The Neverending Story (17 page)

And the unbelievable happened!

As though suddenly stricken dumb, they fell silent. Their mouths closed, and eight gigantic goggle-eyes were directed at AURYN. The tempest stopped and the air was deathly still.

“Answer me!” cried Atreyu. “Where are the borders of Fantastica? Do you know, Lirr?”

“Not in the north,” said the black cloud face.

“And you, Baureo?”

“Not in the east,” said the leaden-gray cloud face.

“You tell me, Sheerek!”

“There is no border in the south,” said the sulfur-yellow cloud face.

“Mayestril, do you know?”

“No border in the west,” said the fiery-red cloud face.

And then they all spoke as with one mouth: “Who are you, who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress and don’t know that Fantastica has no borders?”

Atreyu made no reply. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him that Fantastica might have no borders whatsoever. Then his whole Quest had been for nothing.

He hardly noticed it when the Wind Giants resumed their war game. He had given up caring what would happen to him. He clung fast to the dragon’s mane when they were hurled upward by a whirlwind. The lightning played around them, they were spun in a circle and almost drowned in a downpour of rain. They were sucked into a fiery wind that nearly burned them up, but a moment later a hailstorm, consisting not of stones but of icicles as long as spears, flung them downward. So it went: up and down, down and up, this way and that. The Wind Giants were fighting for power.

A gust of wind turned Falkor over on his back. “Hold tight!” he shouted.

But it was too late. Atreyu had lost his hold and fell. He fell and fell, and then he lost consciousness.

When he came to, Atreyu was lying on white sand. He heard the sound of waves, and when he looked around he saw that he had been washed up on a beach. It was a gray, foggy day, but there was no wind. The sea was calm and there was no sign that the Wind Giants had been fighting a battle only a short time before. The beach was flat and there were no hills or rocks in sight, only a few gnarled and crooked trees which, seen through the mist, looked like great clawed hands.

Atreyu sat up. Seeing his red buffalo-hair cloak a few steps away he crawled over to it and threw it over his shoulders. To his surprise, it was almost dry. So he must have been lying there for quite a while.

How had he got there? Why hadn’t he drowned?

Dimly he remembered arms that had carried him, and strange singing voices. Poor child, beautiful child! Hold him! Don’t let him go under!

Perhaps it had only been the sound of the waves.

Or could it have been sea nymphs and water sprites? Probably they had seen the Glory and that was why they had saved him.

Involuntarily, he reached for the amulet—it was gone. There was no chain around his neck. He had lost the Gem.

“Falkor!” he shouted as loud as he could. He jumped up and ran back and forth, shouting in all directions: “Falkor! Falkor! Where are you?”

No answer came—only the slow, steady sound of the waves breaking against the beach.

Heaven only knew where the Wind Giants had driven the white dragon. Maybe Falkor was looking for his little master in an entirely different place, miles and miles away. Maybe he wasn’t even alive.

No longer was Atreyu a dragon rider, and no longer was he the Childlike Empress’s messenger. He was only a little boy. And all alone.

The clock in the belfry struck six.

By then it was dark outside. The rain had stopped. Not a sound to be heard. Bastian stared into the candle flames.

Then he gave a start. The floor had creaked.

He thought he heard someone breathing. He held his breath and listened. Except for the small circle of light shed by the candles, it was dark in the big attic.

Didn’t he hear soft steps on the stairs? Hadn’t the handle of the attic door moved ever so slowly?

Again the floor creaked.

What if there were ghosts in this attic!

“Nonsense!” said Bastian none too loudly. “There’s no such thing! Everyone knows that.”

Then why were there so many stories about them?

Maybe all the people who say ghosts don’t exist are just afraid to admit that they do.

Atreyu wrapped himself up tight in his red cloak, for he was cold, and started inland. The country, as far as he could see through the fog, was flat and monotonous. The only change he noticed as he strode along was the appearance among the stunted trees of bushes which looked as if they were made of rusty sheet metal and were almost as hard.

You could easily hurt yourself brushing against them if you weren’t careful.

About an hour later, Atreyu came to a road paved with bumpy, irregularly shaped stones. Thinking it was bound to lead somewhere, he decided to follow it but preferred to walk on the soft ground beside the bumpy paving stones. The road kept twisting and turning, though it was hard to see why, for there was no sign of any hill, pond, or stream.

In that part of the country everything seemed to be crooked.

Atreyu hadn’t been skirting the road for very long when he heard a strange thumping sound. It was far away but coming closer. It sounded like the muffled beat of a big drum. In between beats he heard a tinkling of bells and a shrill piping that could have been made by fifes. He hid behind a bush by the side of the road and waited to see what would happen.

Slowly the strange music came closer, and then the first shapes emerged from the fog. They seemed to be dancing, but it was a dance without charm or gaiety. The dancers jumped grotesquely, rolled on the ground, crawled on all fours, leapt into the air, and carried on like crazy people. But all Atreyu could hear was the slow, muffled drumbeats, the shrill fifes, and a whimpering and panting from many throats.

More and more figures appeared, the procession seemed endless. Atreyu looked at the dancers’ faces; they were ashen gray and bathed in sweat, and the eyes had a wild feverish glow. Some of the dancers lashed themselves with whips.

