Destiny Disturbed. II- Wisdom

Part II: Wisdom.

–
33 Din

Ganondorf has been gone an awful long time, more than the two days he claimed to need.
He must be up to no good. Heavens, the storm's finally clearing. It must have stretched all the way to the forest.

--

34 Din

I have a bad feeling this entry is going to be longer than whole weeks combined.

My dream changed last night. For weeks now I have been having the same one. I've written about it many times, so I will not write about it again. And it was an omen, too. Just like the dream was before. Only something's different. I'll try to remember. It's easier on paper.

The stormclouds were the same, ominous as ever. And lightning cracked in the distance. I was waiting for the light from the forest and the fairy and the Emerald Stone when the dream changed. It went like this:

The wind changed direction, became strong and cool instead of stagnant. But the clouds lingered, forming a kind of funnel over the castle. Issuing from the windows of the towers. And the clouds became smoke, and there was fire, but a quiet fire. Secret. Nobody knew it was there. Just the smoke-clouds overhead gave it away. Then the light from the forest came just like normal.

I looked at a map today and tried to base the change in the dream against geography. The new wind that stood against the stormclouds came from the west. The desert, I'm sure of it.

Diary, it was an omen. I'm so confused. I don't know what to think.

Ganondorf arrived back at the castle from his leave in the negotiations today. Ever since he came weeks ago I've been having the dream like I said before. But today was different. I don't know how to say it. I'll try to describe it and then I can flip back a few entries and compare what I say now to what I already said about him.

I had to appear with my father today to reopen the negotiations. Really, I was like a little perfect political doll. All I was there for was to make it seem like all of the royal family cared, to make Hyrule seem more forgiving than we really are. But in my nicest dress I saw everything.

The moment he burst into the room, I could already notice something strange about him, something different from the many times he had entered the throne room before. He came with no guards this time, and he did not polish his armor. In truth, I would have said he looked a bit disheveled but remarkably it was anything but. Always he's haggard, strained, with a forced neutral expression that makes him look older than maybe he is. Either that or a nasty sneer he makes when he thinks nobody's looking.

Today he seemed tired, as if he had been riding for a long time. But in a lot of ways he looked unexpectedly invigorated, as if he had gotten a good share of sleep. He carried himself differently-- straight, not ramrod, but pulled to his enormous full height with good posture. His steps were confident, fluid, and he wasn't so careful not to clunk his boots on the carpet. He's no longer worried about seeming nonthreatening. I think a few of the other presiding lords in attendance were a bit intimidated by his boldness.

For once he didn't hide his real expressions. He was worried, a little angry, and clearly would take no nonsense from the court. I know he practices dark magic, and I've looked up what horrible things it can do to the body over time. But strangest of all, what traces of damage I've seen on him were faded almost as if he was mending. Some of the uglier creases in his face were gone, sunken angles fleshing smoothly up, and the tight, drawn lips were relaxed and more natural. I fancied I was hallucinating from my tight bodice. He looked strangely healthier, and because of that, also not so old and weathered.

I'd heard stories of people getting struck by lightning and somehow gaining back hearing or sight. But I've never heard of anybody being struck by lightning and undoing years of black magic abuse. It's ridiculous. Maybe if lightning was made up of life-force. But how can anybody be struck by life? What in the world can feed somebody pure, concentrated spiritual vigor?

I thought I was imagining it all until he opened his mouth to speak. His voice was the real sign that something was not at all the same with him. I don't know how everybody else missed it. They didn't notice at all. Ganondorf always spoke in controlled tones to my father: low and restrained and sort of greasy-feeling, like chunks of cold fat mutton stuck in the back of the throat. His words were usually just strong enough to fill father's ears, and those were full of yeses and pandering. And hoarse at that, as if he spent a lot of time roaring and nobody ever heard it anywhere.

But today his voice filled more than father's ears: it filled the entire hall! He wasn't even yelling, but his voice was just... big and deep and full. It was strange to hear my father talk back to that huge, rich voice when he was usually the one who made the demands. And again, like that man had gotten a good sleep the sandy rasp in his speech had vanished. Maybe his throat got burned from muttering evil words, and somehow it's healed over again as good as new.

