The Neverending Story (21 page)

Atreyu, who had been clinging with both arms to Falkor’s neck, sat up and looked around. He had expected some sort of reception, or at least a detachment of palace guards to challenge them—but far and wide there was no one to be seen. All the life seemed to have gone out of the gleaming white buildings roundabout.

“They’ve all fled!” he thought. “They’ve left the Childlike Empress alone. Or she’s already . . .”

“Atreyu,” Falkor whispered. “You must give the Gem back to her.”

Falkor removed the golden chain from his neck. It fell to the ground.

Atreyu jumped down off Falkor’s back—and fell. He had forgotten his wound. He reached for the Glory and put the chain around his neck. Then, leaning on the dragon, he rose painfully to his feet.

“Falkor,” he said. “Where must I go?”

But the luckdragon made no answer. He lay as though dead.

The street ended in front of an enormous, intricately carved gate which led through a high white wall. The gate was open.

Atreyu hobbled through it and came to a broad, gleaming-white stairway that seemed to end in the sky. He began to climb. Now and then he stopped to rest. Drops of his blood left a trail behind him.

At length the stairway ended. Ahead of him lay a long gallery. He staggered ahead, clinging to the balustrade for support. Next he came to a courtyard that seemed to be full of waterfalls and fountains, but by then he couldn’t be sure of what he was seeing. He struggled forward as in a dream. He came to a second, smaller gate; then there was a long, narrow stairway, which took him to a garden where everything—trees, flowers, and animals—was carved from ivory. Crawling on all fours, he crossed several arched bridges without railings which led to a third gate, the smallest of all. He dragged himself through it on his belly and, slowly raising his eyes, saw a dome-shaped hall of gleaming-white ivory, and on top of it the Magnolia Pavilion. There was no path or stairway leading up to it.

Atreyu buried his head in his hands.

No one who reaches or has reached that pavilion can say how he got there. The last stretch of the way must come to him as a gift.

Suddenly Atreyu was in the doorway. He went in—and found himself face to face with the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes.

She was sitting, propped on many cushions, on a soft round couch at the center of the great round blossom. She was looking straight at him. She seemed infinitely frail and delicate. Atreyu could see how ill she was by the pallor of her face, which seemed almost transparent. Her almond-shaped eyes, the color of dark gold, were serene and untroubled. She smiled. Her small, slight body was wrapped in an ample silken gown which gleamed so white that the magnolia petals seemed dark beside it. She looked like an indescribably beautiful little girl of no more than ten, but her long, smoothly combed hair, which hung down over her shoulders, was as white as snow.

Bastian gave a start.

Something incredible had happened.

Thus far he had been able to visualize every incident of the Neverending Story. Some of them, it couldn’t be denied, were very strange, but they could somehow be explained. He had formed a clear picture of Atreyu riding on the luckdragon, of the Labyrinth and the Ivory Tower.

These pictures, however, existed only in his imagination. But when he came to the

Magnolia Pavilion, he saw the face of the Childlike Empress—if only for a fraction of a second, for the space of a lightning flash. And not only in his thoughts, but with his eyes! It wasn’t his imagination, of that Bastian was sure. He had even seen details that were not mentioned in the description, such as her eyebrows, two fine lines that might have been drawn with India ink, arching over her golden eyes, or her strangely elongated earlobes, or the way her head tilted on her slender neck. Bastion knew that he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this face. And in that same moment he knew her name: Moon Child. Yes, beyond a doubt, that was her name.

And Moon Child had looked at him—at him, Bastian Balthazar Bux.

She had looked at him with an expression that he could not interpret. Had she too been taken by surprise? Had there been a plea in that look? Or longing? Or . . . what could it be?

He tried to remember Moon Child’s eyes, but was no longer able to.

He was sure of only one thing: that her glance had passed through his eyes and down into his heart. He could still feel the burning trail it had left behind. That glance, he felt, was embedded in his heart, and there it glittered like a mysterious jewel. And in a strange and wonderful way it hurt.

Even if Bastian had wanted to, he couldn’t have defended himself against this thing that had happened to him. However, he didn’t want to. Oh no, not for anything in the world would he have parted with that jewel. All he wanted was to go on reading, to see Moon Child again, to be with her.

It never occurred to him that he was getting into the most unusual and perhaps the most dangerous of adventures. But even if he had known this, he wouldn’t have dreamed of shutting the book.

With a trembling forefinger he found his place and went on reading.

The clock in the belfry struck ten.

  nitting his brow, powerless to utter a single word, Atreyu stood gazing at the Childlike Empress. He had no idea how to begin or what to do. He had often tried to imagine this moment, he had prepared words and phrases, but they had all gone out of his head.

At length she smiled at him. Her voice when she spoke was as soft as the voice of a bird singing in its sleep.

“You have returned from the Great Quest, Atreyu.”

Atreyu hung his head.

“Yes,” he managed to say.

After a short silence she went on: “Your lovely cloak has turned gray. Your hair is gray and your skin is like stone. But all that will be as it was, or better. You’ll see.”

Atreyu felt as if a band had tightened around his throat. All he could do was nod his head. Then he heard the sweet soft voice saying: “You have carried out your mission . . .”

