The Neverending Story (20 page)

Falkor didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know what the strange blinking under the sea was, or whether it had anything to do with Atreyu.

But he didn’t hesitate for long. He flew high into the sky, turned around, and head down, pressing his legs close to his body, which he held stiff and straight as a telegraph pole, he plummeted. The water spouted like a fountain as he hit the sea at top speed. The shock was so great that he almost lost consciousness, but he forced himself to open his ruby-red eyes. By then the blinking beam was close, only a few body lengths ahead of him. Air bubbles were forming around his body, as in a saucepan full of water just before it boils. He felt that he was cooling and weakening. With his last strength he dived still deeper—and then the source of light was within reach. It was AURYN, the Gem. Luckily the chain of the amulet had got caught on a coral branch growing out of the wall of an under-sea chasm. Otherwise the Gem would have fallen into the bottomless depths.

Falkor seized it and put the chain around his neck for fear of losing it—for he felt that he was about to faint.

When he came to, he didn’t know where he was, for to his amazement he was flying through the air, and when he looked down, there was the sea again. He was flying in a very definite direction and very fast, faster than would have seemed possible in his weakened condition. He tried to slow down, but soon found that his body would not obey him. An outside will far stronger than his own had taken possession of his body and was guiding it. That will came from AURYN, the amulet suspended from a chain around his neck.

The day was drawing to a close when at last Falkor sighted a beach in the distance. He couldn’t see much of the country beyond, it seemed to be hidden by fog. But when he came closer, he saw that most of the land had been swallowed up by the Nothing, which hurt his eyes and gave him the feeling of being blind.

At that point Falkor would probably have turned back if he had been able to do as he wanted. But the mysterious power of the gem forced him to fly straight ahead. And soon he knew why, for in the midst of the endless Nothing he discovered a small island that was still holding out, an island covered with high-gabled houses and crooked towers. Falkor had a strong suspicion whom he would find there, and from then on it was not only the powerful will of the amulet that spurred him on but his own as well. It was almost dark in the somber backyard where Atreyu lay beside the dead werewolf. The luckdragon was barely able to distinguish the boy’s light-colored body from the monster’s black coat. And the darker it grew, the more they looked like one body.

Atreyu had long given up trying to break loose from the steel vise of the werewolf’s jaws. Dazed with fear and weakness, he was back in the Grass Ocean. Before him stood the purple buffalo he had not killed. He called to the other children, his companions of the hunt, who by then had no doubt become real hunters. But no one answered. Only the giant buffalo stood there motionless, looking at him. Atreyu called Artax, his horse, but he didn’t come, and his cheery neigh was nowhere to be heard. He called the Childlike Empress, but in vain. He wouldn’t be able to tell her anything. He hadn’t become a hunter, and he was no longer a messenger. He was Nobody.

Atreyu had given up.

But then he felt something else: the Nothing. It must be very near, he thought. Again he felt its terrible force of attraction. It made him dizzy. He sat up and, groaning, tugged at his leg. But the fangs held fast.

And in that he was lucky. For if Gmork’s jaws had not held him, Falkor would have come too late.

As it was, Atreyu suddenly heard the luckdragon’s bronze voice in the sky above him: “Atreyu! Are you there, Atreyu?”

“Falkor!” Atreyu shouted. And then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Falkor! Falkor! I’m here. Help me! I’m here!”

And then he saw Falkor’s white body darting like a living streak of lightning through the square of darkening sky, far away at first, then closer. Atreyu kept shouting and Falkor answered in his bell-like voice. Then at last the dragon in the sky caught sight of the boy down below, no bigger than a bright speck in a dark hole.

Falkor prepared for a landing, but the backyard was small, there was hardly any light left, and the dragon brushed against one of the high-gabled houses. The roof collapsed with a roar. Falkor felt an agonizing pain; the sharp edge of the roof had cut deep into his body. This wasn’t one of his usual graceful landings. He came tumbling down on the grimy wet pavement next to Atreyu and the dead Gmork.

