Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

“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.

ire hunger and thirst pursued Atreyu. It was two days since he had left the Swamps of Sadness, and since then he had been wandering through an empty rocky wilderness. What little provisions he had taken with him had sunk beneath the black waters with Artax. In vain, Atreyu dug his fingers into the clefts between stones in the hope of finding some little root, but nothing grew there, not even moss or lichen.

At first he was glad to feel solid ground beneath his feet, but little by little it came to him that he was worse off than ever. He was lost. He didn’t even know what direction he was going in, for the dusky grayness was the same all around him. A cold wind blew over the needlelike rocks that rose up on all sides, blew and blew.

Uphill and downhill he plodded, but all he saw was distant mountains with still more distant ranges behind them, and so on to the horizon on all sides. And nothing living, not a beetle, not an ant, not even the vultures which ordinarily follow the weary traveler until he falls by the wayside.

Doubt was no longer possible. This was the Land of the Dead Mountains. Few had seen them, and fewer still escaped from them alive. But they figured in the legends of Atreyu’s people. He remembered an old song:

Better the huntsman

Should perish in the swamps,

For in the Dead Mountains

There is a deep, deep chasm,

Where dwelleth Ygramul the Many,

The horror of horrors.

Even if Atreyu had wanted to turn back and had known what direction to take, it would not have been possible. He had gone too far and could only keep on going. If only he himself had been involved, he might have sat down in a cave and quietly waited for death, as the Greenskin hunters did. But he was engaged in the Great Quest: the life of the Childlike Empress and of all Fantastica was at stake. He had no right to give up.

And so he kept at it. Uphill and down. From time to time he realized that he had long been walking as though in his sleep, that his mind had been in other realms, from which they had returned none too willingly.