[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 63] The Name at the Cape
Marle took small sips before setting the bowl down. Even then, a mouthful remained. She knew she only had to tip it a little farther. Her hands would not do it.
Lucca stood first.
They left the Epoch at the village and took the path north through frozen grass. Nearer the sea, the snow thinned to patches of bare rock. Marle adjusted the bow on her back. Two arrows knocked together in her quiver.
Lucca stopped ahead of her.
A black cloak stirred at the edge of the cape. The man beneath it faced the sea. His scythe lay beside his feet, its point resting against the rock, unmoved by the wind.
Marle walked closer.
“Where's Schala?”
He did not turn.
“You got out too. She sent you out. Did you see her afterward?”
His cloak wrapped around his legs and loosened. At last he turned his head slightly.
“No.”
Marle looked past him at the water. She had not expected him to promise that Schala was still somewhere out there. She had only wanted someone else to have seen her. Someone who knew what had happened just one moment after they left.
“She always sent everyone else to safety.”
Something in his words made Marle look back. It took her a moment to understand. He did not sound as though they had met in the palace.
Lucca climbed onto the rock, keeping several paces between them.
“You knew her before you became the Prophet?”
Magus turned fully toward them. His face looked thinner than it had in the Ocean Palace. Marle glanced from his scythe to his hands. His fingers were open.
“Janus,” he said. “Do you remember that child?”
Marle let go of her bow strap.
Blue hair. Feet that retreated before anyone came close. The boy calling for Schala without looking toward the other adults. While Marle remembered, the man waited.
“We're looking for him. He disappeared from Algetty with Melchior.”
Something shifted in Magus's eyes. She could not tell whether he was surprised or had found something he expected.
“I was that child.”
A stone rolled beneath Lucca's foot. Marle did not look toward the sound. She searched his face for the boy, but the shape of his eyes and ears would not fit the memory. She felt she needed some resemblance before she could believe him.
What returned instead was the moment Schala had reached him on the palace floor. He had looked up at her and fallen silent.
“You're Janus?”
He turned back toward the sea.
“On the day I remember, we were in the palace. Openings appeared in the floor. The Gurus vanished. My sister reached for me.”
My sister.
Marle closed her mouth. Those words, at least, hurt in the same place they had when the boy spoke them.
Magus did not raise a hand to show her. He kept looking at the water.
“I was drawn in before she could reach me. When I woke, there was a forest. No familiar trees. No familiar paths. The way back had closed.”
Lucca adjusted her glasses.
“The Janus we met stayed in Algetty. Schala left him with Melchior.”
“That is the day you saw.”
Lucca did not immediately argue. Marle could not say she understood it either. A grown man stood before her in the missing child's place, and yet she was no closer to knowing where they could look for that child.
“Where was the forest?” Lucca asked.
“In the lands of the Mystics, long before you entered my castle. I met Ozzie there.”
Marle remembered the castle stairs, corridors full of enemies, doors closing behind them. She tried to imagine Janus there and stopped. A boy had grown up. That did not change what had happened inside those walls.
“And you spent all that time trying to summon Lavos?”
“To kill him. I did not create him. I do not serve him.”
Lucca lifted her head. Magus was watching her.
“Had I completed the summoning that night, I could have faced him. You interfered. The opening twisted. I was returned to this age.”
Marle scarcely heard the accusation. Returned to this age: to a place where Schala lived and Janus was still a child. She pictured him walking through the palace beneath his hood. It was as though a door had opened, long after they had left the room.
“You could be a prophet because you knew what would happen,” Lucca said.
He did not deny it.
“I thought I could prepare this time.”
He picked up his scythe. Marle's shoulders tightened, but the blade did not turn toward them. He planted the shaft against the rock and rested his hand on it.
“Lavos took that from me too.”
Marle remembered darkness drawing his arms upward. She had wanted him to succeed. Then Crono had stood before the creature he had meant to kill, with the fallen people behind him.
