The Neverending Story - The Neverending Story Part 31
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The Neverending Story Part 31

When he woke up the next morning, he felt better and happier than ever before. He looked around and saw that he was in a cozy little room - lying in a crib. Actually, it was a very large crib, or rather it was as large as a crib must look to a baby. For a moment this struck him as ridiculous, because he certainly wasn't a baby anymore, and he was still in possession of all the powers and gifts that Fantastica had given him. The Childlike Empress's amulet was still hanging from his neck. But in the very next moment he stopped caring whether it was ridiculous or not. No one but him and Dame Eyola would ever find out, and they both knew that everything was just as it should be.

He got up, washed, dressed, and left the room, A flight of wooden steps took him to the big dining room, which had turned into a kitchen overnight. Dame Eyola had breakfast all ready for him. She too was in high spirits, her flowers were in full bloom. She sang and laughed and even danced around the kitchen table with him. After breakfast she sent him outside to get some fresh air.

In the great rose garden around the House of Change it was summer, a summer that seemed eternal. Bastian sauntered about, watched the bees feasting on the flowers, listened to the birds that were singing in every rosebush; played with the lizards, which were so tame that they crawled up on his hand, and with the hares, which let him stroke them. From time to time he crept under a bush, smelled the sweet scent of the roses, blinked up at the sun, and thinking of nothing in particular, let the time glide by like a brook.

Days became weeks. He paid no attention. Dame Eyola was merry, and Bastian surrendered himself to her motherly care and tenderness. It seemed to him that without knowing it he had long hungered for something which was now being given him in abundance. And he just couldn't get enough of it.

He spent whole days rummaging through the House of Change from attic to cellar. He never got bored, because the rooms were always changing and there was always something new to discover. Clearly the house was at pains to entertain its guest. It produced playrooms, railway trains, puppet theaters, jungle gyms. There was even a big merry-go-round.

Or else he would explore the surrounding country. But he never went too far from the House of Change, for suddenly he would be overcome by a craving for Dame Eyola's fruit, and when that happened, he could hardly wait to get back to her and eat his fill.

In the evening they had long talks. He told her about all his adventures in Fantastica, about Perilin and Grograman, about Xayide and Atreyu, whom he had wounded so cruelly and perhaps even killed.

'I did everything wrong,' he said. 'I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica.'

Dame Eyola gave him a long look.

'No,' she said. 'I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that wasjvowr way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs .the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there.'

After a short silence she added: 'But every way that leads there is the right one.'

Suddenly Bastian began to cry. He didn't know why. He felt as if a knot in his heart had come open and dissolved into tears. He sobbed and he sobbed and couldn't stop. Dame Eyola took him on her lap and stroked him. He buried his face in the flowers on her bosom and wept until he was too tired to weep anymore.

That evening they talked no more.

But next day Bastian brought up the subject again.

'Do you know where I can find the Water of Life?'

'On the borders of Fantastica.'

'I thought Fantastica had no borders.'

'It has, though. Only they're not outside but inside. In the place where the Childlike Empress gets all her power from, but where she herself cannot go.'

'How am I to find the way there?' asked Bastian. 'Isn't it too late?'

'There's only one wish that can take you there: your last.'

Bastian was terrified. 'Dame Eyola - all the wishes that have come true thanks to AURYN have made me forget something. Will it be the same with this one?'

She nodded slowly.

'But if I don't notice it!'

'Did you notice it other times? Once you've forgotten something you don't know you ever had it.'

'What am I forgetting now?'

'I'll tell you at the proper time. If I told you now, you'd hold on to it.'

'Must I lose everything?'

'Nothing is lost,' she said. 'Everything is transformed.'

'But then,' said Bastian in alarm, 'I ought to hurry. I shouldn't be staying here.'

She stroked his hair.

'Don't worry. It will take time, but when your last wish is awakened, you'll know it - and so will I.'

From that day on something began indeed to change, though Bastian himself noticed nothing at first. The transforming power of the House of Change was taking effect. But like all true transformations, it was as slow and gentle as the growth of a plant.

The days in the House of Change passed, and it was still summer. Bastian still enjoyed letting Dame Eyola spoil him like a child. Her fruit still tasted as delicious to him as at the start, but little by little his craving had been stilled. He ate less than before. Dame Eyola noticed, though she never mentioned it. He also felt that he had had his fill of her care and tenderness. And as his need for them dwindled, a longing of a very different kind made itself felt, a desire that he had never felt before and that was different in every way from all his previous wishes: the longing to be capable of loving. With surprise and dismay he recognized that he could not love. And the wish became stronger and stronger.

