[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 8] The One Who Returned, the Guilt That Remained
The bells of Guardia Castle rang to announce the queen’s return.
Their sound was higher and brighter than the knights’ signal at the cathedral. Soldiers along the walls opened the gates as one, and the people filling the courtyard withdrew to both sides of the road. Wounded knights rose with their arms across one another’s shoulders. Attendants lowered their water jugs and bandages.
When Queen Leene passed through the gate, someone began to weep.
Only then did the cheering start.
At first, a few nearby soldiers called the queen’s name. The sound soon spread to the walls, the towers, and the open windows of the kitchens. News that the missing queen had returned had already traveled through the kingdom once. This time, however, there was no mistaken face and no abandoned search. The fatigue, the earth on her clothes, and the torn gown all testified to a true return.
At the rear of the procession, Crono looked up at the tower.
The window of the chamber where Marle had vanished was closed.
Beside him, Lucca checked the tracking device. The needle on its crystal panel had pointed steadily east since they left the cathedral. The moment they passed through the castle gate, it began to tremble rapidly.
“The change is too large,” she said quietly.
“The response resembles a Gate opening, but it isn’t the same. Maybe this isn’t space changing. Maybe… history is settling back into place.”
Crono moved toward the central stairs.
A guard tried to bar the way, but Leene looked back.
“Let them pass.”
At the queen’s word, the spear withdrew.
Frog remained beside her. A temporary bandage covered the wound on his shoulder, and his cape was torn in several places. Leene asked him to come inside with her, but he bowed and stepped back.
“Your Majesty must first see the king.”
“Come with me.”
“I…”
Frog looked toward the knights within the castle. Some regarded him with respect. Others avoided his eyes, uncertain what they should call him.
Leene did not force him.
“Then wait here. This time, do not disappear without my permission.”
Frog answered only with a deep bow.
Crono and Lucca ran up the stairs.
People gathered to welcome the queen blocked the way inside. Each time Lucca’s pack struck the wall, she swallowed a curse, while Crono found gaps between those in front of them. Once they crossed the central hall and entered the spiral stairs of the eastern tower, the cheers outside receded behind the stone.
No one stood before Marle’s chamber.
The door had been left open during the search after the queen’s disappearance. The wind moved it slightly. When Crono pushed, the hinges gave a long cry.
The room was as they had left it.
The map remained open on the table and the chair stood pushed aside. The fire had nearly died, leaving only ash. Nothing occupied the place where Marle had last stood.
Lucca put the device on the table.
The needle rose to its limit, then suddenly fell. Blue light revolved once within the crystal panel.
“The change has stopped,” she said.
Crono stood in the center of the room.
Nothing happened.
They had defeated Yakra at the cathedral, and the true queen had returned alive. If Leene’s death had caused Marle to disappear, she should now have come back. But only the bells continued outside the window.
Lucca activated the device again. She changed the wires and turned the crystal. Her swollen wrist made her grimace each time she moved the handle, but she did not stop.
“Just wait a little.”
It was unclear to whom she spoke.
“There might be a delay before a change in time reaches a person. Or the point where Marle vanished and the point where she returns may be different. It could be the canyon where the Gate first—”
Crono raised his hand.
Lucca stopped.
The light in the room was changing.
A trace of gold mingled with the gray sunlight entering through the window. Dust gathered into the outline of a person. Fingers appeared first, then an arm and shoulders. The map and hearth remained visible through the transparent form.
Crono began to approach, then stopped himself.
Without taking a breath, Lucca watched the readings.
Color returned to the figure.
A red vest, white clothing, and golden hair found their shapes within the light. Last of all, a blue jewel appeared at her breast.
Marle fell to her knees.
Crono caught her.
This time, his hands did not pass through. Her warmth and weight were unmistakable. Marle drew a breath and clutched his arm. Her chest labored like that of someone emerging after too long underwater.
“Crono…”
She looked at her own hands. She opened and closed her fingers several times, then checked the shadow on the floor.
“I came back?”
Crono nodded.
Marle closed her eyes. It was difficult to tell whether she was holding back tears or laughter. After a moment, she rested her forehead against his shoulder.
“You didn’t let go.”
The words answered the plea she had made just before she vanished.
Crono tightened his arms.
Lucca crouched beside them and took Marle’s wrist. She checked her pulse, pupils, and breathing. She pretended at her usual composure, but moisture had gathered behind her glasses.
“Does anything hurt?”
Marle shook her head.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I was in a place where there was nothing.”
Marle spoke slowly.
“It wasn’t dark or bright. It wasn’t cold. There was no sound, but sometimes I thought someone was calling me.”
She looked from Crono to Lucca.
“I don’t know how long I was there.”
Lucca released her breath without releasing Marle’s hand.
“I’ll explain later. There’s still too much I don’t understand.”
Before asking anything about herself, Marle asked about one person.
“The queen?”
“We saved her.” Lucca did not hesitate over that answer.
“The real Queen Leene has returned to the castle. That is why you exist again.”
Marle’s eyes widened.
