The Neverending Story (16 page)

Moved to sympathy, Urgl stroked his bald little head and mumbled: “Poor old Engywook! Poor old Engywook! Don’t let it get you down. You’ll find something else to occupy you.”

“Woman!” Engywook fumed at her. “What you see before you is not a poor old Engywook, but a tragic figure.”

Once again he ran into the cave, and again a door was heard slamming within.

Urgl shook her head and sighed. “He means no harm,” she muttered. “He’s a good old sort. If only he weren’t plumb crazy!”

When they had. finished eating, Urgl stood up and said: “I’ve got to pack now. We can’t take much with us, but we will need a few things. I’d better hurry.”

“You’re going away?” Atreyu asked.

Urgl nodded. “We have no choice,” she said sadly. “Where the Nothing takes hold, nothing grows. And now, my poor old man has no reason to stay. We’ll just have to see how we make out. We’ll find a place somewhere. But what about you? What are your plans?”

“I have to do as Uyulala told me,” said Atreyu. “Try and find a human and take him to the Childlike Empress to give her a new name.”

“Where will you look for this human?” Urgl asked.

“I don’t know,” said Atreyu. “Somewhere beyond the borders of Fantastica.”

“We’ll get there!” came Falkor’s bell-like voice. I’ll carry you. You’ll see, we’ll be lucky.”

“In that case,” Urgl grunted, “you’d better get started.”

“Maybe we could give you a lift,” Atreyu suggested. “For part of the way.”

“That’s all I need,” said Urgl. “You won’t catch me gallivanting around in the air. A self-respecting gnome keeps his feet on the ground. Besides, you mustn’t let us delay you. You have more important things to do—for us all.”

“But I want to show my gratitude,” said Atreyu.

“The best way of doing that is to get started and stop frittering the time away with useless jibber-jabber.”

“She’s got something there,” said Falkor. “Let’s go, Atreyu.”

Atreyu swung himself up on the luckdragon’s back. One last time he turned back and shouted: “Goodbye!”

But Urgl was already inside the cave, packing.

When some hours later she and Engywook stepped out into the open, each was carrying an overloaded back-basket, and again they were busily quarreling. Off they waddled on their tiny, crooked legs, and never once looked back.

Later on, Engywook became very famous, in fact, he became the most famous gnome in the world, but not because of his scientific investigations. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.

At the moment when the two gnomes were starting out, Atreyu was far away, whizzing through the skies of Fantastica on the back of Falkor, the white luckdragon.

Involuntarily Bastian looked up at the skylight, trying to imagine how it would be if Falkor came cutting through the darkening sky like a dancing white flame, if he and Atreyu were coming to get him.

“Oh my,” he sighed. “Wouldn’t that be something!”

He could help them, and they could help him. He would be saved and so would Fantastica.

  igh in the air rode Atreyu, his red cloak flowing behind him. His blue-black hair fluttered in the wind. With steady, wavelike movements, Falkor, the white luckdragon, glided through the mists and tatters of clouds . . .

Up and down and up and down and up and down . . .

How long had they been flying? For days and nights and more days—Atreyu had lost track. The dragon had the gift of flying in his sleep. Farther and farther they flew.

Sometimes Atreyu dozed off, clinging fast to the dragon’s white mane. But it was only a light, restless sleep. And more and more his waking became a dream, all hazy and blurred.

Shadowy mountains passed below him, lands and seas, islands and rivers . . . Atreyu had lost interest in them, and gave up trying to hurry Falkor as he had done on first leaving the Southern Oracle. For then he had been impatient, thinking it a simple matter, for one with a dragon to ride, to reach the border of Fantastica and cross it to the Outer World.

He hadn’t known how very large Fantastica was.

Now he had to fight the leaden weariness that was trying to overpower him. His eyes, once as keen as a young eagle’s, had lost their distant vision. From time to time he would pull himself upright and try to look around, but then he would sink back and stare straight ahead at the dragon’s long, supple body with its pearly pink-and-white scales.

Falkor was tired too. His strength, which had seemed inexhaustible, was running out.

More than once in the course of their long flight they had seen below them spots which the Nothing had invaded and which gave them the feeling that they were going blind. Seen from that height, many of these spots seemed relatively small, but others were as big as whole countries. Fear gripped the luckdragon and his rider, and at first they changed direction to avoid looking at the horror. But, strange as it may seem, horror loses it’s power to frighten when repeated too often. And since the patches of Nothing became more and more frequent, the travelers were gradually getting used to them.

They had been flying in silence for quite some time when suddenly Falkor’s bronze-bell tone rang out: “Atreyu, my little master. Are you asleep?”

“No,” said Atreyu, though actually he had been caught up in a terrifying dream.

“What is it, Falkor?”

“I’ve been wondering if it wouldn’t be wiser to turn back.”

“Turn back? Where to?”

“To the Ivory Tower. To the Childlike Empress.”

