EASTER was late that year, falling in the second half of April. The evening before Good Friday Vitko was received into the Black School. Krabat had never seen such a skinny, untidy raven as Vitko made. He thought he could spot a reddish gleam on Vitko’s feathers too, but perhaps that was his imagination.
The miller’s men spent Saturday sleeping, and late in the afternoon Juro gave them an enormous meal. “Eat as much as you can,” Hanzo advised them. “You know it will have to last some time!”
For the first time they let Lyshko share the same dish with them; the rule said that at Eastertide all quarrels among the miller’s men must be forgotten.
As dark fell, the Master sent out his men to bring back the sign. Everything happened exactly as it had the year before. Once again the Master counted out his men, once again they left the mill in pairs. This time Krabat’s partner was Juro.
“Where do we go?” Juro asked.
“To Baumel’s End, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Very well,” said Juro, “so long as you know the way. I’m no use at night—I’d be lucky to find my way from the house to the stable without getting lost!”
“I’ll go ahead, then,” said Krabat. “Mind you don’t lose track of me in the dark.”
Krabat had only once before trodden the path they were now taking, and that was with Tonda. It was not difficult to cross the fen, but it might be harder once they came out on the other side of the wood and had to find the path leading over the fields and past Schwarzkollm village. “If worst comes to worst, we’ll have to cut across country,” thought Krabat. But all went well.
In spite of the darkness they found the path quite easily and went over the fields with the lights of the village to their left. After a while they reached the road on the other side of Schwarzkollm and followed it to the next turning.
“It ought to be somewhere here,” said Krabat.
They groped their way along the side of the road, from pine to pine. Krabat was glad when at last his fingers met the squared upright of the wooden cross.
“This way, Juro!”
Juro came stumbling up.
“However did you find it, Krabat? I’d like to see anyone else do that!”
He dug into his pockets, produced flint and steel, and they lit a handful of twigs. By the light of their small fire they gathered pieces of bark and dead branches that were lying under the trees.
“I’ll tend the fire,” said Juro. “Fires and firewood, now, that’s something I can deal with.”
Krabat wrapped himself in his blanket and sat down under the cross, just as Tonda had sat there a year ago, upright, his knees drawn up, his back against the wood of the cross.
Juro told stories to pass the time, and every now and then Krabat said, “Yes,” or “Well, well!” or “Imagine that!” He spoke at random, not really listening, but it was enough to keep Juro happy. Juro talked on, telling stories about anything that happened to occur to him, and it did not seem to bother him that Krabat was hardly attending.
Krabat was thinking of Tonda, and at the same time he was thinking of the girl from Schwarzkollm, the girl who led the choir. She had come into his mind unbidden. He was glad to think that soon he would hear her sing again as her voice floated over from the village at midnight.
But suppose he didn’t hear her? Suppose some other girl was singing the solo part this year?
When he tried to remember her voice he made the discovery that he could no longer do so; it was quite vanished from his mind, gone, obliterated. Or did he only think so?
It gave him pain to think he had forgotten her voice, and the pain he felt was of a kind that was new to him—as if he were wounded in a place that he had not known existed until now.
He tried to dismiss it from his mind; he told himself, “I never had much time for girls, and I’m not starting now! What’s the good? I’d only go the same way as Tonda some day. There I’d sit, with my heart heavy with grief, and when I looked out at the moonlit moor by night I would sometimes go out of myself in search of the place where my girl lay underground, because I brought her bad luck . . .”
By now Krabat had learned the art of going out of himself. It was one of those few magic arts against which the Master warned his men, “because,” said he, “you might easily happen to leave your body and never find your way back.” And he impressed it upon his pupils that you could only go out of yourself after nightfall, and you could only return before dawn of the next day.
If you delayed, and stayed away longer, there was no going back. Your body would be closed to you and be buried for dead, while you yourself must wander restlessly between life and death, unable to show yourself, to speak, or make yourself known in any way at all—and that was the peculiar horror of it: even the most insubstantial of poltergeists could at least do some knocking, or rattle pots and pans in the kitchen, or throw logs of wood at the wall.
“No!” thought Krabat. “Whatever may tempt me to go out of myself, I’ll take good care not to do it!”
Juro had fallen silent; he was hunched by the fire, scarcely moving. If he had not put a branch on the embers now and then, or fed the fire with a piece of bark, Krabat would have thought he had fallen asleep.
So midnight came.