He shook himself, sneezed like a dog coming out of the water, and said: “At last!

So this is where you are! Oh well, I seem to have got here on time!”

Atreyu said nothing. He threw his arms around Falkor’s neck and buried his face in the dragon’s silvery-white mane.

“Come!” said Falkor. “Climb on my back. We have no time to lose.”

Atreyu only shook his head. And then Falkor saw that Atreyu’s leg was imprisoned in the werewolf’s jaws.

“Don’t worry,” he said, rolling his ruby-red eyeballs. “We’ll fix that in a jiffy.”

He set to with both paws, trying to pry Gmork’s teeth apart. They didn’t budge by a hairbreadth.

Falkor heaved and panted. It was no use. Most likely he would never have set his young friend free if luck hadn’t come to his help. But luckdragons, as we know, are lucky, and so are those they are fond of.

When Falkor stopped to rest, he bent over Gmork’s head to get a better look at it in the dark, and it so happened that the Childlike Empress’s amulet, which was hanging from the chain on the dragon’s neck, touched the werewolf’s forehead. Instantly the jaws opened, releasing Atreyu’s leg.

“Hey!” cried Falkor. “What do you think of that?”

There was no answer from Atreyu.

“What’s wrong?” cried Falkor. “Atreyu, where are you?”

He groped in the darkness for his friend, but Atreyu wasn’t there. And while the dragon was trying to pierce the darkness with his glowing red eyes, he himself felt the pull that had snatched Atreyu away from him. The Nothing was coming too close for comfort. But AURYN protected the luckdragon from the pull.

Atreyu was free from the werewolf’s jaws, but not from the pull of the Nothing. He tried to fight it, to kick, to push, but his limbs no longer obeyed him. A few feet more, and he would have been lost forever.

In that moment, quick as lightning, Falkor grabbed him by his long blue-black hair, and carried him up into the night-black sky.

The clock in the belfry struck nine.

Neither Atreyu nor Falkor could say later how long they had flown through the impenetrable darkness. Had it been only one night? Perhaps time had stopped for them and they were hovering motionless in the limitless blackness. It was the longest night Atreyu had ever known; and the same was true for Falkor, who was much older.

But even the longest and darkest of nights passes sooner or later. And when the pale dawn came, they glimpsed the Ivory Tower on the horizon.

Here it seems necessary to pause for a moment and explain a special feature of Fantastican geography. Continents and oceans, mountains and watercourses, have no fixed locations as in the real world. Thus it would be quite impossible to draw a map of Fantastica. In Fantastica you can never be sure in advance what will be next to what. Even the directions—north, south, east, and west—change from one part of the country to another. And the same goes for summer and winter, day and night. You can step out of a blazing hot desert straight into snowfields. In Fantastica there are no measurable distances, so that “near” and “far” don’t at all mean what they do in the real world. They vary with the traveler’s wishes and state of mind. Since Fantastica has no boundaries, its center can be anywhere—or to put it another way, it is equally near to, or far from, anywhere. It all depends on who is trying to reach the center. And the innermost center of Fantastica is the Ivory Tower.

To his surprise Atreyu found himself sitting on the luckdragon’s back. He couldn’t remember how he had got there. All he remembered was that Falkor had pulled him up by the hair. Feeling cold, he gathered in his cloak, which was fluttering behind him. And then he saw that it was gray. It had lost its color, and so had his skin and hair. And Falkor, as Atreyu discovered in the rising light, was no better off. The dragon looked unreal, more like a swath of gray mist than anything else. They had both come too close to the Nothing.

“Atreyu, my little master,” the dragon said softly. “Does your wound hurt very badly?” About his own wound he said nothing.

“No,” said Atreyu. “I don’t feel anything anymore.”

“Have you a fever?”

“No, Falkor. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“I can feel you trembling,” said the dragon. “What in the world can make Atreyu tremble now?”

After a short silence Atreyu said: “We’ll be there soon! And then I’ll have to tell the Childlike Empress that nothing can save her. That’s harder than anything else I’ve had to do.”

“Yes,” said Falkor even more softly. “That’s true.”

They flew in silence, drawing steadily nearer to the Ivory Tower.

After a while the dragon spoke again.

“Have you seen her, Atreyu?”

“Who?”

“The Childlike Empress. Or rather, the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. Because that’s how you must address her when you come into her presence.”

“No, I’ve never seen her.”

“I have. That was long ago. Your great-grandfather must have been a little boy at the time. And I was a young cloud-snapper with a head full of foolishness. One night I saw the moon, shining so big and round, and I tried to grab it out of the sky. When I finally gave up, I dropped with exhaustion and landed near the Ivory Tower. That night the Magnolia Pavilion had opened its petals wide, and the Childlike Empress was sitting right in the middle of it. She cast a glance at me, just one short glance, but—I hardly know how to put it—that glance made a new dragon of me.”

“What does she look like?”

“Like a little girl. But she’s much older than the oldest inhabitants of Fantastica. Or rather, she’s ageless.”

“Yes,” said Atreyu. “But now she’s deathly sick. How can I tell her that there’s no hope?”

“Don’t try to mislead her. She can’t be fooled. Tell her the truth.”

“But suppose it kills her?”

“I don’t think it will work out that way,” said Falkor.

“You wouldn’t,” said Atreyu, “because you’re a luckdragon.”

For a long while nothing was said.

When at last they spoke together for the third time, it was Atreyu who broke the silence.

“Falkor,” he said, “I’d like to ask you one more thing.”

“Fire away.”

“
Who
is she?

“What do you mean?”

“AURYN has power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica, the creatures of both light and darkness. It also has power over you and me. And yet the Childlike Empress never exerts power. It’s as if she weren’t there. And yet she is in everything. Is she like us?”

“No,” said Falkor, “she’s not like us. She’s not a creature of Fantastica. We all exist because she exists. But she’s of a different kind.”

“Then is she . . .” Atreyu hesitated. “Is she human?”

“No,” said Falkor, “she’s not human.”

“Well then . . .” And Atreyu repeated his question. “Who is she?”

After a long silence Falkor answered: “No one in Fantastica knows, no one can know. That’s the deepest secret of our world. I once heard a wise man say that if anyone were to know the whole answer, he would cease to exist. I don’t know what he meant. That’s all I can tell you.”

“And now,” said Atreyu, “she’ll die and we’ll die with her, and we’ll never know her secret.”

This time Falkor made no answer, but a smile played around the corners of his leonine mouth, as though to say: Nothing of the kind will happen.

After that they spoke no more.

A little later they flew over the outer edge of the “Labyrinth,” the maze of flower beds, hedges, and winding paths that surrounded the Ivory Tower on all sides. To their horror, they saw that there too the Nothing had been at work. True, it had touched only small spots in the Labyrinth, but those spots were all about. The once bright-colored flower beds and shrubbery in between were now gray and withered. The branches of once graceful little trees were gnarled and bare. The green had gone out of the meadows, and a faint smell of rot and mold rose up to the newcomers. The only colors left were those of swollen giant mushrooms and of garish, poisonous-looking blooms that suggested nothing so much as the figments of a maddened brain. Enfeebled and trembling, the innermost heart of Fantastica was still resisting the inexorable encroachment of the Nothing.

But the Ivory Tower at the center still shimmered pure, immaculately white.

Ordinarily flying messengers landed on one of the lower terraces. But Falkor reasoned that since neither he nor Atreyu had the strength to climb the long spiraling street leading to the top of the Tower, and since time was of the essence, the regulations and rules of etiquette could reasonably be ignored. He therefore decided on an emergency landing. Swooping down over the ivory buttresses, bridges, and balustrades, he located, just in time, the uppermost end of the spiraling High Street, which lay just outside the palace grounds. Plummeting to the roadway, he went into a skid, made several complete turns, and finally came to a stop tail-first.