When my father sat I got a good look at the awful face. Diary, I wish I hadn't. I like to think I'm good at reading everybody. It sort of happens when you spend all your life watching and never doing. But I don't know what to think anymore.

His eyes were scary, but not in the usual way. They were the same shape. With the same intensity, the same yellow fierce glare-stare. But where they once invoked fear, his eyes falling on me reminded me of something different. Before I had the omens I thought I was going crazy because when he looked around I could sort of feel every little bit of his badness behind the stare. He radiated it. He'd look at us and I would feel 'bad, bad' way deep in me where things just have to be true.

It's the reverse now. I'm scared of him because when he looked upon us today I think my heart stopped for a second. Instead of 'bad, bad,' the voice in my heart said 'good, good.' I almost couldn't look at him because in my head he exhaled good things that were too stark-- he held a fire to my eyes when before he'd been dark. Even though he was the same man. It was too sudden. Instead of my spine freezing as if I was going to be eaten when he looked at me I clenched up with much nicer, more tender things. Like he was coming to watch over us and not to kill us.

Overnight, he stands for the complete opposite of what he had been before. Diary, only days ago he terrified me! I wanted to run away and hide from him. Now I just have this outlandish urge to run up to him and call him uncle or something like that. I suppose my hunches are usually right but I don't know if I should trust myself anymore. It could all be a trick. If I listen to my intuition, he went from malevolent to righteous in one day. One day!

His eyes fell on everybody in the court in turn when he faced us and when he came to me I smiled at him. I didn't know what got into me, Diary. It just came out. It wasn't proper for me to smile at all when his news concerned demons on the loose. His presence was mesmerizing, though, and I couldn't help it. And instead of passing over me like he usually did when he pretended to heed the royal family he really and truly looked at me, right in the eyes.

He smiled back, diary. And not one of his scary hungry grins. It was only a twitch, a brief little ghost of an awkward jerk in the corner of his mouth. As if he was very bad at smiling. But it was one. I could see it, it was there! He really and truly smiled at me!

As if things couldn't get any stranger. I've never seen anybody seem so different before. He's the same man but he feels like a completely separate person. He's changed, just like how the nice strong wind started blowing from the desert in my dream.

But he is really, really good at pretending. Maybe he's just trying harder to seem nice now. Maybe he's  just as rotten, deep down inside? But why would he try so hard if nobody was going to notice it? I think I'm the only one who sees something different in him. I don't understand how nobody saw that for the first time ever before the court his words were one hundred percent sincere.

Goodnight, Diary. Tomorrow I'm going to spy on him more and see it it's really true. I can't write anymore tonight. I'm going on and on because I'm just so confused.

I hope I'm not right. I really hope that he has changed. I hope that he's been completely transformed. I hope that whatever happened to him happened really hard and now he's become the best man ever and he sees how awful he was and is guilty over it. It would serve him right. And it would serve my father right for being mean to him. He thinks I don't notice, but I do. Just like about everything else.

Goodnight for real this time.

–

36 Din

Oops. Ganondorf caught me snooping. I think. Maybe he was spying on me at the same time I was spying on him. He's tricky that way. But he didn't make a scene-- he caught me in the library last night after I spent the whole day thinking he wasn't noticing. I snuck out of bed like normal to put back the books I borrowed in secret and he was already there expecting me when nobody else was around. He even kept a fire going just so he could sit with a book and wait.

He had a poetry book. I didn't even know he liked things like books, much less poetry. But he read it in a way that made me feel that it wasn't because he'd had this personality change. It was weird. He was reading it aloud when I ran into him, to himself. Or maybe to me, if he knew I was going to be there. I have to admit it, he has a great voice for war sagas.

He asked me what I had been doing earlier looking through his things and sneaking about like a thief.

Really late at night in the library with no guards around on patrol to save me anyway, it didn't matter if I was polite or rude to him. I told him indelicately to let go of his act because he wasn't fooling me with it and that I knew what he wanted and that I wasn't afraid of him, and at length, that he could go soak his head.

He laughed at that. A startling deep laugh that swelled his chest and twisted his mouth into a smirk. The same frightening sound as before. Diary, it was strange: felt like he was pleased with me, rather than that he was going to hurt me.

He applauded my bluntness and then began to ask about what I was doing in the library anyway. I'm sure he already knew, though. I didn't let him see the titles of my books but I'm sure he guessed they were elementary magic technique. He offered to show me a few tricks but I impolitely said no.

