From the top, it's clearly just a few Bokoblins. The average traveler or group of travelers might have difficulty taking them down, which would explain why no one has incidentally cleared them out in what has been, apparently, years.

A Blue Bokoblin is sat on top of an old, rotten chest. Through the holes, something vibrant red glints.

"I'll deal with them," Link says, slinging his bow off his back.

"And I will perch in safety," Zelda says agreeably, perching.

He could jump down there with his sword and save the arrows. But he now has infinite arrows, and he's still not as strong as he'd like.

The Bokoblins panic as he picks them off one by one with shots to the head. The blue ones will be tedious to wear down with this mediocre traveler's bow, so he does hop down for those, riling them up with a few smacks, then flipping over their angry swings to bludgeon them into the ground. It takes not half a minute, all said and done.

Then he pries open the lid of the chest.

The instruments inside are... not normal. They're colored in bold crimson, more deep and vibrant than anything they've seen before. The painted eye patterns, four on each maraca, seem to shift as the bulbs move, blinking when the watcher blinks. Yet their gaze is not watchful, nor hostile, but... curious, in a childlike way. Cheerfully expectant.

The maracas don't rattle when they're taken out of the chest, but they give off a sense of delight nonetheless.

...oh goodness. They're so friend-shaped. Vaguely concerning, yet friend-shaped. Zelda is delighted.

They should get these back to Hestu. Link isn't weirded out, per se, but he's feeling the vaguely concerning part more than the friend-shaped to him. What if holding them turns him into... whatever Hestu is? An adult of the forest?

Zelda picks up on his discomfort and holds out her hands to offer to take the maracas. She isn't especially concerned about turning into an adult of the forest.

Link is concerned about Zelda turning into an adult of the forest!!

But he cannot read her reasoning, so she gives them to her. Maybe she has strange not-turning-into-adult-of-the-forest powers.

Then they can return triumphant to Hestu!

"We got your maracas back!" She pulls them out of her big roomy pockets and hands them over. "The designs are interesting, did you paint them yourself?"

Hestu hops for joy when he sees what they're holding.

"Thank you thank you thank you! They were gifted to me by my great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather, the Great Deku Tree when I was a little sapling! I don't know who painted them..."

He gives them a happy shake once they're in his hands.

He pauses.

"Oh no... oh no! There's something wrong with my maracas!"

He shakes them again, agitated.

Zelda listens to the... distinct absence of maraca noises.

"That does seem like a problem," she agrees. "Were they working when you had them last? When was that?"

"That was more than one hundred years ago...

"The children of the forest! They must have played a prank on me and stolen the Korok Seeds inside my maracas! How am I supposed to dance now?"

"Well, how do you think they meant for you to get your seeds back? There must be a way for you to get them back, or it would be such a mean prank!"

"They're playing hide-and-seek! That's why I haven't seen any of them lately. But it will take hundreds of years to find all of my Korok Seeds again... but wait!"

He sniffs and turns to Link.

"You... have Korok Seeds on you! I can smell it! Did you find some of the children of the forest? PLEASE GIVE THEM TO MEEEEEE!"

Why does everyone know the contents of his pockets.

He found a few of the little guys on the Great Plateau, hiding under rocks. He didn't know what the tiny yellow things were, but he kept them anyway, since they sounded important. Now that he thinks of it, they did say to give them back to their owner if he saw them, in that weird sneaky tone.

He fishes two of them out of his pockets and glances at Zelda.

"If I can use my maracas again, I can dance and use my powers to help you!"

Hestu waves his stubby arms.

"I could give you... I can teach you the ways of the forest!"

She nods a go-ahead to Link. Now seems like not the right time to get into the question of duplicating the seeds, and those seeds are so small and the maracas so big that they will surely find more of them out there while they're traveling the length and breadth of Hyrule, especially if Link has already run into a few. They can experiment then.

He can't read Zelda's mind as well as she can read his, but he comes to a similar enough conclusion by himself and holds them out to Hestu.

"What are the ways of the forest?"

It's another of those things he feels like he's heard of before.

Hestu pushes the seeds into his maracas... somehow? It's unclear how they go from outside the maracas into inside, but when he tries to rattle them again, there comes the sad sound of a few seeds tinkling around inside. Hestu is nonetheless delighted and demonstrates by rattling them a whole lot more.

Then he processes the question and stops his rattling.

"I don't know!"

...?

"...what do you mean?"

"It's what my pappy would say! In his stories he would teach lost small children a little of the 'ways of the forest' when they pleased him. I don't know what they are, though."

"Well, then, what do you think you could teach us?"

"I can teach you to sing and dance? I'm the musician of Korok Forest, you know! Everybody loves my music!"

He rattles his maracas again.