FicWad

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I seemed to have missed posting this chapter the last time I updated this. This is truly the third chapter, and "Resisting" is the fourth. Sorry. -_-

With a mournful, agonized scream, Anju awoke, sitting straight up in...her bed?

After a taking a few moments to catch her breath, she lifted her hand up to her forehead.

Cold. Sweaty and cold. Blinking amidst still-heavy breathing, she looked around to take in her surroundings. She was in her own bed, in her own house, and the sunlight was pouring in through the windows. Outside she could hear the clucking of her cuccos as they no doubt scattered themselves around the village-

Her cuccos.

She suddenly hopped up and looked out the window above her bed, down to the pen. They were all there...except the one.

So it hadn't been a dream. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry, and her attempt to swallow only halfway worked. Her heart was now beating fast...and she sat back down on her bed. Looking down at herself, she noted that she was still wearing the same clothes as the day before...and they were dirty; very dirty. What was more noticeable was the fact that they were matted and torn in places...and she smelled just like the musk of the well...

Shivering at the memory of the horrors of the previous night, she moved to hold her torso as if cold. She tried to remember what had happened after...Kafei had...

Shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts, Anju then realized that she couldn't remember. It all seemed to get blurry after being thrown down on the floor. She couldn't remember what exactly, happened, but the excruciating details such as the warm trickling feeling down her back as her own blood was spilt. She shuddered again, nearly letting out a small cry.

And then she remembered the last words spoken.

Until tomorrow.

Her eyes widened, and this time she did let out a small cry. Her hands covered her mouth in horror as suddenly more memories came flooding back to her. She was to return again tonight...and every night. If she failed to do so...it was promised that she would suffer the most painful and torturous death imaginable.

She remembered Kafei finally reaching his release while Anju screamed beneath his, crying and begging for mercy, writhing underneath his cold form in a futile effort to scramble away. She remembered staggering from the room once she was release, greeted with a flock of redeads. They did not attack, however, but instead stood aside and watched her as she stumbled past them, tears and blood staining her face. As if another force was moving her, she painfully dragged her way up the ladder to the moonlit village again, to her bed, where she fell asleep, still crying. But sleep was no release. Just a gateway to another horrible nightmare.

She sat for a few moments, staring at the wall opposite of her, recalling this secondary nightmare of hers. It all seemed familiar to her...and the more she thought about it, the more she recalled a story of similar plot being relayed to her as a child, from her grandmother.

Her grandmother.

She would know what was going on. But clouded by all the pain she was in, she wasn't in a much of a hurry after she stood up.

After an hour or so, Anju had managed to bathe, change clothes, and stumble out her front door. Apparently it was obvious that she wasn't feeling very well, as one of the carpenters dropped his load and offered to help her to her cucco pen. She refused, of course, then attempting to fend off any hints that she had been....well...raped the night before. The village would think she was insane if she told them that she had been violated by the shadow spirit beneath the well...especially since it was supposed to be dead.

After what seemed like an excruciatingly long walk, she finally reached the door to her grandmother's potion shop. On the door, however, was a sign informing whoever read it that she was out for a field study. Sighing, Anju stood up on her toes to grab the spare key from above the doorframe, and then leaned down to unlock and open the door. Both actions were a lot more painful than they should have been.

Once inside, Anju found herself closing and locking the door behind her as if paranoid. Who was she kidding? She was paranoid. Even if that...thing couldn't come out of the well...the very memory made her frightened...

The shop held its usual heavy scent of spices, and when Anju sneezed, she found that, too, to be painful. Whimpering slightly, she stumbled across the floor to the abandoned counter, peering over at the bookshelf behind, eyes clouded from the incessant pain of that morning. After a few moments of fruitless searching, cerulean eyes finally landed on...the book. It was bound in heavy black leather, the simple phrase "Shadow Spirits" scratched along the side of it. Supposedly it was passed down from generation to generation in her family, and she distinctly remembered being read to from this book when she was young; as a makeshift warning to never ever go near the well.

Perhaps that was a lesson worth remembering. She would have mused over it, had she not feared that musing, too, would be painful.

With a cough, she stumbled around the counter and to the bookshelf, which she immediately rested against. Her fingers reached up, fumbling around the worn black binding of Shadow Spirits, attempting to grasp and pull it out. After a few moments, she was successful, but was only greeted with the very heavy weight of the book in her arms. She yelped slightly as one of the cuts in her back was reopened from the sudden lunge forward, wincing afterwards, moving to drop the book on the floor. She followed suit, slowly sitting down before it. Hesitantly she ran her hand over the cover of the book.

Supposedly it was written by the Sheikah, which would make sense since they were the race of Hyrule with the most profound knowledge of all things dark an unnatural. This was a story book of their kind. A story book....where all the horror stories...were real.

Slowly she opened it, the worn parchment and leather crinkling slightly. There was no title page or table of contents; the first page said in simple bold letters "The Well of Kakariko", followed by an illustrated story. The story was simply written, as if it was intended to be read to a child.