It didn't daunt him. He gave that spontaneous twitch of a bare smile at me again and mocked my caution. I still don't get this strange spiritual metamorphosis. I keep trying to put my finger on it: he acts in the same way as he did before-- on the outside the same, but underneath things are less severely angry. More healthy. Better, like some previously shriveled dead good part of him is flourishing like a weed seed and taking over.

Impa told me earlier, with all of her powers of true sight, that he's not putting up a facade. It confuses her, too. By all rights this all should be really creepy and I should be staying away from him. I hear all sorts of stories in the town about scary men enticing children with sweets and then taking them to sell into slavery in the deep south jungles, but in some weird subversion Ganondorf is just giving me the metaphorical sweets, without a covered wagon to throw me in. I don't get it.

I don't want to believe it, but Ganondorf was being truly and honestly kind. There was a kind of glow in his eyes that I sometimes see in father's. But a lot brighter. Now that I think of it, he talks to me like I was a grown-up and not a child. I wish father would do that, too. Nobody ever believes me when I try to say something important.

Maybe to the Gerudo, being grown-up comes earlier than it does for princesses.

He told me a lot of things. He told me that I was very brave to stand up to him and that I was absolutely right about him and that my mother must have been an excellent woman because I certainly hadn't gotten much from my father. I asked him if he was going to kill me, and he said that would have been a waste for it was difficult to find sensible people these days.

He also asked for my help. I wondered what he was doing asking for my help when he could ask for the King's. He said my father was a blind bigoted donkey rear. To be polite.

I didn't like him insulting my father at all, but I can see where he may have been coming from. Father  doesn't trust the Gerudo. The negotiations were only to stall open skirmishes that the Gerudo would always win because chasing them across the canyon and into the desert was just too hard. Ganondorf had come to the castle under the pretense of peace and suffered through endless negotiations while he got closer and closer to the Golden Power.

He said the Triforce was in danger. I said that he was the one who wanted it and he couldn't trick me.

He agreed with me on that. He said that he needed it because his people suffered and mine were selfish. But he didn't spend time on that at all. He said that not only did he want it, there was another him that wanted it too. I don't understand what he means but it has something to do with what woke up the warmth or tenderness or whatever this is in him.

I'll try to write what he said down as verbatim as I can remember. It was something like  how he had been given the gift of virtue by the wood spirit and that he was growing into a new man. How he felt powers working within him that were bringing to him a new clarity of mind, and how he could feel something he described as a fiery knot growing stout in his breast: a mighty thing that sank and swelled and burst with powerful, overt emotions. Normal people call that a heart, I told him. It only made his gaze keener on me.

But there was also something about destiny. About how when there's a fixed destiny it can't be rewritten even if the people who must fulfill it grow and deepen and learn and change in ways the destiny didn't account for. And how by destiny his hatred was supposed to get worse and worse and now it had to do so even if it wasn't inside him.

I think. It was weird. I don't know how a tree could put so much goodness in him that it would cut him in half. Or was there goodness in him all along and the tree just woke it up and made it grow, like trees do to their roots in the spring? There's still a terrible intensity in his eyes, but it's gotten tempered with a fierce, protective compassion that I can't explain very well.

But if that hate, how he was before, couldn't live inside of him it had to leave and find somewhere else to get stronger, so there are really two of him running around. The one I know has the body and the bad him is just a spirit or something like that but that's even more dangerous because it can go anywhere it wants and won't get stopped by anything the Royal Family can do. We can't try to arrest it, send an army, put out a notice or a bounty, or anything. All we can do is wait for it to strike, and we don't know how it will do that or from where.

It's scary. I thought an evil Ganondorf I could see was frightening, but one I can't see is even worse.

And that was why he needs my help, he said. The Triforce is in danger and he's like me: nobody will ever believe him. The bad him can't get to the sacred realm without a body to open it and that body needs the keys to the Temple of Time. The King isn't going to keep the keys safe, so Ganondorf needs somebody with the power of the royal family who's not the King to guard the ocarina. Ganondorf can't play it, he said, but if the evil him finds a body of somebody who can we'll be in big trouble.

But he's like me. I don't know how that's possible.

