The Neverending Story (8 page)

Then Atreyu woke up.

The clock in the belfry struck twelve. Soon Bastian’s classmates would be going down to the gym for their last class. Today they’d probably be playing with the big, heavy medicine ball which Bastian handled so awkwardly that neither of the two teams ever wanted him. And sometimes they played with a small hard rubber ball that hurt terribly when it hit you. Bastian was an easy mark and was always getting hit full force. Or perhaps they’d be climbing rope—an exercise that Bastian especially detested. Most of the others would be all the way to the top while he, with his face as red as a beet, would be dangling like a sack of flour at the very bottom of the rope, unable to climb as much as a foot. They’d all be laughing their heads off. And Mr. Menge, the gym teacher, had a special stock of gibes just for Bastian.

Bastian would have given a good deal to be like Atreyu. He’d have shown them.

He heaved a deep sigh.

Atreyu rode northward, ever northward. He allowed himself and his little horse only the most necessary stops for sleep and food. He rode by day and he rode by night, in the scorching sun and the pelting rain. He looked neither to the left nor the right and asked no more questions.

The farther northward he went, the darker it grew. An unchanging, leaden-gray twilight filled the days. At night the northern lights played across the sky.

One morning, when time seemed to be standing still in the murky light, he looked out from a hilltop and finally glimpsed the Swamps of Sadness. Clouds of mist drifted over them. Here and there he distinguished little clumps of trees. Their trunks divided at the bottom into four, five, or more crooked stilts, which made the trees look like great many-legged crabs standing in the black water. From the brown foliage hung aerial roots resembling motionless tentacles. It was next to impossible to make out where there was solid ground between the pools of water and where there was only a covering of water plants.

Artax whinnied with horror.

“Are we going in there, master?”

“Yes,” said Atreyu. “We must find Tortoise Shell Mountain. It’s at the center of those swamps.”

He urged Artax on and Artax obeyed. Step by step, he tested the firmness of the ground, but that made progress very slow. At length Atreyu dismounted and led Artax by the bridle. Several times the horse sank in, but managed to pull himself loose. But the farther they went into the Swamps of Sadness, the more sluggish became his movements.

He let his head droop and barely dragged himself forward.

“Artax,” said Atreyu. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know, master. I think we should turn back. There’s no sense in all this. We’re chasing after something you only dreamed about. We won’t find anything. Maybe it’s too late even now. Maybe the Childlike Empress is already dead, and everything we’re doing is useless. Let us turn back, master.”

Atreyu was astonished. “Artax,” he said. “You’ve never spoken like this. What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

“Maybe I am,” said Artax. “With every step we take, the sadness grows in my heart. I’ve lost hope, master. And I feel so heavy, so heavy. I can’t go on!”

“But we must go on!” cried Atreyu. “Come along, Artax!”

He tugged at the bridle, but Artax stood still. He had sunk in up to his belly. And he made no further effort to extricate himself.

“Artax!” cried Atreyu. “You mustn’t let yourself go. Come. Pull yourself out or you’ll sink.”

“Leave me, master,” said the little horse. “I can’t make it. Go on alone. Don’t bother about me. I can’t stand the sadness anymore. I want to die!”

Desperately Atreyu pulled at the bridle, but the horse sank deeper and deeper.

When only his head emerged from the black water, Atreyu took it in his arms.

“I’ll hold you, Artax,” he whispered. “I won’t let you go under.”

The little horse uttered one last soft neigh.

“You can’t help me, master. It’s all over for me. Neither of us knew what we were getting into. Now we know why they are called the Swamps of Sadness. It’s the sadness that has made me so heavy. That’s why I’m sinking. There’s no help.”

“But I’m here, too,” said Atreyu, “and I don’t feel anything.”

“You’re wearing the Gem, master,” said Artax. “It protects you.”

“Then I’ll hang it around your neck!” Atreyu cried. “Maybe it will protect you too.”

He started taking the chain off his neck.

“No,” the little horse whinnied. “You mustn’t do that, master. The Glory was entrusted to you, you weren’t given permission to pass it on as you see fit. You must carry on the Quest without me.”

