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The year Link turns nine is when A Lot of Things happen. The Great Deku Tree gets ill and dies. Then he un-dies, but he’s small and… round. For the first time Link didn’t have to look up to talk to his father. What’s more, Link leaves the forest. Even though everyone knows you can't leave the forest, that it’s a death-wish, Link somehow, inexplicably, does.
The world outside is large and messy, full of monsters and people alike. Tall, grown people who are too busy to play. Some of them indulge him with smiles that don't look real and the rest don't give him much time of day. He can always go back to the forest and play there, of course, but the Deku Tree almost-sorta-maybe died, and Navi keeps urging him onto his next task, and then there's a princess with a treasure, and, and, and-
Link's running full tilt ahead, barely stopping to breathe. It feels like if he falters for even a moment his legs will run out from underneath him, leaving him gasping in the dirt. There's always another task, another problem, but eventually he gets one stone, then two, then three.
Even when he's not doing something he's doing something. He visits Castle Town and Kakariko Village and helps the people there. He scours the edges of the kingdom for glinting gold spiders to lift an ugly curse, or strange glowing jewels that are shaped like a heart and make him feel stronger. They all show up in the strangest of places.
By the time he has the third and final stone, Link has seen a lot of the world. He had a Keaton mask in his sack for that kindly soldier that let him up towards death mountain. He was given an empty bottle from helping a lady wrangle all her cuckoos back to their cage, which he is dying to fill up with some fresh milk the next time he's near Lon Lon Ranch. He even has a handful of bean sprouts he is very interested in planting around to see what they'll do. They smell of magic and Link loves the magic of plants, just like the ones back home.
He has so many things to do, but not enough time to do them. He’s gotten the final stone, and his hands are still shaking from being zapped so many times inside Lord Jabu-Jabu. Navi keeps telling him they should get a move on but he's so tired. He could probably sleep for a whole year after this, but when he puts the stones in place and does whatever it is he has to do, it will be over. He can rest, and play, and spend some time with Saria again, and maybe check out that cool bomchu alley game in the town. All these things can wait until he's finished.
Things don't work out that way.
Link wakes. The stone around him is the same familiar temple, but the very air itself has changed. It's become cold. His ears are buzzing, like cotton stuffed into his head. He looks around, and feels a weird rush of vertigo.
Instinctively, he raises a hand to his head, but someone near smacks him in the face before he gets to it. He jumps, looking around frantically but nobody else was there. It's only when catches sight of the hand and jumps that he realises.
It moves with him.
Link probably would have spent hours staring at his own hands (but not his, not really) except the appearance of a person named Sheik interrupts his growing panic. He draws his sword, and even though his arms are longer and the sword is different, it's as easy as breathing.
Sheik begins to speak, and Link is supposed to be on guard, he really is, but his mind was running. That... that dream, of the man Rauru. The sage. It wasn't real, was it?
Seven years couldn't have possibly passed.
But Sheik is finished with their poem, and calls him the 'Hero of Time' just like in that dream of the sage. Link concentrates, focusing on the unfamiliar sheikah until it feels like he can finally hear again.
"...you have no choice. You must look for the five temples and awaken the five sages."
He checks out again. When he comes back to himself, Navi is there, bouncing around and trying to get his attention. Has she been there all along?
"Link! Are you listening? We should hurry go to Kakariko village."
He wasn't listening, not really. He didn't want to go to the village, he wanted to go home, and crawl into his bed, and pretend it was all a dream.
But Navi always knew what to do. Whenever he got stuck, or distracted, or had forgotten, she'd remind him. Navi was his fairy, the one he'd waited so long for. She would know best, wouldn't she?
On awkward, stumbling legs, Link leaves the temple to make his way to the hidden village.
He walks out into a world of nightmares.
The Kokiri make things, sometimes. Usually most of them don't have the patience, and might go beg the Deku tree for a new toy instead. But with all the time in the world, they end up making things at least some of the time.
Link doesn't remember who made it, but there was a length rope in their village. It was thick and sturdy, and incredibly long, like someone had started making it and got distracted and looked back to find they'd continued to make it in the interim.
Two of them had strung the rope between two trees that were not too close and not too far apart, tied tightly around their trunks. One of the trees was a little downhill from the other, so each child could take turns riding down the rope by using a stick, one hand on each side.
When it has been Link's first time riding, he was excited, and a little nervous. It was the most popular game at the time, and he had been waiting for ages to get on it. Saria had lent him her stick, long, thick, and wooden. It was smooth from the lack of bark, and there was a small groove in the centre from where she has used it over and over. He reached up high, standing on his toes to put the stick above the rope, before holding each end like a handle. Then he kicked off.
It was fun, at first. Exhilarating, with the wind rushing through his hair and the ground racing by under his curled up legs. But too it was too much, too fast. The second tree was approaching quickly, inevitably, and all at once Link could see his sticky fate smacked against the hard wood of the fast approaching tree. He panicked, letting go of his stick and falling fast down the hill, rolling enough times to make him dizzy before he finally stopped.
