The Vigil

Kakariko Village.

It was the only place left in Hyrule, excepting, perhaps, the forbidden forest on the southeastern fringe, where one could find refuge from the hailstorm of arrow-shafts to the west and the death-blows of quarrelers’ swords in the east across the whole of the Hyrulean plain as the fierce wars dragged on.

Everywhere else, from the fiery Death Mountain to the once-immaculate Hylia Lake, stank of bloodshed and treachery. Here the only indications of the conflict were the cries of mournful lament for the fallen as the bodies of the dead found rest under the solid earth and their spirits settled into restful repose. This war had claimed many lives, so many lives, during its duration; such was the lust for the mystical Sacred Realm that had pervaded the hearts of the people. Now, thankfully, that fight had boiled down to an all-or-nothing struggle betwixt the Hyrulians and the Gerudo, with their allies drawn into the bloodbath.

Maestro Flat was alone, as was often the case, staring pensively over the rain-washed landscape of Kakariko from the desk in his study, which faced the largest window in the manor. Were it not for the blustery flurries of wind rattling the study window and whistling through the jagged crack that scarred its face, the hammering of raindrop bullets against the aluminum roof, the crackling drumbeats of thunderbolts splitting the sky, and the rap-tapping of his conductor’s baton against the writing-desk, the Maestro would have had himself a pristine silence. Those were the sorts of quiets good for a composer’s work, those utter stillnesses in which one can bask in only the echoes of his own artistic brilliance. No disturbances, no distractions, no wayward, wand’ring thoughts. Naught but whispers of virtuosity and a page and quill with which to record them.

But he had not been able to enjoy any such tranquility for many dismal, overcast days; the itinerant front that had wandered into Hyrule’s skies since the insurgents strengthened their advance had bestowed not a notable kindness in its approach, nor any even fleeting interest in departing in the near future. Without a genuinely unspoiled silence to set the ambiance for his work, the Maestro turned his attentions to his ledger, his pen intent on authoring something, e’en if it could not be a musical masterwork or an experimental hypothesis. He had not taken up the ledger in months, and residual sheets of dust had gathered on the cover, caking the otherwise attractive leather binding. The ledger smelled of the oil paper he had packed it with when he and his brother had fled the war-struck city of Hyrule to resume their studies in the more undisturbed Kakariko. He realized immediately after he lifted it from its place that he had not entered in it since before their departure—he had simply set it on his writing-desk when they arrived at the estate and forgotten its existence since.

But now he wrote, and freely, not concerned for once whether or not any abstract stroke of genius would find its way onto the page.

“Our task has proved itself to be an abysmally confounding one. My brother and I toil day and night, night and day, to discern the secret to controlling time. For the past two years, we have set everything aside—our families and friends, our wives, our social obligations, our matters of state, our mistresses, and even, as it seems, our very siblinghood—in pursuit of this seemingly-incomprehensible thing, this solution to the most mystifying riddle that envelops this land of Hyrule. And for what!—nothing! We remain as empty-handed as we were when we began!—even more so, in fact, what of the disquieting hollowness that now inundates our pocketbooks! I cannot begin to fathom the rationale that must sponsor our unremitting doggedness, but I envisage that it must have somewhat to do with our incessant quarreling over our father’s favoritism—a squabble that, much though it troubles me to admit it, did not expire at his passing, has not expired since, and shows no indication of coming to any sort of end in the imminent or even indistinct future. So much progress we have yet to make, in every aspect!

“The unremitting rain has served ever as a hindrance to our designs, and seems to mock our efforts in so doing. Sharp is even now outdoors, conducting tests of varying sorts in an attempt to trace even the slightest hints of magic in the air, in the earth, and (I find myself almost ashamed to express it, e’en in these pages) in all practical probability in the lightning as well; he has been literally thunderstruck twice since we arrived at Kakariko alone. What a shocking effect these fortuitous occurrences must have on his common sense! And still he beleaguers me that the answer must lie in nature—that there must be some rational phenomena at the root of all this. I admittedly am not entirely confident of where my faith rests on these matters. I do know that I shall continue to toil over volumes and manuscripts in the study, and will continue investing myself in perfecting my compositions; Sharp may continue to do as he will, for as long as he pleases—it is of no consequence to me. In any case, I should not be at all astonished if he again finds himself assailed by a hail of lightning this very night. One can only speculate as to how many lightning strikes a fellow can take before he squanders his sanity.”

