Otfried Preussler - Krabat

They never mentioned the night before Easter again, or Tonda’s grief for the girl he loved; they did not even allude to it. Yet Krabat thought he knew where Tonda had been while he sat by the fire like a dead man, staring into the distance. And whenever Krabat thought of Vorshula and her story, the singer of Schwarzkollm, the girl who led the choir, came into his mind – or rather her voice as he had heard it floating across the fields from the village at midnight. This seemed strange to him; he would have liked to forget that voice, yet he found it was impossible.

Once a week, on Fridays, the miller’s men assembled outside the Black Room after supper, turned themselves into ravens – Krabat soon learned the trick of it – and settled on their perch. Every Friday the Master read them a passage from the Book of Necromancy; he read it three times in all, and they had to repeat it after him, though the Master himself did not care what or how much of it they remembered.

Krabat was eager to memorize all the Master taught them: storm spells and charms to make hail, the casting of magic bullets and the way to use them, invisibility, the art of going out of one’s body, and many other things. While he was working by day, and before he fell asleep at night, he repeated the instructions and the words of the spells from the Book over and over again, so as to stamp them on his memory.

For by now Krabat had realized one thing: a man who knew the Art of Arts had power over other men, and to have power – as much as the Master had, if not more – struck him as a fine thing to aim for. It was to achieve that aim that he was studying and studying and studying.

One night in the second week after Easter the miller’s men were called from their beds. The Master was standing at the attic door with a light in his hand.

‘There’s work to be done!’ he cried. ‘The Goodman is coming – hurry up, make haste!’

In the rush Krabat could not find his shoes, so he followed the others out of the mill barefoot. There was a new moon; the night was so dark that the miller’s men could not see an inch in front of them. In the crush someone wearing wooden clogs trod on Krabat’s toes.

‘Hey!’ cried the boy. ‘Watch out, you clumsy oaf!’

A hand was put over his mouth. ‘Ssh!’ Tonda whispered.

Then Krabat realized that not one of the miller’s men had spoken a word since the Master woke them. And they did not utter a sound all the rest of that night, nor did Krabat himself.

He could guess what kind of work lay ahead, and soon enough the stranger with the flickering plume in his hat came rattling up in his cart. The men fell upon it, tore off the dark canvas cover, and began dragging sacks into the mill – to the Dead Stones at the far end of the grinding room.

Everything happened just as it had four weeks ago, when Krabat watched the others through the gable window, only this time the Master swung himself up by the stranger’s side on the box. Today it was he who cracked the whip, right above their heads, so that the men ducked as they felt it whistle past.

Krabat had almost forgotten what hard work it was to carry a full sack, and how soon you were out of breath.

‘Remember that you are my pupil!’

Those were the Master’s words, and the longer Krabat thought about them, the less he liked the sound of them.

The whip cracked, the men ran back and forth, the mill wheel went around and the house was filled with the clatter and squeal of the Dead Stones. What was in those sacks? Krabat glanced into the hopper, but he could not make much out in the dim light of the lantern swaying from the ceiling. Was he tipping clods of dirt, or pine cones, into the hopper, or maybe round stones encrusted with mud …?

The boy had no time to take a closer look; Lyshko came up with the next sack, panting, and elbowed Krabat aside.

Michal and Merten had taken up their positions by the meal bin; they refilled the empty sacks with whatever it was that had been ground, and tied them up. Again, everything happened just as before. At first cockcrow the cart was loaded up again, the cover pulled over it and fastened. The stranger reached for his whip, and off he went with his cart, so fast that the Master only just had time to jump down without breaking his neck.

‘Come with me!’ said Tonda to Krabat.

While the others went into the house, the two of them went up to the millrace to shut the sluice. They heard the mill wheel run down below them, and all was quiet, but for the rooster crowing and the hens clucking.

‘Does he often come?’ asked Krabat, jerking his head in the direction in which the cart had disappeared into the morning mist.

‘Every night of new moon,’ said Tonda.

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘Only the Master knows that. He calls him the Goodman – and he is afraid of him.’

They walked slowly back to the mill through the dewy meadows.

‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ said Krabat, before they entered the house. ‘Last time the stranger came the Master was working, too. Why not today?’

‘Last time he had to help us to make up the dozen,’ said the head journeyman. ‘But since Easter the numbers of the Black School have been made up, so now he can afford to spend the nights of new moon cracking the whip!’

Sometimes the Master sent his men out on errands, in pairs or in small groups, to give them a chance to use the arts they learned in the Black School. One morning Tonda went up to Krabat. ‘I have to go to the Wittichenau cattle market with Andrush today,’ he said. ‘The Master says you can go with us if you like.’

‘Good!’ said Krabat. ‘It’ll make a change from all this grinding of grain!’

They took a path through the wood that joined the road beside some houses near the Neudorf village pond. It was a fine, sunny July day. The jays were calling in the branches, they could hear the tapping of a woodpecker, swarms of honey bees and bumble bees filled the wild raspberry bushes with their buzzing.

Krabat noticed that Tonda and Andrush looked as merry as if they were off to the fair. It couldn’t be just the fine weather. Andrush, of course, was always a cheerful, good-tempered fellow, but it was unusual to hear Tonda whistling happily to himself. From time to time he cracked his ox whip.

‘Are you practicing to do that on the way home?’ said Krabat.

‘What do you mean, on the way home?’

‘I thought we were going to Wittichenau to buy an ox?’

‘On the contrary!’ said Tonda.

Just at that moment Krabat heard a loud ‘Moo!’ behind him, and when he turned around, there was a fine ox standing where Andrush had been a moment before. It had a smooth, reddish-brown coat, and it was looking at him in a friendly way.

‘Hey!’ said Krabat, rubbing his eyes.

Suddenly Tonda, too, was gone, and in his place there stood an old Wendish peasant, wearing felt shoes, linen trousers with cross-gartering from ankle to knee, and a smock belted with a cord. He had a greasy fur cap, its brim rubbed bare.