[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 1] The Bells of the Millennial Fair
Morning in Guardia began with cannon fire before it began with bells.
The window trembled lightly, and the wooden sword propped beside the bed knocked against the wall. Only after the dull vibration had traveled across the floor did a distant cheer roll over the rooftops. The first firework of the festival must have burst above a town not yet fully awake.
Crono opened his eyes beneath the covers.
Sunlight entering through the open window cast a long rectangle across the floor. Dust drifted slowly inside it. At this hour on an ordinary day, he would have heard only the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and his mother’s footsteps. Today, the whole town was stirring beyond the walls of the house. Someone ran down the lane calling for a friend. Cartwheels scraped over stone. The wind carried the smells of freshly baked bread and spent gunpowder.
The cat curled at the foot of the bed twitched one ear. At the second report of the cannon, it finally raised its head and glared toward the window as though determined to find the culprit responsible for waking it.
“Crono.”
His mother’s voice rose from downstairs.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
“You aren’t planning to sleep until the Millennial Fair is over, are you?”
The stairs creaked outside his door. The cat assessed the situation before Crono did. It slipped off the bed and through the gap beneath the door, then fled with its tail lowered, apparently unwilling to meet the person coming upstairs.
A moment later, the door opened.
His mother stood there with her apron in one hand. A few strands of hair clung to her forehead, and the heat of the stove remained in her cheeks. For someone who had come to scold him, her smile was much too close to the surface.
“They say the square is already packed. Lucca has been in a frenzy since morning, moving that invention of hers.”
At the sound of Lucca’s name, Crono sat up. His red hair stood out in every direction.
His mother took one look at him and laughed.
“So that’s all it takes to get you out of bed. I only have to mention Lucca.”
Crono reached for the shirt he had left beside the bed. He raised one eyebrow instead of answering, but his mother did not appear inclined to accept the protest.
“She says it’s truly safe this time. Since she said it herself, I suppose we can believe about half of that.”
Before closing the door, she added, “Eat before you go.”
Warm soup and bread waited on the table downstairs. Beside the window stood a small commemorative flag the merchants had been handing out for the fair. The crest of the kingdom had been embroidered across its blue field, and the flag sagged whenever the breeze from the window reached it.
As Crono sat down, the cat pressed itself against his ankle as if it had been waiting. Its resentment over the cannon fire had vanished. He tore a small piece from the crust of his bread and lowered it toward the floor.
“Not at the table,” his mother said without turning around.
Crono stopped.
The cat looked from the bread to him and back again. After a brief silence, Crono put the morsel into his own mouth. The cat raised its tail, turned away, and departed with the expression of one betrayed.
His mother laughed as she put the lid on the soup pot.
“I see everything.”
When he had finished eating, she handed him a small pouch. A few coins chimed clearly inside.
“Don’t spend all of it on sweets.”
While Crono tied the pouch to his belt, she straightened the cloth at his neck. Her hand rose with the old instinct of someone tending a small child, then paused when she looked at the shoulders of a son now much taller than she was.
Her fingers were still for only a moment.
“Come home before it gets too late.”
Crono nodded.
The instant he opened the door, the morning quiet of the house receded behind him.
People in festival clothes already filled the lane. Children brandished little wooden swords and pretended to be soldiers. Adults carried baskets of food and casks of drink toward the square. Garlands of flowers and bright cloth hung from every window, while lines of blue and white pennants stretched between the roofs.
Somebody rang a bell in the direction of the fair.
Unlike the cannon, its sound did not startle anyone. The clear, high note crossed the rooftops and filled the lane. As if by agreement, the townspeople all looked the same way. No one had explained what weight a thousand years truly possessed, but for this one day they treated that span of time as though it were an object they could hold.
Crono joined the flow of people heading north.
Once he had left the town behind, he saw the rising road to Leene Square. Ordinarily it smelled only of grass and carried little more than birdsong. Today it was crowded with vendors, travelers, and guards. People from every province of the kingdom haggled in different accents, while musicians stationed halfway up the hill played a lively tune.
