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The house on the other side of the Lost Woods was built by a lord aiming to cloister his family during times of war. Before the King of Hyrule unified the lands, conflict would break out on the whim of some barony or another. Nobles would take pains to shelter their families so that their lines could survive through the ages. Trying to find the best way to do this, the lord had sought the council of fairies and of hags, who had told him the cruel forest knew no rank or moral when it was invaded.
There were four daughters: Meg, Joelle, Beth and Amy. As the carriage rattled towards their new home, they peered through the windows, watching the Hylian fields course by before heading into the darkness of the forest. Amy, the youngest, pressed her hands against the window as they passed a small village just on the outskirts; here, children played seemingly without a care for the danger that lurked just beyond the village boundaries. As they headed into the deeper woods, howls and whispers and more unearthly noises beside filled the air and Meg, the oldest, tried to pull Amy from the window. Something would shatter the girl’s mind, or peg her as a target, she feared, or at the very least, invade her nightmares.
Joelle, who would reject Meg’s fussing, watched with interesting. There must be something that she could sketch or jot down research about. Meg knew better than to fuss about the second oldest, so she was left to do this.
The carriage rolled onwards and the lord settled comfortable in his seat, content with the preservation of his lineage. These winding paths and thick shadows would protect it. Meg was close to coming of age, and a moment of peace could offer enough time to find a valuable allyship in marriage. He did not consider that the forest was thoroughly capable of looking towards its centre, or that the land itself served as a passage to unseen realms that valued their hallowed grounds.
“I’m going to see the fairies,” announced Amy. The four daughters sat at the breakfast table, the maid bustling around them, the sun shining through the windows, pale and crisp. It was a spacious room, looking out onto the eastern courtyard, where the pond ran from underneath the house.
“You can’t. They don’t want to talk to you,” said Joelle. She picked at sugary porridge. Last night’s recollections of the journey here hadn’t proved fruitful.
“Shh, Joelle,” repremanded Meg, gently. “Amy, you shouldn’t go into the forest. Remember, father told us how dangerous it was.”
Amy ignored Meg. “They do too want to talk to me, Jo!” she said. “One of them waved at me.”
“They’re not fairies, anyway,” said Joelle. “They’re Kokiri. If a fairy waved at you, you wouldn’t see it because they’re so small and bright. But they still wouldn’t because you’re not a Kokiri. You’re just a Hylian.”
“If you spoke to a Kokiri, I’m sure they would let you meet their fairy,” Beth chimed in, quietly.
Meg sighed. “But she’s not going into the forest.” She looked down at Amy. “Are you?”
Later that morning, Amy crept through the spacious foyer. Much of the house’s staff were still organising the house, and father had not yet had their tutors transferred over, so Amy went unnoticed. Only once did she need to to hide: when the butler and the chief came through, chattering about things Amy had little reason to care about.
She found a painting, propped up against the wall, waiting to be affixed somewhere. It was of one of Amy’s great aunts or something like that; somebody who’d died before she’d ever even begun to exist. There was a small gap between the painting and the wall where Amy could just about hide and remain unseen until their footsteps faded.
Once quiet had settled once again, Amy crept out of her hiding place and slipped out through the entrance corridor, shoes soft on the rug, and then out through the front door. From there, it was down the front steps shaded by an overhanging tree and then onwards. The forest loomed ahead, patched with shadows even in the bright morning light.
She paused at the edge and peered in. Branches obscured part of the way, crossing in places above the path to create arches, but that path was clear. And they had come this way to get to the house, after all. If it was that dangerous, surely the horses and the driver would have been afflicted.
Amy thought of the village she’d seen, with tiny houses carved out of giant tree stumps, runged bridges hooked overhead and a glittering pond dotted with rocks. Children had played there, in the grass, running across the ladder and even sitting on the rooftops. They all seemed to be about Amy’s age, and each one of them had a tiny glowing companion at their shoulder. There had been no grown-ups there at all.
Some of the children had turned to watch the carriage with curiosity at it had passed, their eyes bright like gems. A little boy had scowled and a little girl had looked very sad. But most of the children had seemed amused, even joyful. A little girl with blonde curls had waved and laughed when Amy had waved back. Kokiri, Joelle had said. Amy scowled at the memory of her sister’s words.
So, she stepped on the path. The forest thrummed quietly with the noise of small creatures and a breeze between the branches. She could hear none of the howling or whispers that had permeated the woods on their journey to the new house. And for somebody of Amy’s diminuative stature, the path did lay unobstructed. There were shadows, lurking between trees, where the sun didn’t shine, but Amy imagined that she could avoid those to get to the Kokiri village so she could play with them and their fairies.
Then there was, on that breeze, a quiet melody, sweet and cheerful. As Amy walked, it became louder and louder and until at once it started growing softer, again. Amy retraced her steps, turning to see a small branching path that led off between the trees, but still distant enough from the deeper shadows that she decided to chance it. The music grew louder again, no doubt from the village, since those children must have loved to dance and sing like fairies should.