In the end, Link had come out of that ordeal relatively intact. His hands were a little raw, and he had a few cuts and bruises, but that was par the course. He rode on the rope a couple more times, and never really forgot the initial rush, exhilaration, panic. Eventually the rope snapped in the middle, granting Mido, the last to ride it, a swollen ankle, that his fairy companion immediately fell upon to heal.
Link felt a little bit like he was still on that ride. The tree was fast approaching, his inevitable end looming into view with astonishing speed. Only this time he couldn't let go, his hands were stuck in place, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't escape.
Everything was out of control. His hands and legs were too long, his clothes were different, and itchy. He could barely walk straight but felt possessed by some strange, unnaturally smooth instinct whenever he touched the master sword, letting him move with such ease it was scary. Castle town was in ruins and full of the worst creatures Link could ever imagine, while Hyrule field was safer and emptier than ever: deserted by both human and stalchild alike. It was wrong, some perverse reversal of what normality should look like, and completely out of the realm of Link's control.
Link isn't quite sure why Sheik told him to go to Karakiko. Perhaps it was to steel his resolve, for the graveyard was as creepy as ever. Large, ghostly poes roamed it, and Link was very tempted to leave straight away.
How did he do this before? When he was getting the three stones? Link had upturned basically every stone across Hyrule in his relentless curiosity, but when he tries imagining doing it all again he's filled with an immeasurable sense of exhaustion.
'I thought this would be over by now', he thought.
And all of a sudden Link was overcome with an incredible sense of betrayal. This wasn't how it was supposed to go – this wasn't what they promised him. He’d gathered the stones, and opened the door of time. All they had to do was use the triforce to defeat Ganondorf. It was like a puzzle, gather the pieces, and slot them in place, then the game is over and you’ve won. Except, Link has come to realise, they didn’t win. Even though he did everything he was supposed to do, it wasn’t enough. Everything was gone. His body, all his plans for when it was over – his home. Link had said goodbye to so many people with a simple 'see ya,' secure in the knowledge that he'd be back soon, that the great enemy would be defeated and the Deku tree would be safe.
Did they wait for him? Day after day, year after year, while things took a turn to the worse. Or did they even remember that boy in green with the too-big shield, too caught up in everything else going on? Either way, he had never returned.
How did he get this far? Perhaps it wasn't so bad when he had a goal in sight. When he had a place to return to, and a concrete plan what what he had to do and why. Now, Link had none of those: Ganon was in charge of Hyrule. The way forward was fraught with uncertainty, all he had going for him was some song about these sages. Goddess knows what became of his house. Everyone knew if you left something unattended in the forest, it was free to grab.
Link could feel the tears prickling around the corners of his eyes, stinging him like brands calling to his weakness. His knees wobbled, and he crumpled besides a grave, leaning heavily on it.
"Link? Link!" Navi's tinkling voice cut through the ominous silence of the graveyard. "What are you doing? We can't rest here."
Link leaned more heavily on the gravestone, staring blankly at the small flowers that dotted the plot of land in front of it. It shifted a little underneath his weight.
"Hey! Listen!" Navi's voice rang out, shrill and demanding.
He shifted further upright, facing his companion more fully, but at a loss for what to say. In the end, he needed have said anything.
Having shifted it enough, the gravestone slipped out from underneath him, pushed backwards by the force of his weight, revealing a hole in the floor that Link very quickly fell into, yelling all the way down.
That was one way to find a hookshoot.
For all his newfound physical maturity, Link was still somewhat of a child. Anyone with any measure of familiarity with children could speak of how readily they will drag their feet on a task they did not wish doing, and Link was no exception.
Staunchly ignoring the familiar lay of the land which led to the woods he called home, Link set out to do anything else other than what he was meant to be doing. He took his time to get used to walking while he was so high up. He practised with the hookshoot – sending himself flying all over, and launching himself clean over the rooftops of Kakariko. He even found another heart-shaped crystal, and a couple of gold spiders that would have been impossible to grab beforehand. These small, familiar things brought Link a small sense of joy that immediately brightened the otherwise bleak future.
Like all things, it was not built to last, and Link soon found himself out of distractions or things to do with his shiny new toy. He had almost resigned himself to trekking onwards towards the temple when in the distance of Hyrule field he spotted the sloping hills that surrounded Lon Lon Ranch. Immediately he has set his sights on the new target, Navi grumbling at his side all the way. These people waited seven years. They could stand to wait another day.
Link trekked on, determined to ignore everything that he didn’t want to deal with. He ignored how everything looked so different from this high up, he ignored how he could finally hold his heavy Hylian shield. He ignored how most of his toys and items fit so awkwardly in his giant, fumbling hands, that they were less helpful than not using them in the first place. He vehemently ignored the fact that his home was now lost to him, that the Keaton mask sitting in his bag would never reach its intended target, that he wouldn’t be able to finish all the little tasks he’d left undone. They tugged on his heart, those loose ends with nowhere to go.
Most of all, he ignored that small, but growing sense of betrayal that nestled in his core like a bitter poison.