They’re mad, Atreyu thought, and a cold shiver ran down his spine.

The procession consisted mostly of night-hobs, kobolds, and ghosts. There were vampires as well, and quite a few witches, old ones with great humps and beards, but also young ones who looked beautiful and wicked. If he had had AURYN, he would have approached them and asked what was going on. As it was, he preferred to stay in his hiding place until the mad procession had passed and the last straggler vanished hopping and limping in the fog.

Only then did he venture out on the road and look after the ghostly procession.

Should he follow them? He couldn’t make up his mind. By that time, to tell the truth, he didn’t know if there was anything that he should or should not do.

For the first time he was fully aware of how much he needed the Childlike Empress’s amulet and how helpless he was without it. And not only or even mainly because of the protection it had given him—it was thanks to his own strength, after all, that he had stood up to all the hardships and terrors and the loneliness of his Quest—but as long as he had carried the emblem, he had never been at a loss for what to do. Like a mysterious compass, it had guided his thoughts in the right direction. And now that was changed, now he had no secret power to lead him.

He had no idea what to do, but he couldn’t bear to stand there as though paralyzed. So he made himself follow the muffled drumming, which could still be heard in the distance.

While making his way through the fog—always careful to keep a suitable distance between himself and the last stragglers—he tried to put his thoughts in order.

Why, oh, why hadn’t he listened when Falkor advised him to fly straight to the Childlike Empress? He would have brought her Uyulala’s message and returned the Gem.

Without AURYN and without Falkor, he would never be able to reach her. She would wait for him till her last moment, hoping he would come, trusting him to save her and Fantastica—but in vain.

That in itself was bad enough, but still worse was what he had learned from the Wind Giants, that Fantastica had no borders. If there was no way of leaving Fantastica, then it would be impossible to call in a human form across the border. Because Fantastica was endless, its end was inevitable.

But while he was stumbling over the bumpy paving stones in the fog, Uyulala’s gentle voice resounded in his memory, and a spark of hope was kindled in his heart.

Lots of humans had come to Fantastica in the past and given the Childlike Empress glorious new names. That’s what she had sung. So there
was
a way from the one world to the other!

“For them it is near, but for us too far,

Never can we go out to them.”

Yes, those were Uyulala’s words. Humans, the children of man, had forgotten the way. But mightn’t just one of them, a single one, remember?

His own hopeless situation mattered little to Atreyu. What mattered was that a human should hear Fantastica’s cry of distress and come to the rescue, as had happened many times before. Perhaps, perhaps one had already started out and was on his way.

“Yes! Yes!” Bastian shouted. Then, terrified of his own voice, he added more softly: “I’d go and help you if I knew how. I don’t know the way, Atreyu. I honestly don’t.”

The muffled drumbeats and the shrill piping had stopped. Without noticing it, Atreyu had come so close to the procession that he almost ran into the last stragglers.

Since he was barefoot, his steps were soundless—but that wasn’t why those creatures took no notice of him. He could have been stomping with hobnailed boots and shouting at the top of his lungs without attracting their attention.

By that time the procession had broken up and the spooks were scattered over a large muddy field interspersed with gray grass. Some swayed from side to side, others stood or sat motionless, but in all their eyes there was a feverish glow, and they were all looking in the same direction.

Then Atreyu saw what they were staring at in fascinated horror. On the far side of the field lay the Nothing.

It was the selfsame Nothing that he had seen from the bark trolls’ treetop, or on the plain where the Magic Gates of the South Oracle had stood, or looking down from Falkor’s back—but until then he had always seen it from a distance. This time it was close by. It cut across the entire landscape and was coming slowly but irresistibly closer.

Atreyu saw that the spooks in the field ahead of him were twitching and quivering. Their limbs were convulsed and their mouths were wide open, as though they had wanted to scream or laugh, though not a sound came out of them. And then all at once—like leaves driven by a gust of wind—they rushed toward the Nothing. They leapt, they rolled, they flung themselves into it.

The last of the ghostly crowd had just vanished when Atreyu felt to his horror that his own body was beginning to take short, convulsive steps in the direction of the Nothing. He felt drawn to it by an unreasoning desire, and braced his will against it. He commanded himself to stand still. Slowly, very slowly, he managed to turn around and step by step, as though bucking a powerful current, to struggle forward. The force of attraction weakened and he ran, ran with all his might over the bumpy paving stones. He slipped, fell, picked himself up, and ran on. He had no time to wonder where this foggy road would lead him.

He followed the senseless twists and turns of the road until high pitch-black ramparts appeared in the fog ahead of him. Behind them several crooked towers jutted into the gray sky. The heavy wooden wings of the town gate were rotting away and hung loose on rusty hinges.

Atreyu went in.

It was growing colder and colder in the attic. Bastion’s teeth were chattering.

What if he should get sick—what would become of him then? He might come down with pneumonia, like Willy, a boy in his class. Then he would die all alone in this attic. There’d be no one to help him.

He’d have been very glad just then to have his father come and save him.

But go home? No, he couldn’t. He’d rather die.

He took the rest of the army blankets and wrapped them around him.

After a while he felt warmer.

  n the endless sky, somewhere above the roaring waves, Falkor’s voice rang out like a great bronze bell: