The Neverending Story (50 page)

The boy who no longer had a name stood with bowed head and was silent for a while. Then he said just as softly: “Thank you, Yor, for what you have taught me.”

They pressed each other’s hands.

“You’ve been a good miner,” Yor whispered. “You’ve worked well.”

Then he turned away and went to the mine shaft. Without turning around he got into the pit cage and descended into the depths.

The boy without a name picked the picture out of the snow and plodded out into the snow-covered plain.

He had been walking for many hours. Yor’s hut had long since disappeared below the horizon. On all sides there was nothing to be seen but the endless snow-covered plain. But he felt that the picture, which he was holding carefully in both hands, was pulling him in a certain direction.

Regardless of how far it might be, he was determined to follow this pull, for he was convinced that it would take him to the right place. Nothing must hold him back. He felt sure of finding the Water of Life.

Suddenly he heard a clamor in the air, as though innumerable creatures were screaming and twittering. Looking up into the sky, he saw a dark cloud like a great flock of birds. But when the flock came closer, he saw what it really was and terror stopped him in his tracks.

It was the butterfly-clowns, the Shlamoofs.

Merciful heavens! thought the boy without a name. If only they haven’t seen me! They’ll shatter the picture with their screams!

But they had seen him.

Laughing and rollicking, they shot down and landed all around him in the snow.

“Hurrah!” they croaked, opening wide their motley-colored mouths. “At last we’ve found him! Our great benefactor!”

They tumbled in the snow, threw snowballs at one another, turned somersaults, and stood on their heads.

“Be still! Please be still!” the boy without a name whispered in desperation.

The whole chorus screamed with enthusiasm: “What did he say?” — “He said we were too still!” — “Nobody ever told us that before!”

“What do you want of me?” asked the boy. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

All whirled around him, cackling: “Great benefactor! Great benefactor! Do you remember how you saved us, when we were the Acharis? Then we were the unhappiest creatures in all Fantastica, but now we’re fed up with ourselves. At first what you did to us was a lot of fun, but now we’re bored to death. We flit and we flutter and we don’t know where we’re at. We can’t even plan any decent games, because we haven’t any rules. You’ve turned us into preposterous clowns, that’s what you’ve done. You’ve cheated us!”

“I meant well,” said the horrified boy.

“Sure, you meant well by yourself,” the Shlamoofs shouted in chorus. “Your kindness made you feel great, didn’t it? But we paid the bill for your kindness, you great benefactor!”

“What should I do?” the boy asked. “What do you want of me?”

“We’ve been looking for you,” screamed the Shlamoofs with grimacing clown faces. “We wanted to catch you before you could make yourself scarce. Now we’ve caught you, and we won’t leave you in peace until you become our chief. We want you to be our Head Shlamoof, our Master Shlamoof, our General Shlamoof! You name it.”

“But why?” the boy asked imploringly.

The chorus of clowns screamed back: “We want you to give us orders. We want you to order us around, to make us do something, to forbid us to do something. We want you to give us an aim in life!”

“I can’t do that. Why don’t you elect one of your number?”

“No, we want you. You made us what we are.”

“No,” the boy panted. “I have to go! I have to go back!”

“Not so fast, great benefactor!” cried the butterfly-clowns. “You can’t get away from us. You think you can sneak away from Fantastica, don’t you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“But I’m at the end of my rope,” the boy protested.

“What about us?” the chorus replied.

“Go away!” cried the boy. “I can’t bother with you anymore.”

“Then you must turn us back!” cried the shrill voices. “Then we’d rather be Acharis. The Lake of Tears has dried up, Amarganth is on dry land now. And no one spins fine silver filigree anymore. We want to be Acharis again.”

“I can’t!” the boy replied. “I no longer have any power in Fantastica.”

“In that case,” the whole swarm bellowed, whirling and swirling about, “we’ll kidnap you!”

Hundreds of little hands seized him and tried to lift him off the ground. The boy struggled with might and main and the butterflies were tossed in all directions. But like angry wasps they kept coming back.

Suddenly in the midst of this hubbub a low yet powerful sound was heard—something like the booming of a bronze bell.

In a twinkling the Shlamoofs took flight and their cloud soon vanished in the sky.

The boy who had no name knelt in the snow. Before him, crumbled into dust, lay the picture. Now all was lost. Now nothing could lead him to the Water of Life.

When he looked up, he saw, blurred by his tears, two forms in the snow. One was large, the other small. He wiped his eyes and took another look.

