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It is nearly time to depart for Hyrule Castle when a festival stall catches Revali’s eye.
Far too typical of the Hylians not to check the calendars of other people: as Princess Zelda is making her pilgrimage to Mount Lanayru on the day of her seventeenth birthday, the kingdom is celebrating it formally a week beforehand with a party that Revali as Rito Champion is obliged to attend, no matter that it falls on the day marked by the Rito as summer’s beginning. Ordinarily, Revali would spend the day preparing for and participating in the archery contest, collect his trophy, then glut himself on salmon. Instead, he must watch the sun and not linger.
Stalls spill over Warbler’s Nest, lining the road to the north and south. Some offer the usual festival sweets: wrapped candy, honeyed wildberries stuck five-to-a-stick and drippingly sweet, skewered pieces of fish and deer grilled on fires that fill the morning air with delicious smoke. People come down from Tabantha Village for the festival, so there are also mushroom-stuffed Tabanthan bakes, Hylian rice balls – plain, fish, mushroom, pickled plum – and slightly toasted pucks of rice starch that Revali doesn’t know the name of. Earlier, he saw Keteli with her fledgling daughter, pulling at the pucks from a shared stick. The child seemed pleased.
It is not a Tabanthan food vendor whose work stands out.
First, he spots a communal waste pot and disposes of two honey-sticky skewers – if he is not going to compete, he can at least enjoy the festival’s treats – and tuts at two children whose chase along the road nearly careens them into his side. “Sorry, Revali!” one shouts, still running. Keteli’s daughter. The same violet plumage as her mother, but with the other parent’s white feathers at her half-developed crest and along the undersides and points of her wings. Tall like her mother, too. The Hylian girl is struggling to keep up with her.
After checking that none of the honey has transferred to his body, Revali steps closer to his target.
The craftswoman is a visitor from Tabantha Village, her feathers a rosy grey. Carved wood covers the blue-and-orange cloth of her stall. It stands out amid other artisans selling embroidered hip-wraps, cushion covers, ceramic wares, beads and jewellery.
Some of the wood carvings are large enough to hang in a roost, rectangular panels depicting mountain scenes, but it is the small pieces that he examines. A new fashion he’s noted in the Rito around his age is to wear long, thin decorations in their braids. These decorations are designed for them: a hole at the top and bottom to thread part of a semiplume through, holding it to a braid. Yet, it could be adapted. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be worn in the hair. He looks at the patterns carved into them.
None are quite right. Mountains, pines, rock formations all visible from the villages, the main Rito crest, geometric patterns popularly painted along walkways and roost beams, a leaping salmon: all things Link has seen. What he thinks drew Link to the swords and their old cloths in the desert was a desire for difference. Novelty.
“For your own braids or someone else’s?” the craftswoman asks.
Revali tenses, then regrets a response so outward. Then, he chides himself. The woman does not know him, not well enough to be bemused by the idea of Revali wanting to make such an obviously–
Well, it is.
An idea strikes him. “Do you have any depicting the mountain lights?” he asks.
“Ooh, no.” The craftswoman sounds intrigued. “What do you fancy? A mountain, then the swirl of the lights.” With her wing, she waves a line in the air – a mimicry of green lights flowing like impossible wind in the upper night sky, too high for even Revali to reach. “I would put the landscape detail at the bottom, then most of it the lights. Assuming you want it to hang vertically? And how long?” A quick glance at his braids, far longer than the pieces of wood on display – and it would be impractical to have wood hanging in them. His feathers don’t suit braids that frame his face.
“The same length as the others, but with a hole only at the top,” he says, declining to add: it is for another.
The woman nods. “I could have that done in a few days, I reckon. I’ll be staying here for the week.”
Too late for Revali to take it today, but he’ll be returning to central Hyrule in a week – to Kakariko, and the pilgrimage path to the foot of Mount Lanayru, on the day of the princess’ true birthday.
