Krabat has been with the mill almost one year when Tonda dies. Suddenly, Krabat can work as if he gained the strength of many men the work is still laborious, yet Krabat can work with ease. It is hard work and Krabat has a difficult time keeping up, until Tonda, the lead journeyman and Krabat’s new best friend, lightly touches Krabat while uttering a few words under his breath. Krabat and eleven other boys work grinding grain for long days and nights.

The next day he slips away from the other two boys in his vagabond group and goes to the mill of the sorcerer. Krabat has a strange dream he feels he must follow. “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.” One day, however, the sound of church bells and of a passing girl singing an Easter hymn penetrates the boys’ prison: At last they hatch a plan that will win them their freedom and put an end to the Master’s dark designs.”

At the mill he finds eleven other boys, all of them, like him, the apprentices of its Master, a powerful sorcerer, as Krabat soon discovers.ĭuring the week the boys work ceaselessly grinding grain, but on Friday nights the Master initiates them into the mysteries of the ancient Art of Arts. One night he has a strange dream in which he is summoned by a faraway voice to go to a mysterious mill-and when he wakes he is irresistibly drawn there. Krabat, a fourteen-year-old beggar boy dressed up as one of the Three Kings, is travelling from village to village singing carols. The New York Review Children’s Collection

Krabat by Otfried Preußler