by Michael Ende
In the golden mirror of her eyes, he saw, small at first as though far in the distance, a reflection which little by little grew larger and more distinct. It was a boy of about his own age; but this boy was slender and wonderfully handsome. His bearing was proud and erect, his face was noble, manly—and lean. He looked like a young prince from the Orient. His turban was of blue silk and so was the silver-embroidered tunic which reached down to his knees. His high boots, made of the softest red leather, were turned up at the toes. And he was wearing a silver-glittering mantle which hung down to the ground. But most beautiful of all were the boy’s hands, which, though delicately shaped, gave an impression of unusual strength.
Bastian gazed at the image with wonder and admiration. He couldn’t get enough of it. He was just going to ask who this handsome young prince might be when it came to him in a flash that this was his very own self—his reflection in Moon Child’s golden eyes.
In that moment he was transported, carried out of himself, and when he returned, he found he had become the handsome boy whose image he had seen.
He looked down, and saw exactly what he had seen in Moon Child’s eyes: the soft, red-leather boots, the blue tunic embroidered with silver, the resplendent long mantle. He touched his turban and felt his face. His face was the same too.
And then he turned toward Moon Child.
She was gone!
He was alone in the round room which the glowing thicket had formed.
“Moon Child!” he shouted. “Moon Child!” There was no answer.
Feeling utterly lost, he sat down. What was he to do now? Why had she left him alone? Where should he go—that is, if he was free to go anywhere, if he wasn’t caught in a trap?
While he was wondering why Moon Child should have vanished without a word of explanation, without so much as bidding him goodbye, his fingers started playing with a golden medallion that was hanging from his neck.
He looked at it and let out a cry of surprise.
It was AURYN, the Gem, the Childlike Empress’s amulet, which made its bearer her representative. Moon Child had given him power over every creature and thing in Fantastica. And as long as he wore that emblem, it would be as though she were with him.
For a long while Bastian looked at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other’s tail, and formed an oval. Then he turned the amulet over and to his surprise found an inscription on the reverse side. It consisted of four words in strangely intricate letters:
Do
What You
Wish
There had been no mention of such an inscription in the Neverending Story. Could it be that Atreyu hadn’t noticed it?
But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that the words gave him permission, ordered him in fact, to do whatever he pleased.
Bastian approached the wall of luminous plants to see if he could slip through somewhere. To his delight he found that the wall could easily be thrust aside like a curtain. Out he stepped.
In the meantime, the night plants had kept on growing, gently but irresistibly, and Perilin had become a forest such as no human eye had ever beheld.
The great trunks were now as high and thick as church towers, and still growing. In places these shimmering, milky-white pillars were so close together that it was impossible to pass between them. And seeds were still falling like a shower of sparks.
On his way through the luminous forest, Bastian tried hard not to step on the glittering seeds that lay on the ground, but this soon proved impossible. There simply wasn’t a foot’s breadth of ground from which nothing was sprouting. So he stopped worrying and went wherever the giant trees left a path open for him.
Bastian was delighted at being handsome. It didn’t bother him that there was no one to admire him. On the contrary, he was glad to have the pleasure all to himself. He didn’t care a fig for being admired by the lugs who had always made fun of him. If he thought of them at all, it was almost with pity.
In this forest, where there were no seasons and no alternation of day and night, the feeling of time was entirely different from anything Bastian had ever known. He had no idea how long he had been on his way. But little by little his pleasure in being handsome underwent a change. He began to take it for granted. Not that he was any less happy about it; but now he had the feeling that he had never been any different.
For this there was a reason which Bastian was not to discover until much later. The beauty that had been bestowed on him made him forget, little by little, that he had ever been fat and bowlegged.
Even if he had known what was happening, he would hardly have regretted the loss of this particular memory. As it happened, he didn’t even realize that he had forgotten anything. And when the memory had vanished completely, it seemed to him that he had always been as handsome as he was now.
At that point a new wish cropped up. Just being handsome wasn’t as wonderful as he had thought. He also wanted to be strong, stronger than anybody! The strongest in the world!
While going deeper and deeper into the Night Forest, he began to feel hungry. He picked off a few of the strangely shaped luminous fruits and nibbled gingerly to see if they were edible. Edible was no word for it; some were tart, some sweet, some slightly bitter, but all were delicious. He ate as he walked, and felt a miraculous strength flowing into his limbs.
In the meantime the glowing underbrush around him had become so dense that it cut off his view on all sides. To make matters worse, lianas and aerial roots were becoming inextricably tangled with the thicket below. Slashing with the side of his hand as if it had been a machete, Bastian opened up a passage. And the breach closed directly behind him as if it had never been.
On he went, but the wall of giant tree trunks blocked his path. Bastian grabbed hold of two great tree trunks and bent them apart. When he had passed through, the wall closed soundlessly behind him.
Bastian shouted for joy.
He was the Lord of the Jungle!
