The Neverending Story (7 page)

Then he became frightened. It had been foolish of him to shout so loud. What if someone had heard him? He waited awhile and listened. But all he heard was the intermingled shouts from the yard.

Feeling rather foolish, he climbed down off the horse. Really, he was behaving like a small child!

He unwrapped his sandwich and shined the apple on his trousers. But just as he was biting into it, he stopped himself.

“No,” he said to himself aloud. “I must carefully apportion my provisions. Who knows how long they will have to last me.”

With a heavy heart he rewrapped his sandwich and returned it to his satchel along with the apple. Then with a sigh he settled down on the mats and reached for the book.

  airon, the old black centaur, sank back on his bed of furs as Artax’s hoofbeats were dying away. After so much exertion he was at the end of his strength. The women who found him next day in Atreyu’s tent feared for his life. And when the hunters came home a few days later, he was hardly any better, but he managed nevertheless to tell them why Atreyu had ridden away and would not be back soon. As they were all fond of the boy, their concern for him made them grave. Still, they were proud that the Childlike Empress had chosen him for the Great Quest—though none claimed to understand her choice.

Old Cairon never went back to the Ivory Tower. But he didn’t die and he didn’t stay with the Greenskins in the Grassy Ocean. His destiny was to lead him over very different and unexpected pathways. But that is another story and shall be told another time.

That same night Atreyu rode to the foot of the Silver Mountains. It was almost morning when he finally stopped to rest. Artax grazed a while and drank water from a small mountain stream. Atreyu wrapped himself in his red cloak and slept a few hours.

But when the sun rose, they were already on their way.

On the first day they crossed the Silver Mountains, where every road and trail was known to them, and they made quick progress. When he felt hungry, the boy ate a chunk of dried buffalo meat and two little grass-seed cakes that he had been carrying in his saddlebag—originally they had been intended for his hunt.

“Exactly,” said Bastian. “A man has to eat now and then.”

He took his sandwich out of his satchel, unwrapped it, broke it carefully in two pieces, wrapped one of them up again and put it away. Then he ate the other.

Recess was over. Bastian wondered what his class would be doing next. Oh yes, geography, with Mrs. Flint. You had to reel off rivers and their tributaries, cities, population figures, natural resources, and industries. Bastian shrugged his shoulders and went on reading.

By sunset the Silver Mountains lay behind them, and again they stopped to rest.

That night Atreyu dreamed of purple buffaloes. He saw them in the distance, roaming over the Grassy Ocean, and he tried to get near them on his horse. In vain. He galloped, he spurred his horse, but they were always the same distance away.

The second day they passed through the Singing Tree Country. Each tree had a different shape, different leaves, different bark, but all of them in growing—and this was what gave the country its name—made soft music that sounded from far and near and joined in a mighty harmony that hadn’t its like for beauty in all Fantastica. Riding through this country wasn’t entirely devoid of danger, for many a traveler had stopped still as though spellbound and forgotten everything else. Atreyu felt the power of these marvelous sounds, but didn’t let himself be tempted to stop.

The following night he dreamed again of purple buffaloes. This time he was on foot, and a great herd of them was passing. But they were beyond the range of his bow, and when he tried to come closer, his feet clung to the ground and he couldn’t move them.

His frantic efforts to tear them loose woke him up. He started out at once, though the sun had not yet risen.

The third day, he saw the Glass Tower of Eribo, where the inhabitants of the region caught and stored starlight. Out of the starlight they made wonderfully decorative objects, the purpose of which, however, was known to no one in all Fantastica but their makers.

He met some of these folk; little creatures they were, who seemed to have been blown from glass. They were extremely friendly and provided him with food and drink, but when he asked them who might know something about the Childlike Empress’s illness, they sank into a gloomy, perplexed silence.

The next night Atreyu dreamed again that the herd of purple buffaloes was passing. One of the beasts, a particularly large, imposing bull, broke away from his fellows and slowly, with no sign of either fear or anger, approached Atreyu. Like all true hunters, Atreyu knew every creature’s vulnerable spot, where an arrow wound would be fatal. The purple buffalo put himself in such a position as to offer a perfect target. Atreyu fitted an arrow to his bow and pulled with all his might. But he couldn’t shoot. His fingers seemed to have grown into the bowstring, and he couldn’t release it.

Each of the following nights he dreamed something of the sort. He got closer and closer to the same purple buffalo—he recognized him by a white spot on his forehead—but for some reason he was never able to shoot the deadly arrow.

During the days he rode farther and farther, without knowing where he was going or finding anyone to advise him. The golden amulet he wore was respected by all who met him, but none had an answer to his question.

One day he saw from afar the flaming streets of Salamander, the city whose inhabitants’ bodies are of fire, but he preferred to keep away from it. He crossed the broad plateau of the Sassafranians, who are born old and die when they become babies. He came to the jungle temple of Muwamath, where a great moonstone pillar hovers in midair, and he spoke to the monks who lived there. And again no one could tell him anything.

