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?”
“Oh yes!” cried Atreyu in his bewilderment. He was determined to imprint every word on his memory, though he had forgotten what for. He merely had a feeling that it was very, very important. But the singsong voice and the effort of hearing and speaking in rhymes made him sleepy. He murmured:
“I will remember. I will remember every word.
But tell me, what shall I do with what I’ve heard?”
And the voice answered:
“That is for you alone to decide.
I’ve told you what was in my heart.
So this is when our ways divide,
When you and I must part.”
Almost half asleep, Atreyu asked:
“But if you go away,
Where will you stay?”
Again he heard the sobbing in the voice, which receded more and more as it sang:
“The Nothing has come near,
The Oracle is dying.
No one again will hear
Uyulala laughing, sighing.
You are the last to hear
My voice among the columns,
Sounding far and near.
Perhaps you will accomplish
What no one else has done,
But to succeed, young hero,
Remember what I have sung.”
And then, farther and farther in the distance, Atreyu heard the words:
“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.”
That was the last Atreyu heard.
He sat down, propped his back against a column, looked up at the night sky, and tried to understand what he had heard. Silence settled around him like a soft, warm cloak, and he fell asleep.
When he awoke in the cold dawn, he was lying on his back, looking up at the sky.
The last stars paled. Uyulala’s voice still sounded in his thoughts. And then suddenly he remembered everything that had gone before and the purpose of his Great Quest.
At last he knew what was to be done. Only a human, a child of man, someone from the world beyond the borders of Fantastica, could give the Childlike Empress a new name. He would just have to find a human and bring him to her.
Briskly he sat up.
Ah, thought Bastion. How gladly I would help her! Her and Atreyu too. What a beautiful name I would think up! If I only knew how to reach Atreyu. I’d go this minute. Wouldn’t he be amazed if I were suddenly standing before him! But it’s impossible. Or is it?
And then he said under his breath: “If there’s any way of my getting to you in Fantastica, tell me, Atreyu. I’ll come without fail. You’ll see.”
When Atreyu looked around, he saw that the forest of columns with its stairways and terraces had vanished. Whichever way he looked there was only the empty plain that he had seen behind each of the three gates before going through. But now the gates were gone, all three of them.
He stood up and again looked in all directions. It was then that he discovered, in the middle of the plain, a patch of Nothing like those he had seen in Howling Forest. But this time it was much nearer. He turned around and ran the other way as fast as he could.
He had been running for some time when he saw, far in the distance, a rise in the ground and thought it might be the stony rust-red mountains where the Great Riddle Gate was.
He started toward it, but he had a long way to go before he was close enough to make out any details. Then he began to have doubts. The landscape looked about right, but there was no gate to be seen. And the stones were not red, but dull gray.
Then, when he had gone much farther, he saw two great stone pillars with a space between them. The lower part of a gate, he thought. But there was no arch above it. What had happened?
Hours later, he reached the spot and discovered the answer. The great stone arch had collapsed and the sphinxes were gone.
Atreyu threaded his way through the ruins, then climbed to the top of a stone pyramid and looked out, trying to locate the place where he had left the Gnomics and the luckdragon. Or had they fled from the Nothing in the meantime?
At last he saw a tiny flag moving this way and that behind the balustrade of Engywook’s observatory. Atreyu waved both arms, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted: “Ho! Are you still there?”
The sound of his voice had hardly died away when a pearly-white luckdragon rose from the hollow where the gnomes had their cave and flew through the air with lazy, sinuous movements. He must have been feeling playful, for now and then he turned over on his back and looped-the-loop so fast that he looked like a burst of white flame. And then he landed not far from the pyramid where Atreyu was standing. When he propped himself on his forepaws, he was so high above Atreyu that to bring his head close to him, he had to bend his long, supple neck sharply downward. Rolling his ruby-red eyeballs for joy, stretching his tongue far out of his wide-open gullet, he boomed in his bronze-bell voice: “Atreyu, my friend and master! So you’ve finally come back! I’m so glad! We had almost given up hope—the gnomes, that is, not I.”
“I’m glad too!” said Atreyu. “But what has happened in this one night?”
“One night?” cried Falkor. “Do you think it’s been only one night? You’re in for a surprise. Climb on, I’ll carry you.”
Atreyu swung himself up on the enormous animal’s back. It was his first time aboard a luckdragon. And though he had ridden wild horses and was anything but timid, this first short ride through the air took his breath away. He clung fast to Falkor’s flowing mane, and Falkor called back with a resounding laugh: “You’ll just have to get used to it.”
“At least,” Atreyu called back, gasping for air, “you seem to be well again.”
“Pretty near,” said the dragon. “Not quite.”
Then they landed outside the gnomes’ cave, and there in the entrance were Engywook and Urgl waiting for them.
Engywook’s tongue went right to work: “What have you seen and done? Tell us all about it! Those gates, for instance? Do they bear out my theories? And who or what is Uyulala?”
But Urgl cut him off. “That’ll do! Let the boy eat and drink. What do you think I’ve cooked and baked for? Plenty of time later for your idle curiosity.”
Atreyu climbed down off the dragon’s back and exchanged greetings with the gnomes. Again the little table was set with all sorts of delicacies and a steaming pot of herb tea.
The clock in the belfry struck five. Bastian thought sadly of the two chocolate nut bars that he kept in his bedside table at home in case he should be hungry at night. If he had suspected that he would never go back there, he could have brought them along as an iron ration. But it was too late to think of that now.