One evening as they were sitting together, he spoke of it to Dame Eyola.

After listening to him, she said nothing for a long while. She looked at Bastian with an expression that puzzled him.

'Now you have found your last wish,' she said finally. 'What you really and truly want is to love.'

'But why can't I, Dame Eyola?'

'You won't be able to until you have drunk of the Water of Life,' she said. 'And you can't go back to your own world unless you take some of it back for others.'

Bastian was bewildered. 'But what about you?' he asked. 'Haven't you drunk of it?'

'No,' said Dame Eyola. 'It's different for me. I only needed someone to whom I could give my excess.'

'But isn't that love?'

Dame Eyola pondered a while, then she said: 'It was the effect of your wish.'

'Can't Fantasticans love? Are they like me?' he asked anxiously.

She answered: 'There are some few creatures in Fantastica, so I'm told, who get to drink of the Water of Life. But no one knows who they are. And there is a prophecy, which we seldom speak of, that sometime in the distant future humans will bring love to Fantastica. Then the two worlds will be one. But what that means I don't know.'

'Dame Eyola,' Bastian asked, 'you promised that when the right moment came you'd tell me what I had to forget to find my last wish. Has the time come?'

She nodded.

'You had to forget your father and mother. Now you have nothing left but your name.'

Bastian pondered.

'Father and mother?' he said slowly. But the words had lost all meaning for him. He had forgotten.

'What must I do now?' he asked.

'You must leave me. Your time in the House of Change is over.'

'Where must I go?'

'Your last wish will guide you. Don't lose it.'

'Should I go now?'

'No, it's late. Tomorrow at daybreak. You have one more night in the House of Change. Now we must go to bed.'

Bastian stood up and went over to her. Only then, only when he was close to her, did he notice that all her flowers had faded.

'Don't let it worry you,' she said. 'And don't worry about tomorrow morning. Go your way. Everything is just as it should be. Good night, my darling boy.'

'Good night, Dame Eyola,' Bastian murmured.

Then he went up to his room.

When he came down the next day, he saw that Dame Eyola was still in the same place. All her leaves, flowers, and fruits had fallen from her. Her eyes were closed and she looked like a black, dead tree. For a long time he stood there gazing at her. Then suddenly a door opened.

Before going out, he turned around once again and said, without knowing whether he was speaking to Dame Eyola or to the house or both: 'Thank you. Thank you for everything.'

Then he went out through the door. Winter had come overnight. The snow lay knee-deep and nothing remained of the flowering rose garden but bare, black thornbushes. Not a breeze stirred. It was bitter cold and very still.

Bastian wanted to go back into the house for his mantle, but the doors and windows had vanished. It had closed itself up all around. Shivering, he started on his way.

XXV.

The Picture Mine

OR, the blind miner, was standing beside his hut, listening for sounds on the snow-covered plain around him. The silence was so complete that his sensitive hearing picked up the crunching of footsteps in the snow far in the distance. And he knew that the steps were coming his way.

Yor was an old man, but his face was beardless and without a wrinkle. Everything about him, his dress, his face, his hair, was stone gray. As he stood there motionless, he seemed carved from congealed lava. Only his blind eyes were dark, and deep within them there was a glow, as of a small, bright flame.

The steps were Bastian's. When he reached the hut, he said: 'Good day. I've lost my way. I'm looking for the fountain the Water of Life springs from. Can you help me?'

The miner replied in a whisper: 'You haven't lost your way. But speak softly, or my pictures will crumble.'

He motioned to Bastian, who followed him into the hut. It consisted of a single small, bare room. A wooden table, two chairs, a cot, and two or three wooden shelves piled with food and dishes were the only furnishings. A fire was burning on an open hearth, and over it hung a kettle of soup.

Yor ladled out soup for himself and Bastian, put the bowls on the table, and with a motion of his hand invited his guest to eat. They ate in silence.

Then the miner leaned back. His eyes looked through Bastian and far into the distance as he asked in a whisper: 'Who are you?' 'My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.' 'Ah, so you still know your name.' 'Yes. And who are you?'

T am Yor; people call me the blind miner. But I am blind only in the daylight. In the darkness of my mine, I can see.' 'What sort of mine is it?'

'The Minroud Mine, they call it. It's a picture mine.' 'A picture mine?' said Bastian in amazement. T never heard of such a thing.'

