The Neverending Story

by Michael Ende

  Merciful heavens! thought the boy without a name. If only they haven’t seen me! They’ll shatter the picture with their screams!

  But they had seen him.

  Laughing and rollicking, they shot down and landed all around him in the snow.

  “Hurrah!” they croaked, opening wide their motley-colored mouths. “At last we’ve found him! Our great benefactor!”

  They tumbled in the snow, threw snowballs at one another, turned somersaults, and stood on their heads.

  “Be still! Please be still!” the boy without a name whispered in desperation.

  The whole chorus screamed with enthusiasm: “What did he say?” — “He said we were too still!” — “Nobody ever told us that before!”

  “What do you want of me?” asked the boy. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  All whirled around him, cackling: “Great benefactor! Great benefactor! Do you remember how you saved us, when we were the Acharis? Then we were the unhappiest creatures in all Fantastica, but now we’re fed up with ourselves. At first what you did to us was a lot of fun, but now we’re bored to death. We flit and we flutter and we don’t know where we’re at. We can’t even plan any decent games, because we haven’t any rules. You’ve turned us into preposterous clowns, that’s what you’ve done. You’ve cheated us!”

  “I meant well,” said the horrified boy.

  “Sure, you meant well by yourself,” the Shlamoofs shouted in chorus. “Your kindness made you feel great, didn’t it? But we paid the bill for your kindness, you great benefactor!”

  “What should I do?” the boy asked. “What do you want of me?”

  “We’ve been looking for you,” screamed the Shlamoofs with grimacing clown faces. “We wanted to catch you before you could make yourself scarce. Now we’ve caught you, and we won’t leave you in peace until you become our chief. We want you to be our Head Shlamoof, our Master Shlamoof, our General Shlamoof! You name it.”

  “But why?” the boy asked imploringly.

  The chorus of clowns screamed back: “We want you to give us orders. We want you to order us around, to make us do something, to forbid us to do something. We want you to give us an aim in life!”

  “I can’t do that. Why don’t you elect one of your number?”

  “No, we want you. You made us what we are.”

  “No,” the boy panted. “I have to go! I have to go back!”

  “Not so fast, great benefactor!” cried the butterfly-clowns. “You can’t get away from us. You think you can sneak away from Fantastica, don’t you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “But I’m at the end of my rope,” the boy protested.

  “What about us?” the chorus replied.

  “Go away!” cried the boy. “I can’t bother with you anymore.”

  “Then you must turn us back!” cried the shrill voices. “Then we’d rather be Acharis. The Lake of Tears has dried up, Amarganth is on dry land now. And no one spins fine silver filigree anymore. We want to be Acharis again.”

  “I can’t!” the boy replied. “I no longer have any power in Fantastica.”

  “In that case,” the whole swarm bellowed, whirling and swirling about, “we’ll kidnap you!”

  Hundreds of little hands seized him and tried to lift him off the ground. The boy struggled with might and main and the butterflies were tossed in all directions. But like angry wasps they kept coming back.

  Suddenly in the midst of this hubbub a low yet powerful sound was heard—something like the booming of a bronze bell.

  In a twinkling the Shlamoofs took flight and their cloud soon vanished in the sky.

  The boy who had no name knelt in the snow. Before him, crumbled into dust, lay the picture. Now all was lost. Now nothing could lead him to the Water of Life.

  When he looked up, he saw, blurred by his tears, two forms in the snow. One was large, the other small. He wiped his eyes and took another look.

  The two forms were Falkor, the white luckdragon, and Atreyu.

  ig-zagging unsteadily, scarcely able to control his feet, the boy who had no name took a few steps toward Atreyu. Then he stopped. Atreyu did nothing, but watched him closely. The wound in his chest was no longer bleeding.

  For a long while they faced each other. Neither said a word. It was so still they could hear each other’s breathing.

  Slowly the boy without a name reached for the gold chain around his neck and divested himself of AURYN. He bent down and carefully laid the Gem in the snow before Atreyu. As he did so, he took another look at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other’s tail and formed an oval. Then he let the amulet go.

  In that moment AURYN, the golden Gem, became so bright, so radiant that he had to close his eyes as though dazzled by the sun. When he opened them again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes.

  Atreyu, Falkor, and the boy without a name stood side by side, near the head of the black snake, which held the white snake’s tail in its jaws. The rigid eye with its vertical pupil was directed at the three of them. Compared to that eye, they were tiny; even the luckdragon seemed no larger than a white caterpillar.

  The motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain.

  But while holding each other fast, they guarded the Water of Life. For in the center of the edifice they encircled there was a great fountain. Its beam danced up and down and in falling created and dispersed thousands of forms far more quickly than the eye could follow. The foaming water burst into a fine mist, in which the golden light was refracted with all the colors of the rainbow. The fountain roared and laughed and rejoiced with a thousand voices.

  As though parched with thirst, the boy without a name looked at the water—but how was he to reach it? The snake’s head did not move.