Before long, Amy was following the music more than she was following the path, and she started paying less heed to the lurking darkness. The melody soared over the sound of nature, and it was as if the insects themselves were buzzing in time with its tune. Until it drowned them out, and then was all Amy could hear. Then it was all she thought of, the Kokiri, her sisters at breakfast and even the fairies all fell away in aid of finding the source of the music.
It led her to a small clearing: a small circle of grass lined by trees. The sunlight beat down onto the grass, here, making it gleam emerald. In the centre, that little girl with the golden curls sat on a treestump, an instrument Amy couldn’t identify held to her lips, her eyes closed as she played that enchanting tune.
Then she stopped, and turned her gaze onto Amy. It felt so sudden, that Amy almost jumped, not least because the girl’s eyes were a solid, shocking blue. The colour of the sky on a bright day, maybe, or maybe the eggs that the birds that sometimes nested in the rafters of their old house would lay. Except so much brighter than either of those things and without pupils. The girl laughed, a tinkling sound.
“I knew you’d come to see me!” she exclaimed. She clapped her hands together around the instrument, which was bone-white. “And I knew you wouldn’t get lost.”
“I followed the music.” Suddenly, she didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to tell this girl she wanted to play. She stepped onto the grass and the realisation that she was doing something wrong hit her all at once, as if she’d be punished for standing right there.
“But sometimes people come here and get lost even though there’s music,” said the girl. “I think it’s because you’re small. Not big like him.”
She pointed at the edge of the clearing, just out of Amy’s line of sight. Amy craned her head to see that there was a man laying on the ground, half in and out of the sunlight. He wore armour, his helmet having toppled off onto the grass to reveal the palest face Amy had ever seen.
“Oh,” said Amy. “Did he get tired?”
“Don’t worry,” trilled the girl. “He’ll wake up soon and then he’ll protect us!”
Amy nodded, slowly. Something was strange, something small but persistent, but Amy couldn’t recognise what it was, so she ignored it.
“I’m Fado!” said the girl.
“I’m Amy.” Suddenly, she felt shy. These children were all strangers even if she wanted to be friends. “I wanted to find the village.”
“We would love to have you come and play!” said Fado. “You should come with me right now!”
“No,” said another voice from the entrance of the clearing. Amy turned to see another girl. This one had green eyes like the grass they stood on, bright like Fado’s, and her hair was unlike any Amy had ever seen before. It was green, like she’d grown from a treebranch instead of being born. This was the sad-looking girl, Amy realised. But she looked annoyed, now, crossing her arms and staring at Fado. Another little fairy hovered at her shoulder and Amy could have sworn it was also glaring.
“She’s not going to the village,” she said.
“But…Saria…” Fado pouted.
“And you stole my ocarina,” said Saria. “I knew I should never have taught you that song.”
Amy watched as Fado lifted herself from her treestump and slouched across the small clearing, her fairy trailing behind her. She dropped the ocarina into Saria’s waiting hand and then slumped in place, her curls drooping about her face. Saria turned to Amy so fast it almost made her jump.
“And you!” she said. “How did you get here?”
She put Amy in mind of a strict tutor, which was not at all what Amy liked to associate with fairies. “Um…I,” stammered Amy, trying to put her words in order. “We moved into a big house outside the forest and, I wanted to come and see the faries.”
Saria sighed. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here at all,” she said. “Come, I’ll take you home. Fado, back to the village, now.”
Fado looked as if she might protest, before thinking better of it and stalking past her, disappearing between the trees, the light from her fairy vanishing. Amy followed Saria out of the clearing, obediently.
The journey back to the house was quick and quiet, since Saria didn’t make any conversation and she seemed angry enough that Amy didn’t feel like saying anything. They arrived back at the house and Amy caught Saria’s eyes widen at the sight of it, before settling into something so melancholy that it made Amy look away. Amy ran towards the house, catching just a few words muttered by Saria under her breath.
“Great Deku. I’m so sorry.”
Not a month later, Beth woke in the night. Her spacious room was quiet, lit by the moonlight that streamed in through the curtains. She didn’t know why she had woken, but she was thirsty, and the glass on her bedside table was empty. Pushing herself up, she got out of bed and passed the window. Outside, the forest lay dark, below, and was deceptively quiet. Unlike her sister, Beth never wanted to go there; just hearing the noises it made at night was enough.
Slipping on her dressing gown and slippers, Beth took her glass and left her room. The corridor was dimly lit by the candles in the wall sconces, though most of the staff of the house had gone to bed. Only the guards stayed vigilant, the protection of the lord’s daughters their first and foremost duty.
They had been here long enough, now, that Beth knew she could find the kitchen without getting lost, so she headed in the direction of the upstairs dining room and, from there on, she would find the steps down to the kitchen, the ones that the maids used to bring up food.
