Krabat thanked him and turned in the direction the old man had pointed. He had gone only a few paces when he felt someone pluck him by the sleeve, and when he looked around, it was the old man with the bundle of sticks again.
‘What is it?’ Krabat asked.
Coming closer and looking cautiously around, the old man said, ‘I just wanted to warn you, boy! Keep away from the Kosel fen, keep away from the mill by the Black Water – it’s a queer place, that …’
Krabat hesitated for a moment, then he turned from the old man and went on his way, out of the village. Dusk was gathering, he had to take great care not to stray from the path, and he was shivering with cold. When he turned his head, he saw lights begin to flicker in the village he had left behind, here one, there another.
Might it not be wiser to turn back?
‘Oh, come!’ muttered Krabat, pulling up his collar. ‘I’m not a baby! It won’t hurt just to take a look at this mill!’
For some time Krabat groped his way blindly through the wood, until he came upon an open space. As he was emerging from the trees the clouds cleared away, the moon came through, and suddenly everything was flooded in cold moonlight.
Then he saw the mill.
It lay there before him, a hunched shape in the snow, dark and menacing, like some vicious, powerful animal lying in wait for its prey.
‘I don’t have to go there,’ thought Krabat, but then, telling himself he was a coward, he plucked up his courage and stepped forward out of the shadows of the wood. Striding boldly up to the mill, he found the door of the house closed, and knocked.
He knocked once, he knocked twice; there was no movement inside the house. No dog barked, no step creaked, no bundle of keys rattled – nothing.
Krabat knocked for the third time, so hard that it hurt his knuckles.
All was still quiet inside the mill. He tried the door handle, and the door opened. It was not even bolted. Krabat walked into the hall of the house.
It was silent as the grave, and pitch dark. But right at the end of the passage there was a faint gleam of light, just the glimmer of a glimmer.
‘There’s sure to be someone around, if there’s a light,’ said Krabat to himself.
Arms outstretched, he groped his way forward. As he came closer he saw that the light was coming through a chink in the door at the end of the passage. Suddenly full of curiosity, he crept up to the chink on tiptoe and peered through it.
He saw a room lit by the light of a single candle. The room was all black, and the candle red; it was stuck in a skull that lay on a table in the middle of the room. Behind the table sat a burly man in dark clothes. His face was very pale, white as a sheet, and he had a black patch over his left eye. A thick, leather-bound book lay chained to the table in front of him, and he was reading this book.
Suddenly he raised his head and gazed across the room, as if he had detected Krabat behind the chink in the door. His glance froze the boy to the marrow of his bones. Krabat’s eye, glued to the chink, began to itch, and then to stream, and his view of the room blurred.
Krabat rubbed his eye – then he felt a cold, icy hand placed on his shoulder from behind. The chill of it went right through his coat and his shirt. At the same time he heard a hoarse voice say, in the Wendish language, ‘So here you are!’
Krabat jumped; he knew that voice. When he turned around, he was facing the man with the patch over his eye.
How had he got there? One thing was certain, he had not come through the door …
The man, who was holding a candlestick in his hand, looked Krabat up and down in silence. Then, thrusting out his chin, he said, ‘I am the Master of this mill. You can be my apprentice if you like – I’m in need of one. Would you like that?’
Krabat heard himself reply, ‘Yes, I would.’ His voice sounded strange, as if it did not belong to him at all.
‘And what am I to teach you? How to grind grain, or the rest as well?’ inquired the master miller.
‘The rest as well,’ said Krabat.
The miller held out his left hand.
‘Done!’
At the very moment that they shook hands, a muffled thudding and rumbling sound started up somewhere in the house. It seemed to come from deep down. The floor quivered, the walls began to tremble, the beams and door-posts shook.
Krabat cried out and tried to run. All he wanted was to get away from this place! But the miller barred his way.
‘The mill!’ he cried, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘The mill is grinding again!’
Signaling to Krabat to follow him, the Master silently showed the boy the way up the steep wooden stairs to the attic where the miller’s men slept. In the light of the candle Krabat could make out twelve low truckle beds with straw mattresses, six on one side of the room, six on the other, and beside each a locker and a pinewood stool. The blankets on the beds were tumbled, there were a couple of overturned stools in the gangway between them, and shirts and stockings were flung around the room. It looked as though the miller’s men had been summoned posthaste to work, straight from their beds.
One bed, however, was untouched, and the Master pointed to a bundle of clothes at its foot. ‘There are your things,’ he said. Then he turned and went out, taking the candle with him.
Krabat was left alone in the dark. Slowly, he began to undress. As he took off his cap, he felt the straw crown – why, it was only yesterday he had been one of the Three Kings! How long ago that seemed!
The attic, too, was echoing with the thud and clatter of the machinery of the mill, and it was lucky for the boy that he was worn out. No sooner did he lie down on his straw mattress than he fell asleep, and he slept like a log. He slept and slept, until suddenly he was awakened by a ray of light.
Krabat sat up, and froze with horror.
There were eleven white figures standing around his bed, looking down at him in the light of a stable lantern. Eleven white figures with white faces and white hands.
‘Who are you?’ asked the frightened boy.
‘We are what you will soon be,’ one of the apparitions replied.
‘We won’t hurt you,’ another of them added. ‘We are the miller’s men, we work here.’
‘There are eleven of you?’
‘And you make twelve! What’s your name?’ ‘Krabat. What’s yours?’
‘I am Tonda, the head journeyman. This is Michal, this is Merten, this is Juro …’
Tonda introduced them all by name, and then said, ‘That’s enough for now. Go back to sleep, Krabat. You’ll need all your strength in this mill.’
The miller’s men went to their truckle beds, the last one put out the light, they said good night and soon they were all snoring.
At breakfast the miller’s men assembled in the servants’ hall of the house, where the twelve of them sat around a long wooden table. There was good, thick oatmeal, one large dish to every four men. Krabat was so hungry that he fell on it ravenously. If dinner and supper were as good as breakfast, this mill was not a bad place at all!
Tonda, the head journeyman, was a handsome fellow with thick, iron-gray hair, though judging by his face he could hardly be thirty years old. There was something very grave about Tonda, or more precisely, about