  Then Falkor raised his head. His ruby-red eyeballs glittered.

  “Do you understand what the Water is saying?” he asked.

  “No,” said Atreyu. “I don’t.”

  “I don’t know why,” said Falkor. “But I understand perfectly. Maybe because I’m a luckdragon. All the languages of joy are related.”

  “What does the Water say?” Atreyu asked.

  Falkor listened closely, and slowly repeated what he heard:

  “I am the Water of Life,

  Out of myself I grow.

  The more you drink of me,

  The fuller I will flow.”

  Again he listened awhile. Then he said: “It keeps saying: ‘Drink! Drink! Do what you wish!’ “

  “How can we get to it?” Atreyu asked.

  “It’s asking us our names,” Falkor reported.

  “I’m Atreyu!” Atreyu cried.

  “I’m Falkor!” cried Falkor.

  The boy without a name was silent.

  Atreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: “He’s Bastian Balthazar Bux!”

  “It asks,” Falkor translated, “why he doesn’t speak for himself.”

  “He can’t,” said Atreyu. “He has forgotten everything.”

  Falkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain.

  “Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won’t let him through.”

  Atreyu replied: “I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him.”

  Falkor listened.

  “It wants to know by what right?”

  “I am his friend,” said Atreyu.

  Again Falkor listened attentively.

  “That may not be acceptable,” he whispered to Atreyu. “Now it’s speaking of your wound. It wants to know how that came about.”

  “W
e were both right,” said Atreyu, “and we were both wrong. But now Bastian has given up AURYN of his own free will.”

  Falkor listened and nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “It accepts that. This place is AURYN. We are welcome, it says.”

  Atreyu looked up at the enormous golden dome. “Each of us,” he whispered, “has worn it around his neck—you too, Falkor, for a while.”

  The luckdragon motioned him to be still and listened again to the sound of the Water. Then he translated:

  “AURYN is the door that Bastian has been looking for. He carried it with him from the start. But—it says—the snakes won’t let anything belonging to Fantastica cross the threshold. Bastian must therefore give up everything the Childlike Empress gave him. Otherwise he cannot drink of the Water of Life.”

  “But we are in her sign!” cried Atreyu. “Isn’t she herself here?”

  “It says that Moon Child’s power ends here. She is the only one who can never set foot in this place. She cannot penetrate to the center of AURYN, because she cannot cast off her own self.”

  Atreyu was too bewildered to speak.

  “Now,” said Falkor, “it’s asking whether Bastian is ready.”

  At that moment the enormous black snake’s head began to move very slowly, though without releasing the white snake’s tail. The gigantic bodies arched until they formed a gate, one half of which was black and the other white.

  Atreyu took Bastian by the hand and led him through the terrible gate toward the fountain, which now lay before them in all its grandeur. Falkor followed. As they advanced, one after another of Bastian’s Fantastican gifts fell away from him. The strong, handsome, fearless hero became again the small, fat, timid boy. Even his clothing, which had been reduced almost to rags in the Minroud Mine, vanished and dissolved into nothingness. In the end he stood naked before the great golden bowl, at the center of which the Water of Life leapt high into the air like a crystal tree.

  In this last moment, when he no longer possessed any of the Fantastican gifts but had not yet recovered his memory of his own world and himself, he was in a state of utter uncertainty, not knowing which world he belonged to or whether he really existed.

  But then he jumped into the crystal-clear water. He splashed and spluttered and let the sparkling rain fall into his mouth. He drank till his thirst was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was newborn. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.

  And much later, long after Bastian had returned to his world, in his maturity and even in his old age, this joy never left him entirely. Even in the hardest moments of his life he preserved a lightheartedness that made him smile and that comforted others.

  “Atreyu!” he cried out to his friend, who was standing with Falkor at the edge of the great golden bowl. “Come on in! Come and drink! It’s wonderful!”

  Atreyu laughed and shook his head.

  “No,” he called back. “This time we’re only here to keep you company.”

  “This time?” Bastian asked. “What do you mean by that?”

  Atreyu exchanged a glance with Falkor. Then he said: “Falkor and I have already been here. We didn’t recognize the place at first, because we were asleep when we were brought here and when we were taken away. But now we remember.”

  Bastian came out of the water.

  “Now I know who I am,” he said, beaming.

  “Yes,” said Atreyu, and nodded. “And now I recognize you. Now you look the way you did when I saw you in the Magic Mirror Gate.”

  Bastian looked up at the foaming, sparkling water.

  “I’d like to bring my father some,” he shouted. “But how?”

  “I don’t think you can do that,” said Atreyu. “It’s not possible to carry anything from Fantastica across the threshold.”

  “For Bastian it is!” said Falkor, whose voice had resumed its full bronze resonance. “He can do it.”

  “You really are a luckdragon,” said Bastian.

  Falkor motioned him to be still while he listened to the roaring voice of the Water.

