Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The clouds part on a blood moon.

Naba stumbles out of her ger into the dim, red light. Her furs are tight around her shoulders, pulled close against the late winter air of the highlands. Shouts thicken the air: her title, her name, dismay. People point at the sky. A dark cloud drifts over the belly of the moon, and it is undeniably red, blood-stained, ill-omen, yet no gloom-fog burns her throat. No motes of red wink in the dark air. The stars at the moon’s side shine white.

With one hand, Naba reaches up to the sacred stone hanging on its beaded string at her ear. It’s smooth under her fingers, cold as air – quiescent.

“Naba.” A calmer voice. “What is it?”

“Find Takkar for me,” she says.

The woman hurries on the camp’s wooden boards to a far ger.

Naba remains at the entrance to her own ger, tucking her hands into the folds of her furs, watching the moon. Her demeanour starts to calm those near her. The wind blows into her face, tugging her hair from its loose tie. Din above, but it’s cold.

“Sage Naba! I’m here!” She turns away from the sky to see the girl running ahead of the Gerudo woman, waving an object over her head – a telescope, clutched in bare fingers. No one can accuse Takkar of weakness. The girl’s indigo robe peeks out from a Gerudo-made snowcoat fox hide coat, and her wool tights are thick, for all that she insists on wooden sandals, not boots. Foster a girl for two years in the highlands, but a Sheikah she will remain. She stops at Naba’s side, barely hip-high, that strange silver hair pinned up messily, and puts her telescope to her eye. The dark stone of it gleams in the moon’s light. “It’s an eclipse,” Takkar says with all the confidence of a gem merchant assaying rubies. “We’ll see the shadow move soon. It must have slid over when the clouds covered the moon.”

“An eclipse,” Naba repeats. “An ordinary astronomical event.”

A film of calm settles over her shoulders, gauzy and light, as if at a desert court. The Gerudo astronomers there are looking at the same moon with their own telescopes, drawing – she assumes – the same conclusions. So, too, their kin to the north.

“Yes.” Takkar lowers the telescope. “But it’s early.”

“Early?” The gauze falls away. “How is it early? Are the skies not fixed in their course?”

“They are,” Takkar says, but here doubt colours her voice, and she sounds like the child she is: so small that only a few weeks ago, one of Naba’s people needed to sit with her and explain the process of her menses. The scientists who trained Takkar in the sky and the properties of chemicals neglected the journey into adolescence. “My almanac says we’re due a lunar eclipse in two months’ time. A blood moon.” Then she winces. “It’s called that. In almanacs–”

“I know the term predates the war,” Naba says, as if to assuage the girl, when fear climbs her spine like a scorpion up a nursery wall.

“Maybe the almanac is wrong,” Takkar says.

“We will confer with the Tauma astronomers,” Naba finds herself saying, “and you should contact your people.”

“But the project–”

Thirty years ago, when the dead King Rauru first entered the courts of her people and declared the immanence of a calamity, a younger, keener Naba felt a curl of certainty in her gut like a fist. It came. It came, and turned courts into wastelands, and he left burnt bodies in his heel-steps, and Naba saw Rauru bind him into the bedrock of Hyrule and–

Here is that fist in her gut again, as the shadow slides off the moon, red to white.

Yaks snort in the cold air as Naba’s people finish tying down the walls and felts of the gers. Strips of yellow and blue cloth tied to the animals’ horns flap in the wind. Naba pats the shoulder of her favourite, an old cow called Somgo, and earns a flicked ear in reply. “There’ll be grass on the slopes of Ruvara,” she promises, and pats Somgo one more time before stepping away to where Takkar still prays.

The Sheikah girl set up the shrine a year ago, when Naba said they would remain in this region through the seasons. It’s a slight thing: a wooden box that holds a figure of the goddess Hylia, small, grey stone, but for the squares of gold leaf pressed at her hands. Takkar opens its doors when it’s time to pray. The box sits on a stand of rock in the side of a cliff, protected – somewhat – from the sky. A red-painted wooden gate stands before it. Lacking the paper that Sheikah hang in zig-zagged strips at the gates between profane and holy space, Naba offered her white cloth. The strips of it flutter, wind-torn.

