Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

And in that he was lucky. For if Gmork’s jaws had not held him, Falkor would have come too late.

As it was, Atreyu suddenly heard the luckdragon’s bronze voice in the sky above him: “Atreyu! Are you there, Atreyu?”

“Falkor!” Atreyu shouted. And then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Falkor! Falkor! I’m here. Help me! I’m here!”

And then he saw Falkor’s white body darting like a living streak of lightning through the square of darkening sky, far away at first, then closer. Atreyu kept shouting and Falkor answered in his bell-like voice. Then at last the dragon in the sky caught sight of the boy down below, no bigger than a bright speck in a dark hole.

Falkor prepared for a landing, but the backyard was small, there was hardly any light left, and the dragon brushed against one of the high-gabled houses. The roof collapsed with a roar. Falkor felt an agonizing pain; the sharp edge of the roof had cut deep into his body. This wasn’t one of his usual graceful landings. He came tumbling down on the grimy wet pavement next to Atreyu and the dead Gmork.

He shook himself, sneezed like a dog coming out of the water, and said: “At last!

So this is where you are! Oh well, I seem to have got here on time!”

Atreyu said nothing. He threw his arms around Falkor’s neck and buried his face in the dragon’s silvery-white mane.

“Come!” said Falkor. “Climb on my back. We have no time to lose.”

Atreyu only shook his head. And then Falkor saw that Atreyu’s leg was imprisoned in the werewolf’s jaws.

“Don’t worry,” he said, rolling his ruby-red eyeballs. “We’ll fix that in a jiffy.”

He set to with both paws, trying to pry Gmork’s teeth apart. They didn’t budge by a hairbreadth.

Falkor heaved and panted. It was no use. Most likely he would never have set his young friend free if luck hadn’t come to his help. But luckdragons, as we know, are lucky, and so are those they are fond of.

When Falkor stopped to rest, he bent over Gmork’s head to get a better look at it in the dark, and it so happened that the Childlike Empress’s amulet, which was hanging from the chain on the dragon’s neck, touched the werewolf’s forehead. Instantly the jaws opened, releasing Atreyu’s leg.

“Hey!” cried Falkor. “What do you think of that?”

There was no answer from Atreyu.

“What’s wrong?” cried Falkor. “Atreyu, where are you?”

He groped in the darkness for his friend, but Atreyu wasn’t there. And while the dragon was trying to pierce the darkness with his glowing red eyes, he himself felt the pull that had snatched Atreyu away from him. The Nothing was coming too close for comfort. But AURYN protected the luckdragon from the pull.

Atreyu was free from the werewolf’s jaws, but not from the pull of the Nothing. He tried to fight it, to kick, to push, but his limbs no longer obeyed him. A few feet more, and he would have been lost forever.

In that moment, quick as lightning, Falkor grabbed him by his long blue-black hair, and carried him up into the night-black sky.

The clock in the belfry struck nine.

Neither Atreyu nor Falkor could say later how long they had flown through the impenetrable darkness. Had it been only one night? Perhaps time had stopped for them and they were hovering motionless in the limitless blackness. It was the longest night Atreyu had ever known; and the same was true for Falkor, who was much older.

But even the longest and darkest of nights passes sooner or later. And when the pale dawn came, they glimpsed the Ivory Tower on the horizon.

Here it seems necessary to pause for a moment and explain a special feature of Fantastican geography. Continents and oceans, mountains and watercourses, have no fixed locations as in the real world. Thus it would be quite impossible to draw a map of Fantastica. In Fantastica you can never be sure in advance what will be next to what. Even the directions—north, south, east, and west—change from one part of the country to another. And the same goes for summer and winter, day and night. You can step out of a blazing hot desert straight into snowfields. In Fantastica there are no measurable distances, so that “near” and “far” don’t at all mean what they do in the real world. They vary with the traveler’s wishes and state of mind. Since Fantastica has no boundaries, its center can be anywhere—or to put it another way, it is equally near to, or far from, anywhere. It all depends on who is trying to reach the center. And the innermost center of Fantastica is the Ivory Tower.

To his surprise Atreyu found himself sitting on the luckdragon’s back. He couldn’t remember how he had got there. All he remembered was that Falkor had pulled him up by the hair. Feeling cold, he gathered in his cloak, which was fluttering behind him. And then he saw that it was gray. It had lost its color, and so had his skin and hair. And Falkor, as Atreyu discovered in the rising light, was no better off. The dragon looked unreal, more like a swath of gray mist than anything else. They had both come too close to the Nothing.

“Atreyu, my little master,” the dragon said softly. “Does your wound hurt very badly?” About his own wound he said nothing.

“No,” said Atreyu. “I don’t feel anything anymore.”

“Have you a fever?”

“No, Falkor. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“I can feel you trembling,” said the dragon. “What in the world can make Atreyu tremble now?”

After a short silence Atreyu said: “We’ll be there soon! And then I’ll have to tell the Childlike Empress that nothing can save her. That’s harder than anything else I’ve had to do.”

“Yes,” said Falkor even more softly. “That’s true.”

They flew in silence, drawing steadily nearer to the Ivory Tower.

After a while the dragon spoke again.

“Have you seen her, Atreyu?”

“Who?”

“The Childlike Empress. Or rather, the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. Because that’s how you must address her when you come into her presence.”

“No, I’ve never seen her.”

“I have. That was long ago. Your great-grandfather must have been a little boy at the time. And I was a young cloud-snapper with a head full of foolishness. One night I saw the moon, shining so big and round, and I tried to grab it out of the sky. When I finally gave up, I dropped with exhaustion and landed near the Ivory Tower. That night the Magnolia Pavilion had opened its petals wide, and the Childlike Empress was sitting right in the middle of it. She cast a glance at me, just one short glance, but—I hardly know how to put it—that glance made a new dragon of me.”

“What does she look like?”

“Like a little girl. But she’s much older than the oldest inhabitants of Fantastica. Or rather, she’s ageless.”

“Yes,” said Atreyu. “But now she’s deathly sick. How can I tell her that there’s no hope?”

“Don’t try to mislead her. She can’t be fooled. Tell her the truth.”

“But suppose it kills her?”

“I don’t think it will work out that way,” said Falkor.

“You wouldn’t,” said Atreyu, “because you’re a luckdragon.”

For a long while nothing was said.

When at last they spoke together for the third time, it was Atreyu who broke the silence.

“Falkor,” he said, “I’d like to ask you one more thing.”

“Fire away.”

“ Who is she?

“What do you mean?”

“AURYN has power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica, the creatures of both light and darkness. It also has power over you and me. And yet the Childlike Empress never exerts power. It’s as if she weren’t there. And yet she is in everything. Is she like us?”