Cerulean eyes scanned the words, and Anju read aloud to herself.

"Long ago, The Great Impa (II) opened Kakariko Village to all races of Hyrule. The Sheikah were not pleased with this decision, but their faith in their great leader lead them to accept the change."

There was a simply illustration of Kakariko Village, the art style very clearly Sheikah. Anju turned the page.

"The people leaved together in peace, until one day, an intruder was born."

She turned the page.

"His name was ...." She stopped. The name looked as if it had been scribbled out, only with...blood. Shaking her head, she resumed reading, "...Nobody liked this little boy, for he was different from the rest. Nothing good ever came from his presence, and his very being gave off an aura of death and misery. He had three golden foxtails like the ghost fox that haunted the village graveyard, and went to play with the fox every night."

There was a drawing of a yellow fox frolicking through the graveyard with a little boy...of blue hair.

Eyes widened, Anju suddenly had a flashback to her nightmare. A lone little boy sat at the foot of the steps leading up to the windmill, all alone, crying. When suddenly, as if morphing from the shadows, a golden fox emerged before him. The fox laughed, tails waving around in the air, and spoke a few inaudible words to the boy. Both laughed, but then the boy began to cry again. The golden fox then frowned.

"....." Anju shook her head and resumed reading, but was only greeted with the bloodied out name of the boy. Shivering, she skipped it, "...was given, or so it was said, two jungle drums from the golden fox. The boy never cried again, and stayed up all night with his bongos; playing until the sun came up." She turned the page, finding herself smiling slightly at the simply illustration of the little boy sitting on a roof playing bongos, a happy smile on his face.

"The villagers grew tired of the drumming. Every night, they were kept awake by the boy, his drums, and the golden fox laughing. They tried to talk to his mother, but their selfish and superstitious natures would not let that suffice their blood thirst..."

Anju felt dizzy as another portion of her dream came back to her.

"Please, you don't understand...he's different. He's only a little boy..."

"His mother pleaded for the villagers to accept her son and leave him be, offering them all of her money and all of her valuables. Greedily, the villagers took the offerings, leaving her at home with her sleeping son. But even after they villagers agreed to deal with the boy, they did not do as they said. Things got worse as he grew older, until it seemed Kakariko Village was covered by a never ending storm. The well flooded over, the cuccos died, the sun never came from behind the clouds anymore. The villagers all knew it was because of the boy; he was a dark child, a legendary Shadow Spirit; a plague upon the village; destined to live in the shadows, but born in the wrong place. Finally they decided the plague needed to end. They came together in an angry mass, demanding that his mother give up her son's life. When she refused...."

Anju turned the page, and she felt her heart sink in her chest at the illustration that took up the entire next page. A burning Kakariko Village. A little boy crying and reaching out for his mother...who was impaled...on a stake...over a fire.

She almost felt herself fall over as more memories of her dream rushed back to her, but she continued to read none the less.

"MOTHER!"

"The little boy screamed and cried for his mother, begging the villagers to take his life instead of hers. But the greedy, impatient villagers only promised him that both would be taken. They laughed as they held him down, making sure his eyes stayed on the screaming form of his mother as they readied the wooden spire before her body."

Her grandmother had forgot to mention this part of the story.

"Before he could watch his mother be killed, a pair of arms grabbed the boy and pulled him away from the angry villagers, into the shadows, out of sight. The boy sobbed and cried, opening his eyes long enough to see that his rescuer was The Great Impa herself."

Anju found herself crying as she turned the page.

"The Great Impa told the boy to run to the well and hide there; that the only way for him to live was down there, away from the villagers...with his kind." Confused and hysterical, the boy complied, running screaming towards the well, The Great Impa following him closely. And the boy was never seen again."

The illustration was old and worn, and looked as if there had been blood spattered on it. She couldn't make out the picture.

"The Great Impa told the people that the great evil of the boy had been sealed beneath the well forever, but because of their hateful actions, the well was cursed, and they were to never drink from it again. No man knows what happened to the boy beneath the well."

Anju turned the page, only to be met with the incredibly disturbing full-page image of an inversed Sheikah eye, drawn entirely out of...blood.

"The myth has become true." Were the words hand-scribbled on the page next to the eye, followed by a few blank pages to indicate the end of the story. Shivering nearly violently, Anju shut the book and practically threw it across the room. Everything that had happened in that fable-turned-fact; even the parts she had never heard before, had been replayed in excruciating detail in her dream.

Kafei wasn't a dream.

Kafei was the boy in the story.

Kafei was the nightmare beneath the well.

She scrambled to her feet, beginning to cry. She was leaving the village. She would go stay at the ranch, with Malon. Kafei couldn't reach her there...he just...couldn't.

But as she ran out from the shop, the sun had set, and the moon was rising. Terrified blue eyes looked down to the well, and she could hear her name being called...softly...playfully.

With a long, horrified scream, she sank to her knees and covered her ears.