkward with a blade almost as big as he was.

"And rightly so," she said, hands at her hips. "Work on that wooden post over there until you've cut clean through it." She motioned to the beginnings of a porch, what it belonged to seemingly abandoned for a time.

"It's hard to lift," he started, wincing at the weight.

"Such is the weight of this world," she had said.

And it wasn't until dawn that he laid atop the grass and let sleep take him, the beam speckled with grooves here and there, cuts from the blade inconsistent. Saria sat beside him and gently petted his dampened hair, her soft humming like a residual lullaby that could not say goodbye to this world.

He worked on that post for almost two days, and when the final splinter was cut and the beam toppled over he internally congratulated himself although his slight disappointment lingered.

He wanted to be strong, wanted to wield the sword like it was part of his arm, part of his being. And even though he grew to be better at it, his skill still did not resemble what he knew he could do, and he couldn't help but to think he was trying to be someone he was not.

It had been a long time since he had visited the graveyard, but he did so again on that day. And beside the glory lilies he sat and pondered, talked to the princess and the hero and the others around them.

When his grandma came by like she usually did, she tended to the grounds but inside wondered how she would even begin to tell him that he needed to stop. That he needed to grow up, face his future. The fact that she had passed on seven years ago and he had continued to keep talking to her as if she were alive troubled her. So that visit was the last.

"Say goodbye, my grandson," she had said, "say goodbye to me and everyone else you hold onto that is no longer here. I cannot continue on and neither can they if you persist to cling so tightly."

He did not look to her. "Why must I do that?" he asked.

"There are many reasons why, but if I had to put it plainly I'd say people are going to think you're crazy, and I don't want you to live the rest of your life alone, with the dead. Normal folks just don't get this sort of thing."

"What if I said I didn't care?"

There was silence for a long while after that, until he heard a soft "I love you. Always." and that was goodbye. For real.

It had made him angry. The reality of his situation begun to set in - that he had been alone for a long time, going through the motions, interacting with hardly anyone - so he had said a loud, "fuck you" to all the spirits he knew and heard who knew and heard him too and then he just shut them out. Stopped listening.

But not all listened to him, and that night his red-eyed visitor appeared as usual near the window beside his bed in the darkened room. He turned to his side and pulled the covers higher around him, closed his eyes tight and tried his best to ignore it, but he felt the bed dip slightly anyway, the shadowy form making physical contact with this world. Something which took a great deal of energy to do.

And for the first time it spoke to him, a voice that sparked his nerves.

"So this is goodbye?" it asked.

He didn't answer.

"I will be here when you change your mind." it said after a moment.

And as he tried to open his mouth to tell Sheik to fuck off too, something strange enveloped him. It entered his mouth, wrapped itself around his body, covered him in its shadowy wisps like a cocoon.

That, that was an occasion he would never speak of to anyone. It had been affection from beyond. There was no way he could put into words what he experienced, just that he had felt the warmth from ages ago. It had lit up his heart, ignited it. It was sensorial, physical. It was strange, illogical. Yet the most perplexing thing of all, was that he stupidly, irrationally fell in love with it. 'It' being many things - the person the shadow once was, the experience, the memories - and it stayed with him from that point on. And even though he spoke to none of them again, including Sheik, that feeling lingered for five years. For five years he pretended to be normal, and the town he lived in for most of his life finally got to know who he was.

He was cheerful and helpful. People discovered they liked to be around him. He applied to work on the tourist trails, found out he had a natural talent with horses, and spent almost every day telling those who followed him up and down the mountain the stories of old Hyrule with an addictive enthusiasm.

And even though he had moved on from those 'other things', he still reveled in their history, and he became quite proficient in it, reading, researching, tying all the little bits together and rejoicing that even though he had an odd gift, that these people were in fact real. Very real. Had been real, anyway.

It was really not that long ago that he had been walking home when he saw the door of the old house slightly open. It had been a nondescript night after a long day at work, the fall air slightly crisp, the crunch of the golden leaves underneath his feet. It was odd, for it had been locked since, gosh, the last time he had visited with Saria, years ago?

It called out to him.

He couldn't very well leave it open. But he also didn't want to go near it.

Even stranger was that the door had several locks, his grandma being the only one who had a key.

So he had went home quickly, retrieved the keys from the place they had always been, and returned to the old house to lock it up again, but the smell inside halted him as he stood near the crack in the doorway. A honeyed mixture of incense and maple syrup. Sweet. Gentle.

"Damn it," he whispered.

And it tempted him inside.

Inside was just how he remembered it. Dusty, creepy, cobwebs everywhere. Stuff upon stuff all over the place. A hurried exit, it looked like, with nowhere near enough time to care about what was being left behind. His grandma had always been protective of this place. Kept it hidden, kept it the same. Everyone had thought it belonged to her - an unusual old woman with too many things who needed more space to hoard it all in.

But now, being older, wiser, he realized that it was not. And not being confused by or swayed by the voices in his ears like the previous visit here, he investigated from a new persepective, and the past unfolded before his very eyes.

The spirits had begun to make sense. All these people around him, they were all connected. He traced them back to a specific time, a particular stamp in Hyrule's history where they all had played a part of a considerably significant event. As a child he knew there were dead people in the graveyard, and that some of them were royalty. Some of them not. One of them a hero. But he never thought about it much more than that. His spirits, these spirits, weren't lingering randomly from whenever, no. They were from a precise age, a precise lifetime - like a rip in the universe, a rip in dimensions and time itself.

The house had had three key visitors. Impa, whom he discovered was the proper owner of the house, a Sheikah woman and sage who had spent her days protecting the Princess. Then the Hero of Time, Link, whom he was named after, and another Sheikah - a male named Sheik. Everything inside seemed to be theirs, whether it be the multitude of books and relics belonging to Impa, to the array of weapons stored by the hero and evidence of his and Sheik's short time spent there.

This web of a story had begun to unfold. A love affair. How Hyrule tried to extinguish it from existence. Disease. Escape. Failure. Promises. Expectations. Disappointment. Every evening he'd carry over a broom and a dust pan, some garbage bags, tried to make it seem like he was cleaning the place up. In reality he was reading. Everything. And for some reason he felt like he was meant to.

"Why, Zelda?" he had whispered one night, baffled by what he had been reading. The candlelight beside him had flickered, and in that dusty old forgotten home he heard her voice again, and she said,

"I will tell you everything I know."

He let her back in. Only her. And she respected his wishes and only spoke once he had initiated.

She told him she was sorry.

It had been an overwhelming amount of information. He had left her with a quick 'goodnight' and returned home with a slight headache and a dizziness that was all too familiar. So he turned on his laptop, checked his emails - one particularly catching his attention:

[I read one of the letters on your blog, the last one from Sheik to Impa. Did I read it correctly? Were Link and Sheik involved? I am attending Hyrule Academy in the city, and I've never read anything about this before. Could you shed some light on this? Thank you.]

And all of it had started to make sense.