Krabat Read online

  These days Krabat often went out felling trees in the wood, with Tonda and some of the others. As they set off in their sleigh, well wrapped up, hot oatmeal inside them, their fur caps crammed down on their foreheads, he felt so good in spite of the bitter cold that he envied no one in the world.

  The trees they felled had their branches lopped on the spot, were stripped of their bark, cut to the right length, and stacked up loosely, with crossbars running between each layer to let the air in between the trunks, before they were taken to the mill next winter to be made into beams or sawn up for planks and boards.

  So the weeks passed by, and nothing much changed in Krabat’s daily life. He noticed a good many things that made him stop to think. For a start, it was odd that no customers ever came to the mill. Were the local farmers avoiding it? Yet the millstones ground every day, and grain was always being poured into the hoppers – barley and oats and buckwheat.

  Did the flour that was poured from the meal bins into sacks by day turn back into grain overnight? It seemed perfectly possible, Krabat thought.

  At the end of the first week in March the weather changed. A west wind sprang up, driving gray clouds across the sky. ‘There’ll be snow,’ muttered Kito. ‘I can feel it in my bones!’ And it did snow a little, large, watery flakes, before the first raindrops came splashing down and the snow turned to a downpour.

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Andrush to Kito. ‘You’d better keep a tree frog to tell you what the weather will be – there’s no relying on your bones these days!’

  It rained cats and dogs, the rain poured down in torrents, whipped along by the wind, melting snow and ice, and making the millstream rise alarmingly. The men had to go out in the rain to close the sluice and shore it up with props.

  Would the sluice gate hold against the rising water?

  ‘If it goes on like this we’ll all be drowned along with the mill before three days are up!’ thought Krabat.

  On the evening of the sixth day the rain stopped, there was a break in the blanket of clouds, and for a few moments the rays of the setting sun shone through the dark, dripping wood.

  The next night Krabat had a frightening dream. Fire had broken out in the mill. The miller’s men jumped up from their straw mattresses and clattered downstairs, but Krabat himself lay on his bed like a log of wood, unable to move from the spot.

  Flames were already crackling in the rafters, and the first sparks were showering down on his face, when he woke with a yell.

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned, looking around him. All of a sudden he froze, unable to believe his eyes. Where were the miller’s men?

  Their beds were empty, deserted; they seemed to have left in a hurry, since the blankets were hastily pushed back and the sheets crumpled. Here was a jacket on the floor, there a cap, a muffler, a belt – all clearly visible in the reflection of a red light flickering outside the gable window …

  Was the mill really on fire?

  Wide awake now, Krabat flung the window open. Leaning out, he saw a cart standing outside the mill. It was heavily laden, a canvas cover, dark with the rain, was stretched tightly over it, and a team of six horses, every one of them as black as coal, was harnessed to it. Someone was sitting on the box, his collar pulled up high, his hat well down over his forehead, and all his clothes were black as night, too. Only the feather he wore in his hat was bright red. It was wavering in the wind like a flame flickering, now blown upward, glowing bright, now drooping as if it would go out. It was bright enough to light up the whole front yard of the mill.

  The miller’s men were hurrying back and forth between the house and the covered cart, unloading sacks, dragging them into the mill, running out again. They worked in complete silence and feverish haste. Not a shout nor a curse could be heard, only the panting of the men, and now and then a snap as the driver cracked his whip right above their heads, so that they could feel the wind of it. That spurred them on to redouble their efforts. Even the Master was hard at work, though he usually never did a hand’s turn in the mill, never lifted his little finger. But tonight he was working with the rest, competing with his men as if he were being paid for it.

  Once he stopped work for a moment and vanished into the darkness, not for a rest, as Krabat suspected, but to run to the millstream, move away the props and open the sluice.

  The water shot into the millrace, came rushing along and poured over into the tailrace, surging and slapping. With a creaking sound, the wheel began to turn, it was some time before it really got going, but then it went smoothly around. And now the millstones ought to start grinding, with a hollow groaning noise, but there was only one set of stones working, and that one set of stones worked with an unfamiliar sound. Krabat thought it seemed to come right from the back of the mill, a noisy clatter and thud, accompanied by an ugly squealing sound which soon turned to a howl that tormented the listener’s ears.

  Krabat remembered the Dead Stones, and his flesh began to creep.

  Meanwhile work was still going on down below. The covered cart was unloaded, and the miller’s men had a break – but not for long. The work went on again, though this time they were carrying the sacks back from the house to the cart. Whatever those sacks had contained, it was now ground and was being brought back.

  Krabat meant to count the sacks, but he nodded off to sleep in the middle. At first cockcrow the rumble of cartwheels awakened him, and he was just in time to see the stranger drive away over the wet meadow, cracking his whip, going toward the wood – and strange to say, heavily laden as it was, the cart left no tracks behind it in the grass.