Beth reached the dining room door in near silence but for her own footsteps. A creak sounded on the other side of the door. She stopped and kept herself still. If it was one of the staff, she made enough of a pale figure in the dark that she’d be noticed without scrambling to hide. She consoled herself with the thought that it must be one of the staff, perhaps even one of the guards. The younger maids would kowtow and hurry away, even though Beth did her best to make them feel comfortable around her. The chief maid would give her a stern look but trusted Beth enough that she wouldn’t be questioned. Beth and her older sisters would fob the butler off with issues of a feminine persuasion, and nobody else slept in this part of the grounds.
It would be fine, so Beth opened the door. The dining room, at night, was darker than the corridor, lit only by the moon through the arched windows. It was circular, with this door and another on the other side, and the round table sat in the centre. Beth’s eyes took a moment to acclimatise themselves to the gloom and, at first, she thought the sound had been her imagination, or had come from elsewhere.
Then she saw it: a figure by the window, outlined in moonlight. She froze, and the figure was still until it moved with a clank. It took a laborious step and now she saw that he wore armour and was settled by the knowledge that this was just a guard patrolling the house. That was until she saw the way he moved, with a pronounced limp and an arm bent at an angle that an arm should not be. Though Beth knew some of the guards were older, none were infirm.
She repressed a scream and took a shaking foot back. But, surely, as one of the nobles of the house, she must find out who this is. Beth was not a brave person, but she’d curse her own cowardice if anything happened to her sisters or perhaps any of the maids.
“Hello?” she said. Her voice was thin and quiet in the large, dark room.
Her breath caught in her throat as the man did not respond but, instead, turned. And here Beth screamed, for the face beneath his helmet was nothing but a skull, completely stripped of flesh.
She fled, water forgotten, running back to her room, locking the door behind her.
Joelle had read all that she could about the forest and its surrounding areas as soon as her father had made the announcement that they were coming here. In the carriage, she’d watched for something she’d only heard about but not seen, before. She’d learned that the forest was a nexus of sorts - many of the smaller kingdoms had connections to it. Litaral underground paths in the cases of the Zora and the Gorons, and possibly others besides. It was a source of something just beyond, and peoples like the Kokiri supposedly drew their unaging power from it.
So, to live there would mean that Joelle would learn first hand about at least some of that power. She was just a Hyrulian, though noble blood often carried favour with the supernatural.
It had been six months since they moved here and she had not seen head or tail of a single thing. She’d sat out and watched the edge of the forest, she’d taken the hounds around the grounds to see if their noses caught anything strange. But, still, nothing.
Amy had come back subdued on the day she said she was going to see the fairies, and Joelle had tried to press her on what she’d seen, telling her that she wouldn’t tell a soul if Amy had gone into the forest when she had been told not to. But her youngest sister had brushed her off, apparently still smarting from the comments Joelle had made that morning at breakfast. How was Joelle to know Amy might actually get to see something?
Then Beth said she’d seen something, but it had been difficult for Joelle to get anything out of her. Some kind of skeleton, since Beth mentioned a skull. Joelle wondered if Beth hadn’t just caught sight of a guard and the shadows had made illusions of things that weren’t there. She had to admit that that might be spite, since Joelle had once watched for hours to catch sight of one of the rumoured stalchildren of Hyrule Field, and hadn’t seen so much as a dessicated femur. Still, Beth seemed shaken months later, even more so than usual.
Meg and her father seemed to have seen nothing, or they hadn’t let Joelle know if they had. So this afternoon saw Joelle sitting in the drawing room, putting together an old jigsaw puzzle. Puzzles always settled her mind, let it run while her hands were occupied. She’d done this one - a painting of Hyrule Castle - so many times she barely even needed to thing about it. It had often proved the best way to put two and two together.
Piece into piece into piece, until something clicked. And then it occurred to Joelle that perhaps she was looking in the wrong direction. Maybe, she should be looking not around the grounds or out into the forest, but beneath the earth.
To do this, she needed to go down to the cellars. That was where, after all, so many secrets had turned up in ages past.
When the lord had announced to his daughters that they were going to live in the forest, Meg had grieved. So much of her life was rooted in the town - her friends, local fashion and everything to do with being the primary heiress of her father’s family. Her father had assured her that nothing would change once she came of age, but Meg mourned the loss of her social circle all the same.
Though, she’d kept it quiet - Amy had seemed excited, Beth had seemed cautious but intrigued and Joelle had that singular expression of raptness on her face that Meg knew meant that she was coming up with a whole number of new rabbit holes she could disappear down in a different place. And Meg wanted neither to sully the anticipation of her sisters or the efforts of her father.
Especially since they would be even more central to her life, now, than they had been before. Amy needed protection, Beth needed encouragement, and Joelle…Joelle just needed to talk face to face with other Hylians now and again.
So then, Meg had cause to notice the effect this new place had on her sisters. She knew Amy had gone into the forest on that first day, slipping away before anybody else could do anything at all. Later, when Meg had seen her, she was subdued, sullen, as if some kind of spark had begun to elude her since that morning. Meg had frowned, but considered any kind of disappointment the little girl had experienced that day to be punishment enough.
That evening, as she’d closed her bedroom curtains for the night, Meg had glanced down at the entrance to the woods, and saw, just for a moment, two pale faces staring up at the house. She looked again, and they were gone.
Beth, who might have been the most sensible of her siblings, if only because of her nervousness, had only become more spooked. After about a month or so, every time night fell, Beth would ensure the presence of light wherever she went. She had become frightened to step out into a dim corridor, lit only by candles, and evening dinner had seen her sometimes skip the meal altogether, so that Meg had to inform the cook and the maids to bring a meal to her room, where she had set lit candles before mirrors to increase their reach.
When Meg had tried to console her, Beth had only been able to talk about skulls and limbs that angled wrongly. Meg told her that she’d simply had a nightmare, for nothing could get past the guards and their hounds, and a new house must be causing her some emotional upheaval. Beth had nodded, shakily, and repeated to both Meg and herself that Meg must be correct.
Meg extinguished her candles before she slept and saw nothing. Just the creaking of wooden floors, perhaps caused by the wind or even a maid, perhaps checking on Meg’s anxious sister.
And Joelle, whose yearning for knowledge became a noticeable craving. On several occasions, Meg had seen her parading the grounds with one or two of the guards’ hounds, taking deliberate steps, occasionally crouching to give the dogs some persuasive treats. Meg warned her that she ought not to take up too much of the hounds’ time, as the guards needed their aid. Joelle had told her that the time spent was worthwhile, that she was on the brink of finding something.
After six months of living in the house, Meg had spied her heading down to the skullery, where Joelle had pushed aside a rug before crouching. Meg watched her as she pulled out one of the pins that kept her hair reasonably tidy and carefully pushed it into something on the floor that Meg hadn’t been able to see. When Meg had entered the room, Joelle had looked up and told Meg that she’d had an idea.
Meg could only tell her to be careful - Joelle was never going to take her advice like the younger two did. Sometimes, when the house was particularly quiet, Meg heard noises like distant yelps and shrieks. Just foxes, she told herself.
A year after the family moved to the new house, to see a hand, fingers splayed like spider’s legs, palm spread before his face. As it lunged for his neck, the lord felt out for an arm to grab to pull it away, but he felt nothing. His room was locked from the inside, and the door had to be broken open by one of the guards after he failed to appear that morning. A physician hurried over from the castle town declared it an accidental death given the circumstances.
A vigil was held on the grounds, attended by the sisters and most of the staff. The sisters wept and Amy was so distressed, she had to be put to bed. Afterwards, Meg made the decision to have her father’s body be taken back to the graveyard where their mother was interred, so that he could be buried with her.
After that, life continued. The sisters found that their grief softened after a while, as it had done after their mother had passed. On one misty night, Amy realised what she’d seen in that clearing and woke with a jolt. Beth slept amid candleflame yet, if she looked down to the bottom of her bed, still saw a figure watching her with empty eyes, holding its mangled arm. Joelle got into the cellars and recorded scratches and marks and found evidence that she could go deeper, still. Meg fell into running the household, now that their father was gone, ensuring her sister’s education continued even as her own approached its finish.
Two years after the sisters had moved into the house, they sat around the breakfast table. A maid bustled about, nervously, and Meg wondered if the chief maid was going to let her know that another one of the staff would have to have been let go, soon.
“Make sure you all attend your lessons, today,” she said. “This means you, Amy.”
Amy scowled. “I always do my best,” she said. “Even though none of the tutors will tell me why grown-ups get lost and die in the forest. Like that soldier.”
Beth started at this, her eyes growing wide and she stared unblinking at the plate of eggs in the centre of the table. Meg placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You know why, Amy,” she said. “Because the forest is dangerous, and you shouldn’t go there.”
“If you see anything like that, again,” said Joelle. She seemed almost permanently distantly frustrated, now. “Please tell me so that I can see it, too.”
“No, it’s my thing,” said Amy. “Find your own thing.”
“It’s Beth’s thing, actually.” Joelle looked at Beth. “Isn’t it? Your ghostly visitor that I’ve never seen, no matter how hard I look.”
Beth shook her head, frantic. “N-no,” she said. “You and Amy can both have it.”
“That’s enough,” said Meg. “When you’re all finished, we will go and and get ready, because our lessons start in an hour.”
Amy would have sworn that she really had intended to go to her lessons that day, but something had proved distracting. It was that music, again, and this time, it piped into the front garden. It was actually lucky that it had been Amy that heard it, instead of the butler or one of the maids. So Amy had really had no choice but to follow it.
