[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 51] Clouds Beneath Their Feet
Lucca rolled the damaged arrow across her lap. Straightening the head had been easy enough, but there was a crack where it joined the shaft. When she showed Marle the fine split that caught her fingernail, Marle pressed her lips together.
“It ought to be good for one shot.”
“I can't promise where it'll go.”
Lucca handed it over. Marle felt the crack herself, then wrapped the arrowhead in cloth. She put it inside the bag so it would not be confused with the sound arrow, and laid down her bow.
They spent another night in Algetty. Before bed, Lucca added a double patch over the tear in her bag. She slipped the screwdriver they had recovered into an inner pocket and tucked the Gate Key deep beside it. She checked that a sudden impact would not jar its casing open, though the device could not open a way for them here.
She was about to lie down under a piece of oilcloth when Marle spoke.
“Do you think the ship's all right?”
“Probably has more snow on it by now. We'll have to clear it off when we get back.”
Lucca pictured the ridge and the spot she had marked. The Epoch had brought them back to this age. That did not mean it could take them to the mountain above their heads. She did not want to assume that knowing how to work one function meant she understood the rest. Nothing in Belthasar's notes had mentioned flight.
“What if we went to get the others?” Marle asked.
“Then let's all go. Even once we've taken the ship to another age, we'd still have to make our way to them. I don't know how long that would take, and I don't want to split up here.”
“Which means we'd get nothing done here in the meantime.”
Lucca nodded. They knew the route now; she could not be certain a trip back would make them too late. But neither did she know enough to promise they could return to the precise moment they intended. As she explained, Marle fiddled with the waterskin's stopper, then let it go.
“Let's see how we are tomorrow. Decide then whether the three of us can do it.”
Crono nodded too. He turned over to sleep, his movements less broken than the night before. Lucca switched off the lamp. Once the village fires burned low, someone's snoring seemed remarkably loud. Marle curled up in her bedding, trying not to laugh. Beside her, Crono covered his face. Lucca started to tell them both to be quiet, then had to press a hand over her own mouth.
In the morning, the elder checked their knots. Securing a load on the ground was not quite the same as keeping a person attached to a chain. Lucca undid her work and copied the movements of his hands. They took turns putting their weight on the rope to make sure it would not work loose.
Crono also climbed the ladder near the entrance and came back down, this time carrying a full waterskin. He paused on the last rung but stepped off without help. Marle moved her arm and drew the bow once. Lucca bent and straightened with her bag on her back.
“We can manage if we take it slowly,” Marle said.
The elder did not detain them. He made no claim to know the mountain's paths or where they might rest. He only told them to wait out the shifting gusts beyond the cave mouth: lie flat against the chain, rather than meet the wind standing up.
Lucca wrote that beside the map. She wound the borrowed rope around her waist and turned on the lamp.
The Beast's Nest seemed wider than before. It was the absence of certain sounds. On their first visit, every rock had seemed to conceal something clinging to it. Now she could distinguish the drip of water from the gaps that admitted the wind. The marks of their fighting remained. Crono passed without looking away, while Lucca shone the light once more over the place where her tools had scattered.
They stopped at the chain. The links dwindled beneath the clouds. Lucca began estimating the gaps by eye, then gave up. Knowing the distance would not quiet the tremor in her fingertips.
Crono went first. He stepped onto the edge of one link and gripped the upright link ahead. The leather wound around his soles compressed against the iron. After two steps he glanced back, but instead of waiting where only one person could stand, he moved on to a place with room for Marle.
Lucca climbed on last. She had put away the lamp, which they no longer needed. With both hands free, she could see more clearly where each finger ought to go. The iron was uneven: rough rust here, a patch of melted and refrozen snow there.
The cave mouth receded behind them. Wind rose from below and lifted their clothes away from their bodies. Marle pulled her bow tight against the middle of her back. Lucca passed the rope over the link ahead and held on. They waited for the wind to ease, then moved a step at a time.
Cloud was not as insubstantial as it looked from a distance. Moisture clung to Lucca's face and glasses. Droplets gathered at the ends of Marle's hair ahead of her. As Lucca wiped a lens with the back of her hand, the chain swayed sideways. Her foot twisted and her body tipped.
She hauled on the rope. It tightened around her waist, and her knee struck the iron. Marle started to turn.
“Don't come back!” Lucca called. “Hold on where you are.”
Crono crouched too. Marle gripped the link nearest him while Lucca took some of her weight on her arms and found a footing again. Water covered one lens, doubling everything she saw. The two ahead remained still until she nodded twice.
Only when her hand reached rock did Lucca realize how tightly she had been gripping the chain. Her fingers would not straighten to let go. Crono took her bag, and Marle moved aside to give her room to climb up.
Loose stone and short grass covered the mountain's first slope. Still on her knees, Lucca looked back toward the cavern. Only a few links showed through the cloud. Had the way up really been that narrow? She stopped looking.
Marle offered the waterskin.
“You should have some too,” Lucca said.