At the beginning of each prayer Takkar claps to draw the attention of the goddess, but that time is past. Takkar kneels in front of the opened box, hands pressed together, head bowed. A thin candle burns, fixed to the stone by its own wax.

“I apologise,” Naba says from the gate, “but we are set to depart.”

Takkar bows her head further to the Hylia figure, then closes the doors of the box and picks it up. The rest of the shrine remains: the mounds of wax across the stone, the red gate and its white cloths in the wind. Another woman helps Takkar wrap the portable shrine in cloth and fix it to a yak’s back.

They set off north.

“I wonder if Queen Idelin hears the voice of the goddess,” Takkar says a little while later, as they walk up a narrow, yak-flattened trail. Snow blows off the higher land, lit up in the sun.

“I wonder,” Naba murmurs. Rauru and Sonia’s daughter is a woman now, goddess-blooded – by Sonia’s religion – and half-goddess, to any still inclined to see the Zonai as divine. Not many among the Gerudo ever did.

It is not long before they reach the pass at the northern edge of the highlands and see, spread out below them, a land sliding into spring: the green-touched cliffs of Ruvara, the lowland trees, the grasslands. They leave snow at their backs.

On the cliffs, Naba’s group parts so that some can take the yaks to a great ledge of grass and sweet flowers. Kin herd horses not too far down: Naba’s daughter Zopa, her husbands, others. Zopa has a new baby on her back. For a moment, Naba forgets the ill-omened moon in the pleasure of kissing her granddaughter’s brow. Zopa’s first daughter is younger than Takkar, but they run and scream as girls ought while the adults saddle up some of the horses and prepare for the onward journey. Zopa leaves her husbands in charge of the remaining horses and joins Naba and the highlanders. They ride on north.

They reach a valley, low and warm. The sun lowers soft lashes to Naba’s wind-toughened cheeks. A nearby copse is half-greened, wildflowers still blooming between the trees. Birds call from their branches. Zopa sets her eagle to work as they go, fetching rabbits, marmots, pigeons, but bigger hunting birds land on a rocky promontory at the border between a mesa’s flank and woodland: Durguli and two other warriors. Young, one young enough to be red-cheeked still. Fortunately not too young to not know that horses need time to adjust to Rito. Naba pats her mount’s neck, but her eyes are on Durguli.

The sacred stone still hangs at his left foot, dim in the sun.

“You didn’t sleep through it, then?” he asks of her.

Other than the stone on its bronze band, he is arrayed as any Rito warrior: a light armour of twined linen over his torso, dyed a deep madder-red that stands out on his grey and white feathers. The sash at his waist bears densely packed lines of yellow and white embroidery in leaf-swirls and flowers. He wears his longest crest feathers in three braids now, long at his neck, wrapped in butter-yellow cloth.

“No,” Naba says, “but did you?”

“Kudali woke me.” Durguli tilts his beak at the younger of the two others, a white-feathered youth with the red still at his cheeks and a brighter, permanent wash of red at his wingtips.

“We were celebrating a successful hunt,” Kudali contributes.

The sight of a blood moon cannot have improved their drinking session.

“I’m going to Tauma. Takkar–” she gestures at the girl, mounted in front of another woman “–is a Sheikah astronomer, and says it was an eclipse, but early.”

Durguli only grunts, but Kudali and the other youth – Naba suspects she is Boren, the eldest of Durguli’s brood, too similar to Durguli in plumage to be unrelated – exchange worried glances and shift on their feet.

“Join us,” Naba says, because she is unsure what Durguli knows. Some Rito make a science of the sky: they built towers into it, to better understand its heights. They fight its behemoths. That, Durguli has done. They collaborated with the Zonai to build an ark that controls the weather – useful, Durguli once told her, when the behemoths breed too abundantly – but Durguli’s band care less for the science of it than for the summer hunt, free of storm winds. The winter weaving, the ebb and flow of song. Few Rito sit still long enough to let cities grow up around them.

