The Wind Waker

XXXII

IT WAS half a week later, when Link, Tetra, and Medli found themselves marching through the middle of a thick, jungle of an island. Link's sword wasn't quite sharp enough to make a big difference in cutting away the plants that blocked their way - he wished he'd thought to have it looked at before they'd left Dragon's Roost.

There was a bit of a shake in the ground, and the group stopped for a moment.

"What do you think it is?" Medli asked them.

"I don't know," Link answered. "This island doesn't appear to have active volcanism."

"How do you know?" Tetra asked. "You seem to act like the temple is for sure here."

"I'm... confident it might be here."

"Face it," Tetra said, "you have no idea where we're going."

"We were led here," he said, "there's got to be something on this island somewhere."

"Want me to fly up and scout some more?" Medli asked.

"No," Link said, "the canopy is too thick to see anything. If this temple does reach underground, it may not be very visible from above."

"Great," Tetra said, "it could be a hole in the ground, and we could spend the next thousand years looking for it and never find it. Maybe you should make a hurricane tear through here and clear all the trees out."

"That is not how the wind waker functions," Link retorted in annoyance. "I have to persuade the wind to go in a different direction, and I just can't summon a violent storm."

"Then a strong gust of wind," Tetra rolled her eyes, "I don't know. Anything to knock all this out of the way. Some kind of power of Farore or something."

"I don't think Farore would very much like that."

They spun around and looked behind them.

"Linder?" Link said with a hopeful smile.

"No," a groaning, wooden sound answered. A korok slowly drifted down on a spinning clover leaf from branches above, and landed on the ground. "Makar."

The korok was stouter than Linder was, and Linder was already the tallest korok Link had seen, reaching nearly Link's own height. Makar was more the height of one of Rose's children on Outset.

"Oh, um," Link struggled to remember, "I met you right before I left right?"

The Korok's leaf mask hid what was probably a derisive expression. "It couldn't have been at any other time, considering we were all trapped beneath a gigantic monster."

"Um, yes...," Link said, somewhat sheepishly. "What are you doing here?"

"Spreading seeds of the great deku tree, as our ceremony you witnessed was the beginning of. I also, it seems, am here to keep pirates from destroying a beautiful forest."

Not again. Did the korok's have a feud with her too?

"We aren't going to destroy any forest," Medli reassured. "We are looking for a temple of the goddesses."

Makar suddenly went stiff. 

"Who has told you of this?" he said with an edge in his voice.

"A talking boat," Link said.

Makar was still for a moment. Then he pressed his wooden fingers against his mask, in a way that seemed to communicate frustration.

"Him," Makar said simply. "Of course. The king who refused to die. The king who cared more for his own people then protecting the innocents in the forests."