The Neverending Story (45 page)

Bastian stopped running. He realized that he couldn’t escape. “You mean,” he asked, gasping for breath, “that all these people here were once Emperors of Fantastica, or wanted to be?”

“That’s it,” said Argax. “All the ones who can’t find their way back try sooner or later to become Emperor. They didn’t all make it, but they all tried. That’s why there are two kinds of fools here. Though the result, in a manner of speaking, is the same.”

“What two kinds? Tell me, Argax! I have to know!”

“Easy does it,” said the monkey, giggling as he tightened his grip on Bastian’s neck. “The one kind gradually used up their memories. And when they had lost the last one, AURYN couldn’t fulfill their wishes anymore. After that, they came here, in a manner of speaking, automatically. The others, the ones who crowned themselves emperor, lost all their memories at one stroke. So the same thing happened: AURYN couldn’t fulfill their wishes anymore, because they had none left. As you see, it comes to the same thing. Here they are, and they can’t get away.”

“Do you mean that they all had AURYN at one time?”

“Naturally!” said Argax. “But they forgot it long ago. And it wouldn’t help them anymore, the poor fools!”

“Was it . . .” Bastian hesitated. “Was it taken away from them?”

“No,” said Argax. “When someone crowns himself emperor, it simply vanishes. Obviously, because how, in a manner of speaking, can you use Moon Child’s power to take her power away from her?”

Bastian felt wretched. He would have liked to sit down somewhere, but the little gray monkey wouldn’t let him.

“No, no, our tour isn’t done yet. The best is yet to come! Keep moving!”

Bastian saw a boy with a heavy hammer trying to drive nails into a pair of socks. A fat man was trying to paste postage stamps on soap bubbles. They kept bursting, but he went on blowing new ones.

“Look!” Bastian heard the giggling voice of Argax and felt his head being twisted by the monkey’s little hands. “Look over there! It’s so amusing!”

Bastian saw a large group of people, men and women, young and old, all in the strangest clothes. They didn’t speak, each one was alone with himself. On the ground lay a large number of cubes, and there were letters on all six sides of the cubes. The people kept jumbling the cubes and then staring at them.

“What are they doing?” Bastian whispered. “What sort of game is that?”

“It’s called the jumble game,” answered Argax. He motioned to the players and cried out: “Good work, children! Keep at it! Don’t give up!”

Then, turning back to Bastian, he whispered in his ear: “They can’t talk anymore. They’ve lost the power of speech. So I thought up this game for them. As you see, it keeps them busy. It’s very simple. If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories. Now take a look. What do you see there?”

Bastian read:

H G I K L O P F M W E Y V X Q

Y X C V B N M A S D F G H J K L O A

Q W E R T Z U I O P U

A S D F G H J K L O A

M N B V C X Y L K J H G F D S A

U P O I U Z T R E W Q A S

Q S E R T Z U I O P U A S D A F

A S D F G H J K L O A Y X C

U P O I U Z T R E W Q

A O L K J H G F D S A M N B V

G K H D S R Z I P

Q E T U O U S F H K O

Y C B M W R Z I P

A R C G U N I K Y O

Q W E R T Z I O P L U A S D

M N B V C X Y A S D

L K J U O N G R E F G H I

“Yes, of course,” said Argax with a giggle, “it usually makes no more sense than that. But if you keep at it for a long time, words turn up now and then. Not very brilliant words, but still words. ‘Spinachcramp,’ for instance, or ‘sugarbrush,’ or ‘nosepolish.’ And if you play for a hundred years, or a thousand or a hundred thousand, the law of chances tells us that a poem will probably come out. And if you play it forever, every possible poem and every possible story will have to come out, in fact every story about a story, and even this story about the two of us chatting here. It’s only logical, don’t you think?”

“It’s horrible,” said Bastian.

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Argax. “It depends on your point of view. It keeps these people, in a manner of speaking, busy. And anyway, what else can we do with them in Fantastica?”

For a long time Bastian watched the players in silence. Then he asked under his breath: “Argax, you know who I am, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Is there anyone in Fantastica who doesn’t?”

“Tell me one thing, Argax. If I had become emperor yesterday, would I already be here now?”

“Today or tomorrow,” said the monkey. “Or next week. One way or another, you’d have ended up here.”

“Then Atreyu saved me?”

“You’ve got me there,” the monkey admitted.

“But if he had succeeded in taking the Gem away from me, what would have happened then?”

The monkey giggled again.

“You’d have ended up here, in a manner of speaking, all the same.”

“Why?”

“Because you need AURYN to find the way back. But frankly, I don’t believe you’ll make it.”

The monkey clapped his little hands, lifted his mortarboard, and grinned.

“Tell me, Argax, what must I do?”

“Find a wish that will take you back to your world.”

After a long silence Bastian asked: “Argax, can you tell me how many wishes I have left?”

“Not very many. In my opinion three or four at the most. And that will hardly be enough. You’re beginning rather late, and the way back isn’t easy. You’ll have to cross the Sea of Mist. That alone will cost you a wish. What comes next I don’t know. No one in Fantastica knows what road you people must take to get back to your world. Maybe you’ll find Yor’s Minroud, that’s the last hope for people like you. But I’m afraid that for you it’s, in a manner of speaking, too far. Be that as it may, you will, just this once, find your way out of the City of the Old Emperors.”

“Thanks, Argax,” said Bastian.

The little gray monkey grinned.

“Goodbye, Bastian Balthazar Bux.”

With one leap Argax vanished into one of the crazy houses. He had taken Bastian’s turban with him.