The cities are all in the east, and Naba has no more interest in clamour.

Yet here she sits, astride a horse, beset once more with great purpose.

“I suppose we ought,” Durguli says, and takes off in a gust of wind as cold as the highlands – or the Hebran heights – that bears all three Rito high into the sky.

They carry on north, past woodlands and mesas to the grasslands, where tulips grow wild. Red and yellow heads sway in the wind. Dragon trees shade their passage down to the cultivated wetlands of Tauma. Gerudo with the braids of northerners tend to their fish ponds or fields, or sit on the wooden walkways running between them, soaking in the spring warmth. The gardens gleam under the sun’s generous light. Naba leaves the horses and some of the group at a stable on dry land, shaded by a dragon tree, and continues on foot.

Pontoon walkways pass between grids of square fields, well-stocked with trout, snails, new rice, fleet lotus, water chestnut, spicy peppers, tomatoes, taro. Small houses sit amid the fields. Beyond it all rises the circular structure of Tauma Observatory. A glint of gemstone atop one of its dragons catches Naba’s eye. At her back, Takkar asks questions of every square pond they pass: about hydroponic farming in general, about eating snails, about Tauma pearls, cultivated here and worn on necks and wrists around the continent. A warm wind wafts fishy air over Naba’s face as she turns to encourage the girl on. There is probably time for pearl-shopping. If Takkar’s purse is too light, Naba will be pleased to open her own.

“Is it true,” Takkar asks, back at Naba’s hip, “that this observatory’s named for a Gerudo warrior?”

“A warrior-queen,” Naba says. “Queen Taumuriyah, who cut off the Hylian king’s head for daring to invade these lands – but that was a thousand years ago. Hylians are welcome here.”

Durguli snorts. “You miss the best part of the story,” he says. “Taumariyah dropped the king’s head in a barrel of blood, to finally whet his thirst for the stuff.”

“So it is said–”

“We prefer to sing it.”

“Gross,” Takkar says. “Blood goes bad very quickly. That barrel must have stunk.”

Naba glances down at the girl’s hat-shaded head. Battle rarely smells well.

The pontoon walkways give way to a stone causeway, and then steps up to the observatory. The raised circular platform is itself part of the astronomical mechanism, to be turned – and the draconic sculptures positioned – for calculations. The library and study rooms lie within.

On such a fair day, one of the head scholars leads a class atop the observatory: a woman tall even for a Gerudo, with a long, thick braid wrapped in red ribbon. A narrow, short braid hangs at one side of her face, similarly red-wrapped. Her sirwal and jacket bear the same madder-hue. She stops her lesson on Naba’s approach.

“Sage Naba, Sage Durguli. You are most welcome.” To Takkar, she says, “I don’t believe we have met. I am Briya, a specialist in astronomical forecasts.”

“You’re exactly who we need to see!” Takkar says, then remembers herself and adds, “I am Kuh Takkar of the Sheikah, fostered to Sage Naba to learn about the Gerudo. We’ve been up in the mountains taking observations – we saw the blood moon nearly two weeks ago. According to the Sheikah almanac, it was early, by two months. I have confirmed it with my teachers in Kakariko.”

“You cut to the point.” Briya nods. “Yes, we observed it too, and our forecasts similarly have it at 4 Thagrakis, in your Rikka.”

“Yes!”

“What does it mean?” Naba asks, and Briya’s obvious pleasure at an enthusiastic young scholar turns serious.

“We had better continue this conversation inside,” she says, and sets her class to self-study.