For a while he amused himself opening paths for himself, like an elephant that has heard the Great Call. His strength did not abate, he had no need to stop for breath. He felt no stitch in his side, and his heart didn’t thump or race.
But after a while he wearied of his new sport. The next thing he wanted was to look down on his domain from above, to see how big it was.
He spat on his hands, took hold of a liana, and pulled himself up hand over hand, without using his legs, as he had seen acrobats do in the circus. For a moment a vision—a pale memory of the past—came to him of himself in gym class, dangling like a sack of flour from the bottommost end of the rope, while the rest of the class cackled with glee. He couldn’t help smiling. How they would gape if they saw him now! They’d be proud to know him. But he wouldn’t even look at them.
Without stopping once he finally reached the branch from which the liana was hanging, climbed up and straddled it. The branch gave off a red glow. He stood up and, balancing himself like a tightrope walker, made his way to the trunk. Here again a dense tangle of creepers barred his way, but he had no difficulty in opening up a passage through it.
At that height the trunk was still so thick that five men clasping hands could not have encircled it. Another, somewhat higher branch, jutting from the trunk in a different direction, was beyond his reach. So he leapt through the air, caught hold of an aerial root, swung himself into place, made another perilous leap, and grabbed the higher branch. From there he was able to pull himself up to a still higher one. By then he was high above the ground, at least three hundred feet, but the glowing branches and foliage still obstructed his view.
Not until he had climbed to twice that height were there occasional spaces through which he could look around. But then the going became difficult, because there were fewer and fewer branches. And at last, when he had almost reached the top, he had to stop, for there was nothing to hold on to but the smooth, bare trunk, which was still as thick as a telegraph pole.
Bastian looked up and saw that the trunk or stalk ended some fifty feet higher up in an enormous, glowing, dark-red blossom. He didn’t see how he could ever reach it, but he had to keep going, for he couldn’t very well stay where he was. He threw his arms around the trunk and climbed the last fifty feet like an acrobat. The trunk swayed and bent like a blade of grass in the wind.
At length he was directly below the blossom, which was open at the top like a tulip. He managed to slip one hand between two of the petals and take hold. Then, pushing the petals wide apart, he pulled himself up.
For a moment he lay there, for by then he was somewhat out of breath. But then he stood up and looked over the edge of the great, glowing blossom, as from the crow’s nest of a ship.
The tree he had climbed was one of the tallest in the whole jungle and he was able to see far into the distance. Above him he still saw the velvety darkness of a starless night sky, but below him, as far as he could see, the treetops of Perilin presented a play of color that took his breath away.
For a long time Bastian stood there, drinking in the sight. This was his domain! He had created it! He was the lord of Perilin.
And once again he shouted for joy!
ever had Bastian slept so soundly as in that glowing red blossom. When at last he opened his eyes, the sky overhead was still a velvety black. He stretched and was happy to feel miraculous strength in his limbs.
Once again, there had been a change in him. His wish to be strong had come true.
When he stood up and looked out over the edge of the great blossom, Perilin seemed to have stopped growing. The Night Forest looked pretty much the same as when he had last seen it. He didn’t know that this too was connected with the fulfillment of his wish, and that his memory of his weakness and clumsiness had been blotted out at the same time. He was handsome and strong, but somehow that wasn’t enough for him. He also felt the need to be tough and inured to hardship like Atreyu. But how was he to come by that quality in this luminous garden, where all manner of fruit was to be had for the picking?
The first pearly streaks of dawn appeared over the eastern horizon. And with the rising of the light the phosphorescence of the night plants paled.
“High time!” said Bastian aloud. “I thought the day would never come.”
He sat down on the floor of the blossom and wondered what he should do. Climb down again and keep going? Of course, since he was lord of Perilin, no one could stop him from wandering around in it for days, if not for months or years. This jungle was so enormous he would never find his way out of it. But beautiful as he found the night plants, he didn’t think this prospect would suit him in the long run. Exploring a desert—that would be something else again. The biggest desert in Fantastica. Yes, that would be something to be proud of.
In that same moment, a violent tremor shook the giant tree. The trunk bent, and a crackling, groaning sound could be heard. Bastian had to hold tight to keep from rolling out of his blossom, the stem of which tilted more and more, until at last it lay flat.
The sun, which had risen in the meantime, disclosed a vision of devastation. Hardly anything was left of all the enormous night plants. More quickly than they had sprung up they crumbled under the glaring sunlight into dust and fine, colored sand. Gigantic tree trunks collapsed as sand castles do when they dry out. Bastian’s tree seemed to be the last still standing. But when he tried to steady himself by grasping at the petals of his flower, they crumbled in his hands and blew away like a cloud of dust. Now that there was nothing to obstruct the view, he saw how terrifyingly high up he was. He knew he would have to climb down as fast as possible, for the tree was likely to collapse at any moment.
Cautiously, he climbed out of the blossom and straddled the stem, which was now bent like a fishing pole. No sooner had he left the blossom than it broke off behind him and crumbled into dust in falling.
