Otfried Preussler - Krabat

The boy had no time to pursue his thoughts, for the Master, sitting down at the table again, was beginning to read an extract from the Book of Necromancy. He read slowly, in a singsong voice, rocking stiffly back and forth from his hips as he did so.

‘This is the way to make a well run dry, so that it will give no water from one day to the next,’ he read out. ‘First get four pegs of birch wood, dried over the stove, each two and a half spans long, as broad as your thumb, and sharpened to a three-cornered point at one end. Next you must place your pegs of wood around the well by night, between twelve and one, driving each into the ground seven feet from the well, every one at a different point of the compass, beginning with midnight and ending with evening. Third and lastly, when you have done all this, saying no word, you must walk around the well three times and speak the words written here …’

Then the Master read out a magic spell, a sequence of incomprehensible words, fair-sounding, all of them, and yet there was a dark undertone, suggesting something evil, that lingered in the boy’s ears, even when the Master began again after a brief pause.

‘This is the way to make a well run dry …’

He read the passage from the Book and the magic spell three times in all, always in the same singsong voice, rocking back and forth from the waist. After the third time he closed the book. He waited in silence for a while, and then turned to the ravens.

‘Now I have taught you a new piece of the Secret Arts,’ said he, in his normal voice. ‘Let’s hear how much you remember of it. You there – begin!’

He pointed to one of the ravens, and told him to repeat the passage and the magic spell.

‘This is the way … to make a well run dry … so that … so that it will give no water from one day to the next …’

The miller picked on first one raven, then another, and questioned each one. He did not call any of the twelve by name, but Krabat could tell them apart by the way they spoke. Even when he was a raven, Tonda’s voice was calm and deliberate, Kito spoke with an unmistakably peevish tone, and Andrush was as quick with his beak as with his tongue, while Juro, when it was his turn to repeat the spell, had great difficulty and kept getting stuck; in short, there was not one of them whom Krabat could not identify.

‘This is the way to make a well run dry …’

Again and again they repeated the passage from the Book of Necromancy and the magic spell, some fluently, some hesitantly, a fifth time, a ninth, an eleventh.

‘Now you!’ The Master turned to Krabat.

The boy began to tremble. He stammered, ‘This is the way … is the way to make a … a well …’

Here he broke off, struck dumb. With the best will in the world, he could not remember how it went on. Would the Master punish him?

The Master did not seem at all angry.

‘You’d better pay more attention to the words than the voices another time, Krabat,’ he said. ‘Remember, no one is forced to learn in this school! If you master the passages I read you from the Book, it will be to your advantage; if not, it hurts no one but yourself!’

So saying, he finished the lesson. The door opened and the ravens flew out. Back in the hall, they returned to human form, Krabat, too, was changed back, he did not know how or by whom, and as he made his way up to the attic behind the miller’s men, he felt as though he had dreamed some strange, confusing dream.

The next day, which was Easter Eve, the miller’s men did not have to work. Most of them seized their chance to go back to bed after breakfast. ‘You’d better go upstairs and get some sleep, too,’ Tonda told Krabat. ‘You’ll be needing it.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll find out why. Go and lie down now, and try to sleep as long as you can.’

‘All right, I’m going!’ muttered Krabat. ‘Sorry I asked!’ Up in the attic, someone had hung a piece of cloth over the gable window, which was a good idea, it made it easier to get to sleep. Krabat settled down on his right side, his back to the window, his head buried in his arms. He lay there sleeping until Juro came to wake him.

‘Get up, Krabat – the food’s on the table.’

‘Why, is it midday already?’

Laughing, Juro pulled the cloth back from the window.

‘Midday! That’s a good one!’ said he. ‘The sun will soon be sinking out there, sleepyhead!’

The miller’s men had their dinner and supper rolled into one that day. It was a good, plentiful meal, almost a feast.

‘Eat all you can!’ Tonda told the men. ‘It will have to last you some time, as you know.’

After their meal, as night fell before the dawn of Easter Day, the Master came to the servants’ hall where they were sitting and sent out his men ‘to bring back the sign.’

They formed a circle around him, and he began to count them out, as children do playing tag or hide-and-seek. Reciting some words that had a strange, menacing sound, the Master counted first from right to left, then from left to right. The first time Stashko was counted out, and the second time it was Andrush. The two of them left the circle in silence and went away, while the Master began to count again. Next time it was Merten and Hanzo who had to go, and then Lyshko and Petar. Finally, only Krabat and Tonda were left.

For the last time the Master repeated the strange, ominous words, slowly and solemnly, then dismissed them both with a gesture and turned away.

Tonda signed to Krabat to follow him, and in silence they, too, left the mill and went out to the woodshed together.

‘Wait here a moment!’ Tonda fetched two blankets from the shed and gave one of them to Krabat. Then he set off along the path to Schwarzkollm, past the millpond and through the fen.

As they entered the wood the last of the daylight went. Krabat tried hard to keep close to Tonda, and it occurred to him that he had walked this way once before, though in the opposite direction and on his own, in wintertime. Could that really be little more than three months ago? It seemed incredible!

‘There’s Schwarzkollm,’ said Tonda after a while.

They saw the lights of the village shining between the tree trunks, but they themselves bore right, out onto the open moor. The path was dry and sandy here, and led past a few stunted trees, shrubs and bushes. The sky was high and wide, bright with starlight.

‘Where are we going?’ Krabat asked.

‘To Dead Man’s Cross,’ said the head journeyman.

A little later they caught sight of a fire burning on the moor, flickering at the bottom of a sandy hollow. Who could have lit it?

‘Not shepherds, for certain,’ said Krabat to himself, ‘not so early in the year. It must be gypsies, or a traveling tinker with his wares.’