And what of Sharp?—his elder brother had not ventured inside for several hours, despite the intense downpour and the spectacular lightning show, and he began to worry. But, of course, as Flat recalled instantaneously, Sharp had always had himself a penchant for the outdoors, especially in bad weather, and it had been a considerable enough trait to constrain their parentages to the brink of madness. Flat, on the other hand, had inherited the more refined character traits of his family, the genteelism that typified those of noble birth, and, as such, had in turn inherited his parents’ favor, despite being the younger.

Despite their differences, however, the composer brothers did share a few noteworthy commonalities; namely, their unparalleled genius, both in science and in the arts. Curiously enough their superior intellects were not, contrary to popular supposition, prototypical of their kin. Their ancestors descended from a long succession of Hylian aristocrats who, while better educated than the preponderance of the common folk, possessed no congenital scholastic predilection. The two of them made quite the dynamic duo, as their chauffeurs, tutors, and various other attendants never failed to remark.

And what a pair they were!—while their contemporaries hammered out symphony after symphony under the direction of the music instructors, Sharp and Flat were hard at work composing them! Why memorize the numerous varieties of flora and fauna when one could instead be out in the field uncovering new ones? Why scrutinize the politics of the past when they were already a part of the much more pertinent politics of the present? It all seemed such an outrageous waste of time, to youths such as they who already had minds for such things.

Their father had served, as one might anticipate of all gentleman of noble birth during this tumultuous era, as a member of the Legion of Hyrulian Knights. He had been a captain of the Hyrulian Royal Cavalry once upon a time, and as such had commanded a great range of respect both among his subordinates and from his family. This unfortunately translated to a significant amount of domestic cruelty, specifically towards his wife, and this translated in turn to a blanketed spite on the brothers’ part towards their father and towards the soldierly upper class in general; which certainly accounts for their abhorrence of and deviance from the customs of the highly classist society of their youth. For instance, when Sharp reached his sixteenth birthday the captain showered him in the typical pomp and circumstance surrounding the coming of age of a military man’s eldest son—a night on the town, his first round of beers, even a complimentary bed-mistress to keep him occupied afterwards.

Any fledged aristocrat would have been more than pleased with the arrangements, but Sharp?—Sharp was hardly the stuck-up courtier that one would expect him to be. While his father badgered him to keep at the gentlemen’s public-house, he instead insisted on going to browse through the glassman’s quarter down at the city piazza. He followed suit by declining every pint offered him, after the first, and outright repudiating—even chastising!—the whore his father had furnished.

Needless to say, his father was furious, but nothing could have incensed the captain more than what would happen next. Instead of taking on the family legacy and entering military service, Sharp decided instead to pursue a higher education at the Hyrulian Academy of Science & the Arts. This, of course, heightened tensions in the household to an unprecedented intensity. Blunt articles flew, windowpanes shattered, and their mother, exasperated in her own way, burst into a torrent of tears. Flat recalled his father’s bellowing voice, echoing from the anterior foyer all the way up to his bedchambers on the far side of the mansion. He remembered those heated words as clearly as he remembered his own name.

“Look how you have made your mother weep!—how could the gods have delivered unto me such an ungrateful son? What have I done to deserve such melancholy? What a stain you are upon this family’s name! Get out!—leave my sight at once!”

He remembered hastening onto the mezzanine, frightened that he would never see his brother again, just in time to hear Sharp’s terse reply: “Well then; I suppose I’ll have your blessing after all, won’t I?” before he turned around and walked, his head held high, out through the front entrance and into the rain, pouring then just as heavily as it was in the now. Flat had nearly called out to his brother, but regained his composure not a moment too soon. Sharp must have heard his shallow intake of breath as he stopped himself, though, because as he ambled out he turned his head just enough so that Flat could see him wink. The door shut quietly behind him, quieter, at least, than the hammering of the raindrops against cobblestone.