I asked him what he would do if I didn't help him. He said that he'd tell my father and my tutors that I went into the library at night, and that he would make sure I was watched at all times and that I would never sneak out to play ever again.

I said that I didn't care and I couldn't risk that he was lying and I wouldn't give into him. Then he threatened to do just what I thought he would do, kill father and ruin everything himself. When he said it I couldn't tell if he meant it or not. He'd do anything to make me listen to him. Even horrible things the Bad Him would do.

It was important to him that I listen or else, so I had no choice but to agree to his terms.

I need to be sneaky, he said. I have to spy on a lot of people: the people closest to the Sacred Realm. The High Bishop. The court wizards. My father. I told him that he would have to keep a watch on the grown-ups and tell me about them so I can snoop better.

We're really going to try together to keep the Triforce safe. Even if Ganondorf wants it for himself, he doesn't want the other him to get it. He can't double-cross me because of that, I think. He'd never do anything that doesn't help himself. He's too tricky for that.

I told Impa about this and asked her to keep it a secret. She's the only other one who believes me and she told me to be careful but she thought that I did the right thing.

I don't know. But I don't think he's lying. Just to see what he would do I told him that if he kept his word when all of this was over I'd make father give the Gerudo a whole chunk of Hyrule field by the lake that nobody even uses; the Zora don't like traffic through there to Castle Town because roads muddy the water, and arguing with Zora makes them want to cut off the river. It should be fine for Gerudo, though.

We're supposed to be a united country, I said. We really have to start acting it.

I think that face he gave me was supposed to be a pleased one. He's very bad at making nice faces.

–

Din 45

Diary,

I haven't written for a long time because I've been really busy. Snooping on everybody is hard work and I haven't had any time to myself. Every day I do all of my lessons and when I have a moment I go and spy on somebody and then in the evening I go to the library and he's waiting there for me. One day I snuck some leftovers from the kitchens and when I got there he took way more than half of them. He just took some! And said that if I brought food I had to be expected to share.

What a pig.

But that's not the reason I'm writing today, Diary. Two days ago, I finally figured out what the light from the forest meant. It went like this:

Ganondorf had another audience with my father today and Ganondorf had been worried about it because the negotiations were not going anywhere and his excuses to stay at the castle might dwindle if the meetings went badly. I wasn't allowed to go, so I told him that I would watch from the window in the courtyard; if he got angry I could just wave to him so he wouldn't become too mad and make things get worse. It sounds a bit silly, but really it's all I can do. Politics just aren't appropriate for a princess, which is really ironic. If it was the Zoras or the Gorons, Scribe Gaebora would make me attend as part of my lessons. Because it was Ganondorf, he didn't let me anywhere near the audience.

It's a good thing that father can't see the east window from his throne, and he never leaves his throne when he talks to Ganondorf. The guards can't see through it either-- too much glare from the stained glass above them. But from where he stood in there (Why can't people just sit? Etiquette can be silly.) Ganondorf could see me just fine if he looked.

Today was special though. Today I met Link.

Link is a boy from the forest, and he came with a fairy just like in my dream. And he also has the Spiritual Stone. So he is definitely the light in my dream. It's weird, but I think I've heard his name before. I don't know how that could be-- I just met him. That also sort of happened with Ganondorf, but I was too scared when I first met him to really pay attention.

But he managed to sneak in past all of father's guards and past the gates. I don't know how he did it-- if there was ever a siege we might be in trouble because if we can't keep out a child my age we're really slipping.

He's very polite and earnest and grown-up for a boy. Not like some of the rude boys I meet sometimes in the square. He has a quiet voice, but maybe he was just shy because I'm the Princess. I sort of hate that.

I told him everything. He said that the Deku Tree had died and had come to him in a dream to do this, and he told me about Ganondorf's appearance in the forest and the nasty Ganondorf Demon (Ganondemon? Ganon-Demon? Maybe just Ganon?) that had tried to hurt his best friend and how it was Ganondorf who actually beat it back for the moment. The story matched up with Ganondorf's story. Also that it was Ganondorf who had said almost the same thing the Deku Tree had said: take the spiritual stone to the castle.

Maybe there is something to this idea of fate after all. It all matches up with what Ganondorf said, and it's not kind of conspiracy at all. Everything that man said to me feels so much more honest now. I really can trust Ganondorf! Diary, Link really is the light from my dream!