For a while Bastian stood motionless. He was so stunned by what he had just heard that he couldn’t decide what to do. All his plans had collapsed at one stroke. His thoughts seemed to have been stood on end—like the pyramid he had seen. What he had hoped was his ruin and what he had feared his salvation.

At the moment only one thing was clear to him: he must get out of this insane city. And never come back!

He started through the jumble of crazy buildings. He soon discovered that it was much harder to get out than to get in. Time and time again he lost his way and found himself back in the center of the city. It took him all afternoon to reach the earthworks. Then he ran out into the heath and kept going until black night—as black as the night before—forced him to stop. Exhausted, he collapsed under a juniper tree and fell into a deep sleep. And while he slept, the memory that he could once make up stories left him.

All night he had the same unchanging vision before his eyes: Atreyu, with the gaping wound in his chest, stood there looking at him in silence.

Awakened by a thunderclap, Bastian started up. Deep darkness lay all around him, but the massive clouds that had been gathering for days had been thrown into wild disorder. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the earth, the storm wind howled over the heath and the juniper trees were bowed to the ground. Rain fell in dense sheets.

Bastian arose and stood there wrapped in his black mantle; the water ran down his face.

Lightning struck a tree directly in front of him and split the gnarled trunk. The branches went up in flames, the wind blew a shower of sparks over the heath. In a moment they were doused by the rain.

The crash had thrown Bastian to his knees. He dug into the earth with both hands. When the hole was big enough, he unslung the sword Sikanda and put it in.

“Sikanda,” he said. “I am taking leave of you forever. Never again shall anyone draw you against a friend. No one shall find you here, until what you and I have done is forgotten.”

He filled in the hole and covered it over with moss and branches, lest anyone should discover it.

And there Sikanda lies to this day. For not until far in the future will one come who can wield it without danger—but that is another story and shall be told another time.

Bastian went his way through the darkness.

Toward morning the storm abated, the wind died down, and there was no other sound than the rain dripping from the trees.

That night was the beginning of a long, lonely journey for Bastian. He no longer wished to return to his traveling companions or Xayide. Now he wanted to find the way back to the human world—but he didn’t know how or where to look for it. Was there somewhere a gate, a bridge, a mountain pass that would take him back?

He had to wish for it, that he knew. But he had no power over his wishes. He felt like a diver who is searching the bottom of the sea for a sunken ship, but keeps being driven to the surface before he can find anything.

He also knew that he had few wishes left, so he was careful not to use AURYN. He was determined to sacrifice his last few remaining memories only if he felt sure that this would help him get back to his world.

But wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.

And so, before he knew it, a new wish arose within him and little by little took form.

For days and nights he had been wandering all alone. And because of being alone, he yearned to belong to some sort of community, to be taken into a group, not as a master or victor or as any special sort of person, but merely as one among many, perhaps as the smallest or least important, provided his membership in the community was unquestioned.

And then one day he came to a seacoast. Or so he thought at first. He was standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, and before him lay a sea of congealed white waves. It was some time before he realized that these waves were not really motionless, but were moving very slowly, that there were currents and eddies that moved as imperceptibly as the hands of a clock.

He had come to the Sea of Mist!

Bastian walked along the cliff. The air was warm and slightly damp. There was not the slightest breeze. It was early morning and the sun shone on the snow-white surface of the fog, which extended to the horizon.

He walked for several hours. Toward noon he espied a small town some distance from the shore. Supported by piles, it formed a sort of island in the Sea of Mist. The long, arching bridge connecting the town with the rocky coast swayed gently as Bastian crossed it.

The houses were relatively small. The doors, windows, and stairways all seemed to have been made for children. And indeed, the people moving about the streets were no bigger than children, though they all seemed to be grown men with beards or women with pinned-up hair. As Bastian soon noticed, these people looked so much alike that he could hardly tell them apart. Their faces were dark brown like moist earth and they looked calm and gentle. When they saw Bastian, they nodded to him, but none spoke. Altogether they seemed a silent lot; the place was humming with activity, yet he seldom heard a cry or a spoken word. And never did he see any of these people alone; they always went about in groups if not in crowds, locking arms or holding one another by the hand.

When Bastian examined the houses more closely, he saw that they were all made of a sort of wicker, some crude and some of a finer weave, and that the streets were paved with the same kind of material. Even the people’s clothing, he noticed, their trousers, skirts, jackets, and hats were of wickerwork, though these were artfully woven. Everything in the town seemed to be made of the same material.

Here and there Bastian was able to cast a glance into the artisans’ workshops. They were all busy weaving, making shoes, pitchers, lamps, cups, and umbrellas of wickerwork. But never did he see anyone working alone, for these things could be made only by several persons working together. It was a pleasure to see how cleverly they coordinated their movements. And as they worked, they usually sang some simple melody without words.

The town was not very large, and Bastian had soon come to the edge of it. There he saw hundreds of ships of every size and shape. The town was a seaport, but of a most unusual kind, for all these ships were hanging from gigantic fishing poles and hovered, swaying gently, over a chasm full of swirling white mist. These ships, made of wickerwork like everything else, had neither sails nor masts nor oars nor rudders.

Bastian leaned over the railing and looked down into the Sea of Mist. He was able to gauge the length of the stakes supporting the town by the shadows they cast on the white surface below.

“At night,” he heard a voice beside him say, “the mists rise to the level of the town. Then we can put out to sea. In the daytime the sun reduces the mist and the level falls. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it, stranger?”