The two forms were Falkor, the white luckdragon, and Atreyu.

  ig-zagging unsteadily, scarcely able to control his feet, the boy who had no name took a few steps toward Atreyu. Then he stopped. Atreyu did nothing, but watched him closely. The wound in his chest was no longer bleeding.

For a long while they faced each other. Neither said a word. It was so still they could hear each other’s breathing.

Slowly the boy without a name reached for the gold chain around his neck and divested himself of AURYN. He bent down and carefully laid the Gem in the snow before Atreyu. As he did so, he took another look at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other’s tail and formed an oval. Then he let the amulet go.

In that moment AURYN, the golden Gem, became so bright, so radiant that he had to close his eyes as though dazzled by the sun. When he opened them again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes.

Atreyu, Falkor, and the boy without a name stood side by side, near the head of the black snake, which held the white snake’s tail in its jaws. The rigid eye with its vertical pupil was directed at the three of them. Compared to that eye, they were tiny; even the luckdragon seemed no larger than a white caterpillar.

The motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain.

But while holding each other fast, they guarded the Water of Life. For in the center of the edifice they encircled there was a great fountain. Its beam danced up and down and in falling created and dispersed thousands of forms far more quickly than the eye could follow. The foaming water burst into a fine mist, in which the golden light was refracted with all the colors of the rainbow. The fountain roared and laughed and rejoiced with a thousand voices.

As though parched with thirst, the boy without a name looked at the water—but how was he to reach it? The snake’s head did not move.

Then Falkor raised his head. His ruby-red eyeballs glittered.

“Do you understand what the Water is saying?” he asked.

“No,” said Atreyu. “I don’t.”

“I don’t know why,” said Falkor. “But I understand perfectly. Maybe because I’m a luckdragon. All the languages of joy are related.”

“What does the Water say?” Atreyu asked.

Falkor listened closely, and slowly repeated what he heard:

“I am the Water of Life,

Out of myself I grow.

The more you drink of me,

The fuller I will flow.”

Again he listened awhile. Then he said: “It keeps saying: ‘Drink! Drink! Do what you wish!’ “

“How can we get to it?” Atreyu asked.

“It’s asking us our names,” Falkor reported.

“I’m Atreyu!” Atreyu cried.

“I’m Falkor!” cried Falkor.

The boy without a name was silent.

Atreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: “He’s Bastian Balthazar Bux!”

“It asks,” Falkor translated, “why he doesn’t speak for himself.”

“He can’t,” said Atreyu. “He has forgotten everything.”

Falkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain.

“Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won’t let him through.”

Atreyu replied: “I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him.”

Falkor listened.

“It wants to know by what right?”

“I am his friend,” said Atreyu.

Again Falkor listened attentively.

“That may not be acceptable,” he whispered to Atreyu. “Now it’s speaking of your wound. It wants to know how that came about.”

“We were both right,” said Atreyu, “and we were both wrong. But now Bastian has given up AURYN of his own free will.”

Falkor listened and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “It accepts that. This place is AURYN. We are welcome, it says.”

Atreyu looked up at the enormous golden dome. “Each of us,” he whispered, “has worn it around his neck—you too, Falkor, for a while.”

The luckdragon motioned him to be still and listened again to the sound of the Water. Then he translated:

“AURYN is the door that Bastian has been looking for. He carried it with him from the start. But—it says—the snakes won’t let anything belonging to Fantastica cross the threshold. Bastian must therefore give up everything the Childlike Empress gave him. Otherwise he cannot drink of the Water of Life.”

“But we are in her sign!” cried Atreyu. “Isn’t she herself here?”

“It says that Moon Child’s power ends here. She is the only one who can never set foot in this place. She cannot penetrate to the center of AURYN, because she cannot cast off her own self.”

Atreyu was too bewildered to speak.

“Now,” said Falkor, “it’s asking whether Bastian is ready.”

At that moment the enormous black snake’s head began to move very slowly, though without releasing the white snake’s tail. The gigantic bodies arched until they formed a gate, one half of which was black and the other white.

Atreyu took Bastian by the hand and led him through the terrible gate toward the fountain, which now lay before them in all its grandeur. Falkor followed. As they advanced, one after another of Bastian’s Fantastican gifts fell away from him. The strong, handsome, fearless hero became again the small, fat, timid boy. Even his clothing, which had been reduced almost to rags in the Minroud Mine, vanished and dissolved into nothingness. In the end he stood naked before the great golden bowl, at the center of which the Water of Life leapt high into the air like a crystal tree.