Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

The clock in the belfry struck four.

Little by little, the murky light was failing. It was getting too dark to read by.

Bastian put the book down.

What was he to do now?

There was bound to be electric light in this attic. He groped his way to the door and ran his hand along the wall, but couldn’t find a switch. He looked on the opposite side, and again there was none.

He took a box of matches from his trouser pocket (he always had matches on him, for he had a weakness for making little fires), but they were damp and the first three wouldn’t light. In the faint glow of the fourth he tried to locate a light switch, but there wasn’t any. The thought of having to spend the whole evening and night here in total darkness gave him the cold shivers. He was no baby, and at home or in any other familiar place he had no fear of the dark, but this enormous attic with all these weird things in it was something else again.

The match burned his fingers and he threw it away.

For a while he just stood there and listened. The rain had let up and now he could barely hear the drumming on the big tin roof.

Then he remembered the rusty, seven-armed candelabrum he had seen. He groped his way across the room, found the candelabrum, and dragged it to his pile of mats.

He lit the wicks in the thick stubs—all seven—and a golden light spread. The flames crackled faintly and wavered now and then in the draft.

With a sigh of relief, Bastian picked up the book.

ladness buoyed Atreyu’s heart as he strode into the forest of columns which cast black shadows in the bright moonlight. In the deep silence that surrounded him he barely heard his own footfalls. He no longer knew who he was or what his name was, how he had got there or what he was looking for. He was full of wonder, but quite undismayed.

The floor was made of mosaic tiles, showing strange ornamental designs or mysterious scenes and images. Atreyu passed over it, climbed broad steps, came to a vast terrace, descended another set of steps, and passed down a long avenue of stone columns. He examined them, one after another, and it gave him pleasure to see that each was decorated with different signs and symbols. Farther and farther he went from the No-Key Gate.

At last, when he had gone heaven knows how far, he heard a hovering sound in the distance and stopped to listen. The sound came closer, it was a singing voice, but it seemed very, very sad, almost like a sob at times. This lament passed over the columns like a breeze, then stopped in one place, rose and fell, came and went, and seemed to move in a wide circle around Atreyu.

He stood still and waited.

Little by little, the circle became smaller, and after a while he was able to understand the words the voice was singing:

“Oh, nothing can happen more than once,

But all things must happen one day.

Over hill and dale, over wood and stream,

My dying voice will blow away . . .”

Atreyu turned in the direction of the voice, which darted fitfully among the columns, but he could see no one.

“Who are you?” he cried.

The voice came back to him like an echo: “Who are you?”

Atreyu pondered.

“Who am I?” he murmured. “I don’t know. I have a feeling that I once knew. But does it matter?”

The singing voice answered:

“If questions you would ask of me,

You must speak in poetry,

For rhymeless talk that strikes my ear

I cannot hear, I cannot hear . . .”

Atreyu hadn’t much practice in rhyming. This would be a difficult conversation, he thought, if the voice only understood poetry. He racked his brains for a while, then he came out with: “I hope it isn’t going too far, But could you tell me who you are?”

This time the voice answered at once: “I hear you now, your words are clear, I understand as well as hear.”

And then, coming from a different direction, it sang: “I thank you, friend, for your good will. I’m glad that you have come to me. I am Uyulala, the voice of silence. In the Palace of Deep Mystery.”

Atreyu noticed that the voice rose and fell, but was never wholly silent. Even when it sang no words or when he was speaking, a sound hovered in the air.

For a time it seemed to stand still; then it moved slowly away from him. He ran after it and asked: “Oh, Uyulala, tell me where you’re hid. I cannot see you and so wish I did.”

Passing him by, the voice breathed into his ear: “Never has anyone seen me, Never do I appear. You will never see me, And yet I am here.”

“Then you’re invisible?” he asked. But when no answer came, he remembered that he had to speak in rhyme, and asked: “Have you no body, is that what you mean? Or is it only that you can’t be seen?”

He heard a soft, bell-like sound, which might have been a laugh or a sob. And the voice sang: “Yes and no and neither one. I do not appear In the brightness of the sun As you appear, For my body is but sound That one can hear but never see, And this voice you’re hearing now Is all there is of me.”

In amazement, Atreyu followed the sound this way and that way through the forest of columns. It took him some time to get a new question ready: “Do I understand you right? Your body is this melody? But what if you should cease to sing? Would you cease to be?”

The answer came to him from very near: “Once my song is ended, What comes to others soon or late, When their bodies pass away, Will also be my fate. My life will last the time of my song, But that will not be long.”

Now it seemed certain that the voice was sobbing, and Atreyu, who could not understand why, hastened to ask: “Why are you so sad? Why are you crying? You sound so young. Why speak of dying?”

And the voice came back like an echo: “I am only a song of lament, The wind will blow me away. But tell me now why you were sent. What have you come to say?”

The voice died away among the columns, and Atreyu turned in all directions, trying to pick it up again. For a little while he heard nothing, then, starting in the distance, the voice came quickly closer. It sounded almost impatient: “Uyulala is answer. Answers on questions feed. So ask me what you’ve come to ask, For questions are her need.”

Atreyu cried out: “Then help me, Uyulala, tell me why You sing a plaint as if you soon must die.”

And the voice sang: “The Childlike Empress is sick, And with her Fantastica will die. The Nothing will swallow this place, It will perish and so will I. We shall vanish into the Nowhere and Never, As though we had never been. The Empress needs a new name To make her well again.”

Atreyu pleaded: “Oh, tell me, Uyulala, oh, tell me who can give The Childlike Empress the name, which alone will let her live.”

The voice replied: “Listen and listen well To the truth I have to tell. Though your spirit may be blind To the sense of what I say, Print my words upon your mind Before you go away. Later you may dredge them up From the depths of memory, Raise them to the light of day Exactly as they flow from me. Everything depends on whether You remember faithfully.”

For a time he heard only a plaintive sound without words. Then suddenly the voice came from right next to him, as though someone were whispering into his ear: “Who can give the Childlike Empress The new name that will make her well? Not you, not I, no elf, no djinn, Can save us from the evil spell. For we are figures in a book— We do what we were invented for, But we can fashion nothing new And cannot change from what we are. But there’s a realm outside Fantastica, The Outer World is its name, The people who live there are rich indeed And not at all the same. Born of the Word, the children of man, Or humans, as they’re sometimes called, Have had the gift of giving names Ever since our worlds began, In every age it’s they who gave The Childlike Empress life, For wondrous new names have the power to save. But now for many and many a day, No human has visited Fantastica, For they no longer know the way. They have forgotten how real we are, They don’t believe in us anymore. Oh, if only one child of man would come, Oh, then at last the thing would be done. If only one would hear our plea. For them it is near, but for us too far, Never can we go out to them, For theirs is the world of reality. But tell me, my hero, you so young, Will you remember what I have sung?”