Falkor stretched out in the little gully in such a way that his huge head was near Atreyu and he could hear everything.
“Just imagine,” he said. “My friend and master thinks he was gone for only one night.”
“Was it longer?” Atreyu asked.
“Seven days and seven nights,” said Falkor. “Look, my wounds are almost healed.”
Then for the first time Atreyu noticed that his own wound too was healed. The herb dressing had fallen off. He was amazed. “How can it be? I passed through three magic gates. I talked with Uyulala, then I fell asleep. But I can’t possibly have slept that long.”
“Space and time,” said Engywook, “must be different in there. Anyway, no one had ever stayed in the Oracle as long as you. What happened? Are you finally going to speak?”
“First,” said Atreyu, “I’d like to know what has happened here.”
“You can see for yourself,” said Engywook. “The colors are all fading. Everything is getting more and more unreal. The Great Riddle Gate isn’t there anymore. It looks as if the Nothing were taking over.”
“What about the sphinxes? Where have they gone? Did they fly away? Did you see them go?”
“We saw nothing,” Engywook lamented. “We hoped you could tell us something.
Suddenly the stone gate was in ruins, but none of us saw or heard a thing. I even went over and examined the wreckage. And do you know what I found? The fragments are as old as the hills and overgrown with gray moss, as if they had been lying there for hundreds of years, as if the Great Riddle Gate had never existed.”
“It was there, though,” said Atreyu under his breath, “because I went through it. And then I went through the Magic Mirror Gate and the No-Key Gate.”
And then Atreyu reported everything that had happened to him. Now he remembered every last detail.
As Atreyu told them his story, Engywook, who at first had impatiently demanded further information, became more and more subdued. And when Atreyu repeated almost word for word what Uyulala had told him, the gnome said nothing at all. His shriveled little face had taken on a look of deepest gloom.
“Well,” said Atreyu in conclusion. “Now you know the secret. Uyulala is just a voice. She can only be heard. She is where she sings.”
For a time Engywook was silent. When he spoke, his voice was husky: “You mean she was.”
“Yes,” said Atreyu. “She herself said no one else would ever hear her speak. I was the last.”
Two little tears flowed down Engywook’s wrinkled cheeks.
“All for nothing!” he croaked. “My whole life work, all my research, my year-long observations. At last someone brings me the last stone for my scientific edifice, finally I’m in a position to complete my work, to write the last chapter—and it’s absolutely futile and superfluous. It’s no longer of the slightest interest to anyone, because the object under investigation has ceased to exist. There go my hopes. All shattered.”
He seemed to break into a fit of coughing, but actually he was shaken with sobs.
Moved to sympathy, Urgl stroked his bald little head and mumbled: “Poor old Engywook! Poor old Engywook! Don’t let it get you down. You’ll find something else to occupy you.”
“Woman!” Engywook fumed at her. “What you see before you is not a poor old Engywook, but a tragic figure.”
Once again he ran into the cave, and again a door was heard slamming within.
Urgl shook her head and sighed. “He means no harm,” she muttered. “He’s a good old sort. If only he weren’t plumb crazy!”
When they had. finished eating, Urgl stood up and said: “I’ve got to pack now. We can’t take much with us, but we will need a few things. I’d better hurry.”
“You’re going away?” Atreyu asked.
Urgl nodded. “We have no choice,” she said sadly. “Where the Nothing takes hold, nothing grows. And now, my poor old man has no reason to stay. We’ll just have to see how we make out. We’ll find a place somewhere. But what about you? What are your plans?”
“I have to do as Uyulala told me,” said Atreyu. “Try and find a human and take him to the Childlike Empress to give her a new name.”
“Where will you look for this human?” Urgl asked.
“I don’t know,” said Atreyu. “Somewhere beyond the borders of Fantastica.”
“We’ll get there!” came Falkor’s bell-like voice. I’ll carry you. You’ll see, we’ll be lucky.”
“In that case,” Urgl grunted, “you’d better get started.”
“Maybe we could give you a lift,” Atreyu suggested. “For part of the way.”
“That’s all I need,” said Urgl. “You won’t catch me gallivanting around in the air. A self-respecting gnome keeps his feet on the ground. Besides, you mustn’t let us delay you. You have more important things to do—for us all.”
“But I want to show my gratitude,” said Atreyu.
“The best way of doing that is to get started and stop frittering the time away with useless jibber-jabber.”
“She’s got something there,” said Falkor. “Let’s go, Atreyu.”
Atreyu swung himself up on the luckdragon’s back. One last time he turned back and shouted: “Goodbye!”
But Urgl was already inside the cave, packing.
When some hours later she and Engywook stepped out into the open, each was carrying an overloaded back-basket, and again they were busily quarreling. Off they waddled on their tiny, crooked legs, and never once looked back.
Later on, Engywook became very famous, in fact, he became the most famous gnome in the world, but not because of his scientific investigations. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.
At the moment when the two gnomes were starting out, Atreyu was far away, whizzing through the skies of Fantastica on the back of Falkor, the white luckdragon.
Involuntarily Bastian looked up at the skylight, trying to imagine how it would be if Falkor came cutting through the darkening sky like a dancing white flame, if he and Atreyu were coming to get him.
“Oh my,” he sighed. “Wouldn’t that be something!”
He could help them, and they could help him. He would be saved and so would Fantastica.