“You want us to go to her empty-handed?”

“I wouldn’t call it that, Atreyu. What
was
your mission?”

“To discover the cause of her illness and find out what would cure it.”

“But,” said Falkor, “nothing was said about your bringing her the cure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s a mistake, trying to cross the border of Fantastica in search of a human.”

“I don’t see what you’re driving at, Falkor. Explain yourself.”

“The Childlike Empress is deathly sick,” said the dragon, “because she needs a new name. Morla the Aged One told you that. But only a human, only a child of man from the Outer World can give her this name. Uyulala told you that. So you’ve actually completed your mission. It seems to me you should let the Childlike Empress know it as soon as possible.”

“But it won’t do her a bit of good,” Atreyu protested, “unless I bring her the human who can save her.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Falkor. “She has much greater power than you or I. Maybe she would have no difficulty in bringing a human to Fantastica. Maybe she has ways that are unknown to you and me and everyone else in Fantastica. But to do so she needs to know what you have found out. If that’s the way it is, there’s no point in our trying to find a human on our own. She might even die while we’re looking. But maybe if we turn back in time, we can save her.”

Atreyu made no answer. The dragon could be right, he reflected. But then he could be wrong. If he went back now with his message, the Childlike Empress might very well say: What good does that do me? And now it’s too late to send you out again.

He didn’t know what to do. And he was tired, much too tired to decide anything.

“You know, Falkor,” he said, hardly above a whisper, “you may be right. Or you may be wrong. Let’s fly on a little further. Then if we haven’t come to a border, we’ll turn back.”

“What do you mean by a little further?” the dragon asked.

“A few hours,” Atreyu murmured. “Oh well, just
one
hour.”

“All right,” said Falkor, “just
one
hour.”

But that one hour was one hour too many.

They hadn’t noticed that the sky in the north was black with clouds. In the west the sky was aflame, and ugly-looking clouds hung down over the horizon like seaweed.

In the east a storm was rising like a blanket of gray lead, and all around it there were tatters of cloud that looked like blue ink blots. And from the south came a sulfur-yellow mist, streaked with lightning.

“We seem to be getting into bad weather,” said Falkor.

Atreyu looked in all directions.

“Yes,” he said. “It looks bad. But what can we do but fly on?”

“It would be more sensible,” said Falkor, “to look for shelter. If this is what I think, it’s no joke.”

“What
do
you think?” Atreyu asked.

“I think it’s the four Wind Giants, starting one of their battles. They’re almost always fighting to see which is the strongest and should rule over the others. To them it’s a sort of game, because they have nothing to fear. But God help anyone who gets caught in their little tiffs.”

“Can’t you fly higher?” Atreyu asked.

“Beyond their reach, you mean? No, I can’t fly that high. And as far as I can see, there’s nothing but water below us. Some enormous ocean. I don’t see any place to hide in.”

“Then,” said Atreyu, “we’ll just have to wait till they get here. Anyway, there’s something I want to ask them.”

“What?!” cried the dragon, so terrified that he jumped, in a manner of speaking, sky-high.

“If they are the four Wind Giants,” Atreyu explained, “they must know all four corners of Fantastica. If anyone can tell us where the borders are, it’s them.”

“Good Lord!” cried the dragon. “You think you can just stop and chat with Wind Giants?”

“What are their names?” Atreyu asked.

“The one from the north,” said Falkor, “is called Lirr, the one from the east is Baureo, the one from the south is Sheerek, and the one from the west is Mayestril. But tell me, Atreyu. What are you? Are you a little boy or a bar of iron? How come you’re not afraid?”

“When I passed through the sphinxes’ gate,” Atreyu replied, “I lost all my fear. And besides, I’m wearing the emblem of the Childlike Empress. Everyone in Fantastica respects it. Why shouldn’t the Wind Giants?”

“Oh, they will,” cried Falkor, “they will. But they’re stupid, and nothing can make them stop fighting one another. You’ll see.”

Meanwhile the storm clouds from all four directions had converged. It seemed to Atreyu that he was at the center of a huge funnel, which was revolving faster and faster, mixing the sulfur-yellow, the leaden gray, the blood-red, and the deep black all together.

He and his white dragon were spun about in a circle like a matchstick in a great whirlpool. And then he saw the Wind Giants.

Actually all he saw was faces, because their limbs kept changing in every possible way—from long to short, from clear-cut to misty—and they were so knotted together in a monstrous free-for-all that it was impossible to make out their real shapes, or even how many of them there were. The faces too were constantly changing; now they were round and puffed, now stretched from top to bottom or from side to side. But at all times they could be told apart. They opened their mouths and bellowed and roared and howled and laughed at one another. They didn’t even seem to notice the dragon and his rider, who were gnats in comparison to the Wind Giants.

Atreyu raised himself as high as he could. With his right hand he reached for the golden amulet on his chest and shouted at the top of his lungs: “In the name of the Childlike Empress, be still and listen.”