The Neverending Story (15 page)

For they no longer know the way.

They have forgotten how real we are,

They don’t believe in us anymore.

Oh, if only one child of man would come,

Oh, then at last the thing would be done.

If only one would hear our plea.

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

Never can we go out to them,

For theirs is the world of reality.

But tell me, my hero, you so young,

Will you remember what I have sung?”

“Oh yes!” cried Atreyu in his bewilderment. He was determined to imprint every word on his memory, though he had forgotten what for. He merely had a feeling that it was very, very important. But the singsong voice and the effort of hearing and speaking in rhymes made him sleepy. He murmured:

“I will remember. I will remember every word.

But tell me, what shall I do with what I’ve heard?”

And the voice answered:

“That is for you alone to decide.

I’ve told you what was in my heart.

So this is when our ways divide,

When you and I must part.”

Almost half asleep, Atreyu asked:

“But if you go away,

Where will you stay?”

Again he heard the sobbing in the voice, which receded more and more as it sang:

“The Nothing has come near,

The Oracle is dying.

No one again will hear

Uyulala laughing, sighing.

You are the last to hear

My voice among the columns,

Sounding far and near.

Perhaps you will accomplish

What no one else has done,

But to succeed, young hero,

Remember what I have sung.”

And then, farther and farther in the distance, Atreyu heard the words:

“Oh, nothing can happen more than once,

But all things must happen one day.

Over hill and dale, over wood and stream,

My dying voice will blow away.”

That was the last Atreyu heard.

He sat down, propped his back against a column, looked up at the night sky, and tried to understand what he had heard. Silence settled around him like a soft, warm cloak, and he fell asleep.

When he awoke in the cold dawn, he was lying on his back, looking up at the sky.

The last stars paled. Uyulala’s voice still sounded in his thoughts. And then suddenly he remembered everything that had gone before and the purpose of his Great Quest.

At last he knew what was to be done. Only a human, a child of man, someone from the world beyond the borders of Fantastica, could give the Childlike Empress a new name. He would just have to find a human and bring him to her.

Briskly he sat up.

Ah, thought Bastion. How gladly I would help her! Her and Atreyu too. What a beautiful name I would think up! If I only knew how to reach Atreyu. I’d go this minute. Wouldn’t he be amazed if I were suddenly standing before him! But it’s impossible. Or is it?

And then he said under his breath: “If there’s any way of my getting to you in Fantastica, tell me, Atreyu. I’ll come without fail. You’ll see.”

When Atreyu looked around, he saw that the forest of columns with its stairways and terraces had vanished. Whichever way he looked there was only the empty plain that he had seen behind each of the three gates before going through. But now the gates were gone, all three of them.

He stood up and again looked in all directions. It was then that he discovered, in the middle of the plain, a patch of Nothing like those he had seen in Howling Forest. But this time it was much nearer. He turned around and ran the other way as fast as he could.

He had been running for some time when he saw, far in the distance, a rise in the ground and thought it might be the stony rust-red mountains where the Great Riddle Gate was.

He started toward it, but he had a long way to go before he was close enough to make out any details. Then he began to have doubts. The landscape looked about right, but there was no gate to be seen. And the stones were not red, but dull gray.

Then, when he had gone much farther, he saw two great stone pillars with a space between them. The lower part of a gate, he thought. But there was no arch above it. What had happened?

Hours later, he reached the spot and discovered the answer. The great stone arch had collapsed and the sphinxes were gone.

Atreyu threaded his way through the ruins, then climbed to the top of a stone pyramid and looked out, trying to locate the place where he had left the Gnomics and the luckdragon. Or had they fled from the Nothing in the meantime?

At last he saw a tiny flag moving this way and that behind the balustrade of Engywook’s observatory. Atreyu waved both arms, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted: “Ho! Are you still there?”

The sound of his voice had hardly died away when a pearly-white luckdragon rose from the hollow where the gnomes had their cave and flew through the air with lazy, sinuous movements. He must have been feeling playful, for now and then he turned over on his back and looped-the-loop so fast that he looked like a burst of white flame. And then he landed not far from the pyramid where Atreyu was standing. When he propped himself on his forepaws, he was so high above Atreyu that to bring his head close to him, he had to bend his long, supple neck sharply downward. Rolling his ruby-red eyeballs for joy, stretching his tongue far out of his wide-open gullet, he boomed in his bronze-bell voice: “Atreyu, my friend and master! So you’ve finally come back! I’m so glad! We had almost given up hope—the gnomes, that is, not I.”

