Themes: Loneliness, Curiosity, Adventure, Awakening, Pandora’s Box, Wizardry, Fairy Tales, Horror
A young boy, Sieben, driven by his curiosity and fervor for books, enters a wizards (‘Meister’) apprenticeship. He doesn’t know at first, but more and more strange and horrifying things happens. Visitors in moonless nights, dark secrets. Windsau, one of his fellow apprentices disappears, while the other (Altgans) is cursed to roam the house at midnight, slowly transforming into a lizard man. Finally Altgans and the Meister clash, with Sieben standing between them. Sieben’s only aid is the demon Nebis, hardly a reliable ally. Can Sieben prevail and survive?
We learn about Sieben and his family. Sieben is the seventh child, hence the name. His father is a craftsman, doing wood carvings. The two eldest sons help in the workshop, the eldest daughter takes care of the household and finances. Four is a mysterious boy, five and six rowdy twins. And Sieben is Sieben.
The youngest, most quiet and somewhat naive. He is always looking beyond, not quite there, which brings his father and oldest brothers to despair. Sieben is mostly interested in stories, books, and art, which runs against the trade-people’s blood that runs in the family. When Sieben works, then he can spend many hours and even days meticulously carving wood. But he prefers listening to the story tellers in the taverns. Always sitting quietly in the best stop, with unadulterated attention.
As Sieben is getting older, the parents start to worry. ‘The boy needs to learn a craft!’ they think. ‘How will he find a wife otherwise?‘. So they ask around. But no one wants to hire the boy — Sieben is either too withdrawn and taciturn or too clever and cheeky, or just flat out refuses to go.
Finally, a friend of the family recommends that Sieben joins the old bookmaker out of town, because ‘doesn’t he like stories? I heard there are some vacancies recently’. Sieben eagerly agrees, and so the adventure starts.
Sieben and his father visit the bookmaker, and successfully convince him to take Sieben in. So Sieben starts living with the bookmaker and the other apprentices.
The bookmakers workshop lays outside the town, remote and situated in a small forest. It is an old building, shared between the Meister and his three apprentices. Sieben, Wildsau and the oldest, Altgans.
Wildsau is chubby, a bit untamed with a permanently running nose, but also warm and dear, and reminds Sieben of his fifth and sixth siblings. Altangs in comparison is ten years older, mid twenty, and runs the workshop. He is distant, strict, authoritative, but also a good teacher with a witty sense of humor. A bit like an older version of Sieben.
The Meister in comparison rarely appears, either hiding in his laboratory or wandering outside.
So Siebens daily life as bookmaker apprentice begins, with him and Wildsau learning the art of bookmaking, occasionally helping out with strange requests.
Over time Sieben becomes aware of the wondrous and strange happenings. A table that always serves warm food, lamps that never go out, a workshop that is always clean (even though smelling dusty). And every seven days on Sunday he and Wildsau sit down and learn the other things. Runes and old alphabets, ancient drawings and strange pronounciations.
Sieben is more talented than Windsau, spending his free time reading and practicing, often sneaking forbidden books into his room to study them in private — he already read all the other books!
Windsau in comparison struggles keeping still, running around outside and exploring the workshop. He is the one discovering all the secrets, as Sieben prefers to keep quiet and read.
Altgans in the meantime becomes enamoured with Schwester Kaltwasser, a strange nun visiting the workshop on moonless nights, buying and selling forbidden books. She is not the onliest visitor, but the most frequent. And always are she and Altgans talking and whispering and laughing.
As the year turns round autumn settles in, and the Meister returns, locking himself into his laboratory. Where he was around once or twice a month, he now hardly cares about anything in the workshop anymore. Altgans is also preoccupied, not being strict or teaching anymore, and often travelling for a few days. Windsau and Sieben are left to their own devices.
Sieben now unbridled studies the forbidden arts, whereas Windsau tries to find out what is going on. At one point Windsau calls Sieben for a nightly exploration, but Sieben is busy, having called an ancient demon. Nebis, how the demon calls himself furthens Siebens studies, but also requests small sacrifices. And he is an all-knowing jokester, foreshadowing the possible end.
Windsau disappears, only to return as personal disciple of the Master. He stops sleeping in the same room as Sieben, rarely eats together, until he finally only stays in the laboratory with the Meister. The breakfast and dinner together have started becoming awkward for some time, as Altgans is starting to get sick, wearing more and more layers of clothing.
It is also forbidden to open the door at night, or wander around. Once Sieben notices a big yellow eye staring at him through the door, until Sieben quickly turns off the light.
It is finally winter, and the workshop gets snowed in. Sieben frenziedly tries to deal with Nebis and all the strange occurrences.
Altgans calls Sieben, gives him his private notebook and tells Sieben to run away. Apparently Windsau is dead! The Meister plans to sacrifice all of them in a black rite to attain immortality. Sieben should flee, as Altgans is preparing to fight the Meister. This is also why he appeared sick — he drank a failed potion of dragon power that is slowly turns him into a lizard. The Meister in the meantime is trying to perfect the recipe of the dragon potion.
The snow gets ever stronger, and Sieben makes a cruel discovery. He stumbles across the frozen body of Windsau and is forced to return. In the workshop all pretenses have been shed, with the Meister and Altgans being openly hostile. Sieben hides in his room, only sneaking out for food.
But Sieben is not lucky. The Meister forces him to serve in the laboratory. As Sieben is about to be sacrificed, despite struggling with his weak powers and still refusing to call for Nebis help, Altgans appears to the rescue. He has finished transforming into a half-lizard, and he and the Meister clash. Their magic powers calls a storm, and Sieben is hanging in by a threat.
Finally a big explosion occurs and the workshop and laboratory get blown to smithereens. Both Altgans and the Meister disappear.
Sieben survives in a the cellar, forced to eat frozen chunks of lizard meat. This increases his magic power, but also makes him see things.
A magic rat apears and talks to him, keeping him company. There are also many more magic books. And Nebis. Of course.
—Preparation for part 2—
2024 © Jonas Steinbach