Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

Without stopping to think, he set foot on the sticky ropes of the web, which swayed beneath him as he ran. He lost his balance, fell, clung by his hands to keep from falling into the dark chasm, pulled himself up again, caught himself in the ropes, fought free and hurried on.

At last Ygramul sensed that something was coming toward her. With the speed of lightning, she turned about, confronting Atreyu with an enormous steel-blue face. Her single eye had a vertical pupil, which stared at Atreyu with inconceivable malignancy.

A cry of fear escaped Bastian.

A cry of terror passed through the ravine and echoed from side to side. Ygramul turned her eye to left and right, to see if someone else had arrived, for that sound could not have been made by the boy who stood there as though paralyzed with horror.

Could she have heard my cry? Bastion wondered in alarm. But that’s not possible.

And then Atreyu heard Ygramul’s voice. It was very high and slightly hoarse, not at all the right kind of voice for that enormous face. Her lips did not move as she spoke. It was the buzzing of a great swarm of hornets that shaped itself into words.

“A Twolegs,” Atreyu heard. “Years upon years of hunger, and now two tasty morsels at once! A lucky day for Ygramul!”

Atreyu needed all his strength to keep his composure. He held the Gem up to the monster’s one eye and asked: “Do you know this emblem?”

“Come closer, Twolegs!” buzzed the many voices. “Ygramul doesn’t see well.”

Atreyu took one step closer to the face. The mouth opened, showing innumerable glittering feelers, hooks, and claws in place of a tongue.

“Still closer,” the swarm buzzed.

He took one more step, which brought him near enough to distinguish the innumerable steel-blue insects which whirled around in seeming confusion. Yet the face as a whole remained motionless.

“I am Atreyu,” he said. “I have come on a mission from the Childlike Empress.”

“Most inopportune!” said the angry buzzing after a time. “What do you want of Ygramul? As you can see, she is very busy.”

“I want this luckdragon,” said Atreyu. “Let me have him.”

“What do you want him for, Atreyu Twolegs?”

“I lost my horse in the Swamps of Sadness. I must go to the Southern Oracle, because only Uyulala can tell me who can give the Childlike Empress a new name. If she doesn’t get one, she will die and all Fantastica with her—you too, Ygramul.”

“Ah!” the face drawled. “Is that the reason for all the places where there is nothing?”

“Yes,” said Atreyu. “So you too know of them. But the Southern Oracle is too long a journey for a lifetime. That’s why I’m asking you for this luckdragon. If he carries me through the air, I may get there before it’s too late.”

Out of the whirling swarm that made up the face came a sound suggesting the giggling of many voices.

“You’re all wrong, Atreyu Twolegs. We know nothing of the Southern Oracle and nothing of Uyulala, but we do know that this dragon cannot carry you. And even if he were in the best of health, the trip would take so long that the Childlike Empress would die of her illness in the meantime. You must measure your Quest, Atreyu, in terms not of your own life but of hers.”

The gaze of the eye with the vertical pupil was almost unbearable.

“That’s true,” he said in a small voice.

“Besides,” the motionless face went on, “the luckdragon has Ygramul’s poison in his body. He has less than an hour to live.”

“Then there’s no hope,” Atreyu murmured. “Not for him, not for me, and not for you either, Ygramul.”

“Oh well,” the voice buzzed. “Ygramul would at least have had one good meal. But who says it’s Ygramul’s last meal? She knows a way of getting you to the Southern Oracle in a twinkling. But the question is: Will you like it?”

“What is that way?”

“That is Ygramul’s secret. The creatures of darkness have their secrets too, Atreyu Twolegs. Ygramul has never revealed hers. And you too must swear you’ll never tell a soul. For it would be greatly to Ygramul’s disadvantage if it were known, yes, greatly to her disadvantage.”

“I swear! Speak!”

The great steel-blue face leaned forward just a little and buzzed almost inaudibly.

“You must let Ygramul bite you.”

Atreyu shrank back in horror.

“Ygramul’s poison,” the voice went on, “kills within an hour. But to one who has it inside him it gives the power to wish himself in any part of Fantastica he chooses.

Imagine if that were known! All Ygramul’s victims would escape her.”

“An hour?” cried Atreyu. “What can I do in an hour?”

“Well,” buzzed the swarm, “at least it’s more than all the hours remaining to you here.”

Atreyu struggled with himself.

“Will you set the luckdragon free if I ask it in the name of the Childlike Empress?” he finally asked.

“No!” said the face. “You have no right to ask that of Ygramul even if you are wearing AURYN, the Gem. The Childlike Empress takes us all as we are. That’s why Ygramul respects her emblem.”

Atreyu was still standing with bowed head. Ygramul had spoken the truth. He couldn’t save the white luckdragon. His own wishes didn’t count.

He looked up and said: “Do what you suggested.”

Instantly the steel-blue cloud descended on him and enveloped him on all sides.

He felt a numbing pain in the left shoulder. His last thought was: “To the Southern Oracle!”

Then the world went black before his eyes.

When the wolf reached the spot a short time later, he saw the giant spider web—but there was no one in sight. There the trail he had been following broke off, and try as he might, he could not find it again.

Bastian stopped reading. He felt miserable, as though he himself had Ygramul’s poison inside him.

“Thank God I’m not in Fantastica,” he muttered. “Luckily, such monsters don’t exist in reality. Anyway, it’s only a story.”

But was it only a story? How did it happen that Ygramul, and probably Atreyu as well, had heard Bastian’s cry of terror?

Little by little, this book was beginning to give him a spooky feeling.

ver so slowly Atreyu awoke to the world. He saw that he was still in the mountains, and for a terrible moment he suspected that Ygramul had deceived him.

But these, he soon realized, were entirely different mountains. They seemed to consist of great rust-red blocks of stone, piled in such a way as to form strange towers and pyramids. In between these structures the ground was covered with bushes and shrubbery. The air was blazing hot. The country was bathed in glaring sunlight.

Shading his eyes with his hand, Atreyu looked around him and discovered, about a mile away, an irregularly shaped arch, perhaps a hundred feet high. It too appeared to consist of piled stone blocks.

Could that be the entrance to the Southern Oracle? As far as he could see, there was nothing behind the arch, only an endless empty plain, no building, no temple, no grove, nothing suggesting an oracle.

Suddenly, while he was wondering what to do, he heard a deep, bronzelike voice:

“Atreyu!” And then again: “Atreyu!”

Turning around, he saw the white luckdragon emerging from one of the rust-red towers. Blood was pouring from his wounds, and he was so weak he could barely drag himself along.

“Here I am, Atreyu,” he said, merrily winking one of his ruby-red eyes. “And you needn’t be so surprised. I was pretty well paralyzed when I was caught in that spider web, but I heard everything Ygramul said to you. So I thought to myself: She has bitten me too, after all, so why shouldn’t I take advantage of the secret as well? That’s how I got away from her.”