The captain was never really the same again; but, then again, he never really displayed much in the way of change, either. It would be most accurate to say that he wasn’t much of anything at all after that. He became fairly quiet and withdrawn after Sharp’s curt departure, and he gradually withdrew himself from the Legion and from the veterans’ clubs and gentlemen’s public-houses. He did not live long enough to see his eldest son, disowned though he was, graduate from the most prestigious of academies in the realm. The war soon claimed him at the point of a Moblin’s lance.

He enjoyed a stately burial—one of his fellow soldiers recited the highly impersonal stock eulogy read at every military officer’s interment, the congregation of mourners sang a collection of funeral hymns, and then all in attendance went on with their lives. And that, as they say, was that.

Sharp went on to pursue degrees in natural sciences and the arts, and Flat soon followed in his footsteps. Of course, as a result, the two of them were essentially disclaimed from the social aristocracy; not that this mattered to either of them in the slightest, since their primary focus was on their academic pursuits, not the approval of the peers of their youth.

As Byrna the Renowned once imparted to his fellow scholars: “Revulsion of common mores is the force that makes mountains move and that molds true merit among men.”

And, truly, without their disgust toward their father and toward everything he stood for, the brothers might have turned out the same as all the other products of their generation: lackluster facsimiles of their patrician predecessors, devoid of novelty and sustenance, chattel slaves bound by the shackles of their or generation, unable to move forward without being hauled along by the bandwagon of the day, or sometimes the hour. By what seemed an act of Providence they had discovered early on that what their peers called ‘adolescent rebellion’ was a sham; that though young men pushed the envelope of their upbringing they never pushed hard enough, and in failing to do so never made any honest progress whatsoever. And that realization was precisely what qualified the brothers for foundation grants from the Academy during their graduate years for the purposes of building their musical studio and scientific laboratory, it was precisely the reason why the royal family selected them to study the magical properties of the world, and it was precisely why they intended to succeed.

But this is all detail; consummate detail, memories fluttering across consciousness like a trick played by mischievous spirits before they gave their kisses of death, but still merely detail nonetheless.

The Maestro set his conductor’s baton on the surface of the desk and approached the window to glance over the flats contiguous to the family estate for any sign of his brother, but the rain came copiously, and it proved difficult to observe anything, much less the dark, robed speck that was his brother through the valance of unsettled showers. He did glimpse, however, something that was altogether peculiar; something he had not been sharp enough to remark in the past when he surveyed the Kakariko countryside.

In the budding twilight he could distinguish, just barely, a trace of light which reminded him of the flicker of a candlelight-flame, floating in circles around the Kakariko windmill off in the distance. Flat strode briefly to the far side of the room and rummaged through his chest for his binoculars, then promptly revisited the window, gazing this time through the lenses to better determine, with any luck, the origin of the effulgence, dim and imperceptible as it was.

What Flat beheld through the lorgnette astonished him so profoundly that he nearly cried out in sheer consternation.

He immediately discarded the looking device and returned to his ledger to add a closing line of text, and straightaway he donned his rain-cloak and started for the door in such haste that he left the chronicle ajar on his writing-desk, revealing the single sentence he had scrawled at the bottom of his account.

It seems I may have just stumbled upon a breakthrough.

:::

What a delightful tune.

The young caretaker of the Kakariko windmill, the aptly-named Guru-guru, played the song often on his musical box, and Sharp, distinguished Maestro and celebrated academic though he was, could not help but revel in it, even as he conducted his research. It was light and fanciful, and it reminded him of the carnivals that he and Flat once stole away from the mansion in order to attend during their youth, in disguise, no less, for t’would be appalling if members of the noble class were seen commingling with the common folk.

Oh, but he could perceive the taste of cotton candy bubbling in his mouth at the mere memory of them and the smell of the caramel cauldrons wafting across his senses nonetheless! Ah!—to be a child again!—to look at the world through innocent and carefree eyes once more! But alas, those days were long gone, and nowadays he had no time for carnivals and cotton candies and the purchase of caramel cauldrons, only toil and research followed again by more of the same, day in and day out.

He could still entertain the memories, though, and he could still enjoy the windmill man’s tune.