Atreyu pressed his face into the horse’s cheek. “Artax,” he whispered. “Oh, my Artax!”

“Will you grant my last wish?” the little horse asked.

Atreyu nodded in silence.

“Then I beg you to go away. I don’t want you to see my end. Will you do me that favor?”

Slowly Atreyu arose. Half the horse’s head was already in the black water.

“Farewell, Atreyu, my master!” he said. “And thank you.”

Atreyu pressed his lips together. He couldn’t speak. Once again he nodded to Artax, then he turned away.

Bastion was sobbing. He couldn’t help it. His eyes filled with tears and he couldn’t go on reading. He had to take out his handkerchief and blow his nose before he could go on.

Atreyu waded and waded. For how long he didn’t know. The mist grew thicker and he felt as if he were blind and deaf. It seemed to him that he had been wandering around in circles for hours. He stopped worrying about where to set his foot down, and yet he never sank in above his knees. By some mysterious means, the Childlike Empress’s amulet led him the right way.

Then suddenly he saw a high, steep mountain ahead of him. Pulling himself up from crag to crag, he climbed to the rounded top. At first he didn’t notice what this mountain was made of. But from the top he overlooked the whole mountain, and then he saw that it consisted of great slabs of tortoise shell, with moss growing in the crevices between them.

He had found Tortoise Shell Mountain.

But the discovery gave him no pleasure. Now that his faithful little horse was gone, it left him almost indifferent. Still, he would have to find out who this Morla the Aged One was, and where she actually lived.

While he was mulling it over, he felt a slight tremor shaking the mountain. Then he heard a hideous wheezing and lip-smacking, and a voice that seemed to issue from the innermost bowels of the earth: “Sakes alive, old woman, somebody’s crawling around on us.”

In hurrying to the end of the ridge, where the sounds had come from, Atreyu had slipped on a bed of moss. Since there was nothing for him to hold on to, he slid faster and faster and finally fell off the mountain. Luckily he landed on a tree, which caught him in its branches.

Looking back at the mountain, he saw an enormous cave. Water was splashing and gushing inside, and something was moving. Slowly the something came out. It looked like a boulder as big as a house. When it came into full sight, Atreyu saw that it was a head attached to a long wrinkled neck, the head of a turtle. Its eyes were black and as big as ponds. The mouth was dripping with muck and water weeds. This whole Tortoise Shell Mountain—it suddenly dawned on Atreyu—was one enormous beast, a giant swamp turtle; Morla the Aged One.

The wheezing, gurgling voice spoke again: “What are you doing here, son?”

Atreyu reached for the amulet on his chest and held it in such a way that the great eyes couldn’t help seeing it.

“Do you recognize this, Morla?”

She took a while to answer: “Sakes alive! AURYN. We haven’t seen that in a long time, have we, old woman? The emblem of the Childlike Empress—not in a long time.”

“The Childlike Empress is sick,” said Atreyu. “Did you know that?”

“It’s all the same to us. Isn’t it, old woman?” Morla replied. She seemed to be talking to herself, perhaps because she had had no one else to talk to for heaven knows how long.

“If we don’t save her, she’ll die,” Atreyu cried out. “The Nothing is spreading everywhere. I’ve seen it myself.”

Morla stared at him out of her great empty eyes.

“We don’t mind, do we, old woman?”

“But then we shall all die!” Atreyu screamed. “Every last one of us!”

“Sakes alive!” said Morla. “But what do we care? Nothing matters to us anymore. It’s all the same to us.”

“But you’ll be destroyed too, Morla!” cried Atreyu angrily. “Or do you expect, because you’re so old, to outlive Fantastica?”

“Sakes alive!” Morla gurgled. “We’re old, son, much too old. Lived long enough. Seen too much. When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away, whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything’s empty. Nothing is real. Nothing matters.”