  A moment later the sluice was closed and the mill wheel ran down. Krabat jumped back into bed and pulled the covers up over his head. The miller’s men came staggering upstairs, tired to death. They lay down on their beds in silence, only Kito muttering something about ‘these accursed nights of new moon’ and ‘a fiendish job.’

  In the morning Krabat was so tired he could hardly get up. His head was throbbing, and he had a queasy feeling in his stomach. At breakfast he looked at the miller’s men, they were sleepy and bleary-eyed and surly as they ate their oatmeal. Even Andrush was disinclined to make jokes; he stared gloomily at his plate and did not say a word.

  After breakfast Tonda took the boy aside.

  ‘Did you have a bad night?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure,’ said Krabat. ‘I didn’t have to work, I was just watching. But what about you? Why didn’t you wake me when the stranger came? I suppose you wanted to keep it secret from me – like all the other things that go on at this mill, and I’m not to know about them! But I’m not deaf or blind, you know, and I’m no fool, either, not by any means!’

  ‘No one said you were!’ protested Tonda.

  ‘But that’s the way you all act!’ cried Krabat. ‘You’re playing some kind of game with me! Why don’t you stop it?’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Tonda quietly. ‘You’ll learn all about this mill and its master soon enough. The day and the hour are nearer than you know. Be patient until then.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Ravens’ Perch

  Early on Good Friday evening there was a pale, bloated moon hanging in the sky above the fen of Kosel. The miller’s men were sitting together in the servants’ hall, while Krabat, worn out, was lying on his bed trying to get to sleep. They had had to work on Good Friday, too. He felt thankful it was evening at last, and he could get some rest …

  All of a sudden he heard his name called, just as it was in the dream he had in the smithy at Petershain, only now he knew the hoarse voice that seemed to come out of thin air.

  He sat up and listened, and the voice called again. ‘Krabat!’ Reaching for his clothes, he got dressed.

  When he was ready, the Master called him for the third time.

  Krabat made haste, groped his way to the attic door, and opened it. Light shone up from below. Down in the hall he heard voices, and the clatter of wooden clogs. Feeling uneasy, he hesitated, hol
ding his breath – but then he pulled himself together and ran downstairs, three steps at a time.

  The eleven journeymen were standing at the end of the hall. The door to the Black Room stood open, and the Master was sitting behind the table. Just as on the day of Krabat’s arrival, the thick, leather-bound book was lying in front of him, and there was the skull, too, with the red candle burning in it. The only difference was that the Master was not so pale in the face now.

  ‘Come closer, Krabat!’ he said.

  The boy came forward, to the threshold of the Black Room. He did not feel tired now, nor did he notice his dizziness or the throbbing of his heart anymore.

  The Master looked him over. Then, raising his left hand, he turned to the journeymen standing in the hall.

  ‘Up on your perch!’

  Croaking and flapping their wings, eleven ravens flew past Krabat and through the door of the room. When he looked around, the miller’s men had disappeared. The ravens settled on a perch at the far end of the room, in the left corner, and sat there looking at him.

  The Master rose, and his shadow fell on the boy.

  ‘You have been at this mill for a quarter of a year now, Krabat,’ said he. ‘Your trial period is over, and you are no longer an ordinary apprentice – from now on you will be my pupil.’

  With these words he went up to Krabat and touched the boy’s left shoulder with his own left hand. A shiver ran through Krabat, he felt himself begin to shrink, his body became smaller and smaller, he grew raven’s feathers, a beak, and claws. There he crouched in the doorway, at the Master’s feet, not daring to look up.

  The Master looked down at him for a while, then clapped his hands and cried, ‘Up on your perch!’ Krabat – the raven Krabat – obediently spread his wings and rose into the air. Flapping awkwardly, he crossed the room, flew around the table, brushing against the book and the skull, and then settled beside the other ravens, clinging tight to the perch.

  ‘You must know that you are in a Black School, Krabat,’ the Master told him. ‘You will not learn reading and writing and arithmetic here – you will learn the Art of Arts. The book chained to the table is the Book of Necromancy, which teaches how to conjure up spirits. As you see, it has black pages, and the words are white. It contains all the magic spells in the world. I alone may read them, because I am the Master here. But you – you, Krabat, and my other pupils – you are forbidden to read the Book, remember that! And no going behind my back, or it will be the worse for you! Do you understand that, Krabat?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ croaked the boy, surprised to find he could still speak at all – in a hoarse voice, to be sure, but quite clearly and easily.

  Krabat had heard whispered tales of such Black Schools before. There were said to be several of them in Lusatia, but he had always supposed those were just old wives’ tales, such as women will tell while they sit and spin. Now he was a pupil in a Black School himself, though it appeared to be an ordinary mill! Yet it seemed that those who lived nearby, at least, said there was something strange about the place, or why did the people of the fen of Kosel keep away?

  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.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Sign of the Secret Brotherhood

  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.’

  Tonda had stopped. ‘They’re at Dead Man’s Cross before us – let’s go to Baumel’s End.’