Even at the edge of the forest, it looked different, now. There were more shadows, and the way that the branches crossed the path overhead made them look like crossed swords, rather than an inviting arch. Amy took a deep breath and stepped into the forest. If she kept to the path, it should still be fine. She had grown since her last trek into here, and the branches overhead pulled at her hair. Spiders fidgeted their legs in corners, the markings on their backs like skulls. Amy shuddered and avoided them; just seeing them out of the corner of her eye made her feel like something was creeping up her spine.
She persevered along the path, forced to duck beneath branches. Then a ghastly sight met her: from the earth sprouted hands, swaying on spindly arms, pointing fingers occasionally twitching like insect legs. Amy’s heart was in her throat, her feet rooted to the earth. She closed her eyes tight, hiding the monstrous sight in darkness. When she opened them, she saw that they were just spindly trees, stripped of leaves and branches.
“Hello.” The voice startled Amy and she turned to see Fado. The golden-haired Kokiri girl was unchanged since she’d last seen her, and the way the forest was now made her look strange: too pointed, too luminous. “I saw you coming and decided to meet you. You’re bigger now, so you might be less safe, here. And it would be fun to have you here forever, but I don’t think it would be so for you.”
“No.” Amy wasn’t sure what else to say. Part of her wanted to flee, as if she were Beth, but another part of her, something stout and resolute, decided to stay. “I heard the music, so I came.”
“Oh!” Fado bent down and rose again with a small, ornate wooden box. “Saria wanted me to give you this. She said it ought to be in your house, that she was sure now that there was nothing more to be done. I don’t know what she meant, but there it is. Take it.”
Amy took the wooden box; it was lighter than it looked. She cracked it open, and inside was a bow and a quiver full of arrows. They were much finer and more delicate than the ones she’d seen the guards using.
“Are you sure?” she said. “None of us in the house are archers, except the guards, and they already have bows. Meg would never let me learn.”
Fado frowned, an expression that made her eyes dim momentarily. “Adults are like that,” she said. “Sometimes Saria is like that, even though none of your people would ever call her grown-up. But no, this is absolutely for you. She said you ought to hide it somewhere.”
Amy nodded, and Fado continued. “You should go, I really, truly do not what you to get trapped, here.”
Amy ran back out of the forest, clutching the box to her chest, bent over slightly to protect it and also so that the branches would not catch at her hair. She managed to get inside the house and hide it in her bedroom before anybody caught her.
As usual, Beth took the time to light the candles beside her bed and by the big mirror over the mantlepiece. Her sisters had gone to bed; Meg and Amy still at odds after Amy had skipped her lessons when she said she wouldn’t, and Joelle after coming out of the cellar, where she seemed to spend most of her days, now. Beth could never do any of those things, so why the apparition had chosen her to haunt, she didn’t know.
She left her curtains open to let in as much light as possible, and slipped into bed. Sure enough, as she drifted off to sleep, she heard the creaking of the floor and the clank of armour. Beth dreamed of the sun cresting over forgotten ruins. With the certainty of dreams, she knew that something in these old stones yearned to be remembered.
When she woke, she knew that he was there, though she didn’t dare look. She was never given the grace of being able to sleep through the night, so all she could do was cower in her blankets until her dreams took her, again.
Have you seen my kingdom? A voice echoed around Beth’s mind and her eyes were wide; it had never spoken to her, before. She tried to ignore it and drift off once again, but the question hung there, waiting.
“No!” she said, raising her voice a little. “I don’t know who you are! I don’t know why you haunt me!”
There was quiet, and Beth hoped, for a moment, that her outburst had worked, and the thing would now leave.
I thought you might remember… There was a melancholy in those words that caught Beth off guard. Sadness was not what she expected from such an apparition. For the first time, she wondered if it really meant to frighten her.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Beth, more gently. “I have only lived in the castle town and here.”
Oh. Then I am lost, I think. This made Beth dare to sit up, although she kept her eyes carefully on the foot of her bed. She had the sudden notion that he did not want to be here any more than she did.
“I think you might be,” she said, softly. “When did you die?”
I am sure I fell here. My lady, who I swore fealty to, I thought you were… The words trailed off into rumbling sounds, and it took a moment for Beth to realised that he was weeping. She forced herself to look at the ghost head-on. His pauldroned shoulders were heaving, and his face, bent in grief, seemed less frightening.
“Maybe I can help you to move on,” she said.
Now, the skull startled her only slightly when he looked up. Is that something you can do for me?
Beth took in a shaky breath. “I can try,” she said.
Beth got out of bed and felt only a little trepidation as she approached the ghost. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll find a way.”
She held out her hand, and the apparition took it. To her surprise, it seemed warm beneath his glove. Beth looked up, taken aback when she saw that the skull had been replaced with the face of a young man, only a year or two older than she. He was handsome, with sweet blue eyes and fair hair. A young hero, good-hearted and in love, taken too early, like something from a storybook.
“Shall we go?” she said. Her heart quivered, but she gathered enough courage to lead him to the door. When she opened it, they saw not the corridor, but a field beneath a rising sun. And the moment Beth took one step onto that field, although she didn’t know it, yet, that day would be the last day she ever saw her sisters alive.
