Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

“Oh!” Bastian cried. “I thought you had turned to stone.”

“So I had,” the lion replied. “I die with every nightfall, and every morning I wake up again.”

“I thought it was forever,” said Bastian.

“It always is forever,” said Grograman mysteriously.

He stood up, stretched, and trotted about the cave. His fur shone more and more brightly in the colors of the mosaic floor. Suddenly he stopped still and looked at the boy.

“Did you shed tears over me?” he asked.

Bastian nodded.

“Then,” said the lion, “you are not only the only being who has ever slept between the paws of the Many-Colored Death, but also the only being who has ever mourned his death.”

Bastian looked at the lion, who was trotting about again, and finally asked him in a whisper: “Are you always alone?”

Again the lion stood still, but this time he did not turn toward Bastian. He kept his face averted and repeated in his rumbling voice: “Alone!”

The word echoed through the cave.

“My realm is the desert, and it is also my work. Wherever I go, everything around me turns to desert. I carry it with me. Since I am made of deadly fire, must I not be doomed to everlasting solitude?”

Bastian fell into a dismayed silence.

“Master,” said the lion, looking at the boy with glowing eyes. “You who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress, can you tell me this: Why must I always die at nightfall?”

“So that Perilin, the Night Forest, can grow in the Desert of Colors,” said Bastian.

“Perilin?” said the lion. “What’s that?”

Then Bastian told him about the miraculous jungle that consisted of living light. While Grograman listened in fascinated amazement, Bastian described the diversity and beauty of the glimmering phosphorescent plants, their silent, irresistible growth, their dreamlike beauty and incredible size. His enthusiasm grew as he spoke and Grograman’s eyes glowed more and more brightly.

“All that,” Bastian concluded, “can happen only when you are turned to stone. But Perilin would swallow up everything else and stifle itself if it didn’t have to die and crumble into dust when you wake up. You and Perilin need each other.”

For a long while Grograman was silent.

“Master,” he said then. “Now I see that my dying gives life and my living death, and both are good. Now I understand the meaning of my existence. I thank you.”

He strode slowly and solemnly into the darkest corner of the cave. Bastian couldn’t see what he did there, but he heard a jangling of metal. When Grograman came back, he was carrying something in his mouth. With a deep bow he laid this something at Bastian’s feet.

It was a sword.

It didn’t look very impressive. The iron sheath was rusty, and the hilt might have belonged to a child’s wooden sword.

“Can you give it a name?” Grograman asked.

Bastian examined it carefully.

“Sikanda,” he said.

In that same moment the sword darted from its sheath and flew into his hand. The blade consisted of pure light and glittered so brightly that he could hardly bear to look at it. It was double-edged and weighed no more than a feather.

“This sword has been destined for you since the beginning of time,” said Grograman. “For only one who has ridden on my back, who has eaten and drunk of my fire and bathed in it like you, can touch it without danger. But only because you have given it its right name does it belong to you.”

“Sikanda!” said Bastian under his breath as, fascinated by the gleaming light, he swung the sword slowly through the air. “It’s a magic sword, isn’t it?”

“Nothing in all Fantastica can resist it,” said Grograman, “neither rock nor steel. But you must not use force. Whatever may threaten you, you may wield it only if it leaps into your hand of its own accord as it did now. It will guide your hand and by its own power will do what needs to be done. But if your will makes you draw it from its sheath, you will bring great misfortune on yourself and on Fantastica. Never forget that.”

“I will never forget it,” Bastian promised.

The sword flew back into its sheath and again it looked old and worthless. Bastian grasped the leather belt on which the sheath hung and slung it around his waist.

“And now, master,” Grograman suggested, “let us, if you wish, go racing through the desert together. Climb on my back, for I must go out now.”

Bastian mounted, and the lion trotted out into the open. The Night Forest had long since crumbled into colored sand, and the morning sun rose above the desert horizon. Together they swept over the dunes—like a dancing flame, like a blazing tempest. Bastian felt as though he were riding a flaming comet through light and colors.

Toward midday Grograman stopped.

“This, master, is the place where we met.”

Bastian’s head was still reeling from the wild ride. He looked around but could see neither the ultramarine-blue nor the fiery-red hill. Nor was there any sign of the letters he had made. Now the dunes were olive-green and pink.

“It’s all entirely different,” he said.

“Yes, master,” said the lion. “That’s the way it is—different every day. Up until now I didn’t know why. But since you told me that Perilin grows out of the sand, I understand.”

“But how do you know it’s the same place as yesterday?”

“I feel it as I feel my own body. The desert is a part of me.”

Bastian climbed down from Grograman’s back and seated himself on the olive-green hill. The lion lay beside him and now he too was olive-green. Bastian propped his chin on his hand and looked out toward the horizon.

“Grograman,” he said after a long silence. “May I ask you a question?”

“Your servant is listening.”

“Is it true that you’ve always been here?”

“Always!”

“And the desert of Goab has always existed?”

“Yes, the desert too. Why do you ask?”

Bastian pondered.

“I don’t get it,” he finally confessed. “I’d have bet it wasn’t here before yesterday morning.”

“What makes you think that, master?”

Then Bastian told him everything that had happened since he met Moon Child.

“It’s all so strange,” he concluded. “A wish comes into my head, and then something always happens that makes the wish come true. I haven’t made this up, you know. I wouldn’t be able to. I could never have invented all the different night plants in Perilin. Or the colors of Goab—or you! It’s all much more wonderful and real than anything I could have made up. But all the same, nothing is there until I’ve wished it.”

“That,” said the lion, “is because you’re carrying AURYN, the Gem.”

“But does all this exist only after I’ve wished it? Or was it all there before?”

“Both,” said Grograman.

“How can that be?” Bastian cried almost impatiently. “You’ve been here in Goab, the Desert of Colors, since heaven knows when. The room in your palace was waiting for me since the beginning of time. So, too, was the sword Sikanda. You told me so yourself.”

“That is true, master.”

“But I—I’ve only been in Fantastica since last night! So it can’t be true that all these things have existed only since I came here.”

“Master,” the lion replied calmly. “Didn’t you know that Fantastica is the land of stories? A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.”

“Then Perilin, too, must always have been there,” said the perplexed Bastian.

“Beginning at the moment when you gave it its name,” Grograman replied, “it has existed forever.”

“You mean that I created it?”