  Then he said: “The Water says you must be on your way now and so must we.”

  “Which is my way?” Bastian asked.

  “Out through the other gate,” Falkor answered. “Where the white snake’s head is lying.”

  “All right,” said Bastian. “But how will I get out? The white head isn’t moving.”

  Indeed, the white snake’s head lay motionless. It held the black snake’s tail in its jaws and stared at Bastian out of its great eyes.

  “The Water asks you,” Falkor translated, “whether you completed all the stories you began in Fantastica.”

  “No,” said Bastian. “None of them really.”

  Falkor listened awhile. His face took on a worried look.

  “In that case, it says, the white snake won’t let you through. You must go back to Fantastica and finish them all.”

  “All the stories?” Bastian stammered. “Then I’ll never be able to go back. Then it’s all been for nothing.”

  Falkor listened eagerly.

  “What does it say?” Bastian wanted to know.

  “Hush!” said Falkor.

  After a while he sighed arid said: “It says there’s no help for it unless someone promises to do it in your place. But no one can do that.”

  “I can! I will!” said Atreyu.

  Bastian looked at him in silence. Then he fell on his neck and stammered: “Atreyu! Atreyu! I’ll never forget this!”

  Atreyu smiled.

  “That’s good, Bastian. Then you won’t forget Fantastica either.”

  He gave him a brotherly pat on the back, then quickly turned around and headed for the black snake’s gate, which was still upraised and open as when they had entered.

  “Falkor,” said Bastian. “How will you and Atreyu finish the stories I have left behind?”

  The white dragon winked one of his ruby-red eyes and replied: “With luck, my boy! With luck!”

  Then he followed his friend and master.

  Bastian watched as they passed through the gate on their way back to Fantastica.

  They turned again and waved to him. Then as the black snake’s head sank to the ground, Atreyu and Falkor vanished from Bastian’s sight.

  Now he was alone.

  He turned towards the white snake’s head. It had risen and the snake’s body now formed a gate just as the black snake’s body had done.

  Quickly Bastian cupped his hands, gathered as much of the Water of Life as he could hold, ran to the gate, and flung himself into the empty darkness beyond.

  “Father!” he screamed. “Father! I—am—Bastian—Balthazar—Bux!”

  “Father! Father! I—am—Bastian—Balthazar—Bux!”

  Still screaming, he found himself in the schoolhouse attic, which long, long ago he had left for Fantastica. At first he didn’t recognize the place, and because of the strange objects around him, the stuffed animals, the skeleton, and the paintings, he thought for a brief moment that this might be a different part of Fantastica. But then, catching sight of his school satchel and the rusty seven-armed candelabrum with the spent candles, he knew where he was.

  How long could it have been since he started on his long journey through the Neverending Story? Weeks? Months? Years? He had once read about a man who had spent just an hour in a magic cave. When he returned home, a hundred years had passed, and of all the people he had known as a child he remembered only one, and he was an old old man.

  Bastian was aware of the gray daylight, but he could not make out whether it was morning or afternoon. It was bitter cold in the attic, just as on the night of Bastian’s departure.

  He
disentangled himself from the dusty army blankets, put on his shoes and coat, and saw to his surprise that they were wet as they had been the day when it had rained so hard.

  He looked for the book he had stolen that day, the book that had started him on his adventure. He was determined to bring it back to that grumpy Mr. Coreander. What did he care if Mr. Coreander punished him for stealing it, or reported him to the police? A person who had ridden on the back of the Many-Colored Death didn’t scare so easily. But the book wasn’t there.

  Bastian looked and looked. He rummaged through the blankets and looked in every corner. Without success. The Neverending Story had disappeared.

  “Oh well,” Bastian finally said to himself. I’ll have to tell him it’s gone. Of course he won’t believe me. There’s nothing I can do about that. I’ll just have to take the consequences. But maybe he won’t even remember the book after all this time. Maybe the bookshop isn’t even there anymore.”

  He would soon find out how much time had elapsed. If when he passed through the schoolhouse the teachers and pupils he ran into were unknown to him, he would know what to expect.

  But when he opened the attic door and went down the stairs, there wasn’t a sound to be heard. The building seemed deserted. And then the school clock struck nine. That meant it was morning, so classes must have begun.

  Bastian looked into several classrooms. All were empty. When he went to a window and looked down into the street, he saw a few pedestrians and cars. So the world hadn’t come to an end.

  He ran down the steps and tried to open the big front door, but it was locked. He went to the janitor’s office, rang the bell and knocked, but no one stirred.

  What was he to do? He couldn’t just wait for someone to turn up. Even if he had spilled the Water of Life, he wanted to go home to his father.

  Should he open a window and shout until somebody heard him and had the door opened? No, that would make him feel foolish. It occurred to him that he could climb out of a window, since the windows could be opened from the inside. But the ground-floor windows were all barred. Then he remembered that in looking out of the second-floor window he had seen some scaffolding. Evidently the façade was being refurbished.