Krabat
One of Neil Gaiman’s favourite scary stories for children.Set within a world of sorcery and wizardry, much like an 18th Century Harry Potter, Krabat tells the story of a 14-year-old beggar boy lured to a mysterious mill by a series of frightening dreams and apparitions.He becomes an apprentice to the master of the watermill where he joins the eleven other young journeymen who work there. Much to his surprise Krabat soon discovers that the mill is actually a school of black magic and he is expected to learn much more than just a normal miller’s trade.Krabat studies hard and becomes the master’s star pupil, but when he falls for a local village girl the depth of the masters evil and the darker secrets of the mill begin to reveal themselves. One by one his fellow classmates perish from mysterious, unexplained accidents and Krabat realises he must use all of the dark magic skills he has learned to secure his escape.Now a major motion picture starring David Kross (The Reader, War Horse).
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KRABAT
OTFRIED PREUSSLER
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHEA BELL
CONTENTS
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.’