He had been traveling aimlessly for almost a week, when on the seventh day and the following night two very different encounters changed his situation and state of mind.

Cairon’s story of the terrible happenings in all parts of Fantastica had made an impression on him, but thus far the disaster was something he had only heard about. On the seventh day he was to see it with his own eyes.

Toward noon, he was riding through a dense dark forest of enormous gnarled trees. This was the same Howling Forest where the four messengers had met some time before. That region, as Atreyu knew, was the home of bark trolls. These, as he had been told, were giants and giantesses, who themselves looked like gnarled tree trunks. As long as they stood motionless, as they usually did, you could easily mistake them for trees and ride on unsuspecting. Only when they moved could you see that they had branchlike arms and crooked, rootlike legs. Though exceedingly powerful, they were not dangerous—at most they liked to play tricks on travelers who had lost their way.

Atreyu had just discovered a woodland meadow with a brook twining through it, and had dismounted to let Artax drink and graze. Suddenly he heard a loud crackling and thudding in the woods behind him.

Three bark trolls emerged from the woods and came toward him. A cold shiver ran down his spine at the sight of them. The first, having no legs or haunches, was obliged to walk on his hands. The second had a hole in his chest, so big you could see through it. The third hopped on his right foot, because the whole left half of him was missing, as if he had been cut through the middle.

When they saw the amulet hanging from Atreyu’s neck, they nodded to one another and came slowly closer.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the one who was walking on his hands, and his voice sounded like the groaning of a tree. “We’re not exactly pretty to look at, but in this part of Howling Forest there’s no one else left who might warn you. That’s why we’ve come.”

“Warn?” Atreyu asked. “Against what?”

“We’ve heard about you,” moaned the one with the hole in his chest. “And we’ve been told about your Quest. Don’t go any further in this direction, or you’ll be lost.”

“The same thing will happen to you as happened to us,” sighed the halved one.

“Would you like that?”

“What has happened to you?” Atreyu asked.

“The Nothing is spreading,” groaned the first. “It’s growing and growing, there’s more of it every day, if it’s possible to speak of more
nothing
. All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn’t want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us.”

“Is it very painful?” Atreyu asked.

“No,” said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. “You don’t feel a thing. There’s just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won’t be anything left of us.”

“In what part of the woods did it begin?” Atreyu asked.

“Would you like to see it?” The third troll, who was only half a troll, turned to his fellow sufferers with a questioning look. When they nodded, he said: “We’ll take you to a place where there’s a good view of it. But you must promise not to go any closer. If you do, it will pull you in.”

“All right,” said Atreyu. “I promise.”

The three turned about and made for the edge of the forest. Leading Artax by the bridle, Atreyu followed them. For a while they went this way and that way between enormous trees, then finally they stopped at the foot of a giant tree so big that five grown men holding hands could scarcely have girdled it.

“Climb as high as you can,” said the legless troll, “and look in the direction of the sunrise. Then you’ll see—or rather not see it.”

Atreyu pulled himself up by the knots and bumps on the tree. He reached the lower branches, hoisted himself to the next, climbed and climbed until he lost sight of the ground below him. Higher and higher he went; the trunk grew thinner and the more closely spaced side branches made it easier to climb. When at last he reached the crown, he turned toward the sunrise. And then he saw it:

The tops of the trees nearest him were still green, but the leaves of those farther away seemed to have lost all color; they were gray. A little farther on, the foliage seemed to become strangely transparent, misty, or, better still, unreal. And farther still there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a bare stretch, not darkness, not some lighter color; no, it was something the eyes could not bear, something that made you feel you had gone blind.

For no eye can bear the sight of utter nothingness. Atreyu held his hand before his face and nearly fell off his branch. He clung tight for a moment, then climbed down as fast as he could. He had seen enough. At last he really understood the horror that was spreading through Fantastica.

When he reached the foot of the great tree, the three bark trolls had vanished.

Atreyu swung himself into the saddle and galloped as fast as Artax would carry him in the direction that would take him away from this slowly but irresistibly spreading Nothing. By nightfall he had left Howling Forest far behind him; only then did he stop to rest.

That night a second encounter, which was to give his Great Quest a new direction, awaited him.

He dreamed—much more distinctly than before—of the purple buffalo he had wanted to kill. This time Atreyu was without his bow and arrow. He felt very, very small and the buffalo’s face filled the whole sky. And the face spoke to him. He couldn’t understand every word, but this is the gist of what it said:

“If you had killed me, you would be a hunter now. But because you let me live, I can help you, Atreyu. Listen to me! There is, in Fantastica, a being older than all other beings. In the north, far, far from here, lie the Swamps of Sadness. In the middle of those swamps there is a mountain, Tortoise Shell Mountain it’s called. There lives Morla the Aged One. Go and see Morla the Aged One.”