The rooms of Tauma Observatory are cool, dug into the wet, rocky earth of the wetlands and strong-walled in stone, engraved with draconic motifs. Dehumidifiers keep the library stacks dry. The rule is to store nothing at floor-level, in case of floods, but limited space means the lower shelves are packed with printed books, Zonai tablets, boxes of hand-copied notes. Other measures provide protection: channels under the shelves to direct water into an even lower cistern, raised door thresholds, doors and walls that swing fast-shut against water. Pumps await use. Naba has heard horror stories – but the floods come rarely, and the growth of the eastern cities with their permanent lighting makes Tauma Observatory’s western location valuable, for all its impracticalities. The village serves the observatory, and dims its lights at night. The sky remains whole.

Briya pushes aside a ribbed-stone wall and steps over the raised threshold into a room lined with bookcases and lit by the soft warmth of Gerudo-light. Carpets rich in the triangular amulet motif of mountain weaving cover the floor, with a low table and cushions set up for readers.

The conversation that follows flies over Naba’s head, as high as Durguli, who endures it better than his fidgeting brood – but it is clear that in the intricate science of astronomical motion, the scholars of Tauma find dissent. A faction led by Briya seeks a scientific explanation. “Our knowledge of the stars is incomplete,” she concludes. “Three hundred years ago, we recorded a brilliant light in the northern sky that lasted for two years. The Gerudo of the southern desert likewise recorded it, as did the Zora, and Rito oral history preserved the knowledge of it, and we later corroborated with Sheikah and Zonai scientists. In my lifetime, the astronomer Haspara at this very observatory was the first to recognise that the Oyster Nebula arose from that bright-nova. We are still learning, every day.”

Naba likes the thought that the movements of the sun, the moon and their world follow patterns too complex to submit to easy knowledge. Mundane marvels await.

Another scholar scoffs, saying that the dates of eclipses have been tracked for two thousand years and never erred by more than minutes. It is an omen.

“We have had our ruin,” Naba protests.

“It is your people’s prophecy,” the scholar Pvana says to Takkar, her stare arrow-sharp over the table. “The moon turns to blood, the sundelions wither, the elephants lay down their tusks. Do you not recognise it?”

Takkar looks wide-eyed and young, shaking her head.

“Why should she?” Naba says. “That sounds like my grandmothers warning me not to eat voltfruit or my baby’s skin would be hard and scaled.”

“It is written in gold in one of your people’s temples,” Pvana says, undaunted. “Verify it for yourself.”

“I will,” Takkar says cautiously.

Takkar perches atop one of the stone dragons at the rim of the observatory – what passes for privacy in Tauma – as she uses her slate to call back to Kakariko and consult her people. The signal works poorly under layers of stone, but carries cleanly through the relay tower that gleams blue above the wetlands.

Sunset darkens the sky. Naba sits on the stone lip and looks out over the dragon trees. Dinraal and Farosh once fought for this land, so it is said, and the blessing of their spilled blood grows tall above its wetlands and golden grasses.

“You believe in Rauru’s warning,” Durguli says, pacing the stone lip.

“He was right, more often than not. Others augured a calamity.” Naba turns her head away from the glint of Durguli’s secret stone. “You’re here.”

“I have seen enough not to doubt that worse is possible.”

The square fields shine like Zora armour scales in the fading light. Naba frowns. Under a far dragon tree, above the water line, Zopa has set up two gers for their travelling group, and sits – perhaps at a simmering pot, perhaps with her new daughter at her breast, perhaps gazing out at the same night. The infant should not know Zopa’s fear, huddling in a ruined temple as he defied Din’s succour, tore up Her altars, soiled Her sacraments with Gerudo blood. Naba had thought it safe to hide her daughter at the goddess’ feet. How she ripped her nails from their beds pulling the stones away to find Zopa and two other girls alive.

It can’t happen again, but the world is a water wheel, ever-turning.

“When Takkar is done with the slate, we ought to borrow it,” she says to Durguli, “and arrange a call with Jaddira and Hego.”