“Soon,” Guru-guru often said, “I shall contrive a musical box that can perform on its own, without need for human intervention, especially not the manual rotating of cranks.”

The Maestro had to admire the young fellow’s intentions, and were it not for his already-existing obligations to the royal family he might have offered the windmill man some assistance in his endeavor. Someday, if ever he and his brother ever finished this infernal task of theirs, he could lend the young man a hand so that he could make something of himself. For now, he just continued with his work, and marveled privately at Guru-guru’s uncomplicated standard of living. Complexity was the prime persisting trait he maintained from his upbringing; he could take nothing in simplicity.

That may be why he spent so much time in the windmill, he thought, even outside of his work: Guru-guru was everything that his existence had never allowed him to be. Perchance, then, it might be best to let the lad go his own way. After a long while the music stopped and Sharp heard footsteps coming up the stairs of the loft. There came a knock on the door, and before Sharp could answer it, Guru-guru poked his already-balding head into the room, followed by a cascade of light heralding his entrance from the tower proper.

“Good evening, sir,” Guru-guru said meekly. He breathed sharply, as though about to go on, but instead screwed up his eyes and scratched his head. “Gracious, sir! It is rather dim in here! Would you like for me to fetch an oil lamp?—some more wicks?”

It had never occurred to the Maestro how outlandish it must have seemed to the lay masses that he worked in such conditions as he did. He often chose the darkest, dankest corners of the gloomiest buildings in the vicinity to rent for use as research laboratories, and often worked late at night, with only a single candlelight to illuminate his desktop, by which he read, wrote, and even examined earthen material and fiddled with electrical apparatuses of various sorts. But that was how he had always conducted his vocation, and he did not intend to change that.

“No, thank you, my lad,” Sharp replied flatly, “I shall carry on well enough as things are, I expect. Was there something else you wished to speak with me about?”

“Ah, yes sir,” Guru-guru said, bowing politely, out of habit. “I was just going to set off for town to procure some fresh fowl for the supper table, and I was curious as to whether you would care for a morsel or two for yourself as well.”

Sharp was somewhat taken aback by the gesture, and almost even declined it. He was not accustomed to receiving favors from those he hardly knew, much less by someone living so humbly in the lower class; no one had ever exerted even the slightest hint of obligation towards him without expecting something in return, and so he was by nature wary of any charity. But Guru-guru was a fair, kind-hearted young man, and so he could not deny the offer; he was rather famished, to be sure, and he knew that he could hardly expect to fetch something for himself.

“Why, how considerate of you, dear boy!” he answered, pulling his monocle from his face and inserting it into his breast pocket so that he could recline back in his chair. “Yes, please! I would like, let’s see: one order of the Cucoo & Shrimp salad from Aginah’s Seafood Grille, and a loaf of their delicious honey-bread, and a bottle of Torciano Fragolino to wash it all down with. Yes, that will be fine.”

He was about to go on with his work, but it took only a brief moment to realize his mistake.

“Oh, dear!—I have completely forgotten myself. Please don’t allow me to inconvenience you with my luxurious tastes.” He reached into his satchel and produced a small purple gem. “There you are, lad; that should cover both our expenses, I think,” he said, presenting the rupee piece to Guru-guru with his outstretched hand.

But Guru-guru proved to be more modest than the Maestro could ever have expected. He shook his head decisively and said, “Oh, no sir. I could not. You have been more than generous enough already, sir. I’ll leave you to your research. I know you have important work to attend to, and I have taken up far too much of your time as it is.”

What an honest and giving heart!—ne’er before had Sharp been granted such a kindness! He supposed he knew the cause. When he had applied to rent the loft, Guru-guru had originally offered him rent of only three-hundred seventy-five rupees per month. Of course, Sharp could not see how this could possibly be a fair exchange—three-hundred seventy-five rupees was hardly enough to cover a monthly stock of rations, even for a modest one-man household in which its member did not squander thirty-eight rupees a meal on extravagant tastes. So, naturally, he had counter-offered a more reasonable sum of one-thousand seventy-five per month, a sum which Guru-guru was more than happy to accept (so happy, in fact, that he had nearly collapsed at the mere mention of such a figure). Sharp’s munificent rent rate more than paid for Guru-guru’s monthly expenditures, which, as he noted, had also catalyzed a betterment of the young lad’s disposition.

