"The empress of a whole country is dying — because no one has called her name."
In Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, there is a girl who rules a whole country called Fantastica. She is ancient and newborn at once. She rules but does not judge. Every creature in her country carries a part of her.
She is called the Childlike Empress. In the Swedish translation, her name — the one that saves her — is Månbarnet. Moon Child.
She is dying at the story's opening. Not because she is old, or ill, or wounded. She is dying because no one has called her by name. Her name has always come from outside her story, from someone else's mouth. And the world outside her story is losing faith. The name is not being spoken.
The book asks a girl reading it to shout the name. Any name. The name she chooses will be the name that saves.
She shouts Moon Child.
The empress lives.
And here is what I have understood, more slowly than I would like to admit —
We all have an empress inside us. She is dying quietly when we go unnamed. She lives again the moment a stranger — a friend, an editor, a mother, someone across the room — calls out a name for us with real attention.
To be named is to be brought into being. To do the naming is holy work.
I have learned to be both — the empress who waits, and the stranger who shouts. To name myself before anyone else can.
Kejsarinnan månbarnet. Empress Moon Child.
She is the muse I did not know I had until I saw her dying in my own body — and knew I could shout the name in her direction, and she would live.
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