“That would be convenient,” he allows, and the conversation turns to price: her suggestion is very reasonable, for the considerable extent of her skill, and he sees no need to haggle on it.
“My name’s Saezuri, by the way,” she says, “if you need to ask after me. I’m usually at the Snowy Feathers, if for some reason we don’t cross paths before I go back.”
A loud shout distracts him from replying: a pair of Tabanthan Hylians clearing people out of the way as they wheel a cart along the road. It is heavily laden with barrels. Wheat liquor, Revali guesses. It’s either that or pickles, or both. Their usual proclivities. Later on, the festival will be raucous and joyful, but a glance at the sky tells him that it is already time for him to leave. A singer is just warming up her voice by the Warbler’s Nest pinnacles. It would be good to stay. He restrains the urge to rustle his wings.
The festival recedes beneath him as he gales into the warm, early summer sky. He tilts his wings at four warriors circling over the festival, watching for the monsters increasingly swarming in the hills.
Only as he glides to the top of Rito Village does it occur to him that if Saezuri is staying for a week, she will surely discuss her sales and commissions – and the entire village will know that Revali purchased an ornament he cannot intend to wear.
Too late to withdraw the commission. Nor does he want to. He wants, instead, to skirt the eye of the village’s incessant gossip. How long will he need to train on Vah Medoh until they move on from discussing his life? Hylians, for all their many flaws, understand discretion. He will invent new archery competitions until the other Rito stop looking at him for buying a little piece of wood.
He lands on the upper stairway and nearly walks directly into Keteli, too distracted by the thought not of the village’s chatter but of whether the gift is an appropriate reply to Link’s desert cloth. Though Link speaks more in his company now, it is still little enough that discerning his intent is not always easy–
The master bard only tuts at him and says, “We are nearly ready to set off.”
Demna stands not far behind her, at the entrance to the Elder’s roost. Like Revali, the lead warrior wears his armour, with the addition of a newly woven belt tied at his waist, all in clean order. A fresh ochre-red feather from his husband is woven through his long, dun braid. His best bow is fixed to his back.
“All of you are coming?” Revali says. He’d thought Keteli might join the Elder, who had received her own invitation, but faced with the prospect of all three flying with him to Hyrule Castle–
“The Hylian princess is reaching maturity,” Demna says in his usual flat affect. It sounds like reproof. “Especially at this time, we are affording our alliance the fullest respect.”
“Of course.”
The Elder steps out of her roost, adorned in a densely embroidered tunic and carrying her own bow: ceremonial in design, intricate scenes carved into the deep, polished curve of it, yet effective against enemies if danger calls for it. Only Keteli is unarmed, carrying instead her six-stringed harp. Both women wear shaped sapphires in their braids. Revali is glad that he attended to his own appearance with his usual diligence. It truly slipped his mind that this formal event differs from the others. Will Urbosa bring other Gerudo, arrayed in gold and silk? Most likely. Mipha will thus be accompanied by members of her own court, festooned in their usual silver. The Gorons do not have much in the way of politics, but maybe there, too, Revali is ignorant, and Daruk will be joined by Goron notables.
It drives home the uneven comparison in Link’s position: standing at Princess Zelda’s side, chosen by uneludable divine fate yet ever part of her entourage. Revali tugs at it, as if it is an arrow embedded too far in a tree’s trunk, and is never satisfied. The arrow stays stuck.
“Shall we?” Keteli says.
“I will set the pace,” the Elder says, “and call a rest, at lunch.” That explains why they are setting off so early, with barely any time to peruse the festival. The Elder showed her face at dawn, as the vendors set up their stalls, but Keteli will not perform, nor Demna open the archery contest – nor lose it. “We will arrive together.” The look she gives Revali is not stern, but he snorts and looks aside, chastened nonetheless. “Let’s go.”
Too slow a journey awaits, but there is one reason to look forward to its end. The strength of that thought under his wings lifts him high enough that he must circle back for his elders.