Joelle was the last of the three remaining sisters to know that Beth had gone missing; she spent so much time in the cellars, trying to find something that went deeper, that she even skipped meals. Instead she stole away food from the kitchens to eat as she worked. One day, feeling the pangs of hunger, she surfaced to find Amy and Meg, waiting. Joelle noted that they were almost the same height, now - Amy had grown so much since they had arrived here. Their faces were drawn, pale with worry. This made Joelle pause.
“Joelle, we can’t find Beth.” Amy’s voice sounded younger than it had in a while, though it wasn’t as if Joelle had talked to her much, lately.
“Have you seen her?” Meg was trying to keep her voice level and calm, likely for the benefit of Amy, but Joelle could hear a quiver. Meg had suddenly had to take charge of the house, and had started presenting herself as more mature since Amy had been born, even, but Joelle knew when she’d reached that last nerve. She would know; the two oldest sisters had often been at odds since there were just two of them.
“No…” Joelle tried to remember the last time she’d actually seen Beth. Perhaps it had been been over a week.
“She isn’t anywhere in the house,” said Meg. “We’ve looked everywhere. We’ve had the maids help us search, have had the guards search the grounds.”
“But nothing,” said Amy. Her eyes were brimming with tears and Joelle felt the incredible urge to make it stop, make this all stop. Her sisters were not part of this; they were supposed to live placidly as she sought for more.
“I will look for her,” she said. “If she’s nowhere in the house or the grounds at all, and I don’t think she would have gone into the forest, then she must be in the cellar.”
She turned to go back the way she came, hunger forgotten. She could never have eaten now, anyway.
“Joelle, no!” said Meg. “Please, stay here and help us look, I’m sure you’ve found all that you can down there.”
“Jo!” called Amy, as Joelle disappeared back down the stairs.
Just before the door closed, Joelle caught one last protest from Meg.
“I don’t want to lose anybody else.”
Life still continued, despite Beth’s absence. Everyone still searched, but the structure of life reformed itself, again. Certainly, children know that their parents will leave the world, some day, but siblings are to remain and age with you. Meg upheld the house, because Amy and Joelle still needed her to do so. Once, perhaps, she would have cloistered herself away in mourning, but she had always been the eldest, so had always worn that mantle if need be.
And needed it was, as it seemed to be weekly that the chief maid approached her to tell her that one or two more of the maids wanted to leave. The old woman did not defer to Meg in the same way she had the girls’ father and, earlier, their mother, but she accepted Meg’s position enough to trust her with the responsibility. When the staff left, they needed to leave in groups, as the trek back through the forest, even by carriage, was a risk. Still, Meg could not stand to refuse to let people go if they wanted to.
Not only that, but the chief maid also reported that guards sometimes strode into the forest and did not come out, again. But Meg had a duty to keep the house, together, and do that she would.
It was rare, now, that the girls took breakfast together, but today happened to be one of those days. Amy, Joelle, Meg and an empty chair. A maid hovered at the door, and Amy could see the way her fingers grabbed at her sleeve. She wondered if this was one of the ones who was leaving.
“I hear noises in the night, now,” said Amy. She put down her slice of buttered toast. “I think…I think it’s Beth.”
Nobody replied for a moment. Meg, who had poured herself a single glass of juice, bowed her head, and Joelle was pulling apart her own slice of toast in a fractious manner.
“Amy-” began Meg.
But she was interrupted. “You didn’t hear Beth,” said Joelle. “I know she’s beneath the house. We know this whole place is a central point for some kind of power. That’s why we moved here, so that it would protect us. Except it took Beth.”
“No!” yelled Amy. Meg jumped at this, Joelle’s eyes only widened, slightly. “You weren’t here, Jo! Why haven’t you been here?”
“I’m doing my best,” said Joelle, evenly.
“Meg does her best,” retorted Amy. “You just do whatever you want to do.”
Meg raised her head and placed her hand on the table. “Stop. Both of you.”
Quiet settled, for a moment. Then Joelle said, “Beth never disobeyed once in her life.” She dropped a piece of toast onto her plate. “And she’s gone.”
After breakfast, Joelle hurried back downstairs, and Meg did not push Amy towards her lessons. Instead, the oldest of Amy’s sisters put her hand to her brow and said she would be resting before she needed to talk to the guards about their disappearances.
Amy was no longer as interested as she had been in the Kokori, and would not have decided to venture out of the house if she hadn’t heard, once again, that music. So, she stepped outside, and was surprised to see Saria sitting beneath the tree that overlooked the yard. The Kokiri girl was staring up at the top of that tree, as if searching for something.
“Saria?” said Amy, hesitantly. Saria had ever seemed eager to talk to her.
Saria looked at her, and blinked. “Oh, Amy, good. You’re here.” She turned her ocarina over in her hands. Amy truly got the notion that it was important to her. Amy approached Saria, and sat down on the grass next to her. She folded her hands in her lap and waited.
