Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

You’re caught and there’s no escape.”

“Then we’ll die together,” said Atreyu.

“So we will,” said Gmork, “but in very different ways, you little fool. For I shall die before the Nothing gets here, but you will be swallowed up by it. There’s a big difference. Because I die first, my story is at an end. But yours will go on forever, in the form of a lie.”

“Why are you so wicked?” Atreyu asked.

“Because you creatures had a world,” Gmork replied darkly, “and I didn’t.”

“What was your mission?”

Up until then Gmork had been sitting up. Now he slumped to the ground. He was plainly at the end of his strength, and he spoke in raucous gasps.

“Those whom I serve decided that Fantastica must be destroyed. But then they saw that their plan was endangered. They had learned that the Childlike Empress had sent out a messenger, a great hero—and it looked as if he might succeed in bringing a human to Fantastica. They wanted to have him killed before it was too late. That was why they sent me, because I had been in Fantastica and knew my way around. I picked up his trail right away, I tracked him day and night—gradually coming closer—through the Land of the Sassafranians—the jungle temple of Muwamath—Howling Forest—the Swamps of Sadness—the Dead Mountains—but then in the Deep Chasm by Ygramul’s net, I lost the track, he seemed to have dissolved into thin air. I went on searching, he had to be somewhere. But I never found his trail again, and this is where I ended up. I’ve failed. But so has he, for Fantastica is going under! I forgot to tell you, his name was Atreyu.”

Gmork raised his head. The boy had taken a step back.

“I am Atreyu,” he said.

A tremor ran through the werewolf’s shrunken body. It came again and again and grew stronger and stronger. Then from his throat came a panting cough. It grew louder and more rasping; it swelled to a roar that echoed back from the city’s walls. The werewolf was laughing.

It was the most horrible sound Atreyu had ever heard. Never again was he to hear anything like it.

And then suddenly it stopped.

Gmork was dead.

For a long time Atreyu stood motionless. At length he approached the dead werewolf—he himself didn’t know why—bent over the head and touched the shaggy black fur. And in that moment, quicker than thought, Gmork’s teeth snapped on Atreyu’s leg. Even in death, the evil in him had lost none of its power.

Desperately Atreyu tried to break open the jaws. In vain. The gigantic teeth, as though held in place by steel clamps, dug into his flesh. Atreyu sank to the grimy pavement beside the werewolf’s corpse.

And step by step, soundless and irresistible, the Nothing advanced from all sides, through the high black wall surrounding the city.

ust as Atreyu passed through the somber gateway of Spook City and started on the exploration that was to end so dismally in a squalid backyard, Falkor, the luckdragon, was making an astonishing discovery.

While searching tirelessly for his little friend and master, he had flown high into the clouds. On every side lay the sea, which was gradually growing calmer after the great storm that had churned it from top to bottom. Suddenly, far in the distance, Falkor caught sight of something that puzzled and intrigued him. It was as though a beam of golden light were going on and off, on and off, at regular intervals. And that beam of light seemed to point directly at him, Falkor.

He flew toward it as fast as he could, and when he was directly over it he saw that the light signal came from deep down in the water, perhaps from the bottom of the sea.

Luckdragons, as we know, are creatures of air and fire. Not only is the liquid element alien to them; it is also their enemy. Water can extinguish them like a flame, or it can asphyxiate them, for they never stop breathing in air through their thousands of pearly scales. They feed on air and heat and require no other nourishment, but without air and heat they can only live a short time.

Falkor didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know what the strange blinking under the sea was, or whether it had anything to do with Atreyu.

But he didn’t hesitate for long. He flew high into the sky, turned around, and head down, pressing his legs close to his body, which he held stiff and straight as a telegraph pole, he plummeted. The water spouted like a fountain as he hit the sea at top speed. The shock was so great that he almost lost consciousness, but he forced himself to open his ruby-red eyes. By then the blinking beam was close, only a few body lengths ahead of him. Air bubbles were forming around his body, as in a saucepan full of water just before it boils. He felt that he was cooling and weakening. With his last strength he dived still deeper—and then the source of light was within reach. It was AURYN, the Gem. Luckily the chain of the amulet had got caught on a coral branch growing out of the wall of an under-sea chasm. Otherwise the Gem would have fallen into the bottomless depths.

Falkor seized it and put the chain around his neck for fear of losing it—for he felt that he was about to faint.

When he came to, he didn’t know where he was, for to his amazement he was flying through the air, and when he looked down, there was the sea again. He was flying in a very definite direction and very fast, faster than would have seemed possible in his weakened condition. He tried to slow down, but soon found that his body would not obey him. An outside will far stronger than his own had taken possession of his body and was guiding it. That will came from AURYN, the amulet suspended from a chain around his neck.

The day was drawing to a close when at last Falkor sighted a beach in the distance. He couldn’t see much of the country beyond, it seemed to be hidden by fog. But when he came closer, he saw that most of the land had been swallowed up by the Nothing, which hurt his eyes and gave him the feeling of being blind.

At that point Falkor would probably have turned back if he had been able to do as he wanted. But the mysterious power of the gem forced him to fly straight ahead. And soon he knew why, for in the midst of the endless Nothing he discovered a small island that was still holding out, an island covered with high-gabled houses and crooked towers. Falkor had a strong suspicion whom he would find there, and from then on it was not only the powerful will of the amulet that spurred him on but his own as well. It was almost dark in the somber backyard where Atreyu lay beside the dead werewolf. The luckdragon was barely able to distinguish the boy’s light-colored body from the monster’s black coat. And the darker it grew, the more they looked like one body.

Atreyu had long given up trying to break loose from the steel vise of the werewolf’s jaws. Dazed with fear and weakness, he was back in the Grass Ocean. Before him stood the purple buffalo he had not killed. He called to the other children, his companions of the hunt, who by then had no doubt become real hunters. But no one answered. Only the giant buffalo stood there motionless, looking at him. Atreyu called Artax, his horse, but he didn’t come, and his cheery neigh was nowhere to be heard. He called the Childlike Empress, but in vain. He wouldn’t be able to tell her anything. He hadn’t become a hunter, and he was no longer a messenger. He was Nobody.

Atreyu had given up.

But then he felt something else: the Nothing. It must be very near, he thought. Again he felt its terrible force of attraction. It made him dizzy. He sat up and, groaning, tugged at his leg. But the fangs held fast.