Ever so gingerly Bastian proceeded downward. Many a man would have panicked on seeing the ground so very far below, but Bastian was free from dizziness and his nerves were steel. Knowing that any abrupt movement might reduce the whole tree to dust, he crept along the bough and finally reached the place where the trunk became vertical. Hugging it, he let himself slide, inch by inch. Several times, great clouds of colored dust fell on him from above. There were no branches left, and what towering stumps remained crumbled when Bastian tried to use them for support. As he continued downward, the trunk became too big for him to hold. And he was still far above the ground. He stopped to think; How was he ever going to get down?
But then another tremor passed through the giant stump and relieved him of the need for further thought. What was left of the tree disintegrated and settled into a great mound of sand; Bastian rolled down the side of it in a wild whirl, turning a number of somersaults on the way, and finally came to rest at the bottom. He came close to being buried under an avalanche of colored dust, but he fought his way clear, spat the sand out of his mouth, and shook it out of his ears and clothes.
Wherever he looked, the sand was moving in slow streams and eddies. It collected into hills and dunes of every shape and size, each with a color of its own. Light-blue sand gathered to form a light-blue hill, and the same with green and violet and so on. Perilin, the Night Forest, was gone and a desert was taking its place; and what a desert!
Bastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that recurred in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermilion, lapis lazuli. And so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hills, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand.
“This,” said Bastian aloud, “is Goab, the Desert of Colors.”
The sun rose higher and higher and the heat became murderous. The air over the colored sand dunes shimmered, and Bastian realized that he was in a tight spot. He could not stay in this desert, that was certain. If he didn’t get out of it soon, he would die of hunger and thirst.
He took hold of the Childlike Empress’s emblem in the hope that it would guide him. And then staunchly he started on his way.
He climbed dune after dune; hour after hour he plodded on, never seeing anything but hill after hill. Only the colors kept changing. His fabulous strength was no longer of any use to him, for desert distances cannot be vanquished with strength. The air was a searing blast from hell. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth and his face streamed with sweat.
The sun was a whorl of fire in the middle of the sky. It had been in the same place for a long time and didn’t seem to move. That day in the desert was as long as the night in Perilin.
Bastian’s eyes burned and his tongue felt like a piece of leather. But he didn’t give up. His body had dried out, and the blood in his veins was so thick it could hardly flow. But on he went, slowly, with even steps, neither hurrying nor stopping to rest, as if he had had years of experience at crossing deserts on foot. He ignored the torments of thirst. His will had become as hard as steel, neither fatigue nor hardship could bend it.
He recalled how easily he had been discouraged in the past. He had begun all sorts of projects and given up at the first sign of difficulty. He had always been afraid of not getting enough to eat, or of falling ill, or having to endure pain. All that was far behind him.
No one before him had dared to cross Goab, the Desert of Colors, on foot, nor would anyone undertake to do so in the future. And most likely no one would ever hear of his exploit.
This last thought saddened Bastian. Goab seemed to be so inconceivably large he felt sure he would never come to the end of it. Despite his phenomenal endurance he was bound to perish sooner or later. That didn’t frighten him. He would die with calm dignity like the hunters in Atreyu’s country. But since no one ever ventured into this desert, the n
ews of his death would never be divulged. Either in Fantastica or at home. He would simply be reported missing, and no one would ever know he had been in Fantastica or in the desert of Goab. All Fantastica, he said to himself, was contained in the book that the Old Man of Wandering Mountain had written. This book was the Neverending Story, which he himself had read in the attic. Maybe his present adventures and sufferings were in the book even now. And maybe someone else would read the book someday—maybe someone was reading it at that very moment. In that case, it must be possible to give that someone a sign.
The sand hill where Bastian was standing just then was ultramarine blue. And separated from it by a narrow cleft there was a fiery-red dune. Bastian crossed over to it, gathered up sand in both hands and carried it to the blue hill. Then he strewed a long line of red sand on the hillside. He went back, brought more red sand, and repeated the operation. Soon he had fashioned three enormous red letters against the blue ground:
B B B
He viewed his work with satisfaction. No reader of the Neverending Story could fail to see his message. So whatever happened to him now, someone would know where he had been.
He sat down to rest on the red hilltop. The three letters glittered bright in the desert sun.
Another piece of his memory of the old Bastian had been wiped out. He forgot that he had once been a namby-pamby, something of a crybaby, in fact. And he was ever so proud of his toughness. But already a new wish was taking form.
“It’s true that I fear nothing,” he said aloud, “but what I still lack is true courage. Being able to endure hardships is a great thing. But courage and daring are something else again. I wish I could run into a real adventure, something calling for great courage. How grand it would be to meet some dangerous creature—maybe not as hideous as Ygramul, but much more dangerous. A beautiful, but very, very dangerous creature. The most dangerous creature in all Fantastica. I’d step right up to it and . . .”
Bastian said no more, for in that same moment he heard a roaring and rumbling so deep that the ground trembled beneath his feet.