[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 41] The Sky Beneath the Snow
The Gate spat the three of them out not onto open ground, but into the heart of the rock.
Crono struck the wet stone floor shoulder-first. Marle, still gripping his hand, tumbled after him. Ayla landed last, on top of them both. Blue light swept once across the cave walls, and then the rift in the air sealed as though it had never been there.
Darkness returned.
For a moment, there was nothing but the rasp of their breathing. Crono tried to rise, pressed a hand to his side, and sank back onto one knee. The place where he had rolled across the stone floor of the Tyrano Lair burned as though it had been seared. Marle reached for him, then stopped to inspect her own left arm. The cloth wrapped around the burn was still in place, and her fingers moved when she flexed them.
“Ayla?”
“Here.”
Ayla stood in the darkness. Her voice sounded steady, but her knee dipped whenever she put weight on her right foot. Blood was seeping through the wound on her calf again.
Marle felt along her belt and found a small fire striker. The first two attempts raised only sparks. On the third, a twist of dry fiber glowed red and caught. In the weak light, a low cave took shape around them. Frost covered the ceiling in white, and fine snow blew through a narrow gap that looked like an entrance.
No Gate remained where they had fallen. No light. Nothing.
Marle swept her palm through the empty air. The pendant swung against her chest but gave no response.
“There’s no way back to Frog.”
Ayla stared at the sealed wall for a long time. Until moments ago, beyond it had lain a burning forest, Kino, and Frog standing alone.
“Frog strong. Kino there too.”
It sounded less like comfort than a promise Ayla needed to hold on to herself.
Crono picked up the short sword lying on the floor and slid it into its sheath. Then he pointed to the ember in Marle’s hand and gestured toward the cave mouth. First they had to find out whether this was a place where they could stay.
The wind grew louder as they approached the entrance. When they rounded the final bend, white light stabbed into their eyes.
The whole world was snow.
There was no telling whether it was day or evening. The blizzard had erased the line between earth and sky. Distant mountains vanished into the clouds at their peaks, while the valleys lay heaped with ice like waves frozen in the act of breaking. There were no trees, no grass, not even the tracks of an animal. In a single instant, the red sky and hot ash of the world they had just left seemed as remote as a dream.
Marle stood beneath the cave’s rocky overhang and gazed out across the snow. She remembered the cold Azala had foretold in the Tyrano Lair. If dust and ash had smothered the sky after Lavos fell, weakening the sun, perhaps this was what the world had become. Whether they had arrived the next day or tens of millions of years later, there was no way to know. But a few black shards buried in the snow looked like the fragments they had seen in the crater.
She bent to pick one up. Crono caught her wrist.
Lines of red, fine as needles, writhed beneath its black surface. When he touched it with the tip of his sword, the lines withdrew into the stone.
Ayla kicked the shard beneath the snow.
“Lavos scraps.”
“Maybe.”
“If not know, not touch.”
Marle laughed at the simple verdict. Her breath whitened and seemed to freeze before her face. The warmth of Crono’s grip lingered on her wrist after he let go.
Ayla held out her hand to catch a snowflake. She tasted the water as it melted in her palm, then grimaced.
“Sky water cold.”
“It’s snow,” Marle said. “Your time will have it now, too. A lot of it.”
Ayla looked back. The wall of rock that barred their return made the words heavier.
Marle opened her quiver, then closed it again at once. Every arrow was broken. She could still draw the bow, but she had nothing left to loose from it. All they had were Crono’s blade and Ayla’s two fists.
They searched the cave for usable scraps of cloth and dry moss. Crono cut away one side of his torn coat and wrapped it around Ayla’s calf. Ayla folded the hide across her shoulders and covered Marle’s burned arm with half of it. No one said they were fine. None of them was, and there was no longer any reason to pretend otherwise.
Before stepping into the storm, Marle extinguished the flame and sealed the ember inside a small metal case.
The wind shoved them sideways within ten paces.
Ayla lowered her body and leaned into it. Storms in prehistory carried the smells of trees and wet earth. This wind had no smell at all. Every breath froze the inside of her nose. Marle shielded her eyes and searched for a ridge of rock, while Crono went first, testing the ice ahead with the toe of his boot.
They stepped into one another’s tracks. If Crono sank, the other two stopped. When Ayla slipped, Marle caught the leather strap around her. Before long, finding a direction ceased to matter. All that mattered was keeping the three of them together.
As they crossed a slope, water murmured beneath the ice. Crono had barely begun to signal that they should turn back when the crust collapsed. One of Marle’s legs plunged in to the thigh, and black water surged up from below. Ayla caught her arm, only to lose her own footing.
Crono threw himself flat, laid his sword crosswise, and thrust the sheath toward them. Pain tore through his side, but he did not let go. Marle seized the sheath while Ayla pushed at her waist from behind. They rolled onto firm snow an instant before the edge of the ice gave way again.
The wet hem of Marle’s trousers stiffened almost at once. Teeth chattering, she lifted Crono’s coat. Red spots had spread across the bandage.
“Next time, grab me before you tell us to turn back.”
Crono nodded, apology plain on his face.
“And remember—if you go down, we both go down with you.”
Ayla pulled one of their arms over each of her shoulders.
“Three walk like one. Then not only one fall.”
Crono stopped without warning.
Through the driving snow, a straight line had appeared. It was too regular to be a split in the rock. Two black stone pillars stood in the middle of the white plain, and between them ran a path on which no snow had settled.
The three pressed close to the pillars for shelter. Spirals and shapes like stars had been carved into the surface. A faint blue light moved through every groove.
“People made.” Ayla traced one of the cuts with a fingertip. “Where people?”
Marle looked beyond the pillars. At the end of the path stood a round building half-buried in snow. It seemed to be made of stone, but no joints were visible, and the pointed ornament on its roof did not stir in the gale.
The door opened before they touched it.
Warm air spilled out. For a moment, the three exchanged glances. Even if it was a trap, it was better than remaining outside.
There were no torches within. Milky light shone from inside the walls, and a circular platform occupied the center of the floor. Three bands of the same symbols surrounded it: clouds on the outside, wings within them, and at the center a long line pointing upward.
Marle held out a hand. Her pendant gave a faint tremor.
“It isn’t a Gate.”
Crono rubbed at the snow along the edge of the platform. It had not blown in from outside. It had melted from someone’s boots and dripped there, and not very long ago.
People used this place.
Ayla stepped onto the center of the platform.
“Ayla look first.”
“Wait—”
The markings flared before Marle could catch her. Though there was no wind, Ayla’s hair lifted straight upward. She raised her fists, but the light did not strike. A pillar of blue radiance rose from beneath her feet, wrapped around her body, and pulled her toward the ceiling.
Ayla vanished.
The color drained from Marle’s face. Crono leapt onto the platform without hesitation, and Marle caught his arm.
Light drove the world downward.
There was no sensation of falling. It was the ground that receded. Stone and ice became transparent, and the endless blizzard streamed away beneath them. In the space of a breath, the cloud layer rushed close and swallowed all three.
Then Crono and Marle tumbled onto a warm stone floor.
“Slow.”
Ayla was already there, looking down at them. She was unharmed.
The building resembled the one below, but no frost rimed its walls. Sunlight poured through the open exit. Marle stepped carefully outside—and lost the power of speech.
Clouds lay beneath her feet.
An island floated in the sky. Blue-green grass bent in the breeze, and white flowers rippled like water. Clear streams curved through the air, crossed by small bridges made of light. In the distance, a city of rounded roofs and slender towers shone gold beneath the sun.
Far below, through breaks in the clouds, they could see the frozen earth.
Above, it was spring. Below, the world was freezing to death.
Ayla seized a handful of grass. Soft earth crumbled between her fingers. Even after finding living soil, she did not smile.
“Sky stole land.”
Crono did not look toward the city. He studied the island’s edge. Blue shafts extended from beneath the floating earth and disappeared into the clouds, pulsing at measured intervals.
The same resonance they had heard in the ritual chamber of Magus’s Castle.
The same tremor they had felt where Lavos fell.
When Crono pressed a hand to his side, the pulse beneath his wound and the island’s light seemed, for a moment, to beat in time.
Then someone in white approached along the road from the city. He saw their wounds and hides, saw at once that they had climbed through the blizzard, yet showed neither surprise nor caution.
He smiled as though he had been waiting for them.
“Have you come to rest awhile in dreams?”
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