Naba sets up the Sheikah slate and its projected screen in her daughter’s ger, late in the morning when the highlanders are all sitting outside in the shade of the dragon trees. Lacking a flat surface inside the ger, she hangs a bed sheet between two slats of the orange-painted frame, then sets out cushions for herself and Durguli. His brood are out flying in the sun. It is only the two of them, two sages, and Takkar sitting to one side, and the screen – and not Hego, who is not in Gorondia but at an outlying mine, unreachable. Jaddira’s face fills the blue-tinted projection. In all these years, she has not changed at all. Still young by Zora standards, not yet through her second century, smooth-skinned and bright-finned, arrayed in silver and diamonds and little else.

“At last,” she says. “It is about time. Zorana has been frenetic since the lunar eclipse – I hardly think our scholars have slept. I trust that you saw it.”

“Good morning, Jaddira,” Naba says, glad for the bowl of tea already in her hands. “Yes. I travelled down from the highlands to consult our scholars here at Tauma, and met Durguli on the way. We, too, are concerned–”

“What do they think at Tauma?”

“That it is early, either a new mystery of the heavens or an omen.” Naba runs her thumb over a chip in the bowl. “How are your sundelions?”

“My – why?”

“Tell me.”

Jaddira frowns. “They’re dead, Nabs.” Naba presses her thumb into the chip’s rough edge, stilling her own face. “In our gardens. I would have to ask about the wild-growing ones. Why does it matter?”

“I have a Sheikah apprentice living with my community at present, who spoke to her people last night. It is a prophecy. Blood moons, dying sundelions, tuskless elephants – we are not clear what exactly that entails.”

“Speak to the Hylians about that,” Jaddira says. “They are hunting the elephants for their tusks. I admit the ivory-work is exquisite, though I’m not sure the population can sustain the pressure.” What is happening in the east? “What do the Sheikah say it portends?”

Calamity. “Calamity,” Naba forces herself to say, as if Jaddira’s response is anything but–

“When do we expect the birth of the next Gerudo male?”

–inevitable. “About thirty years,” Naba says, each word scoured from her tongue. Blood runs over her teeth and tongue, onto her hands, an offering-up of her people. A sacrifice of a future boy.

It might as well be that. Clean-handed, she drinks her tea.

“He will be king of your people?” Jaddira asks.

“If he is born into the Lotus Court, perhaps,” Naba says, “and some others might send him there, but if he is born in the highlands or here he’ll be one man among many.” It is only in the desert that the courts maintain an exclusion of men, and only in the courts. Hylian men travel and trade again now that many of the old routes are restored. “He is century-born,” Naba says, “and every century we do not have a calamity, or there would be nothing in the desert but sand and bone-dust.” If her people ever believe that a man is innately an error, a divinely ordained disease, the simplest, grimmest solution becomes inevitable.

Jaddira looks little convinced. “Mineru found–”

“Hylian histories,” Naba snaps. “Hylian accountings of wars they won.”

“Your own people’s libraries were not so forthcoming,” Jaddira says.

Half of them were razed to the fucking ground by him–

As if that would do anything but prove Jaddira’s point. Mineru’s point. The sage’s spirit might as well be in the air around them.

Naba would ask what the older Zora say of Gerudo men, the half-millennium fish who only knew one gloom-warped Demon King and three or four men of less renown, but the Zora inscribe religion and royal history into their stones far more than foreign mundanities.

Durguli leans his beak over Naba’s shoulder and says, “It’s hardly sensible to assume the next Gerudo man is the only source of this calamity, or that we have so many decades to wait. What other signs are there? Does the Hylian queen have any inkling?”

“Yes,” Naba says. “Has she any prophetic insight?”

“She burns with it–” Jaddira says, for the first time sounding keen: a silver-scale blade sounding out the words “–as bright as the sun. She has retreated into the great temple to understand her visions. When she emerges, we will see if it accords with the Sheikah prophecies and the astronomers at Tauma.”

It will. It is a fist in her gut.

Naba stands up and walks out of the ger into the bright sunlight, her stone heavy at her ear. Her heart is heavier. Her new granddaughter burbles happily from the shade. “I will not have this,” she says to herself, to Durguli when he joins her after offering Jaddira some parting words.

The wheel turns, and an unborn Gerudo boy is set to drown in it.

Naba would pull him out.