Yor seemed to be listening for something.

'And yet,' he said. 'It's here for just such as you. For humans who can't find the way to the Water of Life.'

'What kind of pictures are they?' Bastian asked.

Yor shut his eyes and was silent for a while. Bastian didn't know whether to repeat his question. Then he heard the miner whisper: 'Nothing gets lost in the world. Have you ever dreamed something and when you woke up not known what it was?'

'Yes,' said Bastian. 'Often.'

Yor nodded. Then he stood up and beckoned Bastian to follow him. Before they left the hut, he dug his fingers into Bastian's shoulders and whispered: 'But not a word, not a sound, understand? What you are going to see is my work of many years. The least sound can destroy it. So tread softly and don't talk.'

Bastian nodded and they left the hut. Behind it there was a wooden headframe, below which a shaft descended vertically into the earth. Passing these by, the miner led Bastian out into the snow-covered plain. And there in the snow lay the pictures, like jewels bedded in white silk.

They were paper-thin sheets of colored, transparent isinglass, of every size and shape, some round, some square, some damaged, some intact, some as large as church windows, others as small as snuffbox miniatures. They lay, arranged more or less according to size and shape, in rows extending to the snowy horizon.

What these pictures represented it was hard to say. There were figures in weird disguise that seemed to be flying through the air in an enormous bird's nest, donkeys in judge's robes, clocks as limp as soft butter, dressmaker's dummies standing in deserted, glaringly lighted squares. There were faces and heads pieced together from animals and others that made up a landscape. But there were also perfectly normal pictures, men mowing a wheat field, women sitting on a balcony, mountain villages and seascapes, battle scenes and circus scenes, streets and rooms and many, many faces, old and young, wise and simple, fools and kings, cheerful and gloomy. There were gruesome pictures, executions and death dances, and there were comical ones, such as a group of young ladies riding a walrus or a nose walking about and being greeted by passersby.

The longer Bastian looked at the pictures, the less he could make of them. He and Yor spent the whole day walking past row after row of them, and then dusk descended on the great snowfield.

Bastian followed the miner back to the hut. After closing the door behind them Yor asked in a soft voice: 'Did you recognize any of them?'

'No,' said Bastian.

The miner shook his head thoughtfully. 'Why?' Bastian asked. 'What are they?'

'They are forgotten dreams from the human world,' Yor explained. 'Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under our earth. There the forgotten dreams are stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer together they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams.'

Bastian was wide-eyed with wonderment. 'Are mine there too?' he asked. Yor nodded.

'And you think I have to find them?' 'At least one,' said Yor. 'One will be enough.' 'But what for?' Bastian wanted to know.

Now the miner's face was lit only by the faint glow of the hearth fire. Again his blind eyes looked through Bastian and far into the distance.

'Listen to me, Bastian Balthazar Bux,' he said. 'I'm no great talker. I prefer silence. But I will answer this one question. You are looking for the Water of Life. You want to be able to love, that's your only hope of getting back to your world. To love - that's easily said. But the Water of Life will ask you: Love whom? Because you can't just love in general. You've forgotten everything but your name. And if you can't answer, it won't let you drink. So you'll just have to find a forgotten dream, a picture that will guide you to the fountain.. And to find that picture you will have to forget the one thing you have left: yourself. And that takes hard, patient work. Remember what I've said, for I shall never say it again.'

After that he lay down on his wooden cot and fell asleep. Bastian had to content himself with the hard, cold floor. But he didn't mind.

When he woke up the next morning feeling stiff in all his joints, Yor was gone - to the mine, no doubt, Bastian decided. He took a dish of the hot soup, which warmed him but didn't taste very good. Too salty. It made him think of sweat and tears.

Then he went out into the snow-covered plain and walked past the pictures. He examined one after another attentively, for now he knew how important it was, but he found none that meant anything in particular to him.

Toward evening Yor came up from the mine. Bastian saw him step out of the pit cage. In a frame on his back he was carrying different-sized sheets of paper-thin isinglass. Bastian followed him in silence as he went far out into the plain and carefully bedded his new finds in the soft snow at the end of a row. One of the pictures represented a man whose chest was a birdcage with two pigeons in it, another a woman of stone riding on a large turtle. One very small picture showed a butterfly with letters on its wings. And many more, but none meant anything to Bastian.

Back in the hut with the miner, he asked:.'What will become of the pictures when the snow melts?'

'It's always winter here,' said Yor.

They had no other conversation that evening.