“Then I disappeared because…”
“History was becoming one in which the queen died.”
Lucca chose each word with difficulty.
“You appeared in this era and were mistaken for her, so the search stopped. If the real queen was not rescued, her descendants would never be born. That means you could never be born either.”
Marle closed her hand around the pendant.
She did not say that she had done something wrong. Lucca had no intention of allowing it.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Lucca said first.
“No one could have predicted the reaction between our machine and the pendant. But it is also true that we came here, touched history, and saw the consequences ourselves.”
She looked at the tracking device, its crystal panel now dark.
“From now on, we can’t act carelessly just because we don’t understand something.”
Marle lowered her head, then raised it again.
“I want to meet the queen.”
The three descended together.
In the central hall, the king and Leene were holding each other. The people around them kept a respectful distance, while the true chancellor explained to the commander of the knights how Yakra had deceived the castle in his image.
Marle stopped midway down the stairs.
Leene’s face resembled her own.
They shared the golden hair, the shape of the eyes, even the small habit of lifting the chin. Yet the queen’s posture and expression held the time of a woman who had lived in this age. Marle did not merely seem to see a face like hers. She stood motionless like someone seeing for the first time the distant root from which her life had grown.
Leene noticed her first.
Surprise crossed the queen’s eyes. She must already have heard of the strange girl who resembled her and whom the castle had mistaken for its missing queen.
Leene gently left the king’s arms and stood before Marle.
“I am told you stayed in this castle in my place.”
Marle could not decide whether to kneel or give her name.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last.
It was the same thing she had said before.
“People called me their queen, and I couldn’t tell them at once that I wasn’t. The search stopped because of me…”
Leene took her hand.
“The fear of someone who falls alone into a strange place cannot be called a sin.”
Marle looked down at the queen’s fingers. Their warmth was different from the king’s hand when he had believed she was Leene.
“But my choice put you in danger.”
“And you came with your companions to reverse that danger.”
Leene looked at Crono and Lucca.
“A person should be judged less by what they did not know at first than by what they chose after learning the truth.”
Marle nodded, as if determined to remember the words for a long time.
The king watched the two women with a bewildered expression. He clearly wanted to know the identity of a girl who looked so much like his wife, but Leene silenced him with a glance.
Marle did not reveal her true name.
There was no need to tell the people of this age that she was a princess four hundred years in the future. Even proving the truth might create another change.
Frog stood beside a pillar at the edge of the hall.
Leene called to him.
“You kept your promise. You did not disappear.”
Frog came forward and lowered himself onto one knee.
“I have no intention of evading responsibility for the danger to Your Majesty.”
“Did you abduct me?”
“No.”
“Did you stop the search?”
“No.”
“Did you abandon me?”
Frog could not answer.
Leene’s voice softened.
“Frog, protecting me does not mean ensuring that I never encounter danger. It means finding the road back even from within it.”
Frog placed both hands over the hilt of his sword.
“I do not deserve those words.”
“You alone do not decide what you deserve.”
Even then, he did not raise his head.
Crono remembered what Frog had told him in the cathedral: do not cast aside the weight of killing, but do not let that weight prevent you from protecting the next person. Frog himself stood bound by a much older burden.
Leene understood that and did not try to tear him free of it in a single moment.
“Have your wound treated, and rest.”
“I shall obey.”
Frog rose, but walked toward the exit rather than deeper into the castle.
Lucca followed.
“Where are you going?”
“The queen has returned. My role is finished.”
“You were just ordered to rest.”
“There are places to receive treatment beyond these walls.”
Lucca pushed her glasses up in frustration.
“I was rude when we met. I’m sorry.”
Frog stopped.
“Your appearance startled me, and I said so without thinking. But you saved us in the cathedral. You were also the one who kept searching for the queen.”
Frog looked back at her.
“It was my appearance you feared. What I fear now is remaining in this castle. Neither fear disappears through an apology alone.”
Lucca pressed her lips together.
“Yet you fought beside me despite your fear.”
Frog inclined his head by the smallest degree.
“That is enough.”
He stopped before Crono.
For some time, the two looked at each other without speaking. This silence lasted longer than the time their swords had moved together in the cathedral.
“You may become a fine swordsman,” Frog said.
Crono looked at his cracked blade.
“If you can place your choice before your sword.”
Frog did not offer his hand, and Crono did not try to hold him. They replaced a longer farewell with a short bow.
Frog walked out through the castle gate.
His blue cape moved in the evening wind, and his figure grew smaller along the road into the forest. No one asked where he was going.
As the sun declined, Crono, Marle, and Lucca also left the castle.
Leene did not question them closely about the Gate or the future. Instead, she prepared food and fresh bandages before they departed. The king tried to grant the strange young people a royal reward, but Crono refused. There was no knowing what change might come from carrying objects out of this age without need.
They crossed Guardia Forest and headed toward Truce Canyon.
It was the same road by which they had come, but Marle saw everything anew. She took in the forest where she had first awakened, the place where the soldiers knelt, and the rocky way Crono had crossed alone.
