From _Mirror in the Mirror_, by Michael Ende
Translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn

Under the expert guidance of his father and mentor, the young man had
dreamed himself a pair of wings. The fruit of long hours of dreamwork
spanning many years, they took shape bone by bone, sinew by sinew,
feather by feather. He made them sprout from the appropriate spot
between his shoulder blades (it was extremely hard to visualize while
dreaming) and learned by degrees how to move them to good effect. It
had sorely tried his patience to continue practising until, after
countless futile attempts, he momentarily succeeded in lifting himself
off the ground for the first time. Then, thanks to his father's firm
but unfailingly sympathetic tuition, he gained confidence in his
work. As time went by, he grew so thoroughly accustomed to his wings
that he felt them to be an integral part of his body - indeed, they
even became sensitive to pain and pleasure. In the end, he was
compelled to wipe his memory clean of the years when he had still been 
without them. They were now as much a part of him as the eyes or hands 
he had been born with. He was ready.

It was not forbidden to leave the labyrinth-city. On the contrary,
anyone who succeeded in doing so was hailed as a hero, a luminary, and 
became a long-enduring legend. That destiny, however, was reserved for 
the happy. The laws that governed the lives of the labyrinth-dwellers
were paradoxical but unalterable. One of the most important stated
that only those who left the labyrinth could be happy, but that only
the happy could escape its confines.

There had been few such persons over the millennia.

Anyone prepared to run the risk had first to pass a test. If he failed 
his master was punished in his place, and the punishment was cruelly
severe.

"Wings like yours are only to be worn by those who are light," the
young man's father told him, looking stern, "--as light as happiness
alone can make them." Then, after fixing him with a long, searching
stare, he asked, "Are you happy?"

"Yes, Father," came the answer, "I am."

Ah, thought the young man, if that were all, there could be no risk of
failure. He was so happy he felt capable of flying without wings, for
he was in love. He loved with all the ardour of a youthful heart,
without reservation, without a shadow of a doubt, and he knew that his
love was returned as wholeheartedly. He knew that his beloved was
awaiting him, and that, at the day's end, when he had passed the test, 
he would join her in her sky-blue chamber. Then she would nestle in
his arms, weightless as a moonbeam. Clasped in a never-ending embrace, 
they would rise above the city and leave its walls behind them like an 
outgrown toy, soaring over other cities, over forests and deserts,
mountains and seas, until they came to the edge of the world.

As custom prescribed during this last, decisive ordeal, he was naked
saved for a fishing-net that swept the ground behind him as he made
his way through the maze of streets and alleys, passages and
rooms. Although he did not know what problem would beset him, he felt
sure he would solve it. He know only that no two problems were the
same because each was carefully adapted to the candidate's personal
disposition. It might have been said that the problem consisted in
guessing, by dint of self-knowledge, what the problem actually
was. The one rule to be strictly observed was that he should on no
account enter his beloved's sky-blue chamber before sunset, when the
ordeal ended. If he did, he would at once be disqualified.

He smiled to himself as he recalled the almost grim severity with
which his revered and kindly father had explained this prohibition. He 
felt not the least inclination to flout it, so he was in no danger on
that score. Indeed, he had never been able to understand all the
stories in which the very existence of such drove people to break
them. His progress through the labyrinth-city's convoluted streets
had several times taken him past the towerlike building on whose
topmost floor his beloved lived. He had even passed her door - the
door marked '401' - on two occasions, and had walked straight on
without even pausing in his stride. But that could not be the test
proper - that would have been too easy by far.

Wherever he went, he came across unhappy people who stared at and
after him with admiration and longing or envy. Many of them he had met 
before, though no such meetings could ever be deliberately
engineered. The position and layout of the labyrinth-city's streets
and building were forever changing, so its inhabitants could never
meet by prior arrangements. Every encounter was the result of fate or
chance, however one chose to interpret it.

All at once the young man felt a tug at the trailing net and turned to 
look. Seated in a gateway, a one-legged beggar was threading one of
his crutches through the mesh.

"What are you doing?" protested the young man.

"Take pity on me," the beggar pleaded hoarsely. "You can easy my
burden a great deal by adding very little to your own. You will escape 
the labyrinth, happy man that you are, whereas I shall remain here for 
ever, for I shall never be happy. By taking at least a modicum of my
unhappiness with you, you would grant me a tiny share in your
escape. That would console me."

The happy are seldom hard-hearted. They tend to be compassionate and
eager for others to share in their good fortune.

"Very well," said the young man. "If it would take so little to do you 
a favour, nothing could please me more."

On the very next street corner he saw a ragged, careworn woman with
three half-starved children. She glared at him with hatred in her
eyes.

"You can scarcely refuse us what you granted him," she hissed, and
threaded a little iron cross through the net. It was the cross that
had adorned her husband's grave.

From that moment on, the net became steadily heavier. There were
countless unhappy people in the labyrinth-city, and all entwined
something of their own in the young man's net: a show or a valuable
piece of jewellery, a bucket or a bag of coins, a garment or an iron
stove, a garland of roses or an animal's carcass - even an entire
door.

Evening approached, and with it the end of the young man's ordeal. He
trudged onward, step by step, bent double as if heading into the teeth 
of a fierce but inaudible tempest. Though bathed in sweat, his face
was still radiant with hope, for he thought he had grasped the nature
of his task and felt strong enough, in spite of everything, to
accomplish it.

Dusk fell, and still no one came to tell him that enough was
enough. Without knowing how he came to be there, he had hauled his
superhuman burden on to the flat roof of the towerlike building in
which his beloved's sky-blue chamber was. He noticed for the first
time, perhaps because it had never been in its present position, that
the tower overlooked a stretch of seashore. To this profound alarm,
the sun was already sinking below the misty horizon.

On the shore stood four figures, winged like himself, and he clearly
heard a disembodied voice pronounce them free to fly away. He shouted
down, protesting he had been forgotten, but no one paid him any
heed. His trembling finger fumbled desperately with the net, but in
vain. Again and again he cried out, pleading with his father to come
and help him, craning over the parapet as far as he could.

As the last of the daylight faded, he saw his beloved being led out of 
the door below him, veiled from head to foot in black. Then, drawn by
two black horses, there appeared a black coach whose roof bore a
likeness of his father's grieving, despairing face. His beloved got
in, and the coach drove off into the darkness.

At that instant the young man realized that his task had been to be
disobedient, and that he had failed the test. He felt his dream wings
shrivel and fall from his shoulders like autumn leaves, and he knew
that he would never fly again, never again by happy. He would remain
in the labyrinth for as long as he lived, for now he truly belonged there.