Once more the Easter bells rang out, far away, and yet again a girl’s voice was raised in song in the village of Schwarzkollm—a voice that Krabat knew, the voice he had been waiting for, the voice he had searched his memory for in vain.
Now that he heard it, he wondered how he could ever have forgotten it.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen!
Hallelujah, hallelujah!
Krabat listened to the girls singing in the village, and to the way the voices chimed in, now the solo voice, then the chorus, and as the chorus sang he was waiting for the solo voice to ring out again.
“I wonder what her hair is like?” he found himself thinking. “Is it brown, or black, or fair as wheat?”
He longed to know; he longed to see the singer’s face.
“Suppose I go out of myself?” he thought. “Only for a few moments—just long enough to look into her face . . .”
And already he was reciting the spell, and felt himself shake free of his body as his breath left it. He went out into the black night.
He cast a glance back at the fire, and Juro crouching by it as if he would fall asleep any minute, and himself sitting upright against the cross, neither alive nor dead. All that went to make up Krabat’s real life was out here now, outside that body. He felt free, light and untrammeled and alert—all his senses far more alert than ever before.
Still he hesitated to leave his body alone. There was still a last bond to be cut. It was not easy when he knew the separation could be for ever. All the same, he turned away from the young man who bore his name, sitting by the fire, and set out for the village.
No one heard Krabat, no one could see him, but he himself saw and heard everything with astonishing clarity.
Still singing, the girls were walking up and down the village street with lanterns and Easter candles. They wore their communion dresses, all black but for a white headband around the hair, which they wore parted in the middle and combed straight back. Krabat did as he would have done if he had been there in his body; he joined the village lads standing on either side of the street watching the girls, calling out to them and cracking jokes.
“Sing a bit louder, can’t you? We can hardly hear you!”
“Watch out for those candles—you’ll singe your noses.”
“You’re blue with cold! Why don’t you come over here and get warm?”
The girls acted as though the young men were not there at all. This was their night, and theirs alone. They went calmly on their way, singing, up the street and down again.
Later they went into a farmhouse to warm up. The young men tried to follow them in, but the master of the house turned them away, and they crowded around the window to peer in. The girls were standing by the stove while the farmer’s wife gave them Easter cakes and hot milk, and that was all the young men could see, because all of a sudden the farmer was back, with a stout stick this time.
“Shoo!” said he, as if they were stray cats. “Be off with you, my lads, or you’ll be sorry for it!”
The young men went away, sulking, and Krabat went too, although he had no need at all to do so. They waited nearby until the girls left the farmhouse and walked on.
By now Krabat knew that the singer had fair hair. She was tall and slender and carried herself proudly, holding her head high. In fact, he could have rejoined Juro by the fire long ago—he ought to have rejoined Juro by the fire long ago.
However, he had seen her only from a distance, from the roadside, and now he wanted to look into her eyes. Krabat became one with the flame of the candle that she was carrying. Now he was close to her, closer than he had ever been to any girl before. He was looking into a face that was young and very beautiful in the severe frame of her headband and cap. Her large, soft eyes looked down at him without seeing him—or did they?
He knew it was high time to return to the fire, but the girl’s eyes, so bright, fringed by such long lashes, kept him back. He could not tear himself away. He heard her voice only distantly; it did not matter now that he could look into her eyes.
Krabat knew that morning was near, but he could not leave her. He knew his life was lost if he did not break away and return to his body in time—he knew it, but he could not make the effort . . .
Until a sudden sharp pain pierced through him, burning like fire, and wrenched him abruptly away.
Krabat found himself back on the outskirts of the wood, with Juro. A glowing piece of wood lay on the back of his hand, and he shook it off quickly.
“Oh, Krabat!” cried Juro, “I didn’t mean to do that! You looked so strange all of a sudden, so different! I lit this torch and shone it in your face. How was I to know that ember would fall on your hand? How bad is it?”
“It’ll be all right,” said Krabat.
He spat on the burn. He could not tell Juro how thankful he was for his clumsiness. But for that burn he would not be sitting here now! The pain on the back of his hand had made him return to his body as quick as thought, and not a moment too soon.
“Day is breaking,” said Krabat. “Let’s cut the splinters of wood.”
They cut them and put them in the fire.
I mark you, brother,
with wood from the cross.
I mark you
with the sign of
the Secret Brotherhood.
On their way back to the mill they met the girls with their pitchers. For a moment Krabat wondered whether to speak to the singer, but then he let it be. Juro was there, and besides, he did not want to frighten her.