The Hero's Squire

Chapter 4

Particle by particle, Rat's body knit together, and the light set him down gently. He held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut, still clinging to the swordsman's boot. But his body kept its form. The journey seemed to be over. Sand pressed against his cheek. The sound of water rushing filled his ears. Carefully, a splinter at a time, he pried open one eye.

The swordsman stared down at him in shock. They had landed on an island in the center of a lake. A multi-tiered city floated above the blue water, supported by white stone columns that glowed with blue light. Waterfalls spilled from the bridges and archways, as smoothly as the sands that used to spill from the rim of Karusa Valley. Rat was suddenly, ravenously thirsty. He licked his dry lips.

Link pulled his ankle out of Rat's fingers and squatted down to the boy's level. "How did you follow me?"

Rat started to say he didn't know, then the sun rose. Sun beams pierced the waterfalls and reflected off the surface of the lake, stinging his eyes like a thousand needles. Rat cried out. He slapped his hand over his eyes and moaned.

A light cloth settled on Rat's face, dimming the light. The swordsman shifted Rat onto his back, lifted him under the arms, and dragged him into the shadow of a giant stone.

"Don't move," Link said. "I'll be back." His footsteps scurried up a ladder.

Rat couldn't move if he wanted to. He lay where the swordsman left him, longing for his mother, trying not to cry. He pressed the cloth to his face-it was soft like a shirt, and smelled like sweat and horses. Why was he here? He should have stayed in the Depths. He never should have pulled the cannon's trigger.

A splash sounded on his left, then a rubber slap as two feet landed on stone. "Good gracious." A woman spoke, her voice fluid, like water tumbling over stones. "You poor child. Lie still, now. You're safe." She lifted her voice to the bridge above them. "I need a stretcher."

The swordsman's boots tapped down on the island, rejoining her. "I was going to ask you to come to us, but he followed me."

"How?"

Rat peeked above the shirt as the swordsman shrugged his shoulders.

"No matter. You made the right choice." The woman a green giant with the wide head of a fish. Jewelry glittered around her neck and waist.

Rat recoiled from her hand.

A red figure burst from the water, somersaulted, and landed lightly beside Link. He straightened to his full size, twice the height of a Hylian. His pointed teeth flashed with a smile in his red, shark-like face. "I felt you call, Link-" Then his eyes fell on Rat, and his jaw dropped open.

"Darling," the fish-woman said. "Link needs you to separate the gloom from this child, like you did with the sludge, then I will heal him. Can you do that?"

Rat clutched the shirt. Shivering, he curled into himself. His heart raced. Those teeth. An enormous trident hung on the fish-man's back. Rat saw himself skewered through the stomach and lifted high like a flapping trophy.

"Of course, of course I will," the fish-man said. "But what happened to him?"

Link slipped between the couple and kneeled over Rat. "This is King Sidon and Queen Yona," he said. "They're Zora." He lifted his face to the woman. "He's going back into shock. Sidon."

"You want me to do it now? Here?" Sidon glanced around the barren island.

"Yes." Link nodded. "I've moved him too much already."