Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

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.”