Which is why Link agreed with me: he already knew the truth even before we met. I let him spy through the window with me. The meeting was very heated, but neither side was winning the debate, so Ganondorf eventually looked through the window for me. He couldn't let on that there was somebody there, but his sharp eyes did soften somehow when he saw us.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with Link, talking to him about things in the castle and asking him what the forest was like. I think we'll be good friends. A guard came in to check on us but Impa saved the day by saying that I was having a parlay with a Korkirish emissary and that the guard was barging in on our privacy.

Ganondorf found us afterward, appearing with magic in the courtyard and giving Impa a scare. Beyond that, the two were on neutral terms: Gerudo and Sheikah don't usually bother one another, and there's nothing bad between them. He reported that he would be able to stay for a while longer yet, and that for now, he was locked in a stalemate.

We told him what our plan was and after a short debate he grudgingly agreed, but he didn't like it. Although he wanted to send a company of gerudo after the stones, that would attract too much attention both from the King and from the Evil Ganon. He will simply have to help from where he is: in the way of the diplomat and not of the commander.

I have faith in Link. He knows what he's doing. The Demon will expect grown-ups and brute force because that is what Ganondorf though of first, too. But it's like this castle: an army would never be able to storm it, but somebody by himself can sneak in. In the end both of them, Impa and Ganondorf, agreed with us. Sometimes, grown-ups can make things too complicated. Unrelated, it's kind of nice to be listened to.

Impa taught Link the song that would make people take him seriously as my messenger. I also wrote him a special letter that might help him make other people believe him. Ganondorf knows the song too now, although he assures me he cannot sing and has no musical aptitude. I wonder if that's true, or if he's too embarrassed to admit things-- singing is not particularly manly, after all. Maybe he knows how to play some other instrument; he reads poetry as if it was music. But whether he can sing or not, he's not officially our ally and Link isn't either, so what we just did was technically high treason.

If father finds out, I'm in big trouble.

Earlier this evening, after Link left, I met with Ganondorf again. He's almost... scared. I think Ganon is getting closer. Or he's lost its position and he's wary of some kind of surprise attack. He's afraid of himself, and I don't blame him. He was pretty awful, after all.

He offered again to teach me some basic magic techniques, saying that something under the evil would eventually become wise to us and try to cut our plan off at the source. This time, I accepted. I know that his magic is dark and terrible, but I'm justified, I swear. His motives changing aside, he could never be as masterful as he is if he was not an expert at the basics and normal know-how, too. And I've already studied all of the theory in the library, so he won't even have to give the long long lectures about safety and how not to blow oneself up by accident. I just have nobody to teach me the application-- the books are vague on purpose. The Mages' Guild wants to keep knowledge out of the hands of everybody but themselves.

He gave me my first lesson today. It was very difficult and frustrating. Just when I think I can feel the magic, it flutters away out of my hands. The books make it sound so simple, and Ganondorf makes it look so easy. It had to be at least a hundred tries, but I finally managed to conjure a little wisp of smoke. Not even a flame. Not even light. Not even raw energy. Just a piddly little puff of smoke or cloud. I feel so stupid. How could I have believed that I would learn magic and be good at it and that would be that? I spent all that time breaking the rules and learning the description of techniques for nothing? None of it does anything!

My failure aside, Ganondorf is not built for making an astonished face. He said that it was amazing that I was even able to touch on the first day of trying. I don't want to make stupid wispy smoke. He also said I was being greedy and was going to blow myself up with that mindset, but I don't want to even go into that irony. This is his advice for further practice until tomorrow: I have to stop thinking about reaching and just reach. The complexity of it will happen later.

Whatever that is supposed to mean. It's so late. I need to sleep or I'll never wake up in the morning. Goodnight.

–

Din 46

Smoke all evening.

–

Din 47

I hate smoke.

–

Din 48

I hate Ganondorf.
You do not.

–

Din 49

Too tired to write. Smoke.
Stay out of my diary, Ganondorf. How did you find this anyway?

–

I am not called King of Thieves for nothing, Princess. As an aside, you write astonishingly well for being only twelve years old.

Din 50

I still hate you.

–
Din 51

More smoke. I hate this. I wish he would die.