“I’m glad too!” said Atreyu. “But what has happened in this one night?”

“One night?” cried Falkor. “Do you think it’s been only one night? You’re in for a surprise. Climb on, I’ll carry you.”

Atreyu swung himself up on the enormous animal’s back. It was his first time aboard a luckdragon. And though he had ridden wild horses and was anything but timid, this first short ride through the air took his breath away. He clung fast to Falkor’s flowing mane, and Falkor called back with a resounding laugh: “You’ll just have to get used to it.”

“At least,” Atreyu called back, gasping for air, “you seem to be well again.”

“Pretty near,” said the dragon. “Not quite.”

Then they landed outside the gnomes’ cave, and there in the entrance were Engywook and Urgl waiting for them.

Engywook’s tongue went right to work: “What have you seen and done? Tell us all about it! Those gates, for instance? Do they bear out my theories? And who or what is Uyulala?”

But Urgl cut him off. “That’ll do! Let the boy eat and drink. What do you think I’ve cooked and baked for? Plenty of time later for your idle curiosity.”

Atreyu climbed down off the dragon’s back and exchanged greetings with the gnomes. Again the little table was set with all sorts of delicacies and a steaming pot of herb tea.

The clock in the belfry struck five. Bastian thought sadly of the two chocolate nut bars that he kept in his bedside table at home in case he should be hungry at night. If he had suspected that he would never go back there, he could have brought them along as an iron ration. But it was too late to think of that now.

Falkor stretched out in the little gully in such a way that his huge head was near Atreyu and he could hear everything.

“Just imagine,” he said. “My friend and master thinks he was gone for only one night.”

“Was it longer?” Atreyu asked.

“Seven days and seven nights,” said Falkor. “Look, my wounds are almost healed.”

Then for the first time Atreyu noticed that his own wound too was healed. The herb dressing had fallen off. He was amazed. “How can it be? I passed through three magic gates. I talked with Uyulala, then I fell asleep. But I can’t possibly have slept that long.”

“Space and time,” said Engywook, “must be different in there. Anyway, no one had ever stayed in the Oracle as long as you. What happened? Are you finally going to speak?”

“First,” said Atreyu, “I’d like to know what has happened here.”

“You can see for yourself,” said Engywook. “The colors are all fading. Everything is getting more and more unreal. The Great Riddle Gate isn’t there anymore. It looks as if the Nothing were taking over.”

“What about the sphinxes? Where have they gone? Did they fly away? Did you see them go?”

“We saw nothing,” Engywook lamented. “We hoped you could tell us something.

Suddenly the stone gate was in ruins, but none of us saw or heard a thing. I even went over and examined the wreckage. And do you know what I found? The fragments are as old as the hills and overgrown with gray moss, as if they had been lying there for hundreds of years, as if the Great Riddle Gate had never existed.”

“It was there, though,” said Atreyu under his breath, “because I went through it. And then I went through the Magic Mirror Gate and the No-Key Gate.”

And then Atreyu reported everything that had happened to him. Now he remembered every last detail.

As Atreyu told them his story, Engywook, who at first had impatiently demanded further information, became more and more subdued. And when Atreyu repeated almost word for word what Uyulala had told him, the gnome said nothing at all. His shriveled little face had taken on a look of deepest gloom.

“Well,” said Atreyu in conclusion. “Now you know the secret. Uyulala is just a voice. She can only be heard. She is where she sings.”

For a time Engywook was silent. When he spoke, his voice was husky: “You mean she
was
.”

“Yes,” said Atreyu. “She herself said no one else would ever hear her speak. I was the last.”

Two little tears flowed down Engywook’s wrinkled cheeks.

“All for nothing!” he croaked. “My whole life work, all my research, my year-long observations. At last someone brings me the last stone for my scientific edifice, finally I’m in a position to complete my work, to write the last chapter—and it’s absolutely futile and superfluous. It’s no longer of the slightest interest to anyone, because the object under investigation has ceased to exist. There go my hopes. All shattered.”

He seemed to break into a fit of coughing, but actually he was shaken with sobs.