A great arch decorated with flowers and colored cloth stood at the entrance to the square.
Beyond it, color and sound poured over him at once.
Round pavilions lined the green, and crowds flowed between them like water. Smoke from roasting meat turned white in the sunlight. A long queue stretched away from the stall selling honey cakes. In the middle of the square, dancers held hands and spun, while a short distance away young men swung an enormous hammer in a contest to ring a bell.
Crono paused beneath the arch.
When he looked toward the hill, he could see the towers of Guardia Castle. Festival banners ran along its walls, yet from here even the great fortress seemed no more than a backdrop pushed behind the music and laughter.
Near the bell tower in the depths of the square, metal rang intermittently against metal. Lucca would be preparing her demonstration. Crono could have headed there at once, but the people blocking the entrance made it difficult to find a way through.
He was looking for a gap in the crowd when someone rushed in from the right.
Red cloth swept across his vision.
He twisted, but too late. Shoulder struck shoulder. The other person lost her balance and fell onto the grass, while Crono staggered back two steps before catching himself.
A few people glanced over, then quickly returned their attention to the festival.
The person on the ground was a girl about his age.
Bright blond hair had been tied behind her head, and a red vest lay over the kind of plain white clothing a traveler might wear. The outfit was modest, but the weave of the cloth and the leather of her boots were finer than anything commonly seen in the square.
The girl pressed one hand to her forehead.
“Ow…”
Crono immediately offered his hand.
She looked from his hand to his face. Her surprise did not last. The corner of her mouth rose, and she took it.
“I’m all right. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Once he had helped her up, she brushed the grass from her clothes. Crono studied her face and arms for any sign of injury. Noticing his inspection, she held both arms out for him.
“See? Nothing broken. How about you?”
Crono was about to nod when something glittered between the blades of grass.
It was a silver chain with a blue jewel at the end. It must have slipped from the girl’s neck when they collided.
He bent and picked it up.
Even under the sun, the jewel felt strangely cold. It was not the sharp chill of ice against the fingertips. It felt more like the air of a chamber sealed underground for ages, or the temperature of deep water untouched by starlight, somehow imprisoned inside a small stone.
As Crono examined the jewel, the girl’s hand flew to her bare throat.
“My pendant…”
The ease vanished from her voice.
Crono held out the necklace at once.
She received it in both hands. Only after quickly checking that the chain was unbroken and the jewel unscratched did she release a long breath.
“Thank goodness.”
Even as she put it around her neck again, her fingers remained wrapped around the stone. She did not look merely like someone relieved to recover an expensive ornament. She looked like someone who had nearly lost something for which no substitute existed.
“Thank you. This is… something I can’t afford to lose.”
Crono watched the blue gleam disappear beneath her collar but did not ask why.
Apparently pleased by his silence, the girl gave a small smile. Then she looked around as if truly seeing the fair for the first time. Above the heads of the crowd, banners danced and little windmill ornaments spun. The smells of boiling sugar, roasted meat, and damp grass passed them in turn as the wind shifted.
“I had no idea there would be so many people.”
Her voice held the excitement of someone venturing into this place for the first time. Yet there was scarcely anyone in the kingdom who did not know the day of the Millennial Fair. Even a traveler from a distant province would not usually be here alone at her age.
She looked back at Crono.
“Do you know your way around?”
When he pointed farther into the square, her eyes brightened.
“Then would you mind showing me around?”
She asked the question, took a step toward him as if unaccustomed to waiting for an answer, then realized what she had done and belatedly restored the distance between them.
“I can walk around by myself, of course. But I might run into somebody again.”
Crono looked toward the bell tower. There was still time before Lucca’s experiment began. He could see a little of the apparatus’s metal ring over the crowd, but the lights announcing the demonstration had not yet come on.