–

(an unreadable scribble and a blotch of ink)

–

(this page is singed badly)

–

Nayru 2

I  made fire today. Reading the past entries, I feel a little silly. But Ganondorf has to go back to the desert tomorrow-- father is making him leave. Ganondorf says that he will be watching, though. He's worried.

But I'm brave and Impa and I will keep the ocarina safe. What he has to do now is go back and win his own people's favor again, so that if something happens they'll listen to him and believe what he says.

Even though he's their king, I think that a lot of his own people don't like him. I don't blame them-- he really was a demon, if the stories I hear from the politicians are true. Even if he never hurt them, I looked him up in the records for the Fierce War. In them he was a complete monster. What they think of him needs to be fixed right away.

I hope it won't be too hard. On one hand, he looks better and more and more like a good king every day. On the other hand, he spent however old he is being a bad king. But really, doesn't anybody know his real age? I thought he was forty, but now I'm not so sure. He looked forty a month ago. Two weeks ago, he seemed thirty. Now I can't guess how old he might be anymore other than my father now seems ancient in comparison. He's just so big it's hard to tell. Only when he does bend down to talk to me that I notice that his hair seems thicker and his face less sunken than before. I normally can't see it; I'm not tall enough. But if he looked older than he really is, and now he is looking a lot less old, how young is he really? Who was I scared of before, anyway?

But that's getting away from things. I'm brave and Impa is strong, and we'll never stop watching. Nobody will get close to the Ocarina. I won't let them.

He gave me a present because he's leaving-- his own long knife. It's more like a sabre to me. He showed me how to belt it to my leg under my skirts (a little embarrassing, but he was businesslike) so it won't slip and I so I can sneak it around inside my dress.

Keep a good watch. If you notice anything, feel for this blade and do not be shy to flee.

That's what he said. He also gave me a hug good-bye. It was very strange. I'm sure he did it for me and not for him. I don't think he really wanted to, but maybe he felt he had to because I'm small and he was leaving me all alone. Either way, he is very big and warm. Even if he is rude and a bit cruel in humor, I really like him now. I hope he doesn't have to go for too long. I don't know if he meant it for real, but his arms felt... nice. I can't wait until he comes back.

In other news, the gorons sent a message thanking us for the help with the dodongos that we didn't officially give, which royally confused my father. This happened a little while ago-- just about the time Link ran up Death Mountain, I think. Link's won one more stone key, I'm sure of it. I can only hope that he's quick with the last one and that he gets back in time so we can get the triforce as fast as possible. It's too quiet here without Ganondorf around.

–

Nayru 5

Ocarina is still safe. No word from anybody.

–

Nayru 7

Ocarina not safe. Impa came to me last night and gave it to me and told me to guard it with my life. Today there was a trial and she was found guilty of stealing it and she's to be imprisoned in the Shadow Temple for her crime. She turned herself in so nobody would suffer in Kakariko if they decided to flush her out.

I've heard how horrible the Shadow Temple is. ~there are tearstains here~ She doesn't deserve it. I'll pray for her tonight.

She must have caught somebody trying to take it, so she took it first. But whoever it was, I'll never know because they alerted the guards and reassigned the blame on Impa. I keep the ocarina in my bodice: the last place the palace guards will ever check. I won't let her sacrifice be in vain.

I'm all alone now.

I want to run away, but I can't. I need to wait for Link. I even left a message in the ocarina for him, a magic one I just learned how to make. Just in case I have to hide it for him, if something happens. Nobody else but Link will see the message-- unless they have a fairy with them. If he knows I'm dead, he'll go find Ganondorf and they'll open the Sacred Realm without me.

I'm scared.

–

Nayru 8

Nothing yet. Father is ill and in bed. I wish I knew what to do.

–

Nayru 9

Still nothing. I can light a candle across a room.

I miss Ganondorf. He would know what to do.

–

Nayru 10

Tonight I'm going to bed with Ganondorf's knife. Just in case. Maybe it'll make me feel better.

--

Nayru 11

Did not go to bed last night-- found myself practicing with the knife in the dungeons. If I try to remember to cut the shins and legs, a man can't chase me.

Father still ill. Will sleep tonight with knife.

–

Nayru 12

Tod,--~-..

~This is the final entry in the binding.~