[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 27] Those Who Had a Way Home
Marle moved the Dreamstone three times before the night was over.
First she placed it inside the chief’s hut, out of sight but trapped behind a single entrance. Next she carried it to the central fire, where the villagers could watch it in shifts. There, however, the red stone caught every tongue of flame and seemed to announce itself to the whole plain.
At last, she chose the shelter where Ioka’s wounded rested.
Two or three people were always awake there, and others came and went with water and herbs. Marle wrapped the stone in several layers of hide and pushed it beneath a sleeping platform. Anyone who meant to steal it would have to pass the injured hunters and the people caring for them.
She sat in the doorway and watched the ridge.
The sun had set and risen again since Crono, Lucca, and Ayla entered the forest. The Reptites had not attacked the village, but their signals had sounded several times in the dark. Each time, Ioka fed the fires and took up its spears.
Even with their chief gone, no one stood waiting for an order.
The hunters patrolled the outer boundary. The elders gathered the children in the innermost huts. Different people took charge of water and flame. Ayla did not lead by doing everything herself. She led by making sure everyone else knew what had to be done.
As the sun cleared the treetops, a lone figure appeared below the ridge.
Kino.
He was limping, and dried blood streaked one arm. Two sentries ran to meet him. Marle rose from the shelter and followed.
“Where’s Ayla?”
Kino stopped to catch his breath and pointed toward the forest.
“Went with Crono and Lucca. Reptite nest.”
The villagers’ faces tightened.
Someone demanded to know why he had come back alone. Kino said Ayla had ordered him to return. The next words did not come as easily. He searched the gathering faces until he found Marle.
“Kino has something to say.”
One look at him told her what it was.
“Don’t tell just me.”
Kino raised his eyes.
“Everyone here needs to hear why they’re gone.”
The people of Ioka gathered in the clearing.
At first, Kino stared at the ground. He spoke in pieces: how he thought Ayla liked Crono, how anger had driven him to open Lucca’s bag in the night, how he took the shining device to hide it, and how the Reptites took it from him. With every admission, the silence around him deepened.
Even the children did not laugh.
The old man who made stone knives asked, “Without that thing, guests cannot go home?”
Kino nodded.
“Ayla went into danger too?”
His next answer was smaller.
“Yes.”
The old man did not shout. Somehow, that made Kino shrink even further.
“You said you wanted to lead after Ayla.”
Kino bit his lip.
“Yes.”
“Then look where your mistake sent everyone. A chief is not only the one who walks in front. A chief must see the trail left behind.”
Kino had no answer.
Marle thought of the council chamber at Guardia Castle. She had seen confessions used there as if naming a failure ended the responsibility for it. Other people remained to repair the damage after the apology was done.
“You’ll tell Lucca yourself when she gets back.”
Marle knelt to examine his ankle. “Until then, do what you can. Ayla isn’t here, and the village has twice as much ground to watch.”
Kino looked at her.
It was not forgiveness. It was something he could do.
He bowed his head, then limped toward the sentries.
No one emerged from the forest before noon.
Marle changed a hunter’s bandage, helped the children carry water without spilling it, and checked the hide-wrapped Dreamstone whenever she could. The stone held the same warmth it had possessed when Ayla gave it away.
The heat was at its worst when a sentry on the ridge sounded a horn.
Two short notes.
Not the warning for an enemy.
Marle ran from the shelter.
Ayla’s red hair appeared first. She was climbing the ridge in front, with Crono behind her supporting Lucca by one arm.
All three had returned on their feet. None had returned untouched.
A deep bruise spread along Crono’s side, and the edge of one sleeve was singed. Fine burns branched over both of Ayla’s arms. Lucca held her right hand against her chest and clutched the strap of her bag with the left.
Before Marle could say she was glad to see them, she asked, “The Key?”
Lucca opened her bag.
Inside three layers of knots lay the Gate Key. Its crystal face came alive. Only then did Marle let out her breath.
“And the injuries?”
“Electrocution,” Lucca said. “My wrist will probably spend the next few days lecturing me.”
“Who did it?”
Ayla spread her arms wide.
“Nizbel. Very big. Very hard. Eats lightning, spits it back.”
“You expect me to understand that?”
“Lucca explains too much. Ayla explains it right.”
Lucca opened her mouth, then seemed too tired to continue the argument.
Crono looked at Marle, then toward the shelter for the wounded.
She nodded.
“The stone is safe.”
Some of the tension left his shoulders.
The people of Ioka surrounded Ayla. Hands checked her burns while voices asked whether the Reptites had followed. Ayla answered every question in clipped phrases, but her own came first: what had happened during the night, whether anyone else was hurt, and whether the village boundaries were secure.
Kino stood outside the circle.
Ayla saw him.
“You told?”
“Yes. All of it.”
“Tell Lucca too.”
Kino went to Lucca.
There were no excuses this time. He said that opening the bag and taking the Gate Key had been wrong. Lucca listened until he finished, then looked down at the bandage around her wrist.
“I’m not going to judge you for being jealous,” she said.
