'I do not know, Falkor. We might search all Fantasia, for we must find our Saviour.'

The luckdragon's bell-like voice rang with a chuckle. 'Here? Our friend has come back to us?'

'You must take me with you!'

Atreyu turned to the eager tenor voice. A figure seemed to materialize out from the wall of the tower, but Atreyu realized this to be only and optical illusion resulting from the glorious coat on the young stallion gleaming so perfectly white as the Ivory Tower itself. The Greenskin saw in astonishment that the stallion had two enormous wings folded at his sides. And there was something else unusual and not quite horse-like about him - something exotic about his ears. Atreyu gave more study to the ears and realized that they were unusually enlongated. More like a mule's ears than those of a horse.

'Please,' the winged stallion said sincerely, 'you must take me with you. We must find my master.'

'I am sorry, but we have our own quest.' Atreyu was truly sorry. He had not seen such a magnificent stallion since his Artax. And it had just been long enough since Atrax's death that Atreyu might be ready to take a new steed. 'Much as we'd like to help, we have our own person to locate.'

'But our quests are one in the same,' the winged stallion said, seeming to gleam from pride, 'for my master is the Saviour!'

That astonishing statement took a moment to penetrate Atreyu’s thoughts, for he remained in awe at simply seeing the winged stallion stand before him. Winged horses were actually quite rare in Fantasia. In fact, Atreyu could only remember one other . . . but this was not the same. The other had lived long ago, and this one seemed quite young. Atreyu wondered where this one came from. But more importantly, the Greenskin wondered how the winged stallion knew Bastian.

He doesn’t, Bastian thought. Unless that is . . . but even he would not know me.

‘Where is he?’ Atreyu asked.

The winged stallion looked blankly back.

‘Your master,’ Atreyu explained.

‘Oh!’ the stallion postured from pride. ‘Uh, I don’t know. For sure. Exactly where. But I think – I mean: I know . . . Maybe the Desert of Death?’

‘The what?’ Atreyu had never heard of such a desert before. But Fantasia was enormous beyond imagining, so such a desert could very well have evaded his travels.

‘The . . . you know,’ began the young stallion. ‘With the sand all different colours. And it turns into a forest?’

‘He means Goab,’ Falkor said to Atreyu.

Atreyu nodded to the luckdragon. ‘The Desert of Colours?’ he suggested.

‘Right! Goab, the Desert of Colours, in which lives Grograman, the Many-Coloured Death,’ the winged-one said, eyes closed and bobbing his head up and down in rhythm with the words. ‘I don’t memorize very well.’

‘Memorize?’ Atreyu’s brow furrowed. ‘Haven’t you been there?’

‘No,’ the winged horse said, looking down at his hooves. ‘I wasn’t allowed to explore beyond my region when I was a colt.’ He stretched his wings to the extent of their amazing breadth and looked up at the star-lit sky overhead.

‘How do you know he’s there then?’

‘Who?’ the young stallion asked, tilting his head.

‘Your master,’ Atreyu said. ‘How do you know he is in Goab if you haven’t been there?’

‘I have a feeling that is where my master will be.’

Atreyu’s heart sank. He berated himself for having let this newcomer inflate his hopes. He’d thought for a brief moment that perhaps he wouldn’t have such a difficult time in finding his friend. Perchance there remains hope, he thought. ‘Where was he when you last left him?’

‘Left him?’ the stallion seemed confused. ‘Oh! I never left my master! I never met my master.’

‘How can he be your master then?’ Atreyu had the decency to refrain from saying aloud the pun that came to mind: ‘So much for horse sense.’

‘Because it is my destiny.’ The winged-one tilted his head upward, then looked back to the Greenskin. ‘My mother told me so.’

‘Your mother,’ Atreyu said condescendingly, for which he immediately felt guilty.

‘Yes, Yikka.’

Atreyu felt even worse at the stallion’s sincereity.

‘She was once the mount to a Saviour.’

‘I knew Yikka,’ Atreyu smiled. ‘A fine mule.’

The young horse looked frightened. ‘Then you know I’m not a . . .’ But he would say no more.

‘Not a what?” Atreyu asked.

‘Oh! Then you are the- Um . . . What are you again?’

‘A Greenskin.’ Atreyu nearly smiled at Yikka’s son’s forgetfulness . . . but then he remembered that this particular forgetting resulted from the disappearance of all his people. That thought sobered him.

‘You are the Greenskin that was the Saviour’s friend?’ the stallion’s equine mouth opened in surprise.

‘I am,’ Atreyu said, now finding the winged-one’s youthful innocence charming. ‘I am Atreyu.’

‘It is an honour to meet you, sir!’ the winged stallions’s voice was full of breathy reverence as he bowed his long head. ‘I am Pataplan, son of Yikka.’

‘A pleasure to meet Yikka’s son.’ Atreyu politely returned the head bow, then gestured to Falkor. ‘This is the luckdragon that also carried the Saviour. And befriended him. Falkor.’

‘I have never met a luckdragon before!’

Falkor found himself smiling at Pataplan’s awe-filled eyes.

‘I have always wanted to,’ Pataplan continued. ‘And to meet the one who carried my master! It is a pleasure!’

‘The pleasure is mine, my boy.’ Falkor smiled.

Atreyu was eager to end the pleasantries and return to the task at hand. ‘I suppose we may as well set off for the Desert of Colours. It is as good a place to start as any.’ He climbed onto Falkor’s back, and with Pataplan trailing they flew into the stars.

Bastian looked out the shaded window into the rainy afternoon. Atreyu’s starry night seemed so much more welcoming and free than the constant sheets of rain falling from above. Although, Bastian remembered, he did enjoy the rain. It was so easy to fall into the mindset that rain was uncomfortable. Really, Bastian found it quite comfortable. Within a house while the rain was falling blanketed Bastian in a feeling of security. Even outside in the storm had a magical, cleansing feeling. Giving in to the rain felt like offering sins and impurities to be washed away. Like when he’d bathed in the Water of Life . . .

Yet anytime Bastian was not outside experiencing this enchantment, it was easy to forget that being rained upon could be anything more than a soggy nuisance. It was so easy, Bastian thought, to fall into the mainstream flow of thought and forget one’s own contrary notions.

The grandfather clock in the living room chimed two. Bastian’s stomach rumbled angrily in reply.

‘Stupid stomach.’ He glared at his midsection. ‘I overindulged yesterday. You should be fine.’

Bastian’s stomach continued to protest.

‘Food is overrated,’ he mumbled, pulling the blanket more snuggly around his body.

Atreyu had fallen asleep astride Falkor. Having not slept within the past few days - and having spent an exhausting day climbing countless steps - proved too wearisome to fight against.

It might sound terribly unsafe to sleep astride a soaring dragon, but Falkor was well aware that his rider slumbered and so glided gently.

Flying such long distances was still such a new and wondrous experience to Pataplan that despite the late hour he was too exhilarated to even think of sleep.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ Pataplan yelped.

A quick ripple shot through the luckdragon’s body. ‘Good Lord!’ he gasped in surprise. ‘My boy! You startled me out of my dozing.’

Atreyu bolted upright. ‘Are we being attacked?’

‘No, my friend. Back to sleep with you.’

‘But what’s the commotion about?’ the Greenskin slurred sleepily.

‘Our tagalong is just excitable,’ Falkor explained.

‘But the world is vanishing!’ Pataplan argued.

‘Oh,’ Atreyu said, closing his eyes.

‘Don’t you care?’ the winged stallion gasped.

‘Of course we care,’ Falkor said in a soothingly soft voice. ‘But there is nothing just now to be done about it.’

‘But we must do something! We cannot allow Fantasia to disappear!’

‘The impetuousness of youth,’ Falkor chuckled brightly. ‘All: “Now! We must save the world! Immediately!” My boy, that is exactly what we’re doing. But in order to help in something as grand as saving the world, we must first find someone as grand as the Saviour.’

‘My master,’ Pataplan breathed in a hushed voice.

‘Yes,’ Falkor nodded. ‘He has saved Fantasia before, and he can save us again.’

But how? Bastian wondered. He had no idea how to prevent the end from coming. Maybe if he simply refused to read the end? That would surely prevent the ending, wouldn’t it? But the more he thought about it, the less likely that seemed. The end was already written. He’d seen it. It would happen. It was a ridiculous endeavor to try to prevent it.

Now he had an inkling of what Atreyu felt. All the people he’d come to love were about to die, and he could do nothing to stop it. He felt utterly helpless.

But they weren’t dead yet, Bastian reasoned. And perhaps Atreyu would figure out for him if there was some way that Bastian could help them. He could only hope for now.

He let his eyes return to the pages.

‘I must admit,’ Pataplan began reproachfully, ‘that I am a bit jealous you were my master’s mount before me.’

‘My boy, your master flew on my back before you were a colt in your dam’s heart. You have no need to be jealous.’

‘What is my master like?’ Pataplan’s eyes were wide with wonder.

‘Now that is difficult to say,’ said Falkor solemnly.

‘Why is that so?’

‘Because . . . Well, mostly because ten whole years have passed since he was here. People change. Especially him.’

Bastian bit his lip, frightened to read what Falkor was about to reveal. A decade had passed, but Bastian still felt much guilt for what he had done – who he had become – while he was in Fantasia. He had dared to hope that by some miracle all of Fantasia had forgotten his misdeeds. Apparently not. Deep shame coursed through Bastian.

‘What do you mean? Does my master change often?’

‘It was unfair of me to imply it,’ Falkor said harshly. ‘I merely meant that AURYN affects most humans similarly.’

‘What’s a human? And how does the Gem change one?’

‘A human, my boy, is what your master is. Humans are from the Outer World – which is an odd name for it since Fantasia goes on forever in all directions without end.’

‘Surely the land ends and then eventually the sea tumbles over the edges into . . . whatever.’

‘No. On my many flights I have never seen an end to either land or sea. It does indeed stretch on endlessly.’

Pataplan squinted his large chocolate eyes. ‘That hurts my head to think about.’

‘Mine, too, my friend.’

‘So, why does the Glory change one of these humans? How did it change my master? Does it change Fantasians as well?’

‘Good Lord! Don’t you know how to ask one question at a time?’ Falkor’s tone was unwavering good-natured and joyous, so Pataplan was reassured he had committed no offence.

‘The Gem has no such effect on we Fantasians, for when bestowed upon us, we cannot use its power. Only humans have the ability to create. Humans though—’ Pataplan startled the dragon by flying closer to him and asking earnestly: ‘Is the Childlike Empress a human?’

That, too, startled the luckdragon; he hadn’t expected such a question from one so young. Though, Falkor reflected, Atreyu hadn’t been much older when he had asked the same question.

‘She is not a human,’ Falkor said finally. Then expecting the inevitable question, said: ‘Neither is she a creature of Fantasia.’

‘Then who is she?’

‘The one to whom we owe our existence.’

Pataplan snorted in frustration.

‘That is all we know,’ said Falkor. ‘And all we can know.’

‘I know,’ the winged horse sighed. ‘My dam said that were anyone to know the whole answer, they would cease to exist.’

Falkor nodded his leonel head. ‘I once heard a wise man say the same.’

‘But what does it mean?’

‘That’s all I can tell you.’

‘It sounds frightening!’ Pataplan confessed.

‘I am perfectly happy existing, thank you,’ Falkor’s bell-like voice rang.

‘It doesn’t keep me from wondering, though.’

‘Me either, my boy.’ Falkor smiled. ‘And that’s the point, I think. We are to wonder, even if we will never know the deepest of secrets.’

‘But what’s the point of wondering if we can never know?’

‘What would life be like without some mystery?’

Pataplan snorted.

‘What does it matter who she is?’ Falkor countered. ‘It merely matters that she is, for in her existence we too exist.’

‘How do we even know she does exist?’ Pataplan retorted, his equine eyes flashing.

Falkor was taken aback. ‘Because she does.’

Pataplan was resolute. ‘But how do we know?’

‘I have seen her with my own eyes.’

This was the closest to anger Pataplan had seen of the luckdragon. But the young stallion was in awe. ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘When?’

Falkor’s ruby eyes seemed to stare at nothing before him, smiling. ‘Long, long ago I was about your age, with a head full of foolishness.’ Falkor winked at the winged horse. ‘I tried to grab the shimmering moon out of the sky.’

‘Silly dragon!’ Pataplan snorted. ‘You can’t reach the moon!’

Falkor simply smiled in return before saying: ‘When I tumbled from sky with exhaustion. I landed near the Ivory Tower. The moon was full and bright, and then the Magnolia Pavilion opened its petals wide, within which sat the Childlike Empress. She cast a glance at me—just one short glance-’

‘What did she look like?’ Pataplan asked lowly, his eyes round as the moon.

‘A little girl.’ Falkor’s voice sounded as if from afar. ‘Beautiful and gleaming. Ancient as time, but young as youth.’

‘Don’t we owe our existence to my master rather than the Childlike Empress?’

The queer question pulled Falkor out of his nostalgia. ‘How do you mean?’

‘My mother told me that Fantasia once came to an end, but her master recreated it.’

Bastian stomach gurgled in discomfort—or was it because he still hadn’t fed it? Regardless, Bastian was embarrassed at Pataplan’s comparison between the Childlike Empress and himself. He was sweating profusely as he continued reading.

What Pataplan had said seemed absurd to Falkor. Fantasia had come to an end and was then recreated? What insanity was Yikka spouting in her old age?

But the more Falkor thought of it, the more likely it seemed. The Nothing had consumed nearly all of Fantasia as he and Atreyu had come to the Ivory Tower so long ago. Falkor remembered very little after alighting atop the Tower. He’d probably fallen to slumber from exhaustion, the luckdragon decided. After that he and Atreyu had been in AURYN—which they had not known at the time, but on their return they discovered that to be the case. When they exited AURYN, Fantasia was once again whole. Perhaps that had been by Bastian’s doing. But even so—‘The Saviour’s power comes from AURYN. And the Gem’s power is a manifestation of the Childlike Empress’. When a human uses it, AURYN changes them wish by wish, causing them to forget what it has changed.

‘That is why it is difficult to say what your master is like. He changed entirely from the moment I met him until Atreyu and I entered AURYN. Then he changed again just before returning to his world. With ten years having past, I have no idea what he could be like.’

Pataplan seemed to be silently musing over all Falkor had said for furlongs of flight. ‘AURYN sounds dangerous,’ he finally said, barely more than a whisper.

‘It is, my boy, for those who abuse it.’

Pataplan’s joy seemed dashed with this revelation. The glorious image of his master smashed by the truth. ‘How can we expect him to save us then?’

Bastian felt wretched. His sweating palms stained the pages. ‘I’m sorry, Pataplan,’ he whispered, wishing he could have lived up to the winged stallion’s expectations.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Falkor smiled. ‘He will have learned from his mistakes and will help us save Fantasia.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Pataplan’s eyes narrowed in skepticism.

A pell of laugher rang from within Falkor. ‘My boy, do you forget with whom you fly?’ Falkor’s bell-like laugher crescendoed.

Pataplan merely looked back quizzically, head tilted.

‘I’m a luckdragon! All will come out well.’

Pataplan grinned as well he could with his equine mouth, but then gasped, ‘More land is vanishing!’

Falkor laughed so loudly it awakened Atreyu. ‘Not quite, my boy.’ He turned an eye to Atreyu who was stretching his strong arms and yawing. ‘You awoke just in time, my little master. The rising sun is turning Perilin below back into Goab. We have arrived at the Desert of Colours at last.’

Chapter Five: The Search for the Saviour