The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

midair, and he spoke to the monks who lived there. And again no one could tell him anything.
    He had been traveling aimlessly for almost a week, when on the seventh day and the following night two very different encounters changed his situation and state of mind.
    Cairon’s story of the terrible happenings in all parts of Fantastica had made an impression on him, but thus far the disaster was something he had only heard about. On the seventh day he was to see it with his own eyes.
    Toward noon, he was riding through a dense dark forest of enormous gnarled trees. This was the same Howling Forest where the four messengers had met some time before. That region, as Atreyu knew, was the home of bark trolls. These, as he had been told, were giants and giantesses, who themselves looked like gnarled tree trunks. As long as they stood motionless, as they usually did, you could easily mistake them for trees and ride on unsuspecting. Only when they moved could you see that they had branchlike arms and crooked, rootlike legs. Though exceedingly powerful, they were not dangerous—at most they liked to play tricks on travelers who had lost their way.
    Atreyu had just discovered a woodland meadow with a brook twining through it, and had dismounted to let Artax drink and graze. Suddenly he heard a loud crackling and thudding in the woods behind him.
    Three bark trolls emerged from the woods and came toward him. A cold shiver ran down his spine at the sight of them. The first, having no legs or haunches, was obliged to walk on his hands. The second had a hole in his chest, so big you could see through it. The third hopped on his right foot, because the whole left half of him was missing, as if he had been cut through the middle.
    When they saw the amulet hanging from Atreyu’s neck, they nodded to one another and came slowly closer.
    “Don’t be afraid,” said the one who was walking on his hands, and his voice sounded like the groaning of a tree. “We’re not exactly pretty to look at, but in this part of Howling Forest there’s no one else left who might warn you. That’s why we’ve come.”
    “Warn?” Atreyu asked. “Against what?”
    “We’ve heard about you,” moaned the one with the hole in his chest. “And we’ve been told about your Quest. Don’t go any further in this direction, or you’ll be lost.”
    “The same thing will happen to you as happened to us,” sighed the halved one.
    “Would you like that?”
    “What has happened to you?” Atreyu asked.
    “The Nothing is spreading,” groaned the first. “It’s growing and growing, there’s more of it every day, if it’s possible to speak of more nothing . All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn’t want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us.”
    “Is it very painful?” Atreyu asked.
    “No,” said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. “You don’t feel a thing. There’s just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won’t be anything left of us.”
    “In what part of the woods did it begin?” Atreyu asked.
    “Would you like to see it?” The third troll, who was only half a troll, turned to his fellow sufferers with a questioning look. When they nodded, he said: “We’ll take you to a place where there’s a good view of it. But you must promise not to go any closer. If you do, it will pull you in.”
    “All right,” said Atreyu. “I promise.”
    The three turned about and made for the edge of the forest. Leading Artax by the bridle, Atreyu followed them. For a while they went this way and that way between enormous trees, then finally they stopped at the foot of a giant tree so big that five grown men holding hands could scarcely have girdled it.
    “Climb as high as you can,” said the legless troll, “and look in the direction of the sunrise. Then you’ll see—or rather not see it.”
    Atreyu