Were these words meant as a question? Atreyu didn’t know. He didn’t dare look up to read the answer in her face. Slowly he reached for the golden amulet and removed the chain from his neck. Without raising his eyes, he held it out to the Childlike Empress. He tried to kneel as messengers did in the stories and songs he had heard at home, but his wounded leg refused to do his bidding. He fell at the Childlike Empress’s feet, and there he lay with his face to the floor.

She bent forward, picked up AURYN, and let the chain glide through her fingers.

“You have done well,” she said, “and I am pleased with you.”

“No!” cried Atreyu almost savagely. “It was all in vain. There’s no hope.”

A long silence followed. Atreyu buried his face in the crook of his elbow, and his whole body trembled. How would she react? With a cry of despair, a moan, words of bitter reproach or even anger? Atreyu couldn’t have said what he expected. Certainly not what he heard. Laughter. A soft, contented laugh. Atreyu’s thoughts were in a whirl, for a moment he thought she had gone mad. But that was not the laughter of madness. Then he heard her say: “But you’ve brought him with you.”

Atreyu looked up.

“Who?”

“Our savior.”

He looked into her eyes and found only serenity. She smiled again.

“Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes,” he stammered, now for the first time using the official words of address that Falkor had recommended. “I . . . no, really . . . I don’t understand.”

“I can see that by the look on your face,” she said. “But whether you understand or not, you’ve done it. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?”

Atreyu said nothing. He couldn’t even think of a question to ask. He stood there openmouthed, staring at the Childlike Empress. “I saw him,” she went on, “and he saw me.”

“When?” Atreyu asked.

“Just as you came in. You brought him with you.”

Involuntarily Atreyu looked around.

“Then where is he? I don’t see anyone but you and me.”

“Oh, the world is full of things you don’t see. You can believe me. He isn’t in our world yet. But our worlds have come close enough together for us to see each other. For a twinkling the thin wall between us became transparent. He will be with us soon and then he will call me by the new name that he alone can give me. Then I shall be well, and so will Fantastica.”

As the Childlike Empress was speaking, Atreyu raised himself with difficulty. He looked up to her as she lay on her bed of cushions. His voice was husky when he asked: “Then you’ve known my message all along? What Morla the Aged One told me in the Swamps of Sadness, what the mysterious voice of Uyulala in the Southern Oracle revealed to me—you knew it all?”

“Yes,” she said. “I knew it before I sent you on the Great Quest.”

Atreyu gulped.

“Why,” he finally managed to ask, “why did you send me then? What did you expect me to do?”

“Exactly what you did,” she replied.

“What I did . . .” Atreyu repeated slowly. His forehead clouded over. “In that case,” he said angrily, “it was all unnecessary. There was no need of sending me on the Great Quest. I’ve heard that your decisions are often mysterious. That may be. But after all I’ve been through I hate to think that you were just having a joke at my expense.”

The Childlike Empress’s eyes grew grave.

“I was not having a joke at your expense, Atreyu,” she said. “I am well aware of what I owe you. All your sufferings were necessary. I sent you on the Great Quest—not for the sake of the message you would bring me, but because that was the only way of calling our savior. He took part in everything you did, and he has come all that long way with you. You heard his cry of fear when you were talking with Ygramul beside the Deep Chasm, and you saw him when you stood facing the Magic Mirror Gate. You entered into his image and took it with you, and he followed you, because he saw himself through your eyes. And now, too, he can hear every word we are saying. He knows we are talking about him, he knows we have set our hope in him and are expecting him. Perhaps he even understands that all the hardship you, Atreyu, took upon yourself was for his sake and that all Fantastica is calling him.”

Little by little the darkness cleared from Atreyu’s face.

After a while he asked: “How can you know all that? The cry by the Deep Chasm and the image in the magic mirror? Did you arrange it all in advance?”

The Childlike Empress picked up AURYN, and said, while putting the chain around her neck: “Didn’t you wear the Gem the whole time? Didn’t you know that through it I was always with you?”

“Not always,” said Atreyu. “I lost it.”

“Yes. Then you were really alone. Tell me what happened to you then.”

Atreyu told her the story.

“Now I know why you turned gray,” said the Childlike Empress. “You were too close to the Nothing.”

“Gmork, the werewolf, told me,” said Atreyu, “that when a Fantastican is swallowed up by the Nothing, he becomes a lie. Is that true?”

“Yes, it is true,” said the Childlike Empress, and her golden eyes darkened. “All lies were once creatures of Fantastica. They are made of the same stuff—but they have lost their true nature and become unrecognizable. But, as you might expect from a half-and-half creature like Gmork, he told you only half the truth. There are two ways of crossing the dividing line between Fantastica and the human world, a right one and a wrong one. When Fantasticans are cruelly dragged across it, that’s the wrong way. When humans, children of man, come to our world of their own free will, that’s the right way. Every human who has been here has learned something that could be learned only here, and returned to his own world a changed person. Because he had seen you creatures in your true form, he was able to see his own world and his fellow humans with new eyes. Where he had seen only dull, everyday reality, he now discovered wonders and mysteries. That is why humans were glad to come to Fantastica. And the more these visits enriched our world, the fewer lies there were in theirs, the better it became. Just as our two worlds can injure each other, they can also make each other whole again.”