“I did. That's why I'm giving it to you.”
Lucca accepted it and swallowed. Her throat was painfully dry. Beside them, Crono examined the route ahead. Another chain hung between outcrops. This one did not lead to the ground. It joined two separate pieces of the mountain.
Farther along the path, a round stone moved. At first Lucca thought the wind had rolled it, but it was traveling uphill. Something like an eye flashed in a crevice. Crono raised his hand. Lucca opened her fingers to summon fire.
Nothing happened.
It was different from exhaustion. The impulse itself seemed to break off before it could begin. Marle was staring at her palm too. The round stone spun, and Crono stepped in with a downward cut. His blade struck the place it had just left. For such a small thing, it changed direction astonishingly fast.
“Get away from it!” Lucca said.
They backed off, leaving the stone between them. Crono checked his next step instead of pursuing it. The creature rolled back and forth among the rocks, then vanished into a crack. A little later, a flame formed at Lucca's fingertips. She extinguished it at once.
“It seems to stop us using our power when it's close.”
She could not tell how far the effect reached. They might meet it again on the way down. Lucca marked the crevice on her map. Here, they could not count on magic to keep them on their feet or catch someone who fell. She gave the rope at her waist another tug.
As they climbed, the paths split and rejoined at the chains. A promising slope ended in a cliff; a boulder that seemed to block their route concealed a climbable gap. When Crono raised his hand ahead, they waited where they were. Even when he took time to investigate an opening and return, neither of them hurried him.
While they were crossing the second chain, a winged creature unfolded from a rock above. Light shone through its gray membranes. As it rode the wind toward them, Crono lowered himself without releasing his grip. Marle flattened herself behind him. At the rear, Lucca raised her arm, then drew it back. From there, her fire would have to pass the other two.
Claws scraped a link. Crono thrust out his sheathed weapon and braced it beneath a wing. As the creature wheeled upward, they moved toward the rock ahead. Lucca waited until Marle's feet reached level ground before crossing the last link.
The returning shadow covered them. Crono drew his blade and stepped forward. The creature reached for his face, but Marle's cold stiffened one wing. As its body tilted, Lucca's flame struck the other. Crono's sword cut across the lowered torso. The creature hit the edge of the rock and fell into the clouds.
Lucca did not approach the drop. She waited for the sound of wings. When none came, she took off her bag and examined the knee she had struck against the chain. Blood beaded where her trousers had scraped away. Marle dampened a cloth and cleaned off the grit.
For a long time, none of them spoke. Clouds streamed past the rock while they drank. A gap opened beneath them, revealing snowfields far below. Lucca tried to work out which way the Epoch lay. She could not tell whether the mountain was swaying and turning slightly, or whether the moving cloud only made it seem so.
“Will Melchior be able to get down?” Marle asked.
Only then did Lucca reconsider the length of rope they had brought. She had been so occupied with getting three people up that she had not properly worked out where to put four on the way down.
Crono reached back to indicate his empty back. Marle shook her head immediately.
“If you carry him, the two of us will have to carry you.”
Lucca pointed to the broad rocks she had marked along their route. They could secure people to the chain one at a time. If Melchior could not walk at all, they would have to find a way to support him with rope and clothing. Crono could not take that weight alone.
“We'll see how much he can do, then decide. I'll keep some rope for the way down.”
In the margin of her map, she sketched the wide rocks and narrow links separately. What had been a sheet of directions was becoming a record of places to rest and places where one person could wait for another.
They shared small portions of the remaining food. When Crono stopped chewing his piece of hard root, Marle softened it in water for him. Lucca remembered the three seats in Belthasar's dome. Someone had made exactly enough room for the three of them. Now they had to find room for four on the journey back from the mountain.
The sun sank above the clouds. The rock stayed cold even in its light. By the time they reached the last chain, all three had reddened palms. Crono scouted ahead, then returned and gestured that he thought he had seen someone standing above. Lucca gathered the rope and followed.
The summit was flatter than she had expected. A block of blue ice stood in the middle. Light divided its interior into layers, and at first she could make out only a human outline. As Crono approached from another angle, a beard and stooped shoulders came into view.
Lucca held her breath. This was no face preserved in a recording in some ruin of the future. It was Melchior, the man she knew. His eyes were shut, his hands held close to his body. Though he stood inside the ice, there was no frost on the hem of his clothes.
Crono reached out. Before he touched the cold surface, the rock reverberated. Lucca caught his arm and pulled. Enormous fingers were rising beyond the summit.
The hand gripping the edge on their left was dark red. On the right, a paler hand opened. A face rose between them. Beneath a forehead ridged like layers of rock, eyes opened—human in shape, far beyond anything human in size.
Lucca made sure Marle was backing away, then shifted her own position. The chain down lay behind them to the left. Melchior, still encased in ice, stood directly before the giant.
She put the rope where it would not trip anyone and laid the carefully folded map on top. The way home she had drawn on that paper still had to reach this last patch of ground beneath their feet.
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