It was around this time, as Sharp remembered fondly, that the young man had expressed his grand idea for the automatic musical box—which he had appropriately given the sobriquet ‘gramophone’—alongside proposals for a heat-powered carriage and a pictobox that could record moving pictures. The lattermost of these was most intriguing to Sharp, as the inventor of the original pictograph box, which he and his brother improved not long after so that it could snap pictographs in color. In any case, he could understand why the lad might feel indebted to him; he had single-handedly allowed young Guru-guru to enjoy a better standard of living and asked for nothing in return, save the services he paid so generously for, namely the use of the loft, and this only made young Guru-guru’s benevolence all the more appreciable to him.

“I thank you, my lad,” Sharp said simply, too enveloped in stark revelation to call any other, more meaningful words to mind.

“You already have, sir,” said Guru-guru, already bowing and already starting down the stairs for the portico. Sharp watched the door swing shut, then set his monocle back on his face and turned his attentions back to his studies. He suddenly became unnervingly sensitive to how dark it was in the room, and so he rose to his feet and ventured down into the windmill proper, to the storage closet, retrieved one of the oil lamps to better light the room, and carried it back up with him.

Before he could start it, however, he perceived the sound of heavy footfalls pounding up the stairs, followed by a heavy and insistent knock on the loft door.

“My word!—he can’t have returned already!” Sharp exclaimed. He made his way swiftly to the far side of the room once more and tugged open the door, only to be faced not with the young Guru-guru but his own brother, panting under his hood, dripping wet from the rain; he had not even bothered to remove his cloak when he entered.

“Ah, Flat—you seem rather excitable!—what brings you to the lab, dear brother?”

Flat rushed quickly to the lab-desk and leaned against it, his face remarkably close to Sharp’s, and lowered his eyes so that he was no longer looking at his brother through his half-moon spectacles but, rather, over them, and replied, “You are not going to believe me, dear Sharp.”

He told him regardless.

:::

Sharp’s reaction had been more or less what Flat had anticipated it would be.

At first, he seemed paralyzed by the sheer shock of the discovery, then that shock turned to the realization that the news might actually be true, and then glee when he finally accepted that it was true. Flat had not seen his brother smile so widely in over a fortnight. Then again, this had been one of the signs they had futilely sought for the past several years: the interaction between the spirit realm and the world of the living. They had long suspected such a connection, since the involvement of the spirits of the dead in everyday life would more than explain the strange magical phenomena that surrounded the land and its people, but they had never been able to demonstrate it—until now. Of course, Sharp would still require a lengthy span of time in order to finally get over the initial announcement—at the very least until he caught a glimpse of the little spirit for himself—but that would only serve to entertain.

“I first saw it just there, floating around the turbines,” Flat said, pointing up at where the spirit had been. “It carried a small lantern which it had hung around its neck—the same sort of lantern that the stories say houses souls—and it appeared as white as mountaintop snow. But it vanished as I got close, so I was unable to take a quality pictograph.”

“Well, that is certainly unfortunate…” Sharp replied, in that I-almost-don’t-believe-you tone the two of them often employed when they snatched wind of the fact that they were on to something.

It would be difficult to attach any greater significance to his brother’s discovery if he could not bear witness to it himself. But something was nagging at the back of his mind—there was some missing piece of the puzzle, some link between the ghost’s disappearance and young Flat’s arrival at the windmill. His mind worked like a machine, methodically concocting a deductive solution to this riddle. He did the most obvious thing that came to mind.

“Do you recall the time when it appeared?”

His brother kept the time for everything—when the two of them conducted experiments together, Flat always to be the scribe, always the timekeeper. Flat was always so very meticulous that Sharp wouldn’t know what he would have done without his brother to keep him straight.

“But of course!” Flat said. “It was about five thirty.”

“Hmm,” Sharp huffed. This was hardly surprising, since that was the advent of the hour of twilight, which, in legend, was already closely associated with heightened paranormal activity. “And when did it vanish?”

“At five forty-two, only a few minutes ago!”