“I…” started Saria. She stopped, her green eyes heavy and sad. She stared out at the forest but also, somehow at nothing at all. “Wanted to tell you that I am sorry.”
“For what?” said Amy. “For Dad? For Beth?”
Saria took a deep breath. “For both, I suppose, and more besides,” she said. She craned her hand to look at the house. “There’s so much on this land that wants to protect it.
“Yes,” said Amy. “I said before, remember, that’s why we came here. So it could protect us, too.”
Saria closes her eyes for a moment. “It’s not quite like that,” she said, quietly. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you lose your family members.”
“Dad died in his sleep, but the doctor said there were marks on his neck. Bruises,” said Amy. “Beth isn’t dead, but she was scared of something. A ghost with a skull instead of a proper face, she said.”
Amy’s words seemed to have cast a pall over Saria’s face. “Oh,” she said. “That’s how it happened.”
“You said before that we should never have come here,” said Amy.
Saria nodded. “That’s true,” she said. “But, I think you had to. I think you and your house have to be here.”
She ran a hand over her ocarina, fingertips bumping over the holes. “Listen, I don’t know how this will all happen in its entirety,” she said. “Maybe you and your sisters will leave. Perhaps Beth made it through the forest.”
She stood up. “I should go, now,” she said, turning to look back at Amy before she headed back into the forest. “But. Amy. I will try to help when I can.”
Amy stared after her, dumbly, watching Saria disappear between the trees.
Down in the depths of the cellar, where Joelle spent most of her day, the dirt of the ground was smoothed over with her constant poring over it. Unlike the rest of the house, these rooms were a lot older, though they contained little. The walls were made of large, rough bricks and the place smelled like old earth, like the passages leading up to the castle.
Joelle thought, perhaps, that if it wasn’t the basement of an earlier settlement, then it was a crypt, and its deceased inhabitants simply had been lain to rest in a room, below. Joelle had scratched at the floor to find some ancient trapdoor hidden beneath the earth, and she had felt over the walls to find a faded door. But the only thing of note was a carving of an eye in the wood in the stone high on the wall that was opposite the stairs that led out.
This was a symbol that Joelle had never seen in any of her books or explorations. Perhaps a family crest or even an ode to a forgotten god. Joelle stood as close as she could to the wall and lifted the candle she carried down with her. The carving was more deeply engraved than she’d first thought, the iris protruding in a raised bump. If Joelle could just press her hand against it...
Joelle looked around her, and picked up her notebook. As carefully as she could, she aimed it squarely at the carving and threw the book. It hit the eye at its very centre by its corner and, for a swift moment, there was nothing. Then, there was a creaking of stone.
Joelle turned to see, on the righthand wall, a door had opened up, with stairs leading down into darkness. Quickly, she lit a fresh candle and extinguished the old one. Then she headed down into that pitch blackness.
The steps were solid stone and, the walls were the same old stone that the cellar had been. Unable to see far ahead, Joelle took the steps down, slowly. This room, it seemed, was rather deeper than the cellar. Eventually, her foot landed on soil, and she knew that she had reached the bottom. Holding up her candle, she surveyed the room.
It was higher than she imagined, the ceiling arching up into a dome, which did, perhaps, explain the depth of the room. The walls seemed to be bare, thought down here they were inscribed with strange symbols. At first, Joelle thought it might be a language she hadn’t seen before, and certainly couldn’t read but, when she held the candle up and looked closer, they appeared to be drawings. There were six different ones that she could see.
The first: a leaf. The second: a flame. The third: a teardrop. The fourth: a skull. The fifth: a curling plume. The sixth: a star. Before she left, Joelle would sketch them into her notebook.
On the other side of the room to the stairs, there was a round pool. It was dry and blackened, though Joelle imagined it filled with perfectly clear water, perhaps from the stream that ran beneath the house out into the courtyards.
And then a noise sounded from one corner of the room; a grinding crunch coupled with an unearthly moan. Joelle stumbled and righted herself just before she fell onto the dirt, candle and all. There was nothing there in the corner, just darkness. Then something began to glow in the dimness. A faint, sickly green.
Then a face showed itself. A sunken, hollow-eyed face, its jaw gaping as if it had come apart from the rest of its face. For a moment, Joelle stared at it frozen, watched how that jaw dangled, how its teeth made a grotesque smile. But, just as it lunged towards her, she ran, with only the candlelight to guide her as she darted towards the other side of the room.
She felt the thing looming at her back, the grinding of its loose bones, the noise of its moans. Those were moans of pain. Joelle had never heard such a sound, but she felt it so acutely. It came so close that she could feel its breath on the back of her neck and it was so cold. But she continued to run, heading back towards the stairs.
Joelle had almost reached the bottom step when she stumbled over something and fell. Thinking quickly, she held her candle upright. When she looked down to see the obstacle, she saw hair streaming across the earthen floor and, beyond that, her sister’s face, eyes unseeing, smiling at nothing.
