Dead woman
Bastian could not have wished for a more festive reception. On every roof and battlement stood elves with gleaming trumpets, blaring away at the top of their lungs. The jugglers juggled, the astrologers proclaimed Bastian’s greatness and good fortune, the bakers baked cakes as big as mountains, the ministers and councilors escorted the coral litter through the teeming crowd on the High Street, which wound in an ever-narrowing spiral up the conical tower to the great gate leading into the palace. Followed by Xayide and the dignitaries, Bastian climbed the snow-white steps of the broad stairway, traversed halls and corridors, passed through a second gate, through a garden full of ivory animals, trees, and flowers, mounted higher and higher, crossed a bridge, and passed through the last gate. He was heading for the Magnolia Pavilion at the very top of the tower. But the blossom was closed and the last stretch of the way was so steep and smooth that no one could climb it.
Bastian remembered that the wounded Atreyu had not been able to climb that slope, not by his own strength at least, because no one who has ever reached the Magnolia Pavilion can say how he got there. For this victory must come as a gift.
But Bastian was not Atreyu. If anyone was now entitled to bestow the gift of this victory, it was he. And he had no intention of letting anything stop him.
| Elegant woman and birds | Elegant woman with a horse |
| Elegant woman and birds | |
| Elegant woman with a horse |
