Otfried Preussler - Krabat

OTFRIED PREUSSLER

TRANSLATED BY

ANTHEA BELL

Cover

Title Page KRABAT OTFRIED PREUSSLER TRANSLATED BY ANTHEA BELL

The First Year

CHAPTER ONE: The Mill

CHAPTER TWO: Eleven and One

CHAPTER THREE: No Bed of Roses

CHAPTER FOUR: A Dream of Escape

CHAPTER FIVE: The Man with the Plumed Hat

CHAPTER SIX: The Ravens’ Perch

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Sign of the Secret Brotherhood

CHAPTER EIGHT: Remember I Am the Master

CHAPTER NINE: The Ox Dealer from Kamenz

CHAPTER TEN: Military Music

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Keepsake

CHAPTER TWELVE: No Pastor or Cross

The Second Year

CHAPTER ONE: The Custom of the Guild

CHAPTER TWO: A Mild Winter

CHAPTER THREE: Long Live Augustus!

CHAPTER FOUR: An Easter Candle

CHAPTER FIVE: The Tales of Big Hat

CHAPTER SIX: Horse Trading

CHAPTER SEVEN: Wine and Water

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Cockfight

CHAPTER NINE: The End of the Row

The Third Year

CHAPTER ONE: The King of the Moors

CHAPTER TWO: The Way You Fly with Wings

CHAPTER THREE: An Attempted Escape

CHAPTER FOUR: The Winter Wheat

CHAPTER FIVE: My Name is Krabat

CHAPTER SIX: Living in a Dream

CHAPTER SEVEN: Surprises

CHAPTER EIGHT: A Hard Task

CHAPTER NINE: The Sultan’s Eagle

CHAPTER TEN: A Ring of Hair

CHAPTER ELEVEN: An Offer

CHAPTER TWELVE: Between the Years

Copyright

About the Publisher

It was between New Year’s Day and Twelfth Night, and Krabat, who was fourteen at the time, had joined forces with two other Wendish beggar boys. Although His Most Serene Highness, the Elector of Saxony, had passed a law forbidding vagabonds to beg in His Most Serene Highness’s lands (but luckily the justices and those in authority would often turn a blind eye), the boys were going from village to village in the country around Hoyerswerda, dressed as the Three Kings from the East. They wore straw crowns on top of their caps, and one of them, little Lobosch from Maukendorf, who was playing the part of the King of the Moors, blackened his face with soot every morning. He walked proudly at the head of the little procession, bearing the Star of Bethlehem, which Krabat had nailed to a stick.

Whenever they came to a farm, they would put Lobosch in the middle and sing, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ Or rather, two of them would sing, while Krabat merely moved his lips silently, because his voice was breaking. The other two Kings sang all the louder to make up for it.

A good many farmers had killed a pig for the New Year, and they would give the Three Kings from the East plenty of sausages and bacon. At other houses they got apples, nuts and prunes, and sometimes gingerbread and lardy cake, aniseed balls and cinnamon cookies.

‘Here’s a good start to the year!’ said Lobosch at the end of the third day. ‘I could go on this way till next New Year’s Eve!’

Their Majesties, the other two Kings, nodded solemnly and sighed, ‘We wouldn’t mind that at all!’

They spent the next night in the hayloft of the smithy at Petershain, and it was there that Krabat dreamed his strange dream for the first time.

There were eleven ravens sitting on a perch, looking at him. He saw an empty place down at the end of the perch, on the left, and then he heard a voice. It was a hoarse voice, and it seemed to be coming out of thin air, from very far away, and it called him by his name, but he did not dare reply. ‘Krabat!’ called the voice a second time, and then a third time – ‘Krabat!’ Then it said, ‘Come to the mill at Schwarzkollm, and you will not regret it!’ At these words the ravens rose from their perch, croaking, ‘Obey the voice of the Master! Obey!’

With that, Krabat woke. ‘What a strange dream!’ he thought, turning over and dropping off to sleep again. The next day he and his companions walked on, and when he happened to think of the ravens, he laughed.

However, he dreamed the same dream again the next night. Once more the voice called him by his name, and once more the ravens croaked, ‘Obey!’ This set Krabat thinking, and the next morning he asked the farmer who had given them shelter for the night if he knew of a village called Schwarzkollm, or some such name.

The farmer remembered hearing that name. ‘Schwarzkollm …’ he said reflectively. ‘Oh, yes – it’s in the forest of Hoyerswerda, on the road to Leippe! There’s a village called Schwarzkollm there.’

The Three Kings spent the next night in a barn in Gross-Partwitz, and there, too, Krabat dreamed his dream of the ravens and the voice that seemed to be coming out of thin air. Everything happened just as before, and now he made up his mind to follow the voice. He crept out of the barn at daybreak, while his companions were still asleep. At the gate of the farmyard he met the servant girl going to the well. ‘Say good-bye to my two friends for me,’ he asked her. ‘I have to leave them now.’