He turned back to the girl and gave a short nod.
“Really?”
Her voice rose above the music around them.
“Good. Where should we start?”
She went a few steps ahead, then stopped.
“I just realized I never asked your name.”
Crono was quiet for a moment. Throughout the square, strangers exchanged names as readily as they clinked cups, but he had always found the moment of saying his own name faintly awkward.
“Crono.”
It was a short answer.
The girl repeated it as though testing the name in her mouth.
“Crono.”
She smiled.
“I’m Marle.”
There had been the briefest hesitation before she spoke. Crono heard it but gave no sign.
“It’s nice to meet you, Crono.”
Marle offered her hand as if asking for a formal handshake. When he took it, her eyes widened for an instant, as though the response had surprised her. Then she shook his hand vigorously and turned toward the fair.
They followed the path between the pavilions.
Marle turned her head at everything she saw. She slowed in front of a furnace where enormous skewers of meat were roasting. When she saw the dancers, she moved her shoulders to the music. At the exhibition of the kingdom’s history, the stern face of a soldier’s mannequin made her bite her lip to keep from laughing.
“Do the people inside the castle wear faces like that even on a day like this?”
Crono looked at her.
Marle waved a hand, as if only then realizing what she had said.
“I was just wondering.”
At one edge of the square, spectators cheered around a circular fence. Four small beasts wearing different colored cloths on their backs raced around a dirt track. Whenever the leader changed, the roar of the crowd traveled from one side to the other.
Marle moved to the fence and rose onto her toes.
“Which one do you think will win?”
Crono watched the animals for a moment. The one in front was already breathing hard, while the animal in third place cut inward through every turn. He pointed to the third runner.
“That one?”
Marle chose the leader. Leaning against the fence, they watched the final lap. Just before the finish, Crono’s choice slipped through an opening along the inside and surged ahead. Marle’s leader stumbled in the dust.
When the winner crossed the line, Marle burst into laughter without the slightest disappointment.
“You’re good at this too.”
Crono shook his head. He had only pointed to what he saw.
“I’ll get it right next time.”
She already wore the expression of someone planning to return for the next race.
A little farther on, the dancers blocked the path. Musicians plucked their strings at a racing pace and beat their drums while people revolved in a circle. Marle waited at first for the way to clear, but when one of the dancers offered a hand, she stepped into the ring without hesitation.
Two paces behind, she looked back and beckoned to Crono.
He shook his head.
Marle refused to yield. When the circle carried her near again, she seized Crono by the wrist and pulled him in.
There was no time to find the steps. People brushed one another’s shoulders as they turned, and the harder he tried to catch the rhythm, the faster the music seemed to become. For the first several steps, Crono concentrated solely on not crushing anyone’s toes. Marle laughed at his awkward movements and nearly lost her own balance.
When they escaped the circle, they spent a while recovering their breath.
Marle’s cheeks were red from the sunlight and exertion.
“We did it.”
What exactly they had done was unclear. Perhaps she meant finishing the dance, dragging Crono into it, or simply avoiding a fall. Whatever it was, she looked satisfied.
Then the sound of a child crying reached them from the edge of the square.
A little girl stood beneath a tree, rubbing her eyes with both hands. Her father crouched beside her and tried to soothe her, but the girl kept shaking her head.
“I know she came this far with me.”
“With this many people, she must have hidden somewhere.”
“She can’t find the way home by herself.”
Marle’s laughter faded.
“What did you lose?”
She was the first to approach. Between sobs, the child said it was a small cat with brown fur. A red ribbon was tied around its neck, and a bell hung from the ribbon.
Marle immediately searched the surroundings, peering between people’s feet and beneath the pavilions. In all the noise of the fair, however, finding a small animal’s movements was no easy thing.
Crono listened.
Jingle.
It was not the sound of cups touching. It was lower and lighter—the voice of a little bell.
