Михаэль Энде - The Neverending Story

At length Bastian spoke.

“Atreyu,” he said. “You tried to steal Moon Child’s amulet and take it for yourself. And you, Falkor, were an accomplice to his plan. Not only have you both been untrue to our old friendship, you have also been guilty of disobedience to Moon Child, who gave me the Gem. Do you confess your wrong?”

Atreyu cast a long glance at Bastian; then he nodded.

Bastian’s voice failed him. It was some time before he could go on.

“I have not forgotten, Atreyu, that it was you who brought me to Moon Child. I have not forgotten Falkor’s singing in Amarganth. So I will spare your lives, the lives of a thief and of a thief’s accomplice. Do what you will. Just so you go away, the farther the better, and never let me lay eyes on you again. I banish you forever. I have never known you.”

He bade Hykrion remove Atreyu’s chains. Then he turned away.

Atreyu stood motionless for a long while. Then he cast another glance at Bastian. It looked as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. He bent down to Falkor and whispered something in his ear. The luckdragon opened his eyes and sat up. Atreyu jumped on his back and Falkor rose into the air. He flew straight into the brightening morning sky, and though his movements were heavy and sluggish, he soon vanished in the distance.

Bastian went to his tent and threw himself down on his bed.

“At last you have achieved true greatness,” said a soft voice. “Now you’ve stopped caring for anything; now nothing can move you.”

Bastian sat up. It was Xayide. She was squatting in the darkest corner of the tent.

“You?” said Bastian. “How did you get in?”

Xayide smiled.

“O my lord and master, no guards can shut me out. Only your command can do that. Do you wish to send me away?”

Bastian lay back and closed his eyes. After a while he muttered: “It’s all the same to me. Go or stay!”

For a long while she watched him from under her half-lowered lids. Then she asked: “What are you thinking about, my lord and master?”

Bastian turned away and did not reply.

It was plain to Xayide that this was no time to leave him to himself. In such a mood he was capable of slipping away from her. She must comfort him and cheer him up—in her own way. For she was determined to hold him to the course she had planned for him—and for herself. And she knew that in the present juncture no magical belts or tricks would suffice. It would take stronger medicine, the strongest medicine available to her, namely, Bastian’s secret wishes. She sat down beside him and whispered in his ear: “When, O lord and master, will you go to the Ivory Tower?”

“I don’t know,” said Bastian. “What can I do there if Moon Child is gone?”

“You could go and wait for her.”

Bastian turned to face Xayide.

“Do you think she’ll be back?”

He had to repeat his question more insistently before Xayide replied: “No, I don’t believe so. I believe she has had to leave Fantastica forever, and that you, my lord and master, are her successor.”

Slowly Bastian sat up and looked into Xayide’s red-and-green eyes. It was some time before he grasped the full meaning of her words.

“I!?” he gasped. And his cheeks broke out in red spots.

“Do you find the idea so frightening?” Xayide whispered. “She gave you the emblem of her power. Now she has left you her empire. Now, my lord and master, you will be the Childlike Emperor. It is only your right. You not only saved Fantastica by your coming, you also created it! All of us—I too!—are your creatures. Why should you, the Great Knower, fear to take the power that is rightfully yours?”

Bastian’s eyes glowed with a cold fever. And then Xayide spoke to him of a new Fantastica, a world molded in every detail to Bastian’s taste, where he could create and destroy just as he pleased, where every creature, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, wise or foolish, would be the product of his will alone, and he would reign supreme and inscrutable, playing an everlasting game with the destinies of his subjects.

“Then alone,” she concluded, “will you be truly free, free from all obstacles, free to do as you please. Weren’t you trying to find out what you really and truly want? Well, now you know.”

That same morning they broke camp, and led by Bastian and Xayide in the coral litter, the great procession set out for the Ivory Tower. A well-nigh endless column moved along the twining paths of the Labyrinth. In the late afternoon, when the head of the column reached the Ivory Tower, the last stragglers had barely entered the great flowering maze.

Bastian could not have wished for a more festive reception. On every roof and battlement stood elves with gleaming trumpets, blaring away at the top of their lungs. The jugglers juggled, the astrologers proclaimed Bastian’s greatness and good fortune, the bakers baked cakes as big as mountains, the ministers and councilors escorted the coral litter through the teeming crowd on the High Street, which wound in an ever-narrowing spiral up the conical tower to the great gate leading into the palace. Followed by Xayide and the dignitaries, Bastian climbed the snow-white steps of the broad stairway, traversed halls and corridors, passed through a second gate, through a garden full of ivory animals, trees, and flowers, mounted higher and higher, crossed a bridge, and passed through the last gate. He was heading for the Magnolia Pavilion at the very top of the tower. But the blossom was closed and the last stretch of the way was so steep and smooth that no one could climb it.

Bastian remembered that the wounded Atreyu had not been able to climb that slope, not by his own strength at least, because no one who has ever reached the Magnolia Pavilion can say how he got there. For this victory must come as a gift.

But Bastian was not Atreyu. If anyone was now entitled to bestow the gift of this victory, it was he. And he had no intention of letting anything stop him.

“Bring workmen,” he commanded. “I want them to cut steps in this smooth surface. I wish to make my residence up there.”

“Sire,” one of the oldest councilors ventured to object, “that is where our Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes lives when she is here.”

“Do as you’re told!” Bastian roared at him.

The dignitaries turned pale and shrank back from him. But they obeyed. Workmen arrived with mallets and chisels. But try as they might, they couldn’t so much as chip the smooth surface of the dome. The chisels leapt from their hands without

leaving the slightest dent.

“Think of something else,” said Bastian angrily. “My patience is wearing thin.”

Then he turned away, and while waiting for the Magnolia Pavilion to be made accessible, he and his retinue, consisting chiefly of Xayide, the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn, and Ilwan, the blue djinn, took possession of the remaining rooms of the palace.

That same night he summoned all the ministers and councilors who had served Moon Child to a meeting in the large, circular hall where the congress of physicians had once met. There he informed them that the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes had left him, Bastian Balthazar Bux, power over the endless Fantastican Empire, and that he was now taking her place. In conclusion he demanded perfect obedience.

“Even, or I might say especially,” he added, “when my decisions are beyond your understanding. For I am not of your kind.”

He then announced that in exactly seventy-seven days he would crown himself Childlike Emperor of Fantastica and that the event would be celebrated with such splendor that it would outshine anything ever done in Fantastica. And he ordered the councilors to send messengers forthwith to every part of the realm, for he wished every nation of the Fantastican Empire to be represented at his coronation.