“You truly came all this way by yourself?”
Crono nodded.
“Weren’t you afraid?”
Crono did not hide from his own memory. He considered it for a moment before answering.
“I was.”
The short reply stopped Marle in her tracks.
Crono rarely gave words to his fear. He neither concealed it now nor explained it at length.
When Marle resumed walking, she stayed a little closer beside him.
“But you came anyway.”
At the highest point in the canyon, traces remained where Crono had first fallen. Between crushed grass and broken branches, a circle of light shimmered faintly. To the unaided eye, it resembled sunlight wavering in the air, but the crystal panel brightened when Lucca brought her device near.
“The Gate is still here.”
From her belt, Lucca took an instrument shaped like a small key.
She had made it through the night after the Telepod accident. When she turned its handle, the shimmer widened and revealed a blue opening.
“I can open and close the same Gate to some extent now. That doesn’t mean I completely control it.”
Marle looked inside.
“This time, we know where it goes, right?”
“It’s connected to the point when we left. Assuming there’s no deviation.”
“And if there is?”
Lucca did not answer.
Crono went to the Gate first.
Marle caught his sleeve.
“Together this time.”
The three entered the light at once.
There was still no direction within the Gate. Unlike before, however, Crono was not alone. He could sense Marle and Lucca on either side. Their hands did not touch, but their voices did not tear apart in the distance.
Blue light opened, and a metal platform appeared beneath them.
They tumbled out onto the demonstration stage at Leene Square.
The sun had not yet set.
Music from the fair and the voices of the crowd rose from below. In their own era, it seemed that not even several hours had passed. Taban had been sitting beside the machine. The instant all three appeared, he sprang to his feet.
“Lucca!”
He started to embrace his daughter, then stopped at the sight of the pack, the weapon, and the blood on her clothes.
“Where in the world have you been?”
Instead of giving the long explanation, Lucca rested her forehead against her father’s shoulder.
“Very far away.”
Taban asked nothing more. He embraced her.
Marle looked down over the square.
The candy stall, the dancers, and the festival banners were all unchanged. People laughed, unaware that they had nearly entered a history in which she had never existed.
“We’re back.”
She closed a hand around the pendant.
They could not remain there long.
Royal guards were coming up from the lower square. After Marle vanished, the castle must have sent soldiers throughout the kingdom to find its princess. A commander in red armor spotted her and quickened his pace.
“Your Highness!”
The people around him turned.
Marle’s face became rigid.
The girl who had introduced herself as Marle was being called a princess before the crowd. Crono was not surprised; Lucca had already told him. Even so, Marle looked to him as though checking his reaction.
“Princess Nadia, thank goodness you are safe.”
The commander reached the top of the steps and knelt. Relief showed on the faces of the soldiers behind him. When their eyes found Crono, however, the air changed.
“Is this the man who took you?”
Marle immediately stepped forward to cut off the judgment.
“No. Crono saved me.”
“His Majesty commands that you be brought to the castle immediately.”
The commander heard her, but did not revise his conclusion.
“He also ordered an investigation of the person last seen with you.”
Two soldiers approached Crono from either side.
Lucca moved beside him.
“Investigation? On what charge?”
The commander did not hesitate.
“Abduction of the princess.”
“You believe an abductor crossed time itself to rescue her?”
The commander looked at Lucca with suspicion.
“Did you say time?”
Realizing that every explanation would only make matters worse, Lucca closed her mouth.
Marle stood in front of Crono.
“I went with him because I wanted to. I was the one who first asked him to see the fair with me.”
“You may give your account at the castle.”
The commander’s voice remained courteous. He had no intention of yielding.
Crono saw the soldiers’ hands rest on their hilts. If he fought, he might escape. But the square was crowded, and Marle could no longer conceal who she was. Above all, flight would look like an admission that he had taken her.
He removed his hand from his sword.
A soldier closed an iron cuff around his wrist.
Marle stared at him in disbelief.
“Crono, why aren’t you doing anything?”
He shook his head.
He did not mean that everything was all right. He meant that this was not the moment to draw a blade.
Lucca clenched her teeth, but understood his judgment. She passed the damaged auxiliary meter to Taban and quickly whispered that no one was to touch the demonstration area. The key device that opened the Gate remained fastened at her own waist. Marle continued protesting, but the commander only repeated his orders.
The soldiers led Crono down the steps.
The girl whose cat he had returned that morning stood in the crowd with her father. The candy vendor, a couple from the Telepod demonstration, and the owner of the strength-testing game all watched him. Some faces held concern. Others whispered.
The bells of the Millennial Fair rang again.
That morning, they had announced a new day. Now they sounded like the signal accompanying an accused man on the road to the castle.
Marle called Crono’s name from between the soldiers.
He looked back once.
The banners of Leene Square moved in the evening light. Beneath them, Marle and Lucca were following him.
He had crossed a thousand years to recover one person, only to find people waiting at the place of his return to judge that choice.
In the distance, the gates of Guardia Castle opened.
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