Magus glanced at her face.
“Your friend misjudged his strength as well. That is what happens when you challenge something beyond you.”
Marle stepped forward.
“Stop.”
He stopped speaking, but he did not look away. She came closer. Lucca called her name. The rock beneath Marle's feet was wet.
“You were on the floor.”
She spoke slowly. Faster, and she would lose her breath.
“All of us were. Crono stood in front of you too.”
The hand on the scythe remained still.
“And that's what you have to say?”
Magus lifted the shaft. The thin blade cut across the sky above them.
“Will you fight?”
Marle caught her bow. The curve of the wood was familiar. Two arrows remained behind her shoulder. It would take little time to draw one. She could even decide where to aim: his face, or his chest.
Her hand fell away.
“No.”
The anger did not lessen once she had said it. She pressed her nails into her palm.
“Would killing you bring Crono back?”
Magus did not answer.
“Then I won't. Not now.”
Lucca came to stand beside her, then half a step ahead. She had not drawn her gun either.
“We've heard your story. You can tell Frog yourself.”
His eyes narrowed. Lucca turned away. Marle placed her feet beside Lucca's tracks. Showing him her back frightened her. But if that fear made her reach for the bow again, she might never leave this rock.
As they stepped down, his voice followed.
“Find the Guru of Time.”
Lucca stopped first.
“What?”
“If there is a way to recover lost time, he will know it.”
Marle stepped back off the stone. She turned so quickly that her arrows knocked together.
“You mean Crono can come back?”
“I don't know.”
The answer came so quickly that her mouth closed.
“Ask him.”
“Where is he?”
“The Gurus were scattered, as Janus was. You found Melchior. From your flying machine, I assume you have found traces of Belthasar too. The Guru of Time is Gaspar.”
Lucca looked at Marle. Marle was thinking of a small light in the darkness. An old man leaning against a railing. Whatever age they returned from, he was always there.
They did not yet know if he had that name. At least they had somewhere to ask.
Magus put away his weapon and approached. Lucca's hand went to her waist.
“I'll come with you.”
“To help us?”
He looked past her at Marle.
“Lavos is still alive.”
Lucca did not move aside. Marle touched her arm. They looked at each other briefly. Marle did not say it would be all right. Lucca was not waiting for her to.
They walked apart. Magus neither passed them nor drew alongside. Each time Marle looked back, the black cloak followed at the same distance.
At the village, a child reached for the Epoch's wing until an adult caught his hand. Lucca climbed into the cockpit and checked the locks. Marle took a rear seat. Magus paused before the remaining one.
Marle was looking at it.
He sat. His weapon lay along the seat's edge. She shifted her bow from her knees toward the window so that the wood would not touch its shaft.
Lucca closed the canopy. This time the Epoch lifted cleanly. The village lights fell away. The sea came into view.
Far out, the surface rose.
Marle thought it was a wave. But the dark edge breaking through it did not subside. Water poured down a wall. More walls emerged, followed by a high tower. Lucca drew back on the controls, carrying them away from the enormous rising structure.
Marle pressed both hands to the glass.
They had come from down there. The breaking floor, the Mammon Machine's light, the place where Schala had stood—all of it had been inside those walls. Water streamed from the building's underside. Its foundations lifted clear of the sea.
The Ocean Palace hung in the air.
Magus leaned forward, bracing a hand beneath the window.
“The Black Omen.”
Marle did not ask whom he was speaking to. Light gathered above the structure and drove the low clouds aside. From here, she could not see who might still be alive within it.
Lucca's hand paused before the time controls.
Marle looked from her to the suspended palace. If she asked to go inside again, what would Lucca say first? Schala's name? Or what had happened there?
“Take us to the old man.”
Lucca nodded. Magus removed his hand from the window.
The light outside stretched into long bands. Marle brought the bow back onto her knees. As the Epoch entered time, the stranger's cloak brushed the back of her hand.
She moved her hand away.
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