Atreyu didn’t know what to answer. The Aged One’s dark, empty, pond-sized eyes paralyzed his thoughts. After a while, he heard her speak again:

“You’re young, son. If you were as old as we are, you’d know there’s nothing but sadness. Why shouldn’t we die, you and I, the Childlike Empress, the whole lot of us? Anyway, it’s all flim-flam, meaningless games. Nothing matters. Leave us in peace, son.

Go away.”

Atreyu tensed his will to fight off the paralysis that flowed from her eyes.

“If you know so much,” he said, “you must know what the Childlike Empress’s illness is and whether there’s a cure for it.”

“We do, we do! Don’t we, old woman?” Morla wheezed. “But it’s all the same to us whether she’s saved or not. So why should we tell you?”

“If it’s really all the same to you,” Atreyu argued, “you might just as well tell me.”

“We could, we could! Couldn’t we, old woman?” Morla grunted. “But we don’t feel like it.”

“Then it’s not all the same to you. Then you yourself don’t believe what you’re saying.”

After a long silence he heard a deep gurgling and belching. That must have been some kind of laughter, if Morla the Aged One was still capable of laughing. In any case, she said: “You’re a sly one, son. Really sly. We haven’t had so much fun in a long time. Have we, old woman? Sakes alive, it’s true. We might just as well tell you. Makes no difference. Should we tell him, old woman?”

A long silence followed. Atreyu waited anxiously for Morla’s answer, taking care not to interrupt the slow, cheerless flow of her thoughts. At last she spoke:

“Your life is short, son. Ours is long. Much too long. But we both live in time.

You a short time. We a long time. The Childlike Empress has always been there. But she’s not old. She has always been young. She still is. Her life isn’t measured by time, but by names. She needs a new name. She keeps needing new names. Do you know her name, son?”

“No,” Atreyu admitted. “I never heard it.”

“You couldn’t have,” said Morla. “Not even we can remember it. Yet she has had many names. But they’re all forgotten. Over and done with. But without a name she can’t live. All the Childlike Empress needs is a new name, then she’ll get well. But it makes no difference whether she gets well or not.”

She closed her pond-sized eyes and began slowly to pull in her head.

“Wait!” cried Atreyu. “Where can she get a name? Who can give her one? Where can I find the name?”

“None of us,” Morla gurgled. “No inhabitant of Fantastica can give her a new name. So it’s hopeless. Sakes alive! It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

“Who then?” cried Atreyu in despair. “Who can give her the name that will save her and save us all?”

“Don’t make so much noise!” said Morla. “Leave us in peace and go away. Even we don’t know who can give her a name.”

“If you don’t know,” Atreyu screamed even louder, “who does?”

She opened her eyes a last time.

“If you weren’t wearing the Gem,” she wheezed, “we’d eat you up, just to have peace and quiet. Sakes alive!”

“Who?” Atreyu insisted. “Tell me who knows, and I’ll leave you in peace forever.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “But maybe Uyulala in the Southern Oracle knows. She may know. It’s all the same to us.”

“How can I get there?”

“You can’t get there at all, son. Not in ten thousand days’ journey. Your life is too short. You’d die first. It’s too far. In the south. Much too far. So it’s all hopeless. We told you so in the first place, didn’t we, old woman? Sakes alive, son. Give it up. And most important, leave us in peace.”

With that she closed her empty-gazing eyes and pulled her head back into the cave for good. Atreyu knew he would learn no more from her.

At that same time the shadowy being which had condensed out of the darkness of the heath picked up Atreyu’s trail and headed for the Swamps of Sadness. Nothing and no one in all Fantastica would deflect it from that trail.

Bastian had propped his head on his hand and was looking thoughtfully into space.

“Strange,” he said aloud, “that no one in all Fantastica can give the Childlike Empress a new name.” If it had been just a matter of giving her a name, Bastian could easily have helped her. He was tops at that. But unfortunately he was not in Fantastica, where his talents were needed and would even have won him friends and admirers. On the other hand, he was glad not to be there. Not for anything in the world would he have ventured into such a place as the Swamps of Sadness. And then this spooky creature of darkness that was chasing Atreyu without his knowing it. Bastian would have liked to warn him, but that was impossible. All he could do was hope, and go on reading.