He headed behind the pavilion where the sound had come from. Marle followed without a word. Between crates of food and empty casks, a small brown cat had curled into itself. At the sight of two strangers, it pressed even lower to the ground.
When Crono tried to approach, the cat gave a short hiss.
He stopped and crouched where he was. Turning his gaze aside, he held one palm upward and waited. Marle started to sit beside him, hesitated when she saw the hem of her skirt nearing the dirt, then ignored it and lowered herself onto her knees.
“You don’t have to be afraid of us,” she whispered.
The cat answered only by moving its nose. The smell of meat had drifted from a nearby furnace to the back of the pavilion.
Crono took a slice of apple from the top of a crate and set it on the ground. After a long hesitation, the cat emerged. It had no interest in the apple, but it seemed willing to believe that Crono would remain still.
When it came close enough, he slowly lifted it with both hands.
Marle went ahead and held the pavilion flap aside.
The child stopped crying the instant she heard the bell at the cat’s throat.
“You found her!”
She released her father’s hand and ran toward them. The cat squirmed in Crono’s arms until it heard the familiar voice, then settled. When he placed it down, it rubbed its body against the child’s skirt.
The girl’s father bowed again and again. Marle watched the child and cat with a pleased expression, almost as if she had found the animal herself. When Crono moved on, she hurried after him.
“You heard the bell from the beginning?”
Crono nodded.
“All I could hear was the crying.”
For a moment, Marle studied his profile.
“You notice things before you speak. Or should I say you listen?”
He did not answer.
“That was a compliment.”
With that, Marle faced forward.
Some of the awkward distance between two strangers had disappeared. When the crowd pressed close, Marle naturally caught Crono’s sleeve. When the path divided, she followed his gaze before asking which way to go.
At the strength-testing machine in the center of the square, a young man swung a tremendous hammer with his whole body. The iron head struck the base, sending a weight halfway up a column before it stopped. The spectators jeered. The young man spat into his palms and joined the line again.
Marle looked from the hammer to Crono.
“Want to try?”
He glanced between the machine and the queue. There was still no special signal from Lucca’s demonstration area.
Crono paid a coin, and the attendant handed him the hammer. The handle had been polished smooth by the sweat of many hands, while the weight of the metal head pulled insistently toward the ground.
Outside the rail, Marle clasped both hands together.
“All the way to the top.”
The people around her laughed.
Instead of raising the hammer over his head, Crono lowered his body. He spread his feet, gripped the end of the handle, and turned waist and shoulders together, swinging as though merely letting the iron head fall.
The impact split the noise of the square for an instant.
The weight shot up the column. It seemed to slow just beneath the bell, then spent the last of its force touching the metal plate.
A clear note rang out.
Marle cheered before anyone else.
When Crono returned the hammer, the attendant reluctantly offered him a small commemorative silver coin. Marle snatched it up and held it to the sunlight.
“Our first spoil of the day.”
She started to return it, reconsidered, and slipped it into Crono’s coin pouch herself. The silver piece struck the other coins with a low chime.
At that moment, blue light flashed from the depths of the square.
Metal rang behind it, and the people near the bell tower cheered as one. Birds perched on the pavilions took startled flight. Banners filled with wind and snapped above the crowd.
Marle rose onto her toes, trying to see over the heads in front of her.
“What was that?”
Crono pointed in the direction of the teleportation device advertised on the sign by the entrance.
“Lucca.”
At the name of his friend, Marle turned.
“Your friend made that?”
Crono nodded.
The blue light spread once more.
A different curiosity appeared in Marle’s face than the one she had shown for food, dancing, or races. It was the look of someone who would want a closer view even after being told something was dangerous.
“Let’s see that next.”
Marle caught Crono by the wrist.
Without waiting for an answer, she began to run. The pendant’s chain trembled beneath her collar, and the hem of her red vest opened into the sunlight.
Crono looked down at the wrist she held, then matched his stride to the girl running through the crowd.
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