She pressed one finger to the fastening he had opened and retied. “But you didn’t put only the three of us in danger. If we couldn’t come back, Marle would be trapped here. Robo would still be waiting at the End of Time. Melchior could never repair the sword. What you did kept going until it reached people you’ve never even met.”
Kino’s gaze moved from the bag to Marle.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t touch someone else’s tools again.”
Lucca hesitated, then added, “If you’re curious, ask. I’ll show you whatever I can.”
Kino looked up in surprise.
Lucca was already searching for a place to sit.
“That doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you. It means I don’t intend to say this twice.”
They spent the afternoon cleaning wounds and resting.
Marle warmed water and washed the bruise at Crono’s side and the burns on Ayla’s arms. She wrapped cool, wet cloth around Lucca’s wrist to draw out the heat. Throughout the treatment, Ayla made Nizbel larger with every retelling, while Lucca, flat on her back, corrected the measurements downward.
“Half the room.”
“Almost all the room.”
“If you count the tail.”
“Then Ayla is right.”
Crono listened to them as he retied the hide around the Dreamstone.
Marle asked Lucca about Azala.
“What were they like?”
“As clever as Ayla said. Azala came one question short of realizing we’re from another time.”
“Did you tell?”
“Only that the Key opens a road home.”
Lucca stared up at the roof. “Azala was afraid it might bring more humans. That we’d take their land.”
Ayla, beside her, said, “We fear more Reptites too.”
Fear on both sides had not stopped the fighting. Marle thought of Ioka’s wall-less circle of homes and the carefully worked passages beneath the Reptite forest. Both peoples were trying to protect the ground their children would walk.
Before sunset, they prepared to leave.
The Dreamstone still had to reach Melchior. More than that, the Masamune had to be restored before Frog could make his own choice.
Ayla did not go with them.
“More Reptite signals now. Ayla must stay.”
She made the decision quickly, though she did not hide her disappointment. Word that Ioka’s chief had defeated Nizbel would give her people courage. It might also provoke the Reptites.
Marle asked, “You told us to bring the sword back when it was fixed, remember?”
“Yes.”
“We will.”
Ayla stood before Crono, who held the great red stone in both arms.
“Fix sword. Face strong enemy. Better if you win.”
She gripped his shoulder. “If cannot win, come back alive. Dead person cannot learn why lost.”
Crono gave a short nod.
Kino guided them as far as the foot of the ridge. At the fork, he stopped and looked at Lucca’s bag.
“Guard the Key well.”
Lucca stared at him.
“Who do you think made me tie it three times?”
“That is why Kino says it.”
This time, he did not look away.
The slope of the Mystic Mountains had been easier to descend than it was to climb. Lucca’s wrist and Crono’s bruised ribs forced them to rest several times. Marle took her turn carrying the Dreamstone, and on the last ascent she called cool water into the air to ease the heat from their faces.
Almost no trace of blue remained among the rocks where the Gate had opened.
Lucca brought out the Gate Key.
They all watched as she untied the fastenings one by one. She pressed the crystal face. The needle swung wide, then settled on a single point.
Blue light split the air between the rocks.
The cold wind from the vortex pushed back the smells of wet earth and beasts that had greeted them in this age.
Ayla had followed them to the Gate.
She did not put a hand into the light. When it seemed ready to swallow her arm, she stepped back.
“This takes you home?”
“For us,” Marle said.
Ayla looked over her shoulder at the plains and the distant trail toward Ioka.
“Ayla’s home is here.”
There was no hesitation in it.
The three travelers entered the light one by one. Crono went last. When he looked back, Ayla raised one fist.
Her red hair streamed in the hot wind until the Gate closed.
At the End of Time, the air felt suddenly thin and cool.
Robo rose beside the fire.
“Three returning travelers. I detect multiple injuries.”
Lucca lifted her bag before anything else.
“Key recovered. Dreamstone secured. Injuries come third.”
Gaspar studied the red stone Crono set down. The firelight moved across its surface at a different rhythm from the light within.
“You’ve come a very long way.”
“For the people who live there,” Marle said, “it was only the next forest.”
Gaspar smiled.
Robo treated their injuries while they took a brief rest. Crono never moved far from the Dreamstone.
At last, Lucca rose with a fresh bandage around her wrist.
“Let’s get this to Melchior.”
The afternoon in Medina looked almost unchanged from the one they had left behind.
Hammering rang from Melchior’s workshop. When Crono opened the door, the old smith spoke without looking up.
“What have you broken this time?”
Crono placed the hide-wrapped bundle on the worktable.
The knots came loose. The red face of the Dreamstone emerged.
Melchior’s hammer stopped in midair.
For a long moment he said nothing. When he laid one hand on the stone, a clear note sounded from the locked chest beneath the table.
The two broken pieces of the Masamune were answering.
Melchior opened a trapdoor at the back of the workshop.
Red forge light rose from below.
“Bring it down.”
He no longer sounded like a craftsman surprised by what he had been given.
He sounded like a man beginning work he had waited a very long time to do.
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