Fairy Tales & Ghost Stories by Theodor Storm Read online

Chapter Four: Krahirius

  After Hinzelmeier had been a year with the wise master, he wrote to his parents that he had now picked a task: he wanted to seek the Philosopher's Stone.  After two years his master would release him – then he wanted to wander and not return until he had found the stone.  This is a task that had not been learned by anyone, for even the master was actually just an old journeyman, since the stone was in no way found by him.

  When the beautiful Mrs. Abel had read the letter, she folded her hands together and exclaimed, "Oh, he will never come into the rose garden! It will go like our foolish neighbor Kasperle who moved out twenty years ago and never came back home!"

  Mr. Hinzelmeier but kissed his beautiful wife and said, "He had to go his way!  I also wanted to find the philosopher's stone, and found instead the rose."

  And so Hinzelmeier stayed with his master and gradually passed the time.

  It was already deep in the night.  Hinzelmeier sat in front of a smoky lamp, bent over a tome.  But it was not going well that day, and he felt it throbbing and seething in his veins, a fear overcame him that the understanding of the deep wisdom of the formulas and maxims that the old book preserved might be lost on him forever.

  Sometimes he turned his pale face to the room and stared thoughtlessly into the top corner, where the morose figure of his master busied himself before a low fireplace between flasks and crucibles.  Sometimes, when the bats swept past the windowpane, he looked longingly out into the moonlit night that lay like a spell outside over the fields.  Next to the master crouched an herb lady on the floor.  She had the gray house cat on her lap and gently raised the sparks from its fur.  Sometimes, if it really crackled snugly and the animal meowed before a pleasant shutter, the master would reach fondly for it and say, coughing, "The cat is the companion of the wise."

  Suddenly a long-drawn, wistful sound rang outside, from the ridge of the roof, which was below the window, as of that of all animals only the cat and only in springtime is capable of.  The cat inside sat up and dug its claws into the apron of the old woman.  Again it called outside.  There sprang the animal with such a robust leap onto the floor and over Hinzelmeier's shoulder through the windowpane to the outside that the broken glass shards scattered with tinkling sounds after it.

  A sweet primrose fragrance rambled with the draft into the room.  Hinzelmeier sprang up.  "It's spring, master!" he cried and threw back his chair.

  The old man lowered his nose deeper into his crucible.  Hinzelmeier went up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder.  "Did you not hear, master?"

  The master touched his graying beard and stared at the boy daftly through his green glasses.

  "The ice is cracking," cried Hinzelmeier.  "It’s ringing through the air!"

  The master took him by the wrist and began to count his pulse. "Ninety-six," he said thoughtfully.  But Hinzelmeier ignored it and asked for his dismissal and at this very hour.  The master directed him to take a staff and a satchel and went with him to the front door, from where they were able to see far into the country.  The boundless plain laid in the clear moonlight at their feet.  Here they stood, the master's face furrowed by a thousand wrinkles, his back bowed, his beard hung low down over his brown robe, looking unspeakably old.  Hinzelmeier's face was also pale, but his eyes lit up.  "Your time's up," the master said to him. "Kneel down, so that you may be released."  Then he pulled a white wand out of his sleeve and touched the one kneeling three times on the neck, saying:

  The word is your wife

  among the specter;

  call it to life,

  so you are the master.

  Present in no kingdom;

  it is a name, a mist

  a finding-creating system,

  that is the gist!

  Then he directed him to get up.  A shiver ran through the youth as he gazed into the gray-haired, solemn face of the master.  He took the stick and knapsack from the ground wanting from thence to go, but the master said, "Forget not the raven."  He put his skinny fist in his beard and pulled out a black hair!  He blew it over his fingers, so that it soared into the air as a raven.

  Then he waved his staff in a circle around his head, and as he swung the raven flew; then he stretched out his arm and the bird perched on his fist.  Then he lifted the green spectacles from his nose, and while he held them fast on the raven's beak he said,

  Paths you shall proclaim,

  Krahirius shall be your name!

  Then the raven cried, "Krahira!  Krahira!" and leaped with outstretched wings on Hinzelmeier's shoulder.  The master said to him,

  Wandering decree and wandering book,

  have you now, and now enough have took!

  Then he pointed his finger down into the valley, where the endless path ran across the plain, and while Hinzelmeier, saluting with his traveling hat, went into the spring night, Krahirius soared up and flew above his head.