Joelle had not wanted to be this correct. That was her final thought as she looked up and saw the ghoulish face baring down on her, the hollows of its eyes filled with desperation, and its jaw grinding and snapping.
As Meg had feared, Joelle had never come up from the cellars, and had locked the door behind her so that Amy would never follow her. For a while, Meg pulled at the door, searched through the house to find the keys. Eventually, she had a guard break down the door, watching with Amy. The guard then accompanied them down by candlelight, Amy holding tightly onto Meg’s hand. The cellar below was empty, its four walls bare, and there were no exits that Meg could see. Perhaps, Meg thought, Joelle had disappeared to the same place that Meg had.
The staff of the house was spare, now. The butler approached her, his cap in his hand, and told her he wanted to go back to the castle town and see his family. Meg, of course, let him go. Another guard disappeared into the forest, and another maid wanted to leave.
Meg held Amy when she could, and found herself promising that she would bring their sisters back, though she doubted her words as she spoke them.
Meg and Amy sat in silence at the breakfast table, and the chief maid herself had served them sugary porridge before she left to go and make up for the gaps that the maids had left. Neither of them were hungry, but they both managed two or three mouthfuls before making their excuses to leave.
Amy was two years older than she had been since they’d moved to the new house and, for somebody of her age, this was a lot of time. No longer did she yearn to play with the Kokiri. Instead, she wanted to find her sisters. And if they weren’t in the house or in the gardens or in the cellar, then there was only one place they could be.
For the final time, Amy stepped out of the house and looked out to the forest, where it loomed teeming with shadows. The branches across the path spiked outwards, threatening to score the flesh and clothing of anybody who dared take the route through them.
But Amy walked onwards and onto the path. Around her, errant trees bent like the joints of limbs, rotting wood grasping like claws. Huge spiders with bodies like skulls spun webs across them, big enough to catch her. Amy walked and she walked and found nothing. And then she was lost.
Meg was alone in the house, now. The final guard was lost in the forest, the final maid had fled without saying a thing. Even the chief maid had picked up her bags and left without saying a word. Meg had run after her, calling her, asking why she hadn’t told her she was leaving. But she stopped at the door, and watch the old woman board a carriage and leave for the Hylian fields.
“Meg.” A voice, light and sweet, called out her name. Meg turned to see a small girl, no older than Amy had been when they’d first arrived at the house. Her hair was the colour of spring leaves, her eyes were verdant and bright and a fairy floated at her shoulder. A kokiri, then. She looked so out of place within the walls of their ornate home.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?” demanded Meg. Her voice felt high, thin.
“I’m Saria, and I live here, now,” said the girl, simply.
“No, you don’t, this is our house, we live here,” said Meg.
“Yes, you do. You and your sisters,” said Saria. “You have all befallen a terrible fate. Beth, sweet Beth, took the hand of a wraith and stepped, just for a moment, into his eternal resting place. Joelle, clever Joelle, wanted to know all that she could and dug too deep. And Amy - bright, vibrant Amy - she went to look for her sisters and became lost.”
Meg swallowed, as the truth was laid bare. “I see. But why not me? Why am I left?”
Saria closed her eyes and bowed her head. “You did not escape, Meg,” she said.
Saria stood aside, and Meg was greeted by herself, hanging from the bannisters. She swayed slightly from the breeze that came in through the front door, and her head sagged, her loose hair hanging down her dress. Meg put her hands to her face and screamed. She screamed over everything she had wanted to, ever since they first came to the house. Saria stands there, quietly, and waits for her to stop.
“When?” asked Meg, finally.
“After Amy left,” said Saria. “I’m sorry, Meg. I didn’t want this to happen, but it seems like it had to. There are five temples, across the land of Hyrule. The forge on death mountain, the Zoran citadel in Lake Hylia, the catacombs underneath Kakariko graveyard, the palace in the desert. Here, there had been no temple for a long time. Nothing to stand watch over our forest. Until your father built a house, here. This, Meg, this shall be the temple, and you and your sisters shall still remain here. Beth didn’t stay in the knight’s resting place, Joelle will not be confined to the basement, and Amy will not be forced to the guard the woods.”
As the sisters wandered their house, fifty years passed. As the sisters wandered their house, skirmishes broke out across Hyrule. As the sisters wandered their house, a gravely injured woman fell to her knees before the Great Deku Tree and pleaded for it to look after her young son. As the sisters wandered their house, that child grew among the Kokiri. As the sisters wandered their house, a darkness spread across the land and rooted itself in their very grounds. A princess disguised herself, a guard protected a town, a water maiden watched over her citadel, a king watched his people taken and a thief rose in power.
Saria waited until the hero - who was her best friend in all the world - found a way to enter the house that had become the Forest Temple. He found the bow and arrows and shot the four sisters through the heart, so that they could finally rest.