About the same time that Guru-guru had come upstairs to pay a visit, if Sharp remembered correctly. And, of course, being a musician, he remembered keenly that just a minute before climbing to the loft Guru-guru had stopped playing his music box. Could that song have somehow had something to do with the rift between the spirit world and the world of life?—since music and magic were his business, he couldn’t imagine why that could not be the case.

“I have an idea,” Sharp said. “I need to fetch something from inside—wait here until I return.”

He ran inside and searched the ground floor of the turret for the music box, he rummaged through every crate he could see, every chest without a lock on its latch, but to no avail. The only other room he could think to search was Guru-guru’s private chambers, and, typically, not even the temptations of discovery would lead him to invade another’s private space, but this case was altogether different. Besides, he was certain that the young lad would understand.

There it was, standing on a chair on the far side of the room, the forbidden fruit on the tree of knowledge, beckoning to him as the golden power beckoned to those with greedy hearts from the holy sacred land. The lance of lightning that flickered outside sent a gleam flashing from the cool metal surface of the musical-box’s bell, flooding the room with white light. For a moment, the world froze, and he was alone with the music-box and the natural light of atmospheric electricity, and with this decision that he had to make. This music-box was young Guru-guru’s life, and while he knew the young lad would have gladly granted it to him, he felt torn in two as to even consider taking it without the lad’s knowledge.

In the end his curiosity persuaded him, though, and time seemed to flow again, the light that held him frozen in apprehension of the deed he was considering subsided and passed away. He lifted it carefully from the chair and strapped it to him as he had often seen Guru-guru do himself, threw a cloak over the apparatus to protect it from the elements, and started back outside with a start.

His brother stared at him quizzically as he stepped out the door and into the rain. “Isn’t that young Master Guru-guru’s musical box?” he asked. “What use could it possibly be to our ends?”

“Well, you reported that the spirit disappeared a few minutes before you arrived, and that it appeared at the dawn of the hour of twilight,” Sharp explained. “The spirit’s appearance at the hour of twilight makes sense enough—that hour of the day has always had a curious connection to magic—but I still could not put my finger on the reason why it would have vanished. I did recall, however, that it was about five forty-two—the point you reported—that Guru-guru stopped playing the music-box to ask if I needed any errands run while he headed into town. This song, I feel, may be the missing link in all of this.”

“Ah, so you believe the secret to the magicks of Hyrule lies in song, just as we suspected!” Flat shouted. “So what are you waiting for?—play the music-box!—the hour of twilight has nearly passed us by!”

Sharp did not need to receive the charge twice—he took the crank and rotated it smoothly, listening to the tune issue forth like a siren’s cry. Flat brandished a pictograph box and pointed it to the heavens in anticipation of the spirit’s reappearance. They were not disappointed—within moments, the specter materialized from the ether, just where Flat had said it had been, and Sharp’s mouth fell agape while Flat snapped photo after photo of it.

Sharp took a long, careful look at the ghost, and found it to be exactly as Flat had described it—white and wispy, carrying a small handheld lantern. It also appeared to be wearing a mask, a mask adorned with a single dark eye—an eye similar, but not exactly the same as the symbol of the Sheikah, the Eye of Truth. It shared the same basic shape, and also had three lashes, but instead of the teardrop extending downward, it sported a second set of lashes. What could it mean?—what sort of spirit was this? For the life of him he could not endeavor to tell.

He noticed something in addition to the ghost, however, that he had failed to observe prior—that the rain seemed to fall perfectly in tempo with the song. To test this hypothesis, he increased and decreased his cadence, and—lo and behold!—the rain changed its rhythm in tandem. But not just the rain—the spirit itself also moved in time with his tune.

“Are you noticing this, Flat?” he shouted. “This song seems to command the spirit and control the rain! Could this be the answer, that song, spirit, and magic are all connected?”

“Oh, ho, ho, ho!” The sound of laughter intruded on their discovery and almost caused Sharp to stop cranking the music-box. “So I see, sir, that you have discovered the secret of that song! This is most pleasing, yes, most pleasing to hear, indeed!”

The two of them whirled about, only to find that the laughter and the voice belonged to Guru-guru, who had just returned from his errands, groceries in hand, and who stood chuckling behind them. “Ah!—Guru-guru, my lad!” Sharp greeted him. “So… you knew?”

“Of course I knew, sir,” Guru-guru said calmly. “The legend of that song has been passed down through my family for generations. If its tune echoes in the hour of twilight, it coaxes spirits from the spirit world and causes the skies to pour their lamentations upon the world. Surely it must have seemed rather suspicious to you, sir, that it would always be raining whenever I played the musical box in the evening?”

“No, I’m afraid it did not occur to me,” Sharp admitted. “I always found the song to be soothing, a nice bit of background noise to accompany my work. I never would have thought, until tonight, that it might hold the answer to the questions that have been plaguing me. Confound it!—I have rented out your loft for months searching for an answer to the puzzle of the powers of this land, and all this time the answer has been right under my nose! Why did you leave me to toil all this time?”

“Well, sir,” Guru-guru began, “it would hardly be worth your while if you could not discover the power of the song on your own. As my father once told me—‘wisdom is not gained through word of mouth, but through toil of mind’. However—if you’d like to know the real reason—it is that I knew I would make more of a profit from our contract if I left you to your work and kept the secret to myself.”

He chuckled again, grinning a wise, earnest grin. “Either way, my plan seems to have enjoyed much success, wouldn’t you say?”

Sharp smiled back with the same elation and intensity. “There is much more to you than meets the eye, my lad! Why do you resign yourself to such a modest lifestyle?—you would find yourself comfortably at home in the world of intellectuals!”

“I have my duties, sir, and you have yours, and I’m sure both of us are just as committed to fulfilling them. Mine is to guard the secrets of my fathers, until that day when someone appears, ready to analyze the secrets in full, and to fully realize the power behind them. It seems that day has come, but I will continue to reside here, as is the tradition of my kin, and leave the intellectuals to aiming for the lofty prospect of discovery. In any case, good sir, I would highly recommend starting on the honey bread and the shrimp salad—the second most especially—before they get cold.”

He produced the container of salad from beneath his cloak and gave it a quick shake so that Sharp could hear the jangling of romaine, chicken, and shrimp, and then proceeded to start inside. As he reached the door, however, he stopped for a moment and peered back at them, his kind smile still beaming like lamplight from his facade. “Ah, and one more thing—I sense that you may have been worried that I might be in arms over the fact that you seem to have intruded upon my private chambers and taken what is most precious to me without my blessing. Do not worry, sir, for this is not the case. If it were, I would hardly have left you alone with it without ensuring that I left it safely secure behind lock and key. Feel free to borrow it at any time, although I admit that I would prefer if you would inform me if you wish to take it from the premises.”

He yanked the door open and set one foot inside, then added, “If you will not be joining me for supper, I bid you goodnight, sirs. Your meal, Master Sharp, will be waiting on the dining-table.” And with that, the young Guru-guru entered his haven and shut the door firmly behind him.

The discovery of the ghost seemed almost to pale in comparison to Sharp’s present impression of the young man. Never before had he encountered an individual so remarkable! He wondered to himself whether it was the will of the goddesses that he had stumbled upon the modest Kakariko windmill and taken up residence there—so perfectly mind-breaking was the positive inspiration that had stemmed from doing so! Sharp could not even bring himself to turn his gaze back to the spirit—so compelling was this impact of Guru-guru’s unanticipated communication of such sophisticated wisdom!

He became so taken aback, in fact, that he called to Flat, and said, “You know, brother, I think I might actually join the lad for dinner! What say you, dear Flat?”

“Well, I suppose that, now that the secret has been exposed, there would be no harm in asking him whether he knows anything more about that song and about the spirit world…” Flat answered. “And besides, I suppose I have taken more than enough pictographs as it is. Why ever not?—let us dine!”

Flat pocketed his pictograph box and Sharp stopped cranking the music-box and started inside, but the two of them failed to notice that, despite the fact that the music had ceased, the spirit still lingered, and, after a brief moment, a second spirit joined it, and together they floated off toward the Kakariko graveyard.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

© Ahmed El-Khuffash and David Butler. All Rights Reserved.